Eric Lee

You might fail to notice as the dying sun still casts its last bending shadow down the hill to meet the dry grass. In the quiet and the feeble glare lie the bones, reaching crippled fingers into the pale and through a soft screen—one million specs of dust. You would hardly notice that this is where the young men go, leaving their empty chairs.

Beneath the hill, the chimneys of the town pout ash and feet shuffle timorously on the cobble. The townsfolk are resilient, and in the cloak of their eyes glimmers the whiteness against a deep black.

As they pass one another, they shudder to avoid the reflection before blinking as the siren begins to moan. Still the dust putters, placid across the drawing shadows.

The men here are born wailing and through the dust they grow and it hangs around them all the while. Some days the wind shakes the dust and in the autumn it rakes the branches. Other days the rain cleans the streets of the town and the gutters gush and the men come with brooms to clear the ditches. But today, a lonely oak stands frigid atop the sentry hill, plastered by the breeze and the white horizon. It would be hard to notice the thousands of young men that cling to its roots, were it not for the sea of white.

On the sentry hill, nervous hands grasp at crumpled pages under the peeled bark of the oak tree. The hands fidget and dart and glare back up at stinging eyes, behind which churns a machine so weak and terrible. Soon, the days will grow longer and then shorter once more, as always. Oh, the people mutter to themselves: how prosaic is the collapse.

It is the most usual day: in the town below, the shivering bodies beneath their smokestacks brush dust from the high shelves and into the fire pit to rise as ash through the chimney. They wait through the sirens for the night to come and they draw the heavy curtains over the windows and gather at their tables.

The sun has set now and the white has turned to grey. The roots of the oak above the town creak as a gust bends the outstretched arms. Sap seeps from the branches and drips to the dirt. The roots twist and devour the bodies of the young brothers with their pregnant wives. They pluck at teeth and eye sockets and crawl down the hill leaving no patch of muddy, rotting flesh unmolested. Still the oak stands stoic, un-quenched by the taste of blood—heaving and wild-eyed in the wind—twigs bustling excitedly at the points and sucking the death through the clods of soil and bone.

Each spring since the first fathers and mothers laid the mortar and swept the roads, the solemn oak has given bud, and in each summer it drops its seed. Each autumn it wilts but refuses to die. Tonight the people huddle in basements with white eyes that cling to life and white knuckles that pulse with the remnants of a sacred pink.

It would be hard to notice all of this without running your soft, young hands over the coarse crust of its ancient spine.

And now the night has drowned out the vibrant orange with purple morose. The shovels pitch into the dirt and they dig for clay. In the waning twilight, the night finally comes and envelops the hill in black. Four men climb the path that leads them to this spot of glowing whiteness in the dark above the sleeping town. As the men rise, they are met by the burning golden moon that races onto its stage, the sky. It seems to move more quickly than the men until they stop still in the night-shade of the voracious oak.

The men bend and grovel. Illuminated by the breath of the moon, you can hardly see that they are dressed according to code, and that before they turn to leave, the tallest among them reaches down to touch the dust beneath the dying grass.

Through his old, arthritic fingers run the years and the sands of the bones of almost everyone he ever knew that has died. The sound of the phone dropping from the mother’s hand is in the dust, and so is the instant roar of metal across the continents. And he touches the dust and feels its particles, real beneath his fingernails and cold like the echoing night air that brushes against the rippled skin on his arms.

Unceremoniously, he relaxes his muscles and the dust falls meaninglessly into the pit. The harassed particles lay under ground- they cannot replace the warmth of a father’s lap or the wetness of a lover’s tongue as it drags across the salty skin.

This is where the young men go, beneath the darkness of the splayed oak, which feeds itself and grows and grows through the endless years.

And though you would hardly notice it, the four men shuffle to the tree and bow once more, brushing their dusty fingers across a written carving on the base of the trunk. You can feel it for yourself when your turn comes to visit the sentry hill– you can read its words and taste the sap that bleeds from its wound and drains to the earth. You can wait with the people of the town in the shadow of the oak until the color drains from your face and your fists clench and your nails puncture your palms. Then may the indelible carving be covered with dust and thick, impenetrable rings of bark.

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Eric Lee is from Northern California and attended the University of California, Davis. He currently lives in Minneapolis, MN.