Doll pointed at the house next door. “Mr. Jeffreys, he gone be mighty mad when he come home and find he can’t get in his driveway. He’s been after Miss Fannie to cut that tree down for years.”
“Quit worrying about the tree,” Fannie yelled, “or you’re going to have another mess to clean up!”
“Really, Doll. What are we going to do?” Ibby asked. “She’s trapped. She’s going to pee in her pants if we don’t do something soon.”
“Got a saw in the shed. I can probably cut her out of there until we get a tree man here.” Doll’s face grew serious. “Look where that branch is sitting next to Fannie. If you hadn’t come into the kitchen, that branch, it might have landed right on top of you, Miss Ibby. Just glad everybody’s okay. I’m gone go see about the damage upstairs.”
Ibby glanced over at the front window where the tree branches had forced their way inside like octopus tentacles. Suddenly it didn’t seem so funny anymore.
“Will somebody hurry up?” Fannie said.
“Calm down, Miss Fannie. We figure out something,” Queenie said, still chuckling. “Someday.”
“All right. You’ve had your laugh.” Fannie sank down into the couch and crossed her arms.
Doll came running back down the stairs. “Lawd!” she cried. “That tree done made a mess of my sewing room. Big limb came through the window just missing the sewing machine.”
“Is that all you’re worried about? How about trying to get me out of here?” Fannie squawked.
A few minutes later Doll came back with a small handsaw. “Daddy’s coming over with some plywood to board up them front windows. But he can’t do nothing until some of them branches are cut back from the house,” she said as she began to saw one of the branches.
“This rate, it’s going to be Christmas before you get me out of here,” Fannie complained.
Doll held the saw up. “You want to try?”
“I’m gone go see if Crow can track down someone to come haul this tree off.” Queenie went back to the kitchen.
After a good twenty minutes of caterwauling from Fannie, Doll was finally able to cut a path wide enough for her to crawl through. The second she was free, she made a beeline to her bedroom.
Crow pulled up to the house in a borrowed pickup truck with sheets of plywood in the back. Birdelia and T-Bone were with him. Crow got out and began to survey the damage, shaking his head, as T-Bone came up beside him. Then the three of them started down the left-hand side of the house and came around the back.
Ibby followed Doll into the kitchen to greet them.
“Did you get ahold of anybody?” Queenie asked Crow as he came in the back door.
He scratched his head. “I phoned over to Roosevelt Jefferson. He got that tree-trimming business, you know.”
“What he say?”
“He gone come over take a look this afternoon, soon as he finish up another job.”
“We got lots to do before the sun goes down,” Queenie said. “Got to get boards up on them windows—otherwise skeeters gone be buzzing around like they own the place.”
“Understand.” Crow nodded.
Queenie beckoned Birdelia and T-Bone inside. “Y’all come on in. Birdelia, you go on upstairs, see if you can help Doll clean up the mess in her sewing room. Crow, T-Bone, y’all follow me into the front room.”
“What about me?” Ibby said.
“Just try and stay out of the way, baby,” Queenie said.
Ibby went up to her room and opened the window. Mr. Roosevelt and his crew had arrived with a large truck carrying heavy equipment. They were standing around the hole in the ground left from the uprooted tree, talking to Crow. The root ball was so big it reached far above Crow’s head. The hole left by the tree was much larger than she’d imagined, maybe eight feet wide and eight feet deep.
As Mr. Roosevelt’s men began to sever the outer branches with chainsaws, Ibby leaned out the window to get a better look. Fannie had come out onto the front porch and was pacing back and forth with a strange look on her face.
Ibby didn’t know why, but she felt sorry for the old tree, the way it was being hacked up. She thought back to Balfour and his accident. If that tree hadn’t been there, the balsa plane might not have gotten caught up in it and Balfour wouldn’t have crawled out on the gutter to get it. If he’d lived, her daddy wouldn’t have been sent off to boarding school, and Fannie wouldn’t have had a nervous breakdown. Could one tree do all that?
Fannie had stopped pacing and her arms were dangling by her sides. Ibby wondered if Fannie was thinking the same thing.
Mr. Roosevelt’s crew worked until sunset, but they’d only been able to clear away the branches from the inside of the house so that Crow and T-Bone could board up the windows for the evening. Fannie stayed on the porch, even after Mr. Roosevelt’s men left.