Liver Spotted Leaves
Of course
that means the tree was old.
“It’s a
metaphor kind of,” little Elaine remarked.
She was playful and fun in those days, dreaming of the man she would
marry and knowing nothing of fox squirrels and what her brother would do to
them if he ever found them on his land.
Pecan trees, however, were welcome, ugly as they were, because they
could be a source of revenue after everyone else moved away. Sad to think how one can end up, where one’s
life can take you, or leave you.
“Leave
you!” barked one of the jokers on the Council for Foreign Relations, old fat
guys’ division.
The coded
message required the services of a team of college kids and nearly three months
of marijuana consumption to obscure beyond the point of concern. Among the piles of empty pizza boxes and
other clichéd ephemera were the new, fresh, baby leaves, tender and bright
green. They would make a refreshing tea.
“Tell us,
great old tree, what is the riddle of existence?”
The tree,
whose name was Organizer, was fitted with special movement facilitator bands
about its trunk to enable it to access the speech rectifier unit on Percy’s
back. “Yay!” thought Elaine, “Percy can
carry that and my Teenage Fantasy doll too!”
“May your
dreams come true,” Organizer croaked with suitably arboreal depth. His roots extended into the surrounding
subdivision, penetrating basements and secret pipes. If he could only prolong the answering
ceremony long enough, his control over this environment would be assured. It was a good thing he was an evergreen.
.
