The Wind in the Willows

The Wind in the Willows

A Short Story

By Maura Morgan

Daddy finished mowing the lawn, and Mama finished working in her garden. Then we played a game of badminton in our big backyard. It was after school let out for the year and before it got too hot to be outside. Daddy and I played as one team, and Mama was the other. Being only six, I wasn’t very good at it, and we didn’t keep score anyway. I got bored with the game and decided to do something else. Daddy’s shadow stretched long as he stood in the late afternoon sun. I laughed and pointed at it, telling him it reminded me of a tree.

“Oh, yeah?” He said, scooping me up in his arms. “What kind of tree?”

I searched the yard and pointed to a tall, skinny pine.

“Loblolly pine? No, darlin’, I’m not a loblolly. Try again.”

I pointed to another tree with bright pink flowers. Mama joined Daddy and me on our side of the net. I caught Daddy giving Mama a crooked look.

“A flowering crabapple? I might say that’s the kind of tree your Mama is, but she’d probably hit me.” Mama played, too. She slapped him on the arm, all in fun. “Try again.”

Certain trees I knew about because they were part of my heritage. Magnolias. Dogwoods. Gums. But none of those fit my impression of Daddy.

He set me down and strode across the yard where a massive, solid tree stood. He held his arms out like a weightlifter.

“This is the kind of tree I am,” he said. “A white oak. I am strong.”

I laughed as he made the muscles in his arms move.

“And me? Daddy, what kind of tree am I?”

“Oh, darlin’,” he said. “I don’t know what kind of tree you are just yet. You’re still a sapling. You’ve got a while before anyone knows what kind of tree you’ll be. For now, you’re my Lily.”

I wish he could tell me what kind of tree I’d become.

Daddy was a Clemson graduate with a degree in engineering. He got a job after graduation at some big company and believed life set him on the path he wanted. He married Mama. They had a big, expensive wedding and bought a house. I came along two years later. We lived outside of Atlanta. We went to church on Sundays, then went to my mee-maw’s house in Marietta for a big family dinner with all my cousins. He was regularly promoted, and we moved into a bigger house with a swimming pool.

After twelve years, the bottom fell out of Daddy’s work bucket, and Mama and I couldn’t fix it. He spent hours on the computer trying to find another job. Mama kept teaching, and I went to school, but we couldn’t bring Daddy out of his sadness. Finally, he found a job in Massachusetts. He hated the idea of moving, especially north.

He’d always joked about the Yankees coming down to Georgia. Not during the War Between the States, but now. Know the difference between a Yankee and a damn Yankee? A damn Yankee stays. I think the idea of leaving the South stuck in his craw, but he felt such a responsibility to his family he didn’t have another choice.

###

We moved north into a small house in an old neighborhood outside of Greenfield in late August when I turned ten. Daddy complained when the moving truck left while he and Mama unpacked boxes. I hovered because I wanted to help, but he shushed me from the dining room and told me to go play. I got out of the way quickly and went upstairs to my room, where my bed waited to be assembled, and my boxes were tightly sealed. It was my first time in this room. It was so different from the one I had in Atlanta. There, I had a high tray ceiling and a fan—that’s how the real estate lady described it when she was writing up our house listing. Here, I was sure I could touch the ceiling with the palm of my hand if I jumped high enough on my four-poster canopy bed. The wall at the back of the room was slanted, and a window with a little cabinet and a flower-covered seat cushion jutted out of it. I sat and looked out the window as I debated what to do. It would be easy to while away the hours here if I had a book to read or a game to play.

A large tree in the backyard caught my attention. It wasn’t an oak or a magnolia or a pine. It was pretty impressive, with a large gray trunk, long, flowing branches, and small, slender leaves. It swayed back and forth in the breeze. On my hand, I made a note with a black pen to see if I could find what kind it was on the computer. With the computer packed away, I’d investigate it in real life.

Before leaving my room, I peeked into my dresser drawers and found Hobart, my teddy bear from when I was young. I clasped him tightly in my arms, wondering why Mama chose to keep him when she donated so many of my other things.

With Hobart under my arm, I went to the bottom of the stairs and sat, listening to Mama and Daddy talking as they worked, and finally found the courage to peer into the dining room.

Daddy pulled a Fresh Linen scented jar candle from a cardboard box. He looked around for a place to put it, then tossed it back.

“Where are we going to put all this stuff? This house isn’t big enough for us.”

Daddy’s voice was as sharp as one of the big knives in the kitchen block. 

“David,” Mama said, placing her tea towels into the dining room hutch drawer. “You know how much more things cost here. This is all we can afford. Let’s just make the best of it.”

“Make the best of it!” Daddy’s voice changed again. This time, it boomed like thunder in a summer squall. He kicked the box and stormed out of the room into the kitchen. I thanked the Lord Daddy didn’t go in my direction. The garage door slammed. Mama sighed and plopped onto a dining room chair.

I padded into the dining room and approached Mama with tender feet. She enveloped me in her arms and squeezed.

“Is Daddy goin’ to be okay?”

“I don’t know, baby, I don’t know. How about you?”

Mama called me baby when she was worried. She’d called me that a lot lately. She smelled of lavender soap and Pert shampoo.

“I’ll be okay,” I said. I gave up my friends, cousins, and mee-maw when we moved. During the two-day drive to Massachusetts, I thought about them a lot, but by the time we pulled into the driveway of our new house, thoughts of them began to fade. Not of mee-maw or my cousins, of course. Mama had lots of pictures of them on her phone to look at and help me remember. But my friends? Julia was the only one I’d really miss, but her mom said we could Zoom. All I had to do was ask Mama when I wanted to see her. That took away a lot of the sting of moving.

Mama gave me one last squeeze and let me go. I gave her a kiss. She saw Hobart tucked under my arm.

“Thought you might be needing a friend,” she said, taking him from me and fluffing his fur. 

“Thanks, Mama,” I said. “I appreciate it.

Mama sighed and glanced around the room.

“The way things are going, I might need to make a lot more donations. I don’t know whatever made me think all this stuff would fit in this tiny house.”

“I found a cabinet in a window seat in my room. You could put some things in there.”

“Thank you,” she said, handing Hobart back to me. “But that’s your space. You go play now. Daddy and I will figure it out.”

I peeked around the corner towards the garage, but Daddy was nowhere to be seen.

I ran through the kitchen and out the back door, stopping at the base of the gargantuan tree. I looked up through the branches; sunlight was barely visible.

“Salix babylonica,” A voice called to me from the other side of the fence. “Haven’t you ever seen a weeping willow before?” I turned to see a girl, a bit older than me, holding a Harry Potter book.

“If I have,” I said, “it’s never been this big.”

“Weeping willows need a lot of water to thrive. The river is just there, through that line of trees, so it gets plenty.” She climbed over the rail fence.

“Lily,” I said, extending my hand. 

“Hope,” she replied, disregarding my gesture. “Where are you from?”

“Atlanta.”

Hope raised her eyebrows. 

“Are you a belle or a tomboy?” She scrutinized me through her round, thick-rimmed glasses.

I slowly shook my head. I had no idea what she was getting at.

“Neither?”

She thrust her chin at Hobart in my arms and then looked upwards into the tree.

“Do you play with dolls, or do you climb trees?”

I gave her question the thought it deserved. 

“Probably both. Never had an opportunity to climb trees. All the ones in my yard in Atlanta had low branches cut or were too small to climb,” I said. “Does that matter?”

“Follow me.”

Hope tucked her book into her shirt and grabbed a low-hanging branch. She swung her legs up over another and steadied herself before climbing higher.

“Come on,” she called to me. I bit into Hobart’s ear and followed her up the tree. She settled her butt into a hole where the branches split, then soared higher into the sky. I looked around, and she pointed to a nearby nub where I could sit. It was like riding on a Western saddle. Hope laughed when I said ‘giddyup.’ She asked if I rode horses, and I told her about my lessons at the Atlanta Riding Academy and my place on the swimming team at Chesterfield Private School. She dismissed one subject in favor of another. I could understand that. Neither my school nor my swimming impressed her, but we shared common ground with horses.

“Do you ride English or Western?”

“Both. Western when I’m lazy. But I probably won’t be doing much riding here.”

“I love horses but don’t ride; it’s too expensive. I play softball in the spring and summer, soccer in the fall, and basketball in the winter,” Hope said. “You should try it.”

I considered it. Though I was more of a solo athlete, I decided, for the sake of fitting in when school started, I’d give it a try.

We spent the entire afternoon in that tree. We talked and laughed. Hope read Harry Potter to me, and I told her about living in the South. That afternoon, we became friends.

###

I wished Daddy would adjust to life in Massachusetts the way I did. Mama assured me things would settle down when he started his new job on my first day of school, but I wasn’t so sure.

As for me, thanks to Hope and her friends, I was only a stranger from Atlanta for the first few days. They all loved my Southern accent and were curious when Mama packed grits in a thermos for breakfast. They’d all been to Chick-fil-A and were just as grossed out by okra and collard greens as I was. 

Daddy was quiet when he came home. It wasn’t a comfortable quiet, though; it was more like walking on eggshells. At any moment, I thought Daddy would explode. Mama and I filled the quiet with talking about our days. Mama was teaching history at the high school and was excited about her new job.

After his first week, Daddy had a lit fuse. He snapped at Mama when she asked about dinner. Daddy yelled at me for leaving books on the floor in the family room. When Mama tried to calm him down, he kicked at the boxes. Mama gently touched his sleeve, and Daddy raised a fist to her. He didn’t hit her, but Mama shouted at him to get himself under control. The rage in his eyes frightened me. He grumbled something and left the kitchen, heading upstairs to his and Mama’s room, slamming the door as he went in. He didn’t eat dinner that night.

In the early morning of the following day, I awoke to a flash of lightning, the booming of thunder outside my window, and shouting from across the hall seeped under my door. Mama and Daddy were arguing again—at one o’clock in the morning. I never heard them so loud and so vicious towards each other. I never heard them argue so long, either. I hid under my covers, hoping to dull the sound of their harsh, cruel voices. I clutched my pillow to my chest, but nothing I did seemed to chase away the flashes of what was happening in the room across the hall. I had to get away.

I jumped up from my bed, put on my rain gear quickly, grabbed Hobart and my umbrella, and ran out the back door. Mama and Daddy, in their room, were so wrapped up in their argument that they didn’t hear my footsteps on the stairs, see me go, or even care that I was climbing a tree in the dark as high as I could.

The wind in the rope-like willow branches made the tree sway, but I wasn’t scared. Something inside me said the tree wouldn’t break, and I was calmed though the storm raged around me. Being away from the sound of Mama and Daddy screaming at one another helped. Some rain dripped through the leaves, passed my Hello Kitty umbrella, and bounced off my Gorton’s fisherman raincoat and hat, but my feet were dry in my rubber boots, and Hobart was dry beneath my coat. Wetness covered my cheeks, but it wasn’t rain. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand as the bark-covered column beneath me swayed back and forth with every gust. If the wind hadn’t whistled so loud through the leaves, I might have felt a baby’s safety in a cradle. A hiding baby.

The yellow-tinted light glowed through the leaves in Mama and Daddy’s room, and the lightning flashed through the sky. The rain stopped, and the crickets started their nightly song. The long, narrow leaves whispered, and Hobart’s soft fur cheered me as it tickled my neck. The fear I felt in my room subsided, and my eyes grew heavy.

I stayed in the tree all night, sleeping, wrapped in the privacy of the willow.

I awoke to Daddy calling my name. He was standing in the backyard. He repeated the call and added a desperate, lower-toned question, “Where are you?” I hardened my heart: I wasn’t going down. He wasn’t the Daddy I knew.

“Lily!”

Mama came into the yard, and I braced myself for more shouting.

“The police are coming,” she said to Daddy, then put her arms around his waist. He put his arm around her, and she nestled her head into his shoulder. “Where could she be?” Daddy wrapped his other arm around Mama and pulled her close to him.

In the blink of my tear-filled eyes, Daddy had become himself.

I climbed down the tree. My feet landed with a thud on the green lawn, and my umbrella fell sideways onto the grass. I thought I’d be in trouble, but it was worth it if Daddy was himself.

“Lily!” Mama and Daddy ran over to me and folded me in their arms. With Mama’s soap and shampoo and Daddy’s lingering aftershave in my nose simultaneously, things smelled normal.

“How long were you up in that tree?” Daddy asked, kneeling to unbuckle my coat and hat. He helped take them off, and I rescued Hobart from taking a tumble.

“Since you and Mama argued last night.”

I was glad they knew I heard their fighting.

“Things are better now,” Mama said, kneeling too. “Daddy and I talked it all out last night.”

“Yes, darlin’,” Daddy said. “I want my family to be happy here, so I’m going to try to be happy too.”

“So, you’re going to try to be a willow instead of an oak?”

Daddy made a funny face. I looked up into the branches of the tree behind me.

“My new friend Hope says weeping willow trees are sturdy but flexible because they bend in the wind, and I think I’d rather see you as a willow than an oak.”

Daddy laughed.

“Sure, darlin’," he said, stroking my hair, “I’ll try to be a willow.”

“And if you’re a willow, Daddy, I’ll be a willow too.”