The Dispatcher

Five days a week he got home at 7:30 in the morning. He was a dispatcher for the town police department. After a night of disrespect from younger coworkers it was good to get back within the familiar dirty walls of home. He’d been a U.S. Marine, a Justice of the Peace, and a “gentleman farmer” but now he took minimum wage.

The dented door of his Wagoneer creaked open and then reluctantly clunked shut with a shove. Dew on unmowed grass wet his cuffs as he walked to the door.

He didn’t glance toward the Lincoln. It’d been brand new such a short pair of decades ago. Now it seemed to be trying to sink into the thinly graveled driveway. Unrepaired after a minor wreck a few years back, it had faded from luxury to junk.

In the house she had coffee ready for him. She handed him a cup, kissed him goodbye and left for work. She was a longtime teller at the bank. It wasn’t much fun anymore. These days it seemed like there was always a new system being implemented and a learning curve to go with it.

He was so tired. The October sunshine was too loud for sleeping. All he could think about was how tired he was. He had a couple of hours before he had to be at his other job. He was also a part-time security guard. Leaves needed to be raked. Not today. He picked up the newspaper and wondered if he could justify mixing himself a highball at this time of day.

Bigleaf Maple

Near the southwestern corner of my property stands a bigleaf maple tree. The surrounding firs are taller; they shoot up like arrows, denying their indebtedness to earth. The maple spreads its muscular canopy in a broad, rounded dome that echoes its mother’s ever-pregnant belly.

One of the best things about trees is that they stay put. Trees are not transient; they don’t change their minds about where they want to live. So when one vacates its place, the spirit of that locale changes.

A few winters ago it lost a large limb in a storm. The following summer I climbed the bank, picking my way through tangles of ivy and blackberry vines. I carried a bow saw, thinking to harvest a few armfuls of firewood from the fallen branches.

I was surprised to find the wood was already rotten from the inside out. It turns out that bigleafs are susceptible to a blight that causes them to fall apart. Few stand for more than a couple of decades.

The tree’s imminent demise has not dimmed its palette. Each autumn its leaves are transformed from sweet green to Van Gogh strokes of ochre, lemon, russet, and flame. It is a fountain of oxygen and color telling a story about the dignity of ending.