Author’s note: While camping over Labor Day with a group of friends, sitting around the campfire and watching autumn leaves cascade down off the trees in a shower of golden hues I was struck by the thought that every leaf represented a minute of warm weather which was rapidly coming to an end. When the leaves were all gone, so too would be summer. And THEN I thought...
He awoke far too early with the dread certain feeling that something was wrong. Somewhere, somehow things weren’t as they were supposed to be.
He wasn’t surprised at the feeling – he had been anticipating it, and after his morning shower and cup of decaf, walked over to the living room window to look across the street. He was in no hurry to take in this particular view, he had a pretty good idea what he was going to see, a vista that had been a long time coming.
But knowing the inevitable wasn’t the same as living it, and he was still deeply saddened to see the Tree in front of his neighbor’s house had finally shed its last withered leaf. Even at this early hour, friends and relatives were gathering for the final task, sorting through the fallen leaves and beginning to prune the dead branches. He knew he would have to join them soon (he was honorary custodian of the block’s chain saw, after all) but he didn’t relish the thought. He’d been quite close to the old widow across the street, who’d been a surrogate grandmother to his kids as they grew up and wasn’t looking forward to the evening’s bonfire, which was always a bittersweet event. No doubt, this would be a big fire. The woman had lived her whole, long life in the same house, so she (and, of course) her Tree had never weathered the stress of transplantation. In its prime, its canopy would block out the sun and throw a welcome pool of cool shade over her lawn and half the street.
He looked sadly at his own Tree, standing forlornly by itself in his yard, no longer accompanied by his wife’s (long gone) or his childrens’ (one married, one in college in Idaho – easier to move your Tree when you were young and it was still a sapling – so much harder as you grew older and your roots grew deeper), and he was so preoccupied with current events that he didn’t notice the change that had taken place in his yard.
Deep breath. He walked out to his garage, picked up the saw and proceeded across the street. Leaf sorting was going to take awhile, the old lady had been one who just let the leaves fall and accumulate on the ground, something he couldn’t understand. He had always kept his yard neat, picking up and cataloguing his foliage as it fell. But not her, and now the task fell to her heirs, a daunting task given the years of accumulation – still a foot deep even though many leaves had blown away and were lost forever. But they’d made a good start of it, and had the customary two piles, one quite large (the everyday events) and another much, much smaller (the truly significant moments). He selected a random leaf from the second pile and inspected the image on its surface, pleased to see that it was one he remembered; her daughter’s first piano recital. He’d been there, oh, so many years ago, and smiled as a melodic snatch of Claire de Lune wafted through his memory. A second leaf sported a scene he was unfamiliar with, some sort of family picnic from the looks of it, but on the third he found his son’s childhood likeness, dressed in Halloween hobo garb and on the receiving end of an enormous popcorn ball from the (much younger–weren’t we all) woman. “Keep it,” said the lady’s son, knowing he’d have to consign the vast majority of her leaves to the fire. As the nursery rhyme said, “Leaves will fall, can’t keep ’em all.”
The Trees were a blessing, and a curse. So nice to see the vibrant springtime green of the young couple down the block’s Trees, and know there were years stretching out ahead them, still nice to see his friend’s Tree in its Autumn gold glory – he’d earned those brilliantly colored leaves one day at a time, and the Tree still clung to the majority of them. Harder to see the withered and gnarled, sparsely covered branches of the old man’s Tree three doors down. He’d be joining the neighbor woman soon. Cancer. Root rot. Call it what you will. Even harder still to see the freshly cut stump of the teenage girl killed a month ago in a car accident. Nobody knew of the tragedy until her father came out to pick up his morning paper and found her Tree, stripped clean of its leaves overnight and standing skeletally bare against the gray morning sky. No one should have to see that. No one.
Yes, a blessing, and a curse.
He pulled the cord and the chain saw roared to life, a throaty growl that sent a primal shiver of fear down the backs of everyone who heard it. The sound of a saw never meant good news.
Hours later a neatly stacked cord of wood stood in the place the tree had occupied for so many years, the everyday leaves piled deeply around its base. Community and family gathered around in a circle as the woman’s body was carried out and placed gently on top. The funerary torch was lit and touched to the leaves which ignited with a whoosh and soon the night was chased away by a fiery blaze that swirled into the sky, dancing embers mixing with the stars in a crackling display of celestial fireworks. Later, when the fire had died down enough to allow a closer approach, he tossed a leaf from his own Tree onto the coals, his favorite part of the ceremony. Fittingly enough, the image imprinted on its surface was of the old woman standing in her doorway clutching her shawl, waving goodbye. It flared briefly to life and then was gone in a swirl of ash – so fitting.
That night, on his way home, he stopped to pick up the fallen leaves under his Tree – not unusual – mature Trees have a limited amount of leaves, just as the human brain has a limited capacity for data storage. Old growth is constantly shed to make room for new memory-leaves and he diligently sorted the rejects into their two-category bins. Odd, he thought, that there would be so many, a good double-handful, but he was too tired after the day’s events to give it much thought and wearily went to bed.
––•––
The next morning, as golden sunlight filtered through the Tree and cast a dappled pattern of light on his wall, he struggled to consciousness through blinding waves of a pounding headache. No ordinary migraine this, he thought while rubbing his temples and the feeling that something wasn’t right reasserted itself, hell, stood up and punched him in the gut with a force that took his breath away.
SOMETHING’S WRONG.
He cautiously sat up in bed, drawing slow, even breaths and willing his world to stop spinning, forcing the dizziness into a room in the back of his mind and then locking the door – a biofeedback trick he had learned long ago. It worked, at least enough to allow him to stay vertical, and he shuffled to the bathroom and took a long, hot shower. That helped too, and he nearly felt normal as he opened the door to fetch the morning newspaper before feasting on a large bowl of raisin bran.
Rising from the stoop, paper in hand, he almost turned and reentered the house when something caught his eye. A little flicker that scratched at the corner of his consciousness. More leaves lay on the ground beneath the Tree. That really shouldn’t be. And then he saw it.
A branch – a small one, thank god – had been neatly severed and spirited away during the night. No. Not one - TWO. The familiar outline of the Tree’s canopy had been irrevocably, deliberately altered, an almost unthinkable offense. No sane person would maim their, or anyone else’s Tree like that! Cutting off branches meant cutting out a piece of life, and was considered a deliberate, possibly deadly assault. For, just as the Trees reflected an illness in their person, the connection ran the other way as well. A branch torn away in a thunderstorm could mean paralysis in an arm, a trunk split by lightning – a heart attack or worse. And fire. Well, it was best not to think about fire. All in all, if you wanted to live a long life, it was wise to keep your Tree well watered and have the Arborist out a few times a year to check for fungus.
But there were always the psychopaths, thankfully rare but garnering a disproportionate share of time on the 10pm news hours (not really “hours” any more are they?) The bark harvesters. The mad carvers and sap-sucking, axe-wielding weirdos that made for good horror-flick plots. And the truly scary thing was the thing that nobody other than the black-dressed Goth fans of Marilyn Manson wanted to think about.
There really are those people. Out there. At night.
Carrying bright metal saws that flash in the moonlight and slice wood like a hot knife through butter.
––•––
The Reporter sat behind the wheel of her car watching the entrance to a small brownstone with mild interest. Stakeouts were the Wonder Bread of her job - plain and boring with just a hint of taste, but impossible to make a sandwich without. And this was looking to be one big ol’ Dagwood sandwich of a story – corruption, bribery and maybe a dash of extortion thrown in for good measure. Its the kind of thing that got you noticed down at the City Desk, the kind of thing Pulitzer dreams are made of.
If you could deal with the hours of stultifying boredom.
Sooner or later the bribe-taking councilman would come out and when he did, she would follow at a discreet distance. The story was almost finished, but she still needed to fit a few more pieces into the puzzle before it could run. Above, a hawk perched observantly on a light pole scanning the ground for signs of movement. A dog barked, a train whistle blew. The woman and the hawk took it all in.
Punctuating the tedium, a single sheet of paper flitted across the deserted street. She half expected to see a tumbleweed roll along behind it completing the gray, deserted cityscape - a scene that could easily have inspired Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” painting of a desolate diner.
Then, as if to answer her wishes, a gray Toyota pickup pulled up, parked and disgorged a small, bearish man wearing a second-hand trench coat and coke-bottle glasses who turned and shambled down the sidewalk. Every so often he would stop to inspect the plants growing in the boulevard and seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of interest in the Trees.
Not unusual, a lot of people liked to keep tabs on their neighbors’ health and activities, and the Trees, after all, were an open book of current and past events. Made interesting reading for the neighborhood busybodies. The leafy life records made it hard for kids to get away with the usual teenage activities, and made it equally difficult for the average person to commit anti-social or illegal activities. Made you think twice when you knew that an image of you losing your virginity would soon be featured for all to see in leafy glory on your Tree (and the embarrassing stuff always seemed to appear on the low-hanging, easily viewed branches.) The more hardened criminals just snipped the tell-tale leaves off, but they paid the price for such regular self-mutilation in pain and suffering – usually a deterrent, but for a certain masochistic set, a perverse incentive (the S&M crowd even hosted trimming parties, and called each other “snippers.”)
Still, the Reporter’s mild interest turned to shock when the man stopped at a honey locust in front of the councilman’s brownstone, glanced furtively from side to side and reached into his coat pocket. He produced a small pair of pruning shears, glanced around a second time, and proceeded to clip off a small twig – inserting its freshly cut end into a glass vial and returning shears and branchlet to his pocket. It was one thing to read about such things in the local counterculture rags, but another to actually witness such a mutilation.
The Reporter shook her head, unable to process the crime she had just witnessed, and was so overcome with disbelief she almost missed seeing the man bumble over and enter the door to the building’s lobby.
“That didn’t really happen,” she thought to herself, but her investigative instincts kicked in and she had the presence of mind to jot down the license number of the hobbling man’s vehicle.
––•––
“We have a problem,” the Pruner began, “that idiot down in Planning refuses to budge on the Tree allotment specs. My clients grow more displeased by the hour.”
“I don’t know what you expect me to do,” the Councilman replied, “Planning is entirely out of my purview. And even if it wasn’t, the Council will never grant a code variance to allow a development with such a small footprint allotted for the Tree garden. It would be political suicide. I’ve told you that before.”
“I refuse to believe that. I’ve shown you the studies.”
“Bullshit. Anyone can twist the science to show results they want. You just can’t plant Trees that closely together and expect them to thrive. Can’t be done. They need space and light, and your clients’ plan allows for neither. You can’t sacrifice peoples’ health just because a crowded garden puts more money in your pocket.”
“We’ve had this discussion before,” he said, “Health is a relative thing. And need I remind you that your cut comes out of that profit, the size of which is not yours to decide? You’re just not applying pressure in the proper manner.” And with that, he reached into his pocket and pulled out twig he had acquired earlier. “You’d be amazed at how peoples’ attitudes can change with the proper amount of persuasion.” He then produced a glass jar filled with clear liquid and carefully unscrewed the top. “Hydrochloric acid.” He grinned, and plunged the leaves into the jar.
“What the fuck!” the Councilman screamed and fell to the floor writhing in pain, angry red blisters erupting on his face.
“Weakling,” the Pruner hissed, “I’ll continue to handle the Planner myself. Pray that I succeed, and start calling in whatever favors you can on the Council.”
He placed the bubbling jar of withered leaves on the floor by the moaning man’s head, stepped over his body and walked out the door, chuckling.
––•––
After he had a chance to process the shock of seeing his mutilated tree, the man turned and stumbled back into his house. He stopped by the bathroom, and gulped a handful of Tylenol - the headache was going to be a bad one, but he knew as his Tree healed it would ease. He fumbled the container of capsules and dropped it, one hand barely functioning, his fingers oddly stiff and unresponsive.
Branch damage. Nerve damage.
The bastard had actually meant it, he thought and struggled to recall the anonymous phone call he’d received three days prior. Something about pushing plans through without a proper study...a development on the east end...
Then it all came back, “Play ball or else,” the caller had hissed. But for crying out loud, he was middle management. He couldn’t push a mailbox variance through Planning let alone an unorthodox project of that size and scope.
“Fucking idiot!” the Planner growled and walked into the garage, where he procured a can of fungicide from a shelf, opened the door and walked out to begin the process of healing his wounded Ash.
The Reporter watched as the odd little shuffling man emerged from the Councilman’s brownstone and immediately decided to abandon her stakeout in favor of this new and tantalizingly dangerous story. A Tree mutilator! She followed him across town to a run-down warehouse in an all but abandoned industrial park, where he exited his car and entered the building. She crossed the parking lot, sticking to the shadows looking for an opportunity to learn more. The building was in disrepair, and while none of the windows were broken, they were so covered with dust that she couldn’t see through. The woman ruefully eyed a rusty fire escape ladder that led to the roof, considered her options for a moment, and sighed. “In for a penny, in for a pound,” she told herself, and began to climb.
The ladder creaked and groaned in complaint, wobbling loosely as she ascended, loosened bits of brick and mortar raining down on her head. Ten feet from the top, the middle section of the ladder pulled free from the building with a rusty shriek and swung precariously below her feet. But she was able to scale the remaining distance and gain the rooftop just as the last anchor bolt let go and sent everything crashing to the ground.
Hearing the commotion, The Pruner looked curiously out a window, but seeing nothing returned to his task. The building was old and odd noises, clanking pipes or the occasional rat were par for the course. The entire top floor of the building was filled with Trees in large ceramic pots, each with a dangling tag that identified its rightful owner. The man walked from Tree to Tree with a large watering can, allowing each enough moisture to sustain it, but not promote growth. He wanted them (and their inter-connected owners) alive, but weakened. Occasionally he would stop and snip off a small twig – Tree and owner being in need of a reminder of just who controlled their destiny.
It was quite a profitable undertaking, each plant representing a monthly ransom payment deposited to an offshore account that changed on a bimonthly basis. As he walked, he hummed a tune in a minor key, and because human beings rarely look above their eye level, he was oblivious to the Reporter watching his every move through the skylight above.
The significance of the Trees had yet to dawn on her, although she was beginning to have suspicions. Third floor warehouse lofts weren’t the normal place for horticulturists to raise their crops, but it wasn’t unheard of either. Plenty of greenhouses were filled with ordinary trees and shrubs – not every plant in the world was connected to a corresponding human. It was a special calling.
And some people put their Trees in special nurseries if time, travel or other happenstance prevented them from caring for their own. There was a whole surrogate industry of Tree care for those who just couldn’t be bothered with the day-to-day burden of maintenance. And although most people still wanted the connection, the intimacy of caring for their Tree – the comforting ritual of filing the fallen leaves, more and more were abandoning the duty to paid minions, too busy in their interconnected, electronic world to care for another living thing, which in reality, meant too busy to care for themselves.
Hauling water to the Trees was hard work, and soon the overheated Pruner removed his shirt, draping it over a nearby branch. From her vantage point above, the incredulous Reporter gasped at what she saw. The man’s body was covered with protruding bumps and lumps, but even more horrifying were the bits and pieces of anatomy growing out at odd angles from his skin. Near his waist, a partially formed hand protruded, fingers writhing, constantly grasping at the air. Near his left shoulder, a distorted mouth struggled to form words, its broken and misshapen teeth chattering and grinding in a most sickening way. Scattered about his chest and stomach were several ears, and on his right bicep a yellowed and sclerous eye blinked and rolled blindly from side to side, tears running down his forearm. The man scratched absentmindedly at a red welt on his neck where a new part squirmed as it struggled to emerge, then reached in his pocket and produced a clipper with which he began to trim the nails of three toes wiggling on his right shoulder.
“All part of the process” the Pruner thought, unperturbed, as he stood at last before his own Tree, the only healthy and well-watered one in the building. “Healthy” was a relative term, the tree was a mishmash of grafted branches from a variety of different Trees the man was holding captive. He could feel the power as he added each new addition, here a small branch from the Banker’s Tree, there a twig from the sniveling little Accountant who lived above the neighborhood bar and was forced to cook his books.
As he carefully studied the numerous grafts, it slowly began to dawn on the Reporter that the man’s deformities were directly tied to the foreign additions to his Tree. What she didn’t know, was that the grafted bits and pieces gave the Pruner an intimate knowledge of his victims, more effective in some cases than others, depending on which part of the anatomy the branch identified with. His growing number of miscellaneous body additions were painful, aching necessities, well worth the power he gained. They gave him insight into people’s lives, he could almost read their minds as they became part of him, and through their ransomed Trees’ grafts, be controlled by him. He could see through their eyes, hear snatches of their conversations, feel their pain and joy. Taste their food and dream their dreams.
But what he didn’t realize was that the new parts were beginning to get the upper hand, clamoring ever more loudly for space in his brain, dozens of voices screaming in agony.
And it was slowing driving him insane.
––•––
As the Planner finished bandaging the ragged stumps of his missing branches he thought back through the last few months, searching for someone who might bear him ill will. One of his many abilities that enabled him to be a good planner was his nearly photographic memory. He could remember in detail waitress names from every restaurant he’d ever visited, his grade school report cards and the faces of every person he’d ever met at a party. As he turned the pages in his brain, flipping back day by day, a flood of images popped up. The old lady with a flowered print dress buying cantaloupes at the grocery store...she’d stormed off in a snit after he had selected the melon she apparently wanted, but he doubted she was his assailant. Teenagers at the gas station. The bass on their CD player was so loud the lenses in his sunglasses vibrated. Safe to rule them out as well, they were being obnoxious mainly because it was in their “teenager” job description.
Ah, but what’s this? A gray Toyota pickup parked across the street from his house, and the odd-looking operator behind the wheel who seemed to be paying an inordinate amount of interest to his Tree. He hadn’t thought twice about it at the time, but recent events threw up a red flag.
And then, suddenly, as he reflected on his memories an image flashed into his mind. Clear as day, he saw the warehouse followed by a crystal-clear vision of the Tree-filled third floor. He was overcome by an accompanying black cloud of rage - the emotion communicated so strongly it made him reel. He heard a chorus of babbling voices crying out in confusion and despair. The cacophony triggered a rotoscope of rapidly shifting scenes - workers paving a street, a dinner spread on a table, a cat sleeping peacefully on a lap, his own living room. Although he couldn’t know, he was seeing through the eyes of victims channeled by their common link, the Pruner’s multi-grafted Tree.
And then, just as suddenly as it came, the vision was gone, leaving the man on his knees, dizzy and overwhelmed.
“I’ve seen that warehouse before,” the Planner panted. He crawled over to his drafting room table where the latest requests for development lay spread for review. In a manila envelope containing the paperwork for the project with the inadequate Tree Garden he found an 8” x 10” glossy aerial photo of the property site. The warehouse stood front and center.
I’ve got you now, my friend,” he grinned and walked out the door.
––•––
On the warehouse rooftop the Reporter was searching for a way down, cursing the rusted ladder that had marooned her. She walked the perimeter, but finding no escape returned to her vigil at the skylight.
In the room below the misshapen man was pasting fallen leaves from his Tree into a large scrapbook while making meticulous notes by each. He continued this task for forty minutes, closed the book and placed it on a shelf lined with a dozen similar books. He then donned a jacket, made a cursory inspection of his surroundings and left, locking the door behind him.
The Reporter tried her cell phone again. No luck; the warehouse’s desolate location was miles away from the nearest cell tower. She then noticed a coil of electrical wire propped up next to an exhaust vent – probably left over from some forgotten construction project. The woman sat and pondered the wire for a moment, then walked over to the half-wall surrounding the rooftop. The building was in a sad state of disrepair and she soon found a loose brick which she was able to pry free with a minimum amount of effort. Returning to the skylight, she tossed it through one of the large panes of glass and then carefully cleaned the jagged edges and loose shards away from the edges. Looping the electrical wire around a protruding vent, she twisted the loose end of the wire around itself several times, pulling on it to make sure it was secure. She then dropped the remaining coil of wire through the broken window where it spiralled down to the floor below. The Reporter wrapped the wire around her back and up through her legs then cautiously backed up to the skylight and dropped through. The wire was much stiffer than a rappelling rope, which slowed her descent enough that she was able to make it down with little more than mild friction burns on her hands.
She had landed near the Pruners’ Tree and spent a few minutes inspecting the scenes on its leaves – childhood images that were quite normal, images from his later life that decidedly weren’t. She then turned her attention to the scrapbooks the man had been working on, and was soon engrossed in what she found documented there. Life Leaves and newspaper clippings along with meticulous paragraphs of handwritten notes told his tragic story.
Years earlier, he had been married to a lovely young lady – she of the golden hair and Mona Lisa smile – and he himself was quite the dashing young man. The Reporter had a bit of trouble reconciling the pictures with the twisted lump he had become, but there was no doubt it was the same fellow she had just been spying on. Here was an article with photos of their wedding, there were honeymoon leaves, weathered but still legible – the two of them at the Grand Canyon. A few years later in the desert surrounded by Saguaros. Dinner with friends.
The man was a brilliant botanist, showered with accolades from his peers. The two of them had been madly in love, so the Reporter had been only mildly surprised to read that he had intertwined his and his new wife’s Trees, grafting them together in an ultimate symbol of twisted togetherness and shared destiny. Soon they discovered they were sharing each other’s emotions, and as time passed, even each other’s thoughts. The Reporter didn’t think she could bear such a continuous union, but from the man’s writing he, at least, seemed deliriously happy.
Then, five years into their marriage, and halfway through the third scrapbook, disaster struck. Newspaper clippings documented her death by drowning, an accidental fall from a hiking trail to the fast water of a river below. The man had felt her terror as she slipped beneath the water.
His psychological damage and emotional devastation were compounded by the fact that their Trees had grown so closely together. And though the Tree surgeons had acted quickly lest her dying Tree would kill his as well, the operation was severe. Huge sections of his Tree’s trunk had to be sacrificed as the two plants were separated, intertwined branches were cut away. And some sections were impossible to remove, leaving pieces of his wife’s dead Tree forever embedded in his. Scars where bark had been stripped away were left open to the air, leaves and memories fell like rain.
From that moment on, the man’s notes became rambling and disjointed, but flashes of the brilliant botanist occasionally shone through. He tried to save himself by treating his Tree with the latest organi-chemicals and healing poultices, but the damage was deep and things deteriorated.
His body too was showing the ravages of his wounded Tree. He was barely able to walk or lift his paralyzed left arm. His eyesight was completely gone in one eye and his hearing severely diminished. He was in constant agony from a multitude of minor ailments.
And so it was that he desperately turned to a campaign of grafting stolen bits and pieces of other peoples’ Trees onto his own to repair the damage, an effort that seemed successful at first. But, gradually his writing became ever more disjointed. For it seemed that while the grafted parts may have healed the Tree’s physical wounds, the connection to their people began to work their way into his subconscious. Toward the end of the last scrapbook his leaves became increasingly deformed and his writing seemed to come from a dozen different voices. Even more disturbing was the increasing pleasure he seemed to be taking from his victims’s distress. He was beginning to relish the pain they felt, as if it validated his own wounds.
The last few pages were barely legible.
The Reporter replaced the book on the shelf and sat down, shuddering. Morning light shone through the windows, she had spent the entire night engrossed in the scrapbooks.
Suddenly, the woman was jolted out of her reverie by the clack-skritch-squeal of the door being unlocked and opened. The man was returning! She looked around the room in panic and seeing no escape dove behind the planter of the nearest Tree. Staying low to the ground, she peered around its edge.
The Pruner backed through the entrance struggling to drag a heavy carpet...no! The body of a man! It was obviously a difficult task for him, and when he had finally made it past the threshold he slumped to the floor, wheezing. Grinding and scratching noises emanated from beneath his shirt which wriggled and heaved in a dozen different places.
“You shouldn’t have come here, you idiot Planner,” he growled at the unconscious man who he then dragged over to a column and bound tightly. When he was done, he fetched a watering can and poured it over his captive’s head. The man coughed, sputtered and opened his eyes regarding the Pruner with confusion.
Ten feet behind the pair, the Reporter was alarmed to see the electrical wire dangling from the broken skylight, but the Pruner was too busy with his task at hand to give it any notice. “Why didn’t you play ball with me when you had the chance?” he hissed, nose to nose with the Planner. On his forehead an emerging fingertip twitched back and forth accusingly. “A simple variance in code was all I asked. Now, I’m afraid the measures will have to be more severe.”
He stumbled across the room and returned with a gas can and a bucket which he set on the large concrete pot holding his Tree. He filled the bucket with gasoline, clambered laboriously up to the Tree and grasped a limb.
“This is your branch, my obstinate friend,” he said, and ripped it away from the trunk.
“Aaugh!” the Planner grunted, but the pruner also cried out in pain, clasping a hand to his forehead. I trickle of blood ran out from under his fingers. “Hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “No matter, my pain will be nothing compared to what I have in mind for you.” And then his head twitched, and he looked around feverishly from side to side clasping his hands over his ears. “I can’t!” he shouted, “I can’t stop – leave me alone. Be quiet! You’ll see. It’s the only way!”
The man leapt to the floor, dipped the branch in the gasoline and produced a lighter from his pocket. A shrill squeal came from his back as the Pruner flicked it to life. “You’ll see,” he said, “it’s the only way.” But he hesitated, briefly puzzled, for when he looked up he saw the cord dangling from the skylight.
“Nooo!” the Reporter screamed, and leapt from her hiding place. Running as hard as she could, she threw her full weight behind her shoulder, which she planted in the surprised man’s chest.
A normal man may have shrugged off her assault with ease – she weighed one hundred and four dripping wet – but the Pruner’s coordination had been badly compromised by the many additions his body bore. He lost his balance, stumbling backwards out of control. Arms flailing, the lighter flew out of his grasp.
The man’s body crashed against the planter knocking the bucket of gas over, flammable liquid pouring into the container. All three people in the room watched in horror as the lighter spun in the air, seemingly in slow motion and fell into the Tree’s pot.
Whooompf! The puddle of petroleum ignited in a fireball that instantly consumed the Tree. Leaves crackled and burned, shriveling into ash which spiralled up towards the broken skylight on a column of hot air. Sparks drifted about the room like so many singed butterflies.
On the floor, the Pruner cried out in a dozen voices, tearing his shirt off in a vain effort to ease his agony. The fingers of his extra hand scratched and grasped at his skin, the mouth on his shoulder frozen open in a silent scream.
Bumps quivered all across the mans body as his skin went bright red, and then a sickening shade of black. His feet drummed against the floor for a minute and then he collapsed, drawing a few labored breaths before he stopped breathing. The grafted appendages continued to writhe and gnash for a minute more and the mercifully, all was still.
All across the city, a select group of citizens simultaneously cried out and clenched various parts of their anatomy as the sharp jolt and scorch of their grafted, burning branches was transferred. The hospital emergency room would be busy tonight, but their days of terror were actually at an end.
Thinking quickly, the Reporter scooped up the Planner’s broken branch, washed it clean with water from the watering can, and placed its ragged end in the water. She then untied the grateful man from the column.
“Why?” was all he could say.
––•––
Months later, the Planner and Reporter returned to the warehouse and sat in the reviewing stands as the Mayor depressed a plunger that detonated explosive charges which brought the warehouse tumbling down. A new project was replacing the building, but not the one the Pruner and his cohorts had imagined.
In its place would rise a center dedicated to healing people whose trees had suffered storm damage. They applauded as a young girl with a shriveled arm turned the first spadeful of earth, dropping the dirt into a waiting clay pot. A young mother, baby in arms, stepped forward and placed a seedling in the pot, smoothing the dirt around its roots.
She smiled down at the child and the Tree, and kissed each, wishing them health and happiness on the start of their shared journey.
As the people left the ceremony, a steady rain began to fall. In a world where people and plants were so intimately connected, it was the ultimate sign of good luck.
