There was a storm. It wasn’t a particularly big one, nor a notably blustery one, and its rain was of average intensity, volume, and general wetness. It was in all respects an ordinary and most mediocre storm, which is not an altogether bad thing. The world needs its middling storms, just as it requires its moderately sloping cliff faces, halfhearted scrublands, and disappointingly tepid public speakers.
It did, however, have an unexpected side effect. A tree fell in a forest, and no one was there to hear it. Well, half a tree fell. The other half remained unfallen, and most irked.
“Damnit!” said the tree. It then spoke several more words, all of which were unspeakable – quite a mean feat by anyone, particularly an individual that was never blessed with a mouth, tongue, or respiratory system. All, alas, wasted on its audience of no one.
The broken tree glared at the forest around it. So many of its weedier, limper, half-hearted colleagues still stood with as much feeble firmness as they could muster, while the tree itself – as vigorous, proud specimen and citizen of phylum — as could be found, in its (exceedingly!) humble opinion – had limply given up half its total mast height without so much as a hold-on-there-bucko.
“This,” the broken tree said, deliberately and menacingly, its roots curling, “is most annoying. I shall fix it at once.” And then it leaned over and tried very carefully to pick up its fallen half. It failed.
The broken tree spoke more unspeakable words, which attracted the attention of the birch next to it. “Pardon me,” it inquired, “but you seem to have dropped something. Will you be all right?”
“No,” said the tree shortly. Doubly shortly. “I cannot mend myself, and I point-blank refuse to regrow the whole nine-and-three-quarters-yards! That’s how many years wasted? Sap’s flowing here, I don’t have the time to throw away! The whole place’ll be old-growth and I’ll be a seedling still if I faff about with that nonsense!”
“You could ask an arborist,” volunteered the birch.
“No thanks. As much as I’d gloat over seeing some of these louts regrow from ground zero, I don’t fancy sitting through a fire much myself.”
“An arborist,” the birch enunciated most carefully. “A sort of tree-doctor. They can fix anything from bark beetles to leaf-blight.”
“Are you sure?” asked the broken tree, dubiousness exuding from its every twig.
“Positive,” said the birch, who wasn’t. Its source was decidedly second-hand. Squirrel-handed, to be precise. Still, they were usually somewhat correct about thirty to ten percent of the time.
“Then I will see about getting to one of these arborist,” declared the broken tree. “Where do they live?”
“The city?” volunteered the birch.
“That seems counterproductive of them. I will set out at once!” said the broken tree, and then it did nothing.
“Blast,” it said. Roots are much more difficult to remember than you’d think. “Plan the second then,” it decided, and it whistled sharply, attracting the attention of a passing man.
“Excuse me, man,” said the broken tree, “but I am in dire need of transportation. Would you mind cutting me loose from my roots?”
“Sure,” said the man. When you lived in a forest, it paid to be polite to trees. He walked home, took out his big axe, walked back, and had the whole tree down and chopped before you could correctly spell onomatopoeia.
“Thank you,” said the tree. And then it failed to move some more. “Damnation.”
“I could put you up at my place for a while,” volunteered the man. “Besides, I could use the wood.”
“I suppose I could spare a little,” agreed the tree. “But NO firewood. I haven’t seen any of my tiniest twigs used for so much as tinder, and I won’t go farther. I won’t, won’t, won’t.”
“Sure thing,” said the man. He hauled the tree back to his house and put it in the woodshed.
“A bit stuffy in here,” the tree complained.
“Shove off you daft twit,” snapped the cordwood. Their relationship grew no more civil for all the nights they spent cooped up together, and the broken tree came to look forward to those nights that the man grew cold and lit fires.
“I could use a bit of whittling to fret away some evenings,” said the man in November.
“Fine, fine… but mind you don’t take too big a piece,” the tree grumped.
“A little piece off the trunk for a new seat on my stool wouldn’t be too bold, would it?” he inquired in December.
“It would be, but I will allow it nonetheless,” decreed the tree.
“My chest has broken! I need somewhere to place my things!” was the cry in January.
“Careless! Spendthrift! My wood will never break, but be more careful, you reckless fop!”
And so it went on, all through winter and into spring, and it wasn’t until mid-March when the last bit of cordwood had been burnt up (to the tree’s immense satisfaction) that the tree said “Hang on a second… I must be off to the arborist! Man, I am in dire need of transportation! Quickly now, before I am all used up!”
“Well, now, there’s no need to be in such a hurry,” said the man. That trunk was mighty sturdy, and his stool had never been so comfortable. He was in very little rush to move the tree anywhere.
“I demand movement!” roared the broken tree.
“No rush, don’t worry, it’ll come soon enough, soon enough, as sure and soon as the spring rains die down and the rivers are passable” soothed the man. He made many fine placating speeches and proverbs, which affected the tree not one whit. It had the most unpleasant sensation that it had acquired a new set of roots, except these ones opted to forgo extracting nutrients from fertilizer and were made entirely of it.
Time passed and the man stalled, and in late spring his friends came down. The maple syrup run was on, and they were gathering pails and boiling sap. A gruesome sight indeed for any tree. But yet the mob brought hope to the broken tree alone in its woodshed as it heard them chatter and yowl indoors after dark. Perhaps it could entice help from one of the strange men.
“Psst,” it whispered to a big bulky man as he relieved his bladder against a nigh-bloodless maple three yards away. “Consider bringing home some magnificent wood?”
“I’ve got that right here,” slurred the man, and he hooted so loudly that he nearly fell over. The tree thought nasty things at his back as he reentered the house.
“You look a discerning sort,” it praised the second man to saunter outdoors for a leak, a stocky, shortish, bearded bloke. “Would you care for some fine, aged timber?”
He appraised the tree with a critical eye, nose, and beard. “Pah! Barely fit for termites,” he sniffed, and left the door swinging before the tree could come out of its shock long enough to insult his parentage.
The third man kicked his way out of the house, stomped down to the woodshed, and urinated with such vicious force that he cut leaves from stems.
“I’ve HAD IT with that dimwit!” he snarled into the forest at large.
“So have I!” agreed the tree. It was prepared to classify any and all of the men it had met as the dimwit in question. “Take me with you!”
The angry man squinted at the tree in the dark. “You Charlie’s?”
“Most likely.” The tree had never bothered to learn the man’s name.
“It’d piss him off?”
“Definitely,” said the tree.
“Hell yes!” said the angry man, and he wrestled the broken tree away and into the night before it could egg him on any further.
“I have an urgent appointment with an arborist,” explained the tree to the angry man as they hurried along through the night.
“And I have a project I have to finish by the day after tomorrow,” said the angry man. “I think this will help both of us.”
“What?” said the tree, but before it could get a straight answer it found itself raced through a sawmill, made into planks, and shoved into a strange, half-tubeish form.
“This is terrible!” yelled the tree. “How am I supposed to see the arborist now!?”
“It’s a canoe,” said the angry man. “And you’re going to head somewhere, all right.”
“What?” said the tree again, but once more its answer had to wait, as it was violently tossed into some water and had things piled in it. Another man in fancy clothes handed the angry man a bunch of shiny bits of metal and then it was away down the river.
“Who the hell are you?” demanded the tree.
The fancy man looked startled. “Goodness me, a talking canoe. I must have had a few too many nips from the bottle last night.”
“You aren’t from around here, are you?” asked the tree. ‘Ignorant swine.”
“My goodness me,” said the man, and his surprise and shock was so great that he quite failed to notice the rapids coming up. The tree was drifting downstream empty and upside down before five minutes time had passed.
“Men,” it said underwater, “are growing irksome.” And then a man pulled it out of the water.
“Here boys, a replacement canoe already!” he hollered at his friends. They were even burlier and hootier than the friends of the first man the tree had met.
“I happen,” said the tree, “to be looking for an arborist.”
“Never met ‘im,” dismissed the man, and he had the tree caulked, sealed, thumped in approval, and shoved back into the water with four men and their supplies onboard before it could so much as sputter indignantly. It was reduced to choking out swearwords between stretches of white water all the way downstream, for miles and miles and miles. Then thump-bump, into a dock, splash, thud, off with the clutter, heave-ho, into a shed. Not a woodshed, but a shed.
“I happen,” the tree said to the man shutting the doors on it, “to be looking for an arborist.”
The man paused. “That one of them firebugs?”
“Arborist,” clarified the tree.
“Never met ‘im,” said the man, and he shut the door on the tree. It seethed all winter, and come spring it was on with the loads again, on with the loud men, and down, down, down the rivers and streams, on backs and off again, until it ended up – to its greatest surprise – to be in the city.
“An arborist! An arborist! My kingdom for an arborist!” cried the tree across the streets as it was hoisted into a warehouse. Its calls fell on deaf, ignorant, and uncaring ears.
“You talk too much,” complained the man, and locked it away, solving that problem for a hundred years and a bit as the trading company went bankrupt the next Thursday.
A hundred years later, there was a click-clack and off came the door’s lock. “Huh,” said the construction worker. “A bunch of old canoes.”
“I am a tree and I am very, very, very bored,” came the reply, leaden with staid despair as few can produce it.
“Oh,” said the worker. “My apologies. Hey, the museum should get a load of this.”
“Wait, what?” said the tree, but the worker was talking into his small squawky metal thing and didn’t pay it any attention.
Some other men came to take it away.
“Are any of you arborists?” it asked as it was heaved with great care into a noisy, cement-y street.
“Naw,” answered the foreman.
“Damnit.”
The tree was put in a large glass case in a large stone building with a small plastic plaque with smaller micro-bits of information on it, mostly concerning voyageurs and the beaver fur trade.
“Are you an arborist?” it demanded of the first (and rather small) man that came across it.
He picked his nose and ate it. “Mommy, I bored,” he announced, and waddled away before being scooped up by his grudging parent.
The tree did not like the start to its search.
“Are you an arborist?” it asked a man who looked to have seen much in the world.
“Janitor,” he responded curtly. “I don’t talk to displays.” And he didn’t ever again, threaten however the tree might.
“Are you?” it asked a bearded, rounded man.
“I am,” the man replied grandly, “freshly unemployed. And newly single. And very, very, very, alone.” And then he burst into hysterical sobbing laughter that lasted until the guards led him away.
“Are you?” it inquired of a man with a face like a terrified gargoyle.
“Elementary school teacher,” came the strained response. He tottered away, surrounded by his horde of manlings, waving futilely at them. For a brief moment, the tree knew pity for something other than itself.
“Are you?”
The man blinked several times over. He was unbearded, untall, unshort, unfat, unthin, and altogether unremarkable. “Yes.”
“What?”
“I am an arborist. Why do you ask?”
“An arborist, yes? Not the other one? The one with matches?”
“No. I am indeed an arborist.”
“Well,” said the broken tree, “you took your time! I have half a trunk missing and I demand that you fix it!”
The arborist examined the canoe. “You seem to be a bit past worrying about that,” he mentioned.
“Pish tosh! Are you a proper arborist or aren’t you? Bark beetles to leaf blight to missing half my trunk, you can and will fix this!”
“Where’s the other half?”
“It’s…” and the tree tried to remember. “It’s the one next to the birch. Yes, that was it. Or maybe it was a sycamore.”
“Hmm. When did you lose it?”
“A hundred and three years ago, or somesuch,” guessed the tree. “Well, maybe a hundred and fifty three. Or maybe not. Does it matter?”
“Mm,” said the arborist. “Say, do you like being a canoe?”
“I am a tree,” said the tree testily.
“Right. Listen, I’ve got an idea.”
The arborist went and got the curator.
“Can you sell it?” he asked.
The curator stroked his thin, hideous beard gently. “Yeesss….I suppose so. There were several dozen in the storage room at the time. Several are in comparable condition.”
“Then you can replace it?”
“I am irreplaceable,” the tree declared proudly.
“Deal,” said the curator. “It’s disturbing visitors anyways.” He took some shiny bits of paper from the arborist and helped him load the tree into his pickup truck.
“Where are we going?” asked the tree.
“A place I know,” said the arborist.
Before too long, they were in a big building filled with paper. There was a large and intimidating-looking machine filled with metal teeth, and the arborist took the tree to it.
“You’re sure this will work?” asked the tree. There were an awful LOT of teeth.
“Positive,” said the arborist, and he dropped it in. A tremendous amount of shredding, screaming, pulping, pain, cursing, squashing, flattening, fuming, sheeting, and screeching happened. The tree came out in a lot more pieces than it had went in, all flat, white, and in a neat stack, which was scooped up by the arborist.
“This,” said the tree, “is not helping one bit.”
“Relax,” said the arborist, as they pulled in at a big brick building. “I’ve got just the people to solve it.”
The nervous, terrified gargoyle-man met them, and he and the arborist talked.
“It’s a big project,” said the man.
“They can handle it,” said the arborist. The tree was brought into a room. A hundred gibbering manling faces stared at it, in varying states of drool and phlegm-expulsion.
“Turn around at once,” commanded the tree. Those glassy eyes, combined with the bowl of gunk it was approaching, gave it no small pause.
“Don’t worry,” said the arborist. He swerved away from the bowl, filling the tree with deep relief, and dumped it in another machine filled with metal teeth. They were much smaller, but just as pointy. The tree called him things that made the classroom gasp and ooh as it emerged from the shredder’s maw, and then was stifled by the goop.
“Go for it,” decreed the arborist, and the tree was set up and crudely slapped around a skinny metal frame through long, painful hours of maddened giggling. Paint slopped over it, brown and green.
“This –” said the tree as a brush interrupted it.
“Why –” it began, only to have a careless handprint splotch beige against its features.
“You are –” it managed, and almost fell over as a manling shoved another one into its base, nearly toppling it.
“THIS IS NOT HELPING!” it yelled as loud as it could, as the arborist gently steered it back upright.
“You’re done,” he said, and held up a mirror. And much to the tree’s shock and surprise, it was.
“Paper-mache,” explained the arborist as it examined its small, crudely-painted leaves and knobbly trunk. “I made the frame myself, so you’re not missing any important bits. And you’ve got that trunk back, all in one piece. Like it?”
The tree considered its options.
“Yes, well, it will suffice,” it managed.
“Good,” said the arborist, and turned to leave the classroom.
“Tell me,” said the tree, making him pause in the doorframe, “do you solve all your clients’ problems this way?”
The arborist chose his next words carefully. “Just the special ones.”
“Right,” said the tree, vaguely satisfied. At least it had a professional’s opinion.
All the same, it wasn’t sure it would pass on any recommendations.