DIE WOODHEAD

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

Although nine days have passed since a white ash was vandalized near the picnic area of Lionsmane Park, the assailant has not yet been apprehended. The tree, however, is making excellent progress toward recovery from the vandalism, in which patches of its bark were torn off and it the words “DIE” and “WOODHEAD” were sprayed on its trunk in red paint. With that recovery, the victim’s recollection of what happened on the day of the attack seems to be returning. It has now stated definitely that it can identify the perpetrator, who was male, white, between twenty and twenty-five years of age and “very small,” which investigators take to mean six feet tall. He wore black pants and a matching hooded sweatshirt, and the ash is quite certain he had dark hair. This accords with information collected from nearby trees, though an oak on the other side of the pavilion insisted that the man wore, instead of a sweatshirt, a bright blue jacket from which he extracted his cans of spray paint. Perhaps the most promising lead comes from a sapling planted just weeks before the incident, which was afforded almost a ground-level view and thus could offer a thorough account of the culprit’s sneakers, which the sapling described as “mainly yellow, with a green side stripe, a matching heel counter, and checkerboard foxing.”