Ridiculust Ch. 08

"I still don't see anybody," said Sarah, looking around. They looked up into the tree to see if someone had managed to climb up it and had gotten stuck. There was nothing up there except for a downy woodpecker that was scooting around the main trunk. It found something and began hammering away at it. Another breeze riffled the leaves, which Sarah noticed didn't seem to look right somehow. The dance of the branches was off.

"There it is again!" said Debbie. "Every time the wind blows, I hear a cry for help. It's louder now that we're here, and I'd swear it was coming from this tree!" She looked angry and perplexed, almost daring Sarah to laugh at her. Instead, she looked thoughtful.

"I wonder if you've just had a new ability start up. Look at this tree - it's an ash of some sort, one that somehow managed to survive the emerald ash borer plague that killed so many of them about 15 years ago. I think that the little fuckers may have finally found it." It looked like the woodpecker had hit paydirt, as it pulled out a white grub from the hole it had made, and it flew off.

"One small woodpecker isn't going to save this beautiful tree," said Debbie sadly, placing her hands on the trunk. "I can definitely hear it calling, but what can we do?"

"John loved trees. We'd always be going for walks in the park, and just listening to the wind in the leaves was so calming, especially after a tough day teaching in the school." Sarah's voice roughened as she leaned against the trunk. "It was heartbreaking to see the ash trees get destroyed, despite spraying and other efforts by the town workers. Even though they were replaced by other types, it was never quite the same for us." Her face hardened, and suddenly her colours snapped on in bright, shifting patterns of brick red, dark blue and intense yellow. "I hated those little fuckers then, and I have hated them to this very day!" she finished in an angry shout. Debbie made a little scream and jumped back, as she'd never seen Sarah this enraged before. Her glow was almost incandescent now, enough to attract some attention from people in the parking lot. "We loved those trees, and I will be DAMNED if I let these bastards claim this one!"

She raised her fists over her head and pounded them onto the trunk as hard as she could. Her glowing energy blasted into the trunk, with some going down into the roots and the rest roaring up through the entire tree with a banshee's shriek. There was a crackling like fireworks as the infesting larvae were ejected from the holes that they'd chewed in the trunk and exploded. It was all over in less than five seconds, and Sarah slumped to the ground as a light smoke was blown away by the wind. Debbie was standing with her eyes wide and mouth open in shock, but quickly regained some level of composure as she rushed to where Sarah was lying.

"Are you all right?" she frantically demanded. Sarah was pale and had a cold sweat all over her.

"What happened?" she asked weakly, sitting up as the first of the people in the parking lot came running over to find out what was going on.

"I think that you just discovered your power," she replied, taking a napkin from her purse and wiping Sarah's forehead with it. "And boy, is it a doozy." The first person to arrive was a man probably in his late twenties or early thirties, about five foot 10 with blond hair and a somewhat muscular build.

"Are you all right, Mrs. Burns?" he asked Sarah, kneeling down to get a good look at her. "I'm Rob Tremblay, and I'm a paramedic. You may not remember me from about 15 years ago in Grade 12 Math. Do you need any help?" Sarah smiled weakly at him.

"Thank you, Rob," she replied, managing to get to her feet with Debbie's help. "I feel like I just had the town's worth of electricity blow right through me, but I will be OK. I need to get something to eat, and wouldn't you know it here I am next to the grocery store," she joked. Her eyes focused on him as she rattled through many years of memories. "You do look familiar. You were one of the ones who loosened all the screws in my chair on April Fool's Day, weren't you?" She gave him The Stare and he jumped back with a squawk.

"Wow, you've really perfected that stare!" he shuddered. "I've got a couple of friends in the Police Department who could use your help for interrogations."

"Sarah just blew all the bugs out of the tree," Debbie explained to the gathering crowd. "I think she saved it." There were oohs and ahhs as the crowd of about twenty people looked up.

"But did you repair the damage that they did?" asked one of them. "I'm Ted, the town arborist by the way," he said with a bright smile of white teeth and blue eyes under unruly sandy blond hair. "You may have killed the bugs, but the damage needs to be undone if the tree is to be able to recover properly." Debbie put her hands on the trunk and concentrated. She could feel the injuries in it as her mind reached out to it.

"Those bugs got their ash kicked," she said loudly, and suddenly she flared brightly with her golden yellow, red and yellowish orange. The energy fired into the tree and illuminated it, with a loud snapping and crackling. "There, I fixed it," she mumbled. Sarah and Rob caught her and lowered her gently to the ground. "Ooh, I'd better not do too much of that," she muttered.

"That pun was worthy of Roger. Has he corrupted you?" Sarah asked.

"A long, long time ago," was her reply, with a weak grin. "I was never as good or as fast as him, but I got in my share of zingers in classes." Sarah rolled her eyes and stood up.

"If any of you kids are in my Math class next year," she addressed the few worried-looking teenagers in the impromptu audience, "I suggest that you be on your best behavior!" That got some laughs from the adults, and a "Yes, Mrs. Burns!" from the teenagers. "Thank you for your help, Rob," she addressed the paramedic as the crowd broke up to return to their cars, chattering quietly. "We will be OK. We were going to get something for dinner anyway, and it looks like we will be getting some more for a snack." Her stomach growled threateningly and Rob grinned.

"I'm glad to have been able to see this," he replied, shaking their hands.

"Me too," said Ted. "Call me if you want to help out some more trees!"

"You're welcome. Any time," said Debbie to the tree as she got to her feet, helped by Sarah and Rob. To Ted, she said "Once we figure out how to use our powers without frying our brains, maybe we will." To Sarah, she said as they started walking towards the door, "If I don't get something to eat really soon, there will be Big Trouble."

"They have battered chicken pieces in the deli," said Sarah as they arrived at the doors. "We can get a ten-pack and split it." They marched in, two women on a mission, and made it to their destination unimpeded. The chicken pieces, nicely deep-fried with crunchy breading, were devoured.

"That's better," mumbled Debbie through the last of her bites as Sarah paid the wide-eyed clerk for them. "Now I know why Roger was always so hungry after his little stunts. I want hamburgers tonight. Big ones."

"I hear you, sister," Sarah replied with a grin. They quickly rounded up 750 grams of ground beef from the meat counter, a package of buns, a couple of tomatoes, baby spinach for the greens, and a block of cheese. "I already have crackers, and the eggs are still good. We don't need fries."

"There's all that fresh corn instead. Much healthier." A half-dozen ears went into the cart. "Do you think Roger will want to be manly man and do the grilling?" They lined up in the express lane, which moved quickly, and within ten minutes they were on the way to the door.

"Thank you for saving the tree," said the store manager, who intercepted them at the door. "It was planted by my father fifty years ago. It's one of the only ash trees left in town."

"It was our pleasure," said Sarah. "I never felt better than when I was frying those bugs."

"We saved the tree, but will the bugs come back and make us do it again?" said Debbie after they'd shaken hands with the manager and were heading for the car. "Maybe Roger could do something to change it so that the bugs can't find it."

"It's a thought," Sarah replied as they tossed their bags in the back seat of the elderly red Honda Civic sedan and got in. "It's become pretty clear that his powers lean towards healing things, but I'm still nervous about having him out in the wild, even with us there."

"I'm hoping that he'll still be asleep when we get back. It's only been an hour, and he looked totally exhausted, poor guy."

"As if we didn't have anything to do with that," murmured Sarah, with the Cheshire Cat smile.