June 2010 — Flea Market Zombies

“Come on,” she says, and she grabs your hand to tug you away. “Parts store’ll be closed we don’t get moving.”

“Yeah,” you say, staring over your shoulder as you follow.

You fix the car. You kiss the girl. You buy her dinner and take her home. All this you do methodically. In the back of your mind you hear the voice of the tree urging you to return once night falls. Bring a rope, it says, and I’ll tell you all that I know, and maybe more. You decide to do just that, because you’ve always been curious, and now you’ve seen the tree and it has seen you.

You go. You loop the rope over your shoulder and you climb up. You don’t stop to wonder if the dead limbs will bear your weight, not even for a second. You work your way into the crook of the tree, breathless and sweating, skin rubbed raw in patches. You listen to the sound of the leaves, to the peepers and tree frogs, to the crickets. It’s good to get away from the city, far away from the known world. You knot the rope to have something to do with your hands while you wait for the tree to tell you what comes next.

You sling it over a branch, so if you fall you’ll have something to catch hold of. That’s what you tell yourself. Then you hear it, the papery voice that you’ve been waiting for, the one that promises that you can bring them back, that you can be them, and know them, and save them, and all so easily. Just a drop. You see a headlight through the leaves. A moped stops below.

“Hey, I see you up there. What the hell do you think you’re doing?” You marvel at her presence here, and wonder what she hears when the tree speaks.

“Nothing,” you reply, and you climb down just as careful as you can, but you leave the rope. You tell her you were going to carve her initials in the bark, and she scolds you never to think such a thing, but you can’t tell if she means the lie or the truth. She takes you home, her home, to a dirty trailer with little in it other than the bed with tousled sheets. You make love, but when you get up, she’s gone. The voice of the tree is still there. Screaming.

You find her there, frantically sawing ancient branches, the rope a discarded coil at its trunk. She sees you standing at the bottom.

“You hear it?” she shouts. “Do you? Do you hear it?”

You shake your head, because you know that if you nod, she’ll cut down the whole damn thing and there won’t be any saving anybody.

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