THE WISH BELLY, PART IV
“The cherry trees bend over and are shedding
On the old road where all that passed are dead
The petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding
The early May morn when there are none to wed.”
-Edward Thomas
By Shane Kimberlin
I drove the car down the highway as the stars reluctantly welcomed the sun, awkward neighbors who were too much alike to ever truly bond. The sky was bleeding, just. The cat slept. He was satiated from the chicken nuggets.
He had ordered food at the drive thru and the woman working through the monitor heard him order the food, heard him speak the words “chicken nuggets” and responded accordingly. I wasn’t insane, and this revelation disappointed me. Before, I hoped, maybe, that I created the voice itself, that, maybe, I was imagining these conversations. Maybe there was no kidnapping and, you know, she just went to the store. Perhaps I was just mentally ill. That possibility was calming. They had prescriptions for these things. There were studies. I could get help. I would write a memoir about this illness and not have to work in IT anymore.
The odds seemed high. But here we were, driving to the cherry tree, and more and more I felt my theory collapsing, confronted with the growing possibility that this actually was my life.
It was fall. Leaves hung to their tree’s respective skeletons, revealing more each day from the tear of wind and rain and cold. College. I was a freshman, 22 years old.
I’d taken a gap year that turned into nearly four, ending up in Utah selling sports gear. Beyond paying rent and keeping things together, I’d never been an overly ambitious guy. It’s not my nature. People get twisted and tightened with too many dreams, instead of just living. I’m not lazy, or scared, just comfortable with what happens.
But living in Salt Lake City gave me pause. For the first time in my young adult life, I wasn’t comfortable. I didn’t like my job. One day I went out to the dunes and looked out at the sun. A bird- a seagull- flew across the pure blue canvas and I thought, in a clear voice, “I will get a degree in computer science”
As a twenty two year old, I didn’t hang out with other freshmen. I didn’t hang out with anyone, really. For me, college was a get-in, get out situation, like a reversed bank heist where they took my money. I wanted a degree and that was that. It was a boring school- the kind of place that never gets mentioned anywhere but had the right credentials. I used to joke it was the Goldilocks of higher learning: not too hot, not too cold, but just right. I did fine.
There was only one cherry tree in a hundred mile radius. It was famous in the way any other cherry tree in a hundred mile radius can be; meaning, not at all. You’d see a mention at the local museum on a small placard. The tree grew on a hill by the college. There was a thin, barely-used trail leading towards it. The hill was neither the biggest nor most visually interesting; chock with ugly weeds and brush on its sides, misshapen like a crummy pastry. The cherry tree rarely bore fruit. It wasn’t very big. The entire location felt like the rough draft of a much better setting that existed far away. I imagine that visiting tourists- if there were any- were disappointed. A small, faded sign by local Parks and Rec explained the history of the tree- over a hundred years old, no one knows who planted it- complete with a cartoon acorn and cherry talking about why recycling really is the bee’s knees.
An old gas station, named “Gas Station,” sat half a mile nearby and sold old novelty t-shirts about the cherry tree. “WE GOT THE TREE TO MAKE SOME CHERRIES,” said one in big bright letters, with a picture of Neil Diamond underneath. There were a few others. They all were folded on a rack on the right side of the cashier’s register. A few displaying different images hung on the wall. Every time I stopped by that gas station- maybe four times a year- I’d check to see if there was any movement of the shirts, as if the shirts leaving the store meant people were finally interested in this wannabe tourist trap.
I’ve always been drawn by failure. Failure is more interesting than success, because it’s so much more relatable. We always hear about heroes, about the greats. This attempt- by the gas station, by town hall forty years earlier, by t-shirt purveyors and bumper sticker hucksters - to make a legend had, by all conceivable measures, failed. But this tree, this dismal flop of an attraction, was at least humble. And how could it not be? It was no canyon, geyser, fault or roaring rapids. It was merely a cherry tree, one that hadn’t even lived up to its own potential.
I only went to the tree twice, but I remembered each time with great clarity. The first was with her. We had met in a class a few weeks earlier and gone on a few dates. We went on a hike from the parking lot to the cherry tree, which took around five minutes. The tree looked bigger in the pictures. We stood and looked out at the area. Little boxes and micro cars and in the far distance our college, the place that could help our future now fitting between our fingers. We stood there for a time without saying anything.
“Strange,” she finally said.
“What?”
“The tree. It’s fall and the leaves are still green.”
“Late bloomer.”
“Look at all the other trees. Orange, brown, nothing at all.”
“But this is green.”
“Yes. Like it’s not changing.”
“I drive past this place sometimes. I’ve seen it without leaves.”
“So, later than this?”
“I suppose.”
“Next time,” she said, “will you check? For me?” She looked at me with a face so somber I thought she was, at first, joking. She wasn’t. With that look she never was.
I promised I would.
A few months later, when winter finally made its home, a carpet of snow and each earthy thing mired in its frost, I drove past the cherry tree. On the hill it stood, solitary, and there were only the thin bones of branches, just black veins against a pale sky. I stopped the car and hiked up to the tree. There were no footprints. The wind hummed low like trumpet notes from past the horizon. Around the tree was new snow from that morning. I turned to walk away, but a blip caught my sight. A single green leaf on the snow. I picked it up. Fresh. An error message in reality’s program. I put the leaf in my pocket and walked away.
I got gas at Gas Station and walked inside to pay. On the right of the cashier was the wall, shirtless and merch-less, now replaced with shelves of bags of chips. No more Neil Diamond, no more cherry tree puns or references.
“What happened to the shirts?” I asked, “You sell them?”
The cashier snickered.
“As if,” he said, “Nobody was buying those. We got rid of them.”
“Oh really?”
“Well, most of ‘em. Hey, you want one?”
“Really?” I said.
“Yeah, I got a box left. Let me see.”
The cashier went to the back for a moment. “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden played off the tinny speakers. I stared at the cracked, worn tiles. I wondered how many feet had stood where I was at that moment, how many little conversations this cashier had done in his lifetime, how many times “Black Hole Sun” played as somebody waited to leave and stared at those little tiles, how many times this circle would go on.
“Here you go,” he said. “We got rid of all the Diamond ones- I was sick of em- but here’s one you might like.”
“Okay, cool.”
He showed me the t-shirt like a flag, stretched out.
“I Went To The Blue Moon Cherry Tree and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.”
Underneath the text was a cartoon image of a teenage boy wearing a baseball cap backwards. He had a skateboard.
“Looks great,” I lied.
“Alright, that’ll be ten dollars.”
“For what?”
“The shirt.”
I was surprised, but said nothing. He took my money and I stood there, feeling like a chump. Gas station robberies sometimes go both ways.
The cat awoke.
“Where are we?” he said.
“Almost there.”
“Really? How do you know where the place is? How do you know it’s the right cherry tree?”
“Because all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”
“What?”
“Sorry,” I said, “if I had the t-shirt it would have made more sense. It was almost a joke. I have a t-shirt that says that about the cherry tree we’re going to”
“I see. Like, a movie thing. Like the Die Hard?”
“I guess.”
“Okay, Mr. James Bond.”
The gas station came into view. A single light shone by the single pump in the empty parking lot. It was closed. I stopped the car in its parking lot.
“What are you doing?” asked the cat.
“I need to stretch my legs.”
I got out. You could see more of the sky now. The stars were fading as dreams fade right before you wake up. The day was waking from a dream. Or maybe the day was the dream, and night- with its silence and haunting- was real. Maybe all this light was an apparition.
The cat got out to wander. I walked over to the gas station window and peered in. Empty. No counter or shelves, not even the tiles, just concrete floor. I felt something behind me. I turned.
“What’s the matter?” said the cat stretching by the car.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Can you hear that?” said the cat.
“What?” I said.
“The silence. It’s deafening.”
We stood for a moment. The cat was right. Even the wind was gone.
It was right then we heard her scream.
The Wish Belly series by Shane Kimberlin: