The Drinks Trolley
by Mark Sadler

The folklore of the frozen north resides in the boughs of the great tundra oak trees that, once matured, seldom grow leaves, even during the summer. They are the biggest and the oldest of all living things; bigger and older, even, than the migrating canutus whales, who parade like chorusing monks along the deep-water trench of the Hagathee Sound. The stories the trees tell are their own. No god whispered these tales into their swaying branches. Mankind did not invent their mythology. He lives inside it, like a character in a book.

An author, named David Gertz, once travelled from the Bronx, in New York City, to the fringes of the Shikvungapik weald, in Alaska, to study the oaks. He believed they would provide him with insights that he would use to lay bare the soul of America. For a month, he observed the complex motion of the forest, but he could not understand it. He christened the trees “storm mimes,” because of the way the broad limbs flail emotively in high winds. At dusk, their expressive silhouettes extended into long, questing shadows that crept into his dreams, like rivers of night.

The tribes who dwell among the tundra oaks understand the sign language of the branches. Mostly, they keep to themselves. They make no effort to communicate the stories to outsiders. Billy Greyhern was one of them; a member of the Omalwahlo tribe by birth. The Omalwahlo are a scattered people who live apart from each other.

When Billy was a boy, before the language of the trees quieted him, he used to ask his father excitedly:

“What stories are the branches going to tell us today?”

His father would respond:

“It depends on the direction and the strength of the wind.”

In the beginning, his father would speak out-loud the words that where being woven by the breeze into the swaying scaffold of the boughs, so that Billy could understand. Later, when the boy knew enough of the language, they would stand in silence, side by side, absorbing the stories together.

Sometimes they would hike great distances to trees with many boughs and branches that moved in complicated ways and housed a greater number of tales. The old man would point out the different parts of the tree where each story was located. Billy recalled a time when a big old oak was badly damaged in a blizzard and could no longer speak. He had watched his father grieve for it, the same way that you might grieve for a loved one. His father had told him: “Watching the stories in the trees can help make the cold go away. One day, if things get bad, they can help you survive.”

But his father died in the cold, among the trees, and the gnawed remains of his body weren't found until June, when almost all the snow had melted.

After his father's death, Billy lived alone. As he moved through the forest, hunting and trapping, the folklore of the forest moved through him. He began to notice that the stories in some of the trees seemed to connect to those that were being told by trees in his peripheral vision, as if they were small parts in some larger narrative.

One morning, outside his cabin, he paused to watch a young oak that had not yet grown large enough to tell a story of its own, stammering out words with its short, stiff branches. Behind him, he heard the scrunch of boots rumpling the deep snow. He turned to see John Bearblood approaching with his rifle lowered:

“Came to tell you 'bout this cultural exchange program they got going on in the city,  Could be good for broadening your horizons. Maybe finding work.”

“I don't know,” said Billy, but John Bearblood said:

“This world don't like people who keep to themselves and don't share none. They think loners are going to shoot up the place. You gotta go out and meet people and shake their hands, so they know you're okay. About this exchange program. They employ you at the city library for a year. Doesn't seem to be anything more to it than that. Might have to give a speech, I suppose. They fix you up in an apartment and the money don't seem bad.~

Billy Greyhern left for the city.

On his first day at the library, he met Jessica, next to the lockers, in the staff room. He introduced himself to her as the Indigenous-Americans Cultural Ambassador.

“Is that what they're calling the diversity hires, now?” she asked him. “I don't know why they bother. Everybody here ends-up speaking the same weird language.”

She patted his arm through his shirt. Her fingers settled momentarily in the beds of his muscles.

“Fortunately, there's still some human beings working here. You want to help me with the bums?”

 Unbalanced by her forwardness, he regarded her uncertainly.

 The homeless people who come into the library,” she clarified.

 “You want me to help you throw them out?”

 “Jesus Christ, Billy, they're human beings...”

 She flashed him a wicked grin.

 “...We quarantine them in a room at the back of the library. I want you to help me get them wasted.”

 She showed him the trolley of banned books. It was kept padlocked to the wall in the ground floor stationery cupboard. In the semi-darkness, she selected a random volume and handed it to him. He studied the cover: Three Lives by Gertrude Stein. 

“I don't know it,” he said.

“It doesn't matter. Read a few lines.”

He turned to the first page and began to read. About halfway down, his head began to swim. He felt unsteady on his feet. He pulled his eyes away from the text and laid a palm against the wall for support. Behind her glasses, Jessica studied him with devilish interest.

“You getting fucked up?”

“It's because the paper is made from many different trees,” he rationalized. “Their stories are confused.”

“No, they did research on it. It's microscopic damage in the typeface. Certain patterns make your brain spaz-out, so you kinda feel drunk. We hand the books out to the winos who come in during the day, so they don't consume alcohol on the premises. It's not legal, but, you know...”

Her face lit up with a strange humour: A duo of mismatched smiles, one flickering behind her eyes, like a lightbulb about to go out; the other hovering on her lips, as if the mechanism connecting the pair had broken and the loose pieces were still rattling around inside her head.~

It happened quickly between him and Jessica. He went back to her apartment one evening after work. Nine days later, after their first argument, he returned to his own place, across the river.

Their first night in bed, she shuffled the silver ring over the burl of his knuckle, holding it above her head, studying it under the blinking colours of the fairy lights. The front-piece was a crude tableau of a woman sitting upright, clasping three small children against her breast.

“It's an anchoring ring,” he told her.

A tapering pinprick in the woman's mouth was tuned to the noise that the wind made in the boughs of the tundra oaks. He lay on his back, drifting-off to the sound of Jessica's funnelled breath as it was shaped by the metal into the faint hiss of the distant forest.

A few days later (it was the evening of the argument) there was a new blanket draped across the back of the couch:  A symmetrical pattern, woven from coarse wool, approximating the aesthetics of some non-existent First Nation tribe.

“I got it from this gallery down-town that specialises in Native American folk art,” Jessica enthused. “The owner said it comes from Alaska. The patterns are a language like hieroglyphics. I thought, maybe later, you could read it to me.”

He picked up the blanket and began feeding it through his hands, studying the indecipherable design.

“I don't know,” he murmured, shaking his head.

“What do you mean: ' I don't know?'”

“I'm not an authority on tribal blanket work. I just know my own people. It's a nice blanket. Nice weaving.”

Her anger smouldered in the silence. Suddenly, she stormed from the room, slamming the bedroom door behind her. He sat on the couch with the TV on. She reappeared briefly, picking the blanket off the floor and flinging it into his lap.

“If you like it so much, then why don't you sleep under it!”

After she returned to the bedroom, he stayed on the couch a while longer. When the apartment got cold, he left and walked back home.

Jessica blamed her shifting moods on her synaesthesia migraines. She owned a collection of sunglasses, with different-coloured prescription lenses, that she used to neutralise the colours of her headache. It always felt to him like there was more to it  than that. In the morning when she awoke, she would stretch her arms upward, with her fingers splayed, and then stiffly thrash them about. Instinctively he would search for a story in her movements, but he could never find any.~

He took the next day off. On Friday, when he returned to the library, there was a message from Jessica at the front desk, instructing him to meet her on the seventh floor. He found her in an alcove beside a wide-open window. A colour photocopier nearby was relentlessly adding to a stack of paper.

She tossed him one of the volumes from the drinks trolley. They sat opposite each other, with their backs against the bookshelves and their bent legs crossing the narrow aisle, taking turns to read passages out loud, watching each other's faces as the misprinted words took effect.

Finally, Jessica flung her book aside. It landed face down, with the covers-splayed, skidding a few feet across the floor. She planted her hand clumsily on his knee. Her addled gaze struggled to focus on him

“Listen, I need your help with something.”

She plucked an emerging photocopy from the machine and handed it to him. On the warm paper there was a colour image of a cross-stitch design; a floral border framing a quote that read: “Nevertheless, she persisted.”

“You know how to make paper air planes?”

He shook his head.

“Fuck, just keep a look out, then.”

Shakily she rose to her feet. Paper plane in hand she leaned out of the window. The small, redbrick plaza below was puddled from an earlier shower. The rain-streaked trunk of a large willow tree rose from the centre, its trailing, wiry branches too weak to bear the weight of a story. Jessica aimed towards the building opposite, at an open window, one floor up.

 It was a careless throw. The plane nosedived, striking the ground close to a man traversing the plaza. He paused for a moment staring into the sky, before continuing.

 Billy discretely turned off the photocopier. He lingered at the end of the aisle, watching the doors to the stairwell, while Jessica assembled squadrons of paper planes. She began throwing them hastily, two at a time. When a chance updraft carried a pair through the targeted window, she let out a sharp cry of triumph.

 “Anyway, I'd better get going,” he said.

She glanced over her shoulder. Something in her expression told him that she was surprised he was still there.

 “Yeah, look there's a band playing at Knaggs tonight. I really want you to see them,” she said, indifferently.

They rendezvoused on the plaza that evening. Trampled paper planes lay scattered on the redbrick. One had been unfolded and stapled to the damp tree trunk, where it dangled precariously by a single prong. Someone had scrawled on the paper in marker pen: 'You tell it, sister!'

Jessica embraced him. He felt the silver ring against his neck.

“You're wearing my anchor,” he said.

“You left it at my place.”

The club was an overcrowded, airless room with black walls that compressed the music to a cacophonous din. Jessica stood alongside him, staring intently at the band. As one song reached a crescendo, her focused expression changed to anger. She wrenched the ring off her finger and hurled it over the heads of the crowd.

Billy's horrified gaze followed its molten trajectory towards the stage. By the time the singer had knelt down to retrieve the shiny object at his feet, he had already pushed his way to the front. A pair of security guards grabbed hold of his arms, wrestling him into a deserted corridor. A boot kicked open a fire exit. He was flung nose-first into the brick wall of an alleyway. The door slammed behind him, muffling the sounds of the club, as blood poured from his face.

~

His nose was still bandaged at the disciplinary hearing.

“I'm sorry it's a meeting like this that brings us together for the first time,” said Pamela Atkinson, the library director.

“The total was 761 colour photocopies. That's around $115, plus paper costs,” reported William Sulsh, who was head of development and fundraising. “While that may seem innocuous, in the past four years we've had our budget slashed twice. We rely upon some very generous donors to keep the lights on. These donors also fund our cultural ambassador program, of which you are a benefactor.”

“Furthermore, there is our standing with our neighbours in the college archaeology department, who were the recipients of your paper planes,” added Pamela.

Elizabeth Pinto-Ribeiro, the equality and diversity officer, was sitting slightly apart from the others. She leaned forward in her seat.

“Billy, what Pamela is trying to establish is whether there was any cultural precedent underlying your actions.”

“Pardon me, but I wasn't saying any such thing,” interjected Pamela. “What I am interested in is whether there were any other parties involved.”

“Obviously this was some kind of statement,” insisted Elizabeth. “You only need to consider what was written on the photocopies, and the fact they were aimed into the office of Professor Bartlett, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by students on three occasions.”

“That's enough, Elizabeth,” said Pamela, firmly. She turned toward Billy.

“It was your staff code that was used to unlock the photocopier. If you are intent on shouldering full responsibility, then I have no choice other than to write you up. I will contact your tribal council explaining the outcome of our meeting, and ask them if they wish you to continue in your role as a cultural delegate.” 

When the hearing was over, he walked to the ground floor. The stationery cupboard was unlocked. He took one of the books from the trolley. On the brick plaza, in front of the tree, he hurriedly read the first page. By the end of the second page he had begun to sway on the spot. By the end of the third his face was flushed. His eyes bulged in their sockets.  At the end of the fourth he felt the need to lurch forward to retain his balance. The book fell from his hand, as he staggered towards the road. One foot plunged off the sidewalk. There was the sound of a car horn and the frantic screech of tires. He looked up, watching in slow-motion as a taxi veered to his left, passing so close that he felt both door handles brush against him. The front wheels blew out on the kerb as the vehicle launched into the air. A jarring collision was followed by the impotent growl of a revving engine, going nowhere. Through a white cloud of smoke he could see the crumpled wreck of the car concertinaed against the trunk of the willow, its spindly branches flailing inarticulately.

~

The library cut ties with him after the accident. He was given an air ticket and a week to vacate his apartment. He did not see Jessica again.

He had been home a few days when John Bearblood came trudging out of the woods, carrying the fog on his breath. He paused a few metres from the cabin. The two men looked at each other.

“When I was your age, I was in jail,” announced John Bearblood. “I was more afraid of being released and my father beating me, than I was of the inmates. All I have in my heart for you is forgiveness.”

He took a few paces forward:

“The taxi driver's okay. Tested positive for cocaine. The accident might not even have been your fault. Knocked a few stories out of that tree, I reckon. That girl you were sweet on's been arrested. I heard she got some teenagers drunk. 'Nother thing: The tribal council kicked up a big stink on social media; guilted that band into giving the ring back.”

He pulled off a fur glove and reached into his pocket. A familiar silver object glinted in his palm.

“You want it?”

“Nah, you keep it.”

John Bearblood returned the ring to his jacket.

“Agnes Pinebit says, if you were to come by one evening, she would be happy to feed yah.”

“I'm okay.”

 “Well, keep it in mind. She says, if you wanted, you might tell each other stories.”

“Feels like I've been pushed and pulled around enough,” said Billy. “Gonna stay in my own place from now on.”

John Bearblood's brow furrowed.

“Just so long as you know, the world's gonna keep closing in,” he said.

He turned and headed back into the woods, the fresh snow cascading from the overloaded branches, erasing his bootprints.

© Mark Sadler, 2020

Mark Sadler lives on the Thames Delta, where he shares a room with a chameleon named Frederic. His writing has been performed by Liars' Leagues in Hong Kong, London and New York City, and has also appeared in a number of online and print publications, that include The London Magazine, The Ghastling and Litbreak. He is endlessly tinkering with a novel, in the same way that some people endlessly tinker with old cars.

The Drinks Trolley was read by Tim Farley on Wednesday, 5th February 2020 for Intimacy & Isolation