The Cedars
for Algernon Blackwood
In my experience, novel writing is anything but a straight forward process. Previous attempts have mostly had their germs in disparate short stories that then start to grow towards one another by their own volition. I simply do my best to shepherd them along while producing some connective tissue as inconspicuously as possible.
With my current project (tentatively titled ‘Fool in the Jukebox’), I tried to break that mold and just write a novel straight through. After a couple wide-ranging ensemble manuscripts, I wanted a simple, streamlined, first person narrative, and that’s just what I wrote as I worked throughout 2022 and 2023.
And I hated it.
I kept tinkering and tinkering, but the final result just felt lifeless, so I locked it up in a drawer and forgot about it. In that drawer under my writing surface, it died and began to decompose and seep into the soil out of which I produce my work, so that in the end I wound up going through the usual process in reverse. Rather than a novel out of short stories, I began to percolate a series of short stories out of a novel. They broke off from their host and mutated, evolving into distinct, isolated species so that no one else would ever guess they originated from the same source. The only tell was that they all took place in Texas.
Funnily enough, now that these parts have gone off and matured into their own unrecognizable pieces, I have become re-energized regarding ‘Fool’ and find myself returning to the project, trying to fit them all back into a novel shape. It is no longer such a straight-forward, simple story. It doesn’t even work in first person anymore, so these stories will go through yet another major evolution as they are melded back together. Perhaps that is the only way I can work and I just took the long way about getting there this time.
The Cedars began as a single line in ‘Fool’ and then it became this Texified homage to Blackwood’s The Willows. How or if it will reappear in the final draft, well you will just have to wait and see, partner.
“Texas has forgotten what it is,” Wesley estimates between slugs from his water bottle. Once satiated, he sheaths it in the mesh pocket in the side of his backpack. Then he sleeves his sweating forehead, adjusts his hat, and starts back down the trail.
Theo rolls his eyes and asks the retreating back how it figures.
“Before us anglos arrived with our great bovine scythe, sweeping it expertly from the Rio Grande all the way through the panhandle, keeping at it until we bore down to the limestone in which nothing could take hold but cedar and suburbs, before all that, Texas had been something, but she can no longer remember what.”
“Hm,” the younger man says, humoring his superior as best he can without betraying his own set of beliefs. They may both work for the same state agency, but only the elder is an initiate of the Secret Order of the Live Oak. Theo, of course, is unaware of this, unaware, even, of the existence of SOLO.
“Don’t just take my word for it. You can feel it, can’t you? Her confusion presses in.” Wesley holds a hand up and tilts his head, as if to indicate there is something he should be listening for, but Theo could not say what. He remains silent all the same so that the two men are standing in the thrumming autumn heat, a not so distant highway purring somewhere to the west. There are a few birds, but not many.
With such a dearth of public land, Texan conservationists must make do with what they have got. For that reason, a majority of trails in the state are spooled tight upon small plots, gaining mileage by cutting twisting spirals through dense groves of cedar, folding layers of trail in on itself. At certain points on such paths, the way might almost meet with itself, one curve spooning into the next, separated only by a single layer of trees, so that hikers might easily become disoriented and quickly lose their place on the map by passing from one ring to another with a single step.
Denser sections can confuse just as easily. A thin trail ribbons between two walls of vegetation as if a path within a healthy hedge maze. As with a maze, there is no sense of progression when traveling within a cedar growth, no moving towards, and no breaking through to reveal any vistas as one might expect when hiking in more mountainous regions. There is only the slow plod forward through monotonous nature. Indeed, there is hardly even any variation within the species which is not a variety of cedar at all, but rather a type of juniper.
Juniperus ashei.
These mountain cedars do not reach particularly grandiose heights, at least not very quickly. Most groves get to be a few heads taller than a tall man. Then they seem to stop, showing their age in their increasingly gnarled bark rather than any majestic rise, creating no high canopy in which the light can dance, but merely a density of stinking cedar waiting for a good rain to release its cloud of poisonous dust upon the nearest civilized outpost. Upon such trails as this, the already hypnotic lull of walking is amplified by the feeling that one is walking in place. A fugue state might arise, followed swiftly by a dull panic. Reports of the feeling of being watched are commonplace in the offices of Texas’ park rangers.
The two continue on their way, twisting deeper into this jumble of trail, putting away more miles than what seems should reasonably fit within these few hundred acres, as if they are not spiraling towards a center point, but down a z-axis, into the earth itself, plodding slowly towards hell where this selfsame cedar probably flourishes amongst the brimstone.
Theo finds himself growing increasingly agitated as he walks. It is not the distance. He has gone much further and in worse conditions. The peak heat has relented and the early evening is actually quite pleasant, but there is a tightening in his chest, a rather alien feeling for him on a hike, which usually provides release. The old man’s stories must have gotten to him. They have spent too much time together: the flight followed by a night in the hotel outside the airport; the long drive out here, and now they have been hiking all day. Not to mention, his partner’s pace is abysmally slow. If Theo were on his own, he would be at the campsite already, measurements taken, tent set up, dinner simmering, and the cheap whiskey at the bottom of his bag warming his belly, but Wesley is painstakingly precise in his measurements. He understands he is meant to be learning from him. Why else pair up the oldest and the youngest members in the department? But the old man is too eager to be the wise elder, Theo feels. He has become a parody of his role. What was it he had said back in their hotel room when they cooked stovetop burgers? He waited till after the meat was cooked to start grilling the onions, meaning the patties went cold before they ate. When Theo said something about it, Wesley told him:
“Better to cook your onions in burger than to cook your burgers in onion.” He was always saying shit like that, and in a way that showed he expected something more meaningful than the surface message to be extrapolated.
Theo idles on the trail as Wesley bends at the base of another tree. There is no way he takes such care in his tasks when he goes about them alone. That would be absurd. Theo decides to watch him more closely this time, study exactly how he is spending so much time at each tree, thinking he might actually be able to offer some advice to make the old man’s life easier rather than vice-versa. Previous to this, he had sort of glazed over each time Wesley went about his business. It had not occurred to him that this is what he had been doing, and he is a little appalled to realize it now, but it is true. He has scant memories of those long stretches of waiting, so he must have been retreating into some interior place.
The older man seems to be muttering something to himself as he works. Theo strains to hear what, but the words are unclear, almost as if they are in another language. As the time drags on, the malaise threatens to take hold again, but Theo fights against it and so catches an almost imperceptible movement. Just before Wesley stands up, he digs two fingers into the ground, slips something within, and covers it back up. Theo holds his tongue, but as they get going again he says he needs to take a leak and that he will catch up with him down the trail. Once Wesley has cleared out, he brushes away the dirt and finds an acorn.
Pinching it between thumb and forefinger, he holds it before him as Wesley turns at his approach.
“You shouldn’t have dug that up,” he says almost gravely.
“You shouldn’t have buried it.”
“How else will the true landscape be brought back?”
“True landscape? Brought back? the soil is gone. The people are here. What is it you think can be brought back? Cedar is what we have now. Best to accept it.”
“Hm,” is all Wesley says.
***
It is nearly dark by the time they reach their designated site. There is not much to it: a picnic table in a small clearing. It is not a park for which overnight passes are typically issued, but for them there had been an exception. No exception has been made, however, when it comes to the burn ban which is strictly in place, as they had been reminded on more than one occasion, so as the darkness comes on they have only their electric lights to fill the space, and nothing to tame the growing cold but more layers.
“It’s the suppression of fire that led to this mess,” Wesley grumbles as they stand in the cold. “I’d see it all burnt to embers, embers,” he repeats more softly, letting that final word float up like a bit of burning paper lifting out of a burn pile. “Good work today,” he continues needlessly, joining the younger man at the picnic table as the final light of day is eaten up by the night’s hungry daub of dark bread. Their two tents are arranged about ten feet apart and are identical models, not too surprising considering they get a hefty discount on the given brand through their work, but that they had chosen the same color and everything meant it was impossible for one or the other not to remark:
“Nice tent.”
“Thanks. Yours ain’t bad either.”
Beyond that, conversation struggles to find any purchase. It has been a bit awkward since Theo’s confrontation, although Wesley appears unphased. The older man sits at the picnic table, turned with his legs stretched before him, socked feet stuck loosely in a pair of Chacos. Talk lilts and pauses then fades away completely. It makes Theo fidgety. He keeps going to his tent and coming back to the table. First time it is with his headlamp, then water bottle, and finally his whole backpack out of which he digs a small propane tank. He screws a metal tripod into a slot at the top of the tank, twists a nozzle, and ignites his lighter over the opening. A jet of flame roars to life and he props a pot full of canned chili over it, stirring incessantly.
“Want some?” he asks when it’s hot and he’s turning off the flame. Wesley has not yet made a move to prepare his own food.
“Thanks, but no.”
“How about a little shnort?” he fishes the bottle of whiskey out, uncaps it, and offers his elder the first taste.
“No,” he shakes his head with a laugh. “But please,” he nods towards his young partner, encouraging him to take a load off.
“Suit yourself,” he shrugs and gobbles some down, chasing it with a spoonload of chili. A few more of these one-two combos and Theo finally relaxes a bit. The mood in camp settles. It would still be better with the quiet crackling of a campfire nearby, something into which the two men could cast their attention, but this will have to do. Theo looks around himself, studying their camp for the first time. The beam out of his forehead sweeps easily across the small clearing before being blunted by the wall of cedar. Dimming it, he tilts his head back and is aghast by the number of stars that have snuck out while he had been busy warming his chili. He stares up at them in stupid wonder, feeling loose and good with the food and whiskey in his belly. He wants to say something to bridge the gap that has grown between himself and Wesley, some rope of camaraderie to toss across that final separation, but nothing comes to mind, and when he looks down from the stars he finds he is alone at the table. There is a sudden rush of cold, like a needle jumping out of its groove and skidding over the surface of the record until reaching the silent center. Theo reaches for his headlamp and twists it on high, looks this way and that. Animal eyes light up in the trees as he scans, a growing sense of dread blooms in his chest.
“Wesley,” he says into the night, doing his best to keep his voice steady, unsure how long he had been looking into the vault of stars overhead. There had been the sound of the highway all through the day, but it is immeasurably distant now. He gets the feeling he is in the single break in an otherwise endless swath of cedar growth. Nothing to eat but stomach-turning juniper berries. No water to speak of. The trees hardly seem to need it. They slake their thirst straight from limestone and stand unbothered and unmoving in the unbroken heat waves of summer. As the world warms and dries, they will march across the continent, watching in total silence as other species succumb. He, himself, would wander for only a day or two across this vastness before succumbing to dehydration. In desperation, he would forage from the only available source, but sucking on the cedars’ spiny leaves would only dry him out all the sooner.
“Wesley,” he calls again, a bit louder. Still, no response. “Probably taking a leak,” Theo mutters to himself, “or a shit?” he adds a minute later when still no one has returned. The tents are dark, but he gets up and goes over to them anyway. For a moment, he forgets which is his, so he stands between the two and calls out Wesley’s name once again. “You in there, Wesley?” he asks, still aware how silly it would be to sound panicked if the situation did not call for it, and so modulating his voice as best he can. He goes back to the table and takes another slug. But what if Wesley had gotten up to take a piss and somehow gotten hurt, and now he is lying out there in the dark? Then it would be his calm apathy that was ridiculous. He sits astounded by how fears of social inaptitude can find him even out here. Another mouthful of whiskey makes it funny and unimportant and he goes back to studying the stars. There are so many of them he can hardly pick out the constellations. And is that blur a hint of the Milky Way? He is trying to puzzle that out when Wesley returns, sitting on the bench beside him and startling him out of his reverie.
“Holy shit man,” Theo gasps, clutching his jumping heart. “Where were you?”
“In my tent.”
“You didn’t hear me calling for you?”
“I did.”
“Why the hell didn’t you say anything? You freaked me out.”
“I apologize. I thought you’d probably heard me go in there.”
“Did you fall asleep?” Theo asks, still confused.
“No. I have a meditation practice that I stick to every evening.”
“You must take it pretty seriously. Couldn’t even give me a ‘I’ll be right out’ or something? Damn.”
“I do apologize.”
“It’s fine. Just these woods. They’re freaky.”
“Indeed they are.”
“You’re not going to eat anything?”
“I’m fasting.”
“Fasting, meditation, sober. You sure know how to have a good time.”
Wesley grins easily then laughs. He is thin-faced and loose-limbed and, for Theo, has taken on a whole new countenance in the last few minutes. It is like he has been sent out here with a monk, or something. Look, the monk nods, pointing over Theo’s shoulder, still smiling. Theo turns and sees an armadillo rooting in the ground not far away. They watch it for a while and it seems totally unaware of them, even spotlighted so, making Theo wonder what might be watching them without their knowledge.
***
“Invasive? No. They’ve always been here,” Wesley has to admit. “Though never in such numbers. The lurker in the garden, awaiting something to prepare the way for its expansion.” This, earlier, while walking. Theo thinks it over as he tries to go to sleep. There are night sounds beyond the thin veneer of his tent that he cannot place. He had gone to bed with food in his tent, as one can get away with in Texas, the last bears having been killed off more than a century ago, except for a small pocket of them contained in the far west desert mountains. It would be more dangerous to leave the food out. With no major predators, these woods are no doubt overrun by raccoons. Out there now, scurrying through the dark maze with their tiny, humanoid hands, turning over rocks and snagging grubs to stuff into their wet twitching snouts.
In the morning something is wrong with the trees. It is as if someone has done something to them over night. What or whom, Theo cannot say, but the feeling of wrongness tinges the air, probably only the panicked anxiety of a minor hangover, but the trees do seem to be somehow on edge.
Which way is out? He suddenly cannot tell. The clearing has been rearranged as he slept. Theo’s chest grows once again very tight and his stomach twists with last night’s whiskey which he had continued to drink even after retiring to his tent as he had been totally unable to fall asleep.
A cold sweat glistens on his forehead and pools in his pits as he stands beside his tent. No sign of Wesley. Probably still asleep. It is a stretch to even call it morning. The darkness of the eastern sky has slackened only the slightest. Most of the stars are still out although that blurred patch has disappeared. Theo feels wide awake, though that is not to say rested. Alert, more like. He goes to the picnic table and fires up his little camp stove again, wiping out his pot as best he can before adding some water from his pack. He brings it to a simmer, dumps it, then wipes it out again, trying to reduce as much as possible the chili flavor his coffee will no doubt have.
The second round of boiling water, he dumps into a Stanley french press over a mound of grounds, swirls it in his hand, then waits. He is pouring his cup before he realizes the second tent is missing.
“You got to be fucking kidding me. Now what?” Theo says actually out loud. He stands from the table and steps up onto the bench, as if the slightly boosted height will give him the vantage he needs. He turns fully, studying the near woods which seem suddenly nearer, as if the clearing has constricted slightly. There is no sign of Wesley, man nor gear. Cleanly gone. Theo stands with steaming cup in hand and turns again. Again, it is as if the clearing constricts a little bit more. He can no longer make out the trail-wide cut by which they had arrived, nor the corresponding one on the opposite side.
In a sudden panic, he tosses out his coffee and rushes to his tent. He drags everything out and stuffs it into his pack. Then he removes the rain flap, wiggles the stakes from the rocky ground, and slips the two long poles out of their sleeves. He folds them in on themselves and rolls everything into the tight squeeze of the tent’s bag which he clips to the bottom of his pack. Scanning the campground one last time for anything he might have neglected, Theo still cannot locate the trail. Instead, he orientates himself by the rising sun before stepping into the cedars. They are now so dense all about him that he must resort to crawling and climbing through their scratching branches.
Before long, he has pushed himself too deeply into the dispersed heart of this forest. No way forward presents itself. The way back, similarly, has closed. He is stuck and the trees are pressing in without consideration for the autonomy of the space he is presently occupying. Struggling for his pack, growing increasingly pinned in place, he tries to remove his camp stove. Branches grow into his sleeves, sharp needles scratch at his face. He can hardly move his head to see what his hands are doing. They feel about inside the bag for the familiar shape of the propane tank. He manages to free it then immediately sets about searching for the slot into which he can plug the base of the regulator. Located, his fingers get it into place and begin twisting. Any movement grows increasingly difficult as the cedars press in, but he fights against the resistance, and eventually feels the regulator tighten into place. All he must do now is twist the nozzle to release a stream of gas, and get into his pocket for the lighter. It sparks weakly against his thumb, once, twice, finally catching. He hears the yawn of exhaust jump into the steady jet of flame before he is totally overcome. The trees have lifted him from the ground, turned him upside down, and twisted one leg behind him. Now they hold him tight in their low canopy. The last movement he can make is not an act of resistance, but one of release. He allows the canister to drop from his hand and watches as it goes bouncing through the branches and down onto a mat of fallen cedar needles. They crackle angrily and a billow of light grey smoke begins to rise, choking the man overhead in a perfume of burning cedar oil. A single scream might have gone up, but its source would be impossible to locate, were anyone out looking. As it is, the only other man currently in the park is already nearing the parking lot, a jaunty whistle pursing his lips.
[Exit Music]