Gone Pecan

My husband has had enough. He bought a five-dollar slingshot at a sporting goods store, and he’s getting more than his money’s worth.

Upon hearing his car in the driveway, I come outside to greet Q after a day of eighteen holes. But he spots the squirrel balancing on a telephone line across the street, and I lose his attention before I even have it. The gray animal has its back to us, but I can see tiny paws fluttering around its mouth, and I can imagine the rest. As the paws and mouth work on what I know is one of our pecans, tiny bits of shell drift to the pavement.

Q unlatches the gate, reaching to the back of the fencepost where the slingshot hangs.

“I’m going inside,” I yell. “I can’t watch.” I do as I threaten but after a moment poke my head out the front door. Q stands in the road, gazing up. The squirrel is gone.

“You scared him away?”

“No.” Q sounds bewildered. “He was gone before I was situated.”  He sounds disappointed.

“That’s what you wanted. Come inside. Dinner’s ready.”

Changing direction, Q looks toward our front yard from the street, and my breath catches when a car zipping past almost grazes him. He continues to stare upwards, scrutinizing the trees for movement as he walks back to the house. A branch on the tree closest to me sways, but I say nothing. It’s just the wind, I think, though the day is breezeless and heavy with humidity. Q picks up some rocks to launch into the trees in case the scavenger is lurking inside one of them. I close the door, removing myself from the scene. Initially, Q’s rounds were the tough unripe pecans that the squirrels dropped, until I realized brown dust from the hulls left indelible stains on his clothing.

*

Just four years ago our pecan trees yielded an abundant crop. Q gathered the nuts in a bucket and dumped them onto old newspapers spread on the den floor. Leaning back against the sofa, he cracked each pecan with a tarnished nutcracker as he watched the games, college football on Saturday and pros on Sunday. He popped an occasional nutmeat into his mouth while he separated kernels from shell fragments with a silver pick. I sat on the other end of the sofa, reading, a novel usually, and glancing up when I heard debris hit the TV or land on the wooden flooring beyond the newspapers. I fetched the broom and swept the scraps back toward him.

We scooped the edibles into plastic bags. We gave some away, froze others. Q had more than enough for snacking. I baked pecan pies for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but the recipe called for only one heaping cup of pecans per pie. I tossed a handful of pecans in other dishes, but there were plenty left over. I refused to make pralines.

Squirrels overran our yard the following summer. The trees never stopped with their bustling. Hard, jagged husks littered the front walkway, curbing my tendency to go outside barefoot. Getting out of my car one afternoon, I could’ve sworn a pecan was thrown at me. I dodged it, looked up and saw a squirrel perched on a limb, frozen in place, fuzzy tail flat against the branch.

Q had no pecans to harvest that season, though some of the shelled ones remained in the freezer. He hurled threats at the squirrels as he wandered under the trees. The animals scampered and ran across the roof.

Hurricane Katrina hit us the next summer. Though we lived in a suburb and were luckier than many, squirrels and pecans were still the least of our worries. We didn’t evacuate, and in the morning, as we inspected our property, we saw that the tallest pecan tree, the only one in the back yard, had toppled onto the wooden fence. The massive exposed roots reminded me of a newly-hatched alien out of a creepy horror film. We lost the biggest tree in the front yard as well, leaving us with the three smaller ones flanking the driveway.

The shock of the storm retarded new pecan growth and kept the squirrels away. The foliage and the fruit of the trees didn’t fully reappear until this summer, almost two years after the hurricane, bringing back the vandals. That was when Q bought the slingshot, to modify the enemies’ behavior, he said.

Last night the local news broadcast a story about a neglected home in one of the city’s nicer residential districts. A neighbor told the camera she saw a rat in a tree on the blighted property.

“Gimme a break,” I said. “I’m sure it was just a squirrel.”

“No difference,” Q said, snapping the page of the newspaper in front of him.

*

Turning away from the front door, I walk down the hallway, the swish of Q’s pebbles through the branches no longer within hearing. I enter the kitchen and shovel food onto a plate.

Clunking and scurrying noises reach my ears as I start to eat. Pushing back my chair, I leave my meal on the table. The racket reminds me of a few years ago when one or two squirrels regularly skittered across our roof, scrabbling to get into the attic. Q later discovered a hole chewed through the underside of the eaves. Hidden inside the wall was a putrid nest of twigs, leaves and fur.

Not wanting to open the front door, I peek between the slats of the blinds in the living room. Golf balls rain from the trees.

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