It was almost like he was told not to.
And, just maybe, I wouldn’t be better off to be holed up in some bomb shelter. In there, I might’ve been forced to obey someone else’s rules, or been caught up in a power struggle. Maybe the shelter failed.
Maybe THEY got in.
Skipping ahead, let me state that I wasn’t the only one who climbed a tree.
There were five of us, and whatever we had been told as kids about avoiding the tree out in the field during a thunderstorm was forgotten the reflex of avoiding the flash flood that swept away our cars and trucks. Some of us swam from the interstate and had no choice but to latch onto a tree, or risk being swept out to sea.
Then again, maybe the ocean of murky green water surrounding us didn’t stretch the 117 miles to the eastern seaboard. Maybe it stopped somewhere in town, right outside a pizza place.
My beer floated away.
It was cheap beer, so I wasn’t heart broken—just disappointed.
That’s sort of why I was out when the storm hit. I wasn’t trying to go home. I was disappointed in myself. I let anger get the best of me and so I stopped for beer, hoping to arrive home and explain to my wife what a rotten day I had at work, been having at work, and would keep having at work if they didn’t fire me.
The thought made me chuckle and so the four other monkeys in the trees turned their irritated and fearful glances at me.
“I got fired today,” I explained. “Doesn’t matter anymore.”
They shrugged me off and watched the water beneath us. It was a polite way of reminding me to shut the hell up again. I already wasted their patience trying to make light of the situation when we first noticed each other hanging on to the trees, hoping that the branches didn’t snap beneath us.
I can’t help but think they don’t make trees like they used to. The branches were mostly as big as a magic marker. I adjusted my position every hour or so, but mostly they dug into my shins or ass and I had to rotate hugging the actual tree with my left and then right arm, sometimes I’d try my legs.
The first three hours actually went by like fifteen minutes. I was impressed when someone reported the time from their waterproof watch. Of course twenty minutes later, we all decided to stop asking. That twenty minutes had felt like three more hours.
The guy with a watch was dude. He wasn’t one to be prepared, and from where I clung, I could see his sandals had cut his feet, and offered no traction as he hung on for (as they say) dear life. His hair was bleached and he kept saying things like, “if only I had my kayak. Left it at my mom’s.” His name wasn’t dude, I think it was Craig, but I was never great with names and when we exchanged them (like some awkward AA meeting) the water was still rushing by.
Closest to Craig, but furthest from me, hung a young woman of my complexion. I had initially tried to spark up some brotherhood with her, but she must’ve thought I was hitting on her. “Please, fool,” she said. Her name was Alucantra… maybe Alucard—no that’s Dracula spelled backwards and the only fang like thing she had was an incomplete set of hot pink plastic nails and her attitude. Then again, there was no telling how she spelled her name.
I don’t think I’d call the others racist if they were rooting for her to fall of the tree first.
Perhaps a full stomach would send the things in the water away.
But despite my own personal preference, I think that’d make the hick in tree number 12 cackle a little too much for my taste. He hadn’t said anything racist yet, but he had the look, the accent, and the Confederate flag on his soaked bandana. His name was Earl, and when the breeze came in right, I could smell the stale tobacco that precipitated from his skin and breath.
Lastly, but sure to demand that she was not thought of last was Kimberly, or Kimmy, or Kim. That’s what she said, and in that order. I think it helped me remember I could call her anything that started with Kim. She was pretty. And I made sure nothing I said could be constituted as flirting, if only to sleep well at night knowing I hadn’t betrayed the promises I made my wife.
Her shirt was wet. Every time I looked, it hadn’t dried. It wasn’t on purpose. It was like my Neanderthal brain kept ordering my head to rotate the 45 degrees…because…nipple.
I looked away just as soon I caught it framed above the crook in her elbow and the tree. And I always played it off as a complete scan of our surroundings. I didn’t want to creep her out.
And I’ll reiterate that I had no intentions of trying to pursue any kind of physical or emotional relationship with the young woman.
Besides, I knew what I looked like. I was that guy who was only selected when picking for teams in basketball were down to three or four rotund guys and one nerdy white boy. And I was always a bit more disappointing on the court than one or two of those other guys. I hadn’t climbed a tree since I was five years old. The only thing I’d hung onto longer than this actual tree was that job that I just got fired from. And people called me George, even though my name is Greg.
At least none of my four comrades in trees had called me George yet. Then again, they might’ve struggled with names as much as I, for I hadn’t heard anyone say, “Shut up, George.” They just said, “Shut up.”
I don’t like being not liked.
I don’t like being not liked and in a tree.
I don’t like being in the midst of trying to rhyme like Dr. Seuss.
Believe me, I’d like to be…
Able to rhyme better. That was another thing that my now former co-workers used to mistake about my ethnicity, when they’d ask me for a word that rhymed with another. They also always said things like, “I love Dre. Or you see the Denzel movie?”
“I don’t. And maybe, which one? He’s in a lot of them.”
Across the way, Alucantra grunted. I wasn’t going to point it out, but she had pissed herself. I could tell because the streak down her thigh was fresh, and still dripping. She had every right. It wasn’t like we were going anywhere any time soon. She shuffled her nails for a tighter grip and bowed her back so that her soaked crotch my air out in time.
It had long stopped raining, and the breeze that carried Earl’s awful stench had put enough of a chill through the humid air that I thought of following her suit and airing out some of my clammier regions.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even climb any higher. My muscles were spent. Man wasn’t supposed to hang in trees.
“You’d think there’d be a tree stand, thick as the woods is here,” Earl said. “Think this plot of land belongs to the Millers. Know they gotta have a stand. Buddy of mine’s hunted this way.”
But that was the most pointless offering of hope one of us could’ve shared. You see, the trees were far enough away from each other that one couldn’t just reach out and grab the next. There were no thick branches to walk across, and no vines so that we could swing from like Tarzan. So what was Earl’s grand plan? Jump in the water and hope he could swim five feet before he became a fancy feast?
“It’s all mental,” the dude Craig said. “Gotta pretend you ain’t holding onto the tree. The tree is holding onto you.”
Just like the tree that held onto the poor Asian woman who didn’t get to introduce herself before she plummeted into the roaring waters and turned them from green to red?
It dissipated quicker than one would expect. There was a cloud of red in the water went for only a yard or two before it was that murky pea soup green again. It was almost like they drank it, like they didn’t want to waste a drop.
“Gotta be mentally tough,” Craig said, with the gusto of an unavailable fist pump.
“You say that again, I hope your tree strangles your ass,” Alucantra said.
“Whoa, peace.”
“If we can climb higher, the trees might bend towards another one. Right?” Kim, Kimmy, or Kimberly spoke up, as if to stop a verbal argument that might’ve attracted more of the things in the water—if they even had ears.
Earl said, “Maybe.”
“W
ish we’d thought of that a few hours ago,” I said. “I don’t think I can climb another inch.”
“I don’t care what you do,” Earl said.
“Promise?” I asked—no, I instigated.
“I ain’t going to leave no body out here who tries,” Earl said. “But if you ain’t to do that, hell with you.”
Kimmy (she looked more like a Kimmy) reached up her tree and began to sling up it. I could imagine the uncomfortable bark scraping her bare thighs, knees, and calves. It was better than the alternative, and the further she climbed, the easier it seemed to get for her. Then again, just what did Kimmy weigh? Maybe all of 120 lbs.?
We all watched.
When she got closer to the top of her tree (some forty feet of the natural ground but only twenty or thirty above the water), her tree began to bend.
“Lil’ more,” Earl called at her.
Craig was already trying to catch up to her. One arm over the other, like he’d snuck a swig of Red Bull while the rest of us watched Kimmy climb.
When I saw Earl try, I knew I had to go to. Only Alucantra looked at me like I was Uncle Tom. But I am not a stereotype. I don’t fit into some kind of demographic. I’m George—I mean Greg. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to spend my last hours or minutes being glared at by one of the worst perpetrators of stereotypes. I climbed.
But I was ready to deck Earl if he said anything about my climbing looking natural. It sure as hell didn’t feel natural.
Then, the unmistakable sound. The pop. No one identified it verbally. We gasped, as did Craig as the top of his tree snapped off. Time slowed for me as I watched him fall into the water below. I might’ve been able to count the number of branches that broke on his way down. I saw his poorly rendered tattoo of Bug Bunny on his belly, as his shirt flew up into his armpits. Then he splashed and cried out as he slammed his chin on the broken treetop. He tried to climb on top of the tree like it would float, but it sunk, and the other thing branches ensnared him. He was going to drown…if they didn’t get him first.
He bobbed. Once. Twice.
Said, “I think I’m okay.”
Then bobbed a third time.
We watched as his bleached blond hair disappeared beneath the water. It should’ve come right back up, and I help onto the hope that it would for more seconds than would ever had made sense given the situation.
Craig did not bob back.
Kimmy didn’t wait to see if his blood stained the green. I heard her grunt a few more feet up her tree, and then the sound of branches shaking hands. A large breath. And when I looked up, she had made it to another tree—one that already began to lean towards the next tree.
“That-a-girl,” Earl said. Craig’s failure quickly forgotten.
“You outta your mind,” Alucantra said.
Something in the back of my brain told me, had that dude just jumped towards the next one, he might not have gone into the water. If my tree snaps—just jump.
In truth, I didn’t want to be left behind. I knew I was scared, the pounding heart in my chest had just been accepted at that point. I scaled almost ten feet from the top before my tree leaned towards another. I reached out, my hand unable to get a grip. I scurried another foot up the tree and strained. I was going to have to put a little more into it—I was going to have to let go of the tree I was on.
I roared. I needed to. And I sprung at the other tree. Almost overshooting it, but my shoulder stopped me and I slid down the side of the tree, catching a couple of branches in my asshole before my grip was enough to hang tight.
I panted, and laughed, and winced.
“Good job,” Kimmy said as she moved onto her fourth or fifth tree.
Earl didn’t congratulate me, but he didn’t call me a monkey either. He’d done a split to reach his new tree, and that might’ve made him nervous to reveal his fresh falsetto.
Going from tree to tree like we were was both easier than it looked, and harder than it looked. At least, watching Kimmy do it made it look easy. But doing it myself, even a dozen or so trees later, was not easy. Besides racking my nerves and nuts, every exchange from one tree to the next was like handling a live grenade. There was the fear of falling, the fear of it breaking, and the fear of my grip giving out just before my heart finally broke through my chest.
We might’ve travelled a mile, but it could’ve been like that twenty minutes that felt like three hours. But we finally reached our desert island: a jack knifed tractor trailer caught up in the trees.
The shiny metal roof was a rite of passage for the birds of the open road. After all the downpour, and the flood, large chunks of white, yellowish, and often black globs coated the trailer. Nearly every inch was in layers. I could feel it beneath my soaked pants.
“We’ll rest here,” Earl said even though most would attribute the decision to Kimmy because she arrived first on the trailer and collapsed—oblivious to the bird poop.
Once I landed, every part of my body had a different flavor of hurt. There were abrasions, bruises, muscles tears, early onset arthritis, muscle spasms, and even my TMJ was acting up. Then, much to my dear chagrin, Alucantra came swooping in behind me, just second later. She landed with her hands on her hips and an attitude set on ‘screw everybody.’
“That’s some bull shit. You can’t be stopping now. I ain’t sleeping on this shit stained bendy ass roof.”
“Then, don’t sleep,” Earl said. His eyes were closed, but I was sure he was squinting through one, getting reading to evade a slap…or judging from Alucantra’s demeanor, a head butt.
“Make this a boat. We float down the river,” she said. “Whip out that pocket knife of yours.”
Earl reached behind his back and pulled out more than a pocket knife. It had at least an eight inch blade, and must’ve been the reason Earl’s pants highlighted his butt crack. It could have just been improper use of a belt. But they don’t teach that sort of thing in public school.
No, judging from Earl’s abrasive stance, he’d learned everything he knew from his pappy.
“If I make a boat, you ain’t coming on it,” he said. “I’ll let the police know where you are.”
“Police don’t got boats,” Alucantra said.
“Sure they do, but maybe I’ll just wait to tell them after the water goes back down.”
“Maybe we could make a raft,” Kimmy said.
“Lots of debris,” I said and even pointed to correctly illustrate that I was talking about branches and logs floating by our metal island.
“You want to reach in there? Be my guest,” Earl said.
The trailer was still a good five or six feet above the water. It would’ve been a risky reach, even for Inspector Gadget.
They were likely still in the water.
Likely, being the positive part of that statement since it produced doubt, but caution. Perhaps, we were lucky they didn’t populate this part of the new river, and luckier that they didn’t track us from our last known whereabouts.
While the rest of us got quiet and surveyed the murky waters for signs of them, Alucantra rattled on about how we needed to make her a raft and she didn’t care how we did it. Even though the dude Craig was gone, I could almost hear his voice living on, saying ‘Chill man. We all love each other here.”
I gave up trying to see them and turned my eyes straight to Kimmy’s chest. She caught me even though it really was an accident. She adjusted how she sat so that an arm covered her breasts, raised that nose of hers a little and turned her attention back to the waters through half-closed eyelids.
“We should rest,” I said.
“No, shit,” Earl said.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “And we’ll think of something, but, Alucantra, we got to think this through.”
“What did you call me?” she asked, delivered a head snap and added, “My name is Alucantra.”
She must’ve been spelling it differently that I said it. I didn’t catch a difference.
Still, I offered an apolog
y.
“Calling me names is disrespectful. My momma gave me that name.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said, then lied, “I knew and Al-a-cant-ra once.”
“Well, you don’t know me.”
“How long ago did he tell you? Shut the fuck up,” Earl said.
“Boy!”
“Stop!” Kimmy yelled. “Everybody stop!”
Then I saw them.
“Look!” I said. My exclamation was more effective in deterring the verbal battle.
“Maybe,” whispered Earl, “that’s just a log.”
The toughness Earl had carried on his face, had fallen off. Whether we had admitted it or not yet, they were not snakes or piranhas. Maybe if one of us watched more Animal Planet, we might’ve come across a special that eased our fears and made us stop thinking these were creatures that inspired the look of demons and dragons for centuries.
Though they appeared to have no appendages (that have come up above the surface of the water), they have tails, and a head like a goat’s. Black horns rolled around the sides of their head like the front fender on a ’73 Corvette Stingray. Their eyes perked up at the edge of the water like Rambo, but they were snake’s eyes—and the cause for our initial determination to pass them off as Anacondas or some one’s escape boa constrictor. Except the more we stared, the more it was confirmed, that the algae that trailed their sharp, jutting movements, was clinging to a wiry mane of hair, like that of a horse.
And just like that, they went back beneath the surface, and we all took a step towards the middle of the trailer. I glanced over to see Alucantra mid-prayer. Her lips trembled as she mouthed the words.
Down a ways, a tree cracked and splashed into the water. There might’ve been something beneath the surface, car or another tree that did it, but I don’t think it would be unfair for me to assume that we all thought they (the demons, the dragons) had the strength to break down a tree.
9 Tales Told in the Dark 16 Page 9