Redwood Forest

Posted on May 9, 2003 in Book of Days Prose Arcana

Note: This is twenty-fourth in a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s something of a rebellion against the Friday Five and similar tupperware content memes.

Today’s topic: Write about a premonition..

Not even the rain has as small hands as a premonition.

During a walk in a redwood grove on a windless day, Bill thought he heard a creak. His girlfriend, Sally — who was still mad because she wet her Reeboks cutting across a stream in a boggy place where Bill said they wouldn’t trample a fine patch of horsetails — groaned because he insisted that they walk to the left of a big tree where there were stones and the octagenuarian elbow of a root rather than the well-travelled and knuckle-skin smooth path to the right. As she kicked and tripped on the root, she exclaimed “You stupid paranoid! Nothing is going to happen here now!” She picked herself up and steadied herself on the forest giant, leaning heavily into it.

Bill just looked at her and shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t help myself,” he said. “If I went to the right, I’d feel betrayed. Even if nothing happened. I’d feel like a liar.”

“Well, you nearly got me killed,” shrieked Sally in a voice that frightened a shadow-hooded Stellar Jay into flight.

“I’m sorry,” said Bill, in a tone that suggested to Sally that he felt guiltier for offending the Stellar Jay than for causing her fright from the near harm.

Sally wiped her palms of the murky, mahogany stain of the forest floor. They walked a little father, to a tree in whose burned out hollow lived a birdnest-haired hermit for many years. He died the cold night his tin teapot developed a hole in it and he couldn’t make himself a hot drink. His only friend — a lumberjack who liked to wear his shoes until the big toes on both feet poked out — found him chewing on the brim of the teapot, as stiff in all his joints as he was in all his bones. Bill and Sally knew the story because a park ranger had told them about it and had given them the directions to the place. On the outer back side of the solitary man’s roost, they found a banana slug crawling into a bark crevice. Sally declared it gross and said that it looked like a big yellow dick. Bill looked closer at the sausage-sized gastropod and said “You’re right. It does.”

When they walked back, they argued over whether they were on the right trail. Or rather, Sally nagged Bill because she couldn’t see any landmarks that she remembered from the hike in. Bill stopped to listen. “We’re near the creek,” he announced after a moment when Sally lost the spirit to power her voice. “The world’s full of water,” Sally scoffed, but she kept following him and nagging him because only his ears could hold everything that she had to say.

When they came to a redwood that leaned hard to the left, she said: “See. We didn’t even come this way. I don’t remember this.” Bill pointed to the ground on the right side of the tree, particularly at a partially unearthed root that clung to the cloddy earth like the ragged arm of a crone. “That’s where you tripped,” he said. “Watch your step and go that way. It’s still pulling up.”

Sally wouldn’t believe him, so he steaded himself, threw his full strength into lifting the sequoia sempervirens until it stood straight again. Then he invited her to pass either way and look back. “See,” he told her as she looked. “It’s the place where you tripped.” The woman of the city shook her head until the ends of her dark chestnut hair lashed the forest’s cool breath and made it quietly squeal. She stomped down the path to the crossing. The tree tilted slightly as Bill released it to follow her. As she muddied her Reebok’s again, she said, “You weren’t paying attention at all. If it weren’t for me, we’d be lost.”

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Tomorrow’ topic/prompt: It’s all you could expect.