Just a Scratch
I am sitting at the base of an ancient elm tree when it happens.
Huge, bearded, pulsating, covered in human scratches and just sort of far away from everything.
The closest tree is like half a mile either way, so you know that this one was planted by humans because trees don’t just grow this far from other trees. They get lonely.
You know, just by looking at its fat trunk so isolated from any other trunk, that this tree was planted by some farmer or shepherd like 300 years ago. Isn’t that weird?
That shepherd’s great, great, great, great, grandchildren are probably already dead and buried, feeding another tree somewhere else. Like, that shepherd probably never even knew what gravity is and yet he planted this beautiful…thing. And now it’s here.
The sun hides behind a passing cloud and I’m just sitting there thinking about all this, when she walks past. I mean we are miles from anything, no-one usually comes by here.
When they do they usually want to chat. Like Mrs. Branson is always getting me to listen to village gossip and how Sarah was telling her how her husband’s cousin’s daughter was caught with her brother’s wive’s sister’s uncle’s step-son by the bins behind the co-op.
It’s not that I don’t like people or anything it’s just that since…I- People are confusing! They never say what they mean, or…
Trees, on the other hand, trees always say what they mean.
They do speak. If you properly listen you can hear them. Their roots, their branches. They aren’t empty. They’re not -
Life walks alongside us. And most of us never notice.
You can see it if you bothered looking. It takes people a long time to finally see what they are seeing.
Goodby Scarecrow, Billie Metcalfe
So I’m sitting there and I see this girl walk past. I know that greeting someone is polite - Mrs. Branson has made sure of that - so I say ‘Hello’ - I’m not very good with people, I don’t know if you can tell - ‘Hello there!’
But she ignores me and just keeps walking. Straight ahead. Not fast, or slow, it’s more…determined. I look at her and she doesn’t look at me, but it’s not rude. It doesn’t feel like she’s being rude to me. It’s just…a fact.
And for some reason - and this never happens because I don’t really -
For some reason I decide to follow her.
I quickly pick up my bag and the two twigs and handful of chanterelles I had plucked earlier and start walking.
Max and I used to go on walks near here.
Back when he could still go for real walks and not those little bursts from the front door to the shop and back.
I’d always have to drag him to get out. He was such a whiny bastard. Exhausting to be around.
Was worth it though. Doing all that. If just for seeing his face when we reached the river, or got our lemonade at the King’s Inn by the hill.
It was as if he was afraid all along that this was the one walk that was…infinite. But once we got to our destination he would know that this too had an ending. On the way back the smallest things gave him such pleasure. Like finding a little bit of sap dripping off an oak tree, or running his hand over a particularly pretty lenticel.
He was just so glad to be…alive.
Max used to say that to live is a relentless thing.
So I walk up next to her. I walk up next to her and try and match her pace, and I just start speaking. I say speaking, but it’s more like a waterfall. It’s more like I’m being sick on her, but with words. Does that make sense?
And I can tell she’s listening, but she’s still just walking straight, looking straight ahead. I should say that her walking straight is remarkable at this point because me, walking next to her, I’m constantly having to evade bushes and trees, because we are basically in the buffer strip of a broadleaf forest, but somehow the straight line she has chosen is completely free of obstacles. She doesn’t change course. Not once.
She reminds me of a lot of people at the same time. I know it’s weird but she’s the kind of person who reminds me of Max, even though she looks nothing like him, because he was small and fat and she is very tall and very athletic. I- I- I- don’t mean that in a mean way, but I think Max being fat is sort of what killed him, so I’m just being honest, like, I still think he was beautiful, but it does just make it more likely…
I sidestep a group of sycamore saplings, tripping over an exposed root and scratch my thigh on a rogue branch.
As I try and regain my balance I tell her how she looks like a chubby dead boy, which isn’t the best form of small talk. Even I know that.
My leg starts to hurt, but I don’t want to fall behind so I don’t stop, I keep walking.
We’re passing a group of high-graded trees - again, I’m side-stepping, she’s just going straight - so I try and tell her that trees talk to each other using fungal tubes called hyphae and that high-grading basically cuts through their communication channels. It cuts off trees from talking to their family, their friends.
Just as I am about tell her that our attempt at communicating with each other seems pathetic compared to trees, the sun comes out from behind a cloud and without skipping a beat she takes off her knitted jumper and ties it around her waist, all in one move.
It’s a mesmerising kind of thing, to watch someone do that while walking. And I realise that this is one of those rare times that I look at another human being and think that they are mesmerising or wonderful, which really, I have to tell you, really never happens.
So I tell her.
I tell her: “You are incredible. You are a mesmerising person” and we keep walking and she doesn’t say anything.
And my leg is really starting to itch…
But I keep walking.
I’m not sure if she heard me so I go again, a little bit louder: “You are incredible. You are a mesmerising person”.
We are just about to pass another one of those isolated beauties - this time a chestnut with its majestic, shaggy catkins, honestly I love those trees - and just as we are passing it I realise that I am being so…CREEPY.
I mean I am walking along next to this girl in the middle of nowhere because for no reason she reminds me of my dead… friend… and I’ve told her all these things about myself and my past and my family and that’s just so CREEPY.
Just as we pass the tree I realise this so I just say ‘Sorry’.
I say sorry and I stop.
And I feel that feeling when stepping on an escalator that’s out of order. An invisible wall hitting my brain.
I stop still and I say ‘Bye’.
She keeps walking and for a moment I’m not even sure if it has registered, if I ever registered.
And she walks another hundred feet or so and then she stops too. And she turns and she looks at me. Like, really looks.
And her stare just makes me sit down. It’s like the weight of her seeing me presses down on my shoulders and makes me weak in a way that I can’t really stand straight anymore.I limply slump against the tree. Feeling it, alive, press hard against my back, humming its calming song. Sap dripping. Feeling the moisture of wet leaves seeping into my trousers.
Not reacting, just waiting.
I touch my leg and I feel hot liquid oozing out my thigh and I realise that maybe it was more than a scratch.
She keeps looking for a moment and then speaks, gently, just loud enough for the emptiness to carry her words over to me, so I can make out that she says:
“You’re bleeding.”
And then she turns around and keeps walking.