The Cherryhill Tree: Cherry Blosssom Drops
The giggles of summer youth trickling from freshly mowed yards swam around the ears of their neighbors. Even if one was to shut their eyes, a picture of the clearest quality would lighten the dark of the mind, and there would be no doubt that one could see the buttered noses from lion weeds on the juvenile faces. The scene was sharpened more by the air ripe with the scent of dandelions and cherries flouncing in the open windows of the neighborhood. The flowery giggles drifting on the perfume of cherries flowed most through one window in particular...
Fitted with tattered white siding and neglected shingles of a faded black, the smallest house of the cul-de-sac sat on a plot of dead grass and weeds. A rusted window from its side teetered on its hinges; whether from the breeze or loose screws was unknown. Inside the portal draped with a convolutedly intricate spiderweb, a small fair-skined boy with tired eyes sat hunched over a desk. In one hand he fisted his dark hair. In the other was a pencil that he tediously drummed against a sheet of paper. His name was Jack Riddle, he was eight, and as told by his doodles of angry trolls, he hated multiplication.
Down the hall, Jack Sr. hollered, "Finish your summer studies, and your mother will walk you to the hill."
The ears of the younger Jack perked. With all the speed he could muster, he slayed the trolls with his gnawed eraser, and replaced their wart-molested faces with calculations. All seventeen questions had been given answers, though, accurate or not was the least of Jack's concern.
Jack ran into his old sneakers whose seams were so worn that they appeared to have mouths when he walked. They steadily blabbed as he scampered down the hall and through an archway where the aroma of yesterday's apple pie still lingered. Jack Sr. sat cross-legged at the kitchen table, sipping on a mug of coffee while he skimmed the newspaper. Across the sea of checkered tile, Violet meticulously scrubbed a pan she'd had soaking for the last three days.
"Good morning," Violet hummed.
"Mom," Jack said in a tone laced with enthusiasm, "Dad said you'd take me to the hill if I finished my math."
Violet spun on her heels, and so did her apron. She perched a gloved hand on her hip, eying her husband. Around his mug, a grin tugged at the lips of Jack Sr., and then he raised the daily paper over his face.
Violet shook her head with the beginnings of a smile. "Of course, dear."
It was only after Violet scrubbed the pan for another half an hour, and fixed Jack Sr. a second cup of coffee, that she and Jack set off for the hill.
The mother and son of nearly identical faces trotted down the steps of the porch with Violet tutting on about buying grass seed and Jack Sr. needing to tend to the unruly edges of the lawn. When they reached the road, Violet habitually grabbed hold of Jack's hand despite their quiet neighborhood rarely seeing traffic other than Mr. Lucas' new '59 T-Bird.
They went down the road, passing larger houses with lawns more lush than their own. Jack could tell his mother was envious, especially when she said old Mrs. Mulberry looked like a Venus Flytrap as she set up an odd contraption to keep pests from her garden. Laughter bellowed out of Jack when his mother muttered something about getting a dog and letting it shit on the neighbors' yards.
At the end of Daisy Avenue, the road began to curve off to the right, but Violet and Jack held forward until they reached the grass of an expansive field tapering up into a hill beyond their cul-de-sac.
"Now, Jack," Violet said, planting her heels at the edge of the field, "I'll be just across the street at Lucille's house. Don't go any further than Cherryhill, all right?"
