Art: Recurring Schemes by Daniel Smith
WHAT THE TREES SAW
Over two thousand miles, twenty cartons of cigarettes and an ocean of liquor lie between me and that place, yet I still can’t escape the Black Hills National Forest. Time has been fluid since that day in the mountains. The only indicator of its passing are ceaseless carols on the radio, in the streets, everywhere I turn. There have been two Christmases since my days back in South Dakota, so I guess it must be 1981.
Miami is the city of death. This year the morgue has hired ice trucks to cope with the influx of corpses – Murder Capitol, USA.
God damn, I hate this season. I thought Miami would be a respite for me with its year-round heat but, as I take a right turn on to 104th Street and collide with crowds of excited families, I plummet into a lukewarm pool of recollection. Turpentine. Most people will tell you that Christmas trees smell fresh – maybe even warming. This is not true. Christmas trees smell like solvents and death. And here, through the vibrating horde I’ve found myself trapped in, the air is dense with the scent. I cannot breathe. If I were smart I would have done my research and known that Jack’s, the most popular Christmas tree nursery in the city, is on this street. But I’m not. And here I am rooted to the spot with my head caving in on itself, cigarette smoke escaping like frozen breath. Those fumes scrape their way through my nostrils and fester at the base of my skull. It feels as though boiling water is being poured over my head as the animated sounds of children edge further away and the crowds fade to black.
The Black Hills, where it’s always winter. Back here the only real adversary of the spiteful mountain air, which turns my fingers purple and bloated as a corpse, are the knives of leaves jutting defiantly from the pines. A plague of snow assaults the forest, whitewashing the scene relentlessly, bleeding together sky and ground. Limbs trembling. Adrenaline. I’m scarcely aware of the arctic gnawing at my limbs and the heat of breath burning the peeling bark of my lips. Each footstep, like crunching bones, is intensified until it is something much larger than myself. A fifty-foot monster marching through the woods, hunting. Chest heaving. Shoulders undulating with each enraptured step. I am a wild beast with tunnel vision locked on to its prize. This forest is empty save for me, the pine sentinels, and her.
She, who once captured what it meant to be an angel, is now a tumbling mess of limbs littering the snow bed, resting clumsily against the jagged base of a Ponderosa Pine. I never knew a body could bend that way. Her bare feet, already consumed by snow, are probably charcoal by now. As black as these hills look from afar. We must have been here for hours because the rigor mortis of night is taking hold, stiffening the whole world. But we are frozen in this moment. Perfectly preserved. I read somewhere that the corpses on Mount Everest will never decay. That thought smudges a melancholy smile across my face.
The earth lies dormant as I gaze in to her eyes in quiet awe. Those hollow eyes, bulging like snow globes in her face, vacant as the mountains around us. The wind interjects, shushing its way through the needles, bringing with it that solvent stench of resin which stings the back of my throat. She slumps, a broken porcelain doll, her head dangling flimsy from an amethyst embellished neck. As the beast subsides, the cold realisation of what has happened seeps in to my skin. The thought carries something dark on its back – an uncontrollable shake. My limbs spasm from the malicious chill of nightfall, and fear.
Something chews through my lip and lurches me immediately back on to the unseasonably warm street. How long have I been stood here, rigid as a corpse? My cigarette is now a red-hot stub, clinging to a fresh, raw blister on my mouth. Shit. It drops to the ground with a splutter. Acutely aware of the probing eyes of what seems to be every damned person in Miami, I manage a deep, staccato breathe (ignoring the sickly, coniferous nostalgia clawing at my windpipe) and grind my joints back in to motion.
‘It’s best not to think about those things’, I warn myself as I light another cigarette and watch the smoke writhe and disappear, ‘that secret stays between me and the trees’.