intro
The man wandered the streets aimlessly, unaware of where we went or if it would get him in any trouble. He hadn’t been drunk for months, and it was a bad thing. He was too happy, too content, and everyone knew it. He was becoming a failure.
Another block passed under his hurriedly-shod feet, and he remembered back to a few months ago, back to when he had hit bottom. Things were better then. More simple. The drunken conversations spoken into pools of vomit dutifully deposited in the parking lots of steaming pubs, they brought a dry, sickening consistency to the hot, much too bright mornings when he drug himself into the chaotic, unsympathetic fluorescents of his workplace.
Yet another block, yellow streetlights burning acid holes in the pitiful streets of his adopted new hometown. Another cigarette burning acid holes in the pitiful alveoli in his chest, raising bumps on his gums and removing all ability for taste from his tongue. He had managed to find himself under the bridge where the homeless setup camp. He stared over at the small communities huddled around trash fires, wondering what conversation might ensue if he was human enough to go initiate them, what wise stories would appear out of the retreating eyes of a stranger.
A drink was required, and yet none was to be found, and so yet another cigarette passed his lips, the sound of the Zippo in his hands a small comfort.
He felt himself getting older as the concrete squares drew underneath, slowly at first, then faster and faster until they swept behind like children running into their bedrooms, frightened by imaginary ghosts in dark hallway corners. The lines on his face deepened with each step, his skin dried and scaled with each drag from the cigarette. Finally, he walked by the glass façade of some unidentified structure and dared to turn his head. Surprise, shock-horror, should have been returned for the reflection’s aged stare, but instead, there was only a dim, boring recognition of what was known all along.
A drink was in order. Yet no order was to be placed. No solace in the dirty, dark, smoky corners where ex-pat Englishmen yell obscenities to no one in particular. No familiar conversations with the barkeep who has your drink poured before you reach the rail.
Just a street and a smoke and the cracks that disappear underfoot and reappear strewn across the gills, staring blindly past the next broken light, shining its darkness down for no one to see, not lighting a street to anywhere, anywhere but here.
1
Then, as quickly as his journey had begun, he found himself at a home. He did not enter. Instead, he wound his way around on its broken, weed-covered walkway to the backyard. A short chain link fence guarded the sparse lawn, a closed but unfastened gate beaconed him inward. He strangely realized that he had smoked his last cigarette.
Inside the gate, he stood and observed in the pale yellow light from that which was cobbled to the rear of the house, attempting to illuminate the yard but instead casting only shadows across the blades. Nature was on the take in this penal system, but it struck a good balance–backyards, he thought, should have a foot in the wild.
He then noticed the tree. It stood directly in the middle of the yard, stoic in its minisculality.
2
He took to the tree. It looked familiar to him, yet only familiar, not identifiable. It’s tiny, barren branches reached out into the night like the gutted homes of his neighborhood’s skyline. And yet, he found himself, step my slowly-strode step, next to the tree.
3
He knew that he was to care for it, and he did, yet he had the feeling that it was actually caring for him. He spoke only briefly to it that evening, but would return, never too infrequently, yet somehow not often enough. He brought cups of water, biscuits, cheese, and would share them while they conversed–he in hushed tones, she in such mysterious silence as to render God quantifiable. His offerings were always accepted with grace, his trip back from the spot shorter than that there.
4
Eventually, spring came and with it a single green leaf bud on a single spindly branch. Its bits spread slowly like a hand opening for a surprise, eyes clamped shut, mouth quiveringly open. The man realized at that moment that he did not know what to say or do anymore.