short story: The King of Limbs and The Meat Machine

 

I once knew a girl who was in love with a tree.

 

I’m not sure if it was the pre-drinks or the dark cab but I started to take heed of her story.

 

This is how it goes.

 

It was a sunny American day, heat on blast. She was alone in a different country, where she would stay in odd places, jumping on trains.  I sat and marvelled at her, she didn’t look like a creature of movement. Her coat too stiff, car too small.

She was camping in a national forest. Further than where the hippies would pick their mushrooms. she knew it was perfect because she heard no cars. No people. Just the stream next to her, minding its own.

By this time we reach the pub, its before 9pm so the lights aren’t low, and the music is soft. We sit opposite each other in a booth, while the others got drinks.

“It was huge. Endless, every branch growing from another, all reaching the sky. It had a wide trunk, thickly rooted. It looked ancient. Silent.”

She camped underneath it for three nights. On the first night she was having her dinner, sitting at the foot of the Oak. No hint of breeze, it began to wave several arms, right above her head.

She took a tentative sip of her drink, now arrived with a gaggle of uni friends, chatting, laughing.

She went on about the oak’s roots, half above ground. It offered ample nap areas she mentioned. She talked to the Oak, and the Oak offered his answer with a wave of a couple of branches. She tried asking when there wasn’t any breeze.

“I loved him. It. It wasn’t like I had to be clever or pretty, laugh at all its jokes. It loved me. I was enhanced when I touched it. Staring at all the colours that made up its bark, the patterned veins of the leaves. The sight of the branches, I-” here she cut her breath short and blushed.

I couldn’t imagine eroticism with a tree. My wide eyes urged her on, she chose her words carefully, slowly pouring out of her.

“It wasn’t like that, like with a guy or a girl. I didn’t want him, nor desire him. I had him, just for a couple of days and I shared him, with the birds above and insects down below. I just loved him, so much. I was even in love with the Oak’s shadow.” She grew more confident as the pub’s patrons rose their voices as drinks were downed.

 

- “Like I touched the trunk, you know how you stroke a lover’s face. I pressed my fingertips against the tips of the budding branches, some heavy with old leaves, green mottled brown. Like an older man’s sunspots.”   She laughed head back, knowingly.

 

I asked her what she got up to during her days up there in the national forest. She told me nothing at all, she lived as a languid as a cat. She woke up with the sun and fell asleep with the stars. She ate berries that grew along the stream, late summer blackberries, blueberries.

She had a loaf of bread and a tub of hummus which was her dinner each night. She bathed in the stream, almost lukewarm by summers kisses. She played like a child, climbing trees, hollering and hooting. She made a bird’s nest, twigs, leaves, moss, but she forgot to take a picture. When the evening sky began its colouring, she would make a small fire, which she said was like taking care of a pet. So her evenings were occupied with tending and attending to the fire, while dinner, reading a book she found by the light.

  

“On my final night, the moon was out. I began to cry, knowing it would be a rare case if I ever came back here. While I was crying, the Oak began moving. It started to wave, not a branch out of tune, not a leaf out of time.”

I closed my eyes and imagined the Oak’s send off. A graceful sight in my mind’s eye.  A lone oak, taller than the skyline itself, moving all at once. Caught in a strong yet mysterious wind. I am not sure if was the Bulmer’s I was drinking but something started to softly stir in me.

 

The girl quickly ended her story when her new university boyfriend arrived, looking at her lips for too long as she spoke

“Sometimes people remind me of the Oak. This tall guy on the tube. He had big hiking boots on, but his face was crinkled in a loving expression. I can’t explain it, some people have resting bitch faces, his was shaped into a silent smile. So yeah, that’s the story.” She smiles and turns to greet her goofy boyfriend, who kept repeating the same joke to the others.

 

I spent the rest of the evening in a drunken state of contemplation.

 

Imagine a love between a tree and a human. I couldn’t imagine anything stranger, yet it made an odd bit of sense.

The love shared isn’t tied by any physicality nor personality. Then what is left? I love this tree because it is a …tree? I love this tree because it is true to its essence and what we share hasn’t been expressed by words but something else. A feeling, a knowing, an instinct. Anyone can hug a tree, but it takes an understanding of etheric self to know that the tree is indeed hugging you back.