The Crooked Trees of Hafford, Saskatchewan

LXXXIII: The End

2010-03-11T12:38:00.000-08:00

The morning after the dance Susan slept in. I left her in bed and went for an early morning walk to think about John Simmonds. Petesabooty tagged along. It's warming up around here so there's an optimism in the air. At least for me.

We ended up, inevitably, at the Trees. I sat on their wooden walkway and stared out through the canopy of twisted lines into the grey-blue sky, imagining what it must've looked like for Mr. Simmonds so many years before. The contorting branches split the air like a shattered windshield. Petesabooty was sitting beside me sharing the view.

"What do you see, Pete?" I asked. "Just some trees? Or something more?" His eyes didn't seem quite as soul-less as they had before. He wore the same stupid grin all dogs are burdened with, but his careless gaze into the Trees got me seriously contemplating his perspective. His and Mr. Simmonds'. And Susan's, Clarke's, Mrs. Scurfield's; what did they see when they came out here?

The exact same thing as me. And yet not.

When I got back to the house two hours later Susan had coffee ready for me. "Your little seedling looks good," she said as I stepped through the door.

"Yeah. I'm almost becoming fond of it. Almost."

"I know. It sorta snuck up on you, didn't it?"

"Yes. It's completely absurd."

"Why?" she asked with a smirk.

I smirked back. "Don't you think it's odd?"

"I don't know, Matthew. I sorta think the Trees are wonderful."

"Wonderful? Really?"

"Yes. Frightening too sometimes, of course. But mostly wonderful."

"I think I'm beginning to, I dunno, understand that point of view," I said slowly. Susan's eyebrows lifted and she lowered her head, looking ready for a punchline to arrive. "It's just that," I stammered -growing self-conscious, "well, maybe they mean something a little different than I thought they did." I waited for Susan's reaction. She was motionless for a while. Expressionless too. Then her shoulders dropped all their tension and she stepped toward me smiling. The entire house seemed to shiver.

LXXXII: Steward of the Trees

2010-02-27T15:14:00.000-08:00

The Ukrainian hall has a sign on the wall near the kitchen that says, "Legal capacity: 85 persons." Last night the Stepanko/Schur wedding dance brought in a lot more than that. I watched Marty Gorski park his truck (one of those trucks that is, unmistakeably, a young man's pride and joy) on Mrs.Price's front yard. He wasn't the only one. By the time I went home there were four trucks on her yard. No room anywhere else, I guess. Seemed like most of the town showed up.

They played the same old casette tapes over the 70s Yamaha sound system they always play at dances: a lot of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Stompin' Tom. Stuff like that. Those silver tower speakers were crackling away.

I drank more than a couple beers with Susan, sitting on a bench near the back. You had to holler to hear anything. There were a bunch of kids making tunnels through the enormous pile of jackets that had compiled in one corner.

"Dance with me, uh, with me," Susan said. How much had she drunk? I can't remember.

"Aww," I replied. I tried to raise my eyebrows and give her a look that said, 'I'm sorry, I know you like dancing.'

"C'mon! C'mon c'mon." She stood up and dared me to turn her down. "Just one song. It doesn't matter if you're not good." I'm definitely not good. So we danced our way through Bud the spud in the bright red mud they call Prince Edward Island. Susan was beaming. Then I stepped out behind the kitchen for a smoke. Marty Gorski was there with his leather jacket.

"Hey."

"Hey."

I went back inside. It was too crowded to breathe. Susan was deep in conversation with our neighbours on the back bench. I went to order two more pints. Which is when I noticed the picture. Hanging on the wall behind the bar. Above a bottle of Chivas Regal. Old, black and white, of a guy just standing there. I spent the rest of the night stealing glances at it.

Susan must've noticed my looks. "Didn't Mr. Simmonds used to look after the Trees or something?" she hollered in my ear an hour later, over the sound of twenty dancing couples and Life is a highway I want to ride it all night long. Mr. Simmonds? The guy in the picture? And then it came flooding back to me. The email from Dr. Remphries. How could I have forgotten?

I'd asked Dr. Remphries if he'd been out to the Trees at any point for his research.

A 1992 trip was my only time at the site. My technician visited there once. In my trip there... they took me to the person who was kind of the 'steward' of the trees at the time, the late John Simmonds. He was very keen on the trees and took us out to the site. On behalf of the land owners, he gave us the permission to take some of the sucker trees.

LXXXI: The Seedling

2010-02-24T08:25:00.000-08:00

I shovelled my driveway this morning. Took a lot longer than was necessary. Like I was sculpting, not clearing the snow. I was so careful. I got all the corners just right, and made sure I hadn't left any shovel streaks. No trails of snow giving away my preferred pushing direction. I smoothed everything out and even put time into shaping the white mounds of snow now crowding the driveway's edge. The seedling kept me company.

Went inside for lunch. Got restless afterwards. But it felt good. Like I had purpose. I ended up in the kitchen staring at my coffee cup. But not in a distracted, detached way. More like I was studying it. Or like a man on alert waiting for some insignificant detail to emerge with the key to life hanging from its neck.

Susan came over mid-afternoon. We talked a little, ate, then got bored. "Mrs. Scurfield's house is like a plant warehouse," I said, by way of making conversation. "Everywhere, in every room. It makes me uncomfortable."

Susan breathed deep, laughed, and said, "I think it would do you good to have a plant in your house."

"No thanks. That seedling is enough."

"Oh God, Matthew. If anyone I know should be a gardener, it's you."

What?

LXXX: Primary Sources

2010-02-20T11:41:00.000-08:00

I looked out at mainstreet yesterday on break. Empty and cold. I know everyone in every building, almost. Which is as depressing as it is reassuring.

After work I packed my Tree essays into a box and hid them away in a dark corner (they've had me spinning in circles for a little too long). Then coveralls, toque, boots, and I was out the door and onto my lawn. It was just me, a fold-out chair, and the Crooked Tree seedling. I studied the texture of the bark and its already meandering shape. Thought about having a cigarette. Didn't.

I heard Clarke behind me. "That thing is gonna block my view in a couple years," he said, dragging a chair from his lawn onto mine.

I'd never considered that before. I said nothing.

"So tell me again why you planted this thing?" he grunted, sitting down.

"I dunno Clarke. But I'm glad I did."

LXXIX: Susan VIII: Leonore

2010-02-15T07:31:00.000-08:00

"I liked Leonore with Clarke," Susan told me in bed last night. "She was good for him."

"No! What?"

"I always saw him around town," she said. "Now I never see him unless it's over here."

"Yeah, but he hates going out."

"Jesus. Who hates going out?"

I smiled. "Well, she never let up with him."

"But she's so nice."

"Of course. She's lovely," I said. "But he was miserable and she couldn't fathom why. I think she loved the version of him that pursued her, but didn't like the realization that that's just a role men play sometimes. It's part of the game. You're not supposed to like the game. Only assholes are like that all the time."

"Oh God. I hate when people talk like this." Susan's voice betrayed some frustration with our emerging battle of the sexes. "She just wanted him to make an effort."

"I think she wanted that effort to be too much on her terms," I argued, defending my side.

"Well, if it's on his terms it's not much of an effort is it?" she asked.

"I don't know what we're talking about anymore. This is too abstract."

"You just say that 'cos you're losing the argument."

I laughed. She laughed. I imagined Clarke next door, sleeping or watching TV. I contemplated his amusement if he could overhear our conversation.

"Clarke makes a social life seem like such a weight," Susan said. "Does it have to be a burden, just saying hello to someone?"

"I dunno. Yeah, sure. Sometimes."

"Who wants that?"

"I'm sure he doesn't want it," I said, feeling like Susan was misunderstanding something important. "It's the same thing for Leonore. I don't see how Clarke not wanting to go out is so different from her not wanting to stay in. It was such a burden for her sitting around the house with him, but that's who he is."

"It's probably not who she fell in love with," said Susan, quietly.

"That's true." I tried to reason the whole thing out. "He played the game of pursuit 'cos he liked her -and it worked; but she liked the game version of him better than the real version. It's the game that's the problem."

"Listen to yourself." Susan poked my ribs with a finger and giggled.

"No. This is what I really think."

"Is it?" She cuddled into me. "She wanted one thing, he wanted something else. Why can't everyone want the same thing?"

LXXVIII: Susan VII

2010-02-05T18:42:00.000-08:00

Friday, January 8th, 2010.

"Yeah, what was that?" Susan asked when we talked about our New Year's Day encounter with the Trees for the first time. It was a week after the event and we were sitting at her kitchen table working our way through a bottle of red wine after supper.

"Did you really hear anything?" I asked. The words seemed to resist leaving my mouth. A little.

"I don't know. I think so," replied Susan. "I'm pretty sure, yeah. Didn't you?" I think she was feeling the resistance too. She looked at me as if to say, 'Are you really asking this?'

I could respond only to her words. "Well, not in a reliable way. But yeah, I heard -or sorta saw- something. And you were a part of it. A part of the thing I saw."

"It was like I was inside a feeling," she said. "A feeling and a sound." She looked excited and sympathetic, but still unsure. As if an expressed skepticism might blow down her paper walls.

The whole situation was getting to me. I put my head in my hands, overcome by a feeling as vague as the one Susan was describing. Something like a holding back, a blocking, a backwards-downwards motion. "This is too much." I looked at her and knew she understood.

She said, "maybe we shouldn't be talking about it."

"Okay." I rose from the chair. "Let's just go out there again. To the Trees."

"You should bring your video camera."

Nothing happened. Just us, cold, looking at some trees. Trees. All I shot was the snow.

LXXVII: Clarke XIV

2010-02-03T07:39:00.000-08:00

My habits are changing. Like, I keep waking up earlier and earlier. 6:30 this morning. Also, somehow I've cut down to a cigarette or two a day. But it's not on purpose. I'm not trying.

Clarke was over last night. We watched The Outlaw Josey Wales. Afterward he drifted over to my 'fridge. "You're out of beer," he said, surprised.

"I haven't had a beer in a week."

He cocked an eyebrow. "What?"

"Yeah."

"A week?"

"I dunno why I haven't."

"I've got beer," Clarke said, returning to the living room. "Let's go to my place. "

"Okay."

"And smoke a cigarette, for chris-sake."

We put on our boots and trudged, jacketless, through the fifty feet of knee-deep snow separating our doors. As I stepped out I could see my Crooked Tree seedling poking through in the front-yard. I pulled out a cigarette as I arrived on Clarke's doorstep. He handed me a bottle when I stepped inside.

"At some point when I was in my early thirties," he said as I took off my boots, "I realized, I am who I am and there's no turning back. This is my lifestyle. And that's all there was to it."

I nodded. He waited for a response, but I had none to offer. I stood in the doorway, waiting for him to finish.

"You'll get there too," he said in a fatherly tone.

I was amused by his condescension. "I am who I am, hey?"

"You'll see."

"That's very pessimistic, Clarke."

LXXVI: Mrs. Scurfield VIII

2010-01-27T10:29:00.000-08:00

"I used to really enjoy going fast," Mrs. Scurfield told me in my truck yesterday. We were driving to North Battleford to run a few 'going-to-town' errands. Groceries, banking, and a stop at Family Pizza. "It's a very powerful feeling."

"I prefer walking to driving," I said as a response.

"You don't like machines generally, do you?"

"I like my stereo."

LXXV: Clarke XIII: Home Alone

2010-01-22T21:09:00.000-08:00

Most of the time I spend with Clarke is wordless. Ten minutes of silence, and then a few words, then ten more silent minutes. That's about the rhythm. I read through my old Clarke entries on this blog recently and realized all I've written so far is our talking. 'Cos what else can I do? But it's not like that. Not really. Mostly we sit and drink and smoke and think our own thoughts.

"I'd make a good hermit," Clarke told me last night. I was on my way out the door after an unusually conversationless evening.

"You are a hermit, Clarke."

"Yeah, Leonore thought so too." He looked at me knowingly. "She always wanted to go out, be out, get out. But I'd much rather sit on the sofa, drunk, at home."

“I met a hermit once,” I said. “When I spent that summer logging up north. He grew potatoes in an oil barrel. He was really nice."

"I couldn't be alone with Leonore. She wanted me to share my thoughts with her. All of them. That's why there're no female hermits."

"Goodnight Clarke,” I said laughing.

“Goodnight.”

I shut the door and walked home. I was glad to be there, alone.

LXXIV: Mr. Hung IV: Chan

2010-01-18T20:13:00.000-08:00

I stepped outside the restaurant on my break. Stood looking out past the edge of town. The snow shielded all sound and I grew increasingly aware of my own breathing. It seemed too fast. Too loud. Too big.

I hate winter.

“Cold enough?” mocked Mr. Hung, sticking his head out the door.

I nodded. "Seriously Mr. Hung, why did you move to this climate?"

"The cold gets your blood flowing,” he said, and pulled his face back into the steamy kitchen.

I thought about my veins, criss-crossing under my skin, gusting like wind. I squeezed at my neck with a gloved hand. The pressure of blood grew. My head throbbed.

I clenched my teeth. The pulsing increased. I held my breath, pushing at the sensation of a body about to burst. After ten seconds my vision seemed to shift. I let go.

I breathed out, then in, and sat down on the front hood of a car in the parking lot. I focused my thoughts on the Trees.

Nothing. Silence. I hope no one saw me. I must've looked like a fool.

"Why do you do that?" asked Mr. Hung when I stepped back in. "You don't like the cold, yet you're always stepping outside on your breaks."

I thought about his question for a second. "I don't know, Chan."

LXXIII: Susan VI

2010-01-15T14:55:00.000-08:00

Last night Susan and I watched a VHS copy of Murder on the Orient Express with Clarke. Clarke had gotten very drunk. Susan and I spent the duration of the film switching between watching the screen and watching Clarke. He got pretty animated in trying to figure out the guilty party. Ingrid Bergman or Sean Connery?

"You should cut back on the alcohol and cigarettes," Susan said to me later, in my darkened bedroom, as we tried to fall asleep.

I laughed. "What? You think just 'cos I let you sleep in my bed you can tell me how to live?"

"Let me?" she joked. "Yes."

"See, sex always costs something."

"Sure does. Now pay up."

"I don't think so." I shifted onto my back and opened my eyes. I tried to make out the shape of the ceiling fan. One shade of black against another. "It's so weird about the Trees."

"Don't!" said Susan. "I liked the sex talk better."

LXXII: Susan V: Susan is the Trees

2010-01-03T19:42:00.000-08:00

"I'll be the Trees," Susan hollered, running from the snow-covered path to hide behind an old gnarled aspen. One of the ugliest in the grove. It was New Year's Day and we were entirely alone, bundled in our winter-wear. Me on the wooden path, her standing behind a Tree.

Only her hands were visible peaking out from the speckled bark. "We can see you!" she said in a whispery, deep voice. Like the voice of the wind in a cartoon, or all the Trees talking at once. "Our branches push up inside you. Stomach, spine and throat."

"Then why aren't I choking?" I replied, following her jest.

"You are," said the voice behind the contorted branches. "I wrap my sprouts 'round your fingers, and my trunk grasps your neck."

"Then why can't I see you?"

"But you can!"

I squinted. "Nope."

"Foolish man. Listen for sight and look for sound."

"Okay." I shrugged my shoulders. "I can't hear you now either."

"But what do you see?"

"Your voice."

"And more than my voice, my heart beating."

"Nope. Just your voice."

"Slow down!" Susan hollered in girl-voice, and then resumed her throaty whisper. "Slow down, slow down. It beats so slow."

So I did. I really did. And Susan too -both of us looking, listening for the heartbeat of the Trees. 'Cos why not? The insulation of winter made the world silent, so we craned our necks in to see and hear.

"I've got something," I lied, extending the game. But then in my lie came a sound. A soft, blurring thunder. Gray like a heatwave shimmering over the roots. Susan looked at me. I looked at her. I watched her come out from behind the Tree. She pushed her hand up into the shivering air and motioned me towards her.

"Me too," she said. "I can hear it."

LXXI: Mrs. Scurfield VII

2009-12-27T16:30:00.000-08:00

Work is slow. Life is slow. I went over to Mrs. Scurfield's place yesterday. "Have a nice Christmas?" I asked.

"Yes. You?"

"Yeah. It was great."

Heads nodded. Then silence. Strangely uncomfortable silence. She offered me tea. I began searching for questions to ask.

"Whadda you do instead of gardening in the winter?" I asked.

"Sleep!" she said, laughing. I laughed too. We drank our tea. But I felt restless. Moments stretched long that would usually have passed unnoticed.

I could say it's not a big deal. These moments happen. But I dunno.

LXX: No Resistance

2009-12-14T12:17:00.000-08:00

The sun came out this morning on a cold, white world. I woke early and left Susan sleeping in bed. I forged a path straight out from my backyard into the long, thin, white aspen bordering my property.

Eventually I laid in the snow, just ‘cos.

Then I imagined entwining this little forest with a patchwork of ten thousand steel bars, each tree burdened with just enough weight to gradually bring it all tumbling down. After the slow collapse a jumble of rust lay on the ground while, decades later, new trees pushed up through the open spaces.

In all my destructive narratives -after the imagined fires, pavement, or bulldozers scrape up root and soil- eventually some winding green pokes out through the cracks.

I walked home dissatisfied.

Susan had coffee ready for when Clarke dropped by. The three of us sat with our own thoughts.

"Whatcha thinkin' 'bout?" Susan asked me after several quiet minutes.

"Well," I said, embarrassed, "I'm thinkin' 'bout how my Trees don’t need steel rods to bend them."

Clarke laughed.

LXIX: Mrs. Scurfield VI

2009-12-07T21:47:00.000-08:00

The ground’s covered in snow. Just a skiff. But it’s cold and now I don’t see people outside in their yards. We’re all inside watching TV.

“I’ve been doing some hard thinking,” I told Mrs. Scurfield last night in her living room at our weekly Friends meeting. “I think the Trees are bigger in my mind than they are, y’know, in real life. Like, when I don’t go out to see them, that’s when my obsession gets enormous. But when I go out there all the time, then it’s there but it’s not so emphasized.”

“Oh Matthew,” she said. I realized she was looking past my words. To a place I can’t see in myself.

“Does that make sense?”

She smiled. “Yes.”

“So whaddaya think?”

“I think I’d like a cup of tea.”

Sometimes, amazingly, other people’s lives don’t revolve around me and my concerns.

And sometimes people leave comments on this site which really throw me. Make me reconsider everything. Like Joel and Jon Kramer’s comments on the last post.

LXVIII: Dr. Bill Remphrey

2009-12-02T07:51:00.000-08:00

I'm reeling. I emailed Dr. Bill Remphrey. Here's an excerpt:

Me: I've been interested in the Trees for a while, and I don't know that my own fascination would be so strong if I understood fully why the Trees are crooked. Do you think anything would be lost (or gained) if a clearer explanation emerged for the Trees' crooked architecture?

Dr. Remphrey: I am not sure exactly what you don't understand. We know the trait is heritable and is most likely a single gene mutation. We don't know exactly what is happening at the gene expression level, but the gene is either causing the shoots to have reduced strength or differential growth that causes them to bend over. Ultimately I suspect plant hormones are involved. In any event, once this happens there is a cascade of developmental events that lead to the crooked form.

I now fear that, rather than searching for an explanation, the hours I devoted to poring over those essays were actually an attempt to sustain my belief that there was no explanation for the Trees.

"I am not sure exactly what you don't understand."

Yeah. Damn.

Please, if you haven't already, check out Dr. Remphrey's website.

LXVII: Outer Space

2009-11-23T10:53:00.000-08:00

Clarke knocked on my door at 8am. He let himself in and stood in my bedroom doorway. "Wake up. The Wiley's found gophers in their field. I can give you a ride."

"Fuck." I knew what that meant. A morning spent shooting. Shooting, with a hangover. "I don't want to wake up."

"Come on."

I threw on some clothes and grabbed my '22.

All these old-timers, and guys I went to high school with but now never talk to, walking in lines, killing. I was inclined to be in a foul mood. But I know we can't let gophers set in around here.

At 2pm Clarke dropped me off at the Trees. I pulled a tiny joint out of my pocket, alone in the silence of pre-winter. "Alright," I said to the branches, "it's getting cold. I won't be coming out here much 'till Spring." They can't hear me.

I wished I could've shown the Trees a snapshot of my morning. Instead, I inhaled and went to outer space.

That night I sent an email out to Dr. Remphrey.

LXVI: Clarke XII

2009-11-23T10:07:00.000-08:00

Drunk with Clarke last night. Feeling sorry for ourselves in his living room after watching Kelly's Heroes. Peetsabooty was sleeping on the carpet in front of us. We were at a lull in the conversation when Clarke said, "I think life is generally a little disappointing."

"Yeah. A little," I replied. Too casually.

"The gifts I wanted to give were never needed."

"What gifts?"

"Oh, I dunno. The ways I'm good at being nice aren't helpful, and the ways I'm bad at it are."

I looked at Peetsabooty. He stared back with that vacant, soul-less look animals have. Nothing but instinct. Glassy eyes. Like a man exhausted at the end of a drunk.

LXV: Susan IV

2009-11-16T08:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Susan got energetic and tried to pull me in. We were in my living room early in the afternoon planning our day. "Come on," she urged. So I tried to work up some enthusiasm. "Tonight we should do something," she said as I rose to my feet slowly from the couch. "Something fun."

"Okay."

She threw her arms around me. I grinned. She waited.

"We could go to a movie in Battleford," I offered.

"No," she said in mock disgust. "Not that."

"Umm," I began, with limited inspiration, "I dunno. Whadda you wanna do?"

"I dunno."

"We could invite some people over."

"I wanna do something, just me and you," she insisted.

"Alright. Like what?"

She looked at me impatiently, then sat down on my couch. I stood, watching her exhilaration settle.

"I don't know, Susan."

She sighed. I felt guilty somehow.

LXIV: Clarke XI

2009-11-14T16:03:00.000-08:00

“Clarke, there’s nothing in Hafford.” I told him this while sitting in the lookout shed at the dump. He sent a weary look in my direction. “I mean, there’s nothing. Just some houses and a couple stores.”

“So move to a big city then.”

“Yeah.” My self-pity transformed itself into self-boredom. “Damn.”

“Or have kids.”

"Ha."

I wandered over to the Trees later in the day. I ran my fingers over the bark. Then I pressed my cheek against a knot. I could feel lines forming on my skin. Breathing hard I waited for the imprint. Thirty seconds.

I'm out of cigarettes.

LXIII: Mr. Hung III

2009-11-05T21:38:00.000-08:00

“You know bananas are going extinct,” said Mr. Hung at work yesterday. We were working on a big order.

“What are you talking about?”

“Yeah. We’ve been genetically altering them so much that they’re just going to disappear.”

I was silent for a long time, watching Mr. Hung grate cheese as I chopped onions. “That’s amazing.”

He looked at me. “Yeah.”

“Oh man, I can’t believe that.” I stopped chopping and stared out the kitchen window. “Bananas? Crazy.”

Mr. Hung chuckled. "I thought you'd like that."

After work I delivered ten bagged meals to the Lions club.

LXII: The Announcement II

2009-11-03T20:56:00.000-08:00

“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time,” I said, “and I just don’t think it’s good for me to be going out there all the time for no reason.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Scurfield. Clarke was eyeing me carefully from the couch.

“Because I feel like it’s a waste. A waste of my life." I looked around the room for a supportive face. "What do you think, Susan?”

“I dunno,” she began. “It’s just, like, stupid. They’ve been such a big deal to you.”

“They are a big deal to you, Matthew,” said Mrs. Scurfield. “Clarke tells me you planted my seedling in your front yard. Why?”

I was feeling ambushed. “Because that’s what you do with plants your friends give you.”

Mr. Hung had an enormous grin on his face.

"Bullshit," said Clarke.

“So none of you think it’s a good idea?” I asked, frustrated and meek.

“Of course not,” said Susan. She stood up. “Who wants wine?”

Susan took over my hosting responsibilities, so I was free to vanish into the haze of whiskey and beer. I woke up the next morning on my couch with a headache. I opened my eyes and saw Clarke sleeping on a chair. I wandered into my room searching for fresh clothes. Mrs. Scurfield lay on my bed snoring, face-down and fully-clothed on top of the blankets.

Susan was in the kitchen making coffee.

LXI: The Announcement I

2009-11-01T17:59:00.000-08:00

Clarke, Mrs. Scurfield, Susan, Birdie, and Mr. Hung; everyone was assembled in my living room for the party, drinks in hand. Standing alone in the corner I cleared my throat. “I have an announcement.” The room got quiet.

“No kidding,” said Clarke.

“I’m done with the Trees. No more obsessing. I’ve decided.” I shifted my feet.

“What?” asked Susan.

“I just think I can’t let my life revolve around them anymore.”

“No,” said Mrs. Scurfield.

“No?”

“No.”

“Whadda you mean?”

“I mean, No, you can’t be ‘done’ with them.”

“Yeah,” said Birdie, “I don’t like this.”

I was shocked. Mr. Hung looked amused.

LX: The Way V

2009-10-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

The Trees, the Trees, the Trees. The god-damned Trees.

I’m smoking again. A lot. My mouth feels raw, but it gives me something to do with my hands.

I laid under the familiar branches, cold, early Monday afternoon. “What is it, you silent things?” My arms were clutched to my breast. “Come on. Come on.” I’m pushing and pushing, and nothing is offering resistance.

“I can’t revolve around you anymore.” I walked home and dug a small hole in the middle of my front lawn.

"Is that what I think it is?" Clarke asked, approaching, pointing at a red pot beside me.

"Yeah."

"In your own yard?"

"Yeah." With hesitant fingers I transfered Mrs. Scurfield 's seedling from the pot to the hole.

"Jesus."

I walked inside and made three phone calls: Mr. Hung and Birdie, Susan, and Mrs. Scurfield. I walked back outside. Clarke was staring at my Tree.

"In your own yard." He knelt down and patted the dirt.

"Clarke, you're invited to a party at my place. Tonight at 8."

"Sure."

------------------------------

The wind has knocked the leaves off many trees, but not mine. They are too dense, and so I've been watching the edges disintegrate; out there for hours, staring through the windshield.

I walked to the dump with Clarke yesterday, and brought my video camera. "How does it work?" he asked.

I handed it to him. "Try to get a shot of me walking."

XLIX: Clarke X

2009-10-24T12:49:00.000-07:00

“Hmm,” said Clarke.

I said nothing. We stood staring at the Trees from one of the winding pathways. He'd volunteered to join me on a mid-afternoon trek.

“So, this is what you do here,” he half-asked, half-stated. “Just look at ‘em?”

“Yes,” I said, embarrassed. Clarke examined some initials carved in one of the branches.

“So whadda you think caused it? Aliens?” He was mocking me a little.

“Yeah. Or something.”

“I meant the initials.”

“Oh. Ha. Good one.”

“'J.R loves K.T.’” he read. “It’s probably a code.” We stood listening to the wind. “They’re nice.” His arms pressed against the dying leaves.

“They’re scary."

“Yeah, maybe to a wimp like you.” He wandered off the path. I could guess what was coming. “They’re not so scary when you’re pissing on them.” I heard the sound of a zipper.

photograph by Ken Delgarno. More here.

XLVIII: Roger Shaw I

2009-10-22T08:44:00.001-07:00

Transcript of phone conversation with Roger Shaw, Ph.D:

Me: …So, just to be clear, you’re alright with me taping this and then posting it on the internet?

ROGER SHAW: Yeah. Unless maybe you make a million dollars off it. [laughing]

M: [laughing] Okay, so my first question is, what drove you to want to study the Trees initially?

RS: Oh. Well. I think it probably has to trace back, I guess, to when I first heard about them.

M: When was that?

RS: When I was eight or nine. I'm from Minnesota. A relative from Saskatoon was telling my Father about these weird trees that grew crooked in Saskatchewan. I was listening in at the kitchen table. It freaked me out a little.

M: Really?

RS: Yeah. It felt like it should have been imaginary. So that frightened me. And then I walked into the room and saw a doodle my Father had been drawing while listening to the story. It must've had a strong effect on me, because when I was presented with the opportunity to study the trees as a grad student in Regina, I was quite enthusiastic.

M: Do you still have it by any chance? The drawing.

RS: I might.
Two days after the phone call I received an email with the above picture attached.

XLVII: The Way IV

2009-10-14T21:25:00.000-07:00

A voice in my head today said, "Move to the city."

Another voice -emanating, it seemed, from the television and radio- said, "You must love the planet. You must." It's kinda scary.

Upon hearing of my 'Love the planet,' voice, Clarke said, "The planet's fucked. We're a disintegrating rock floating in space."

Susan leaned in for a kiss and squinted, whispering "I see you," at my beard.

Mr. Hung laughed when I asked what it was like to move here from San Francisco at 32 years old. "You have no idea," he replied.

Nope. I sure don't. But when I put certain albums on my stereo he looks at me and says, "Yes. You got it."

Birdie flew into Hung's today with a kiss for her husband, and a, "Hey Matt. Oh god, you should throw a party again."

Larissa looked quick at me and said, "So, you gonna call them or what?" An ice cream cone dripped over her knuckles.

Mrs. Scurfield and I met at the Trees again. "How are you?" she asked.

"Alright, thanks," I told her. "But this week, you talk."

XLVI: Ashley Wade Linden I: Larissa III

2009-10-07T08:26:00.000-07:00

Ashley Wade Linden. Former masters student under Dr. Bill Remphrey at the University of Manitoba. He wrote a paper called An Investigation into the Mechanisms of Shoot Bending in a Clone of Populus tremuloides Exhibiting ‘Crooked’ Architecture. Somebody mailed me a photocopy anonymously. It’s been spread out over my kitchen table for weeks, brushed aside occasionally so I can eat or so Clarke can set down his coffee.

Linden thinks the Trees might all come from one giant root. That’s interesting.

Last Saturday morning, at the beginning of my 9-day weekend, I locked myself in, made coffee, opened a new pack of cigarettes, and began reading the Shaw and Linden essays again. Eventually I ran out of room on the table and shifted some of the papers over to the floor. My plan was to spend the day in furious study, looking for a break somewhere in my understanding of the Trees.

At noon there was a knock on the door. Larissa Shapko. I let her in but immediately returned to my studying position on the floor.

"Whatcha doin'?" Larissa asked, following me inside.

"I'm studying."

"But you don't go to school."

"Nope."

"What, are you trying to be smart or something?"

"Yes Larissa, I'm trying to be smart."

She joined me on on the floor, kneeling, and took a closer look at one of the pages spread out over the hardwood. "Oh," she said with an intake of breath, "the Trees."

"You can hang out here a little if you want," I told her. "There's some snacks in the cupboard. But I really need to focus on this."

"Can I help?" she asked, running her fingers over a large book containing maps of Saskatchewan I'd pulled out for reference.

"I doubt it." I was trying to be nice.

Larissa looked at the title page of the Linden essay. "By Ashley Wade Linden," she read. I was concentrating on one of his more curious paragraphs.

Crooked aspen shoot leaning resembles, and might be attributed to, the inability to support itself due to poor strength. Whatever the cause, leaning appears to be the initial stage of shoot bending, and provides a cue for subsequent morphological and anatomical changes observed in relation to the gravity stimulus.

There was a tap on my shoulder.

"Yeah Larissa?" I said with amused resignation.

"Do you know him?"

"What? Who?"

"Ashley Wade Linden."

"No."

"How come?"

And then it occurred to me: I need to talk to these people. Remphrey, Shaw, Linden. I'll bet you I could.

XLV: Friends of the Crooked Bush III: Meeting Adjourned

2009-10-04T16:20:00.000-07:00

I'd stumbled long enough.

"Why do you think I hate the Trees, Mrs. Scurfield?" I asked.

She laughed at me. Quietly. Politely. In a way that was almost answer enough.

"I'd like to hear," I said, before she could begin.

"I don't know, Matthew," she said, straightening her jacket collar. "I think your hatred is a little bit ridiculous. But maybe you’re afraid that if you look it in the face you’ll see that it's unbeatable."

“Yes,” I said with all my courage, “that is my fear.”

“Well,” she offered, “I don’t know what to tell you. It might be better for you -in terms of your happiness- to just stay where you are right now, with all your questions unanswered.”

We sat in the stillness for a while.

“Happiness!” I repeated to myself. “Y'know, even if I was some genius and saint and heroin addict, hovering miraculously over the earth in -I dunno- transcendent, sinless bliss… Even if I was that, the Trees would still be there. They’d keep on growing and doing what they do. I’m not gonna to beat them.”

“No.”

“I hate the Trees because I want to.”

“We established that already.”

“Then I don’t even know what I’m struggling against.”

“Try to stop thinking of it as a hatred, maybe,” Mrs. Scurfield suggested.

“Friendship, not hatred,” I joked.

“Yes,” she replied. “Like a friend you grew up with and never really liked, but are still forced to get along with. Like family.”

There was more to the night than that, but I’ll leave it there.

Susan thinks the club is just Mrs. Scurfield’s way of getting a date. Which is fine with me.

"Figuring out the Trees is like a task I've set for myself," I told Mrs. Scurfield at one point in the evening.

“Is that what you’ve been doing?” she asked me. “Because I thought you were just drinking a lot and wandering around town, smoking your life away.”

I love her.

XLIV: Friends of the Crooked Bush II

2009-10-01T12:52:00.000-07:00

“Okay, Mrs. Scurfield,” I said. “You win. I‘ll tell you why I hate the Trees. Or I’ll try.”

“Good.”

I wanted to get it right. But my mind was blank. “Forgive me if I'm a little incoherent,” I said. "Or tangential."

“We’re not in a hurry,” she whispered.

I was more than a little incoherent, and my speech was pocked with "umm," "well," "y’know," "like," "er," "uh." I won't transcribe it exactly. Each sentence took a minute.

“I get these moments,” I sighed, “where I realize that it doesn’t matter who I talk to or what’s going on, I know that I’m just gonna feel miserable and out of touch with everything.” I paused for a minute. “I’m sad, and it can’t be beaten. Or maybe I’m happy. I have no control. Or very little. It's chemicals in my brain.”

Mrs. Scurfield was paying close attention. “Mmmhmm,” she said, prodding my thoughts forward, though I hadn't yet begun to address her question.

“So on some level,” I continued, neglecting to explain what feeling out of touch had to do with anything, “the Trees just look scary and they’re a mystery, and they frightened me as a child, and that’s enough. I don‘t know. Maybe I’ll never be able to put my finger on what it is about them that bothers me so much.”

“Come on,” she protested.

The umm, uh, er, y’know's multiplied, and married themselves to longer pauses. “Well, maybe as I’ve grown older,” I said, “they’ve become a symbol.” I felt like I was just saying what I thought she wanted to hear. “Or not quite a symbol, but something -they have some connection to everything like nature and life and whatever.” My voice trailed off at the end. It was the worst response I could’ve imagined giving.

Mrs. Scurfield nodded. I felt a twist in my stomach.

“That’s not it at all,” I said, closing my eyes. “That’s too… Um, it’s too tidy.”

“I’ve heard that sort of thing before,” she said to me. “‘Too tidy.’ Yes. Tidy. I think that actually you have a good start there.”

“No. I don’t.”

“No?” she asked.

“It’s hard to put into words.”

“Of course,” she said. “But in this case words are all you’ve got.”

“Oh God,” I sighed. “I can’t believe how poorly I’m explaining this.”

“It’s alright. Think it through.” She was looking at me. I looked back and tried to read her face. It was impenetrable.

More soon.

XLIII: Friends of the Crooked Bush I

2009-09-29T23:18:00.000-07:00

It turned out the so-called "Friends of the Crooked Bush" is just Mrs. Scurfield.

I rode my truck out to the Trees last Friday at 8pm, as instructed. Mrs. Scurfield was sitting quiet in her lawn-chair with a thermos on her lap, in the illumination of her headlights. Alone. “Welcome to the first-ever meeting of the Friends of the Crooked Bush,” she said with a mischievous, youthful grin, standing up to shake my hand. “You’re the second member.”

“When are the other members coming?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s just me.”

“Just you?”

“Yes,” she said, obviously pleased with her little deception.

I was amused, but also a little disappointed. Part of me had been hoping for a cult of people in black robes or something. What I’d been honestly expecting though was a stodgy little group of civic-duty types -school teachers and Christians- who met twice a year to decide who would repair the walkways through the Trees. Instead it was Mrs. Scurfield, and now me, hanging out at the Trees, drinking. I’d done that with her before.

“Now,” she said, after assuring me that, yes, she had put up the signs, and that, yes, she was really the only member and always had been, “to the first order of business."

"Okay," I said, curious.

"You must offer justification to the group as to why you hate the Crooked Trees,” she said in a very official tone, reveling a little in her own mock-seriousness. “The chair recognizes the member who smokes and drinks a lot.” She slammed her thermos on her lap like a gavel. "Mr. Wilkinson." She was being very child-like.

It was my turn to laugh. I shook my head in disbelief. “Well!” I said, like it summed up all my feelings. Then I settled myself into the chair she’d brought for me, pulled up the collar of my jacket -defying the evening chill, and glanced up at the car lights dancing in the jagged branches. I spent a few seconds taking it all in, then breathed deep and tried to pull my thoughts together. She’d really caught me off guard.

More tomorrow.

XLII: Clarke IX

2009-09-28T08:46:00.000-07:00

Clarke dropped by on his way to work. I was making breakfast, and reading over those essays again. He knocked on the door and opened it simultaneously, then sat down at the kitchen table. I poured him a cup of coffee. We talked about my meeting with the Friends of the Crooked Bush for a while (more on that later. I’m still processing it) and then he started complaining about Leonore. They’ve been divorced for more than a year, but he still brings her up almost every other time we talk.

“The difference between me and Leonore came down to one thing,” he started. “And that’s the way we ate.” I raised my eyebrows in laughter and tired resignation. “When Leonore got hungry she’d think of what she’d like to have, then she’d check our ‘fridge to see if it was there, and would usually end up complaining that we didn’t have what she was looking for.” He took a sip of his coffee.

“And you?” I prodded.

“For me when I get hungry I open the 'fridge door, see what’s there, and then try to come up with something I’d enjoy.”

“So what’s the significance, do you think?” I asked obligatorily.

“Well, she was perpetually dissatisfied,” he concluded. I laughed.

“Whereas you are just the happiest guy I know,” I jested.

“No, but I accept my not being happy -in a way she never could. And I look at the world first, and then figure out what I can, y’know, reasonably expect.”

“That’s interesting Clarke. Though I’m sure she’d have another perspective. I‘m sure she thought her expectations were reasonable.”

“Yeah, well...” he began, and left the sentence hanging. It was early, I hadn’t quite fully woken yet, and I stared at him disapprovingly.

“You know what?” I said quietly. “I find it interesting that the only times you get philosophical are when you’re preparing some little assault on Leonore.” I was pushing it.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… I don’t know. I just find it a little suspicious.”

His face drew into a frown. I could see his temper rising. Neither of us said anything for five minutes as we finished our coffees. Finally he rose to his feet, looked at me and said, “Well, alright. Thanks for the coffee.”

I looked up without lifting my face, and then smiled. “Okay Clarke. Anytime.”

I finished my breakfast and wandered over to the Trees.

XLI: Friends of the Crooked Bush: Preface

2009-09-25T16:57:00.000-07:00

I'm on my way out the door to join the Friends of the Crooked Bush. I'm pretty nervous.

And sad. The temperature's dropping. Winter's not so far away really. Visiting the Trees is inconvenient once the cold arrives.

XL: The Way III: The Party

2009-09-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

“We've decided. You’re gonna take next week off,” Birdie commanded, standing on my doorstep last night with a bottle of white wine and my paycheque. Mr. Hung stood sheepish by her side with a twelve-pack. “Chan’s exhausted; you‘re exhausted,” she continued. “Let’s celebrate the money you boys made.” Mr. Hung and I looked at each other and smiled. I invited them in.

“Call Susan,” suggested Birdie.

“And Clarke,” said Mr. Hung.

I made the calls while Mr. Hung filled our glasses. Within ten minutes Clarke and Susan had arrived. “Hey kids,” Clarke said, waving a whiskey bottle. Susan followed with more wine.

"Kids?" laughed Birdie.

They all got very drunk very quickly. I drank ‘till I felt the click, then stopped. I watched the foolishness and high spirits rise with a mostly clear head.

By midnight Susan and Birdie were dancing to an old Beatles record on my back deck. Us guys were sitting on chairs on the lawn. “This is the way to do it,” Mr. Hung muttered to himself.

“To do what?” I asked. Clarke laughed.

At four o’clock I forced everyone to drink some water and then watched them all wander home. Mr. Hung was singing ‘Oh Canada’ walking down main street. Birdie kept whooping and hollering beside him. “Oh Jesus,” said Clark, stumbling over his lawn. Only Susan remained.

“Look at you, all sober," she said, putting on her jacket. "You’re changing,”

“Only temporarily,” I promised, laughing at her slurred speech. "I’ve got a week off. I need to be sharp. I've got to figure some stuff out."

"No, yeah. You're really changing."

"Whatever you say, drunk girl," I said, and kissed her forehead.

XXXIX: Mrs. Scurfield V

2009-09-22T23:18:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Scurfield came by early this morning. Woke me up. I stood scratching my head in the doorway, waiting for an explanation.

“This,“ she said with a smile, “is for you.” I became aware of a small red pot in her hands. Full of dirt. “It’s a Crooked Tree seedling,” she whispered, and handed it to me.

I raised my eyes to meet hers.

“You can do whatever you want with it,” she said. “Pave it over. It’s all yours.”

I was astounded. The unexpected weight of the soil pulled on my arms.

“But,” she continued in decreased volume, “I have a favour to ask.”

I smiled.

“I want you to join the Friends of the Crooked Bush.”

I was looking again at the red clay pot. I coughed.

“We’re meeting on Friday at 8pm at the Trees,” she said matter-of-factly. I began forming a response, but before I could begin to answer she turned and walked away.

I felt like shit all day. I tried smoking a cigarette but stopped half way through.

My kitchen table is covered in pages of photocopied essays. I look without reading. Now that I have time off again, my obsession returns.

XXXVIII: Bujalski Reunion Interlude

2009-09-20T20:41:00.000-07:00

There's this big family reunion in town. The Bujalski Family. Hafford is, strangely, overflowing with people. On Saturday there was a parade. Lots of American license plates.

What this translates into for me is, I've been busy working at Hung's feeding all these visitors. One guy, a tall man from Turkey -of all places- offered me a Turkish Marlboro when I was on a coffee break. It was a longer cigarette than ours, and tasted immeasurably better. "Tobacco is so expensive here," he complained to me.

"Oh yeah. Big time," I replied.

I realized today that this blog has been fading. My efforts at distracting myself from battling the Trees, and then this Bujalski reunion, have kept me away from the keyboard for too long.

Let me assure you readers, old and new, that The Crooked Trees of Hafford, Saskatchewan will be returning in full force shortly. Shortly, shortly, very shortly.

I was out at the Trees last night for the first time in a while. It was cold, and I just felt distracted, sitting there on a picnic table in the tourist' parking lot -knowing I had to work in the morning. I stared at the gnarled branches and felt nothing. Visiting the Trees is a ritual for me, obviously, and so -like all rituals- sometimes you just do it, and can't work up any emotion, or don't want to. I guess that's how it works. And I suppose that's not so bad either. But I'm not feeling quite philosophical enough to take that one apart.

Excuse any spelling or grammatical errors in this entry. It's 3am, I'm drunk(ish), and I work in four hours. Damn those friendly American Bujalskis to hell. No. They've been lovely. Americans usually are.

XXXVII: The Demons Bite Back

2009-09-04T14:55:00.000-07:00

I know I haven’t posted in a while. After my impassioned conversation with Clarke last week I decided to give my head a rest. I was supposed to face my demons, but I don't know if I'm quite ready yet. I asked Mr. Hung for some extra shifts at the restaurant. I thought it might distract me. It didn’t. Now I’m stressed out from days of long shifts and an unsettled mind. I haven’t been to the Trees in more than a week, but I‘ve been thinking about them incessantly. Also, without meaning to, I've cut back on cigarettes, alcohol, and weed. I feel awful.

Larissa came over last night to offer me a Popsicle. I accepted. We sat on my front steps talking about all the things she’d done over the summer. Camp, vacation, and two boyfriends. School begins next week, and she’s dreading it. I don’t blame her.

Autumn looms.

Larissa went home. I wandered inside, sober for the seventh day in a row, to examine a parcel sitting on my kitchen table. It arrived yesterday. Someone anonymously mailed me a photocopy of another Masters Thesis proposal on the Trees. I’m not sure what to make of that.

Several times this week I've caught myself sitting on the edge of my bed, or on the couch, staring into space, focused on nothing. In fact, that's what I was doing just before I wrote this.

XXXVI: Clarke VIII, The Way II: The Wrong Way.

2009-08-25T13:54:00.000-07:00

I got emotional last night.

"I've got to finish this thing with the Trees," I said to Clarke over a beer. We were sitting in chairs on his backyard lawn, watching the sunset.

"Yeah, you sure do go out there a lot," he said. "But I don't know what you're all upset about." I had my eyes closed in quiet, intellectual anguish. I lifted my face, lit a cigarette, and took a deep breath. He laughed at me, asking "What are you getting so worked up about?"

I laughed too -obligatorily. "Yeah, you're right. But I'm scared I'm wasting my life on something unworthy of my attention."

"Well, I don't know," said Clarke, uncomfortably, watching the light tone of the conversation collapse.

"It's like you divorcing Leonore," I insisted -getting a little too personal. "You look back on that time with her and you've got regrets. Imagine you could talk to your 27 year old self and tell him how to avoid whatever needed to be avoided with that situation. I'm trying to figure out what mistakes not to make, and I'm afraid obsessing over the Trees might be a doozy. Or I'm afraid of failing to act properly on that obsession."

Clarke was looking at me, hard. "But how can you know," he asked, "what's a mistake until you make it?"

I started to ramble. "Clarke, with the Trees," I began, then changed direction. "No." I exhaled and started over. "It's just that we live in a time when you can't do heroic stuff. Y'know? Unless you join the army or something there's no big moment where you get to discover if you're a coward or whatever, and so I've got to look at the way I walk to the grocery store or behave with my friends, and try to discern the same information. Am I doing these things well? Am I living well generally? How do you live well in a quiet world where nothing changes and people are mostly pretty content? Should I be out looking for injustices?" I took a sip of my beer.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Clarke replied. "But whatever it is, I think you're talking about it the wrong way." He refused to be any more specific.

XXXV: Susan III

2009-08-22T18:48:00.000-07:00

I'm nursing my third Guiness, with two Dabs and a shot of Crown Royal also spinning around down there. Susan came over earlier and said, "why don't you get drunk, and I'll make you supper." She had 4 Guiness in one hand, and a grocery bag and some white wine in the other.

That girl wants to marry me. I'm sure of it.

I'll bet you anything I'm having sex tonight.

I probably shouldn't write that.

Susan put on Veckatimest. "I love this song," she said as 'Ready, Able' came on. Thank God for downloaded music. Album of the summer.

XXXIV: Mrs Scurfield IV

2009-08-21T21:27:00.000-07:00

"Sometimes I think I’d like to just pave those Trees over,” I told Mrs. Scurfield as I watched her pull weeds from her garden yesterday. I’d been sitting on a lawn chair most of the afternoon, studying the Shaw essay while she worked.

She looked up alarmed. Like a parent with a child. “Oh no. I don’t think you would. You’ve got to be careful with that.”

“Well, in any case,” I said, “I can’t, ‘cos I don’t own the land they’re on.”

She straightened her shoulders to give me a second of hard attention and a grin, then began pulling out a large root system.

“I think I like hating them,” I offered. The noise of her work stopped again.

She looked at me for a while before saying, “I think you do too.”

“It’s comforting,” I offered.

She waited.

“But it’s not like I can get rid of them. And I don’t know how to stop, y'know, obsessing. So maybe enjoying the hatred is the best option for me.” I felt bad making this admission.

“And yet, here you are -dissatisfied,” Mrs. Scurfield observed, and resumed her selective apocalypse.

“Yeah.” Damn.

I think it really is time to confront my demons.

XXXIII: Clarke VII

2009-08-19T08:02:00.000-07:00

Woke up to the sound of a bird hitting my window. Put on some bacon, eggs, and Dylan’s Nashville Skyline -real quiet. Clarke came over for coffee before going to work. His eyes were wide and red, like he was forcing them open.

“It’s too early to be alive,” he said, sitting down.

“It’s 8:30.”

He grunted.

I pulled a joint out of my shirt-pocket and laid it on the table, for after breakfast.

“First thing in the morning?” laughed Clarke. “I wish I had your life.”

“You do have my life. You don’t need to work so much. What are these bills you’re rushing to pay?”

“Oh I know. But I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I didn’t work out there.”

“Okay. Fair enough.”

He left at 9. After breakfast I decided against the joint, and wandered over to the dump. Petesabooty met me at the gate. “How’m I supposed to beat the Trees, Pete?” I asked, throwing a broken hockey stick into a pile of ovens and refrigerators. The dog jumped into action. I could see Clarke in his loader across the yard, pushing stuff around. The sun was hot already.

Later, sitting in the lookout shed listening absently to CJNB with Clarke, he eyed me a little steadier than usual. “What are you doing spending all your time with a fifty year old?” he asked.

“I don’t like people my age, generally,” I answered. Which is true.

“That can't be healthy.”

“No?”

“No.”

“I dunno. I just see too much of myself in them, and I don’t like that. What’re you doing hanging out with a 27 year old?”

“I’m hoping you’ll bring some young girls around eventually.”

XXXII: Populous Tremuloides Explosion

2009-08-14T09:23:00.000-07:00

I drove Birdie into Saskatoon last Sunday. She was catching a flight. I needed weed. Plus, it turned out the U of S had a copy of that Roger Shaw essay I've been looking for. Birdie was in the sky, heading towards Vancouver. I sat in a park reading the freshly photocopied masters thesis. Pretty heady stuff.

For example:

Management of the Populus tremuloide's agroecosystem has led to an increase in local soil salination. While previous research... cites the diversion of water from atholassohaline water bodies for agricultural purposes as a possible indirect contributor in the morphometry of the crooked bush, recent findings... indicate successful micropropogation [of the crooked trees] is not dependent on soil factors.

My mind wandered. I got nostalghic.

I remembered first seeing the Crooked Trees when I was seven or eight, on a picnic with my family. I began having nightmares soon after. Always some variation of the same thing: the Trees were growing -writhing- in a large hall of mirrors, and I was locked in their roots and branches -which sprawled out over a marble floor. I'd wake up in a sweat.

Dad assuaged my fears by taking me out to the Trees several months later, and letting me watch them for long enough to realize they were harmless.

But when I learned about photosynthesis in school I was horrified all over again. Nature was not as stagnant as I'd hoped. It seethed with energy, like in my dreams, moving invisibly. Science conspired against my tranquility. The earth was breathing, like a sleeping giant -passively swallowing life; and the giant itself floated in hostile waters.

Hope lay in our increasing ability to manipulate the elements. We needed to be in control.

At thirteen years old I made a major discovery.

“The world's nuclear powers,” a teacher informed my class one day in grade seven, “have enough bombs to destroy the planet ten times over.” Something to that effect.

I smiled. Beside me in a notebook a friend drew the globe exploding. I copied his drawing. My notebooks in school were covered in versions of that doodle for years.

I used to lay on our thick carpet at home watching documentaries on the destruction of rain forests in Brazil, with a feeling rising in my belly that maybe, just maybe, everything would be okay.

XXXI: Clarke VI

2009-08-08T20:48:00.001-07:00

“I used to believe that the vast majority of people were, y’know -decent, and relatively intelligent. But I’ve lost that in the past couple years,” I told Clarke in the silence after a film in my living room. Clint Eastwood again. Escape From Alcatraz. Great movie.

“Well, God knows I’m a living genius,” Clarke said in reply, lighting a cigarette.

I laughed.

“You just thought that ‘cos you were young,” he said, as if continuing his previous thought. “And when people’re young they’ve got potential. So you looked around at all your friends in school and thought, ‘they’re just like me.’ And they were, ‘cos you were all going somewhere. But now you‘ve all arrived at the places you were going. And some of those places are better or they’re worse than others.” He cleared his throat and moved his eyes like he was trying to see inside his own head, going over his words. Then he shrugged.

“Think so?” I asked, smiling.

“What the hell do I know?” he said, rising from the couch and walking towards my kitchen. “This is a young person’s conversation. I‘m 56; I just want to watch TV, go fishing, and see some nice scenery for a couple decades. Maybe go to Alaska. Then I can die. The rest, I just don't care about.”

I laughed again. He looked at me from the 'fridge with a melancholy face. “Matthew, I coulda never done this with Leonore.” He reached deep into the top shelf. Two beer bottles emerged, gripped between his knuckles. His head was shaking. "God damn that woman made me miserable."

“I know Clarke. I remember.”

XXX: The Way

2009-08-06T00:23:00.000-07:00

I had a vision.

The sky was blackening in my painted-bright community. I was a man with disproportionately large features. 7 feet tall, but in way that in photographs made me look like a short man enlarged.

I could run so much faster than everyone. I saw above the world, like an emerging airplane. And I was smarter.

No one knew where I was from: Hafford, Hawaii, or Ho Chi Minh.

Finally, Clarke appeared -but looked different. He warned me, “Don’t spread the wisdom. If you’ve wasted your life, at least you can still brush your teeth without looking away. You figured out how to beat them, and you did beat them. And that is the end."

The Trees. I think I've found a way.

XXIX: Susan II

2009-08-01T14:02:00.000-07:00

It got windy yesterday afternoon. A hot wind. Susan and I were sitting beneath the Trees. It began as a long, sleepy gust that grew into hard, thick waves of summer air. We were half-way through a joint. “I feel so comfortable,” she said. “Like chocolate cake.”

I grinned.

The sky got loud and the Trees began to shiver. Our t-shirts whipped around our bodies until even our shoelaces got picked up in the gale. Susan’s hair was pressed like fabric over nose and mouth. We sat motionless in the dry, mounting bluster.

That’s the best I can do to describe it. Or I could just say, ‘The wind was incredible.’ I’d never seen the Trees move like that. It was like watching a lover cry for the first time. Though I acted more casual.

It reminded me of heaven, the way it was described in Sunday school.

XXVIII: A Secret

2009-07-31T04:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a secret: I’ve been pissing on Mrs. Scurfield’s restaurant parking lot for years. In a corner near the garbage.

The restaurant is on my route back home from the Trees, and it’s become a bit of a custom to pee there. I do it almost every time I pass by after dark. I can't remember when it started.

Some places just make sense to you, so you build a sanctuary around them. The Trees bother me enough to surround them with ritual. And dreams. An entire life at the disposal of crooked branches.

I try to look these things in the face. I don’t always succeed.

This picture is of a billboard, also on my route home from the Trees, that was recently erected.

A great recent collection of Hafford images is available here.

XXVII: Brenda "Birdie" Hung-Walbrandt II, Chan "Mr." Hung II

2009-07-29T08:34:00.000-07:00

Even in the bar it's "Mr. Hung." Not Chan.

"We've forgotten the effect financial insecurity has on our mental state," said Birdie last night at the K-Bar to Mr. Hung and me. The place was almost empty. "Almost the entire middle-class in our debt-soaked world is mentally burdened. At 47 I'm just now, finally, out of debt. I feel so empowered."

I think I nodded. We were all several pints in.

"That's why you've got to live in a small town with an economy like Hafford's, and work part time," I replied. "I'm free. I'm 27 and I own my own house and that beater of a truck. I can tell the world to fuck off whenever I want to. But the government considers me below the poverty line." Then I added, "The problem with Marxism is that it's trying to get the working class unshackled by telling them to climb out over the top. The best way out is actually through the bottom."

Mr. Hung smiled. "And bureaucracy!" he said, adding to my pontification. "Marxist states are inevitably built on a large bureaucracy, and every sane person knows red tape is evil. You wouldn't believe, with my business, all the..."

"Why're you guys talking about Marxism,"interrupted Birdie. "Who brought that up?"

I walked home later shaking my head, wondering why we'd talked about politics at all. I hate that.

Photo taken from here.

XXVI: University of Manitoba

2009-07-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

I dialed the number. After two rings I heard a woman's voice say, "Hello, Sciences and Technology Library."

"Hi. Yeah, I'd like to get a copy of a masters thesis written by one of your students in 1997."

"Umm... could I get your student I.D number?"

"I'm not a student."

"Oh, well, do you have a library card?"

"Nope."

"You'll need to come by the library to get a card for accessing..."

"Actually, I don't live near Winnipeg."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Are you from another university?"

"No, I'm a part-time cook in Hafford, Saskatchewan."

Long pause.

"What's the name of the thesis you're looking for?"

"It's called Ecology of the Crooked Bush by Roger Shaw. I'm pretty sure you guys have it, but I can't get access to search for it on your site."

Two or three breaths, then typing sounds.

"Alright," she said, "I think... Do you have a pen?"

"Uh, yeah. A pencil."

"I think the best person for you to talk to would probably be Marie at 204-474-7063."

I wrote it down. "Marie at two zero four, four seven four, seven zero six three?"

"Yes. Her information is on our website."

"Okay. Thanks."

"Good luck."

Did she really need to know I had a pencil, not a pen?

XXV: Where Eagles Dare

2009-07-17T12:18:00.000-07:00

Woke early and enjoyed a cigarette. Heard the sound of light rain.

Sure enough.

I looked around my house, then outside. I thought of all the possible places I could go, and how I didn't want to go to any of them. My house is gray and uninspired. The weather keeps us imprisoned.

I put on a hat and jumped on my bike. Pedaled out to the Trees. I sat for a long time under their protective leaves, moisture from the ground soaking into my jeans.

What am I doing? 27 years old, still in Hafford, working 3 days a week as a cook/dishwasher.

"Am I wasting my life?" I asked Clarke an hour later in his kitchen as he offered -and I accepted- some toast and eggs. Coffee was brewing and Clarke was still in bedclothes, his hair tousled from another slightly hung-over sleep. He eyed me wearily. I paused and looked at a mountain goat magnet on his fridge. "I'm just venting. You don't need to actually say anything."

Clarke laughed. I yawned. He yawned. After breakfast we went to my place and wasted the remaining morning hours with some coffee, Clint Eastwood, and Richard Burton in Where Eagles Dare.

2009-07-15T23:04:00.000-07:00

Weather's been dull. My life is aimless. That's the state of things.

All I've got is tired. Calm. The Trees.

The trees. The Trees. Capitalized or not?

XXIV: Clarke V

2009-07-09T15:07:00.000-07:00

Drinking on my lawn last evening, a truck passed by. I recognized the boys inside.

"Faggot!" they shouted, and spun away laughing.

Even when I was one I never cared for teenage Saskatchewan boys.

"Those fuckers," said Clarke, stepping out of his house shirtless. I laughed. He used to be a violent guy, I think. Like once he told me if anyone ever stole his chainsaw he'd bust their kneecaps. I smiled and nodded in agreement, but got the feeling he wasn't kidding at all. "I'd take a wrench," he said, motioning toward his garage, "and I'd hit them right there." His finger rested on the spot where shin becomes knee.

"Jesus, Clarke."

He looked at me. "Sorry. But that is what I'd do."

XXIII: Mrs. Scurfield III

2009-07-09T11:33:00.000-07:00

On Sunday Mrs. Scurfield knocked on my door, still in her church clothes.

“I want you to see something,” she told me, and I followed her out the door and over to her place. “Sit there," she demanded. "I’m gonna change.” One of her green fold-out chairs was ready for me on the lawn.

Emerging five minutes later, she began to garden. And she really went at it.

I’m not one for gardens. A flower is a flower is a flower. I watched for a couple minutes.

“You can go home whenever you want,” she said without turning. Which made me feel bad, ‘cos I was enjoying watching her. But then she said, “And you’re welcome to come sit in my garden anytime.” So I felt better.

“I’ll be right back,” I told her, and ran home for a case of beer. She saw the beer and rolled her eyes a little.

“Don’t be so enigmatic,” I charged, seating myself. “Why’d you want me to see your garden?”

“Because," she began, then paused. "Because I thought it would help you understand something about those trees. And because I wanted you to see what I most enjoy doing.”

I responded with something along the lines of, “You want a beer?”

On Monday after work I walked around town with a plastic Zellers bag, collecting dandelions. Then I wandered out to the Trees and buried those weeds everywhere I could.

I'm lying. I only thought about it. But the detail of the Zellers bag made it convincing, didn't it? What I actually did was sit in Mrs. Scurfield's garden reading A Confederacy of Dunces. It’s hilarious.

I don’t have any real friends my own age. Except maybe Jon, Forrest, and Boyda. But they live a long way from Hafford.

XXII: Anglican Church

2009-07-07T22:39:00.000-07:00

They leave the Anglican church open. All night. So I go in sometimes and play the piano or read the hymn-books, pamphlets, and pew graffiti. Or I sign in as John Diefenbaker in the guestbook.

The pastor’s office isn’t locked either. I’ve resisted going in there up ‘till last night. Moment of weakness. All those pictures of family and friends, and that big map of Israel. Calvin and Hobbes cartoon on the door. Half-finished cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup.

His library was all concordances and self-help books for couples. And The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.

“I saw the souls of the fathers of the world…”

That’s from 3 Enoch 44:7. I saw the souls of the fathers of the world.

The souls of the fathers of the world. Christ, what does that mean?

At 2:30 am in the silence it means something. And then it's just words.

The Trees.

XXI: Rain

2009-06-30T14:41:00.000-07:00

Mr. Hung was sheepish the next morning at work. "I drank too much last night."

I tried to give him a smile that said, 'I don't care. I'm glad you enjoyed yourself.' But I wasn't sure he'd get it, so I said, "I don't care. I'm glad you enjoyed yourself."

He patted my back and raised his eyebrows.

After work I grabbed a jacket from my truck and headed into the woods behind my place, where everything grows straight up and down. It looked like a small rainstorm was gathering.

I carved an inch-thick line through the middle of a trail. When it began raining the water gathered in my path and swelled the path into a river, draining water all over the grass and dirt.

I stood watching.

The water followed my lead for a while, but after a couple minutes, when the raindrops swelled large enough to cause splashes on my arms, my path dissolved. There was no record of my effort.

I contemplated going home for a shovel.

XX: Birdie

2009-06-27T21:16:00.000-07:00

Mr. Hung invited me over for dinner last night. "You should come," he voiced through the phone. So I went. He was drunk by the time I got there. His wife, Birdie, made lasagna.

Brenda Hung. Formerly Walbrandt. Birdie. An old hippy of the Saskatchewan brand: well-read, defensively political, and stubborn. A born New Democrat. But she's cool.

After a conversation-less supper Mr. Hung passed out on the couch with a whiskey bottle, leaving his wife to play hostess. There were several awkward minutes of fork scraping and chair-adjustment until Birdie asked, "D'y'wanna get high?"

Relief. "Okay."

Mr. Hung must've heard, 'cos he half-opened his eyes to mutter, "Yes. Y-you's should git stoooooeee-nd." We were in the kitchen, twenty feet from his perch on the sofa. "Mr. Wilk-ah-son!" he shouted in conclusion, and retreated again behind eyelids.

Birdie laughed.

We lit up.

Fifteen minutes later she confronted me in a serious tone. "What's the last thing you'd want to eat before you die?" she demanded, screwing her forehead in earnest concentration on the word 'die.' As she spoke she waved her fingers, as if conducting the insistent words. "I mean, the last morsel of flavour." She exhaled hard and long.

I laughed, interrupted from my own fancies. "I dunno Birdie. Maybe Milk Toast with egg on top. Or steak with good mushrooms." I thought to myself of the best sandwich I ever had. Clarke made it for me on a freezing cold Boxing Day. Lightly toasted home-made bread with left-over Christmas turkey, fried onions and mushrooms, and eggs. Who knows what else. We ate in his basement, and he took a picture of my first bite.

Birdie offered no response to my comment. She opened her eyes and began focusing on the sleeve of her shirt.

I looked over at Mr. Hung, now snoring quietly. "All my friends drink," I remarked. "I don't know any non-drinkers." It felt like a major revelation, though it isn't remotely true.

"Hey?" Birdie asked, more to the universe than to me.

"All my friends are drunks," I reiterated.

"Yeah.
Oh yeah?
Okay, oh-kay, oooooh-kay.
That's awesome."

I gave up and slipped into the warmth. I like her.

--------------------------------

Afterward I walked to the Trees and fell asleep beneath a swelling, knotty branch, feeling slightly paranoid. I woke at 5am to the feeling of a green caterpillar on my knuckle. Why do I punish myself like this?

XIX: Mr. Hung

2009-06-25T07:09:00.000-07:00

“I read your website,” Mr. Hung told me today. “Why does Santa want to die?”

“It was just a dream,” I said. “And some of it was made up.”

“I have a dream,” he confided. “A sex dream with many women.”

“I have the same one.”

When I was smoking on my lunch break he opened the door and asked, “Will you write about my dream on the website?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes.” He closed the door, then re-opened it. A grin appeared. “Make it very sexy.”

XVIII: The Boredom

2009-06-19T12:02:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned it before, the lethargy that greets me sometimes in Hafford. It's been enveloping lately. Even drunk, I just swivel my head and look around in futility. When I get high my head feels lighter as it turns, but the dullness remains.

I'd like to blame the trees, but that's unreasonable.

Only in my dreams is there any real escape.

Last night I dreamt I was Santa Claus, flying slowly over the Crooked Trees in a cruel August heat. From the sky they looked like thick tangled hair pushing its way through the sleeve of a soldier's cotton jacket. I'd never really noticed them before.

"Jesus Christ," I said, contemplating the mess from above. I stopped my sleigh in air, eighty feet above. No wind. No sound. Just a buzzing heat. I stood up and leaned ass-first into the sky. I'm not sure why. My thick hands and booted feet secured me as I backed out.

Then I let go. Purposely. I asked the weight of gravity to have its way. My eyes blurred and I waited for the fall. But nothing happened.

Nothing at all. Like death. I can't quite describe it. There were no sensations and no thoughts. Not even memories. My identity was gone. So was any sense that I was within a dream.

XVII: Meet Peetsabooty

2009-06-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

Peetsabooty is Clarke's dog. I'm not sure if that's how you spell his name. I'm just guessing. Pizza-boodee. Pete's a booty. I don't know.

We get along fine.

More chapters coming soon, I hope.

XVI: Susan

2009-06-06T02:55:00.000-07:00

Susan Yaremshky. 23 years old. I grew up with her. Every month or two she comes over to cry on my shoulder. Which I don't mind, because a) she's a nice girl. I genuinely like her; and b) her legs go all the way down.

We may be inevitable.

Last Wednesday she arrived with a bottle of wine. "Hey Matthew," she grinned at me.

"Susan," I said. I fear I had a knowing look on my face, and that she saw it, and that she didn't mind. But I mind.

She came in and poured us each a glass.

XV: Clarke IV

2009-06-06T01:22:00.000-07:00

I went for drinks with Clarke at the K-Bar last night.

“On the radio,” he hollered at me, “they were talking about marriage problems.”

The bar was loud, and working its hardest to make you imagine you weren’t in a small town. Clarke continued. “The radio guy said that in broken marriages one of the main complaints of women was that their husbands didn’t do an equal share of the housework.”

“Yeah?” I said, encouragingly.

Clarke continued. “But the thing is, the guy said, the thing is that -that, if men were living on their own they would actually do less housework. So that in a marriage a man ends up actually doing more than he would otherwise. You know!?!” Clarke was on his 4th pint. “It’s like, they get mad ‘cos you don’t help out much on this big turkey meal with a salad, when the thing is, all you would have if it was up to you is prob’ly just a ham sandwich or something.”

“Those are the words,” I told him, “of a man who doesn’t want to get laid.”

“Ha!” Clarke bellowed.

XIV: Clarke III

2009-06-03T18:16:00.000-07:00

I hate the trees. With fury and sadness. I wake up in a sweat.

Today I walked around town with a video camera. I caught the mayor electioneering Clarke a little. I observed from afar with my friend Alissa Fehr.

XIII: Reoccurring Dream

2009-05-29T17:36:00.000-07:00

I drive through an eternity of fog and forest.

XII: Mrs. Scurfield II

2009-05-28T12:45:00.000-07:00

I drove to the trees with Mrs. Scurfield last night. She drank tea from a thermos while sitting on a green foldout lawn-chair with a plaid-patterned blanket on her lap. I sat on a stump with beer and whiskey in my backpack.

At Mrs. Scurfield's request I spiked her tea. She got a little talkative. "They make me sad, these trees," she said. "A bad kind of sad."

"I hate them," I told her.

"Do you?" she asked in surprise.

"Sure."

"Then why do you come out here?"

"I'd have to be a lot closer to drunk before I could tell you."

"Then drink up."

Seriously

2009-05-23T09:49:00.000-07:00

Seriously, if you haven't already, read this page. I'm proud of that.

XI: Hung's

2009-05-22T00:50:00.000-07:00

I found a picture online of the place where I work, Hung's Restaurant. We serve Chinese food and over-the-counter pizza.

Restauranting is in Mr. Hung's blood. His father established a restaurant in San Francisco fifty years ago that is still around today.

Make sure to read the comments in here.

Two entries in one day.

X: Clarke II

2009-05-21T20:11:00.000-07:00

Sitting around with Clarke drinking beers last night in his kitchen, here’s the story he tells me:

“I was in Hung’s waiting for a pizza yesterday. This girl came over and stood beside me. She told me that, ‘If you accept Jesus as your personal saviour your name will be written in the book of life in the kingdom of heaven by the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.’

“So I told her, ‘Fuck yeah, I want to be part of that.’”

I smiled at Clarke, and laughed quietly through my nose.

He laughed hard, repeating the punch-line to himself.

Then I asked him, “Do you have any other poems? I really enjoyed the last one.”

“Sure,” he says, and hands me a piece of paper.

It was too obscene to reproduce here. Unless you're as interested in his poems as I am, in which case I could post it.

He also gave me an old cigarette lighter of his with a picture of Marilyn Munroe on it.

IX: Basement Potluck

2009-05-16T10:39:00.000-07:00

You won't believe what happened this morning.

I woke up early and smoked my way through a Johnny Cash album and some scrambled eggs. Then, after closing my eyes and confronting the sad, massive boredom that sometimes blankets this world, I decided to go to church.

"Matthew Wilkinson," I heard Mrs. Scurfield say from behind me as I stood on the church steps after the sermon and songs.

"Hello," I replied, turning around.

Small talk. Then: "Drunk at the crooked trees. Must've been quite a time." She was smiling and inquisitive.

I can’t remember exactly what she said next, but the long and the short of it is that she goes to the trees a lot, and she said she’d like some company next time she goes.

“Okay,” I replied. “Yeah. Anytime.”

After church I had coffee and deviled eggs in the basement while the pastor’s ten year old son Jacob earnestly told me about a UFO that landed near Hafford last year. He wrote a link on my napkin. Here.

I'll tell you one thing: I don't believe in UFOs.

VIII: Mrs. Scurfield

2009-05-12T11:53:00.000-07:00

I meant to write about this earlier, but felt a little embarrassed.

I've been getting drunk at the trees a lot lately. Last week I woke to the feeling of a hand shaking me.

"Matthew Wilkinson," a female voice said. "Matthew!"

I looked up and saw the crooked branches against a morning sky. I flinched. "Holy God," I muttered. Old Mrs. Scurfield was standing over me. I sat up straight.

"Alright. Your shoulder is covered in vomit."

I groaned.

I puked.

She smiled.

"Sorry," I said, with my head facing the misery.

"Come on." She pulled me to my feet.

We walked back to the road where my truck and her car sat in the May morning sun. "Mrs. Scurfield," I began.

"It's alright,” she interrupted. "No one's hurt."

We came to my truck. I took off my reeking jacket and threw it in the back. I watched her get in her car and drive away. I turned my truck ignition. The clock shone out its digital numbers.

5:34.

I rubbed my eyes.

What was Mrs. Scurfield doing out at the crooked trees at 5:30am?

Hafford VII: Sabbath

2009-05-12T11:11:00.000-07:00

I couldn't sleep on Saturday night. At five am, after tossing for hours, I got in my truck and drove to the trees. No alcohol. The sun was rising. Pretty as hell.

I climbed onto a big branch and carved Ecclesiastes 7:16 in the bark. It took me a half-hour.

"Do not be over-wise, do not be over-righteous. Why should you ruin yourself?"

I drove home and watched Tribal Trails. Then I enjoyed the news-lady for a while and went to bed.

Hafford VI: Clarke & Leonore

2009-05-11T11:20:00.001-07:00

I drew a woman's face on the sidewalk yesterday evening using stuff I found on my lawn, like grass and cigarette butts. I thought about gluing it down.

"Kind of a waste, isn't it?" asked my middle-aged next-door neighbour Clarke in his most observational tone. He runs the town dump, and watches a lot of Law & Order. We drink together sometimes.

I folded a dandelion stem in the shape of an earlobe, asking, "How's work?"

"Mmm," he exhaled, thinking. Clarke takes his job very seriously. "The Crawfords threw out a good couch, so now I've got it in the lookout shed." He scratched his shoulder with a thumb. "Say," he exclaimed as I created the nose, "she's a good-looking woman." He knelt down respectfully to examine. "You know, I started writing a poem once," he began. "I've still got it somewhere."

"Yeah?" I asked. "What's it about?"

"Leonore."

His ex-wife.

Hafford V: Larissa II

2009-05-11T11:19:00.002-07:00

I saw Larissa Shapko in a ball game in the field across from my place.

"Go Larissa!" I exclaimed as she headed to bat. She looked at me, the only person in the stands. I realized I'd embarassed her. That's what I get for drinking at noon on a hot Saskatchewan Saturday.

She struck out, and the inning was over.

After the game I remained in the stands, four empties beside me and one half-done in my hand, contemplating the wind rushing through the grass towards me.

"Hey Peter," Larissa said, skipping up the rows with a backpack.

"My name's not Peter."

"Yes it is." She sat beside me and grabbed one of the unopened beer bottles at my side. I offered no objection. It’d be funny to see a 13 year old girl drink a Guiness Stout.

"Yer folks never came to the game?" I asked with exaggeration. I lifted my bottoms up and swallowed.

"It’s a practice, dummy." She grimaced as she ingested. "Do you have a girlfriend?"

"No. Well, kinda. No." Jesus.

"I'd be your girlfriend if I was eighteen." Jesus H. Christ.

"Okay. How's yer Dad?" I replied.

"I dunno. How's yours?"

"Good," I yawned.

"I heard you were out at the crooked trees last week, drunk." She said this with an acted cool.

"Who told you that?"

"Mrs. Scurfield." Larissa looked at me curiously, then belched, "So, is it true?"

"Yep."

"How drunk were you?"

"Pretty drunk."

Hafford IV: Clint Eastwood

2009-05-11T11:19:00.001-07:00

I ran down the gravel road that takes you past the Cassidy farm. This was on Thursday, when the sun was hot and I was restless after a morning of Clint Eastwood movies. Firefox, In the Line of Fire, Play Misty for Me.

I ran as fast as I could for as long as I could. Then, when I could hardly breathe for the pain in my side, I wandered into a little group of poplar trees.

I sat down and pulled a small joint out of my wallet. Breathing hard, I lit it. I leaned against a tree and inhaled 'till I couldn't hold my breath any longer. Jesus. I felt the warmth move across my arms and legs. Still catching my breath. Another puff. I laid down and watched the wispy clouds above the treetops. I concentrated on breathing deep.

In.

Out.

In.

Hold it.

Hold it.

Out.

Whew.

In ten minutes I had melted. I stretched my arms behind my back and hugged the tree. I squeezed as tight as I could. I was a lunatic.

"I know you hate me," I muttered at the bark. "And that's good, 'cos that's how it is."

A black pickup truck roared past me on the gravel road, just out of view. A wave of gray dust filled the air. I sat back and let the sound fade and the haze settle.

I woke up two hours later, still stoned, and slowly walked back into town. I threw in Any Which Way You Can and barbecued myself a hamburger.

Tomorrow is the high school graduation.

Hafford III: The Trees

2009-05-11T11:18:00.000-07:00

I drove out to the crooked trees on Monday night and got drunk. By myself. A couple Dabs and a flask of gin. I really like German beers.

I passed out on the wooden path that carries you under the trees, while staring up at a particularly gnarly branch.

I barely made it to work on time, waking up freezing with the sun in my eyes and racing into town. Mr. Hung laughed at me and picked some grass off my jacket when I walked in. I work three days a week as a cook at Hung's Chinese Restaurant.

"You go to the trees again last night?" he queried while I started up the oven. I think I might've blushed. He jabbed me in the ribs and laughed. "You drink too much Mr. Wilk-ah-son. You need a girl."

All I could see was the twist of branches fracturing the sky.

Hafford II: Larissa

2009-05-11T11:16:00.000-07:00

I was walking past Shapko & Son Welding last night on the way to buy cigarettes. The Shapkos live next door to their shop. The youngest daughter, Larissa, who at 13 years old is a bit of a tomboy, was fixing the chain of her bike on the driveway. She stopped me.

"Hey Peter."

"Hi," I responded. She knows my name's not Peter.

"D'y'wanna hear my dream?" She asked eagerly.

"Okay."

"Well... I dreamt I had a red plaid shirt with the words 'You Bastard' stenciled on the back. Like a baseball player. Then I accidentally cut my wallet up with scissors."

I laughed.

"Where'r'ya goin'?" she asked.

"To buy smokes at the gas station."

"Will you let me have one when you come back? I'll give you a dollar." Her hands were covered in grease.

"No."

Hafford I: Willard Schute

2009-05-11T11:15:00.000-07:00

Willard Schute got drunk one night. On the way home in his Volkswagon Rabbit he cut across Wiley's field. They found the car next day, crashed in a freshly dug eight-foot basement. Willard had abandoned his ride and walked home, surprised but still drunk. This was in the 70s, when Mr. Wiley built that house.

There are crooked trees near Hafford. They're normal pine, but crooked. For a hundred feet they grow twisted and then the forest is normal. Someone roped it off and built wooden paths. There's a small sign, says, The Crooked Trees of Hafford, Saskatchewan with a painting of a tiger lily underneath.

Hafford's not much of a town. The gas station has a restaurant attached. They serve eggs until 11am every day of the year except Ukrainian Christmas.

Some American hunters shot a goat just outside it at 5am last year. Nearly scared the owner, Mrs. Scurfield, to death.

Hafford, Saskatchewan. Population: 853. We've sent 13 men to the NHL.