The Red Tree

By Dave Williams

While rain falls for weeks, the Engler family invites friends over for an evening of dealing with cabin fever together. And when the spring sun arrives, the Englers celebrate by walking in a wooded park, where they encounter a red tree away from the trail. Guesses abound as to why the tree is red when none of the other trees are.

Life returns to normal for most of the Englers. The father, Calvin, decides the red tree was a sign for him to make changes in his life and property. Changes the family and neighbors don't quite understand. But some family members can be eccentric, and others learn to roll with it.

A short story about family, experiencing the mysterious, and letting your imagination loose.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dave Williams
• Release date: Mar 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393688167

Dave Williams

Dave Williams has worked as a graphic designer and illustrator for many years, and creating fun, bright illustrations to help tell stories is what he finds most rewarding about children's publishing. Based in the Northwest of England, Dave works (digitally) from his spare room at home in the company of his Sprocker Spaniel Charlie and a few cheeky Ragdoll cats.

Book preview

— 1 —

They feared the spring rain would never end. The gray cloud-ceiling kept releasing raindrops, like a tight formation of planes carpet-bombing Calvin Engler’s house and all the other houses in his neighborhood and the roads on which he commuted and the office building in which he worked as a manager for a business consulting company. The cloud-bombers seemed intent on turning the buildings to rubble. Occasionally, thunder rumbled, lightning seared the earth.

Dana Engler didn’t have to tell her husband the family was getting cabin fever, especially their two sons. Playgrounds could’ve been visited, but playing there would’ve resulted in very muddy clothes. Dana said, Could you imagine them going down the slide and landing in a puddle that’s grown bigger every day?

The boys would probably like that, Calvin said, picturing Zach and Ryan, one at a time, sliding down with slickened speed and landing with great explosions of arching water. Like when they cannonballed into a pool, except with darker water.

I wouldn’t like doing the extra laundry, Dana said. We’ve got plenty of dirty clothes as it is.

You have to admit, their clothes have been cleaner since the rain. Indoor play isn’t as dirty.

But they’re getting sick of pillow forts, she said.

Me, too, Calvin said. They were fun in the beginning, but every time it’s the same thing. The boys get a kick out of building the fort and crawling in it for a little while. Then it gets old, so they get their soldiers and knights and attack the fort. I always have to defend it.

It’s more fun to attack than defend, Dana laughed.

Yep, and I like attacking the attackers. But they’re not into that. They get mad at me for flipping things.

Dana and Calvin invited two families over for a Friday evening to liven up the house. The families had met through their kids in elementary school, and they met now and then for playdates and pot-luck dinners. An idea to deal with the ever-present rain was to rotate the host family for gatherings.

Calvin prepared his famous lasagna, and Dana baked several frozen bags worth of tater tots. The Clemenceaus brought Spanish chicken and rice. Neither of the adult Alversons were fond of cooking, so they brought a large salad, along with brownies made from a boxed mix, and nobody complained the brownies weren’t from scratch.

Each of the Clemenceau and Alverson families was balanced with a boy and a girl. The boys were in the same grade level as Zachary Engler. The Clemenceau and Alverson girls were older than all the boys, and often called them immature and suggested they grow up already. To which the boys replied with well-practiced farting noises made with their tongues.

The four boys chowed down dinner and returned to playing in Zach’s room, creating structures with LEGOs and racing cars on the floor and zooming robots in the air, then the cars suddenly achieved the power to also fly. The two girls, under instructions of their parents, had joined the boys before dinner, but after dinner, they retired to the living room, playing