Andrew R. Clark
When all the world was forest
When all the Earth was green
The trees began to wither
Rumored before seen
Then nearby woods were dying
Until there was only one
Everywhere they looked
As far as they could run
One green tree among the dead
With leaves still colored bright
People huddled under its branches
Fleeing from the blight
But when its leaves too had fallen
And it seemed the world must stop
A stem grew from the base of the trunk
Buds upon its top
#
Omer supported small businesses when he could, and doing his marketing downtown provided a break from everyday reality, the old buildings and timeless river runagates from a Mark Twain story. A man in top hat or a woman with a hoopskirt wouldn’t look much out of place. His daypack now held Italian sausages from the butcher; fresh, crusty bread from the bakery; and a few of their fig bars, which were just too good to skip. He didn’t need coffee yet, but as long as he was so close he decided to get some. Cutting diagonally across the town square, he encountered an old woman sitting on a bench, matted white hair sticking out from under a dirty stocking cap, beside her a shopping cart piled with odds and ends. Omer smiled, but she didn’t seem to notice.
When he entered the coffee shop, Molly was sitting at a table by the window, eating a scone. “Just having my break. What can I get you, Omer?” She got up and went behind the counter.
“A pound of house blend and a cup of English tea, and I think I’ll have one of those scones too.” It was mid‑morning lull, and there were no other customers, so after serving him, Molly asked Omer to come sit with her while she finished her break. On the sidewalk outside the window, the old woman pushed past with her cart.
Molly excused herself, went behind the counter again, and then out the door with a small paper bag in her hand. In a few minutes she was back at the table. “It breaks my heart to see someone so low. Oh well, at least it’s almost summer.”
Omer sipped his tea and nodded but had little he could add to that.
The next day at dusk, coming home along the main trail, a light drizzle having turned into a shower, Omer pulled up his hood. His boots crunching on the gravel path, he thought he heard something else. There it was again, like a hurt animal. Seeing a slight parting of the trailside vegetation, he followed the sound into the woods.
In the failing light, he progressed slowly, trying not to get poked in the eye by a branch. The brush thinned out into a clearing, and strung between trees, a blue tarp slanted down, its lower corners staked to the ground. The sound came from under it, the old woman weeping.
Omer carefully retraced his steps out of the thicket but soon returned. It was quiet now. “Don’t be afraid, ma’am.” In the dim, she lay on the tail of the tarp, folded under where it met the earth. Kneeling down, Omer cleared away leaves and sticks. Removing his backpack, he took out a bundle wrapped in a paper bag, placing it on the open spot, and fishing a lighter out of his pocket, set it alight.
“This is an extra sleeping bag I don’t use anymore. It’s clean.” He pulled a stuff‑sack from his backpack and set it down before the lean‑to. “And here are some sweat clothes that are too small for me now.” He placed the neatly folded stack down on the sleeping bag and added a stick to the fire.
“I don’t need your things,” the old woman grumbled. Omer could see she had only the clothes she wore to keep her warm.
“No, you don’t, but I’d be grateful if you’d accept them all the same.” The old woman reached her sun‑spotted hands into the firelight and pulled the sweatsuit and sleeping bag into the shadows under the tarp. “Oh, I was going to throw these out.” Omer gently tossed a balled‑up pair of new wool socks into the lean‑to. He squatted down near the now‑crackling fire, extending his hands. From a nearby pond, a loon’s eerie call echoed through the twilight.
When the fire burned down, he got more things out of his pack. With a hooked blade on his pocketknife, he opened up two cans of beef stew. Leaving an inch or so of the lid still attached, bending back the cut part for a handle, he nestled the cans into the coals.
“I don’t need your help.”
“No, I’m sure you don’t, but it would please me to share a meal with you.” Omer stirred the cans with a spoon he’d brought. Presently, he lifted them from the fire and placed one before the lean‑to. “Be careful, it’s hot.”
“I know how to eat, and I have my own spoon.”
As soon as the can disappeared under the tarp, slurping sounds began. After finishing his own dinner, Omer placed another piece of wood onto the embers. Collecting his things and looking around to make sure all was tidy, he said, “Be well, Grandmother.”
Crouching a little, hands extended in the dark to fend off unseen branches, he found his way to the walking path. He sensed that even if he had asked her to, she wouldn’t have come indoors, having become a wild thing.
Jonathan came over for a visit, bringing Tilly with him, and they all walked to the broad lawn between the park and the schoolyard. He and Omer took turns tossing a tennis ball across the lawn, the black Lab chasing it at breakneck speed, right up to the point where she keeled over panting and promptly fell asleep. Though nearly full grown, Tilly was still a puppy.
They joined her on the grass. “I knew a terrier who would wear the pads on his feet bloody if you kept throwing the ball to him. He didn’t care, it was too much fun.”
“Tilly’s a good dog,” Jonathan said, “but it’s nice sometimes when she takes a nap.”
Pulling a sandwich from his pack and unwrapping it, Omer offered half to the boy. “No thanks, my dad is making breakfast for lunch. We do that sometimes on weekends. My favorite is waffles with strawberries and whipped cream.” The dog rolled onto her back, beginning to snore.
Turning off the sidewalk along the road, a hunched figure headed toward them. It was the homeless woman carrying a bundle on her back. “Excuse me a minute, Jonathan.” Omer rewrapped the remaining half of his sandwich and walked to intersect her path. But when he approached, she waved him away.
When the troll reseated himself on the lawn, Tilly snorted and sat up blinking. “Omer’s got a girlfriend,” the boy said under his breath in a sing‑song voice, a grin wrinkling his face.
“It’s only one date, and besides, she asked me. Now, I think I’d better get going. I have a job to do.”
Jonathan grabbed the end of Tilly’s leash, and as they parted, Omer asked, “What did you say you were having for lunch?”
“Waffles!” he shouted, running for home, his dog leading the way.
Climbing over the train tracks, Omer saw the old woman seated on a bench beside the trail. In a few minutes, he returned with something under his arm. She had finished the half of a sandwich. He waited a few steps away, but she showed no sign of being aware of him. She was filthy, campfire soot covering her hands and face. He didn’t have to be any nearer to smell a body badly in need of bathing.
“Grandmother, come with me. I have something to show you.”
“I don’t want to see anything you might have,” she croaked.
“Even so, it would be a courtesy if you would come.”
She shook her head but levered herself up from the bench. Picking up her bundle, yellow nylon rope tied around it for shoulder straps, she said, “If you won’t leave me alone, I suppose I’ll have to come.”
She followed him to where the troll’s trail split off from the main path, hugging the bank of the train tracks. Sloping down to the left, a fork eventually led to a clearing on the backside of a pond, a nice sitting‑log resting beside a small reed‑curtained beach.
“Set your pack down there.” Taking the roll from under his arm, a plush cotton towel, he placed it on the log. “There’s a clean t‑shirt and athletic shorts in there for modesty.”
She cautiously unrolled the towel and brought something up to her nose, a fresh bar of soap, scented with lavender. “I suppose you’ll want to watch,” she said, scowling.
“Really, madam,” he huffed. “You can’t be seen from the path, and I’ll go up the trail and wait.”
On a boulder shaded by overhanging boughs, Omer waited. If he saw anyone coming, he could give the old woman a warning by whistling like a bird or barking like a chipmunk or just yelling. It was growing warm, and he must have dozed off. The sound of splashing roused him with a start, and he called out, “Are you all right?” Receiving no answer, he hurried to the clearing.
At the little beach, partly in the water, sat something unexpected—strong, supple shoulders, a tumble of thick hair falling down a smooth back, thin waist flaring to round buttocks just at the water. Omer managed to clear his throat, and she turned toward him. A stab like pain struck the troll, her beauty overwhelming. It seemed something just under her skin pushed to break forth and dazzle his senses.
“Don’t be timid, Old Man. I have no shame.” On a nearby rock, the bar of soap was visibly diminished.
“There … there was someone here … when I left,” he stammered.
“I know of her, but we don’t share a mind.” The beautiful young woman stood up and plunged into the pond. She remained submerged for a long time before resurfacing and swimming back to shore. As she stepped onto land, munching a lily root, perfectly naked but for water weeds twined in her hair, Omer understood.
It was Saturday again, and Omer had joined Jonathan and Tilly for their usual walk. Tilly strained ahead, but Jonathan gave the leash a gentle snap, and she came even with his pace.
“She isn’t pulling the leash much anymore. You’re doing a good job.”
“Tilly’s a good dog, but I still miss Henry sometimes.”
“Of course you do.”
They walked on, two of them deep in thought, one pulling at the leash only a little.
A bike path cut through floodplain to south and west, running all the way to the next town, a few miles upriver. Omer didn’t usually go so far, but today he’d gotten up the gumption. Around noon he stopped at a convenience store to use the restroom and buy a snack.
On his way back, he decided to leave the trail and strike out for the river. The sandy soil was firm, providing good footing, but he had to zigzag quite a bit to avoid patches of nettles. A creek cut across his path, and Omer followed it downstream. He felt tension against his leg, thigh‑high, as he came up against something. Looking down he saw monofilament fishing line strung between bushes, a sort of fence line, a warning not to proceed.
Through the trees he could see a shanty of weathered plywood, partially covered by a blue plastic tarp. It’s not uncommon to occasionally encounter hobos or madmen in the woods, and Omer skirted around the place, trying not to excite anyone who might be inside. But then he spotted his old sleeping bag hanging from a broken branch.
He slowly approached. “Old woman, are you there?” It had been weeks since he’d last seen her. Cautiously leaning forward into the shanty, where the tarp had been turned up to let in air, he saw her sitting on a square of moldy carpet, her clothes shabby, her face again blackened by dirt and smoke.
Various items were arranged before her as though she’d been taking inventory—a broken comb; a mismatched pair of gloves; a little pile of coins and trinkets; and peeking out from under the corner of an oily rag, the black barrel of a pistol. A small cardboard box sat near it, a drawing of a red bullet printed on top. She didn’t look up, continuing to mumble, “… dry bones, only dry old bones …” The troll couldn’t hope to know the heart of this ancient being, but he knew enough.
Squatting down, speaking in a conversational tone, he said, “I was visiting a friend in the hospital once. I’d been there awhile, and he had fallen asleep. I was just about to leave when two staff members came in with a gurney and went behind the curtain on the other side of the room. They were packing up the patient, readying him to be transferred, and it became apparent from their conversation that the man in the other bed had tried to kill himself with a gun but had failed. He was going to a nursing home, probably for the rest of his life.
“No, if I was ever going to do it, it wouldn’t be with a gun. I’d just put rocks in my pockets and walk into the river. That’s the way. No trouble, and a sure thing too.”
Omer went to the bank of the river and picked up some stones, rounded by time and current. He brought them back to the shanty and again squatted down in front of the old woman. “Just slip these in, and there you go.”
Never looking up, she lifted the rocks one by one, placing them into the pockets of her jacket. Standing and walking the short distance to the shore, she waded out into the water. When it reached her waist, the current took hold, and she dipped below the surface. For a moment Omer thought he glimpsed a pail form slide away upstream—maybe just a reflection, maybe his imagination. He never saw the old woman or the water nymph again, so he was never sure.
In the restaurant bar, trying not to fidget with his straw, Omer waited. He hadn’t been dressed up in a long time, and he was early. Thankfully, Molly came through the door, wearing a yellow summer dress, her curly dark hair gathered in an attractive pile. When she spotted him and waved, he just about melted off his stool but managed to stand up and greet her. Although a bit short, he had a powerful build. His broad face, with its prominent brow, was softened by intelligent eyes, a neatly trimmed beard covering the lack of a bump at the end of his chin.
“You look great,” Omer managed to get out of his mouth.
“And you’re quite gallant in that suit.”
They were shown to veranda seats overlooking the river. He ordered seared trout on a bed of greens with hand‑made potato crisps and dill sauce, and she had noodles in spicy broth with a quail’s egg cracked on top. Neither of them had much room for dessert, but they agreed to split a piece of chocolate cake alamode.
With the setting sun reflecting off the river, Molly asked, “Do you remember that homeless woman we saw this spring? I wonder what happened to her?”
“Yes, what happens to all the forgotten people?”
Molly looked into his eyes. “But we won’t let that bother us tonight. In fact, I think you can walk me home now.” They left the restaurant, strolling up the street hand in hand in the warm evening.