“Mommy, mommy! The tree is moving!”
“Oh really? That’s exciting!”
Delia kept her eyes on the traffic in front of her as Landon described his fantastic three-year-old world.
“They’re moving! Two of them!”
“When it’s dark out, the lights from the street spread out over the ground, and the shadows of the trees move around in different ways. Especially when there’s a really wide ditch, like there is here.”
“But they’re moving!”
Delia pressed the brake pedal as the traffic slowed in front of her. The light to cross Whitemud had just turned green, so traffic back here was just stopping, of course.
“Oh no! The trees are…”
Delia listened. Landon did not describe what the trees were doing.
“Have the trees stopped moving?” she asked as traffic began to move again.
“Yes,” said Landon in a very small voice. Another childhood fantasy evaporated, thought Delia.
Randall pedaled along the bike path, wondering again why he did this to himself. The path had been cleared, but there were still snow and ice patches. It was twenty below this morning, and the wind made it feel like minus thirty. Luckily it was a tailwind.
Randall didn’t mind this part of his commute. The bike path was separated from Ninety-First Street by a hundred-foot-wide stormwater pond. It had taken a long time to construct, and the detour had been annoying, requiring him to ride on streets that became nearly impassable in winter, covered with the slushy mixture of snow and sand affectionately referred to as brown sugar. It was inconvenient for cars, but it forced the few winter cyclists onto the sidewalk.
Of all the things that held up the construction, Randall could not understand why the path had remained closed when all that remained was planting the trees. Or why it took so long to plant them. You get the scooper truck, pull them out of the nursery, plop them in the ground, and you’re done! Randall could have planted a forest in the time it took the city to place the few scattered trees that added aesthetic to… What the hell?
Randall chuckled to himself. Trick of the light. Headlights coming off Ninety-First Street, where the traffic was slowing as it approached the lights at Whitemud. On average, Randall would get from Thirty-Eighth Avenue to Whitemud about as fast as a car at rush hour. He looked left to see if he could recognize a particular… Shit! He pedaled faster. This couldn’t be happening! Shit! It was on the path! In front—
Needles scratched Randall’s face. He felt his knee snap as his bike landed on it.
He didn’t have time to feel anything else.
Afterword
This story is based on a real location where I used to commute to work by bicycle year-round. My mind always wandered as I pedaled along, wondering, among other things, why it took so long to put the last trees in place when they re-graded the area.
Copyright 2020 by Violet Beckingham, all rights reserved
I Am Violet 