Fruit, Part IV (Conclusion)

“Ashley?” the woman says again.

She doesn’t answer, but keeps looking at the woman’s hands. The woman tries to pull Ash to her feet, and she doesn’t resist, but the woman can’t do it. She kneels down and holds Ash’s face and leans in to kiss it, but Ash turns away like there’s a fly in her face. And the man just keeps standing there, weighing the photograph against the real thing. After a little more struggling the woman lets go, and she waves her fists about and grits her teeth, as everybody watches her silent tantrum, knowing the monstrous wail she is choking. The woman stops, looks back at everyone, the line, the tents, the thermoses, the snow. And then she looks at me.
“Are you a mother?” She says with a surgeon’s poise.
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.” Each word is a cold, sterilized blade. I have to bite my tongue. Stay professional.
She straightens her back, turns and walks away. The man, remaining, looks confused. Then he puts the photograph in his pocket and follows his wife down the path.
“That them?” I say, breathing on Ash’s chilled hands.
“I think so.” Ash doesn’t seem to remember. “I’m thirsty.”

Ash’s breaths are short, and to the point. Every movement she makes is minimal and calculated. I’ve given her three bottles of water in the past hour. Ash’s hair is thinner than it was this morning. I stopped the recorder, but she insists I continue. Her eyes glaze over every few minutes; her face is like a light switch being turned on and off, now in almost regular intervals. People keep lining up and she keeps knocking them down, possibly not even aware she’s doing it anymore. The rest keep their vigil in silence. Water, Ash urges, is the best thing right now.

“Oh fuck me.” She says loud enough for everyone to hear. “It’s official. I’m blind.” Her jaw hangs open and her lower lip is shaking. Her brow is wrinkled, which is the most expression I’ve seen on her face all day. A dim fear fills her eyes like cataracts. I take her sallow hands.
“Mum?”
“Holly.”
“Sorry…Fuck, it’s cold. I can feel that now.” The Thing is not holding up its end of the bargain. Is this still what’s supposed to happen? Before I can ask she slips out again.

Myself and two paramedics squat beside the limp girl, trying to wrest her from the fallow ground. She hasn’t moved that spot in almost two months and they’re expecting it’ll be easy. She is a small, hundred and ten pound teenager with the weight of the earth itself. Perhaps that Thing is pure lead. Poison. Ash is unconscious in our arms while we wiggle her out of place. Four stockier men from the camp come over and help lift her onto the stretcher, straining every muscle in their backs and legs to do it. The bangles slip off her slack arms as we carry her. There’s a shallow groove in the ground where she sat.
I stand over Ash in the ambulance, across from the younger blonde paramedic. A whimper comes up from her through the oxygen mask. The monitor shows a temperature of a hundred and five. The heat is rising up from her, like a skin she’s sloughing off.

Ash’s eyes are sunken and her skin worn so thin the muscles are visible beneath it. I wish I could run my fingers through the girl’s hair, but it looks like it would fall out if I did.

Her eyelids slide open like a doll’s: it’s not Ash I’m looking at. I lean in and stare It straight in the eye.

Thing. You’re not a miracle. You’re a growth of cells that don’t know they’re dead. Those people might be fooled, but I had you once too and only the dead can know the dead so I thought you might listen to me, if not her. Let her go, and I’ll confess. It nods Ash’s head in agreement.
Since I met Ash, I dreamt I had hair again. All the way down past my feet, even. Every time I’m near Ash, my body doesn’t feel so swollen and empty, like a balloon, the way it usually does. I feel like Bo will want to touch me again. I remember his big hands and his strong shoulders and his weight. I want Bo to run his fat stupid fingers through my hair. When I’m near Ash I feel like if I were to do a pregnancy test right there, pee on that stick right there then life would be sure to follow. There, I confessed. Now get out.

Ash’s body straightens out like a plank and her eyes burst open. The paramedic is dumb-struck by the thin green line of her heart rate that moves not like a flat dash interrupted by blips of pulse, but like notes on a score of music, all over the place in no discernible order. A deafening crack rings out through the small compartment of the vehicle. The oxygen mask has snapped off and Ash grins so wide you can see her back molars.
“Treeee—” she proclaims, and vomits out a massive grey root as thick as a pole. It fires out and widens as it goes, unhinging her jaw. On the end little shoots break off from the main stock, and yellow flowers explode on them. It creaks toward the ceiling and spreads its branches along it and down the walls, while the blonde paramedic screams and backs up. The girl’s hair has fallen out completely. From her eyes and nostrils grow damp leaves and smaller branches whipping about and the main limb has sprouted full boughs and they bear fruit, small nut-like fruit growing rapidly. From the body’s joints grow more roots that wrap themselves around the stretcher and dangle to the floor.

The ambulance has slowed to a stop, unable to bear the weight of the tree. The thing has burst through the walls and flattened the tires. It’s fighting to reach the earth again, and in its attempt it cuts the entire vehicle in half, opening it like a steel nutshell. The branches flay about rudely and throw us to the street. It digs its hoary fingers into the asphalt and pierces through until it reaches soil, while it twists and writhes upwards and outwards. There are three main branches, thick, slender and splendid silver; one straight out at an eighty degree angle, and the two other ones winding off in their own directions. The branches bear green, oval-shaped fruit, heavy and ripe.

The crowd from the park has followed us all the way up Centre Street. No cars hit the hulking thing, but several have mashed together on both sides of the road around it. Ash is absolutely gone, and in her place the tree stands five metres at the base and thirty feet high. Its canopy hangs over like a massive dome as wide as it is tall, with thick leaves the size of an adult’s hand.
I see three news networks trying to slither in, but two fire trucks, three ambulances and five police cars barricade the site, offering the shivering multitudes blankets and stretchers. There is a hollow at the base that some of the children play in, hiding themselves. The adults stand back. One sprightly young believer from the park climbs the tree with the grace of a monkey. With a firm footing in the knotted side he reaches the lowest branch, only ten feet off the ground, the end made lower by the weight of the fruit. He shakes the branch, unable to reach the luscious green object that’s as big as his head. One snaps off and rolls down the slope of the trunk’s enormous roots and along the asphalt nearby me.

I pick up the thing; it’s heavy and its husk is pocked and wrinkled. But it is warm as well. There is a shuffle of feet, and I look up and see the boy in front of me, eyes on the fruit. As gently as possible, I thumb open a slit in it to see moist white flesh underneath, sleeping, embryonic. It almost shivers in the late winter air. I fold the slit back over again, and hand the large fruit to the boy, who takes it over and shows it to his parents.
My pocket vibrates, and I pull out my phone: nine missed calls, all from Bo of course.

I open it, and dial.

Fruit, Part III

It is now late afternoon, and at least twenty people have received salvation. The cold sun dips behind the skyscrapers, the downtown core flushes out its workers in a mass exodus, but the faithful mob remains. I offer a blanket from my car to Ash, but she refuses. She says she doesn’t get cold at night; says the ‘Thing’ has been protecting her, keeping her warm. No frost-bite yet, but I see her shiver, all the same. She makes a junky look like Miss Universe: her muscles have atrophied, and recently her bowel movements have completely stopped. She hasn’t left this spott for nearly two months because it hasn’t let her. It’s asserted control, and yet, her personality is somehow still intact.

I’ve brought us both some boxed rice vermicelli and shredded pork. But all Ash wants is water. “You’re anemic,” I say. “Eat.”

Ash’s hands are practically limp right now, so I have to feed it to her. I ask her about people who haven’t been as enthusiastic about the idea of her being there. Between swallowing and chewing she tells me about Reverend Karl Novak, from Church of the Redeemer. He paid her a visit last week with a posse of board members who were upset at what she was doing, and that it was taking parishioners away from their church not three blocks away.

“‘You are stealing God’s flock from Him’” she says in a nasal, flat Novak impersonation. “I told them it was a free country so they can shove it.” Her face beams with pride. “It was rich.”
“Why didn’t you try to ‘convert’ Novak?”
“I can’t really decide who gets healed and who doesn’t. Plus, I think you have to want it. He’s happier going around bullying homeless teenagers with his Jesus Club thugs, anyway. And I don’t think he deserves to know the truth about himself.”
“Why should he feel threatened by you, Ash?”
“He knows I’m right. I’m the real McCoy,” she says, eyeing my notepad, perhaps hoping I quote her verbatim.
“You believe you’re helping these people?”
She pauses. “Sure. What do you think?”
I think the placebo effect is a powerful thing. “I think you need a doctor.”
“I think you need help. You want me to heal you yet?”
“That won’t be necessary, thanks.”
“You miss your hair, don’t you?”
I hold vermicelli up to her mouth. “Eat.”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have--”
“Eat.” Suddenly I feel very conspicuous with my toque on.

The food helps ease the headaches a little, she tells me, but it’s always there. Like drugs and painkillers, food is no better of an anesthetic. She says the Thing is trying to make her hate her body, so she’ll be glad to be rid of it when the time comes, which she insists is soon.

My phone rings. I step away from her and the congregation. It rings three times before I pick it up. A tinny voice from somewhere far away comes on the other end.
“Holly?”
“What is it?”
“Dr. Baum called. Your test was at noon. Where the hell are you?”
“I’m downtown right now, with my story. I’ll worry about the test, okay?”
“You mean you didn’t go?”
“Whatever, Bo. It’s my problem, right?”
“It’s our problem, Hol.” The line goes quiet for a moment. “Anyway, how are you feeling?”
“See you, Bo.” I snap the cell shut. We are a family of three: Bo, myself, and my pelvic exams.
“Who’s Bo?” says Ash.
My cancer. “Husband.”
“He’s leaving you.” She seems surprised at her own words.
I put more vermicelli in her mouth. “Did your tumor predict that?”
“It’s not a tumor!” she says in her best Schwarzenegger parody, sputtering out noodle. “And it didn’t have to.”
“Can we talk about something else?”
“‘Can we talk about something else?’ They teach you that at reporter school?”
“Tell me about your parents.”
She shakes her head, and closes her eyes. “Again, won’t have to.”

The world is blue in the overcast evening. The crowd has surged. People are back from work and they’ve brought others, bundled but faithful, numbered at almost a hundred. If they’re not in line they stand about, talking to each other in low voices, not wanting to miss what happens next, assuming there is something next. A lot of them have brought sleeping bags and thermoses; there are two tents in the park, so far. I’ve been sitting just a few feet away to the Ash’s side, as the queue grows all the way down the path, to the street corner.

At the altar now is another couple. The man is tall and gangly, but his coat is puffed up so he looks like an egg on stilts. His face is thin with a salt and pepper beard and his jaw is tight. The woman is shorter, with broad shoulders under a long red overcoat. She has too much makeup on, but I can still see her hazel eyes, and blonde hair cut to her shoulders. They aren’t kneeling. The man is holding a photograph, glancing at it--at Ash--and back at it. The girl doesn’t look at them, but stares forward cloud-headed, like she does with everybody. She doesn’t look until the woman approaches her and takes her hands. And when she looks it’s not at the woman, just at the hands holding hers. Ash examines them with mild, clinical interest.

“Ashley?” Says the woman, the word quivering out.

Fruit, Continued...

“Look in my bag,” says Ash. “There are two x-rays.” I fish through her knapsack and take out two glossy sheets, both of which show the teenager’s skull in cross-section. “The first one” Ash says, “was from two and a half months ago.” Holding it up to the sunlight, I see in Ash’s parietal lobe a lesion the size of a nickel, with a sperm-like tail.

“It’s like a baby-crocodile,” she says. “Cute when you get it, but soon enough it grows up”. The second one is from two weeks later. “Kinda cool, hey?” she says. It’s the size and shape of a gourd, compressing everything else, with tendrils spread out lovingly throughout her grey matter, roots in rich soil.“Were you expecting the face of the Virgin Mary?” she says. “It got way bigger, and stronger, and the doctors have no idea what to do. It’ll be able to work on its own, without me.”

It will start by shutting down her motor functions, she tells me. She’ll go blind, and then she’ll go into a coma, during which it will shut her organs off. That is what the doctors told her, and while they could predict this, they were unable to do a thing. No amount of radiotherapy or chemotherapy could reverse this, nor does she want it to. Her body is an offering. This thing is taking a great risk, because the stronger it gets, the more it needs Ash to survive, she says.

“And what happens when it takes over completely?”

For a moment Ash’s eyes shine with a benevolent madness and her skin seems gnarled and sinewy. She shrugs, but she is smiling. Ash claims it’s the reason she’s able to do what she does. People come to her with their problems--the maritally challenged, the depressed, compulsive overeaters, alcoholics, even junkies--and she solves them. No, saves them. There was even one case where someone came and demanded something as audacious as resurrection: a kid with his dead rabbit. He dug it out of the backyard and gave her a shoebox with the animal half-decomposed inside. Ash took the rabbit, put it to her lips, and kissed it. The corpse started to twitch. But only twitch. That was enough to make the boy scream and run away crying, leaving the mother to put the remains back in the shoebox and slink away. Ash insists that if the boy came today, when the growth was bigger, the animal would have been “hopping around like the Easter Bunny.” Pet carcasses notwithstanding, her success rate seems high. A touch, a nod, a whisper in their ear, and that’s it. The patients walk away feeling like Jesus just rubbed mud and spittle in their eyes. Who knows how long the effect lasts, but it provides some sort of comfort. Otherwise the fifty odd people in the park wouldn’t still be here. And it’s all thanks to the gourd-shaped growth in her brain.

There was something that Ash told me last week:“I call it ‘Tree’ on a good day, when I can breathe easy and my head doesn’t feel like it’s gonna explode.” She added: “On a bad day, I call it Thing.” Besides that one time, I haven’t heard her call it “Tree” yet.

Happy 144th Birthday, Canada!

(And, as usual, a happy and prosperous Dominion Day for Andrew Cohen.)

Here is the first part of a short story of mine, which I will be publishing in segments over the next little while.

Fruit
By Liam Volke

I pull my toque down further over my bare scalp, and check my cell: two text messages, one from Bo reminding me that my pelvic exam is today at noon, and one from my section editor, asking “Holly why the fuck haven’t u submitted anything 4 a week?” I was supposed to have something by now, to show for these business trips I’ve been taking to the urban core for a feature article. The only people who seem to call me are my editor and Bo, and the only things Bo talks to me about these days are the exams I haven’t been showing up to. Never mind that while sleeping last night, he draped his stocky branch of an arm over me at one point. It then retracted over my shoulder and back where it came from. As if even his subconscious thought better of it.

I put away my cell, and enter the park. There are more people than usual, this morning. Numbering at fifty, they bring candles, flowers, chocolate, photographs, letters, stick-figure drawings. One woman brought an urn carrying her father. They are all here for the girl named Ash.

Every morning, Ash appears rooted to the ground—literally, held down by thick, sooty white roots that coil around her knees, sprouting leaves. Then I blink, and they’re gone: she looks like a sickly and unkempt sixteen-year-old, sitting at the foot of a poplar in the city park. A crowd huddles around her like they would a fire in a garbage can, in this snowless winter. Ash’s body is tense but still, as she sits like a slouching guru. At her feet a man and a woman grovel, turning to the sky and then to each other in tears, ecstatic. They sob out strings of words, unintelligible. I flutter my knees for warmth a few metres away, and fire out notes.

The two people in front of Ash are a couple, caught in the throes of religious rapture as they hold each other and kiss and shout. The woman tries to say “I love you” but it comes out as “guy lah rue.” They’re not speaking in Tongues--not yet, anyway. Ash just watches, like a wooden idol in bangles and a winter jacket. Eventually a few people come and help them up. Others weep and applaud. Ash is a healer, self-proclaimed.

“You’re late,” Ash says with a thin rasp, as I approach.
I smile and take out my notebook and recorder. “I always seem to just miss the miracles, don’t I.”
“Not really," she says. "Marital issues be gone! Nothing special.”
The crowd in the park mills about. Some leave for work, but most are squatters. Followers, they call themselves. They’ve been here since before I met Ash three weeks ago.
“Shall we get to work?” I ask.
“Holly so serious. Holly a serious journalist. Holly needs to ligh--” her eyes glaze over. She remains motionless for almost a minute. Then, she returns. “Fuck that’s annoying.”

Ash said she started having seizures a little over a month ago; I first saw it happen to her last week. She didn’t move, and it was difficult to tell if she was even breathing. It was like looking at the effigy of a girl, not a real one. It would start, once every few days, and by now it’s once every few hours. She told me it’s the way the ‘Thing’ works.


I'll post the next part soon. For now, have a great day!