Sapling Green

It was the sort of day that mirrored itself across winters. The sun was out but barely catching his skin. And the light fell as a pall of muted beacon lines and shadows across the busy street.

He wandered, trudging, wondering what the hell was next. But there was nothing to do but keep walking and try to think about nothing. Nothing was calmer than something. He was sick of something: he’d had plenty of it and never knew what to do with it anyway.

He hid his eyes from the passing motorists. Inspecting the ocean-blue wood panel temporary fence that followed the road. It had stood decaying for years. He’d passed it from time to time between work and home. The cracking wood was that day visible for the first time. The dry grass at its base a mirror to his shallow gate. Each step a warn sneaker slipping over brittle pavement. The wind humming, giving time distance to enjoy being alone. ‘Just walk and keep walking,’ he thought. Watching the broken July clouds, moving quickly to become the promise of a cleansing rain, that that day would only promise.

‘That’s done, I guess. One thing ends another begins and ends again,’ he pondered. Not sure what to do with the information, his head a dull aching shell.

For nothing had ever promised to make sense in that tiny life as his. Though at times he thought he’d caught a glimpse. Never admitting it may have been a peak that really only tempted the desperate wanton lie of normality.

He ran four fingertips over the traffic dusted blue chipboard. His jumper matched it, as if he stood exactly between the wood and the sky. The white-beige dust caking on his fingers, wiping his hands to a drifting cloud that filled his nose with concrete tunnels.

Not thinking stopped his skin from tightening and jaw from clenching. Only by suddenly needing to pull his jaw apart did he know he was thinking. What was it that was said last night? The answer attempted deflection. For it made his skin prickle in its mirrored idiocy.

‘What stupid fucking thing had been said... what had I done to have it said,’ he thought, rubbing a dry knuckle into his sweaty forehead.

At the corner he stopped. The road was an impassable torrent as ticking ambled from a set of traffic lights. Waiting for the pitch to shift to walk. He didn’t press. And instead found himself gazing under a white barked skeleton hanging to a memory of stolen bush; holding fast ailing beside the road. Its earth hard packed clay pulling up the pavement by an empty wire fence. Trying to remind passers by its kind had been there first and may well be there long after. Or so it lamented without needing a thought.

Pulsing past came the impressions of wind shield shrouded people. Better, he felt burned into him, and made well by some elusive ability to live; in the way they had always told them they should. A self-fulfilling prophecy. Unlike him, one without attachment to social convention or foretold expectations to ask for comfort. Though if it had been offered as a lesson, he may have taken it.

The tree held against the traffic’s gusts, that offered shivering in the passing beams of muted sun. It only wanted the sky’s wind to rustle it bare. ‘People how do they live as people?’ he thought watching it refuse. Who agreed that’s what people are supposed to be?

He refused to turn; his back hid a defeated face none would see anyway. None would care yet he felt every eye. And made himself endless in it. Spoken by the voice at the centre of him. The voice without a voice. It asked, ‘what was said last night?’

It slunk through him and touched the places hidden by the shadows of bare branches. The light of the sun running a finger across his dry cheeks.

“Keep walking,” the impulse said but there was nowhere to go, “so, keep walking.”

He stood still.

The conversation had happened under a set of green gelled par-cans, making their faces sickly. The bar was tacky and filled with smoke and pulsed with a wall of electronic noise. His companions green skinned and black shadow silhouettes. Oily hair and cold eyes suddenly becoming day bright with a passing beam then sickly again.

“Keep walking” said the voice. But today there was nowhere to go.

The street fell silent. It let the wind flown rumble of the freeway carry over the rooftops to land in the gully of his ears. Motorcycles and SUVs and Utilitarian vehicles growing again like an approaching crescendo. Don’t think of what was said last night? Folly. Some look to invent their own understanding; for they take it as fodder for their own wanting.

Words spoken as a parody of words. Something about honour. Something taken as invented to be taken. As a song played and drunk children pretended to be adults; dancing and lamented tomorrows encroaching stagger.

“Honour... fuck you,” he whispered and felt softness on his dry hands. Realising how long it had been since he’d changed his clothes. “Honour... Jesus, honour,” He wondered if his friend understood the meaning of the word.

“Honour,” he said again, realising his appearance. His old ratty black baggy jeans and a ragged blue jumper. Self-conscious as he’d not changed his clothes in the decade since adolescents. Like he’d been so caught up in the pursuit of a thing that could only be nothing. Following a friend, himself a fool. That only at its triangle crescendo could he realise himself still wearing a child’s skin suddenly in a man’s body.

All it had taken was the end of childhood friendship and the word honour. From one who would struggle to define it. One who saw it as blind to his wants and follies.

They’d been drinking in a group of four. Him and his old friend — each only looking presentable under the drunken green light. And a couple, old friends, they looked together by comparison.

They were in this place in the city, an institution, open all night. Up a flight of stairs, looking into the tram rung street through white gums that clung to heavy foliage above the pavement. Looking at the skeleton he wondered what they knew, and it didn’t — wondering if they had given up their defiance. All were yelling drunk over the wall of noise that seemed silent in his reflection. Green as though they’d each stolen the leaves off that white gum, and its skeleton was suddenly asking for them back.

“... nothing like how you pulled up last Sunday,” his friend had said yelling over the silent wall of noise. He couldn’t remember last Sunday or the day before. Just that he was apparently hung over. Sucking down a mouthful draft beer he responded, running a hand through his matted hair,

“You know I can’t remember last weekend at all.”

“Yeah you came in pissed again, just like you... looks like you’re doing it tonight, hey,” his friend derided. Sucking back on his own pint of draft, sniffing, broke.

‘I paid for that pint,’ he thought waiting for another to be expected.

“It was a Saturday man... I went out just like anyone.”

“Yeah you always drink too much man, you know like your smoking; I count how many cigarettes you smoke and have a fifth.”

“Why the hell would you count my cigarettes?”

“So, I can know how many someone should be smoking... to stay healthy.”

‘You sit on your arse smoking weed and eating rancid chickens you keep beside your bed, in a room that smells like its rotting. ‘Why do women decide to come back a second time?’ He thought staring at the skeletal gum tree; not sure what anyone saw in any man; but at the time he only thought how badly he needed a smoke.

“Well I don’t remember Sunday is all, or Saturday.”

“You were with us,” stated a rough feminine voice. The lights flashed, returning to sickly green, then to emergency red and deep ocean blue, before back to sickly green again. It had been so loud that he only remembered silence, he now realised.

“Really, what did we do?” He said with an inquisitive naive grin.

“Remember that new bar, the gallery joint, you bought us all shots of this green sweet shit...”

“Oh wait, how do I not remember that... wait... I...”

The other of the two chimed in — his skinny green bald head almost glowing.

“Then you and, you know, started going for it. In front of bar no less. You two were all over each other man. I had no idea. It was uncomfortable.”

“Shit really,” his body hunched, “ I wish I remembered, which you know who?”

The young lady pointed a finger at his friend and said,

“You saw her a couple of times, last year. Pretty sure anyway.”

“Wait, oh her?” his friend said flashing eyes like daggers, as white light flashed across his oily round unshaven face.

“Yeah, the hippy,” she chuckled.

“What!” his friend snapped.

“That’s the one... Jesus I don’t know what you said but you both snuck towards each other and then, well... you too were all over each other. Then you ran off and she was pretty angry.”

“You tried to fuck her,” his friend said, “what the fuck.” as they both skulled the remainder of their beers. His face folded into his nose. Looking at his friend who fell silent as a jealous partner.

“You two went on a few dates a year ago man,” he said.

“I saw her first, you know the rules”

“What rules. You’ve not spoken to her in six months”

His old friend stormed out making as much a point of a sharp leer and shaking head. Making an angry line through the crowd, belting the swinging entry doors. Ten minutes later he’d received a text message stating, ‘You have no honour.’ He called but the voice said,

“the number you have dialled is either switched off or disconnected.”

He stepped up to the tree and placed a hand on its smooth tight wrapped bark as a voice from the street yelled in a belligerent doppler yelp, “Tree hugging cunt.” He ignored it and looked up into the branches. They shook in the wind and seemed to fall still as the traffic behind went silent, to a distant encroaching rumble. ‘It’s good to know somethings hold fast,’ he thought as his eye’s trailed the skeletal branches finding new shoots sprouting from rings were long hanging branches had been removed by the council. Little fresh sapling-green shoots surrounded by concentric grey rings.

He ran a finger around the rings counting them.

“twenty-nine,” he whispered, as the clouds broke from dull grey to sun yellow to grey again. The phone beeped with a message,

‘what you got to say.’

He tried to call and only got the same,

“the number you have dialled is either switched off or disconnected.”

and wrote back,

“I’m done I’m moving out.”

He hit send and placed two fingers around the new growth. Feeling the wood grain dints in the rings along the weathered cut. Making sure not to damage the sapling.