LXXIII: Susan VI

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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.