Rules for Speaking to Trees

Later, the one thing Paul remembers for certain is that Martin told him how glue was made the same day he died.

“They pull the stuffing out of racing horses and melt it down and mix it all up with honey,” his brother said. “That’s why it dries quick and smells just a little bit sweet.” It was a hot day in June, not quite summer but long after the duck eggs they’d found hatched, and Paul followed Martin out into the woods.

“But what happens to the horses?” Paul wanted to know. He liked horses. They were large and he was a little bit afraid of them, but the ones their uncle kept always smelled like oatmeal and nibbled his hair.

“Shh – listen,” Martin hissed as the breeze stilled and the sun beat down. “I told you, you could only come if you promised to be quiet.”

 Quiet: Martin’s first rule. Or the forest’s, Paul was never sure.

Their dirt-smeared heels made crescents in the rain-softened earth as they walked, shoes dangling by their laces around their necks. They’d have to wash their feet at the pond before they went home or Father wouldn’t let them inside. They’d have to sleep outside where they belonged, with the foxes and the squirrels.

“Bears out here, you think?” Paul whispered.

“Listen.” The second rule.

Paul listened.

“Of course there are bears.”

“Big bears?”

“Bigger than you.”

“Bigger than you?”

“Bigger than me.”

“Bigger than Papa?”

“Bigger than the gosh-darned moon. Now listen. I didn’t bring you out here to talk.”

“What are we listening to again?”

Martin sighed. “To them, stupid.”

“Them who?”

“The trees.”

Paul wasn’t sure about the trees. They were big and quiet and he could never quite tell what they were thinking. They didn’t have any eyes that he could see, and yet he always felt like they were watching. Watching him. Or something like him, maybe.

Martin liked the trees. He talked about them like they had real words to say. Like he really could understand them. Maybe it was something that came with being twelve. Paul thought his older brother was probably the smartest person he’d ever known in all the nine years he’d known anyone, but this was the one point he thought Martin was stupid on. Trees didn’t talk, everyone knew that. Everyone Paul knew, at least. Everyone except Martin.

“Well what do they sound like, then?” But Martin didn’t answer. The older boy had stopped. His eyes were closed. His face was all scrunched as he listened to the unspeaking trees. His lips were parted just slightly as if waiting to speak himself.

What are they saying to you?

Paul let a sigh escape his lungs and kicked an impatient heel into the dirt. It must have made a bigger noise than he thought, because when he looked back at his brother, one of Martin’s rusty copper eyes watched him intently, annoyance tilting the lid.

“You can go home if you want,” he said, shutting his eyes again, returning his attention to the trees. But it was rule three that he never went through the woods by himself, but he thought that rule might have come from his mother rather than the uninteresting trees. Certainly it hadn’t come from Martin. He imagined himself marching off, saying “Alright, I will” in a voice three years older than he was that could understand trees, walking back through the woods all the way to the house where Mother would be reading an old book and Father would be whittling something new with his knife––

Paul stayed where he was next to Martin where he couldn’t understand the trees and didn’t know the way back to the house on his own, and his breath caught when he suddenly thought he saw something in the distance and heard a loud dragging through the branches.

The wind changed then, and Paul remembered to breathe. Martin opened his eyes.

“Let’s go then,” he said, stretching his arms high over his head like he was waking up from a nap. He started away, quickly enough for Paul to scramble after him but never fast enough for Paul to worry. Martin was always good like that. Martin always waited just long enough for Paul to catch up. He didn’t even complain when Paul reached for his hand now. Out of habit, of course. Not fear.

“Where are we going?”

“Not far,” Martin said.

“Martin?”

“Paul.”

“Do you really think there are?”

“What.”

“Bears?”

“Oh.”

The wind tracked them in and out of the trees. Paul’s hand hung loosely in Martin’s. One of their grips changed as a shadow passed over the sun.

“Maybe.”

Somewhere, a tree bough snapped as some bird took wing.

“Have you ever seen one?”

“No.”

A stone rolled down a bank and into a stream.

“Dad says there are lots of things here that we can’t see.”

“He does.”

A mound of dirt was shifted by an earthworm.

“Do you think there are bears and we just can’t see them but they can see us?”

“Seems like maybe.”

“Martin?”

“Paul.”

“If you see a bear will you promise you’ll tell me?”

“Sure.”

They walked on, the light flickering down, the leaves coming loose from their branches, the wind whispering wordless secrets around them. Paul wondered if Martin was still trying to listen to them all. His face was calm now, but he glanced up every now and again like he was looking for something.

Soon, or later, glints of water rippled through the trees. Paul looked at his brother with a grin. This was a broken rule. Rule four: Never play near the pond. But here they were. And Paul raced Martin to the edge. The land poked into their feet as they swept across it, the thud of their bare soles against the earth a heartbeat that slowed as they got close and stopped on the smoothed pebble shore.

“We have to think kind thoughts and praise the clearness of the water, remember?” Martin said. “If you don’t, the pond won’t let you out again. The water won’t be clear. The bottom will be too far away to see and it won’t matter at all.”

“And we can’t go past our knees.” Paul knew that rule. His mother told him that one.

Paul liked the pond much better than he liked the trees. He could hear the water, and when he stood directly over it, he could see it had eyes.

He was never quite sure how to greet it, though, when he approached. Should he tell it good morning or good afternoon? Should he comment on the day, or maybe how he’d been enjoying the weather? Wasn’t it lovely that the warm air had come back, last winter was brutal to be sure. But the water never gave him any clues, and never spoke to him like the trees might speak to Martin. It just gurgled and shooshed along the rock, talking to other things maybe, but never to him.

“Hello,” Paul whispered.

Phroosh, the water sang.

Paul watched the ripples on the rock, the movements of fish and snails and whatever else lived here. He tried to hear what they were saying, the little creatures whose voices might travel in those waves, might break through the surface on the stones. Maybe he could hear those, even if he couldn’t understand the water itself.

Martin was already stepping through the clear surface, his trousers rolled to his tanned knees. He didn’t say anything to Paul, who hurried to follow, water still lapping as Martin walked further from the shore along the shallow bottom. The rocks were warm here at the very edge. He knew they would get colder the further he went.

The breeze pushed through his shirt as it stole through the treeline behind him. The leaves rustled. He imagined footsteps.

“I don’t really think there are bears around.” This seemed like something he should make clear to the pond. It seemed the kind of thing the pond cared about, Paul’s being brave, Paul’s knowing what was and wasn’t afoot.

“I think there are other scary things, but I think they won’t seem so scary when I see them up close.” He didn’t think this counted as a lie. Not lying was another rule. He thought about how he often didn’t know how things would be until after they had happened, like seeing all those broken egg shells under the porch where the ducklings had left them, and the brand new ducks scrambling around while their mother cleaned their fragile feathers. He stopped and listened. He looked out along the pond’s surface, clean even with Martin’s feet through it. The bottom was wide, and even though Paul could see the other side, it looked like its collection of stones went on into forever.

“Can I ask you a question?” Paul held his breath. Martin was too far to hear him now, whatever Paul would say next. The pond wavered with the last of Martin’s ripples and then fell still. Paul could feel it listening.

“Why can’t we see the bottom?” He was whispering, just in case his voice carried. “Why do you only let us see the rocks and let us go up to our knees? I know there’s more you’re covering up, the thing that Mother warned me about if I broke the rules. Sometimes I can feel it when I walk, when that funny cold comes up through the pebbles...I can tell there’s something else...”

Paul watched the water exhale.

One wave rolled gently along the rock and tapped the boy’s toes as if to urge him forward, deeper. The bottom shifted as it took the weight of one foot, two. The bottom looked strange in the late shadows of the trees. It seemed to taper into a darkness the water had never betrayed before. It looked like it went on into a very different forever than Paul had thought earlier.

Paul’s eyes were drawn to the single set of ripples that ribbed the surface around him. He scanned the opposite shore for Martin. The older boy must have gone all the way across. Was he there on those far rocks? The forest picked up again on the other side, maybe he’d snuck back into the trees. Paul waited to call out. Martin was somewhere even if he couldn’t be seen.

The dark shadowed spots sunk between Paul and the shore. A new ripple bubbled up and toppled over the water where Paul was looking, far out into the pond’s center, where the water looked darkest.

Deepest.

He made himself think of a fish bobbing there, scooping up a late afternoon snack from the surface. He couldn’t see any kind of fin from here. No telltale glint of scales graced the air. Something he called Suspicion to avoid naming Fear burrowed deep into his gut. It ate its way into his chest and squeezed hard.

“Martin?”

Paul wasn’t sure what the rule was about running through the pond, about churning the water until the rocks were swept behind him and the only sound he could hear was his own feet crashing through the glass. He stumbled, fell. The water was cold and jumped in surprise at so much body falling in at once. It was strange, seeing the water dark like it was right before him now. He thought about the images he’d seen of an oil spill, how the light danced over the smooth puddles like little bits of silk. He thought about oil billowing from below, filling everything, obscuring the surface. Peering down through the water, a face loomed up to follow his own, the eyes of the pond wide and scared and sad. They didn’t mean it; they were sorry.

Paul dug into the pebbles with his fingers, tried to catch glimpses of his brother beneath like a body through ice, but the pond maintained the image of the bottom exactly as it was. As far as he pressed, all was stone and sand. And Martin–

What would happen if Paul stepped out into that dark water under the shadow? What would happen if he followed his brother? He always followed his brother...Martin always knew more. Paul tried to decide if Martin had really known what would happen if they broke the rules. He tried to decide if he had broken the rules. If Martin had. He tried to decide if either of them had known they’d done so. He didn’t think so.

Paul stood up. His clothing stuck and he took a shaky step forward. With one more he hit the darkness, his foot lingering half out of the water. He thought he could see Martin’s hand reaching up, up, up, reaching for his ankle, thought he felt the nails snatch at his toes as his foot came down on the pebbled bottom.

The water cleared.

The stones blew a chill breath as they took Paul’s weight.

The shadows slunk back into the treeline as the sun continued to shine.

The bottom of the pond resumed its infinite clarity.

Martin was playing a trick. Martin was really just on the other side of the pond hiding in the trees, watching him unseen, playing the bear. But the water was so still, and Martin had been here, and now he was not. What was Paul supposed to do? He should not be here alone. But he hadn’t been alone…

He could feel his feet turning through the shallow water. Felt them walking him back to the shore. Felt the gentle sloping of the pond’s bottom as it brought him back to the dry rocks, the warm earth, the pairs of sneakers in the grass. Paul stepped from the water and picked up the shoes. His feet were clean.

He laced the sneakers. He held the second set in his hands. He should leave them on the rocks. For Martin. If Martin walked home through the woods without them his feet would be dirty again and Father would make him sleep outside.

With the bears.

Paul’s suspicious fear had wormed through Paul’s chest now. He hadn’t felt it climbing up his spine, but now it sat comfortably in his brain, gnawing away and whispering its little truths to him. Horror gripped him and he began to run, back through the clover and into the trees, never quite thinking about how he didn’t know the way back home. Not quite thinking about how he couldn’t understand the trees or how they seemed to part around him, leading him there.

He imagined himself falling out of the treeline, saying “I don’t know what happened” in a voice with nine years and a whole lot of scared behind it, making it all the way to the house where Mother would put down her book and Father would drop his knife on the kitchen floor––

Something cracked loudly through the wood, and he felt one of the trees reach out and stop him, sending him hard into the soft earth. He sat on his knees. His eyes burned. Was that a shadow?

“Martin?”

The crack came again, louder this time, closer. Footfalls crushed the leaves in the dry not-yet-summer air. A shadow passed over the sun. Paul believed he saw something across the trees, not once looking his way, keeping its stocky head close to the ground. It breathed heavily through a thick snout, sniffing for...something. Slowly, it came to a standstill. Raised its monstrous eyes to the sky, came to rest on an unseen something rustling through the leaves. The rustling ceased after a moment. The creature bowed its head back to the earth. Listened.

Paul sat and watched it go, his breath clutched tight like he’d lose it if he let go, until slowly Paul’s lungs released their captive air. A little sob that was louder than he thought it’d be escaped alongside it.

The little worm of fear had finished with him and eased its way from his head, making his eyes water and spill over with everything it had revealed. Paul pressed his knuckles into the dirt and cried tears that came with the realization that the world had fallen silent. The trees were statues, the wind whistling through their petrified limbs. There was a rule to their quiet, he was sure of it, but he didn’t know what it was or what it meant.

Do you think there are some words that we just can’t hear but that we can understand?

“Seems like that’s how it might work.”

Later, Paul thinks about glue. Even as an old man, he isn’t sure how he feels about the trees, and, long after he turns twelve, he is both disappointed and pleased that he still can’t understand what they were saying. He can hear them, and this is the difference. He realizes that his brother probably hadn’t been able to understand them either, but knew what they wanted to say and simply liked to listen to their strange voices.

Now, Paul watches his granddaughter talking in the yard. To the trees. Like she understands them. Like they have real words to say. He often thinks of warning her, of telling her not to listen too closely. There are rules, and she has to be careful to follow them. But maybe she already knows that. Maybe the trees have told her like they did Martin.

Maybe it is something that comes with being young.