Sep 26, 2006 20:58
This story is an adaptation from it's original version, which was torn to pieces. Some parts i could put back together, others i couldn't, so i re-wrote them.
The Lumberjack
A short story by mgk.
There once was a man who lived to destroy. The ebbs and flows of his chainsaw tore down lumber like baleful ripples from the hammer of Zeus. The more trees he collapsed, the more his thirst for spraying woodchips grew. Every day he and his crew would watch hundreds of trees fall, either piece by piece or completely sawed over. He would spend hours sawing away at a tree when his chainsaw failed, just for that one prodigious moment when the tree split. He was the saw. The saw was destruction. He woke up to savor every moment that he was chopping and splitting.
One night he found himself chopping long after the rest of his crew had gone home. Late into the night he was hauling trees towards the mill, stack after stack. His muscles ached and his body trembled, but his drive kept him pushing onward. After moving every stack of lumber that had been cut down that day, he proceeded to pick up his axe and went into the forest in search of a good tree to cut down. Deeper and deeper into the forest he wandered, squinting hard in the moonlight. Stumbling over previous selection's stumps, he exhaustedly walked through the thinning forest. Eventually he reached a small clearing with no stumps, just some small shrubbery. As he entered the clearing he lazily clipped his heel and tumbled over a small bush, landing with a loud thud and a soft grunt inside the open area.
He gazed up from his painful stupor and dropped his jaw. Before him was a tree that he had never seen before. This was no oak, cedar, pine nor rosewood. In all of his long hours cutting, he had never seen any tree like it. It had long, flowing leaves that seemed to reach out towards him and cradle him with everything nature had to offer. The moonlight did not seem to be reflecting off of the tree, rather the tree was emanating a glow of its own. He blinked his tired eyes and stared at the tree in disbelief. All his life he had enjoyed cutting down lumber, without realizing that a tree could touch his soul. He filled up with hatred at the tree for ruining his entire reason for waking up in the morning. As he charged the tree with his axe, he suddenly felt calm and let his axe fall softly at his side.
The next day, the lumberjack awoke feeling completely relieved. A soothing zephyr flowed through him, and he no longer desired to chop, but rather to visit the tree he had seen the night before. He arrived at work and left the crew to venture back out into the woods. He vaguely remembered the paths he had chosen the previous night, but soon enough he saw the clearing in the distance. He ran towards the tree at full sprint, nearly tripping on the same bush near the entrance. He suddenly felt alive again, with newfound purpose and understanding. Somehow this tree was affecting his entire emotional state, reaching deep inside him and touching parts of him that he had never even noticed before. He felt alive, with a complete understanding of nature and human existence. He now sat with his back to the tree, usually with his eyes closed, thinking, watching, and experiencing everything that the tree had to offer.
Day after day, week after week, he neglected his saw. His axe had rusted from days of exposure with no use or cleaning as it lay next to the beautiful tree. The more he gazed at the tree, the more he hated the life he used to lead, before he had discovered the tree. He talked to the tree, and the tree would listen, gently swaying in sympathy with his every woe or wish. The tree seemed to grow its roots around the man, holding him close, bringing him in. He touched the tree, and the tree would spread its leaves down towards the man, as if reaching for a handshake or to hold his head. He would tell the tree his deepest secrets, and be completely assured that the tree would share his secrets with nothing else. The tree knew him, and he knew the tree. Together they shared hours of complete understanding.
As the seasons changed, still the man would visit the tree. He had long since been fired from his lumber mill job, and now lived in poverty, surviving on the energy he felt from the tree. The tree was all he needed, and he was all the tree needed. Soon the man lived under the tree, sleeping in the cradling roots that the tree had formed. The shelter given by the leaves made him feel completely protected and safe, secure in his own blissful understanding.
Soon the man's body broke down and he knew that he could not survive on the tree alone any longer. His hair had long since covered his entire face and back, being long to begin with. With a bitter goodbye, he staggered out of the forest and back to the town he used to know. People stared and pointed, excluding him from every beneficial social aspect that personal interaction can give. He stared right back at the people, wondering why they still did not see the world in its entirety.
As he entered the hospital, his voracity and distance from his life source overcame him and he fell to the ground, moaning as his sagging skin slapped against the hard tile floor. Doctors immediately rushed to his side, placing him on a stretcher and rushing him to the Intensive Care Unit. Slowly they began to intravenously feed him, bringing him back from the brink of death. Doctors scratched their heads in confusion, wondering what had possibly kept this man alive for so long.
He awoke from his hunger coma to a room filled with machines and doctors. Doctors touching him, examining him, prodding him, moving him, injecting him, and testing him. He tried to protest but his voice was only a small croak. There was nothing he could say or do but lie there and submit to the doctors. He wimpered in nostalgia over the sweet memory of the tree. He knew that even if the doctors continued to feed him, he would die without his beautiful tree. His tree. The fear of never seeing the tree again was overwhelming, and he twitched in silent agony over the absence of his beloved.
After ten days of being revitalized, the silent lumberjack wandered out the front door of the hospital, heading directly towards the forest. As he ran towards his companion, he noticed that the forest had changed. No longer was the path back to the tree familiar. He noticed new trails and debris that he had never witnessed before.
And then, the trees stopped. Where there had been trees before, there were now only scarred stumps and endless destruction. The man instantly realized that the lumber company had run out of property to the north, and was now cutting south, through his sanctuary. For a moment, the entire world seemed to slow down as he realized that his one true friend had been destroyed.
There, collapsing on a stump, he wept.
The lumberjack awoke in the late afternoon, after having sobbed himself to sleep. He remembered his terror and anguish over losing his friend, his soul. As he ventured through the maze of stumps, something caught his eye.
It was a small clearing, completely devoid of any stumps or debris from lumber work.
And in this small clearing lay a rusty, soot-covered axe, and nothing more.