Chokecherry

In Which we Once Again happen across our old Friend Grampa Bones, who in turn happens across a rather Vexing piece of Foliage

 

        In the great sticky State of Molasses, home to succulent Succotash County, in which is nestled, slightly off-center, the happy hamlet of Horseradish Falls, there is a sleepy street called Sandbag Avenue, and on that street there sits a house.

        There are actually many houses sitting on Sandbag Avenue, but there is only one we are interested in at this particular moment. It is not a big house, nor is it a small house. It is a just-about-the-right-size-for-an-old-man-to-live-in-all-alone sort of house, which is quite fortunate, as it happens to belong to an old man who does indeed live there all alone. This particular old man’s name is Grampa Bones. 

      Grampa had lived for many, many years in that same house on that same street in the same town, leaving Horseradish Falls only occasionally to go fishing for papayafish on Vertical Lake, or to take the bus to try his luck at the Lucky Clam Casino with his friend Artie Applesauce. He liked it this way. Grampa didn’t care much for adventure, and he found plenty of things to interest him right in his own quiet home.  

      One day Grampa awoke to the sound of the gatorphone ringing. The sound surprised him; not many people found much need to call a weary old coot such as himself. Taking a long ostrich feather from the drawer in the bedside table, he tickled the throat of the gator until it opened its mouth wide enough for Grampa to gingerly reach inside and snatch the receiver, before propping the toothy mouth with a stick of peppermint he kept beside the bed for just that purpose.

      “Grampa, thank goodness you’re home!” It was Grampa’s friend Billy Backwash. “You Betcha’s up in the chokecherry tree again!”

      “Holy hippofeathers!” exclaimed Grampa. “How’d she get up there? Those things are vicious.”

      “I know. The one in our backyard seems to like her for some reason. But she climbed up and is too scared to climb down, and none of us can get close enough to help!”

    “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said, and carefully hung up the phone.  

    Twenty minutes later the brontosaurbus spit Grampa out a block away from where Billy lived with his wife and daughter. When Grampa got to the house he found a small crowd of neighbors gathered in the backyard, keeping a safe distance from the tree. It was no ordinary chokecherry, which are harmless things that wouldn’t hurt a butterflea. No, this one towered high above the house, and its fruit, which were the size of melons, opened into wide red mouths filled with sharp, splintery teeth.

      “Grampa!” cried You Betcha from far above. She clung to one of the upper branches. Sure enough, the tree’s strange fruits were ignoring her.

      Grampa waved and beamed at her. Grampa was not overly fond of children in general, but despite her reputation for being an ornery and troublesome child (or perhaps because of these very qualities!)  You Betcha held a special place in his heart, right next to cloud cookies.

      “Where’s Yellow Galoshes?” he asked Billy Backwash, who was pacing nervously back and forth in his work uniform. Billy was head detailer at the local garage, where he helped the head baker ice and frost the cars. Yellow Galoshes was Billy’s wife, who despite her name did not own a single pair of yellow galoshes.

      “Visiting her sister in Tonsilvania,” said Billy. “Thanks for coming over so quickly, Grampa. I didn’t know who else to call. I called the fire department, of course, but they said their staff has had too many tree-related injuries in the past year and now refuse to deal with them. I knew we should have just planted a crabapple- at least their claws are pretty small.”

      “Okay, let me think a minute...” Grampa looked up at the tree. Anytime one of the neighbors got too close, a few giant mouths would snap hungrily at them.

     “Didn’t we have a gumball storm the other night?” asked Grampa.

      “Sure was. A pretty bad one, too,” said Billy. “But, you know, I’m just thankful it wasn’t sardines. Or tractors.”

      “Where do you keep your runoff barrels?” asked Grampa.

      “Behind the garage,” said Billy. “Why?”

      “Come with me. We need to drag one of them over here.”

There were three wooden barrels, each of them filled to the brim with multicolored gumballs collected from the gutters. The waste management company had not yet come to collect them. Together the two men dragged one of the barrels across the lawn. Standing a safe distance from the tree, Grampa scooped up a handful of gumballs and started lobbing them at the chokecherry. The mouths snapped greedily at the gumballs and once they’d caught a few they immediately started chewing.

         “Come on, Billy, help me out. Make sure all the cherries on this side catch some.” 

Billy and the other neighbors joined in and started to hurl gumballs at the snarling mouths, all of which were soon busy chomping on the gum.

      “Now get your ladder,” ordered Grampa. Together the two men leaned the ladder against the branch that You Betcha was still tearfully clinging to.

      “Perfect,” said Grampa. “Now climb on up there.”

      “I, uh, I’m…kind of really sort of very much afraid of heights,” said Billy Backwash, blushing and looking down at his feet.

      Grampa looked around at the neighbors milling about, but now instead of looking up at the tree they all too seemed very interested in their own feet.

      “Oh, for the love of pickles... I guess I have to do everything around here. As usual.” And with that Grampa started to climb, despite the fact that his bones were rickety and his knuckles were knobby and even just bending over to cautiously pluck a wolfblossom caused him pain. But there was no way he was going to leave his favorite little sprat stranded in a tree, so up he went, puffing with exertion.

      When he was close to the top, he noticed one of the cherries next to the ladder starting to blow a bubble. “Watch it there, pardner,” he warned. Other mouths started blowing bubbles as well, and some of these bubbles started pushing the ladder away from the tree.

      “Hey, hey!” exclaimed Grampa. He found the ladder starting to fall away, and he lost his grip. Almost immediately he hit one of the enormous bubbles. It popped, and he continued his descent until he hit another bubble. He fell like this, the exploding bubble gum cushioning his fall, until at last he crashed to the grass, covered in sticky pink goo.

      Billy Backwash ran over to him.

      “Grampa, are you alright? Speak to me!”

      The old man opened his mouth and a single pink bubble grew from it, then popped.

  “Someone call the glambulance!” yelled Billy.

      “She’s going to jump!” someone screamed. Billy looked up just as You Betcha leaped from the branch she was on and started falling down, down through the branches. The bubbles broke her fall, just as they had Grampa’s, but being smaller and lighter she hopped to her feet, unhurt, the moment she hit the ground.

      “That was fun! Again! Again!” she cried, clapping her hands, then stopped when she saw Grampa Bones lying on his back in the grass.

      “Oh no, Grampa! Grampa, are you okay?”

        They heard the siren of the glambulance approaching.

        “I’m too old for this,” groaned Grampa as the emergency attendants, strutting and posing in their glittery uniforms, strapped him to a stretcher. As the strobe lights of the vehicle disappeared in the distance, You Betcha looked up at her father. He had a stern look on his face.

        “I’m sorry, Daddy,” she said. “I didn’t mean for Grampa to get hurt.”

      Billy Backwash sighed and patted her on the head, then walked out to the garage to get his axe.

 

 

(For this and more exciting tales about Grampa Bones, You Betcha, and all your favorite funny characters, check out the forthcoming collection More News from Horseradish Falls)