Excerpt: The Children of the Trees

When I was five the grandma who made me waffles sat me in her large saffron chair in the corner, ran her thumbs slowly across the backs of my hands and told me life was big, I was small, there was lots to be afraid but very little that will ever hurt you and told me with a small tear in her eye that I should not let it scare me like it did her. The next morning my parents told me she would never be able to make me waffles again, or ask me how much syrup I wanted, even though she already knew and would never hold my hand again. I saw her only one last time as she lay sleeping and afterward we rode back home in the big car and had cake and people told lots of stories and cried. It was the same exact year my brothers told me about the children in the trees.

At eighty-nine as I lay in my bed; able only to stare at the tiny sundogs created by the tubing on the ceiling as it runs by the window and disappears into my arm beneath an enormous pile of gauze; do I finally understand what grandma was trying to tell me. I should have punched my brothers when I had the chance; run away; plugged my ears while yelling nananananana, something, anything but listen. My brothers are all gone now. One; Hank; died very young in a trench on a French hillside and the other; Carl, just a year ago just like grandma who went to sleep and never spoke another word except in my dreams.

As I lay here now, completely immobile; save my mouth; with a mind still strong I realize I can give one large parting gift to my fellow earthlings. I have called for a nurse who can dictate every year of my life and if you are reading my words now it is because I am gone and have given all rights to my story to my nurse to tell my story—and hopefully become very rich.

I tell my story not because it is so special; or because I was quite famous. I tell it simply because it was so commonplace; so much like everyone I know. I write my story because at eighty-nine with nothing more to do but think and sip a little water from time to time to wet my tongue, the children of the trees still haunt me in my waking and in my dreams. Every now and then I see the face of one of them and he looks just like me but usually much younger. I try to avoid seeing them but the trees are everywhere and since I never learned to climb a tree I am unable to bring one down to see who is stronger; him or me.

The day the telling of my story began it rained. Not little droplets but huge rain; the kind that comes down in sheets and excites ducklings. The kind that darkens the sky by three hues and strikes terror in the hearts of three-year olds. It was on this stage Glenda walked into my room, dripping profusely on my floor and with a small electronic typewriter in her right hand. She stood about six-foot four, weighing all of 185 pounds and I wondered why the agency had sent someone so ill to a dying man. She only had to speak one sentence in her German accent for me to realize she was not ill, just very thin and imperfectly tall. Her face was a jumble of features that made no sense. Deep-set eyes, a nose that seemed to point to anything she looked at and ears that almost waggled when she moved her head. Her brow was lined from a lifetime of apparent worry and her voice when she spoke boomed off the walls. And I am afraid now she will also disappear into my words. You shall never see or hear from her again; unless by chance you hire her from the Noble Nurses Agency on 12th and Lincoln; and she will be now to you only the fingers that move at the command of my voice and an invisible extension of my person. And so begins my ordinary journey through a land of trees full of children.