Chapter Twenty-Two
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Make Like a Tree
T he Big Thicket National Preserve was about ninety miles away from Houston, Texas. Genesis had pulled her hair up into a ponytail and wore no makeup, with the exception of a sheer pink gloss. She opted for an old black sweatshirt with bleach stains along the stretched-out collar, and a pair of dark green leggings to walk one of the trails which, according to her brochure from one of the rangers, were plentiful—a total of forty miles collectively. Roman said they were going hiking, perhaps bird watching, and enjoying nature as a whole. This side of him surprised her. She never knew that he enjoyed such things, and she found it a bit bewildering when he asked her on short notice to spend the day with him in the great outdoors.
She wasn’t much of a hiker, but being in the midst of a jungle-like landscape did appeal to her desire for peace and tranquility, and it was good to get fresh air and mingle with nature. At least, that’s what her favorite meditation podcaster would say. She glanced to the back of his truck, noting their bags, extra water, bear spray, binoculars and such. The wilderness was a far cry from his Smith Street downtown penthouse, and her comfortable apartment in the suburbs. She looked back out the window, settled in as she sipped from a baby pink Stanley cup filled with chai tea. The classic sounds of ‘Cream,’ by White Room seduced her into thoughts of a time before she was born but felt very much connected to. Old souls running free.
Roman’s lean, long body was stretched out as he leisurely handled the steering wheel with expert precision over rugged terrain, lopsided hills, deep valleys and unexpected dips and hard bumps. They passed campsites, vacationers, quaint cabins in the far distance, deer, foxes and something that may have been a moose. Other times, she saw nothing but towering saplings and wild brush for what seemed like forever. A tapestry of green and brown shades dotted with blips of black, blue and yellow. The truck slowed, and she sat a bit straighter, placing her cup in the holder.
Roman settled along what appeared to be a path made merely by foot traffic, rather than man-made tools and excavators. It was uneven and crude, overrun with weeds. This gave her pause. On one hand, she was excited to see what lay ahead. On the other, she didn’t expect to spend more than two hours here, three tops, and hoped to then return to Roman’s home, take a shower, put on something warm and soft, and curl up in his arms in front of a good movie. From the look of his brown hiking boots, ballcap and jacket, he planned to really do this hiking thing and wasn’t just pulling her leg. This was no magic trick. He was for real.
“Here it is,” he murmured as he hopped out of the truck, grabbing his belongings from the back.
She joined him, trying her best to force a smile when a strange flying thing that resembled a cross between a dragonfly and a wasp buzzed near her. She swatted it, and it made a weird humming sound, then zoomed away. Roman walked ahead, pushing at overgrown shrubs. The chirps, buzzes and squawks of unseen animals and insects filled the air. A musical concert of sorts.
He paused, waiting for her to catch up, then took her hand. They began their journey through the forest along the path, past an assortment of dark, wide, towering trees. They found themselves jumping and stepping over fallen branches, and pausing to smell the air, kiss one another, and listen to all that was around them. It took no time at all for them both to fall headfirst into the seductive divan of nature. Now, she was feeling it. Something surprisingly magical was happening. God was an awesome creator and artist. What an imagination…
Roman opened his brochure and perused a map. While he got his bearings, she reached down and picked up a small green beetle, or at least she thought it was—adorable, with its shiny shell and little black legs that twitched every so often. She looked at it from various angles, then placed it back onto the log from which she first saw it.
“I used to hate bugs,” she declared as they continued on with their hike. “I still don’t like them much, but I realize now how important they are to our ecosystem, and just like we think they’re creepy, they probably think we’re creepy too.”
“Yeah, I ’magine so,” he chuckled as he forged ahead of her, pausing every now and again to ensure she was still close behind him. After about fifteen minutes or so, they stood amongst a tight assemblage of massive trees, so tall and stately, she could barely make out the tops of them. In the distance she could hear the soft sounds of flowing water. Perhaps a brook.
“Oh wow, look at this place. I wonder if people camp right here?”
“I doubt it.” He shoved the map into his jeans pocket. “Not ideal for campin’. It’s too secluded from everything else. It gets flooded this way come the rainy season, and it doesn’t see many folks, so everything is overgrown, and the big huntin’ animals, snakes and whatnot, come here to hunt at night.” She nodded in understanding and watched as he slipped his small backpack off his shoulder, and down onto a rock. “It’s beautiful, ain’t it?”
“Yes, it is.” She looked up at the sky. Rain clouds.
She broke her gaze when she heard the man loudly clearing his throat. Roman’s jaw tightened and twitched. He took a gulp of water from his bag, placed the bottle back inside, and started pacing. He eventually paused, reached down to pick a blade of grass and started twirling it about between his forefinger and thumb. Around and around it went, spinning faster and faster.
“Genesis, me, my brothers Jordan and Dakota would come out here with our daddy. It was our thing. We’d do it a few times a year. Huntin’. Fishin’. Campin’. Mama would be back home wit’ her sister, while we were out in the wilderness with Pop. Learning how to be men, and having fun while doing it. This forest is far too big to memorize each and every part, and too unpredictable to take for granted, so there’s only certain spots I come to. Spots I’m familiar with, like this one. I brought a map just in case, because things change. People change. Thankfully, it’s just as I remembered it. Ain’t been here in this specific spot for a few years.”
She found it remarkable that he’d not returned to this important place for him for an extended amount of time. She wanted to ask questions but could see he was still in the midst of talking. Getting some burdens off his chest.
“I wasn’t always familiar with it though. There’s a start for everything we know. A beginning. A point where we knew nothin’ about it at all before we became a so-called expert.”
“Yeah, that’s true.” She leaned against a tree and looked around her as he spoke.
“I had an unsettling, terrible thing happen one time out here.”
She turned her gaze sharply back in his direction. “What happened?”
He paced slowly back and forth, tearing that piece of grass into little bits. “My brothers and I were playin’ hide-and-go-seek. I couldn’t have been more than ten. I went too far… way past where our daddy told us to never wander. Right before that, I was flustered, see? Dakota kept finding me, so this time, I was going to make sure he didn’t. I meandered, out to about where we are right now.” He pointed to the ground. “Daddy had told us to stop playing and settle down, ’cause he was putting things back in his truck, preparing for us to go back home. See, he had to roll up the sleeping bags and put away the tent. We’d camped way over yonder overnight that evening. “She nodded in understanding. “Well, Jordan wanted one more game of hide-and-go-seek since it was takin’ Daddy so damn long.
“So, me and Jordan scattered like roaches,” he smiled sadly, “while Dakota counted by a tree with his eyes closed. I zoomed off like a rocket. I came out this way… the clouds high in the dark sky, just like right now.” He looked upward. “Smelled like rain. Trees looked so big to me back then, in my little bitty eyes. I was so proud of how far I’d run and found such a good spot behind a rotted-out tree, but then I realized what had happened. Reality came and smacked me in the face. I’d run too far.
“Wasn’t nothin’ around here that I recognized, Genesis.” He spread his arms out. “My heart got to pumpin’, baby. Boom boom! Boom boom!” He placed his hand against his chest, and briefly closed his eyes. “After a few minutes I suppose, I came from around the tree, and I looked up at that tree I’d been hiding behind for Lord knows how long. I got a really good, long look at it. Its insides were all rotted out—like lightning had struck it all the way down the middle…but on the other side of the tree, where I’d been hiding, it looked still alive, the leaves and foliage bright green. The tree that hid me from my brothers, suddenly seemed like a monster that was destined to swallow me whole.
“Let me tell you something: It took over two hours, if I recollect right, for my daddy and brothers to find me. I have no idea to this day how I did it, but I ran almost a mile away to go hide, lady.” She shook her head in disbelief. “It didn’t seem like that long, at the time, Genesis. I just remember runnin’, and runnin’, and runnin’. I remember pure adrenaline, and my thoughts scattered like playing cards. I remember thinking about the toys I wanted for Christmas, and the birthday cake I wanted Mama to bake for my birthday, and how I was going to make all A’s on my report card and get that bike that Daddy kept promising me. I thought about how, if I did all of that, and my brothers acted real good, too, Mama and Daddy would have no choice but to start being good to each other as well.”
She hugged herself, blinking back tears.
“I didn’t understand that that’s not how life works.” He chuckled sadly. “Don’t matter how good you are, how smart, kind and loving, someone is always going to throw the salt or pepper shaker across the room. Someone is always going to break the parts of you that were the strongest. Someone is always going to trick you into thinkin’ that they are your protector, when really, they are the predator and you are their prey—a rotten monster in disguise—hiding you from your rescuers on one side, pretending to be kind on the other, just like that tree.”
Genesis’ soul leapt in her body. A dark pain seeped from the locked door of Roman’s heart and made itself known.
“I used to have nightmares about that tree, Gen.” He kept pacing, back and forth, picking more blades of grass, tearing each one to pieces and starting all over again. “I had nightmares all through my teens about it.” He turned and pointed to it, the one he was standing closest to. She scanned it from the base to the top—long, limp, dark limbs with no leaves. It was gray and clearly dead now. Just a little bit of life in one, tiny section of bark where a few coils of green burst against the lifeless, rough canvas. “Every, oh, I’d say six or seven months, that tree would pop up in my mind and get uglier and uglier, taller and taller, scarier and scarier. But then, as I went through military training, I realized something.”
“What did you realize?”
“That the tree wasn’t the source of my nightmares… being lost and feeling like I couldn’t even trust myself to get out of that predicament was the culprit. It was the not knowing that scared me, and the inability to control my emotions. To not be able to snap my fingers and magically appear back with my papa and brothers. I was angry and scared of that tree, but it wasn’t at fault and didn’t need to apologize to me. That tree did nothin’ but provide a place to hide during a children’s game. It protected me a little from the raindrops that began to fall, too. I was the one who looked at it and blamed it for being damaged, big, and in the way.
“It couldn’t stop the lightning bolt that struck it, or the animal that tore it to shreds. The same gifts it gave me before I was afraid were the same gifts it gave me when I was runnin’ away from it in fear. It wasn’t that tree’s fault that it was intimidating. Or big. Or dying. It was my fault for expecting it to be more than what it really was, and not appreciating what it had become, just for me …” His chest rose and fell sharply as he took a deep, long breath.
“In the Marines I learned ain’t no need in being afraid of the half dead trees, or our enemies. They are what they are. Whatever it is you’re afraid of, you must become—even if you’re only doing a magic trick, or acting, to survive the situation.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like you and that beetle earlier… You said you don’t like bugs, really, but you realized how important they are to the earth’s environment. You picked up that beetle, and something you once saw as disgusting, you then saw beauty in it. Because it was tiny, harmless, just trying to live its beetle life. It could also benefit you, and you understood that you are far more powerful than that beetle, in the grand scheme of things. With one kick of the leg, smash of the hand, stomp of the foot, or even a hard blow from the mouth, you could kill that poor little beetle, send it to insect heaven.” She smiled at that. “It knows that, too.
“On some small level, some primitive scale, it understands that this big human that plucked it from a log can hurt it, if she so chooses. Or she can just look at it, smile, and put it back down to live out the rest of its natural life. That lifetime may only be five more minutes, or it could be five more years, but you believed it wasn’t for you to decide. It can’t help how it looks, the color of its eyes, or its size. You understood that it has a purpose, and so do you.” She nodded in agreement. “That tree had a purpose, too. Instead of being afraid of the tree, Genesis, I needed to become a tree. I needed to stand still.” He stopped pacing. “Get quiet.”
He placed his finger to his mouth as if hushing the world. “And pay attention. Only when I calmed down, stopped panicking, stopped crying and runnin’ in circles did I get my bearings. Devise a plan. Once I realized the direction I had come runnin’ from, I headed back that way. I didn’t move another muscle until I had a clear plan. Becoming the tree probably saved my life that night, but I was too young to understand at that time. Once I got a good distance away from the tree, walkin’ in a straight line from it, I was then close enough for my brother to see me. My father jumped into action and grabbed me. Everyone was soakin’ wet. So was I, but not to the bone. I’d been running towards them under a canopy of trees… protected. My family in the meantime had been terrified that I may have fallen somewhere and sprained my ankle, or even worse, been attacked and dragged away by some animal. When I became the tree, things changed, and that’s how I’ve tried to improve my life. To make things that are going in a bad direction straighten out the right way.”
He walked up to her, closing the gap, and pressed his lips to hers. A passionate warmth surged between them. He smelled like fresh earth and clean soap. He loosened his embrace, but didn’t let her go, and looked down deeply into her eyes.
“You look like a tree now to me, too,” she teased, making him smile. But then she grew serious. “Tall and beautiful as you want to be, Roman. You’re not rotten, in spite of your mistakes in life. You’re just human, and you’re as beautiful as a new day.”
She pulled him in for another kiss, and he obliged.
“Roman, you know what?”
“What?”
“Trees symbolize so many things. Growth. Endurance. Truth. They are true in all four seasons. They are a tree—yesterday, today, tomorrow—regardless of whether they are dead or alive. There a tree once stood.” She glanced at the very thing behind him—the one that had taught him so many valuable lessons through fear and wisdom. “They are a tree no matter what beetle climbs along their bark, or what bird builds a nest on one of their limbs.
“If they bear fruit or not, they are still a tree. A tree can be turned into paper and pencils and continue to live. Trees are used to create paper money, a thing that is soon becoming part of our past, as we lean more towards plastic and electronic financial dealings. Paper, at one point in time, represented wealth. Greed. Benjamins. Dead presidents. The almighty dollar. Yeah, you definitely became the tree. You became what you loved and what you feared, and it made you stronger. That strength and wisdom wasn’t a magic trick or sleight of hand, either.”
“How’d I get someone so damn perceptive and smart, huh?” She smiled up at him as he began to rock her in his embrace. “How’d I get so lucky? You know four languages. You’re creative. Clever. Hard working. Beautiful face and heart. Fascinating. Nurturing. Your body is ridiculously sexy, and my fuckin’ shrine.” He paused and kissed her forehead. “And no matter what happens in my life, or what I say to you, then stumble over my words, you always find a way to help me and complete my thoughts.”
“And to think all of this time you knew my brother, but not me. I could have been havin’ all this good sex we’re havin’ now years ago.” She smirked. He burst out laughing.
“Yeah, but it’s become quite clear that that was divine intervention. If I had seen you way back then, I would’ve thought you attractive, and probably tried to hit on you or something, and it would have ruined things for the future. I was the wrong person for you back then. I’m the right person for you now . I think God literally kept your back turned to me in your old house when you were younger so I would never lay eyes on you, until I could emotionally and mentally handle you. Until I was mature enough to respect you, and give a woman like you what you truly deserved. In the meantime, all I got was your voice on the phone every now and again, and you walking into a room.”
“…It must’ve been a waiting room, because we arrived at the same time for the dental turned romantic appointment. Look at us now.”
The man’s eyes sheened. The sight grabbed her by the heart and squeezed. His silly smile faded and gave way to a flood of reflection. He released her, approached his backpack and began rummaging through it. He snatched something from within it and marched up to her.
“A fun place, turned for a short while into a scary place for me. That’s how it was when I realized… when I realized I was falling in love with my best friend’s sister. That scary place turned into a comforting place. A soothing place where dew-covered spiderwebs glisten like ropes of diamonds, young birds are up early chirping for their mamas to bring them food, and the vast trees are pretty in the sunlight, providing protective shelter from the rain and cover from predators in the deep of the night.
“I had no idea what I was going to say exactly today, Genesis, but I knew I wanted to ask right here. In the same place where I felt happiest as a kid, despite that frightening occurrence that happened to me when I was a little boy. I’m a grown man now. I can see the forest for the trees.” He turned and shot a look at the old tree that had filled his mind for years. “I can turn trees into money, but money don’t buy what we’ve got right now. Pure love.” He took her hands into his and squeezed. She could feel something in his palms, and her heart nearly exploded as a tear trekked down his cheek. His eyes lit up with beautiful wonder, and a gorgeous smile creased his face. “Genesis, will you marry me?”
Her body stiffened in shock, and then she buckled at the knees and screamed. “Yes! Oui , sí , and Ja !”
“Yes, in four different languages.” He laughed through a trail of tears. It was so rare to see him this emotional, and she loved it. Now they could be a crying mess together. Pure, sparkling, masculine vulnerability. “Sold! I’ll take it!” He opened his palm to uncover a small white box. Moments later he was sliding a large cushion diamond ring down her trembling finger.
They stood there under the canopy of tree limbs that reached for the heavens. The branches sprawled above their heads, creating a roof of protection and bark tentacles of soul connection. Spurs of light sparkled through the cracks and spaces above them, carried by the tender kisses of the wind. A twilight of love and oasis of giving and receiving. She gripped him tighter when a raindrop christened her cheek. They didn’t budge though, standing tall and firm like trees… like half rotten mighty oaks who’d been gutted from life but still strived to stand for one more day. Like salt and pepper shakers whizzing through a room filled with angry, broken-hearted energy and domestic dysfunction, slamming into a wall of silence.
Like a worn, cheap notebook gifted from a father—then turned to an emotional sounding board to hoard secrets and protect feelings. They became the notebooks, the trees, the Goddess braids twisting in the wind of love. They became fast cars, pretty smiles in a dental office, hand-crafted beaded necklaces, and deprived kisses all over taut skin. Yes, they were the trees. Gutted and new. Dying and wise. Sprinkled with salt and pepper to flavor. Each tear a salty reminder of what was and what will be.
They were still standing. Long after the world witnessed their last breath. And now, they exhaled. Starting over, and born again from a simple seed of love…