The Cherryhill Tree: Changing Seasons
For the most part, time had done Jack Riddle well. He became tall and hunky, and he grew a full beard that he trimmed every Saturday. He drove a '79 Mustang that Mr. Lucas left to him in the will (Mr. Lucas never had children of his own). Jack did well with the ladies because they liked his car as much as they liked his beard. He never did stop smoking, but he ran a mile every morning without hindrance, so he didn't see the need too. He liked his coffee black, and he read more books than most English professors. He was quiet and he observed a lot, which wasn't a bad thing because he was never fooled. He spent some time in college, but didn't feel as though he was intellectually stimulated. He learned all he could from his books. His IQ was higher than average, but he liked to build things. His mother cried when he left college, but his usually placid father hugged him when he built them a new porch. Jack became a carpenter and made enough money to financially support himself and his parents until his mother died and he put his Dementia-riddled father in a home. He didn't cry when his mother died because he knew she would get to be with her mother. However, he did cry when his father couldn't remember who he was; that's all Jack thought people were, anyway: composites of memories. Jack built himself a small house beside Cherryhill that mirrored his parents' old home. Every day for the twelve years since the storm, he would talk to his old friend at the top of the hill. It took a decade for the cherry tree to recover, but Jack's conversations about anything and everything seemed to assist the process.
Dusk was approaching and the setting sun was like a sea of yellow and orange paint spilling over the edge of the world. It reminded Jack of the time that he stepped on Mrs. Mulberry's orange tiger lilies when he was a teen and she called the cops. She had forgotten that Jack's uncle, Violet's brother, was the head of the police department. All Uncle Victor did was tell Mrs. Mulberry to stop disturbing the peace... his peace. It wasn't the first time Mrs. Mulberry called him with a boatload of frivolous complaints, and it wasn't the last.
No matter how crude she got with age, especially after she went blind, Jack thought himself obligated to check on the old woman whose ninety-ninth birthday just passed. It was unsettling to know that Mrs. Mulberry was the only one left; everyone else had moved away or died. He'd be lying if he said he didn't miss when she had her sight; to have her catch him stepping on her garden wasn't as amusing when she couldn't actually see him doing it. Nonetheless, Jack clobbered through her half-dead garden with plastic grocery bags swaying at his legs. He wasn't sure if the flowers turned so sickly because of him, or because Mrs. Mulberry was too decrepit to care for them anymore.
The porch groaned quite horrendously when Jack climbed its paint-flecked steps. He offered to build Mrs. Mulberry a new one like he had for his parents, but she said she would call the cops if he so much as stared at her porch for too long. So, he shrugged and left it be. He was never one to dwell on things. He kicked the door because his hands were too preoccupied with bags of milk, eggs, bread, and other staple foods. When he did, the bottom of the door splintered. He offered to fix that too, but she called him Satan and said she'd douse him in holy water. So, he left that be as well.
"Get in here, you moron," squawked the disembodied, brittle voice of Mrs. Mulberry from inside the house.
Jack sighed and set the grocery bags amongst the dust and weeds that grew through the porch's creaking boards. He opened the door whose hinges cried rather shrilly, and scooped the groceries back up in his muscular arms. When he kicked the door closed behind himself, Mrs. Mulberry expelled a harsh grunt from the kitchen.
Her house was small and cramped. Stacks of old newspapers and magazines were perched against the peeling floral wallpaper of her living room. Everything was coated in a thin film of dust that danced in the sunlight pouring through the window when someone touched something. Jack had tried to clean her house once, but she thwacked him over the head with a rolled up magazine dated twenty years ago. He never tried again.
