Helen Friee is the final monthly winner of the Bellarine Writer’s Competition.
Helen will now write a story for the grand final of the competition with other finalists Helen Booth, Jenn Eddy, John Farrington and Mark Trowse competing for $1000.
They have been given the choice of three topics: The Awakening, Power and An Accidental Meeting to be published in the Voice on Friday October 21.
Standing tall by Helen Friee
We are trees, the planet’s oldest living organisms. We might look ordinary on the surface, but that’s just our disguise. Below ground level is where it all really happens – where our networks of roots, fungi and bacteria interconnect enabling us to absorb and exchange messages. Humans live amongst us, and yet it’s only now they’re beginning to understand our complex networks – how we share resources, communicate, flourish, protect ourselves, amongst other survival mechanisms.
Don’t believe us? Don’t think we know what’s going on around us? Let’s go to a well-tended house block on an ordinary street where the usual variety of indigenous shrubs, flowers, and popular trees flourish, all the while surveilling and deducing.
Right now we know something is wrong. Inside this humans’ home a body lies by the open back door. The head of this household, the matriarch who tends this garden, has been fatally stabbed.
How do we know of the dead body? We’re usually the first to know of any passing – human, animal or arboreal. Immediately on death, enzymes began to eat her body from the inside out, triggered by the acidic environment created by the carbon dioxide exhaled in her last breaths. This laden air, undetectable to humans, was carried to the garden for trees to absorb. At the same time there was an increase in the number of flies amongst us, attracted from the moment of death to opportunistically lay their eggs.
Moreover, we know the exact location of the murder weapon. In the assailant’s haste to depart the scene of attack, the blood-covered blade was quickly buried under the backyard’s largest tree. Just below the ground surface is the most sensitive for old and massive trees. Our complete root structure is huge, but in the space of a spade’s scoop, in the intricacies of our underground networks are miles of delicate microscopic fungi filaments and invisible micro-organisms. It doesn’t take much of a disturbance for us to sense a change in the earth around us, a foreign incursion totally out of place.
Oh, we also know who the human is who cut short the life of our gardener.
She was the devoted mother of three children who have all grown, branched out from the family home to pursue their own lives. But they regularly visited their mother, safeguarding her comfort when their parents’ relationship dissolved, ensuring she looked after herself. Having been raised so generously to be sturdy yet kind, none of these children could have cut her down in any way.
An admirer has been a recurrent visitor recently, including last night. Well meaning but misguided, he readily twigged to her love of gardening but overplayed his fondness. An amateur thespian, he would name and give personalities to her favourite trees, and imagined stories of them. Why do humans instinctively anthropomorphise anything non-human? Perhaps it gives them a sense of familiarity to things they think hostile or maybe just indifferent to their existence. But all it does is hinder human comprehension of the world so they can’t see what is truly before them.
No, her beau is innocent, simply vying for her affections.
Which leaves her former husband. They built a home together, but once the children flew their parents’ sanctuary, their relationship wilted. Her garden sustained her, but he grew restless and looked beyond their humble home. His endeavours proved fruitless, and every time he returned, he became increasingly incensed by how content she was with her gardening.
So one autumnal day last year, in his rage he turned on the jewels of her treasured front garden – a pair of golden ashes. Planted long ago, they grew tall and vigorous, their radiant foliage the envy of the street. Closely connected by their root systems, and forever considerate of each other’s need for sunlight, water and nutrients, they became two old friends, co-depending, not competing.
In retribution he chopped down, not both of these beauties, but one. Other large trees nearby detected the remaining ash’s distress and sent a flow of healing nutrients through the root system to restore it; while above ground our gardener equally strived to save it. But it could not effectively absorb the nourishment sent its way, and it died, steadily and deliberately.
She was bereft. But she stood tall, and over the next few months mustered the resilience to recreate the front garden.
He returned today one last time, and could not avoid the revamped front garden full of new verve and colour. As he then entered the house and discovered the unmistakeable effects of another man, mounting indignation spiralled with jealousy, and uncontrolled fury overcame him. He snatched a kitchen knife, callous vindication dominating his frenzied attack.
So here before us, one human lies dead, one has cravenly fled, loved ones will be anguished, and we remain to further contemplate the inhumanity. We are trees. We may look innocuous, sedentary, but don’t be fooled – so much more is going on below the surface.
