Fifteen
Craig
Jackie scanned and attached the class certification to the safety job application for me.
Why there are forty different ways to do the same thing on the internet baffles me.
It’s troublesome enough to deal with metric and imperial measurements when fixing a truck or a saw.
If Fords used a different wrench from a Dodge there wouldn’t be a single truck on the road, they’d all be broken down in a shop parking lot waiting for a specialist to get back from lunch.
It’s amazing the internet isn’t a broken mess of a traffic jam.
But we turned in the job application a week before the closure date.
It was just a waiting game now. Again. Ever since my accident too much of my life was waiting for things to happen.
After Rilee agreed to dinner, I’d hoped that something might change in my dreams again, but my nights remained a confusing mix of flavors, stage work, and Rilee.
The same images just in different orders.
Seeing she hadn’t saved me a seat on Saturday after ignoring me at the basketball game almost broke my nerve.
I was ready to pack it in and give the tickets to Lukas and Kathy as a thank you for putting up with me all these months.
But when I was grouped with Rilee I took it as a sign and asked her.
Why else would I be dreaming about her? I’m not a deep thinker or a spiritual guy, but recognizing the dancing cow plaguing my dream on a pamphlet in my counselor’s office begged the question if something bigger than me was going on.
Regardless of some heavenly machinations, Rilee was easy to be around.
Relaxing. Like sitting in the sun on a warm day, she stretched everything out in a pleasing way.
But sitting around waiting for Saturday would just make me stir crazy, so having something to do Monday morning was useful.
Little Cami had an art set and I raided it for some pencils of varying hardness and a gray eraser.
Packing a bag of cookies from the kid’s lunch pantry I headed to the store.
The clerks waved to me in recognition on the way in while I tried to remember what I’d learned in high school about art.
Ulrich was a particular kind of guy, and I still wasn’t exactly sure what he had in mind when he told me to draw the trees that I saw.
Lukas had been at the store early to oversee the delivery for the week, but it was Kathy I found in the office.
“Do you have a clipboard and some paper I can borrow?”
Looking up from her numbers Kathy blinked. “What was that?”
“Ulrich asked me to do those drawings.” I explained. “I need some paper.”
Rummaging in the desk Kathy came up with a clipboard and a small stack of paper. “I still don’t understand this. You haven’t drawn in years. Did you tell Ulrich that?”
“I never mentioned it. And you’ve met Ulrich, you can’t tell him anything.”
“That’s true. We got a load of plants so knock yourself out.” Kathy smiled at me, probably just happy that I wasn’t moping around her house by myself.
More of the bonsai trees had sold, leaving empty spaces to fill. I didn’t know who was buying them all but someone liked them. I took a few moments rearranging the display, finding its new balance and story. Then I pulled a chair around to the newly arrived junipers.
They were bushy with pale green old growth, their spring shoots hadn’t started yet.
Selecting one at random I pushed the others out of the way to give it some space before settling onto the plastic folding chair.
I started with sketching a rather clumpy bush and it remained a bush.
A little more cloud-like than it really was, but still a bush.
Crumpling the paper, I dropped it between my legs.
This wasn’t working. This wasn’t a tree, it was a bush.
Not even a scraggly tree, just a healthy happy bush.
I rotated the pot from left to right to get a different perspective. It was still just a bush.
“Excuse me sir.” I looked up at a five-foot woman with gray permed hair gripping a flatbed cart. “Can you show me where the dwarf maples are?”
Looking around I saw that there was no one else in the nursery. Through a section of chain link fencing, I could see the bare branches of some nursery trees. Standing with a grunt I started in their direction. “If there are any in the store I think they would be over here.”
The cart clanked behind me as we rounded the corner of the pallets and came to a row of five-gallon tree starts.
It was early so there were not a lot but I found a pair tagged as dwarf maples.
The maples were straight trunked with some wispy branches, all covered in smooth gray bark.
They were dormant without any hint of red leaf buds.
The sleeping trees were both about the same height but one had a slightly thicker trunk. I shuffled the stronger tree to the edge of the pallet. I could see right over this woman’s head and she must have weighed half of me.
“It’s early to be putting in trees, but if you want one, I’d take this one.”
“That looks fine. I need to replace one that came down last summer and I waited too long and the ground froze.”
Looking over her wispy arms she was about the same size and shape as the tree itself.
“I’m not sure it’s unfrozen yet,” I said.
“But if you really want it, let me slide it on there for you.” I maneuvered the cart up against the pallet edge and rocked the black plastic bucket back and forth until I had the tree up onto the cart and centered.
Rubbing the tingle out of my thigh I pointed to an outside door. ”
You’re going to want to take it around the front, it’s too tall to go through the interior doorway.” I held the door open and then using the service phone called the front to be on the lookout for the woman.
Walking around was a good break, and when I returned to the juniper I’d selected I saw something.
A flash of reddish brown through the foliage.
Pushing the prickly needles to the side I ran my finger along the trunk of the bush, it had a slight curve but was almost straight.
The bush’s chunky branches extended haphazardly in all directions, giving the plant its clumpy cloud-like appearance.
But running up its middle was a very nice center body.
Pencil in hand I started another drawing, this time focusing on the trunk and branches instead of the foliage.
What emerged was a tall redwood. I removed one branch and pulled another toward the side to give it a more balanced structure.
The drawn tree was wider at the bottom, tapering to a dome like crown but in a broad conical way.
I finished it by adding foliage at the ends of the branches, just as the needles would grow in groups on new growth at the branch ends, searching for sunlight.
Holding the picture next to the potted plant I could see the hundred-year giant it contained in its form.
“I don’t see it,” Kathy said next to my ear, startling me. The paper slipped from my extended arm and floated leaf-like to the floor. Bending down she picked it up, studying it as she stood. “It’s a great drawing, but I don’t see the resemblance.”
Gripping the branches of the juniper I pushed it into place and tried to reveal the shape of the trunk. “The beams are shaped here, and this interior is trimmed out, and this branch comes out,” I explained, trying to conjure the image into reality.
Kathy’s face still held a blank I’m–not–following–you look. “It’s all about the shape of the main stock,” I continued. “It needs some pruning, like any good tree, to avoid growing in on itself or being too focused on the sunlight to do what’s good for itself.”
“Those I see,” She pointed at the fully shaped bonsai. “Those are trees. I don’t see the tree here, just a bush.”
“It still needs some help and time to grow into itself. But I think it could be a tree,” I countered.
“Well okay. It’s a great drawing anyway, better than those bowls of fruit you did in high school. I came by to check on you since an old lady brought a tree to the front checkout and said the nice man in the nursery helped her load it.”
“It’s going to die when she tries and plants it. I told her that. It’s too early.” I wanted my concern on the record. Planting something in frozen ground is a death sentence and a waste of the years it took to grow the start.
Shaking her head Kathy put her hands on her hips. “That’s not why I’m here. I can’t have you doing work and not be on the payroll. It’s a liability. And that tree was heavy. Gerald had to load it in the lady’s car for her. You probably shouldn’t have moved it.”
“I was careful,” I said. I was also tired of Kathy standing in for Mom.
“Well, if you are not going to be on the payroll, don’t do employee things. Call someone. If you want to pal around with Ulrich, fine. He’s a contractor and vendor which is a different situation. I don’t mind having you here, but just don’t get hurt.”
Pulling the paper from her hand I said, “I’m just drawing. I’ll stay out of your hair and won’t cause trouble.” Bending over the drawing I added, “It still needs potting.”
I couldn’t decide if it should be in a tall square pot to emphasize the reach of its height and vertical shape or a broad bowl matching the stretch of its lower branches.
An unglazed square felt more natural so I began sketching in its shape.
Kathy towered over me until she reached some decision and stalked away.
Rotating through a few different pencils I added some roughness to the pot and subtle depth to the rest of the tree.
Holding the paper up again I studied them both.
The red wood was fully contained in both the drawing and the unshaped juniper.
It existed in both places at once, linked by my wakeful dream of it.
Accompanied by only the hum of the overhead heater I sat for a while with the tree, appreciating the idea of its future and where it was right now.
Ulrich wasn’t going to be happy with just the one drawing. He might see something different, and there were a lot of plants on this pallet. I’m sure Lukas wouldn’t want all of them appropriated for the bonsai collection but they sold even during the winter months so it was worth the time.
I took the remainder of the day sketching out three others.
My collection included another tall redwood style juniper with a stick straight trunk and a slanting cascading piece.
But my favorite was an oblong shaped plant.
Most of its branches grew off one side, the other side dominated by a single spindly but long branch curving downward.
Removing that greedy branch, shaping the others, and trimming away all of the foliage sprouting from the trunk revealed a wind shaped masterpiece.
Its struggling trunk leaned away from the pressure of the wind and the branches swept out to one side.
Sparse foliage on the very tips of the tree’s branches defied the wind.
I couldn’t picture its pot, as in my mind the tree grew on an ocean cliff, so I sketched that in instead.
By the time I was done the sun was already laying out evening shadows with the parking lot light poles.
Gathering up my drawings I returned the clipboard to Kathy’s office. She was gone but Lukas was still there.
“I heard you did a bang-up job with a customer today. You really should think about coming onboard.” Lukas must not have been on the same page as Kathy. He probably would happily pay me to move out of his house.
“I’ve got something else in the hopper. I think I’ll see how that turns out first.” Besides, I couldn’t do most of what they needed around here, unloading freight or helping load customers’ cars. And sitting at a cash register all day would turn me into a lunatic.
“Well, I’m glad you’re working on something.”
At home I leaned all four drawings up on my dresser, my own tiny forest. When I turned in for the evening the dream of Rilee and dinner included the cow and singing characters dancing through a forest of tiny trees.
Clearly the bonsai were bleeding into my dreams. The thought that my dreams were just dreams and not some kind of foretelling was actually disturbing.
I was just getting comfortable with the idea that if I just followed what I was dreaming something good might happen.
If my own experiences from the day were entering these dreams did that make them just dreams?