Yellow

It’s much worse now. You never think it can be much worse, but it is a little - a little more each day. Your momentary shock glazed over by a necessary calm, a forced calm as you get about the business of living through each 24-hour cycle. You escape to indifference, you swallow that soundbite, you turn away from that conversation. You shut down your senses to the point of isolation and plugging your ears so that you do not lash out and yourself become the object of scorn.

But then, there comes a change so concrete, it suddenly dawns on you how very consequential all of those little moments actually were. That your evasiveness and your self-preservation, once an oily sheen of amorality, has congealed and caked after so many layers. It now weighs heavily on your past, on your future, on your community, and on your character. Every second was a choice, and every choice was not to do something. And you think, how did I choose this all those seconds? Must be millions and millions of them.

Only in that fleeting instance are you finally gobsmacked by the ice water in the pit of your stomach that is the recognition of your own extreme, irrefutable guilt. Like a sinner taking a sermon to heart one fine Sunday or an addict during a breath of lucidity, you know that you are damned, and the hell around you is by your hand as much as by any other. What you don’t know is whether this moment, undeniably powerful, will at last change you; or will it overpower you? Will you slide back into that glassy sea of pacifism, perhaps never to emerge from it again?

For me, now is one such moment. And the change is this tree. Well, the tree cannot have undergone much transformation. It is a plain, white oak. Nice and tall and straight with white and gray bark roughly robing it like inches-long dragon scales. The impressive boughs sweep out wide to either side, suggesting that beyond a quick ascent in its youth, there must have come a point where quite a lot more space materialized around its dramatically unfurled crown. The result of a forgotten deforestation event, presumably - one that eliminated any competitive kin. Now it rests alone in our park, regal and singular.

This tree shares a perverse similarity to oak trees I recall from a childhood backyard. Right down to the yellow rope tied around one of its most prominent limbs (we’d had a swing my father made from the same coarse twine and a single plank of wood). Maybe this tree hasn’t changed in any remarkable way for many years, but the rope is new. I find myself wondering if they got it from the ACE hardware store down the street, as if that matters.

A hasty and conspicuous addition, the clean goldenrod cord bestows on our old friend a fresh purpose. Earlier this week, word spread that sleepy little Near, Virginia had at last acquired its very own Hanging Tree. Since I have been alive, such a thing has never existed here, but for the oak, who could say? It may be as much as a couple hundred years old and, in that time, some other men and ropes might have found its branches equally suited to their purposes.

The militias who so-christened the tree used to be just some rag-tag individuals from here and there. They would show up when there was something to protest, or when there were protestors to confront, or when there was an election. But now, their ranks have swelled, and they roam the town streets as well as drive the backroads every day without fail. They have more than replenished the pitiful power vacuum left by our tiny police force, all of whom either retired quietly in acquiescence or traded their uniforms for camo. No challenge, government or otherwise, arose to reverse this turn of events.

My fingers reach for the heart-shaped locket round my neck. My thumb rubs familiarly at the smooth yellow metal, up to the buckle, which I snap open and shut once involuntarily. I’m holding it as far away from my neck as I can without breaking it because suddenly my throat is tight underneath the loose chain. I wanted to come out to see for myself. I stare down the center of the noose, thinking it may be just as well if I were the first victim instead of whatever soul they have intended, for all I have done and not done to usher in this pivotal day.

One of the interlopers themselves is now approaching me down the sidewalk. He looks every bit the part, a long weapon slung about his chest. Meaty-featured, his skin is as pink as a picturesque hog but disgustingly hairless. Sunglasses obscure his eyes and afford him the same beetle-like, featureless gaze as the rest of them. Once close, he puts a hand on my shoulder and nods towards the gallows. “You ready for tonight?” he asks keenly. He thinks I’m like him. They always think I’m one of them, just on shared appearances, dialect, or heritage.

I can’t feel anything but a shadow of a whisper of rage anymore. Rage is a fire in your belly, and mine has been long smothered by repetitive waxes of imperative placidity. But hate is a glacier resting on your heart. The glacier grows with each unique snowy flake of spite you accumulate over a lifetime. It moves maybe too slowly to remark upon but nevertheless carves vicious and indelible landscapes. I hope he can see the sun glint off of mine in my uncovered eyes, as I feel that tonnage begin to slip.