Trees and Other Witnesses

By Kathy Taylor and Michele Wayland

Trees are silent witnesses to the passing of time, guardians of myth and memory, metaphors of life. Each story in this collection has a tree of particular importance to its characters and their communities. These are tales of childhood and imagination, of migration and struggle, conflict and change. They are about specific places in Mexico, Nicaragua and the U.S., and real and imagined sites of cultural encounter, growth and adaptation. As the characters in these stories grapple with the forces of nature and the entanglement of human relationships, the trees are their companions and touchstones, reflecting, and at times shaping, the experience of their lives. These stories follow the roots and inner journeys of a variety of characters, while embodying a deep respect for the natural world around them and the power of its imagery to structure the meaning of their perceptions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jul 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781647504588

Kathy Taylor

Kathy Taylor is a writer and musician and a retired professor of Spanish (literature, linguistics, and creative writing). A passionate polyglot, she loves languages and their cultures and is fascinated by language in general. She has lived in Mexico, Nicaragua, Ireland, Curaçao and Germany, and has written and published in English, Spanish, German and Papiamentu: songs, poetry, short stories, essays, translations, a bilingual ethnographic novel on Mexican taxi drivers and literary criticism. Kathy's writing often involves explorations of the natural world and the diverse communities that interact with it. Her recent short story collection Trees and Other Witnesses was a finalist for the Colorado Authors League award for mainstream / literary fiction. She lives off the grid with her husband Peter in the mountains of Colorado.

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About the Author

Kathy Taylor is a writer, musician, and a retired professor of Latin American literature, Spanish linguistics, and creative writing. She has published in English, Spanish and Papiamentu: poetry, songs, short stories, translations, a bilingual ethnographic novel on Mexican taxi drivers and literary criticism. She has lived and worked extensively in Latin America and the Caribbean and her experiences there have deeply informed her work. Her writing often involves explorations of the natural world and the diverse communities that interact with it. She lives off the grid with her husband in the mountains of Colorado.

Dedication

To:

Trees who bear witness

keeping watch over it all,

our breathing partners.

Copyright Information ©

Kathy Taylor (2021)

Illustrations by Michele Wayland

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Taylor, Kathy

Trees and Other Witnesses

ISBN 9781647504571 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781647504564 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781647504588 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021912506

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published (2021)

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

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Acknowledgment

These stories surely took root long before I even imagined them. I am grateful to have grown-up at Pendle Hill, a Quaker community of resident trees with an international river of people flowing through it. The relationship of those arboreal guardians to the spiritual seeking of human visitors was imprinted on me early. The botanical variety was impressive, as was the diversity of languages, colors, and cultures of the visitors. The air was rich with words and stories that launched me into a life of reaching for new experiences in other lands. My heart has a home in Mexico, Nicaragua, Curaçao, Ireland, Germany, and many other places I haven’t yet lived.

I am indebted to Earlham College for the privilege of leading students on extended educational programs in Mexico, Nicaragua, Chicago, and Curaçao and for supporting and nurturing my teaching, publication, and creative projects through the years. In the classroom, I had the joy of exploring in depth with my students the wonders of language and human expression and the works of a wide variety of Latin American and Latinx writers. I never tire of the voices of Isabel Allende, Gioconda Belli, Sandra Cisneros, Elena Garro, Rosario Ferré, and so many others who whisper in my ear as I write.

I want to thank all the people whose stories have touched my life and those who have helped me tell them. These include, of course, my family and friends, books, teachers, students, hosts and adopted families in other countries. My work with Mexican and Central American immigrants in the U.S. left me humbled and inspired by their courage and resilience. Brief conversations with strangers have also left many illuminated moments in my memory. In Mexico and Ireland, and also from my father, Dan Wilson, I learned the value of the storytelling itself, the act of connecting with other people through love of words and imagination.

Ten of these stories were written in 2002–2004 and I value the feedback I got from a writer’s workshop in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and especially the writing friendship with David Hassler that grew out of that. His encouragement and creative suggestions were always most welcome. Three of the stories have been published in literary magazines. The last three stories grew from recent conversations with my husband, Peter Taylor, friends Wilmer Chavarría and Cyrus Dudgeon, and my deep love for the mountains of Colorado and the Upper Arkansas Valley. I am especially indebted to Wilmer for setting the stage for the last story about the Guanacaste tree and for enticing me back to his home in Nicaragua to stay with his family, my beloved adopted family, in Ocotal.

Thanks to David Ebenbach for sharing his writing wisdom and to Austin Macauley Publishers for taking on this project.

And special thanks to Michele Wayland for her lovely artwork that graces the cover and introduces each tree in the book with her own wordless language.

The Rope Swing

r1

It all came back to her in a rush of air when she touched the smooth surface of the wood. Her brother made things, and his hands knew how to turn ordinary wood into something wonderful. It was a beautiful tray with a wavy brown and golden grain. But it was no ordinary wood. From the old beech tree, he had said, and she was instantly swung back into her childhood. Holding tight to the rope, she leaned back to watch the arc of the patchwork sky tilt above her as she let go of everything else.

She called it ‘The Elephant Tree.’ The huge base trunk divided into thick branches as big as an elephant’s leg. Aside from a few scars and carved initials, the gray bark was smooth and welcoming to small climbers. It was older than even the oldest elephant. For over three hundred years, it had seen the seasons come and go, recording in its girth the stories that grew around it.

The old beech tree? Is it…?

It’s still there. Just lost a big branch in a storm. You know that long arm that reached out so far, where we used to…

It was her turn to jump. She looked at the other kids behind her, straddling the branch as they waited their turns. She couldn’t go back. Her brother had boosted her high enough to grab the branch above and swing herself up to scoot along the outstretched elephant arm. She had watched other kids do it. Now it was her time. The branch bounced with the weight of five or six kids lining up. It seemed higher and scarier from above. A big kid handed the rope swing up to her, saying, Just put the rope between your legs so you can sit on the stick. Hold on tight and jump. She didn’t even remember jumping, but suddenly she was flying, oblivious to all but the smell of sun-warmed pine needles, the coarse rope in her hands, and her hair trailing behind.

Some local artists were invited to make things out of the wood from that branch. The pieces were auctioned off to raise money for the community.

The community, her beloved home, was a Pennsylvania retreat where she had grown up among the trees, free to roam the eighteen acres and old stone buildings. It was a Quaker Center that drew people from all walks of life, from all over the world. They came looking for something. She wasn’t sure what. But their fluid presence was a comforting backdrop to her life as they wandered through her childhood. Even now, so many years later, the place was still often the default setting for her dreams and her own inner searches.

A very special gift, she said, running her fingers over the years of sun and rain recorded in the wood, a small piece of her past.

The kids came tumbling into Main House, their outdoor exuberance bringing fresh chaos to the sleepy serenity of the adults. Sometimes, it took them a long time to settle into acceptable indoor behavior. But the old man with a long white beard always calmed them quickly. He was from Korea. He was Korea. He had three names, but no one was sure which one was his first name. Sak Hon Ham or Ham Sak Hon, it didn’t seem to matter. He could often be seen strolling around the grounds, leaving a trail of quiet behind him. There was something about him that felt as dignified and non-judging as the trees. She almost ran into him as she led the pack of kids around the corner to the community dining room. One by one, they stopped and stood still, feeling for a moment like small adults in their respectful silence.

A group had just arrived from Japan, young women from Hiroshima who had come to heal their scars from the war. People called them ‘The Hiroshima Maidens.’ Some Quakers had raised money to pay for them to have plastic surgery in Philadelphia. She was drawn to their grace and gentle smiles and often followed them around, attached to someone’s hand. Right away, she had noticed the strange, ugly creatures growing on a smooth face, hand, or arm.

Why? she had asked her parents, knowing that this was beyond her four-year-old experience. Did bad people do it?

War, her parents had said, and she saw the sadness in their eyes. The Bomb.

Who is War? she wondered.

We have met the enemy and he is us, was one of those mysterious riddles that the grownups liked to repeat. Some guy named Pogo said that.

Who is the enemy? Are we in a war? It was so hard to put it all together. The burns on those lovely faces haunted her.

The War, The Bomb… She often heard those words through the years, and they awakened in her a nighttime terror that lurked in the shadows during the daytime. And every time a jet took off from the nearby airport, flying low overhead, she would cover her ears, close her eyes, and wait for The Bomb to drop.

You’re no more likely to be hit by a bomb than to be struck by lightning, her dad had said lightly once to reassure her. Her dad knew everything. But he seemed to have forgotten the story he had told her about when he was a boy in western Kansas. He was bringing the cows in when he got knocked down and out by a lightning strike. It was a hollow reassurance.

She heard people talk about Communists, but she didn’t know who or where they were. Once a couple of men in gray suits came and were hiding behind bushes, watching things. Maybe one guy was McCarthy. She heard that name a lot. He was always watching everybody, they said. Her dad said it was important to listen to everyone, so he invited them in for coffee. He was the director of the Quaker Center and his job was to listen to people. She didn’t think he liked that McCarthy guy much, though.

Many years later, when she found herself inhabiting the adult world, she understood the war-in-all-of-us and decided that The Bomb came in small installments. There was daily bombardment of threats to life as we know it. Everyone felt it, but folks reacted in different ways. She could see what the adults of her childhood had been looking for when they came to the Quaker retreat. They came to try to understand what could not be understood, those same questions without answers. But living there together among the trees, maybe they found something else.

There were some who looked for answers in Zen Buddhism. Well, not really answers. That was the point. If that is what you are looking for, there won’t be any, or something like that. To her young mind, Zen seemed to kind of make sense in all of its hilarious contradictions. The world of adults had rules that people didn’t seem to follow and questions without answers, like Alice in Wonderland. (Why did grownups think that story was funny?) Quakers asked a lot of questions, like she did, but they seemed okay without the answers.

Sometimes, their questions sounded kind of like the riddles she loved so much. By the time she was six or seven, she was allowed to sit at other tables, without her parents, when they ate dinner in the big dining room. She was a full person all by herself. She would share her favorite riddles with whoever her table mates were and laugh hard at the answers she provided before anyone else could guess them. She loved the way words could be silly. When adults said things that she didn’t understand, she tried laughing at their riddles and was mystified by the uncomfortable silence that followed.

Once she took her riddles to The Elephant Tree, where she could enjoy her own laughing response in peace. But it wasn’t much fun by herself. The Big Questions followed her around and would often climb up the tree with her. One day, she tossed one of them up into the highest branches and it got stuck there, where she forgot about it.

And there was the time that she and her best friend Adrienne got in trouble for trying to follow some of those rules that everyone knew—the Sunday School kind about being generous and sharing. In a moment of compassion, they decided to do something about the plight of the moles, those poor blind creatures who tunneled through the lawn behind Main House. How could they get out and find something to eat, being blind and imprisoned like that? It was so sad, and no one seemed to care. Before she had even heard the words ‘social justice,’ she knew what they meant.

The idea came to them in a flash of inspiration. Those little personal cereal boxes in the cupboard in the dining room would be just the thing! They collected as many as they could carry and spent a couple of hours dedicated to their mission of mercy. Gently lifting up the end of each tunnel, they sprinkled a bit of their gift—Cornflakes, Sugar Pops, Frosted Flakes—a variety, because who knew what moles would like? They felt betrayed when they were sternly reprimanded, starving kids in China or something. She tried to imagine kids living upside down on the other side of the world. Were kids that she didn’t even know more important than creatures in her own backyard? Still, sometimes she worried about those kids. Why didn’t somebody feed them?

There were so many trees. Her oldest brother loved trees, too. He planted lots of little ones so they would be big someday for other kids to climb. And he knew the names of all the trees by heart. She didn’t know all their names, but she knew them with her heart. They were always there waiting for her, those patient trees. She found solace in their open-armed stance. Quaker Meeting was too long, and the benches were hard, but she did understand something of the special silence there. She often found her own quiet moments in the branches of one of her tree friends. Or sometimes all she needed was a brief embrace of the trunk, resting her cheek on the cool bark of a beech or pressing her ear close to see if she could hear the sap running in a sugar maple. (She thought she could.)

One year, there was a terrible storm that raged and blew and knocked down many big trees. It was really scary