October 10, 2023.

The Planting, Part 1.

They say I hurt the Harper girl only I didn't that was Mr. Friend and I know because I saw it. I say just ask her, she's my friend, and they say she don't do much talking any more because of what you done only I ain't do anything. And then as I was walking away from them Mr. Miller grabbed my arms from behind and they bound me tight with jute twine from momma's shed and momma saying no no no the whole time and shaking her head but Mr. Tice and Mr. Friend held her back. And then they hooked my feet with more jute twine to the back of Mr. Tice's Studebaker and drove me slow down the gravel road to the field behind Mr. Friend's house, and it hurt something terrible and when they got me up I was all covered in blood and dirt and autumn leaves and couldn't move my head on my neck no more.

Then they said I looked like a tree, all covered in leaves like that, and they seemed in a wild mind and full of beans and kept laughing when they spoke to me. They kept saying I was a tree and I said no sir I am not but then they cut loose the jute twine on my arms and handed me a shovel and bade me start digging in the field and so I did. The ground was rocky and full of hard clay and I was weak from being dragged and I only got a few feet down before they got restless and said it'll have to do. I couldn't help myself and I threw up my breakfast in the hole I dug and Mr. Friend laughed and said it was good fertilizer and Mr. Miller and Mr. Tice laughed too.

They had me set indian-style in the hole I dug and it was cold and wet with my puke and alive with creepy crawlies. I said please let me go home but the world was fuzzy now and I was having a hard time staying awake to look at them much less talk, and I am not sure they understood me. They said lay your roots out, tree, and I said what, and they said lay your roots out, and I saw they meant me to put my hands to my side and I did, cold earth and scrambled egg and coffee beneath my blistered fingers.

They did not talk while they refilled the hole and when I said please please please they told me to shut up and I did. Their air of humor had gone, this was now the silent work of men, with men's grunts and muttered curses, dirt and clay and rocks hitting my outstretched hands and body, the hole filling up as they took turns with the shovel, burying me up to my chest. They patted the earth with the shovel and nodded and said well that's that.

Mr. Tice said doesn’t he look like a tree now and the other two allowed that I did. He said, don’t you look like a tree now, and I started to respond that I cannot see whether or not I look like a tree, but he told me to shut up and that trees don’t talk, and shoved a handful of yellow leaves in my mouth, a bitter, earthen taste.

Then they left to go to find something to whet their whistles in town and said don’t go anywhere and then laughed, their good spirits returning. Then they climbed into Mr. Tice’s Studebaker and drove off and as its tail lights and the jute twine they tied me to it with disappeared away down the field I spit out some of the leaves but was too hazy and spiritless to get them all out.

The day passed and I was hot and tried to move, but the earth was too heavy. I could feel creepy crawlies moving around my body, tasting as I struggled against the weight of the dirt laid on me, and I imagined that they were tasting their dinner as it was prepared for them like when I steal a spoon of beans on momma’s stove while it is cooking.

My sight, blurred as it was, the shapes of the field melted into one another, and I had the feeling that I was melting into them, too, and if I didn’t escape then soon I didn’t know what would happen. But no matter how I struggled the heaviness of the earth held me fast, and I could not get even an inch in any direction.

I was faced East and so I saw the sun setting as the soft shapes of the field turning orange and black shadow spilling from them longer and longer like hosewater into a garden. Breathing was hard and I tasted irony blood and the bitterness of flecks of dead leaves on my dry tongue each time I did it, and my throat made whistling sounds like, and I thought, like a tree creaking in the wind.

Night came, and the cold grew colder. I was surprised to find I was not shivering, instead, I felt very warm, up through my middle. I could barely see in the blackness of night, for there was no moon. I wondered where the three men had gone, and if they were coming back, but it was late and they had not. I was very scared.

The night seemed to last forever. Maybe it did. Strange thoughts wandered through my head, and I welcomed the warmness of the dirt piled around me, which had been cold at first but now was heated by my body and the leftover heat of the sun. I saw less and less, and closed my eyes to the world, for all I saw or imagined I saw frightened me.

The part of me which grew from the earth was cold, but I could feel the warmth in my middle rise up to warm it. I was hungry, but more-so I was very, very thirsty. The leaves stuck to my body with blood and clay shuddered in the breeze from the east, but did not flight away, and still I did not shiver. In some way their presence soothed me, and I was grateful for their protection against the night chill.

Sounds. The sounds of the night frightened me, distant wind, animals of the night, moving and calling for each other in primal want. I felt trapped, in this place where I had been planted, and struggled still, but my struggles grew less and less violent. The thought of my thirst overwhelmed me. I drifted, dreaming of water, cool draughts from the sink, from a glass, from a hose, to nourish me, replenish me, and I prayed to God in heaven for the men to return, even to throw water on me in their cruel jesting way.

Fear. The fear ran through me like water, oh God, please, send me some water. My lips were cracked like oak bark. My spine ached, stuck in this position, ground by my roll behind the Studebaker to raggedness, to bare, aching pain, coated in dirt which caked to mud with my sweat, dried to woody patches in the freezing breeze. And still, I did not shiver, some warmth inside of me, from my lowest point rising to the crust of dirt which surrounded me.

Fear. Sounds. Distant crashes, booming across the field, sounds I know, not the crack of a gun, the sound of a post being driven into dry earth, but distant, staggered, and part of me perked to it, though I do not know why. I closed my eyes tighter against it. Please, please, please, I thought, but did not speak aloud. Please, please, please.

The crashes grew nearer. And only once they boomed, twice, overhead, did I recognize them for what they were, and then I heard the smatter of first rain hitting the earth around me, water, water! From the heavens! I yet could not move my head, to crane back to catch it in my mouth, but something in me told me to wait, I did not have to. The rain had come, a gift from God, a response to my unspoken prayer, and He would provide.

So I waited, until the smattering became a downpour. It was a roar of rain, thunder crashing overhead, my eyes squeezed closed and unable to see lightning, but I did not need to. The rain was real enough, dashing into me in solid stalks, the wind blustering me, and I moved as I could with it. It was as if a floodgate had been opened above me. The lifewater pooled in the mound I sat in, sank through the earth, and I felt it move around me, seeping into my limbs, my belly. I absorbed the water into me and it gave me life, life! I felt more alive than I had in years. Glory, glory!

Glory, glory! Praise to God in His Heaven!

In time, though I did not know how much, the storm waned, stuttered to a shower, and ended. I did not mind its ending. I had supped my fill, and was satiated. The night no longer held terror over me, as it had before. I allowed myself to simply live in it, washed, clean, anew.

When the sun rose, I felt its warmth on me as sweetest honey, golden and glowing through me like nothing I’d felt before. I no longer wanted for anything. I was warmed, and I straightened my trunk as I could in my spot, what I now thought of as my spot, and felt myself growing in the warm glow of morning sunlight.