The Dragon Tree (3 page)

There was a pause, and then Mrs. Moon said, “You mean Emerald? Oh, my goodness, Emerald isn’t our daughter. She’s my husband’s third cousin, twice removed.”

“And actually she’s an orphan,” explained Mr. Moon, his face turning pink. “So we took her in as our maid-of-all-work.”

“Your what?” said Eddy.

Mrs. Moon ignored him and frowned at her sandwich. (The cucumber slices were far too thick.) “I’m sorry to say she’s dreadfully clumsy. This afternoon she dropped a tray of my best porcelain teacups.”

“And disobedient!” complained Mr. Moon, his face turning scarlet. “This morning she refused to paint the furnace.”

“You asked her to paint the furnace?” said Aunt Alex, taken aback.

“Well, why not? After all, she is a servant in our employ.” Mr. Moon’s face turned purple. “As we told you, she is a …” He paused to sip his tea.

“Your maid-of-all-work,” growled Eddy.

“Of course, said Mr. Moon, scowling, his face now purplish black. “We hired her as a kindness.”

“As a kindness,” said Eddy darkly. “You mean, like, she mows the lawn?”

Again Mr. Moon glowered at him, but it was his wife’s turn to complain. Her voice rose again in anger as she said, “And there’s another thing. She talks back. Yesterday when I told her to dust my teddy bears, do you know what she said?”

Dumbly Aunt Alex shook her head.

“She said I should send them to poor children in Africa. My own dear teddies! Imagine!” Mrs. Moon laughed wildly and shook her finger in the air. “Oh, I punished her severely, I can tell you.”

This was too much for Eddy. He leaped up, knocking over the tea table. The teapot shattered on the floor. So did the cups and saucers. Cream dribbled out of the pitcher and sugar lumps bounced on the rug.

“Eddy,
dear
,” cried Aunt Alex. But when he grinned at her and stamped out of Mrs. Moon’s Nature Center, squishing sandwiches under his big shoes and pulverizing teacups, she murmured, “Oh, please forgive me,” and darted after Eddy.

“I trust, Mrs. Hall,” cried Mr. Moon, “you’ll give that young man the scolding he deserves.”

“Yes, of course,” whispered Aunt Alex, slipping out of the house.

Out-of-doors she took a deep breath of the soft June air. Eddy was nowhere in sight.

The little tree between the houses rustled gently, clapping its leaves as if in praise.

T
HE TEA PARTY
had been very bad, but Eddy had learned something. The girl next door was not stuck-up after all. She was like that girl in the story, the one who had to sweep the floor and stay home from the ball—in this case from the tea party. Which meant that there might be a prince around somewhere.

During the night, the little tree took off.

When Georgie tumbled out of bed in the morning and ran to the window, she saw what had happened. The stick had zoomed upward as far as the
porch roof. Its handful of slender limbs now sprouted branches, and the branches had fingered out into a thousand twigs, and ten thousand leaves were opening and turning their faces to the sun.

As Georgie watched, a small brown bird flew in from foreign parts, perched on the topmost twig, and began to sing. Perhaps, thought Georgie, it had flown seven thousand miles, all the way from some emperor’s garden across the sea.

The tree was enchanted, decided Georgie. It was a tree from fairyland.

Across the way someone was looking at her from a window on the second floor. It was the green-eyed girl. Georgie threw up the screen, leaned out, and shouted, “Hi!”

The girl jumped back from the window and vanished, but Georgie was sure she had been smiling.

It was the last day of school. Yellow buses rumbled back and forth along Walden Street, heading south in the morning and north in the afternoon, but the high school and the middle school were both within walking distance. Neither Eddy nor Georgie needed a ride.

After school the sidewalk teemed with kids hallooing and catcalling.

“Hey, Eddy,” boomed Oliver Winslow, slapping him on the back, “where’s our hero going this summer?”

“Your hero,” said Eddy, reeling from the blow, “ain’t going no place.”

“Me neither,” shouted Oliver. “So, hey, why don’t we goof off?”

“See you, Oliver,” said Eddy, and he galloped home.

As he opened the gate, he heard a hideous noise from the house next door. A couple of men with chain saws and a wood chipper were clearing away the mess of fallen trees in the backyard. At the front of the house Mrs. Moon toddled up the walk with a pink bag foaming with tissue paper. Then the girl named Emerald threw open a window and shook out a dust mop. Later Eddy saw her hanging up the laundry. Still later:

“Eddy,” said Aunt Alex sharply, “what on earth are you doing?”

“Oh, sorry, Aunt Alex.” Eddy jumped back from
the window. “I was just, you know, checking up on the tree.”

“Eddy, dear, you must never spy on people.” But then Aunt Alex looked past him, and her eyes widened in alarm, because Mortimer Moon was tramping heavily across the grass, heading straight for the wonderful tree with his chain saw in his hand.

“H
EY
!”
SHOUTED
E
DDY
, yelling through the bulge in the screen.

Mr. Moon didn’t seem to hear. Before Eddy could force up the clumsy screen, Mr. Moon was down on his knees beside the tree, setting the teeth of the saw against the narrow trunk. “Stop!” shrieked Eddy. “Stop, stop!”

This time Mr. Moon looked up.

Eddy could feel Aunt Alex standing behind him like a monument, and he tried to be polite. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said loudly, “but that tree belongs to us.
I
mean it’s in our yard.”

Mr. Moon remained on his knees while above him the tree stood in dignified silence, not a leaf shaking. If the small brown bird that had strayed so far from home was still perched on the topmost twig, it did not open its beak. “Your yard?” said Mr. Moon, laughing. “I think you are mistaken.”

“Wait a sec,” said Eddy. “I’ll be right there.”

“Gently, Eddy,” murmured Aunt Alex.

But this was no time for gentleness. Eddy hurled open the back door, leaped down the porch steps in a single jump, and bounded around the corner of the house. Skidding to a stop beside the tree, he said breathlessly to Mr. Moon, “This has always been our yard.” He pointed left and right. “I mean, look, that’s our woodpile. That’s our bird feeder. That’s our basketball net.”

“I believe,” said Mr. Moon, standing up and smiling at Eddy in the friendliest way, “that your woodpile and bird feeder and basketball net are trespassing on my property.”

“No, no,” said Eddy. “This part of the yard belongs to us. I mean to my uncle and aunt. It’s always belonged to us.”

“Unfortunately, young man, you are mistaken,” said Mr. Moon. “But it’s quite all right.” He flourished his chain saw at the woodpile and the bird feeder and the basketball net. “They can stay. I don’t mind them at all. Now, forgive me.” He flicked the switch on his chain saw and shouted over the buzzing whine, “I’ll get rid of this blot on the landscape.”

Eddy’s politeness deserted him. He lunged forward and stood between Mr. Moon and the tree. “No, no!” he shouted at Mr. Moon. “You can’t cut it down. This is our tree.”

E
DWARD
H
ALL WAS
the tallest kid in the Concord-Carlisle High School—that is, after his friend Oliver Winslow. Mr. Moon was short and fat. Eddy towered over him and looked down in fury from his commanding height.

Patiently Mr. Moon put down his chain saw and reasoned with the delinquent kid from next door. “My dear boy, you are overreacting.
I
happen to have a degree in forestry.
I
know my trees. This one is not suited to the urban landscape. It is a dangerous weed. It will take over unless it’s nipped in the bud. You must have heard of the kudzu vine?”

“The what?”

“The kudzu vine. It’s a wild invasive weed. It’s taken over whole counties in the South.”

“But this isn’t a vine, it’s a tree. What kind of tree is it anyway?”

Mr. Moon looked flustered. “It is not, I think, a native species. I believe it to be a dangerous invader from Mexico.”

Eddy laughed in disbelief. “You mean you don’t know what it is, and you want to cut it down? What if it’s something really rare?”

At this, almost on cue, a leaf floated down and drifted softly to Eddy’s feet.

Mr. Moon snatched it up, turned it over, and grinned. “Look at that,” he said, showing it to Eddy. “It’s sick already.”

“Sick?” said Eddy angrily. “It looks okay to me.”

“Insect trails, see there? They’re all over it.”

Eddy stared at the leaf. It was true. A spidery squiggle, delicate and fine, covered the underside. It didn’t look like the trail of a greedy bug. It reminded him of something else, but he couldn’t think what.

“I tell you, boy,” said Mr. Moon, “this tree is a weed. Have you seen its explosive rate of growth? It’s a danger to the entire neighborhood. And anyway”—Mr. Moon prodded the front of Eddy’s T-shirt—“this tree just happens to be my tree.”

“It is not!” roared Eddy.

Once again Mr. Moon dropped to his knees at the foot of the tree and turned on his chain saw. “Son,” he shouted, “I must ask you to get out of the way!”

“Never,” shrieked Eddy, leaning against the tree. “You’ll have to cut me down first.”

“Why, good morning, neighbor,” called Uncle Fred, appearing suddenly, having been summoned by Aunt Alex. “Can I help?”

“Oh, good morning, Fred.” Mr. Moon turned off the chain saw and stood up again. “It’s just a little disagreement. Your boy here seems to think—”

“Uncle Fred,” said Eddy, “Mr. Moon thinks this part of the yard belongs to him. He’s wrong, isn’t he, Uncle Fred?”

“Oh, it’s quite all right.” Mr. Moon chuckled.
“I’m delighted to play host to your basketball net and bird feeder and woodpile. They are charming assets to my property. No problem.”

Uncle Fred looked bewildered. “Your property? I think, Mr. Moon—”

“Please, Fred, call me Mortimer.”

“I feel sure, Mortimer,” said Uncle Fred, “that my nephew is right. The property line is, I’m sure, right here.” He stepped forward and dragged the toe of one shoe along an imaginary line in the grass, several feet beyond the tree in the direction of Mr. Moon’s house.

“Oh, but”—Mortimer Moon laughed—“don’t forget, I have just been perusing the deed to my house. I am an expert on the exact dimensions of my lot.” He stepped past the tree and dragged his shoe along the grass on the other side. “Actually the property line is right here.”

Eddy stood back and listened as the tactful argument went back and forth. At last Mr. Moon shook his head and gave in. “All right. The removal can wait. But only until we have a verdict from the
Registry of Deeds.” Reaching out a friendly hand, he beamed at Uncle Fred. “Agreed?”

After a slight pause, Uncle Fred shook his hand and murmured, “Agreed.”

“And in any case, Fred,” said Mr. Moon, picking up his saw, “this tree is sick. It should come down. A tree service would charge you plenty. I’ll be glad to take care of it free of charge.” Then, as if struck by a jolly idea, he chuckled and said, “Why don’t I prune it a little while we wait?”

“Prune it?” said Uncle Fred warily.

“You know, like a gumdrop. I could shape it like a big green gumdrop.”

Eddy opened his mouth to protest, but Uncle Fred said mildly, “Why don’t we wait?” Nodding a good-bye, he turned away and walked into the house. Eddy followed, grinning. Mr. Moon and his chain saw vanished into the house next door.

Left alone, the little tree—of an exotic species from Mexico or Patagonia or Finland or perhaps even fairyland—stood silent while a dozen new leaves unfolded and the topmost twig stretched six
inches higher toward the light.