Book, part 3

A few moments of silence pass. The sound of rain beats lightly on all their hoods and on the gleaming-white planting bags that hung around rookie waists, or on the grey and rugged-looking bags of the seasoned vets, all grey with mud and time.

This will be easier if you have a koan, Feral tells them all seriously. Several seconds of silence ensue, rain falling.

Uh... what's a cone?, one young man says finally. Scott says this.

Anyone?, Feral asks. Anyone? What's a koan?

Magda, with such a charmingly heavy Quebecois accent says It's, uh... like un... tree cone?

Diff'rnt cone, but thank you miss Magda. Anyone? Koan?

Magada again. No. Okay. Un... joke? Un ree-dle? Something to... she stops here, flustered, and blushes just a little, then blushes quite fully in fact, blushes quite red with her rain-wet cheeks, red above her yellow-wet rain-suit.

No no, Feral says, no you're doing faaaaab-u-lus-ment. Continue, je vous prie. I beg you.

She smiles broadly, but entirely self-conscious, eyes on the clear-cut, takes a deep breath, says: Okay, a koan is he that you say to praying and to... euh... deallumer? She looks here to Feral. Turn off, Feral says helpfully. Yes, she continues, to turn off your mind down, okay?

Yes, yes, Feral says, laughing good-naturedly. Yes, perfect. To praying. To turn off your mind down, as the lady says. To do so on the auto-pilot, or to do so on the no-pilot. Everything shutting off, right? Perfectly in the moment, and nowhere else, but not in the moment either. It's a mystery, I know, but that's how you plant. That's how you gotta plant. Otherwise, this job'll fuck'n kill ya. I swear it, man. I swear, it'll fuk'n kill ya.

And then he's hopping from one foot to the other, doing jigs and reels and singing jingles to demonstrate his points about microsite selection and water drainage, about soil temperature and about what he calls, shouting to them over his shoulder as he puts a tree in, about the yea-saying joy of planting, about how to hear nothing, eh?, and to plant nothing, and to, uh, to be nothing? Right? Y'know? Crazy talk, mostly.
And who knows, he says. Who knows. Maybe it isn't.
Buddy,..., um... one kid, brownish-blond dread-locks, so obviously from some big city or other, says. This would be Keith. Uh, uhmmmm...
Yes? Yes? What is it?
Uh... well... he chuckles nervously... well...
Well what, man? What? Good god, spit it out. We only have three christly months.
What does any of this stuff you're saying here, what does it have to do with planting trees?
Wha... Wha...? Feral looks at the sky, at the forest, at the ground, looks at Wolf Boy, seemingly astonished that anyone would even ask this question. What does it have to do with planting trees?, he sputters. What does it have to do with planting trees? Great jumping jesus, man! Fuck! It has everything to do with planting trees! Now, okay, now lookit old Sal down there, you see him running around looking all stressed out and important?

They all look down the hill to where he's pointing, at a determined orange figure who strides quickly up the road and away from them, and they all nod. The girl who answered his question about the koan though, Magda, a strand of curly reddish-brown hair plastered to her perfect face and her perfect neck by the perfect rain, she doesn't look. Sure, she throws a quick glance over her shoulder for appearances sake, but mostly she's just watching him. He notices, looks away nervously, awkwardly, then looks back, to see if she's still looking. Their eyes meet again for a second, and they both smile. Adam, cold and glasses-blurry, notices this and is annoyed by it, though he couldn't quite say why if you had asked him.

Now old Sal there, Feral continues, turning his eyes away from Magda and back to the group, re-composing himself, now old Sal he's, uh... he's got too much sorrow. Ha, ha! It's true, don't laugh--he's seen too way much to ever be happy anymore. Poor bugger. Some days that guy saw more crazy shit before breakfast than most of us will ever see in our whole freakin' lives. He was in some kind of war or something. A big hero I guess, I dunno. Saved a bunch of lives or won some medals or something? But anyway, plant with heart, that's his motto. Plant with heart. I agree. He always says that this is all you're gonna do for the next few months, right?, is eat and sleep and shit and plant trees. So you might as well learn to enjoy it, and do it with heart. I say that too.

He continues. The reality is that your lives are gonna be really hard and really painful for a long while to come, and they're probably gonna be lonely, too. That's just how it is. Embrace it, make it your ally, and then plant with heart. Get a koan, too... Hoummmmmmmmmm, he hums, fingers in the lotus position, eyes closed. Everyone laughs.

Adam is just watching and listening, shivering wet in his almost-useless raingear and his soon-to-fall-apart boots, trying to absorb all this too-much-at-once information the way his boots are presently absorbing the rain, and thinking to himself man, how the hell did I end up here? This was such a bad idea. This fucking SUCKS. Can I go home? Then he remembers--no home to go to, no money to get there. I'm stuck, he thinks. I'm stuck here. This is it. Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Feral continues, planting another tree, making sure everyone's eyes are all fixed right right directly on him again, seeing every detail of what he's doing: You'll learn to be dirty and to bleed, people, and if you want to, and I'm serious here goddamnit, I'm serious, you'll learn to forget every single thing you've ever known about anything. Which is good, because none of it matters anyway, and none of it will help you out here. He finishes planting the last tree and straightens up now, looks at them as he end his speech: Because unless you've been an alpine guide, an Olympic marathon runner, a prisoner of war, or a rice farmer in those, uh, those rice-fields of Asia, pretty much nothing you've done up until now could've prepared you for this. And I mean nothing.

Yes, he says, yes man. This is it. This it it. It's all happening people. All at once. Ha, ha! Wooooo!

And on all of them, shivering there and huddled together in various states of comfort and not, the rain falls on the just and the unjust, the rain just keeps falling without intent, relentless and without intent.



But lets back up here just a little: Who exactly was this Feral person, a person whose name Hank had felt the need to make the rabbit ears around? In fact, let's back up to the very beginning of our story, or to the end of it, someone running along yelling things into the rain. Why was he alive, this Feral person, and why was this surprising? I mean, why wouldn't he have been alive? Was he supposed to have been dead at one time or another?

And then right away that makes all of this seem foolish, because we know you can't take a story seriously when things are happening like the dead coming back to life. Because once you're dead you're dead, right?

And there's no coming back from that, right?


Anyway, I'll attempt to tell you this story as best as I remember it, though it's been so long now, and though know I'm not even getting all of the facts straight anymore, and maybe I've forgotten some things, or added others, or confused them with some other stories I might've heard once, some songs, movies, whatever. Anyway you have my notes, like I said, and if you feel the need at some point in the future to sort them all out and to attempt to tell this story properly, then go for it. But by then, my granddaughter, I'm sure you'll have stories of your own to tell.

I'm so old now baby, so old, which is so surprising to you young people, the idea that such a thing could ever happen, or especially that it could happen to you. The physical impossibility of death in the mind of the living someone once called it, and he encased a shark in clear plastic just to really make the point. But I've forgotten so many things now, which is okay I guess, since we all have to be allowed to forget things, or else we'd all go crazy.
So I don't know. I don't know. I'm sure of that much. But here's the start of this story, and the end of it too, Adam down the puddle-street cell-phoning that Feral's alive, that Feral's alive, Feral's alive...


Night-rain, slow yellow beauty of light-soft on concrete dark, all the muted-rain city-sound, the place and the moment where everything blurs and becomes one.
Adam has put his cell phone away now, he flags a cab down and gets in door closes a-thud, piano music and slow fade into darkness end scene one.