{"id":3150,"date":"2022-03-14T13:44:12","date_gmt":"2022-03-14T13:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=3150"},"modified":"2022-03-19T11:24:36","modified_gmt":"2022-03-19T11:24:36","slug":"before-willows-ever-walked-by-tom-godwin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=3150","title":{"rendered":"Before Willows Ever Walked by Tom Godwin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Before Willows Ever Walked<\/em><\/strong>1<\/sup> by Tom Godwin (F&SF<\/em>, March 1980) begins with Jake Derken experiencing, not for the first time, the lash of a Joshua tree\u2019s branch as he returns to his house from the mail box. He then goes in to tell the other occupant of the house, Joe Smith, that there isn\u2019t a letter from his granddaughter. We subsequently learn that (a) Smith is the alcoholic, dying house guest of Derken, (b) Derken is attempting to inherit Smith\u2019s estate by isolating him from his grand-daughter, and (c) Derken hates Joshua trees.
After the two men discuss whether plants have feelings, and whether the Joshua tree might have sensed Derken\u2019s antipathy towards them, a letter falls out of the pile of circulars. Smith sees it is from his granddaughter, and quickly opens and reads it.
Derken then has to work fast to preserve his scam: he pretends to phone the daughter but tells Smith line isn\u2019t working and that he\u2019ll go into town to call her. When Derken later goes out he is given a letter and cheque to post to the granddaughter, but he stops in the desert and burns it. Then, as he walks back to the car, he gets hit by a falling Joshua tree branch. Derken rages at the tree and then stamps on a young offspring nearby.
The rest of the story works through various plot developments (spoiler): Smith stops drinking so Derken starts adulterating all Smith\u2019s food and drink with vodka to hasten his demise; several days later, Smith dies (but not before realising what Derken has been doing); Derken then waits for the will to go through probate while avoiding the surrounding Joshau trees, which seem to be getting closer to the house; finally, another letter arrives from the granddaughter saying she has scraped together enough cash to send a PI to find out what has happened to Smith.
The climactic scene sees Derken rush to the bank to get the money and flee but, at the place he stamped on the young Joshua tree, he crashes his car and is trapped in the wreckage. Then the adult tree speaks to Derken \u201cin his mind\u201d while it summons a lightning storm (the fact that Joshua trees can do this has been suggested in an earlier conversation). The lightning then strikes the Joshua tree, which falls on Derken and kills him.
I don\u2019t think that my disbelief was suspended for even a single moment by this story\u2019s silly premise and, even if it had been, the car crash at the end is far too convenient.
* (Mediocre). 7,000 words.

1. The title comes from a superstition which suggests there was once a time when willow trees could walk at night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before Willows Ever Walked1 by Tom Godwin (F&SF, March 1980) begins with Jake Derken experiencing, not for the first time, the lash of a Joshua tree\u2019s branch as he returns to his house from the mail box. He then goes in to tell the other occupant of the house, Joe Smith, that there isn\u2019t a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[763],"tags":[21,730,25,765,12,764],"class_list":["post-3150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tom-godwin","tag-21","tag-730","tag-fsf","tag-sentient-plants","tag-short-story","tag-tom-godwin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3150"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3219,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3150\/revisions\/3219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}