Читать книгу Tree Fever - Karen Hood-Caddy - Страница 10

Chapter 3

When everyone had gone, I slid to the ground. I felt exhilarated and exhausted all at the same time. What had I done?

Feeling dazed, I watched people strolling along the sidewalk at the periphery of the park. Did these people have any idea of what had just happened here? Some looked oblivious, others stared at me curiously. What had they heard? That some crazy old lady had tied herself to a tree? I flinched.

I must look like some card-carrying member of the lunatic fringe! Crazy old lady. Crazy old lady, they’ll whisper as I walk down the street.

Normally, I take my respectability for granted. My clients and friends treat me as a person of integrity. Now, however, sitting alone, chained to this tree, the memory of Robyn’s words stung me. I probably did look ridiculous.

It would be worth being called names if I could save the trees. But soon, Tamlin would return to arrest me and my beloved trees were going to come crashing down. Forces much more powerful than my good intentions were obviously in gear here.

So get out. Get away. While you still can.

I rested against the tree and tried to think. Tiredness pulled me into sleep and after a while, I jerked awake. At the edge of the park, a woman hurried by, pushing a baby in a pram with one hand and holding on to a preschooler in the other. The woman was frowning and I could hear whispers between her and the older child. It was starting. Humiliation swept through me.

The child had some sort of costume on and I remembered seeing somewhere a notice for a spring pageant. Yanking herself free, the child bounded towards me, stopping dead in her tracks in front of me. Her little homemade cellophane wings trembled uncertainly on the paper chest band that held them to her body. On the wings were blobs of sun yellow and jello orange, obviously her own work.

The child was supposed to be a butterfly, but with her cherubic face and big, believer eyes, she looked more like an angel. Uncertainly her tongue wet her lips and she caught her lower one in her teeth. Her fear was palpable, yet she held her ground.

“Its all right,” I said gently. “I won’t hurt you.”

“Mommy says you’re gonna save the trees being chopped.”

I looked into the little girl’s face. It was as open as the future. “I’m going to try.”

She clapped her hands together gleefully, threw her head back and looked up. We were so close that I could see the reflection of the trees in her eyes.

Then, her mission complete, the girl skipped back to her mother, wings flapping. At the edge of the park, she turned and waved exuberantly, as if saying goodbye to her very best friend. Thoughtfully, the mother raised her hand and waved as well.

“Starting a fan club?”

“Madge! Where have you been? I thought…” My eyes sought Madge’s to reestablish the camaraderie of a few hours ago, but Madge was studying her fingernails.

“Got Smedly,” she reported matter-of-factly. “Finally. He says you don’t have a leg to stand on. Legally, anyway.” She bit at a nail.

I searched Madge’s face. Something wasn’t right.

“You’re not going to believe this,” Madge said flatly, still not looking at me.

“Believe what?”

“Who owns this land. Who’s developing it …”

Madge’s glance finally swung towards me and our eyes locked. For a moment, neither of us spoke.

“Boyd!”

Madge grinned. Then, as if remembering something, the smile faded. “I went to see him. He definitely wants you out of here.” She snickered. “Which is putting it mildly.” Making her lips like the knot on the end of a balloon, she filled her mouth with air so her cheeks bulged. Then she blew the air out noisily. “He wanted you arrested right away, but I asked him to wait.” She looked at me, and seeing no reaction, carried on. “He wants to settle this peacefully.”

I frowned. There was an uncomfortable twitch in my stomach.

Madge rolled her eyes at my doubt. “This is his land, you know. He did buy it.” She looked away from me. “He showed me the plans for the condominiums. They’re not so bad. He’s only going to take down the trees he has to. The minimum.”

“The minimum! How can you support him killing any of them? We’ve known these trees all our lives.” I stared at Madge incredulously. “You’re a tree person, too.” I wanted to shake her, wake her out of her trance.

She dropped her hands to her sides. “I don’t like this. You don’t like this, but, believe it or not, Boyd isn’t thrilled about taking these trees down either. However, as he says, you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. And he’s promised me he’s going to plant more. In fact, he even offered to let you organize the landscaping.”

My fury sizzled. “Come on! Co-opt the opposition. That’s the oldest trick in the book. He must think I’m an idiot.” The red heat in my stomach rose up and spewed into words. “You tell Boyd to go screw himself – if you’re not doing that for him already.”

Madge’s slap was sharp and painful, but nothing compared to the anguish I was feeling inside. We looked at each other with astonished repentance, then fell into each other’s arms.

“I deserved that,” I said, my voice low.

“No, I shouldn’t have.”

I tried to explain. “I’m on totally new ground here. I want to stand up for what I believe in, but it’s so hard…”

Madge was suddenly optimistic. “Look, how about we unchain you and I take you out for dinner? We’ll brainstorm possibilities. There must be some other way to put the brakes on this thing.”

The thick, spicy smell of garlic linguine filled my nose. We’d go to Giorgio’s. I’d sit in one of those sumptuous wing-back chairs. Over a long drink, we’d come up with another plan.

“I need to stay here.”

“Jessie, there’s nothing more you can do.”

“You may be right. But I have to stay until the end of it. I wouldn’t feel good otherwise.”

Madge stared at me as if she were seeing me for the first time. After a while, she nodded and said, “You sure you don’t want me to send Smedly over?”

I shook my head. Lawyers helped people with their legal rights. I had no legal rights.

The two of us stood awkwardly, neither speaking. Finally she said, “Well, I guess I’d better be off. I have a thousand things I need to do today.” Her voice was brittle with brightness. “I’ll come by later and see how you’re doing.” She turned reluctantly. At the edge of the park she called, “Good luck!” Then, as if to make up for her abandonment, she blew me a kiss.

Resentfully, I watched her go. Why couldn’t she have stayed and fought it out with me? She’d grown up with these trees too. Suddenly the burden of what I was doing weighed down on me. It wasn’t fair. If Madge didn’t care, why should I?

Go home. Before you get yourself in worse trouble.

Left alone, my thoughts pushed each other around. Despite the free-for-all going on in my head, my body settled itself resolutely against the tree. Although it didn’t make sense to me, my body seemed to know something, seemed to have some wisdom that was navigating me through the slums of my thinking to some inner path of rightness. My instinct told me that if I abandoned this knowing, all would be lost.

You’d be proud of me, Rudi. You always told me to trust my body and here I am doing it.

I smiled, thinking back on my time in therapy. “Move out of the smaller knowing into the bigger knowing,” she used to tell me. I now knew fully what she had meant.

I was staying. Straining against the chain, I scanned the park for Tamlin but could see no sign of him. I relaxed back against the tree. He was going to show up when he was going to show up. There was no point in anticipating him.

As if celebrating my decision, the evening sky flared up with pink and yellow streamers that paraded from one end of the horizon to the other. Through a clearing in the trees, I saw the colours of the sunset darken, deepening into streaks of red and purple so intense I was awestruck by the beauty of it. Even the boughs of the trees seemed to stretch up into a party of colour.

One by one in the cerulean blue sky, tiny stars began to flicker until it looked as though there were a thousand fairies up there, each holding a tiny sparkler. I felt a deep pleasure in my belly.

My whole body pulsed with the wonder of it. I felt the blood flooding through my veins and became aware of my skin and how it contained me, as a leather bag might hold a scoop of fish and water from a stream. For a moment, my skin softened, became permeable and the boundary of myself dissolved. Then a realization came to me – that although the physicalness of my body made me feel separate from the nature around me, my body and the earth’s body were really the same thing. In actuality, I was nothing more or less than the earth in a smaller package. That meant that the earth’s survival and my survival were one and the same.

Standing up for these trees was not only a statement about them and their right to survive, it was an affirmation of all life, my own included. The destruction had to stop and I had to be a part of insisting that it stop, even if the only listeners were myself and the earth itself.

As I sat pondering these thoughts in the dimming light, I saw someone approaching. Tamlin? No, this person was small, with skinny legs, and was carrying a bundle. The bundle was dropped at my feet, revealing the person behind it.

“Elfreda.”

“Thought you might need these,” the old woman said, her voice slightly slurred. There, in a heap, was a flashlight, sleeping bag, thermos, a sandwich wrapped in cellophane and a few books. “Just mystery stuff. Didn’t think you’d want anything literary.”

“No, this is definitely an occasion for light reading,” I replied, slipping into my therapist mode. “Pull up a tree.”

Elfreda glanced at me warily, but crouched down. Close now, I realized how small the woman was, almost gnome-like in form. She was wearing a Toronto Blue Jays cap turned sideways on her head and a rumpled jacket. The laces of both running shoes were undone.

“From what I hear, you’ve been having a rough time…” I ventured.

Elfreda shut her eyes. For a moment, I wondered if the old lady had fallen asleep. But when she opened her eyes, they were almost pleading. “Don’t!”

Startled, I softened my voice. “Don’t what?”

Elfreda scowled as if I were purposely misunderstanding her. “Don’t do your therapist number. Don’t pretend to understand when you don’t.” She shook her head resolutely. “Have you lost a child? Have you had a child killed? Have you?” There was spittle at the side of her mouth.

I sighed, wishing I hadn’t opened the conversation like this. Obviously, Elfreda needed therapy and this was no time to start it. I answered as I would have answered anybody. “No. But I’ve had my own suffering. And when I’ve suffered, it’s helped me to talk it through. Sometimes talking helps people feel better.”

“I don’t give a dog’s diddle about feeling better.”

Great, I thought. What a lovely way to spend an evening, chained to a tree alongside a hostile old woman.

“Everyone’s treating me like a bloody basket case,” Elfreda complained.

Words leapt into my throat, but I held them back. Then I decided to let them go. If Elfreda wanted straight talk, she could have straight talk. “If you want people to stop treating you like a basket case, stop acting like one.”

A smile slowly bloomed on her face at my directness. “I just might, one day. If I can find something worth doing it for.” She cast her glance up into the trees like a child throws a beach ball. “Being here, among these trees, is the only time I don’t feel crazy.”

“They’ve bailed me out a few times too,” I said quietly.

Elfreda looked at me with interest. She nodded as if acknowledging the pain she heard in my voice. For a few moments we sat quietly, like any two women might, sitting with our suffering.

“Did you know there’s a sitting place half way up that tree there?” I gestured towards Candelabra. “Not easy to get to, but wonderful.”

“You don’t say!” When her eyes found the spot, she grinned. For a second her face lost its jigsaw puzzle of lines and became a picture of aged wisdom. “Sometimes when I can’t sleep I come and lie out here. I know it sounds stupid, but these trees are my friends.”

I nodded. I understood.

A thought pulled at Elfreda’s smile and soon the lines appeared again, tangling her skin into a knot of unhappiness. “But I always get hassled.”

“After my husband died, I couldn’t sleep for weeks,” I said. “It’s awful at the beginning. I know. Everything reminded me of him.”

My words seemed to settle her. Again, we sat silently and looked at the trees.

“What’ll you do when the cops come?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Tamlin won’t come till morning. But he’ll come early. At first light. At least, that’s what he did when I used to sleep out here. Get me out of sight before people started moving around.”

“I think he’s hoping that if he gives me enough time to think about it, I’ll change my mind and go home.”

“Will you?”

“No.”

A small smile skimmed over the old woman’s lips, but her eyes spoke a warning. “They’ve got the power on their side, you know. Once they have you out of the way, those men will be back with their saws and that will be the end of it.”

I dropped my face into my open palms. I was tired, very tired. “Yes and I’ll be in jail. Unless you can think of something else I can do – I’m out of ideas myself.”

Elfreda’s body slumped forward. She closed her eyes and the shadows made her face look deeply furrowed. Her chest rose and fell in an erratic, agitated way. Finally, in a voice so quiet I could barely hear it, she spoke.

“Its the pain that I can’t stand.” Her eyes were open now and full of jagged hurt. “The pain of things … being destroyed.” Her eyes clawed at mine. “How do you stand it?”

I took a big breath. It was an important question, one I’d spent a lot of time thinking about. As a psychotherapist, I’d seen people endure staggering sorrows. The amount of pain some people faced was truly daunting. It was my job to try and help them handle the pain. During my years of work, I’d learned that everyone had their own way of coping: some marched courageously into the feelings, sweating it out; some tried to distract themselves; others numbed themselves out with drink or drugs or sex, until it was over. Everyone had their own way of surviving. So, as much as I wanted to offer Elfreda a profundity about pain, I couldn’t.

“I guess I’ve learned to wait it out,” I said finally. “Pain doesn’t go on forever. I was just thinking about that a minute ago – how even though there’s the awfulness of these trees being threatened, the sunset still happens. And it’s still staggeringly beautiful. Life, thank goodness, has a way of insisting on itself. I find if I can get myself to focus on what’s beautiful, I have a chance of handling what’s painful. Because I want to learn to handle pain. Not just run from it. That’s what my mother did – run. She would do anything she could to avoid pain. Including drinking a bottle of gin a day.”

Elfreda nodded. “Best anaesthetic I know.”

“The problem is, you need to keep pouring it into your body. And it makes most bodies sick.”

Elfreda’s eyes deadened. Without looking at me, the old woman shook her head and struggled to her feet. I’d lost her.

I looked at her and smiled. I knew there was no point in saying anything more. Psychologically, addictions were world class wrestlers. Until a person learned a lot of tricks about fighting back, they ran the show. “Thanks for what you brought,” I called after her as she meandered off into the night. She looked small and vulnerable. Feeling chilled, I unzipped the sleeping bag and crawled down into it.

How I yearned for the comfort of my own bed. It was dark now. Go. No one will see you. You can be in your own cosy bed within minutes.

Something sticky was in my hair. Turning on the flashlight, I spotted a thin rope of sap oozing from the cut made earlier by the saw.

I touched the wound with my finger, then pulled it away. This was the finger I had scraped in my skirmish with Curt. I moved my finger into the light. The sap and my own blood joined.