Marley Butler was on the computer when Wendy arrived at the In the City offices the next morning. She was working on a collage to illustrate an article on the upcoming festivities organized by the Good Serpent Club at the end of Lent. Every year they put on a kind of a mini-Mardi Gras, more block party than parade. A half-dozen streets in Upper Foxville were closed off and people from all over the city gathered to listen to live bands, sample Cajun and other Louisiana-style cooking, and march around in costumes and masks. The only gathering as colorful was in July when the Gay Pride Parade finished up a week of celebrations, but for that they closed off Williamson Street all the way from Kelly Street to the lake.
Marley was using scans from photos taken during previous years’ Mardi Gras festivals, combining them in such a manner that the individual photos were still recognizable, but taken as a whole, they became a masked face.
“That’s pretty cool,” Wendy said, looking over Marley’s shoulder.
“Thanks.”
Wendy slid into a seat beside the computer desk, and popped the lid on her coffee.
“So ... do you still have your ghost?” she asked and took a sip.
Marley gave her a wary look. “Why?”
“Well, I was telling Jilly about it last night and she was wondering if we could come over and see it.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
Wendy shook her head. “No, really. I swear I’m not. We just like weird stuff.”
“Weird stuff,” Marley repeated, obviously dubious.
“Look, I’ve told you about Jilly—how she’s really into this kind of thing.”
Marley gave a slow nod. “And you?”
“I just like a good story.”
“You’re not telling me something,” Marley said.
Wendy hesitated. How did she explain this without coming off as a complete flake?
But, “Okay,” she said. “Fair’s fair. See, I’ve got this tree that grows on stories. I raised it from an acorn and ever since it’s been the tiniest thing, I’ve given it stories. It’s huge now—way bigger than it could possibly be if it wasn’t a magical tree—but I still give it new stories whenever I can.”
Marley said nothing. Her gaze held Wendy’s, but Wendy couldn’t figure out what the other woman was thinking.
Wendy tried on a smile. “So now you can make fun of me,” she added.
“You’ve got a tree that grows on stories,” Marley finally said.
Wendy nodded. “A Tree of Tales.”
“Where is it?”
“I transplanted it to Fitzhenry Park when it got too big for the pot I was keeping it in. You should see it. It’s already huge.”
“So do you find it cathartic, feeding it your stories?”
Wendy shrugged. “I guess. Depends on the story. Why do you ask?”
“Because I’ve got a story I’d like to tell it.”
“I remember a time,” Chief Larry tells me one day, “when things really meant something. Everything had a meaning. The difference now is, things only seem to have a meaning if we give it to them. But it shouldn’t be that way. Is the crawdad any less of a crawdad if we’re not there to acknowledge it?”
I like that he tells me this kind of stuff. Growing up, all I ever heard was, “Shut up. No one’s talking to you.”
“It’s like a Zen thing, right?” I say.
I read about this once when I was hiding out in the public library from the truant officer. Let me tell you, that’s the last place they’ll come looking for you. I’ve learned about more stuff skipping school than I ever did in the classroom.
“You know,” I add by way of explanation. “Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if no one’s there to hear it?”
“ ‘Course it makes a sound. That’s the whole point of what I’m telling you.”
“But what about quantum physics and this whole business about observable phenomena that scientists are studying now? They’re saying that things like quarks only take on a discernible identity when they’re being observed.”
“I don’t know quarks from farts,” Larry says. “I just know the world doesn’t need us to give it meaning. Just like nothing was put here for our use. If we’re caretakers, it’s only to leave things a little better than when we got here. Me, I think we’re just one more animal, messier and more mean-spirited than most.”
“It’s not always here,” Marley said as she unlocked the door of her apartment.
She’s worried we’re going to think she made it all up, Wendy thought, but Jilly was nodding beside her.
“That’s the way these things work,” Jilly said. “If they were predictable, they wouldn’t be very mysterious, would they?”
Marley gave her a grateful look.
“It’s funny,” she said as she ushered them in. “I never once stopped to wonder if I was crazy. I just knew it was really there, even if it fades away whenever I try to touch it.”
Her guests made no reply. Marley’s hallway let straight into her living room and there, hooked up on the wall, was the costume, an extravaganza of reds and pinks so vibrant that it seemed to pulse. Jilly moved forward, Wendy trailing behind her, until they were both standing directly in front of it.
“Oh my,” Jilly said.
Neither of them tried to touch it, though Wendy was sorely tempted.
“What’s it doing here?” she said.
“Just being gorgeous,” Jilly told her. “It doesn’t have to be doing anything. That’s what I like best about this sort of thing. It just is.”
“No, I meant why would it appear here?”
“I used to know the guy who owned it,” Marley told them. “It showed up about a week or so after I found out he’d died.”
“Were you close to him?” Jilly asked.
Marley nodded. “Once upon a time. It was years ago, back in New Orleans.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too. I should’ve gone back to see him, but I always thought, there’ll be time. But there never is, is there?”
“Never as much as we’d like,” Jilly said.
Marley said nothing for a long moment, gaze locked on the costume, then she blinked and turned to her guests.
“You guys want a beer or something?”
“Beer is always good,” Jilly said.
“So did he ever wear it?” Wendy asked when they returned from the kitchen with their drinks.
Marley nodded. “You bet. He looked amazing in it. Some of the tribes, they saw those red and pink plumes coming towards them on Mardi Gras night, they’d just head down another street so they wouldn’t lose a confrontation to Chief Larry and his Wild Eagles.” She smiled at the blank looks on the faces of her guests. “Do you know anything about the Black Indian tribes down in New Orleans?”
When they shook their heads, she started to tell them. Not about how she ended up on the street, or the simple gift that Chief Larry had given her by treating her as a human being, but describing the tribes and their influence, how it all came together on Mardi Gras night in a pageant of wonder and noisy magic.
Just before they left, Marley walked up to the costume and reached out a hand. Wendy gasped when it vanished. Innocuous as a ghostly costume might be, there was still something disquieting about the fact that it even existed in the first place. Turning, she saw that Jilly was only smiling, her sapphire blue eyes shining bright with pleasure.
This night after the Mardi Gras, Larry tells me it’s his last year of leading the Wild Eagles.
“I’m getting too old to carry the weight,” he tells me.
I wonder if he means the costume, or his responsibility as Big Chief. Probably both.
Like me, he’s got no blood family. The difference is, his people died; they didn’t turn their backs on him. Two sons were shipped home in coffins from Vietnam. His wife was killed in a car crash by a drunk driver. That left him with the Wild Eagles. Just like me now. My great-grandpa on my mother’s side used to run with his dad, back i
n the old days. That’s how come I ended up on his doorstep in the first place, wanting to know about that part of my family. I already knew too much about the Jordan side of the family tree.
“So what are you going to do?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he tells me.
There’s something different in his voice. Like all the strength has gone out of it.
“You’ll still have the Wild Eagles,” I say.
He nods. “But it won’t be the same. I was the Big Chief. Now I’ll just be another guy, banging a drum.”
I don’t want to say, that’s more than I’ve got. I’m just a hanger-on.
But it sort of comes out anyway.
“But you’re still part of the tribe,” I say. “You don’t have to be alone.”
He nods again, but his gaze changes. I can tell he’s no longer feeling sorry for himself. He’s feeling sorry for me.
“That family of yours,” he says. “They must’ve hurt you pretty bad. Other people, too, I’m guessing.”
I shrug.
“But you never gave in to anybody, did you?”
Once, I think. But that was enough.
“No,” I tell him. “I just ran away.”
“Sometimes that’s all you can do,” he says.
I can only look at him. Bad as things were, I still feel kind of ashamed for running. In all the books I read, people stand up for themselves when things get bad. But I wasn’t brave enough.
“Sometimes it’s not just the smart thing to do,” he adds. “Sometimes it’s the brave thing, too.”
It’s like he’s reading my mind.
“Doesn’t seem so brave to me,” I say.
He shakes his head. “You just don’t know enough yet to make that kind of a pronouncement. Wait’ll some time goes by.”
“It’s going to have to be a lot of time.”
“Could be,” he says. “If that’s what it takes ...”
Wendy felt a little awkward taking Marley to where she’d planted the Tree of Tales in Fitzhenry Park. The tree was a miracle, but you wouldn’t know that from looking at it and she was afraid Marley wouldn’t understand. She’d grown it from an acorn, nourished it through a winter, then transplanted the sapling here in the Silenus Gardens, that part of the park that was dedicated to the poet Joshua Stanhold. And it had grown … how it had grown. But while a botanist might be surprised to find such a large and healthy example of Quercus robur—the common oak of Europe—growing here among a handful of native oaks, most people wouldn’t give it a second glance except to admire its lines.
As they approached the tree, walking along the concrete path and keeping out of the way of the in-line skaters and joggers who seemed to think they owned the park, Wendy could see a man sitting under it, talking, except he was alone there under the boughs.
She smiled. There was proof, though she didn’t need it, that she wasn’t alone in sharing her stories with the tree.
He got up as they arrived and gave them a friendly nod before walking away.
“This is it?” Marley said.
Wendy nodded.
Marley craned her neck, staring up into the sweeping canopy that spread above them.
“But this tree looks like it’s ...”
“I know,” Wendy said. “A hundred years old.”
Marley shook her head. “But if it grew so fast …” She looked to Wendy. “How could nobody have noticed?”
“People don’t pay attention to things that are impossible,” Wendy said. “At least that’s what Jilly and Christy are always saying. That’s why all these improbable things like a Tree of Tales—or the ghost of a costume—can exist with hardly anybody noticing. They don’t want to see them.”
“And we did?”
“I didn’t think so in the beginning,” Wendy said. “When John Windle—the crazy old guy who got me involved with taking care of the tree—first approached me, I didn’t want to know about it for a minute.”
“What changed your mind?”
Wendy shrugged. “I don’t really know. Jilly was always telling me about these wonderful magical things that happened to her, but I thought they sounded more scary than exhilarating. But once I gave in and started taking care of the tree, I came to understand what she meant. Everything seemed bigger and more in focus. Everything seemed to have meaning—not necessarily meaning to me, but to itself. I guess what was most important was when I realized that. Everything’s here for its own purpose, not for how it relates to me. I’m a part of it, but just that. A part.”
“You remind me of Chief Larry,” Marley said. “He used to tell me stuff like that.”
Wendy smiled. “Of course, the intensity of what I felt didn’t last. Which is probably just as well, since I’ve also got to live in the world that everyone else inhabits and it’s kind of hard to interact with people when you’re always looking to see if they’ve got an elf sitting on their shoulder or something.”
Wendy shook her head as Marley’s eyes widened.
“No,” she added. “I don’t see that kind of thing. That’s more up Jilly’s alley. But I do have this.” She lifted her arms to encompass the oak boughs spreading above them. “And it’s magic enough for me.
“And you really planted it?” Marley asked.
“Yup. Eight years or so ago, it was wintering in a pot on the windowsill of my kitchen.”
“Wow.”
“Mmm,” Wendy said, a dreamy look in her eyes. “Whenever Jilly tells me some really improbable story, I come here and I’m reminded that the world is bigger and stranger and more wonderful than it sometimes seems to be. And I don’t think I’m alone. Remember that guy who was sitting under the tree when we arrived?”
Marley nodded.
“I’ll bet he was telling the tree a story. I find lots of people come to sit here and talk to it. Most of them probably don’t even know why they do it, except it makes them feel good. But they’re nourishing the tree all the same.”
“I...” Marley began, but then her voice trailed off.
“I understand,” Wendy told her. “You want to tell it your story, but you want to do it in private.”
“I don’t mean to be rude.”
Wendy smiled. “You’re not. Want me to wait for you by the memorial?”
“I might be a while.”
“That’s okay. I don’t mind waiting.” Wendy patted her shoulder bag. “I’ve got a book and, well, maybe you’ll want some company when you’re done.”
Before Marley could protest, Wendy gave her a jaunty wave and headed back the way they’d come.
So here I am, talking to a tree. To tell you the truth, I don’t feel any magic in it. Even with a ghost in my own apartment, Wendy’s claims just seem like too much ... I don’t know. Wishful thinking. But I talk all the same. I tell my story. There’s nothing particularly original about it, and what does that say about this world we live in? Too many kids grow up just like I did, unwanted, unloved, never knowing a kind word or even a kiss until, in my case, I hit puberty, started to get some curves on my skinny-ass frame, and the guy in the trailer park who used to baby-sit kids for whoever was stupid enough to trust the freak with their children “made me a woman,” as he put it.
But that wasn’t the worse of it. The worst was when I told my parents. I don’t know why I did; I already knew they wouldn’t care. But the old man goes ballistic. Starts screaming about my “goddamned nigger blood” and beats the crap out of both me and my mother. I’d have more sympathy for her, living with such a monster, but she wasn’t ever that much better. That night she just spat on me and then hauled herself to her feet and staggered out of the kitchen to leave me lying there on the cracked linoleum.
I ran away that night.
I’d already known that my great-grandpa on my mother’s side was black, or partly black, though you wouldn’t know it from looking at me. I’m so fair-skinned that just thinking of going out into the sun gives me a burn. The funny thing is my old man’s darker-ski
nned than I am—got some Seminole blood a few generations back, Creole, who knows what else. Mostly meanness.
Anyway, I decide to go find out about the ancestors on my mother’s side. She’s no saint herself, but I already know the Jordan side of the family is made up of these mean-spirited sonsabitches, so what have I got to lose? I knew the Butlers came from the city, so I head up to New Orleans and ask around about my great-grandpa Gilbert Butler, did anybody know him?, and that’s how I finally run into Larry Boudreaux.
Life gets a little better. I’m still living on the street when I connect with the Wild Eagles, scraping by the best I can, but I find what I’m looking for. My great-grandpa was a good man; it turns out that the blood didn’t turn bad until it came around to my mother and who knows how much marrying into the Jordan family had to do with that. But better still, I find a friend in Larry. I learn that there are people here in the world who’ll treat me like a human being instead of just the family’s ugly pet, or street trash.
But the thing is, it’s still hard. No matter how far away I get from it, I still feel like the kid in the trailer park who had to run away. The kid who lived on the street like a feral cat, never quite trusting the hand held out to it. I can only go so far with people, only look over the wall I’ve got built up inside me, instead of coming around or letting them in. Maybe that kind of thing never goes away.
It did when I was with Larry, but once I moved, all the doubts came back again. I guess I could’ve gone back, but I had my pride. I wanted to make it on my own, prove how I could be a real success, before I went back. But now it’s too late. Larry’s dead and I know he’s the only one who wouldn’t have cared one way or the other, only that I was happy.
I tell the tree all of that and then I lie back on the grass and stare up into its boughs. I don’t feel cleansed or relieved or like I’ve touched any kind of magic. Wendy’s Tree of Tales is a piece of work all right, but there’s more mystery in why the ghost of Larry’s Mardi Gras costume likes to hang on the wall of my apartment.
But thinking of that costume gives me an idea.
Wendy wasn’t much help as they worked on the costume in Mar-ley’s living room, trying to copy the ghost of Chief Larry’s suit that was still hooked up on the wall, but Jilly threw herself into it with cheerful enthusiasm. Even when Marley and Wendy had to go to the office, Jilly left her own work unattended in her studio and spent long hours at Marley’s apartment, pasting and gluing and stitching. But then, that was Jilly, always ready for an adventure, always ready to drop everything and lend a hand.