Arbour Reality

There were dark rainy nights when they would sit, all three, huddled
on the sofa listening to the sounds of the pouring rain as though
sheltering from the muffled stealth of intruders. They would hold each
other tight, hands clasped. The red and black checked blanket pulled
close; legs curled; listening to the sounds of the thunder and rain
belting a frenetic rhythm on the tin roof, like a manic tabla player in
a flurry of fingers and palms.

The rain had already lasted for weeks. Freezing cold weeks with no
electricity, with nothing but the light from a candle during the night
and the dull grey suffusion of sunlight during the day. There was
nothing to cook on but the scraps of timber that James found on
building sites and, in a desperate need for warmth, from the walls of
their own small house.

Linda, James' long-suffering mother, was resolute through it all. She
was strong enough to fight when she needed to, she'd proven that when
her husband, Robert, had wanted to keep James home from school saying,
books never did nobody no good: she'd won that time but now she was
silent against this aquatic tattoo.

Robert too was quiet. He'd always taught his son that real men don't
cry, a mantra repeated with the same relentless fervour the deluge now
displayed. Of course late at night James had heard his dad. Sitting in
an unlit corner of the house, his arms wrapped tightly around his chest
to keep in the warmth, Robert could be heard softly crying. James knew
that his dad had done this nearly every night since the rain started
when he thought Linda and James were sleeping soundly. Now though he
was quiet.

James added his weight of quietude to the house. He had grown a strong
resolve and had an almost unnatural ability to keep his sorrows or
questions inside. His father could be proud that the litany of
rectitude and stoicism had been fully ingrained after 13 years of
Pavlovian repetition. Although he had heard his father's soft sobbing
he had at least learnt that real men don't cry in public, that when all
the pent up frustrations need to come out it is not for public viewing.
He had learnt quickly that people would use anything they could against
you. They will turn and twist things and the last thing James wanted
was to let them see how much their taunt's of white trash, trailer
trash, scum, loser and all the rest hurt. How, deep inside him, there
was a heart-sized welt; swollen and purple: how his mind was an
enormous balance statement marking off every wrong incurred; adding the
glares and subtracting the smiles and nods of approval. Calculating the
'laughing-with-ness' of a laugh against the 'laughing-at-ness'. James
was a veritable Santa Claus, making a list and checking it twice.

For all the pain he felt at his own suffering, he was a great deal
angrier about the way his mother suffered so. The looks of disgust she
received from the neighbours when venturing outside in a leopard skin
of fresh bruises and the constant harassment from government officials
trying to take him away. He raged inside; a messy, shifting,
coalescence of anger and fear and worried hopes for the future.

The rain poured down outside. There was nothing but the relentless
drumming.

After a few more days the rain began to seep into the house. When James
first noticed the damp patch spreading across his bedspread he'd made a
fast track to his father on the sofa, swore that he hadn't wet his
pants (a habit that still occasionally occurred ) and showed his
parents where the small irregular dripping emerged from the ceiling. A
small regularly emptied bowl was sufficient to stop that problem.

***

James had been going to school since he was five, just like everybody
else. He had been to the same school all his life, and yet, in all that
time had yet to make any real friends. At first he had tried. Walking
over to girls and boys and asking them if he could join in their games
of marbles or skip-rope or the seemingly endless array of games that
they had; games for which he had no name because he was never invited
to play.

Once, when he had been full of a need for connection, a need to belong,
he had forced himself onto a group of children standing by the
eucalyptus trees on the oval. Running up to Sarah, with her long brown
hair and buck teeth, and tapping her gently on the shoulder he had
cried "tag, you're it," then ran a short distance away, bouncing on his
short pale legs ready to make a move out of her way. Sarah just looked
at him between her dirty strands of hair and continued to talk to her
friends. A few more minutes of jogging on the spot and he decided to
sidle off and sit in a far corner of the oval, with his back resting
against the strong white trunk of a ghost gum.

***

The rain was getting close to its fourth week and not a sign of
abatement. James hadn't been to school since the third day of rain, and
his parents hadn't been out of the house since the first. Both Linda
and Robert sat on the sofa and stared at the slowly mouldering wall.
Not a huge change to their normal routine of drinking, shopping for
food, eating food, drinking, getting the dole money to buy more food
and alcohol and sleeping: still it was a routine.

By now the rain was so heavy that what had been a single slow drip had
turned into numerous rivulets. Rain streamed down windows and walls, at
first resolute drips sticking fast against gravity but slowly being
built upon until a small tributary formed into a river pouring into the
ocean that was once the beige-carpeted floor of the Rothbury's home.
The carpet was a soggy sludge and gave off a damp-earth smell. Robert
wore his Doc Martins 24 hours a day; Linda wore the thigh-high patented
leather boots that James had pulled out of the closet for her. James
wore a pair of blue Thomas the Tank Engine galoshes when he wasn't
feeling the carpet squelch between his toes.

***

James now spent all his free time at school at the farthest corner of
the oval with his only companion; the comforting Gum. It became a
common sight to see him playing on it, talking to the tree as though
talking to his best friend (which in a sense it was), climbing across
and over every branch. Like somebody with a new lover James explored
every part of the tree and knew every bump and every hollow. He knew
the location of every family of animals that called his tree their
home. He pruned the old branches away and made sure that the tree had
enough water and even talked Linda into buying some fertilizer. This he
put into his lunch box in plastic sandwich bags and offered as a daily
snack for the gum.

***

Week six and not one of the Rothbury clan had moved from the cold
wasteland that was their living room. They felt heavy and unable to
move. James enjoyed the lackadaisical attitude of them all: the sense
of stillness, of being completely in touch with nature.

***

James spent a long number of days when not tending to his tree,
attempting to be as like a tree as he could. He would spend long hours
still and quiet. At first he tried standing with his arms extended in
the classic branch pose however the aching of his arms would quickly
cause him to move and lose all sense of treeness. So he would stand
with his legs slightly apart and his arms like creeping vines hanging
down his trunk. With each day he would push the boundaries of
stillness. Fifteen minutes soon became thirty, then an hour then two
and more.

He believed he could've stood forever like this if not for the constant
berating of his parents or teachers. There were also the children;
cruel young boys with curled down mouths that would come with the
conviction of the ignorant to 'chop down trees', laying into James with
their hands and feet and teeth, rocks and whatever was at hand. James
would take these beatings with all the patience of a martyr, refusing
to give up his faith in his ability to be a tree. He would feel the sap
pouring from his eyes throughout these ordeals but he refused to move.
He was convinced that the fate of nature at the hands of humanity was
always to be treated this way. It was a conviction he held firmly and
something to which, with all of nature, he had reconciled himself:
humankind was the enemy of the natural world.

He would stand stone still thinking his feet into the soil. Mentally
drilling down through the layers of topsoil and clay to the water
buried miles beneath. After a month of these meditative retreats he was
convinced that he had achieved a state of almost pure treeness. He was
like a dedicated Buddhist on the verge of Nirvana; he could sense the
edges of complete 'oneness' and yet each time he reached the brink he
stepped back.

***

And the rain continued to fall. The walls were green and glistening.
The floor had slithering shoots bursting from the carpeted rooms. The
mosquitos and flies were also plentiful. James was almost prepared now.
He was almost to the place where he knew everything would be all
right.

***

James realised that there was only one way to get beyond the point. He
also knew that the glimpses of beauty and harmony that he had been
afforded were something he should share with his mother and father.
Maybe this way they would stop beating each other and drinking
inordinate amounts of alcohol. Maybe, just maybe, they could, all
three, find peace in the sanctity of nature.

The first thing James did was to buy a dozen bags of fertilizer, which
he liberally spread under the floorboards of the house, filling the gap
between the ground and the floorboards.

His parents were not the easiest people in the world to convince but
eventually they had acquiesced to James' wishes and now sat absolutely
doe-eyed and eager, listening to his every word as he discussed the
logic and beauty of his plan. Hours spent talking about the splendour
and virtue of nature against the abhorrent and despicable acts of
humankind. He talked of the love of nature and the plenitude that
plants and trees supply for all the creatures of the world. In the end
they agreed, and through his tearing eyes he saw the smiles on their
faces and the glowing look of expectation. His father's crying had now
scabbed over and his mother had grown large and blue for James'
plans.

The final part of the plan was the rain. He had cut small irregular
holes into the all the water pipes running through the house; tearing
out the walls in the process and then turned on all the taps in the
house. The environment was established: James would yield to the glory
of nature and be able to leave the cursed world of the spiteful behind.
All was ready and so James stood, stock still against the falling rain
and smiled a giant smile. A smile that stretched larger and longer than
any smile he had ever smiled before.

A single shot rang out, a wisp of smoke curled, the rain continued to
fall and he grew.

~ End ~