By Carol Emshwiller
If you want to hug a tree, here’s the perfect place for it. They all belong to us, and we wouldn’t bother, but we don’t mind if you do it. There are no better ones than these to hug, stunted, weathered, half dead. They’re more used to hardships than any of us so, good to hug them.
We’re crepuscular. And grayish, which makes us hard to see. We’re wide-awake when you’re tired.
You bring dogs to sniff us out, but we outwit them. If caught, which is rare, we lie about ourselves. We pretend we’re you.
When it’s cool we wear squirrel hats and jackets. From a distance, you think we’re those wild furry people you keep talking about, but those wild people are of another sort entirely. But if you think we’re them, all the better.
In certain spots, way up here, there are more of us than of you. You come in small groups or alone. It’s us you’re looking for. Sightings? If we want you to have them, then you’ll have them.
But we watch you——follow you, here and there; set up blinds you think are piles of brush. We use your own field glasses. (You often lose them. When we come out to clean up after you, there they are. Sometimes cameras, too. We don’t use those. How would we get film developed way out here? Though sometimes we play a joke on you and take pictures of each other and then leave the camera back where one of your kind will find it, develop it, and wonder: Who are these odd people making funny faces?
We giggle when we see you, crunch, crunching around, your big feet on dry leaves, or slipping on wet moss. We giggle when you think you’ve caught a glimpse of us. That’s not us.
Lately the woods are full of you——and tin cans and plastic water bottles, sunglasses.... There’s hardly a place to sit alone and contemplate anymore. And God forbid (your God) that we should stand, anymore, at the top of anything, silhouetted against the sky!
Don’t think we don’t have weapons. Silent ones, unlike yours. You don’t know you’re hit till you’re hit, and you never know which direction it came from. Crossbow with darts. So silent, we can shoot and miss more times than several and you don’t know you’re being shot at until you’re shot.
As to your weapons, we make sure our babies’ first words are, “DON’T SHOOT.”
I’m the mother. I don’t mean that really. I mean, I’m the oldest and wisest. I lead my group around at an arthritic limp and everybody calls me Maaaaaaaah. I haven’t had any other name since...I can’t remember when. If I approve of something, then that’s what happens.
When one of us gets hurt it’s me they call. They know, by now, that I know about all there is to know around here.
In order to avoid you, we have nothing to do with the highest and therefore most popular mountains. What difference does it make, high or a little bit less high?
But we’ve captured one of you.
I was sitting here reading from your manuals about us. Most of the books insist we do exist. A few say maybe. Some say we don’t. There are many of you who swear you’ve seen us and have pictures to prove it. They’re lying and the pictures are fakes. Others write about how those people are crazy. We’re like flying saucers, maybe yes, maybe no. Except it’s not exactly us they write about. It’s those others who live farther back. It’s said those others are so cold they sleep with rattlesnakes to keep them warm. We don’t believe that, anymore than we believe we don’t exist.
You say we’re seven feet tall and fuzzy. That’s not us.
So I was sitting here in my favorite shady spot reading when they brought one of you in. An old man almost as old as my own old man got to be. I wondered why they’d bring a grown man up home this time of year. Our women are running around as if it was mating time. All because of this poor old man. It’s the gang caught him. They’ll do anything just to be different or to shake their elders up.
I like the old man’s looks. Gray-haired like us and nice and bony. Younger men are too baby-faced for my taste. I never liked that look even when I had a baby face myself. Such faces are all right for the young but softness of that sort is scary in a man when one must trust one’s life to him. Mostly it’s our men who keep you from us. They will sacrifice themselves if need be.
You can see on his face that this man can’t figure out if we’re us or his kind? I suppose we look odd. (You never look odd to us. We’ve seen you much too often.)
This man has the usual paraphernalia: camera, backpack, field glasses, big notebook full of notes and maps. He must be here on purpose. In his backpack, food, including three little easy-open cans of apricots. I sample one right away. Since I’m the maaaaaaaah, I have the right.
I ask the gang, “Why have you brought this one up here among us. If you don’t know that’s got to be the end of him, you should go down with the fathers and stay there.”
“He knew.”
“He didn’t, but now he does.”
“He did, too.”
“There’s nothing to know.”
But then I see he’s hurt. His arm hangs in an odd way and he’s holding on to it.
“We didn’t do that. He had that already.”
I don’t trust these young ones. They’re at a bad age. Well, but they usually tell the truth.
“Bring him here and hold him down.”
(Up this close those young ones smell bad. It’s a sign of maturing.)
I put my foot in the man’s armpit, grab his wrist and pull and twist and pop his shoulder back in place. I bandage him so it won’t move.
If he didn’t look good to me, I wouldn’t have.... Well, yes, good looking or not I would have. Would I do less for a wounded turkey vulture than for this man? I nursed a vulture all spring. Everybody knows that.
I give this man broth. I don’t tell him what’s in it. We know you better than you know us. Best he not know. To him it’ll taste as buttery as snails.
“I’m Maaaaaaaah,” I say.
Right after, when he says his name, I don’t listen. Why know a thing like that when...well....
I’ve been inside your cabins lots of times——even when you were there. Sometimes, as I walked right past you, I could hardly keep from laughing out loud at how you didn’t even know I was in your shadows. I made myself peanut butter sandwiches. I drank your milk. There was one particular cabin——large for a summerhouse. It was all woody inside. Smelled of cedar and pine. Big wood pile outside.... (You never miss what wood we take.) Usually your cabins have chandeliers made from wagon wheels and horseshoes, but here there was a cut glass chandelier, small though, in the cabinet, teacups with gold on them, on the table, silver candlestick holders. I really did want one of those. Each held three candles and had silver leaves all up and down it. I went up to our home and thought about it for a couple of days, and then I came back down and took one. After all, there were four. After all, I’m the maaaaaaaah.
I could have made this man soup from your supplies, because once your campers get started, you don’t realize how heavy your packs are and how tired you’ll be, and how you’ll lose your appetite because of altitude. You hide things along the trail that you think to pick up on the way home. We watch from our watching spots, thinking: Ha, ha, you’ll search and search and wonder how you could have forgotten so soon and only a couple of days later. You even wrote where you hid it in your little book on flowers or the little one on birds or the little book where you write about this trip you’re taking right now, and you still can’t find that food.
(Why do you leave your food so as to cut down on the weight and not your books? More often we find glasses and cameras than we find those little nature books or your notebooks.)
By now, this man will be wondering, where are those furry ones? You’re always getting us mixed up with them.
I say, “I can take you where you want to go.”
But he has to rest up a bit first so I can still sit here in my shade listening to the ravens. It’s the stone that doesn’t roll——that sits as I do——that gathers moss. That accounts for my greenish tinge.
I say, “You can catch a glimpse of them.”
Now look at this. Already he’s clumping around, snooping, peering but seeing nothing, standing right on our vegetables. Of course our gardens don’t look like gardens to you, they just look like the normal forest floor. (Our walls look like just more greenery or random piles of sticks. You walk right through them. This man already has done it several times.)
But our rattlesnake is waiting there, in the garden.
I should have listened when that man said his name. I hadn’t thought there’d be any need to call him.
I say, “I’ll go with you and lead the way.”
(I’ll go with him even though the gang thinks he’s theirs.)
This year those young ones won’t wear hats. Even in the rain. (They chew your used up gum. Smoke your cigarette butts. They want to try everything.)
I do love that gang. I love the overgrown, the clumsy and wild and insecure and smelly. Or, on the other hand, I love the stunted, the dry, the half dead. This old man has eyes as gray as shadowy water.
What attracted me right away were his stringy muscles, the hair on his arm, that wispy mustache, mostly white. What attracted me was how he laughed when he tried on our hats.
There has to be a reason why he came. What if he’s tired of being one of you all the time and would rather be us?
Helicopters come, flying low. They keep searching back and forth. They’re noisy. Even the noisy gang doesn’t like it. Even this man doesn’t like it. If he wanted to, he could show himself and get himself rescued. I couldn’t stop him.
The gang goes out and cavorts around in plain sight. We’re as pale as the slate-like fragments of limestone we sit on. We wear cobwebs. They make us wispy and dim. We can disappear right before your eyes.
Since the man isn’t showing himself, he might as well look out over those fuzzy others in their habitat.
“In situ,” I say. “Just look over, don’t go down. You have to promise not to.”
I give him a lesson for the journey as I’ve already done, and many times, to the gang. “Some mosses you can eat, and some pine needles. You can eat the roots of Solomon seal if you don’t mind a little——quite a bit, that is——of grit. You can eat ants. You can roll in dust as a sun screen or plaster on mud.”
He’s taking more notes. (I do love the way all of you cling to your notes and your bird books.)
*
When I was young I once showed myself right in the middle of the trail. I
just stood there, all greenish and gray. It was to one of you about my own
age, climbing up, geologist’s hammer hanging on his belt. I liked his
looks though I couldn’t see much under his hat. Well, I liked his legs,
strong and brown and covered with curly golden hairs.
I stood in a spot where the sun streamed——one of those shiny golden
streaks——down——just on me. I wanted to be his vision
of a forest nymph of some sort, and that he’d never forget me, but he
looked at me, staring so, that I got scared and skipped away, not as gracefully
as I’d hoped. It turns out I’m the one who has the memory forever.
That man might have been this man right here.
There was an episode in a cabin, I the succubus. It was dark, but not completely.
There was a moon——gibbous of course. I’m not sure who the
man was but it might have been this one. (I caught a glimpse of legs with
curly hair.) I was no more than a shadow in a shadow, but I was hoping there
was a glistening around my edges.
At first he didn’t want to but I don’t think he was frightened.
He resisted. Just in case, I had feathers in my hairdo, and a bag of wild
strawberries. I whispered things. I sucked.
Then after twisting about a bit, one position and another, I lay under, as
a succubus should.
Once he got started, I lost count of how many times. After all, he was a mountain
climber and in perfect shape as all those who come here usually are. I felt
he loved me. Too bad I hadn’t seen his face, neither then nor on the
trail in the shadow of his hat.
Misty or Dandy, I forget which, could be his son.
We begin the journey to the looking-over site.
I flit and flutter, slither and slide. My old man used to say I was like a
humming bird or a butterfly. I wonder if this old man can see that?
We always think of you as not noticing much.
He takes my picture.
He says, “I’ve always believed in you creatures. When I looked
out the windows of my cabin, I saw shapes dancing. I locked my doors; even
so, I saw, in the corners, shadows that seemed on top of shadows. Now and
then I missed a package of frozen green beans.” (Maybe I took those
beans.)
Flit and flutter, skip and slide and so forth.... I wanted to be, “Shrouded
in mystery,” as you always say we are, but I was thinking too much about
how I looked flitting. I’m the one who stumbles. I had not thought such
a thing would ever happen. You’re usually the ones who fall. I scrape
myself, top to bottom. I hurt my good leg. I tear my grays.
That man picks me up. His arm, my leg.... We’ll have to help each other.
At least it’s my forest.
So, with many hardships along the way, including the aforementioned, having
climbed up and over from one valley to the next, having slept in a hollow
with leaves over us, having chewed on wintergreen, having eaten whole meals
of nothing but chanterelles, we arrive at the looking-over point.
I dress him in a stick hat and a few vines. He’ll look like that candelabra
of mine (or perhaps it’s his), leaves all up and down him. He gets his
camera ready and we enter the blind. I push a peephole for him and one for
myself, and we look down on the fuzzy ones’ habitat.
Cottages of stone and wood, gardens with little flags to label the vegetables,
bird baths, goldfish ponds, here and there a ceramic rabbit. There’s
an iron deer.
I say, “There’s a deer,” and, “Here they are, the
furry ones. Don’t they look nice, all glittery in their golden coats?”
Except they’re not there. He’ll think I made this all up.
I say, “Their little ones are so cute.”
He’s got his field glasses out now. He says, “Where? Where?”
“You can’t see it from here, but their eyes are green.”
Why am I saying all this? I’m the romantic notion. I’m the hope.
I’m the story. He’s been writing me down everyday. We’re
the: Wish-you-existed-after-all people.
I think he’s going to go on down even though he promised not to. I don’t
think I’m strong enough to keep him from it.
I say, “We’re as important to the forest as these fuzzy ones.
If we weren’t here, some other creature would have to take our place.
Put that in your notebook.”
But he’s going on down.
Of course the gang has followed us. There’s not a place they don’t
roam (or anybody they don’t follow), outskirts of towns, back yards,
mountaintops.... Those young ones not only won’t wear hats. This year,
they expose their navels. They cut cute little three-inch holes in their shirts.
Where did that idea come from? As if it has to come from anywhere. Those young
ones think all sorts of things. But it could be worse.
We try to keep them out of danger, but they don’t listen. I used to
be that way myself. They’re at an age when they’re easily mortified.
Just as I used to be, and they never apologize.
However, it’s when your little kids get lost in the woods, that our
young ones show their best side. First, they take them by the hand and lead
them to a place full of flowers. Then they feed them berries. After that,
they take them to where you can find them, and they sit with them until you
do. Or, if you don’t come, they bring them home to us.
He says, “Well, where are they?”
I say, “But it’s you, the mysterious ones and don’t even
realize it. Perhaps it’s even you, the ones important to the trees.
You hug them and kiss them. You sit in the tops to protect them. Sit sometimes
for months. What could be more like us than what you do?”
But he’s crawled out of the blind. He’s standing up in plain sight,
field glasses at his eyes, camera dangling.
“Why don’t you sit and contemplate for a few minutes. Give them
time to manifest themselves. There’s one now. Over to the right, half
way behind the rose bush.” (There isn’t.)
I could have sneaked away and gone down there myself in one of our fur suits,
but I forgot to bring one.
I have my crossbow and a dozen darts. I told him the dangers are few, but
one never knows. I said, “No harm in being ready.”
We always aim for the lower leg.
Then, there they are at last, the fuzzies! A dozen. Of course it’s our
young ones. I can practically see who’s whom by the way they cavort.
Dandy, the thinnest and oldest, doing his usual leaps over hedges. They’re
doing everything right, climbing fruit trees, digging in the marigolds....
Except it’s too late already. My finger’s on the release. There’ll
be just a little swishing sound. I let go right where I aimed, into the big
muscle of the lower leg. Those darts are small and sharp. At first he doesn’t
know what happened, and then he’s on the ground. Not so much because
of pain. Yet. But because his leg gave way. He thinks it collapsed by itself.
It’s too bad, but I don’t think he even had a chance to take one
single picture of the furry ones. (Nobody would have believed the pictures
anyway.)
Does he realize I’m the one who shot him?
I throw the bow into the brush. Best to pretend I don’t know he’s
shot.
There’s no blood. There never is.
He’s examining his calf. He’s going to pull the dart out.
“Don’t do that! ...Till I get my bandages ready.”
He won’t be able to go anywhere, especially not in a hurry.
Those young ones finally realize what’s happened. They come up to us,
still wearing their fur suits. Dandy is the first to get up here. He’s
more or less the leader. I suppose the exposed belly buttons were his idea.
Oh, for Heaven’s sake, they’ve even done that to their fur suits——cut
little holes. They love to take chances.
I say, “He got shot.”
“We didn’t do that.” They all say it, practically in unison.
“Well.... I suppose not.”
It’s so easy to put the blame on them. They expect it, too. All I have
to do is keep my mouth shut.
“Make one of those little stick stools. Four of you to carry him and
two can help me. Then, when we get to the edge, you know what to do.”
And they do it. Showing their navels and all. And with clicks and clucks and
lots of giggling. They don’t even realize, but when have young ones
ever?
There’s this longing in you. All of you. Even if you were sure we didn’t
exist you’d still hope. We intend to live so as to fulfill your dreams
and expectations——be of some worth to those of your ilk. Who would
there be to sneak and follow? Come upon you suddenly. Who would live at the
corners of your lives? Who would there be to be us if not us?
You stop and listen. All of you do. Every snap and rustle has a meaning. You
look. You turn around fast to see what’s behind you.
You want to believe in us and we...I, especially, want to be believed in.
It’s always been my main goal.
That man went over with his field glasses and camera and notes and birding
book and tree book, even one leftover can of apricots.
I wish I knew which cabin used to be his.
I wish I knew his name. I should have listened when he said it.
I wanted to keep him but of course that was never possible.
Well, at least we didn’t break any of our own rules. At least I don’t
have to know what happened. I mean, not exactly.
