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.