FICTION: Back to the Trees

Is this a day? Has time passed? What changes, some infinitesimal flow of variations, have conspired to create the idea of moments? Memory. Deceiver! We recall things from the past, all but dreams – did they have life, reality? Only through memory. “Now” is the wake produced by our lives, always dragging just behind us the instant of their birth; instantly it is called the past. A backward future, fond memories, an acceptable mixture of how things seem and how they are not…but there is finally sunlight, and truth is unnecessary in good weather.

(Twenty-three)

Today is the anniversary. The one-year anniversary, the temporary punchline to a joke that just keeps going. Time lacks purpose. It lacks a teleology of its own. It is nothing; it is an interminable three hundred and sixty-five notches, each indicating a dark blue sunrise, each carved with an old, broken Phillips screwdriver by my own hand, etched in the life-preserving skin of this, the largest tree in the world. Which is my world. Which is, for all practical purposes, the whole world, bounded on all sides by the promise of agony and the certitude of death.

And now, on this solemn occasion, I recognize my inevitable fate. For I am the last one. So happy anniversary to me and my screwdriver.

I think I’ll celebrate with some fresh-picked plantains. And perhaps for dessert, a rare and tasty mantis popper, which I've saved for weeks for just this occasion. You can’t get better protein than praying mantis, and that’s a fact.

(Twenty-two)

We started out ten strong a year ago. I remember old Mrs. Goldblatt, nearly bald and always complaining of cataracts: she just couldn’t hang on to those slick, well-worn branches. Her fingers were gnarled. She couldn't hang on. Her frail husband Lou, in a moment of ultimate decisiveness, followed her down silently, as if he was chasing after her; only a heartbeat separated them in their plunge to oblivion.

But Dutch was the one in control. He orchestrated ingenious feats of engineering, all with an unshakable will to survive. Damn fool, I can only hope he made it somewhere habitable in his flying contraption. I watched him go until the fog swallowed him up.

Then there was little Sven, what a plump young lad. A little too plump: he fell to his death with an eye-melting scream, broken branch-sticks in his marshmallow fingers. Sven’s two sisters, Mina and Joan, were old enough to understand death. But they eventually went mad, all at once, and at the same moment, laughing a most chilling laugh as they joined hands and leapt from this very tree, the tallest one and the stoutest. Just crashed down through the canopy, and then they too were gone.

That was not long ago, according to my calendar of notches. But there’s plenty of room to move around nowadays.

(Twenty-one)

After the Catastrophe, most of the world’s foliage and forests were dead. Vast tracts flattened, twigs and berries ground under the heel of darkness and poison. Thankfully I was in relatively the right place to weather the storm, though I couldn't conceive of a right time. I should’ve been a Portuguese explorer or a famous German poet, or anything at any other time. Let me take my chances.

But I’m here now, and for some reason I persist. At least as long as this pen holds ink – it’s the last one on earth, as far as I'm concerned.

(Twenty)

Before the planet went to hell, I actually had a fairly enjoyable life carved out for myself. I worked at a resort here in the islands, managing a hotel restaurant in town. Fast cars, loose women, money, drugs – I had all I could want. Living in paradise, so it seemed. But when the fuse blew, there was nowhere to go, no matter how far you could possibly run. The extinction steamroller was unstoppable.

I just got lucky, I guess. So lucky, in fact, that now I’m squatting in a tree totally naked except for this pen, thinking about the fact that everyone is dead except for me, and wondering if I’ll ever hear another human voice again. Nothing against the monkeys, of course. They’re nice enough, and don’t taste half bad, once you get used to the metallic flavor.

But now I’m in real danger of going fucking insane, and it seems as though I’m already dead anyway…I'm spending this anniversary thinking of my poor mother. She always knew what to say on holidays to really capture the spirit of the thing, you know. I hope she can’t see me now from heaven, in my tree naked, writing a book no one could possibly ever read, celebrating a year of living death. But if she can, I hope she’s laughing with genuine joy.

(Nineteen)

It took the ten of us a couple of weeks to get the light scaffolding in place. Once we had rope and vine stretched we were better able to pass between trees, and we could travel much farther from the Great Tree, our home, in search of food and whatever supplies we could scavenge.

That was last January. Back then, there was less sunlight, only about six hours a day. But it was lethally intense, pounding through what was left of earth’s atmosphere and burning most surviving life. The rest of the day would be shrouded in purple-gray darkness, and terrible hailstorms would pummel the island, causing ever more misery and destruction.

But eventually, after about three months, the bulbous toxic clouds began to dissipate and the sun began to shine for a solid, glorious twelve hours again, and with much less dangerous intensity. Apparently some balance had been struck in the stratosphere or wherever that kind of thing might happen. See, this is where a good set of encyclopedias would come in handy. Or any kind of fucking book, for that matter.

All I have is this notebook, this pen, two pages from People magazine (both just advertisements, though I know every detail of them by heart), and a weather-beaten paperback about the secret powers of pyramids. It is actually fascinating reading. Did you know that if you construct a little four-sided, Egyptian-type pyramid and line it up on a north-south axis, you can put your dull razor blades in it and a few months later they’ll be sharp again? Talking about the wisdom of the ancients. Thinking of Giza, I can’t help but imagine hundreds of men hauling gargantuan straight razors into the chambers of the Great Pyramid, to be sharpened during some celestial equinox or period of lunar waxing. Pyramids are also supposed to purify water, but so far I’ve had no luck with them.

(Eighteen)

Anyway, once the weather got better, new dangers sprung up in place of grapefruit-sized hail. The most dangerous hazard being the earth itself. The very ground upon which we lived, existed, grew up, and grew old – it was suddenly more toxic than sulfuric acid and deadly to all forms of life.

It happened without warning, one day, as we took our customary trip to the marshes in search of food and water. We were combing the area meticulously, but everywhere we looked, we saw only dead animals. Gruesome corpses. We thought at first that a virus had infected the population, and we were sure that we were next. So we hurried back to the Great Tree and told Dr. Craven what we had seen. He had us fetch the carcass of a shrew, and proceeded to dissect and autopsy the poor wretched creature. He was shocked to discover that most of the shrew’s internal organs were burned, as if a chemical had been injected into its bloodstream. But that, of course, was not the case.

It took the doctor a few days to figure it out, during which we all stayed put, hungry or not. He just had time to tell us before he died. Heart attack, no kidding. Just fell dead on the spot, at only sixty-three. He was a good man and a fine physician, anyway. And I kept his medical bag and his stethoscope, which I still have.

I swear this tree has a heartbeat. I can hear it, ever so faintly, if I hold my breath and listen carefully with Dr. Craven’s instrument. Pah-pum.

(Seventeen)

The toxins, though, seemed not to affect the larger plants of the jungle. And so the biggest trees remain alive, sheltering and feeding dozens of God’s creatures, including yours truly. We guessed that only the topsoil was affected by the poison; we also guessed that whatever poison it was, it could be absorbed directly through the skin and into the blood. After which it burns you alive from the inside out.

So we keep to the trees full-time now. Kind of an evolutionary backpedal, sure, but survival is survival.

(Sixteen)

I just saw the most amazing thing: a bright red parrot just took flight from a tangle of branches not even a hundred meters from me! That’s the first time I’ve ever seen him around here. How rare and beautiful! He flies so gracefully!

Seeing the parrot has raised my spirits immeasurably. It almost gives me hope that perhaps Dutch will return…but it is best not to dwell on dreams and fantasies right now. I’m completely alone, there’s no one left to help. No support save for these sturdy branches, no voices but the silent thoughts put here on paper with this precious last uni-ball. And I’m still shaking a little from all that’s happened recently.

I wonder if I could teach the parrot to talk…

(Fifteen)

After the sisters Mina and Joan took their final spectacular leap into oblivion, only three of us were left. Dutch had just gone, and we were too depressed to utter a word for two days. But eventually the three of us struggled on, gathering fruit and tending to one another like family. That was a brief but relatively happy time for us. I shared everything with those two.

There was the kind and generous young man who we called Flash (but whose real name, he once told me, was William) because he was so adept at arboreal maneuvering. The kid put even the monkeys to shame. And he was always willing to do as much as it took to see that we had enough food. God bless him for that.

And there was Lily, whom everyone was in love with, including me.

(Fourteen)

So Flash, Lily and me lived in relative harmony. Until recently. And now I'm telling the story of how I came to be completely alone.

(Thirteen)

Since we both loved Lily, Flash and I had trouble at first in dealing with one another. But Lily was not one for bullshitting around, and she sat us down and demanded we work it out. After much heart-pouring and heated discussion, it was decided: Flash and I would share Lily equally, on a plan proposed by Lily herself.

The way she saw it, it was up to us to repopulate. And believe me, we all tried, I mean really tried, often and with vigor. But Lily didn’t seem to be getting pregnant, even with me and Flash taking turns on a regular basis. It became clear that the problem was not with our equipment, but with hers. That realization drove down her sex drive considerably, which is sort of the time when things began to unravel.

She became listless, glassy eyed, and withdrawn. Neither Flash nor I could seem to snap her out of it. But we persevered as a group, though Flash and I had taken on all the responsibilities by then.

(Twelve)

The parrot has returned to my neighborhood. He’s looking at me right now. God, he’s beautiful. And he knows it, too. I’ve been trying to lure him over here with some fresh fruit pieces and grubs, but so far he is content just to watch me, with occasional curious little squawks and feather-rufflings. I’ve definitely got his attention, though.

He’s moved closer! He just hopped to the tree with our hammocks. He’s checking out Dr. Craven’s stuff. An old pair of bark sandals, a few empty plastic bottles, a button-down chino shirt. Not much as far as mortal remains are concerned, I guess.

Now he’s watching me again. I hope, I hope he lets me feed him a little. Come here, friend, I won’t eat you! I’ve never seen such bright red plumage in my life. He’s even more redheaded than Lily.

(Eleven)

Some of the scrub and grass is beginning to grow again down below, but their colors and shapes are indications of a toxicity that could cause grave illness, if not a slow, wretched death. The grass is a sickly shit-brown hue, with wilted yellow tips poking up to the bluish sun in the sky. The small foliage seems to grow already dead. The leaves are small, misshapen, and almost black. But they are growing.

As far as the eye can see, life tenaciously seeks a foothold again in a sea of waste, which is the only reason I’ve managed to stay alive and well. My soul is linked to all this life, we are interwoven on a spiritual level, I can feel it. It gives me the strength to go on.

Plus, I’ve always wanted to see the Great Pyramids in Egypt, assuming they haven’t been destroyed. Another hope to keep me breathing.

(Ten)

Dutch was the one who made it possible for all of us to last as long as we did during the first stages of recovery. Once we all came back above ground, once the ethanol-darkness began to clear, it was Dutch who proposed that we gather in the forest and try to start over where there was a decent chance of finding food and fresh water. After much hysteria and yelling, we took a vote and it was decided that Dutch would lead us according to his plan. That may have been the very first post-Catastrophe democracy, for the record.

So we ended up here, about half a kilometer from the coast of the sea, in the densest jungle left standing as far as we could see. The first months of darkness and storms should have leveled this area, but by the grace of God, here they are. Taking this as a favorable omen, we set to work building whatever shelters we could with the few materials we had. We decided that up in the trees was a safe and protected place to start again. The canopy has protected us from the elements, while our height above ground prevents any potential predators from getting to us. Turns out we were smarter than we knew, once we figured out that the ground itself was our enemy.

We actually had an extensive territory, thanks to a network of ropes, vines, planks, platforms, and pulleys, the placing of which was supervised by Dutch. We managed to acclimate to life in the trees, getting around quite easily for a time. But in the end, age or bad luck or insanity caught up to almost everyone.

(Nine)

A year and two days after the Catastrophe, alone in a tree, soaking wet from the monsoons, I’ve made a new friend. That’s right, I got the red parrot to feed from my hand today. I sat for over four hours, motionless, holding out a handful of fruit and a few nuts, while we sized each other up. He very slowly and very tentatively approached around hour three, and by dusk he was perched right next to me in the Great Tree, shyly popping the fruits from my hand into his beak. When the food was gone, the parrot just sort of cocked his head, looked into my face, and let out two short, satisfied squawks before taking flight into the gloom of sunset.

It was incredible. I’m sure now he’ll come back soon.

(Eight)

My goddamn watch battery just died. So much for precision timekeeping. It doesn’t really matter anyway, as long as the damn sun keeps rising and setting. By my notch-count, Dutch left forty-two days ago. He’s had plenty of time to play Lindbergh now. Except the thing he’s piloting would never make the trans-Atlantic flight, that’s for damn sure. Ah, but if anybody could make it to civilization alive, it would be Dutch that I’d bet on. He gave me his word, his solemn oath, that he would return. And it’s not like him to break a promise. I mean, why would he just abandon us? Dutch just isn’t that kind of man.

He’ll be surprised when he finds only me here. I can almost picture the look on his face.

(Seven)

I haven’t seen the parrot yet today.

(Six)

No matter how long it rains, I’m at least assured of not starving to death. I’ll probably die of pneumonia first. And believe me, after all the work I've been doing, I’ve got myself quite an appetite. It’s quite ingenious, really.

You see, we figured out only recently that the foul poison in the ground, if used in adequately minute doses, works to preserve meats and dehydrate fruits. It’s mixed with rainwater and diluted until only a trace of the toxin remains, then strips of meat and such can be soaked in it and dried in the sun. Unfortunately, the buzzards are relentless, and so we would take turns sitting up at the top of the tree, guarding over our jerk-meat with long sticks and trying to cover our sunburned skin with damp leaves.

Which is exactly what I’m doing now. Except no more working in shifts. Which means I’ve got to sit here until dusk to keep these greedy fucking birds from eating my food. I can’t even doze off for a second as long as the sun shines. But the jerky is nearly ready. It should last weeks, by God! Must be enough here to get me through the rest of monsoon season, at least. I can finally take a break from all the goddamn monkey meat I’ve been eating. Tastes like you’re chewing on fucking aluminum foil.

(Five)

The parrot still hasn’t come back.

Still waiting for Dutch.

At least the jerky is ready.

(Four)

I was just thinking about the first time we ever skinned a monkey to cook it. It didn’t bother me at all, I remember, but Lily had the dry heaves for so long, we thought she was going to cough up her large intestine. Of course, eventually she got used to the fact that it was either eat monkey or starve. But she could never stand to see the flesh until it was cooked and ready to be eaten, not after that first encounter. She refused to go near the kitchen except to prepare fruit and vegetable plates. We would bring her over fully cooked pieces, shaped like chicken legs and turkey breasts, just so she could stomach them.

It’s just too bad about Lily. And Flash, too. But survival is survival.

(Three)

I have a lot of time to think these days. Just sit and think. About all kinds of things, big and small. Like: where did that red parrot go? Or: is that the sound of Dutch’s steampunk flycopter?

I also think about the universe. The whole thing, self-contained yet infinite, so vast a wasteland is it. And my place in the universe? To survive. And by God, that’s what I’m going to do. Under the circumstances, what other victory than to simply live? In our universe, a limitless bubble of cold, broken detritus and emptiness, it is only the will to life, to survival and even prosperity which makes any existence possible at all. Without me, there would be nothing of this. Just unobserved emptiness.

But I do what has to be done. Survival can be a mean and unforgiving thing. It forces you to make hard decisions.

She said she loved us both, but she lied. She only loved him, and she only wanted to be with him. And he played along, smiling mendaciously right in my face. I'm sure they were going to run away together and leave me here alone.

(Two)

Saw the red parrot today. He was dead. Looks like he died from the poison, but I don’t know exactly how. Maybe he ate some bad berries. Poor bastard. It’s really just too much sometimes.

(One)

I’ve almost finished the jerky now, and my pen is nearly dry. It’s been one hundred and nine days since Dutch left, but I still have hope. If I can just hold out a little longer – there’s a good chance, anyway. I've managed to stay healthy this long, but now I fear that I will go hungry soon.

The animals have nearly all died or gone away now. Seems something is happening to the trees. The fruits and nuts have become pregnant with the poison. I can no longer eat any of it. And once Flash and Lily can no longer feed me, who will?

I can almost hear the propellers…I’m sure Dutch is just over the horizon ---

END>

Copyright 2011 EW Borg