Reckoning Tree, Remembering Tree

It was the first nip of the season. Hal reached into his closet--the one with the two-tiered horizontal poles holding different seasons’ coats. He only needed to reach along the bottom rung to the coats and jackets used for light winter and rain. There was no need for the ladder yet to move down the ones for the severe winter temperatures to come and the snow.

He slipped the jacket on and when he was buttoning it and closing its pocket zippers, he heard the crunch of the paper. He pulled out a note and unfolded it. Maybe it was an old grocery list, he figured, but instead, on it was written something cryptic and disturbing:

NOVEMBER 1, AT 11 PM. THE OLDEST TREE IN THE PARK. THERE, YOU DIE! FINALLY!

The final exclamation point had been written so forcefully that it had actually cut into the paper of the note.

The oldest tree in the park. He knew that tree. It’s where he had carved in his and his one-day-to-be ex-wife’s initials.

The note had been dated October 31, but was it the previous year?

Had to be.

Hal, my man, he thought, what’d you do this time? Did I know this person? he wondered. They sure remember me. But I don't remember anything to warrant this.

They sure do!

By last year’s Halloween he had already been into the heavier coats; he remembers how the bitter cold had come early that year. Thus, this lighter jacket, having been unused since last year, had to be when that note had been slipped into the pocket.

But by whom?

Perhaps he’d never know. Perhaps it was a lark. A Halloween trick.

Yet, almost defiantly now he stood, on this year’s November 8, breathing and relishing life: he was by no means dead; he had not been killed--a whole year and a week past his predicted doom of the previous year.

He did his Buggs Bunny impression, which most felt was not very good. “Missed me, Doc!” he said out loud and laughed. Still, the small chance the note was ill-intended haunted him. And more than just a Halloween-type haunt. It haunted him in a little-kid-scared-of-the-dark way.

Hal attempted to take inventory of his enemies, but he had none. Even his ex-wife still loved him. He believed that. He tried to recognize the handwriting, but it wasn’t hers. It was unfamiliar.

Was the writer that angry? To force a pen so hard against the paper? It was heavyweight paper.

Hal was a romantic. He liked the tangential conclusions that he could make up, so he made it a point to walk through the park that evening, just to visit the “scene of the crime,” albeit a week and year late. He had wanted to do it immediately, just to see and get it out of his system, but he had a lot of paperwork to complete. When he had, he thought it ironic that the timing would put him there near that hour of doom.

But on November 8, not November 1 of last year.

“Missed me, Doc!” he taunted the writer-in-absentia.

He enjoyed the walk. He had on the very jacket that had started his whole adventure and feeling a chill, wondered if he should have used one of the heavier coats. But then he wouldn’t have found the note had such a fun mystery!

He found the tree--it was famous in town, with a plaque reading “The Oldest Tree in the Park.” Everyone knew it was the oldest and despite the town’s tree surgeon’s efforts to save it, it was dying.

I guess the oldest tree in the park is another year older, he thought, reconciling the date where the tree would see him dead, according to the note, and the actual date of his visit. Additionally, and even more ironic, he checked his watch; it was a quarter to eleven. At least by an extra year in fifteen minutes, by my watch.

He laughed.

“Missed me, Doc!”

Hal reached into the same pocket to retrieve the note, but it was gone. Thinking he might have slipped it into another pocket, he checked for it there. He felt paper. He retrieved it.

It was a different note:

WHERE WERE YOU? I WAITED ALL NIGHT FOR YOU. OH, WHAT I WANTED TO DO TO YOU, TO THE LIKES OF YOU!

And that was it.

Now he checked the other pockets in the jacket. In the next he found yet another note:

LET ME KNOW WHERE YOU’LL BE at 11 PM ON NOVEMBER 8. THE OLDEST TREE IN THE PARK. WE CAN STILL DO THIS. DON’T FAIL ME AGAIN!

“Let me know…” How would I do that, dumb-ass. He discovered that most of the letters had been pressed through by the writer. Even more pissed off, I see, he thought.

HAL looked around. He knew that it was almost 11 o’clock PM on November 8—this NOVEMBER 8—yet, all was quiet. Of course it was. There was no one to see. Until an old, dead branch fell on him at exactly 11 PM and struck him on his head with the blow that would see him dead within minutes.

This time, Doc, it didn’t miss him.

What a tragic coincidence, and no one had found the hacksaw yet, if there even was one. Shouldn’t there have been?

The coroner found another note after his arrival at the morgue—after the now quite-dad Hal, no longer breathing or relishing life, had been killed:

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.

That the year had never been written on the first note never vexed him. The coat racks already had told him the year, so he had thought. What would have troubled him, had he lived, was that he hadn’t missed an attempt on his life last year but was just keeping a re-scheduled appointment.

And being the late Hal, he was just about on time.