LIII
Bean had spent most of the night examining all that he knew. Everything he had once perceived as being true and unquestionable was now as doubtable as what would happen next. This indecision was driving him to the point of madness.
“What would The Accountant do?” he thought.
And that, as it turns out, didn’t equate to much. In his world, The Accountant watched on in prostrating horror as uniformed lumberjacks of all shapes, sizes, and sexes, hacked and slashed their way through the surrounding foliage. There was very little he could do. He was unequipped for anything really except to remain where he stood, under the gilded cover of an enormous tree, while, around him, axes swung, saws heaved and hoed, and small fires were set upon the smallest and prettiest of the plants and flowers, where axes and chainsaws simply wouldn’t do.
The Foreman stood by the biggest tree, clearly impressed. He was a man who didn’t take lightly to his work. He was passionate about the art of felling, but at the same time, he wasn’t an oaf or some sun burned bully; he respected that which he fell. He admired that which had stood the test of time, and which stood as a testament to time. He admired it, for to cut it down meant that he was, in his own god-like manner, an architect of time; that he was more than an integer, he was a divisor.
“It’s so beautiful,” said The Foreman, kissing the tree.
The others looked on strangely
“We seldom see it,” he said, “the thread of existence. It is so fragile, and yet we can move through it with such ardent and ignorant haste. We spend our entire lives passing through it and being so completely unaware. It is lighter than air, and no easier to see - were we to capture it in a jar. Yet its thinly woven veil is what holds this all together.”
He sighed momentarily and kissed the tree again.
“I do not take this lightly,” he said, consoling the tree. “Your bark is more than a canvas for scripture, and it is far more serving that as the skin of knowledge. But I do not take this lightly. We are all fallen, at some point in time. I worship you, I do. I always have. And I take comfort in knowing that is I with you now, and I hope it too provides you with some relief.”
As he nursed the tree, the others spat on the edges of their axes, masturbating them against sharpening stones; themselves drifting like a leaf in the open sea by the current of their distraction, riding the calm and pleasurable wave of metal on stone. Some of them whistled, and others just swayed back and forth with the gentle rhythm of their axes, thinking about quiet and sedentary things.
When he was done weeping, The Foreman took his own silver axe from its sheath on his back. “I had saved this for you, my dear friend,” he said, showing the axe to the tree. He did it not as some cruel executioner, but instead, like some humanist practitioner, with a care for his art, from his utensils down to the angle of his swing, and more so, the compassion that he had for the connection that he was about to make - for the moment that he dug his axe into this great tree, when he pulled at the fine thread of existence, for that very moment, he and the tree would be one.
“Lord of Light and Light of Love,” he sang, “in this, the killing season. Keep stern my axe and heart relaxed, as I reap this child of Eden. Lord of Light and Light of Love, give comfort to its pain. May its death be worth its journey from birth and that none had been in vain.”
The Foreman looked at the tree once more.
“I love you,” he said, as he swung his axe.
The Accountant watched on in awe as The Foreman hacked, so compassionately, through the massive tree, which had, for the time that he had lived on this planet as a small obese insect, given him food and shelter; and which had given him life. He watched how gentle The Foreman was. He moved like a stream, but with the force of a tsunami. The swing of his axe was as lethal as it was delicate.
The Accountant watched each swing hoping that when it was his time that he would be lucky enough to be cut with the same precision, and to be drowned in the same well of sympathy. His fear vanished entirely as he looked at his life now ending, as opposed to being unfinished.
“Such grace,” he thought, watching The Foreman swing.
And when the tree fell, a clap of thunder rang out in every world that existed. It did not fall on its own, though. It walked for some time as if freed momentarily from its shackles. It took its first steps, which were wobbly of course, and shook the entire planet. But it did not collapse, not at first anyway. It walked for some miles, which to it, were only one or two steps. And it could have, had it wanted to, walked away and found somewhere less concerning to put itself. It didn’t though. It merely took one or two steps, stopping for a second to breathe in the air, and then its leaves shook wildly as it exhaled for the last time, before it dived into the river. The great tree rested on its back and stared up at the sky as the current slowly pulled it out towards the horizon. Had it a face, it would have been smiling, seeing the world this way. The Foreman, though, he smiled for it, for they wore the same expression. And as the great tree disappeared over the falls, so too did The Foreman, wandering off, with nothing but his axe and his broken heart.
“What was that all about?” said one of the lumberjacks, watching their foreman walk off into the afternoon sun.
“Some things make little sense the more you try to figure them out,” replied the next in charge.
“What now?”
“Burn it all to the ground,”
“All of it?”
“Ashes to ashes, dust to fucking dust.”
There was very little to burn, nothing that was still standing anyway. There was little except for a few million tree stumps, a great deal of prickly shrubs, and one lone flower, which, now that the great tree was gone, stood out like a sore thumb.
The Accountant watched in dread as the pack of snickering and bloodthirsty lumberjacks moved towards him, licking the sharpened ends of their cutting tools, and igniting sticks of petrol and fire. Neither of them looked as if they had seen or even perceived the fragile thread of existence.
“God help me,” said The Accountant, as more of an expression than an actual prayer.
And on a beautiful summer’s day, the very last flower in Eden was picked.