Trees can bear scars too. Dark, puckered with sap and pitch, botched attempts by an axe or the vaguely violent will of a summer thunderstorm. These trees have borne witness to our worst moments, here, beneath the sweltering sky, among the blackberry-laden bushes. Every slurred word dripping from our lips coat their leaves like nectar, a sickly sweet scent rotting amongst their roots. They know our secrets, and they know our lies.
•
“Coralee!”
“Yes, Mama?” Mama’s voice is a flash of lightning. You always know the thunder is coming.
“Did you feed them chickens? And did you give ’em enough water? You know how they get in the summer.” Mama doesn’t talk the way that our neighbors to the south do, not a full drawl, just the touch of an accent to the tip of her tongue, turning get into git.
“I brought out three buckets this morning, Mama.”
“Check ’em again in the afternoon. That may not be enough.” I want to roll my eyes, but I know she would likely roll up her newspaper and give me a good swat, the way she does with the chubby flies that feed on our table scraps. Besides, I know she’s right. Virginia summers are brutal, the kind that leave your skin sweating like cold grapes at a picnic, making the little baby hairs stick to your cheeks and your face flush like someone caught you spying on that girl down the lane.
I hitch my skirt up around my knees. Mama says it’s not ladylike, but I’m aiming to head down to the pond. She must hear the rustle from the next room over—the next thing I know her voice is ringing out again, muffled by the sleepy heat of the old farmhouse.
“Coralee?”
“Yes, Mama?”
“Where are you gettin’ off to?”
“Just down to the crick, Mama. It’s too dang hot to be stuck in the house.”
“You finished your chores?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“And where are the boys?”
“They’re at Bobby Rider’s house, just down the street a ways.”
“OK. Be back in time for lunch, you hear?”
“Yes, Mama.”
And with the creak of springs and the racket of a screen door, I’m out. The field looks hot as anything this time of day, wheat-baked breeze ruffling the rolling golden grasses, but just past it is the edge of the woods, where the burbling creek meets a cool pond. The hay tickles my ankles and swishes against my skirt on the way down, little seeds clinging in Rorschach patterns that would mean something if I only looked close enough.
The field would be cheery, if it weren’t for the whispers.
Old places like to talk about what came before, what they’ve seen. I don’t live in the Deep South: I’m closer to D.C. than Charlottesville, and we have more Targets than Walmarts, but still, there are some things you can’t forget. Our farm has stood since 1792. I know what that means, even if my family doesn’t.
The air changes when I step into the woods; still muggy, but now with a hint of Appalachian meltwater in the breeze. The pond glitters, dug out by calloused hands dark with dirt so many years ago. I slip out of my clothes, leaving a heap of sweat-stained cotton at the bank, and dive in. The water is silky on my skin, reeds tickling my back, minnows nibbling at my toes and fingers. Sometimes a current will brush up against me, the jetstream of some bigger animal swimming beneath me. I’m not scared, though. I know this place. I know what has been here, and I know that trout aren’t the thing that should horrify me. That, that is a secret held in banned history books and dark bands around branches.
I float, gazing up at the sky above me. Blue and blue for miles, the same sky that was here in 2001, in 1941, in 1929, in 1914, in 1860. The sky has watched this land through it all, from gunshots that rang out every fifteen seconds to fifteen gunshots in a second. It knows the taste of smoke from chestnuts, from gunpowder, from wood piles, and from funeral pyres.
I float under the branches of a poplar tree, old, older than most of the trees in the forest. I climbed this tree when I was little, scrambling up the branches one by one, scraped palms leaving spots of blood on the leaves. They drank it, hungry for the food they grew up on. Towards the top the air was thinner, older. I scrambled out across the limb marveling at how straight it was, like the cross up at the altar. Marks marred the bark, ridges, and grooves like the ones left behind when we untie the horses. I ran my finger along them, forgetting for a moment that I was nearer to sky than ground, that old three-groove bullets were still lodged here from the Civil War, that branches weren’t made to bear the weight of humans.
Before long, I was in a hospital bed, stitches already promising a puckered scar along my forearm. In the pond water, the scar looks green, ghostlike, a whisper of the past.
I imagine falling now: bruised arms, scars, broken bones. I imagine the ones that didn’t fall: bruised necks, closed throats, crushed hyoids .
Trees can bear scars too.
Morgan Smith is a novelist, playwright, and freshman at Bryn Mawr College, where she is double majoring in creative writing and English. Her short stories have been published in the United States and the United Kingdom, and she reviews upcoming books for Simon and Schuster, Random House, and HarperCollins. She is currently in the process of getting her first book published. Her first musical is also in development.