The Taking Trees

“I saw a man with no legs after school today,” Tommy said while pushing his eggs across his plate. “He was asking for change near the school. I asked him if the Taking Trees took his legs.”

Vanna wanted to tell her son that he had been rude to the man but she waited before speaking. She was glad she did. Dean threw his head back and let out a loud laugh.

“What did he say?” Dean had been flipping through the paper while Vanna served his favorite dinner: eggs and bacon. He took a large scoop of eggs on his fork and shoveled it into his mouth.

“He said no, he lost them in Num. I told him he should go find them if he lost them,” Tommy said, smiling with pleasure at making his father laugh.

“It’s ‘Nam, Tommy. It’s short for Vietnam. There was a war there years go,” Vanna said, her voice low, hoping that Dean wouldn’t hear her over his laughter. She was wrong.

“Don’t correct him, Vanna.” His laughter stopped and he glared at her. Dean turned to Tommy, pointing his fork at him while he spoke. “You’re a smart boy, so curious. That guy needs to get a job and get off the street. Defending the country isn’t worth anything if you’re just coming home to live off our hard-earned money, right?”

Vanna nodded. Tommy beamed and looked at his mother. She kept her mouth pressed tight.

“Hey Tommy, what did he say when you told him to go find his legs?” Dean asked, spitting out egg bits as he spoke.

“I dunno; he just wheeled away. He looked mad,” Tommy said. He hadn’t eaten a bite of his eggs. Vanna wanted to tell him to finish them.

“You know why? Because he was a freeloading loser! And what are we?”

Tommy shrugged.

“We’re winners, Tommy. You’re going to grow up a winner, like Rocky. Show me that fighting muscle.”

“Grrr,” Tommy said, pumping his little fist in the air and flexing his arm to show off his tiny bicep. Vanna exhaled and looked down.

“That’s my boy,” Dean said. He took out his phone and started typing. “I have to text this to Gary; he’ll get a kick out of it.” Vanna felt her cheeks flush. If Gary heard about her son being rude, then Gary’s wife Melissa would hear, and then the rest of the PTA would be talking about what Tommy Porter had said to a disabled man.

She started clearing the plates while Dean kept texting back and forth with Gary. She wondered if any of the mothers would tell her what was said about her. They usually didn’t, and she’d hear a whisper through the PTA meeting, or see a post on the PTA Facebook page about an “anonymous child” or “unnamed mother.”

“Hey, Tommy, want to play a game of catch?” Dean’s voice was always softer when he talked to the boy. “I’ll go get the mitts out of the garage, and meet you out back.”

Dean kissed Tommy on the top of his head before passing by Vanna on his way to the garage. Once he was gone, Vanna took a deep breath and looked down at Tommy. She forced a smile onto her face, and squatted near his chair.

“You know, what you said to that man in the wheelchair wasn’t very nice. You have to be nice to people that look different than you.”

“Daddy thought what I said was alright. He laughed.” Tommy looked confused.

“Daddy thinks some things are funny that aren’t really meant to be funny. Remember when Mommy cut her hand in the kitchen, and Daddy laughed, and Mommy needed to get stitches? It’s like that. That wasn’t funny either, was it?”

Tommy shook his head no.

“So when you see someone that looks different, don’t make fun of them or point out what makes them different. OK?”

Tommy shook his head OK.

“Also, I’ve told you a million times. There’s no such thing as the Taking Trees.”

“But Donnie at school said they were real. He heard that the trees ate whole babies, and spit out their bones when they were done!” His eyes were wide. Vanna couldn’t tell if he was scared or excited.

“Those are just stories, Tommy. They’re old stories; people used to tell those stories when I was a kid too. But they’re not real.”

She thought about when she first met Dean, and how they laughed about the Taking Trees together. They had gone to a diner and ordered fried chicken. They’d both grown up on the side of Inwood that bordered the forest, and they talked about how much they had in common. She told him how her nanny growing up had warned her never to stray too far from the house or the Taking Trees would get her. Dean laughed his big laugh, but not at her. He told her that his mother told him the same thing, and said that if he were bad she would put him out by the trees, and let them take him.

“Now,” Vanna said, pushing Tommy’s plate towards him. “Finish your eggs before you go out to play.”

When Dean came upstairs, Vanna waited in bed with her eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. She hoped this time it would work. He opened the door, and emptied his pockets onto the dresser. He took off his watch first, and then his clothes. The floor creaked as he approached the bed, and his weight hitting the mattress made her shake. She felt his hand slide under the sheet and across her stomach, feeling its way up to her chest.

She kept her body still. He breathed on her neck and moaned before pressing his lips against hers. When she didn’t kiss back, he pulled away.

“Don’t play this game. I know you’re awake,” he said. He put his mouth close to her ear and bit her earlobe. Before she could say anything, he rolled on top of her and pinned her wrists above her head.

“You can’t say no if you’re married,” he said.

She didn’t say anything, and kept her eyes closed the whole time. When he was finished, he rolled onto his side, facing away from her, and fell asleep. She always needed a few minutes in the dark afterward. She felt like crying, but she didn’t. She lay there, staring at the ceiling, listening to him breathe.

He slept so easy; so peaceful. He used to hold her when they finished making love, spooning her body against his, kissing her neck and hair until she fell asleep. They didn’t make love anymore. As she listened to Dean sleeping, she could almost pretend that it was as it used to be, that they were still young and had just collapsed into bed together after another day of laughing. The pull in her stomach and burning in her throat reminded her that those days were over.

Her eyes flickered to the closet where they kept their luggage. She could pack a bag and leave before Dean woke up. She thought about leaving every time he had finished with her, and like every other time, she remembered Tommy sleeping in the other room. She thought about her father—she would have killed to play a game of catch with him before he died. This was her life now, and that was it. One day, when Tommy was gone to college, maybe things would change, or she would leave. Until then, she’d bite her tongue.

She crept out of bed and took a shower, scrubbing herself until her skin was pink. When she had dried off, she wrapped herself in a bathrobe and left the bedroom, closing the door gently behind her so it wouldn’t wake Dean.

As she passed Tommy’s room, she peeked in. He was asleep on his stomach with one leg under the covers and one leg out, arms spread out wide on either side of him. She tiptoed in and tucked his leg under the covers. As she left, she took one more look at his face, trying to see whom he looked more like. Dean insisted Tommy was the spitting image of himself as a kid, but Vanna didn’t think so. Tommy had her eyes and long nose, and he was smaller than his classmates were, as she had been.

When she reached the kitchen, she made herself a cup of chamomile tea. The windows near the kitchen table overlooked the back yard. They had chosen this house for the yard. That was back when she wanted four kids, and wanted a yard big enough for all of them to play together. The two sides of the yard were fenced in, and the back of the yard was edged by the forest.

She pulled up her legs so they were tucked against her body, and she held the mug close to her chest. She watched the trees moving in the moonlight.

It was a windy September night, and the pines were swaying in the breeze. Their constant motion soothed her, their limbs bending back and forth like a pendulum, and she took deep breaths of the tea’s steam.

These were the trees that Inwood’s children feared. Legend said that long ago, a little girl had wandered into the woods alone at night; the trees had put her to sleep and swallowed her whole. When her father found her the next morning, all that was left was her head. The story changed, depending on the generation that told it. When Vanna was a child, the story was that, when the little girl’s head was found, her eyes were wide open in fright. She had heard Tommy telling his friend Nathan that the girl’s eyes were closed when her head was found, but the mouth was smiling. She wondered how long mothers had been using the Taking Trees as a scare tactic to keep their children from getting lost in the woods.

The trees seemed to be dancing in the wind, spreading their arms wide above their head like a ballerina, and moving with the wind’s music. They always seemed to calm her, no matter what Dean had said or done. They seemed free, effortless. The moon cast the trees’ shadows across the yard, moving like fingers towards her window. Then, as if the wind had shut off, the trees stopped moving. Their swaying stopped, and they stood straight. Vanna could still hear the wind blowing, but the trees weren’t moving. She held her breath while she watched, her heart starting to beat faster. The forest stood as still as a painting. When she finally released her breath, the trees started swaying again.

Vanna had never seen anything like it. She had an urge to pick up the phone, to call someone and tell them what she had just seen, but she had no one to call. She considered asking Dean in the morning, but imagined his face as he told her she was being stupid, and changed her mind.

A few weeks later, Vanna was cutting Tommy’s sandwich for lunch when Dean stormed into the kitchen. She had been sick all morning, vomiting into the toilet while Dean slept. When she heard him come into the kitchen, her stomach lurched.

“My watch is gone; did you take it?” he asked her. “No, of course not. Do you want me to help you look for it?”

“I’ve already looked everywhere, what help would you be?” He sat down at the kitchen table, and slammed his fist down on it. “Dammit, it’s an Omega. Do you know how expensive that is?”

“Yes,” she said. She had bought it for him as a wedding gift seven years earlier. She knew exactly how expensive it was.

“Four thousand dollars, down the drain.” He was staring at her. It had actually cost three thousand.

“When I clean the house today, I’ll look for it,” she told him. “I’m sure it will turn up soon.”

He didn’t break his gaze as she finished making him breakfast. When she handed him the toast on a paper towel, he grabbed it from her.

“I’m going to be late for work,” he said, and walked out.

She let out a deep breath, and her heart slowed. She had a little time. She knew he’d notice it was gone, but didn’t think he’d accuse her that fast.

Once Tommy was on the bus to school, Vanna walked across the back yard to the woods and found the tree right away. She had watched them all carefully, choosing one because its branches stretched into her yard the most. She ran her hand along the trunk, feeling its rough skin under her fingers. When she reached the point where the largest branch met the trunk, she stood on her tiptoes to look.

When she was a little girl, Vanna had gotten into trouble for leaving one of her plastic horses in a tree she was climbing on the edge of her yard. When they had gone to fetch the toy in the morning, the tree’s bark had grown around the toy so it was embedded in the trunk. All that was left of the horse was its nose poking out of one end. Vanna remembered her nanny shaking as she walked back to the house, looking amazed and scared. This memory had come back to her a few nights after the trees stopped moving for her.

On her tiptoes, she felt along the tree, checking around the spot where she had placed the watch. Finally, she saw a glint of gold along the rough brown bark, and reached up to feel the metal inside the tree. Her stomach lurched again.

The police couldn’t figure out who had stolen their missing things. The watch was gone, as was Dean’s signed Indianapolis Indians baseball, the China teapot they’d received at their wedding, Dean’s laptop, and finally, his Versace suit jacket. There were no signs of forced entry, no pattern to what went missing, aside from increasing size, and no clues in the house. When a police officer asked Dean if they could have just been misplaced, Dean’s cheeks burned a deep purple, and the officer backed off.

Each time something went missing, Dean looked at Vanna with more and more suspicion. She told him she was just as baffled as he was, and that she’d looked through the house as carefully as she could. Dean kept watching her with squinted eyes.

Tommy loved watching the police. He asked them questions and told them he wanted to be a cop one day. When he asked to hold their guns, they smiled and told him no. Dean had thought it was hilarious; Vanna felt her heart creep into her throat at the thought of Tommy holding a gun.

Once the police left, Tommy told his father how he wanted to get to shoot things one day. They were in the living room; Vanna watched from the doorway.

“One day, I’ll take you out and teach you to shoot; would you like that?” Dean asked him, putting his hand on Tommy’s head. Tommy’s face lit up.

“What kind of guns can we shoot?”

“I have a pistol we could try out,” Dean said, looking at Vanna while he said it. Her mouth opened a little to say something, but she didn’t make a sound. They locked eyes for a moment before Dean turned back to Tommy.

“We should teach whoever’s taking our stuff a lesson.”

“Yeah!” Tommy said.

“That person’s probably a loser, right? They need to learn not to mess with us.”

“Yeah! Let’s teach them a lesson!”

Vanna slipped out of the room and heard Dean follow her. She entered the kitchen, and stopped near the sink. He approached her from behind, putting his hands on either side of her, gripping the counter to trap her where she stood “I don’t know what you’re up to, but you’re not fooling me.” His voice was a hoarse whisper.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, hoping her voice sounded convincing.

“I know you’re taking my stuff. You’re stealing from me. You can fool the police, but you can’t fool me. I’ve been watching you. You look around all nervous all the time, watching me from the corner of your eye. You try to play innocent, but I know you too well.” She looked down at the floor, but he put his hand on her jaw, and pulled her face up to look at him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, taking in a quick breath. “I just wanted to save up some money to get you something nice for your birthday. So I sold some of your things.” It sounded like a lie and she knew it, but his eyes flickered with confusion. She kept going. “You said you really wanted a new car, a nice one like Gary’s, so I’ve been saving up to surprise you, but I didn’t have enough money in my own savings, so…” She let herself trail off. When she looked up at Dean, he was smirking at her.

“You idiot,” he said. He ran his hand down to her throat for a second. She swallowed, and he dropped his hand. “Using my own money to buy me a birthday present. Better be a nice damn car.” He took a step back, and she exhaled, placing a hand on her stomach. “You better get my shit back soon,” he said, putting a finger in her face.

She was running out of time. After Dean fell asleep, Vanna headed out to her spot near the woods. She sat down next to her tree, put her hand on the trunk, and closed her eyes. The ground was cold, but she didn’t mind.

She began to calm down. The crickets around her quieted, and she felt the muscles in her stomach relax. She breathed in the scent of the woods, a rich mixture of dirt, leaves, and moss.

“I need help,” she said, hearing her voice crack as it left her.

She took another deep breath and felt an energy surge through her. It started in her fingertips, and moved down her wrists into her arms and chest. It continued through her stomach and into her legs, until she could feel it pulsing through her entire body. Every part of her felt stronger and she felt like her skin was glowing.

Vanna opened her eyes and stood up. She’d never felt so tall as she strode back to the house. She moved towards the staircase, and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror in the hallway. Her hair was wild around her head, and her shoulders hunched forward. Her eyes looked hungry. She smiled and climbed the stairs two at a time.

She stood above Dean. He was sleeping on his back, one arm draped over his head. He looked so peaceful and harmless. Vanna had to hold in her laughter while she watched him. She didn’t want to wake him just yet. She retrieved some items she’d staged earlier, zip ties, duct tape, one of Dean’s Burberry socks, and his pistol.

Vanna looked at Dean one last time before continuing. She rolled him over without waking him, and picked up both of his arms. She slipped zip ties over his hands and tightened them before he opened his eyes. The sound of her pulling out a strip of duct tape woke him, and he looked at her, confused. As he slowly took in the scene around him, she shoved the sock into his mouth, and put a piece of tape over it.

“Goodbye, Dean,” she said, her voice making his eyes flash around in panic.

“I can put up with you, but I can’t let you turn Tommy into a monster.”

His eyes opened wider as she spoke, emerging from the depths of his sleep. She picked up the pistol and pointed it at his head. Dean’s yells were muffled and panicked; he struggled to roll into a seated position with his hands tied together. Vanna didn’t hold back her laughter this time.

“Be quiet. I don’t want Tommy to wake up. Now stand up.”

Dean worked his way into a standing position, and Vanna sneered at his filthy boxer shorts.

“Let’s go. We’re going to the yard,” she said, motioning the gun towards the door. Dean trudged along in front of her, glancing back every few steps.

When they reached the back yard, she could feel the trees pulling her in. They seemed to be humming, and she was humming back. The energy within her started to expand, and she felt like her skin was on fire. He seemed to feel it too; he started to scream into the sock as they approached the line of the forest.

She had him take a few steps into the woods before she cracked the pistol against his head. He dropped to the ground, his body falling onto the forest floor in a heap. She threw the gun onto the ground next to him. It was fast and unceremonious, just the way she’d hoped.

Vanna didn’t want to watch. She turned back and went to the edge of the woods, placing her hand on the tree. “Thank you,” she said. The surge of energy drained out of her. When she returned to the house, her limbs hung heavy against her body and she was out of breath. She had dirt and leaves stuck to her clothes, and she smelled the forest’s earthy smell stuck to her body.

“Mommy?” Tommy’s voice called from his room as she climbed the stairs.

She went to his bed.

“Scoot over,” she said, and climbed in.

“What was going on? I heard you and Daddy?”

“Dad got called into work so he had to go,” she whispered. He nodded and closed his eyes, curling up next to her.

“Get some sleep,” she said. She closed her eyes and felt her body relax. She put her hand on her stomach. “The three of us are safe now.”