I’m over a fifth of the way done with the 52 stories in 52 weeks challenge. For story #12, I was given the following prompt from one of my writing groups:
Which is the oldest tree in your neighborhood and what has it seen?
If you want to play along, try writing your own story before reading mine…
The moss-covered oaks arched over the road with typical South Carolinian hospitality. They extended their welcoming branches, blocked the beating sun, guided the way down the dusty gravel road. I studied them as we drove.
“One hundred-fifty years old, at least,” I muttered.
“What’s that’s?” said Rita, who was driving.
“The trees,” I replied, “they’ve been around since the Civil War.”
“Not you with the trees again,” Rita rolled her eyes. “I’ve had about enough of that.”
I glanced over at Rita. She wore a sun hat over her dark curls and a tight yellow dress that would have done well in the 1970s. We’d only been married two months and I was already wondering if I’d made a mistake. She didn’t understand me and my gift. She thought I was either occasionally delusional or joking when I told her about trees whispering to me, telling me their stories.
I can’t really blame her. I thought I was going mad too after I awoke from a three-week coma and started hearing voices in the forest. But that was five years ago, and the voices haven’t gone away. If anything, they’ve gotten stronger as I’ve learned to listen to the stories that are tethered to their bark like a tap on a maple tree.
We’re from Pennsylvania and the trees there hold ancient tales of surviving lumberjacks and heavy snow, of warding off diseases and watching friends perish under the greed of suburbia, their hides gobbled up by woodchippers. I mourn with them, and I celebrate their triumphs. A new acorn germinating in the ground; the peacefulness of an afternoon park; the sun playing over chartreuse spring leaves. Ordinary pleasures and tragedies.
The trees in the south are different.
As we putter along, I hear their low moans, feel the shadows of this place. The sun shines, but it feels cold, far away.
“Hanging bodies,” the sycamore breathes the words as it leans over the lane. “Men and women, by the dozens.”
“Life extinguished,” a twisted oak sighs. “Too soon, too soon…”
“The screams,” another oak laments, “they linger still.”
As we drive, I begin to see them vividly—bodies hanging over the road, swaying softly and turning first clockwise, then counter as the ropes twist and release, twist and release.
Rita had insisted on visiting the Winshire Plantation, had said it would be good for us. A dose of history, an architectural wonder. I wasn’t terribly interested, but I nodded and went along. I hadn’t anticipated the troubled history of the place; I didn’t know the horrors the trees had witnessed.
How many slaves were hanged along this road? How many people were left without a spouse, a father, a friend? The screams of the living remain trapped in the tree bark, struggling as spiders in a web.
“Stop!” I cry out.
Rita slams her foot on the brake, turns to me. “What is it? Did you get stung by a bee?”
“About a thousand bees,” I say, shaking my head. I feel the contents of my stomach turn. I lean out the window of our Jeep Wrangler and empty my guts onto the gravel.
Rita stares. “Did you eat something, honey?” She pats my back. She’s concerned, but I catch a hint of annoyance in her voice. Why can’t she just have a normal vacation with a normal husband? Why had she settled for someone half-crazed and delicate? Maybe her mother had been right all along.
I lean back and wipe my mouth. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I can’t go to the plantation. It’s the—” I pause before I say trees. “It’s a feeling I have. I can sense the pain of this place. It’s so heavy…”
She blinks at me, a bewildered owl. “But we have to go. It’s only another mile up the road. What are we going to do? Turn around now?”
“Precisely. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I know that face. It’s the one she makes when she’s decided something and won’t be swayed. She shifts the car back into gear. “We’re going,” she says. That, and nothing else. I don’t argue.
The last mile is silent, tense. Except for the constant screams and throat gurgles whipping around my ears. Except for the moaning of thick-trunked trees.
When the car stops, I refuse to go inside the white-pillared house. “You go,” I say to Rita. “I’m fine out here.”
“Suit yourself.” I watch the yellow sundress float up the front steps toward a row of smiling tour guides and disappear through a set of French doors. I think of a candle, snuffed out.
Slowly, I turn back toward the road. It howls and sobs, a tunnel of past agonies. I walk toward it; I touch the first tree.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “Sorry for the lives that were taken; sorry for the pain you witnessed. Sorry for it all.”
The bark under my fingers softens, like the muscles in Rita’s back after I rub them. The screams subside to a soft susurration. It’s the sound my hound dog makes when he’s having a bad dream. I pat the tree and move onto the next one. Then the next. At every tree I pause, touch its battle-scarred trunk, and comfort it with kind words and apologies.
When Rita finds me, I am near the end of the lane and she is angry. “Why the hell did you take off like that without telling me where you were headed? I looked all over kingdom come for you—and here you are, communing with the damn trees.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, laying a hand on Rita’s shoulder. She doesn’t soften like the trees, just looks at me with a half-puzzled, half-livid stare. “Just get in the car,” she says. “We’ll talk about this later.”
I shake my head. “I can’t,” I say. “I’m not done comforting the trees. I need to talk to each one of them. They’ve been hurting for years; they’ve had no one to talk to.”
Rita sniffs. “You’re being ridiculous. Get in the car.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I can’t. Not yet.”
“Are you seriously choosing a bunch of trees over your wife?”
“Are you making me choose?”
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
I turn to the next tree. “The bodies,” it moans, “they hang. They hang…” I touch its bark. I can’t look at Rita when I say, “I’m sorry sweetheart. I’m no good for you. You need someone who pays attention to you, gives you all the love you need. You don’t need a tree talker.”
“Damn right,” says Rita as she hits the gas. I briefly think about my suitcase, sitting idly in the backseat, but I’m not terribly worried about it. I have a duty to fulfill.
I stroke the bark under my fingertips.
Kate Bitters is a freelance writer, marketer, and author of Elmer Left and Ten Thousand Lines. She is writing a story a week in 2015-2016 on the Bitter Blog. Subscribe to follow her journey.
Author: KateBitters
Kate Bitters is a Minneapolis-based author and freelance writer. She is the author of Elmer Left, Ten Thousand Lines, and He Found Me. One of her proudest/nerdiest moments was when Neil Gaiman read one of her short stories on stage at the Fitzgerald Theater.