Where Trees Once Stood

I - Waiting for the Weather

The reclusive Daniel Myers greeted the LiquorLand door with an angry push, one signifying the start of another all-nighter at the counter, and the disruption of his splendid social isolation. He relieved Julia, the daytime attendant, who declared cheerfully that ‘things were pretty slow’ and that she was ‘off to the movies’. She strode briskly towards the door, joyful in her denunciation of the weather.

"Pretty windy out there, isn’t it?" she chirped, failing to penetrate Danny’s haze of sheer disinterest. Julia was amid her late thirties, an age betrayed by the youthfulness infused throughout her appearance and manner. She possessed eyes that were deeply blue, hair that was temporarily red, a husband who was regularly vanishing, two confused, fatherless children, and a smile had grown critically strained. She was in many ways an artist; her life’s work thus far had been a masterpiece in classical self-delusion. Day by day she painted the reassuring images of a world in which love and happiness thrived unabated, and from the infinite depths of her mind’s palette there sprang images of caring, supportive husbands, and fathers attentive and dependable. It was the perfect world, and once she learnt to forget its very fabrication, she became immersed in its paper-thin reality. She struggled endlessly to mend the cracks and tears through which misery was prone to seep - her faithful tools were good humor and a tired, yet vivid imagination. As soon as Julia spotted the disheveled young night attendant slumping into his chair behind the counter, she reached instinctively for the good humor.

"Danny?" she attempted brightly. So accustomed was Julia to being ignored by people, that she’d developed justifications on their behalf, excusing silence as (a) the silent contemplation of her words, or (b) a legitimate failure to hear what she had said, in which case it was to be spoken again and again at increasing volumes until a response was achieved. There was no (c) - the deliberate refusal of response, directly counterproductive to the flow of conversation - because everybody loved talking, especially to her. Inane chatter was her unfailing weapon and with it she soldiered on: "Isn’t it windy, Danny? Hey Danny…?"

Irritated, the present defect corrected itself. "Yeah Julie, it is windy. Well, have a good time at the movies, then." Julia paused for a moment, then, satisfied, she declared victory with her reinvigorated smile. Sporting a triumphant goodnight, she practically bounced out the door and up the street, as glorious colour flooded the canvas once more.

With dead eyes Danny stared after her, and in the instant it took the door rattled to a close his sarcastic grin had snapped elastically back into nothingness. He found his annoyance interrupted by the realisation that it actually was windy outside, that through the relative calm of the shop’s interior it seemed to be blowing a fierce gale. Branches swayed violently in the great trees of the park across the street, as their powerless leaves filled the air like paper confetti. Litter twirled about, then launched into flight from road, gutter and footpath. So strong was the wind that it blew customers in off the street, and with this observation Danny’s annoyance was born anew. It seemed to him that life was nothing more than a sailor’s worst nightmare or the meteorologist’s ultimate fantasy - a vast complexity of gusts and gales, of forces beyond a person’s control that acted only to destroy permanence and certainty wherever it arose. On evenings like these, he would confront the occasional soul ravaged by nature’s chaos.