The Dogwood

By Katie Fitzgerald

Click. Crop. Brighten. Save. I remove the same flaw from each of my sister Sadie’s wedding photos. Offering up my backyard and photography skills had me feeling like Sister of the Year until I noticed the blemish in the background of every image.

Evidently, my neighbors tied a ragged, ugly eyesore of a red scarf around the branch of their dogwood, and now all my photos look like they’ve been dabbed with a drop of blood.

I shouldn’t be surprised. They’re terrible neighbors. Last night, a piercing howl from their yard woke me from a sound sleep. I’ve never seen a dog over there, but there must be one. It took a half hour to fall back asleep. What good is it having a cop next door? Janet is always at work when things happen. Otherwise, I could’ve skipped the white noise and sent her over to tell them off.

My stomach rumbles, and I notice the time. Already noon. Opening the next file in the queue, I vow that it’s the last before I break for lunch. My eyes focus on the spot where I expect to find a red dot, but the color has changed. “What the—” I lean in more closely. Are my eyes playing tricks? “That’s yellow.” I zoom in on the tree, then check the image’s hue, saturation, and warmth, but all are untouched. Then I notice the file name and timestamp. This one is from Sunday when the bridal party came back to my place for brunch. Sometime between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, the scarf was replaced. Why?

Pondering possibilities, I go to the kitchen to toss a salad, then take my food and laptop out to the deck. The warm air and pleasant hum of a distant lawn mower relax me, and I lean back in my chair, savoring a cherry tomato. I shield my eyes and squint toward the property line.

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Once again, a red scarf is wrapped around the lowest branch of the dogwood. Are they going to change colors back and forth every other day? That’s super-weird and annoying. It’s June! I have tons of photo shoots coming up, and at least half of them are happening here!

I pop another tomato into my mouth, chewing aggressively. Then I hear tires against gravel. Janet’s cruiser creeps down the driveway toward the main road. She mentioned taking on extra hours to help with pet thefts, mostly of Siberian huskies, that the department has been investigating all over town.

“Have a good shift!” I wave.

“Thanks, Delia,” she responds with a reserved nod.

As I resume eating, I start thinking about how I’m going to re-stage my photoshoots now that the neighbors have started this bizarre color war. If Janet isn’t going to be home much, her rhododendrons might work. If not, maybe the pines on the opposite end of the tree line will do.

Suddenly, there is movement in my peripheral vision. I freeze as the red scarf on the dogwood disappears from sight. Next, by hands obscured by tree branches, a new scarf is tied in its place. This one is green.

That’s it. Maybe I’ve read too much Nancy Drew, but I need to know what’s going on. I consider the clues.

First, there’s the green scarf. Something triggered the change from red to green. I’ve only been sitting here a few minutes. My deck is well-obscured, so it’s unlikely they’re changing colors on my account. Besides, if they’re trying to communicate with me, they’d have to tell me what the colors mean first.

What else has happened since I came outside? The lawn mower is still whirring away, but I don’t hear any new sounds. But Janet! She left the neighborhood just before the green scarf appeared. Could it be that green is the signal that the resident cop isn’t home? I know, it sounds ridiculous. But if it were true, then what would the other colors mean?

I chew some more salad, thinking back to Sunday, when the scarf was yellow. Janet wasn’t home then, either, but I had a yard full of people and a camera on a tripod. If someone were doing something they didn’t want a police officer to know about, they probably also didn’t want to chance revealing it to a bunch of strangers. Was that it? Green for the coast is clear, and yellow for stay away? But then what about red?

Green, yellow, red.  It has to be traffic lights! If green means go because Janet isn’t home, then yellow could mean caution because someone else is around, and red could mean abort the mission.

I’m wasting work time. It’s probably just kids signaling their friends. If they have a dog over there I’ve never seen, they could easily have kids too. I start to clean up my lunch dish when I glance at the tree again. Dog. Dogwood. Suddenly, it occurs to me. Do Siberian huskies howl?

Returning to my seat, I open my laptop. My fingers dance their way to Google. Finding a sound clip, I press play. The long, high-pitched whine that comes through my speakers sends a chill through me. This is unmistakably the sound I heard last night!

There are a bunch of trees back there. All those pines. A couple of maples. A birch. Yet they chose the dogwood. It isn’t just the scarves that mean something. The tree does, too.

A truck rumbles into view amidst the trees. I’m not messing around. I dial 9-1-1, already certain about what that truck carries. I’m also pretty sure Janet and her cruiser will be back around this way much sooner than she expected.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katie Fitzgerald is a children’s librarian turned homeschooling mom of four daughters and one son. She writes short stories in the mystery, humor, and romance genres, which have appeared in online magazines and print anthologies. When she’s not writing, she’s usually listening to an audiobook at triple speed or buying used paperbacks to add to her to-be-read pile.

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