That makes it honest, you see. You can’t trust the trees in any other season
but Winter. In the Spring, they’ll say
anything just to leaf out—liars, every single one of them. In the Summer, they blend together like a
pack of wolves, hiding everything, plotting and planning, tricking the hapless
traveler who is foolish enough to go through the woods. In the Fall, they paint themselves like
forest prostitutes, giving that come-hither look. Best to run then if you know what’s good for
you. The leaves conceal, hide, fool, and
manipulate. They are a living, breathing
screen that hide the bare bones of the woods.
But the Birch, she doesn’t care. Her leaves are plain and boring in Spring,
small and unassuming in Summer, and dull as can be in Fall. But come Winter, everything changes for our
Lady Birch, because that is when the masks are all off. And while the rest of the trees are hiding in
ugly bony greyness, she juts her white bones right out for all to see….mesmerizing
and terrible at the same time. My mother
always used to say, “Beauty is skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone.” The old Birch is damn pretty clear to the
bone, so I think I can trust her, unlike the other trees. Don’t ask her any questions if you don’t want
the truth, though, because she’s just stuffed right full it.
And speaking of truth, it occurred to me that I ought to
have waited the other day for the man who was praying to finish. Then maybe I could have asked him a few
questions. I didn’t know what those
questions would be, but I knew I had them just the same. I figured the best way to find out would be to
backtrack and go back to land’s end and look for him, so that’s what I set out
to do today. I took the alabaster
scabbard with me, of course. I rarely
leave without it.
This time there was no crow flying above to mock me,
nothing by which to gauge my intentions.
Now I almost wished he were there, high up in the sky, laughing at me
and calling me names. Having an enemy,
real or imagined, is a good distraction.
I know just what he’d say if he were there: “Caw!
Caw! I’ll wear you down to the
bare bones!” in that raspy, terrible voice of his. Scraping and scratching and bleeding. Mirror images, indeed.
So I kept walking, and the land ended again just like it
did last time. But the man on bended
knee was nowhere to be found. There was
no figure in sublime gentility, unpretentious and unassuming. There was no glow from the sunset, just a
cold wind. He hadn’t left any tracks
either, and I started to wonder if maybe I’d imagined the whole thing. That would certainly make things easier,
because then I could go back to haughty expectation and victimhood. And the world’s just full of that today, isn’t
it?
But as I turned to go, I felt a presence. Just as I had been watching the man on bended
knee earlier, now someone was watching me.
I had felt this presence before.
I knew who it was. I turned
around to find the man I had seen on the road at night in the earlier part of
the month, the one with the big pack on his back, the one who had told me that
if I thought I was stronger than him, I should come across the road.
“What are you
doing here?” I asked. “I thought you
said you had to turn around because the thing you feared had come upon you?”
“That is correct,” he said.
“Then why are you back here now?”
“For the same reason, it would seem.”
Damned peculiar. I
still felt the invisible barrier between us.
We both knew it was there, and as before we both behaved accordingly,
although I believe it was a matter of courtesy on his part and not any force
that kept him at bay.
“I will keep on going,” I told him, “because I haven’t
really got a choice. Well, I suppose I
could curl up in a ball and refuse to face reality and shut the world out forever. But that seems to have lost its luster, so I will
keep walking into the next year.” I did
not know that was my intention until I had said it.
“A wise choice,” he said, and I thought I saw the hint of
a smile.
“You knew I was here looking for the praying man, right?” The smile vanished.
“My brother ends up in the strangest of places,” he said,
“But as you can see he is not here now.
It’s cold and getting dark again, too.”
And that sounded more than a bit menacing to me. It was past time for me to go. As usual, though, he seemed to read my mind
again.
“Watch out for those Birch trees,” he said, “Because the
forest is just thick with them this time of year, and you don’t
want to get caught up in a prison made of bones. It’s no better than any other prison, you
know.” And as he said it, he looked at
my alabaster scabbard. Yes, it was
definitely time to go.
“Are you with me or against me?” I asked. I’ll never know what possessed me to ask
that.
“Against you,” he said simply.
I thought he might come across the imaginary barrier at
that point, but he didn’t. I turned and
walked away, slower than I wanted to because I didn’t want him to know I was
afraid.
The year is turning quickly now. Like the old Birch tree, I have stripped off
all my leaves and left my camouflage behind.
I will do the same to you, if you will let me. Let’s throw off these costumes and rid
ourselves of this foolish posturing and political correctness. Caesar and the merchant be damned. Let’s have it be a New Year’s
resolution: GIVE ME TRUTH. I know what my old bleached bones reach
for. So what are your bare bones
reaching for this time? It had better be
your homeland and the Sun. If you have
any sense at all, it had better be your homeland and the Sun.
