Sycamore on Waldo Avenue

It’s August, so the leaves are full and a bright shade of green. When they start to fall in October, I’ll note that most of them are bigger than my hand, many the size of my face. Once the leaves have fallen, there will be less debris when the tree is cut down.

I can only see the camouflage-patterned bark if I look up high where it starts to peel away to white. The branches are smooth up there, like long white arms holding up the sky. They spread out in a wide arc over my house and the houses of my neighbors.

The neighborhood has been designated historic. The house that I have recently bought is 107 years old, a bungalow built in 1917. I like the unexpected that comes with an old house, like the laundry chute in the bathroom or the stairs hidden behind the coat closet door that lead to the attic. Or the large sycamore, the trunk of which is not five feet from the back door and not six inches from the deck railing.

The first time I opened the back door of the house, I instinctively shrunk back, the trunk was so massive and close. From the deck, I can wrap my arms around it, though they only make it about halfway. The size and the startling closeness give the tree a magical quality, as if the tree, practically part of the house, reaches up to some unknown place.

Even before I signed the papers, I knew whoever bought the house would have to do it. The inspection confirmed it. To keep the foundation intact, the tree would have to go. In the basement, dark lines spread through the walls like veins, filled-in cracks where the foundation has been repaired.

~~~

In ancient Egypt, the sycamore, planted near tombs, guided the dead back to the tree of life to be reborn. The tree was a symbol of fertility and protection. Americans, too, have historically seen the sycamore as a sanctuary—ever since General Washington’s troops rested beneath one during the Battle of Brandywine in 1777.  

I’ll live in this house with my cat—it has been a while since we’ve lived alone. We could use a protective presence at the back door.

Plant another one, my family and friends say, in its place (but not so close to the house). When I was growing up, our house was the first one built on land recently cleared of trees, so recently that you could sense the land adjusting to the excessive amount of sunlight. We planted trees in our yard, skinny pathetic-looking trees. We moved before they looked like anything more than sticks.

~~~

The leaves have started to fall. Big, fan-sized leaves that cover not just the backyard but the front yard, too. I can’t see the porch steps for the leaves. I have to be careful not to twist an ankle. The crunch and crackle of the leaves under my feet is delicious. I want to dive head first into that sound. I want to feel that sound all over my body, to roll around in it.

Among the leaves on the ground are perfectly round seeds, button balls they’re called, an inch in diameter. They give the sycamore one of many nicknames—buttonwood tree.

The peeling bark makes it a puzzle tree.

Poets have called it a spotted toad and an albino giraffe.

The poets, I think, are getting close—the sycamore as a sentient being. But more god-like, I’d say.

~~~

Trees communicate with each other, sending out distress signals or warnings. And when one tree is dying, it gives away all its nutrients to the trees nearby.

This tree isn’t dying.

The Christians I know will say trees were put on this earth by God for man. To provide man with shelter and material for furniture and tools and musical instruments. To provide man with fruit and nuts to eat. They say that about animals, too—that they’re here at man’s disposal.

~~~

It’s a clear day in November. A good portion of the leaves have already fallen, but many remain, brown, heart-shaped, waving in the light breeze. Bits of leaf among whole leaves flutter down slowly, sparkling in the sunlight as a man in a lift saws at a limb.

The tools, besides the lift, are relatively simple: a small chainsaw and a rope, a few men in yellow hard hats and matching tan and lime green t-shirts.

The limb the man is sawing suddenly breaks and falls. It swings upside down by the rope. Using a pulley system, two men yank the limb to the ground. They saw it into smaller pieces and drag them to the wood chipper. It grinds, chews, spits the pieces into mulch.

One of the men on the ground swings the rope to the man in the lift who leans, reaching, waiting for it to swing in his direction. Then he snatches at it deftly and throws it around another limb, quickly securing a knot. He saws through the limb easily. It falls and swings, the rope catching it, and hangs there knocking against the trunk.

~~~

Now that it’s over, the house stands starkly against the pale blue sky. Even the softer November sun sears the roof. Come July, the attic that once stayed cool, in spite of the lack of insulation and central air, will become sweltering, uninhabitable. The heat will seep into the lower part of the house. The air conditioner will run, sputtering, unable to keep up.

The back door stands alone without its sentry.

But what are most vulnerable now are the surrounding trees. I have likely cut down what ecologist Suzanne Simard calls the “mother” tree or the “hub” tree, the center of the network that shares nutrients to keep each other healthy.

There is nothing but wood chips in the space where the sycamore formerly stood. I press one foot on the spongy damp spot and lean in. The space feels fresh and strange, the air the ghost of a life evaporated. A crime scene.

But the tree had to go.

Didn’t it?

The previous owners of the house, any of them in its 107 years, didn’t cut it down. Maybe it was the expense. Or the hassle. Or maybe the house wasn’t worth such a sacrifice.

The empty space above the roof looks normal now, as if the tree had never been.

Brandi Handley’s work has appeared in Post Road, The Laurel Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Wisconsin Review, Moon City Review, and elsewhere. She earned an MFA in creative writing and media arts from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and teaches English at Park University, a small liberal arts college in Parkville, Missouri.

Published April 15 2024