Washing Dead Trees

The dead trees stand miserably scraggly, without sap or leaf. Bone washes them weeknights and weekends, like he's ordered to do so by some higher entity from above and beyond. I help Bone wash the trees because he's a good friend of mine. But why we're doing washing dead trees with industrial strength cleaners and brushes suited to janitorize a steel mill or ingot mold foundry has always been a big question to me.

But to Bone, it's important, all right. Just as important as brushing incisors twice every 24, staying to the left of center and trying not to leer at beautiful women too much, but making sure they notice that you notice. So I ask Bone why we're cleaning dead trees and he tells me to just shut up and keep my frothy bristles in motion.  I ask him again and he just says it's our way of keeping our end of the universe up, from keeping the cosmos into falling into some kind of hideous Blakean disarray.

There are a lot more beautiful, living trees that probably would like to have their barks brushed with suds and bristles, but no, we pass by these vibrant, healthy, growing trees -- every one of them. Anyhow, the industrial cleansers and harsh horse whiskers on the heavy-duty brushes might harm living trees' ecological benevolence, who knows. . .

It's hard washing dead trees. The trees are dead, you see, and it's hard to become motivated to clean something that is no longer alive. Another thing about dead trees is they don't have any breathing, living bark. No, they have a tough, sinewy texture that falls apart under the hard scrubbing of the tough brushes we use. Moreover, industrial strength cleaners -- with their acids, poisons and potent chemicals -- serve to make the dead trees' texture frangible.

Funny, but a dead tree in its rough, dirty, natural state, actually looks much worse after it is cleaned than before. After Bone and I clean these trees they have little pieces of wood sticking out all over the place and exhibit a white, sudsy sort of appearance which makes them look artificial and fake.

    Dead trees are also very ugly. It's a joy cleaning something bright and shiny, like a bowling trophy or an itsy, bitsy track and field medallion. It's also nice sprucing up something alive and refreshing, like a wonderful little tree frog that fell far from the branch on high and landed on the hard ground. But come on, Bone, a dead tree? What's so appealing about spending all your free time cleaning something as unappealing and absurdly dead as a dead tree? I really wonder about Bone and I'm thinking about having him either committed to a state insane asylum or enrolled in a state university.

"Only another two hundred and some acres to go and we're done, then we're off to the forest way yonder over that way," he says, jubilantly pointing to the northeast.

I put my brush into the industrial strength cleaner and start scrubbing another dead tree.

"You're doing great. If it wasn't for you I wouldn't have gotten half this far," he encourages.

"Yeah, yeah," I mutter, then grunt and groan a bit.

"I hope you didn't have anything else to do today," Bone yells happily, and starts scrubbing two dead trees at once, with two brushes and two buckets of industrialized cleaner working madly and miserably.

About ten minutes later, Bone's straddling both trees. These two dead trees look very odd because they're only about two feet apart and tower high in the heavens like Sequoia. He has the two buckets dangling from his belt, where they're attached by big `S' hooks. He's about 70 or 80 feet in the air and he's humming some Irish pub song. Man, he was as happy as happy could be. But I was frightened. How am I to call 911 if and when he crashes? The nearest pay phone is 10 miles away. These trees are dead, diseased and unstable. Not only their limbs -- but also their trunks -- break easily and erratically.

Meanwhile, Bone is as high as someone on the twelfth floor of a building. Oblivious to the danger around him, he scrubs and cleans meticulously, too involved to bother a quick look down, where the ground is hard, eager and forever there.

"What are you doing way up there?" I yell up to him.

There's an echo.

"I'm cleaning," he answers.

"Bone, don't you think this is a crazy way to spend a Saturday afternoon?"

Bone throws the two brushes and buckets he is carrying to the ground. The tree cleaning accouterments violently crash. Suds and water fly everywhere. Then he straddles the trees quickly, climbing down from his high perch. Once on the ground, he gives me a nasty look, walks over to me and sharply begins jabbing my chest with his rigid right forefinger.

"Nobody asked you to come out here today! You volunteered!" he screamed.

"I know, but you must have been 120 feet in the air! Those are the two biggest trees in the big woods! You can see them all the way in Millerstown. People from miles around use them as a compass."

"Don't you worry about me, Buster, I've been washing dead trees almost as long as God's made little orange butterflies."
      "What are we cleaning dead trees for? That's what I want to know."

"Don't ask stupid questions."
      "Why?"

"Just because," he said, and then he grabbed the buckets and the brushes and re-attacked the two tall dead trees, straddling and climbing them quickly, effortlessly and expeditiously.

"Bone, how many dead trees are in the forest way over yonder there?" I asked him, pointing to the northeast.

"Damned if I know," he yelled from his high perch. "We'll know when we get this forest done and move way over yonder there."

I shook my head, dipped the brush in the cleaner and began brushing yet another dead tree.

   I pick the small ones, so I don't have to climb too awfully high.

Sam Vargo has an MA in English from Youngstown State University in Younstown, Ohio. He has worked most of his adult life as a newspaper reporter. Today, he makes his living as a public school teacher in an urban school district. He was fiction editor of Pig Iron Press, Youngstown, Ohio, for 12 years. He have has had poetry and fiction appear in the following: Clark Street Review, Coffeehouse Poets Quartnerly, Connecticut Review, Dandelion, Gypsy Blood Review, The Higgensville Reader, Late Knocking, Licking River Review, Ohio Teachers Write, Poetry Motel, Small Press Review (Dustooks), Red Dancefloor, Reed, Whisper, Yasse and other presses, e-zines and literary journals.

Email: Sam Vargo

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