The Walkers
By: Troy Ernest Hill
Tags: Fiction, Pandemic, Covid 19, Short Story, Shelter In Place

The walkers round here’ve always buzzed buzzed buzzed ever which way. Leelee crouching here and there over her plantings, seeding the flyer feeders she hung on my limbs and up and down that long front porch — a little crooked like a Cherry branch, mouthing with the walkers who come to call, yacking about the gardens, folks crowing over the decrepit dwelling and musty barn, yip yap yip. Her male counterpartner, too, whilst he had his turn here, bumbling round, rusty tools and machines, swilling spicy fermentations, mouthing deep and loud and blasting out cackles here and there. Relations and distant offspring, piling out of wheeled machines, calling out, scrambling all round the slick flat grass with them sweet sour juices and sweet salty victuals, toking on tobaccos, swatting acorn-looking floaters with tight nets on handles. Always carrying on, the walkers.

Leelee put me in the ground here in 61. Sapling from a nursery, I was. She brought me up like an abandoned kitty katty. Dug a hole next to this here gurgling spring and tucked me right in with rich dark wormy dirt. Salix nigra, she called me, Black Willow, domesticated I suppose, but my forebearers were wild here before me, grew to hang over the creeks and lakes allover these Catskills, came right up from the earth with nobody’s help, from their own progenation, just like the Hemlocks, the Beeches, the Oaks, and the rest. Ashes, too, but they’ve fallen to the borer now. One by one. Just like the Elms, the Chestnuts. Just like Leelee. Collapsed in the shade garden under my branches and never got up till them worker males carried her off.

Least she went doing the joy thing. All summer’d she’d be in the yard toiling away with that little shovel whatchcallit, turning the soil, slipping in the bulbs, the seeds, the seedlings. Just like me. A fast grower, people said. Good for a shade garden. That’d be yours truly. Yep, she’d be in the cool shadow of my leaves there, toiling and fiddling, pulling out the ones she didn’t like between the iris and the ferns, the trout lilies, hostas, a-still-bees, something called a pitcher plant that swallows up flies just like a toad. Then she’d be squatting alongside that yonder sun-blasted border along the front porch — the poppies and sunflowers, phlox and black-eyed Susans. Next Leelee’d tangle in that ring of roses on the side of the house, and otherwise mosey in the swathe of mixed yellows, blues, and reds that run clear to the road between the spring-fed trickling stream that bubbles up near me, sending up the scent of sweet wet rock, and the grassy field the bowed gravel path for the wheeled machines cuts through on the far side.

After she was felled came a quiet time. Then the drifts of gawkers. Then these newbies started coming round, coming and going and coming and going every few days or weeks. The leaders of the pack with their two half creatures still young, sapling like, the offspring. The little rascals climbing like cats right up my rippled hide before no time, sticking their rubbery feet in my crooks and pulling at leaves, stickin em in their mouths till the female leader snapped at em.

Yessir, these new walkers who come of late shoot round the more so — firecracker like. The male leader, gray feathery scalp, wiry limbed, jouncing round and mumbling night and day like a belabored bumble bee. Plans, he mouths, plans for this and plans for that. He and his counterpartner female, long and thin with hair like red Maple leaves of autumn. From the day they first showed after Leelee’d been carried off, been mouthing plans plans plans. Both of them plus their workers for hire carrying out the insides of the dwelling, pulling its dank guts from the mouth of the door, carting it all outside into the flat grass, into the long grass, stacked on the porch, by the gravel pathway. Every direction. Worn dirtied old stuff pouring out. Some for flames in the yard. Some for wheeling off. Some dumped right in a giant hole dug by a wheeled machine. Dusty dressers, broken sit furniture, bits of walls, half rotten posts like long-dead trees. Porcelain receptacles. Moldy floor fabrics. Empty frames. Those boxy looking packets of the thinnest slices of us — with the words imprinted on each side. Leelee would sit out there in the rocker for hours at a time with her nose in one, turning each slice real careful like it might ignite. I tried not to take it personal — the slices and all. The walkers and their words — them yak em, scribble em, study on em. Words from mouths, words on slices, words to themselves, to one another, to the sky, to machines. They make names for things, for themselves, the things they do — even there’s a word for words, so much so they forget to breathe at times. I get tired just watching them mouthing and moving all the cast-offs here and there. The female leader flapping and folding, oftentimes with a sharp way about it, like she’s angry at the solids in her hands. The male pointing and planning. Planning and pointing. Greeting the workers who come in the wheeled machines, them not as frantic but with the motion of purpose, plodding, plodding, making their way to do what they call gutting the place — “this ol farmhouse,” they love to mouth.

Clean new stuff arrives on the open wheeled machines. Lumber — don’t think I don’t know what it is. Pieces of us, sliced up to squared lengths of robot corpses, “fair and square” they say, sanded down, shellacked, made to hold up their dwellings, full of logic and organic, no, organization, machination. There are words for it. They stack it in the flat grass. Lawn, they call it. That same male walker from Leelee’s day would come every so often all summer to ride a cloud-spewing machine up and down and up and down keeping every blade short and anything else from growing there.

The new walkers like that, too. Walk all round that flat green. The little ones shuffle on it, running here and there, stumbling, crying out for joy and pain. Pulling at the blades. The dandelions. Last sun circle, in the new leaf time, the female leader set these chocolate candies shaped like eggs all round. Set one in my crook. Then the girl and boy and the soap-smelly dog come out midmorning sun and flop all ever which way to find ’em laying here and there. Smear the brown stuff on their faces. Not well hidden, those food balls. No. A mouse would’ve had ’em in the time it takes that long branch on the number circle on the wall under the porch there to go halfway round.

They eat the chocolate egg but not the chicken egg, the new walkers. No sir. They’ve got a word for it, too. Heard ’em tell the welcome wagon folks who walked up here, used to walk up here, it’s the same male walker that drove the machine to flatten the grass. Wrinkled but still ambling. Days when he wasn’t riding the machine up and down the flat grass, he and his female counterpartner would amble on up the driveway to interrupt Leelee in her doings, working the ground or sitting on the porch cushions — the cushions covered in pretend leaves and berries. The male with his beaked hat, the female with a bird’s nest straw-looking item, the two would waddle on up to make their sounds to Leelee. They’d bring eggs in a basket from the chickens in their own yard down the way, green leaves grown for edibles, and some sweet brown they called homemade fudge. They’d go loud cackle a lot. Leelee would make gentle sounds at em, then shake her head after they’d turned their backs moving back toward the road.

Well, these same elder walkers brought the basket of eggs right up here to greet the new ones, so busy with their business, eye nor ear recognized that approach. The capped wrinkled elder yelled out like a laugh, and the newbies jumped. The male leader dropped the hammer he’d gripped. The female leader dropped the black plasticky bag she’d towed. They grinned, but nervous like. The elder female visitor held out the basket. The elder male visitor pointed off toward their dwelling and made oratory explanatory. The new leaders eyed each other. The little female offspring bobbed up, wanted to see into that basket but couldn’t for vertical challenge — the basket stayed put in the branched-out hand of the elder female. The new house dwellers shook heads, pressed lips, made their sounds about no animals for victuals — about this new word. Veegan.

“Not even eggs?” The plump elder male squawked.

The new dwellers crossed their spindly arms. The half size boy now watched from the front porch in the safe cave of the door space.

The neighbor folk took a step backward. Faces drooped the more so. The arm with the basket bent low like a pine branch under snow. They mumbled more sounds, but quieter. Turned and ambled back the way they came. Haven’t come again. A different male worker comes now for the squat wheeled machine to keep the grass flat.

After our leaves colored, browned, and shed, the new walkers left without return. I missed when in the cold months Leelee would send smoke out that brick box on the housetop and some would drift my way. A dense carbonation breath. Soaked it right up. Warmed the roots under the white cold blanket. Made ripples in moonlight.

Then when the ground thawed, still no sign of the new walkers. Started to think them gone for good, but then just soon as the new leaves came, them wheeled on up. These folk would only settle for a couple sundowns, wheel off again. Hung up droopy furniture off my cousins’ limbs to sit and lie in. The small ones growed a little bigger, saying more words. Them all looking at Leelee’s flowers like never’ve eyed such things. They brung here other walkers with them at times. Relations. What have you. Walkers saying, “Veegan” here and there. Some god of worship? Celebrations. Rituals. Victuals. A new word, tofoopups. Baked foods coming out with tiny flames. A game of tossing a baggie into a hole.

One long day at low sun, the small female screeched sound like a pain surprise. Them all gathered round. The male leader came on up real slow with a shovel. I couldn’t see what’s their focus, but them mouthing a sound a lot, “Snake.” I know this. Their heads moved to follow where it went. Took some time for their bodies to unfrozen.

Our leaves began to turn again in crisp air. The walkers still scrambled but slowed up a little to look out and utter, “All that color.”

Another day but shorter now, at low sun, the male leader stopped near me. Asked a worker for hire, “You take trees down?”

I figured they might settle in for the cold months too now and be wanting my cousins in the wild out back for heat.

Worker mouthed no, he don’t, but his buddy does.

“Fuddy duddy,” was a word what Leelee used to say. What she said about her male counterpartner after he stopped coming round. Her visitors would make their mouth noise questions, and she’d mouth, “Oh, that ol fuddy duddy? He got the boat. I got this house.” Then she’d heehaw. She used to say they split up. Sounded painful.

This walker worker said he has a fuddy duddy. No, a buddy. A buddy can take down trees. Soon enough, many leaves on the ground, this buddy duddy wheeled on up. Piled out with a big round belly, spit into a vessel with writing on the side. The male leader joined. They sauntered up, eyed me up and down. The leader pointing at branches — not my best neither.

“Look here, the kids’ climbing tree, getting old, right? Those branches. Could be dangerous?”

The bellied one said he knows trees if he knows nothing. Said I look long in the tooth. Spit in his cup. Walked a quarter circle.

“How do you want it?”

“How do you mean?”

“18-inch or so for the stove. You’d have to split it yourself. Burns up pretty quick, willow, but still you’d get some heat from it. Or I haul it off.”

“Firewood would be excellent. We’re putting in a nice firepit around the side with a hot tub. But let’s wait until winter.”

“I don’t cut in winter. Snowplow keeps me busy enough.”

“Early spring then. Mid spring even? We don’t start coming up until late April or into May.”

“Spring sure come late round here.”

“I’d just like to have it done while we’re in the city — cut and stacked before we come back. The kids, you know.”

“What about ‘em?”

“Seeing it cut up? They couldn’t stand it. But if it happens in our absence, they probably won’t remember, I’m hoping, and if it looks like the magic wood ferry left us a special pile of logs …” The leader holds his palms up and out like a leaf trying to catch rain.

“Uh huh. Whatever works.” The worker male says a figure. Numerals.

The leader brings out green papers from his dressings.

“No, no. Pay when the job’s done. I’ll send you a voice.”

I didn’t want the lilies and the other bee-feeders to know. They’d gone mostly dormant by that time. But my salicin stress smells floated off me like steam after a thunderstorm and my roots can’t lie, spilled my warning juice all into the under-earth fungi, and don’t ever tell that fungi a thing you don’t want the whole forest to know. That soil network spread the news like wildfire. What was left of the browning green stalks of flowers bent their heads the more so. Not just for me neither. Once I’m done and gone, so’s the shade garden. They’ll be over by the end of the next warm time — and not quick like my sawed down hide, but a slow bake in the hot sun, drying em to a crisp like a Maple leaf in November. The fibian hoppers, too, they’d shrivel up, just like the earthworms caught on the road there when the sun bear down after a downpour. I thought, least I’ll be done and gone before them Phoebes come in Spring to fix their nest back up in my branch nook and lay them eggs.

Truth is I’m likely not so long for this earth anyhow, but’ve got a few sun circles left in this here trunk. I send ruminations out like smoke all winter. Soak myself in moonlight. Air stuffed with cold. Stars and planets. Wicked wind through branches. Iced twigs after a storm. Crows ripping sound. Eagle drift up from the valley, circling the mountain for land critters once its river meal froze. Deer pass me by in fluffy coats searching for a stray patch of grass under the white. Turkeys meander in hopes of lost seed or bug remains. Clear sunny days. Joys of soft snow. Seems cruel when I send up a few red-fresh twigs in March despite my knowledges.

Then something happens along the lines of the unexpected.

When still a thin blanket of white covers land and us trees still bare as rock, here comes that wheeled machine. The new walkers pile out and don’t now stay and go and stay and go. They stay put for numerous sundowns. The leaders whisper-mouth with new-new words. Home school. Virus. Inter net. Re-moat. A walker comes in a one-piece cloth to set up this inter net. But it’s not a net. It’s wires along the road and a fat orange one up to the dwelling. They say something from the governor. A shelter. Shelter in place. A extra new turn of phrase. I wonder, do they mean yours truly. Do they mean my fell day?

But, no. Soon enough the belly walker tree cutter wheels up the gravel path past the turned-out house innards — some still sitting round. The male leader walks out into the flat grass and waves him to a stop. The worker stays inside the machine and mouths through its open hole.

“Didn’t expect to see you all back so soon.”

“Up for the duration. With the kids. We’ll have to hold off for a while.” He bobs his gray feathery noggin my direction.

The tree cutter shakes his wide head. “Suit yourself.” He heaves air, breath making a frost cloud, and wheels the machine in a circle to go back the way he came.

The leader sets his eyes square on me. Strides over, close up like never before. Places his palm on my side. I can feel the stress liquid. Leaves a hand-shaped wet spot when he walks off.

The new walkers walk different from before. A little not so buzzy. Even the half sized. Still ambling, but they stick some. It’s not like the so-called vacations, the summer break, the holidays. There’s a quiet, a labor breathing, a weight in the muddy footprint. It’s like Leelee for a time after her male counterpartner stopped his season here. Slowed down. Less proud. Closer to the ground somehow even though upright. The male leader with a steadier swing of the hammer now. The small ones studying on ants, granddady long legs. Resting in the still brown flat grass to eye the cloud shapes. The female leader watching with curled lip and watery eye — part sugar sap, part rain cloud. Them all clutching one another like tree trunks grown entangled.

Shelter in place. Shelter in place. Growing more still now. Closer to earth. More sense of sky. The worms, the cool breeze. Shelter in place. That’s us. Sending signals through air, through ground. All of us my offspring. Forefathers. Foremothers. Wild and domestic. New leaves coming. Some winding down like yours truly, some winding up like saplings. All of us, never all frozen, born back to fresh green stillness.