Short Story: Sprouts
There is, in fact, a forest in central Arizona which burned down in 1990. I took a trip there a few weeks after the fire had been put out and snapped the picture that inspired this story (see the sprouts in the middle). I didn’t actually write it until 2003, but it was that picture which was taped to my monitor the whole time.
Troy stood inside the forest for the first time since the fires. Remains of animals littered the ground, their bones hallowed divinations foretelling a failed future. The fog had rolled in through the night, and as the morning sun rose above the mountains to the southeast, Troy felt the chill burn off. Devastated Ponderosa trees, now nothing more than black sticks, stabbed heavenward, pathetic vestiges of what they once were. The ferns and other mosses, once thriving under the cover of a billion pine needles, were gone. Nature had unleashed its fury, pummeled the earth with chaotic slivers of searing heat, and set an inferno that cost the life of one person.
Or was that two?
The silence overwhelmed—heavy and oppressive. With each step Troy took, his foot pressed down on brittle bones, cracking them. The sound was louder despite the fog, and he felt he was disturbing sacred ground. Perhaps it was sacred ground—after all, so much death leaves a scar. Still, he had to go forward, to walk deeper into the forest to find what he knew was there. It was too bad his discovery would be alone, if he found it at all.
“Do you know what you’re looking for?” The ghost of a man Troy knew wasn’t there whispered in the wind, gently stroked the dead sticks. “I know you didn’t bring me out here for nothing.”
“No, not nothing.” Troy sighed. Perhaps talking to a ghost wasn’t the most mature thing he could do, but then again, the ghost made for company and maybe—just maybe—acted as a cheap replacement for a psychologist’s couch. He could almost see him, a gift of imagination and yet, a burden. There in the morning glow walked a man in his thirties, red hair, green eyes that embodied pure and crystalline beauty.
The fog played with the ghost’s image, first encapsulating the whole, then dissipating as he walked through it with Troy. In the morning light, the spirit seemed so real, yet Troy knew a thousand wishes cast into a thousand fountains would not change the truth: the man before him was only a projection from his tattered mind.
“The place looks different, Troy. So much death.”
“It’s a beginning, Ian, not an end.”
“What are you looking for?”
“A piece of myself. I must have left it behind the last time you and I were out here.”
Ian stopped beside a dead tree. He looked at Troy and sighed. “Please don’t tell me it’s your heart. You don’t have one.”
Troy smiled weakly. Even ghosts could be sarcastic. “No, not my heart.”
“Then what did you lose?”
“A piece of memory.” Troy hesitated for a moment, trying to come up with words to explain his journey. “It’s like— Try to look out the back of your head. What do you see?”
Ian let out a short laugh. “Nothing. You don’t have eyes in the back of your head.”
“I know that, but hear me out. Try to look out the back of your head. You know something is there, but you just can’t see it. The more you try, the more your imagination creates something for you out of what you already know.”
Ian furrowed his eyebrows. “So you’re looking for a way to see out the back of your head?”
Troy looked at Ian and then walked on. “Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you with me.”
“You didn’t bring me, Troy. I’m always with you.”
“Then why can’t you understand what I’m trying to say?”
“You’re not exactly being clear about all of this. What can’t you see, and what is your imagination creating for you?”
Troy tried harder to form the words to explain himself. He didn’t understand why he had to tell a ghost what he was doing, but in a way, it cleared his mind and let him reason through things he may not have thought before. What he knew was factual: he and Ian had gone camping in the forest. They made love, they ate beef stew from a tin can heated over a little campfire, and they explored the surrounding life. All of that made sense, and the more he thought of it, the more authentic it all seemed—a painting which became more vibrant and priceless with age.
There was still something missing, however. A day? An hour? A few minutes? He couldn’t remember how long it was, but there was definitely a void in his memory.
The forest opened to a large clearing ringed by soot-covered, blackened tree stumps. Despite the fog, Troy recognized the location immediately. They had camped in the middle of the clearing, at times laying back on the forest floor and marveling at how countless stars graced the sky a hundred miles from city lights. He smiled and could almost see himself with Ian, pointing at various constellations and other stellar objects.
There was Orion the Hunter, Gemini the Twins, and if you looked just above that tree, you could see Mars. In the briefest of seconds, Troy felt like he was there again, the night cold but electric, the wind soft and inviting, the Milky Way painted across the sky in fine brush strokes by a master painter. In the middle of the forest, Troy and Ian were wrapped together in a blanket of love, oblivious to the rest of life outside of their little world, oblivious to the rejections and discrimination they both felt.
“What are you looking at?” Ian’s ghost materialized next to Troy.
“Can’t you see it?”
“I see lifeless trees and death.”
“In the middle of the clearing, Ian. Look.” Troy pointed, his hand shaking. “There’s a beginning.”
Twenty feet away, two small ferns grew from the ashes, the green a sharp contrast to the surrounding palette of despair. Troy walked toward the young plants, trying to picture the final moments before losing time. He imagined the campfire to the left, poorly put together with rocks laid out in a bad circle. Some rocks were still there, charred by the raging flames that had rushed through this part of the forest.
To the right, a small stick stuck out of the ground, as black as all the others, but different enough to notice. He recalled pounding it into the dirt with one of the rocks, then tying off a cheap lean-to as shelter from the rain before they put up the tent.
Ian’s ghost flitted about here and there, seeming to take in the environment. It finally came to rest on top of the ferns, spreading its ethereal body across them, almost seductively. Troy watched Ian’s vaporous breath, his chest heave in time to the beat of his heart. He was as beautiful now as he had ever been, a masterful brushstroke on the canvas of the world.
“What do you see?” Ian asked. Troy appraised the question: did he really care, or was this more conversation generated by his subconscious to arrive at answers?
“I see where we camped, but nothing else.”
“You said time was missing. What was the last thing you remember?”
Troy looked around at the campfire, the stick, the patch of open forest surrounding the ferns. “The fire. I remember the fire.”
“What about the fire?”
“It was dying. We lit it early, before the sun set, I think. I remember laying down with you in the tent.” Troy smiled. “You were naked.”
“Did you throw more wood on the fire?”
Troy hesitated before answering. “No. There was no wood… except…” He turned to look back at the lean-to post. “The sticks from the lean-to. I pulled one of them out.”
Ian stood up and walked around Troy, a ghostly hand touching a shoulder. Troy swore he could feel warmth flowing through his body. That warmth crept past his shoulders, permeated his pores and filled each cell with comfort, cascading through his body until he felt alive. If this ghost was a figment of his imagination, then his imagination sure had a way of making things seem all too real.
Ian stopped circling Troy and stood in front of him. “What happened next?”
“I bent over the fire with the stick, pushing on the embers. I— I don’t know what happened next.”
“What’s the next thing you do remember?”
Troy looked through the mist of Ian, into the eyes of his past. He tried to reason through it all, to make believe there really was nothing missing. All the pieces fit. All of time still existed. Maybe he just picked at the fire, then went to sleep. That was possible.
But no, something was missing.
“I don’t know.” Troy sighed, and sat down next to the ferns. He stared at the campfire, trying to will his memory to the surface.
“I loved you, Troy.”
“I know that.”
“But do you know how much?”
Troy looked up at the ghost. Ian appeared more real than before, less transparent and brighter. His green eyes seemed to seek answers deep inside of Troy. His lips parted, soft and supple, wet and glistening in the morning sun. He smiled.
“How much could you love me?” Troy felt the corners of his eyes moisten. “I was always blue, a depressing person to be around, afraid of what people would say. I loved you, but could only show you through written words. I never was much for conversation.”
“Yes, you were. I loved talking to you. I loved the way you made me feel when we were together. I just couldn’t…”
Ian’s words trailed off. He turned his head and crossed his arms. The sun caught a tear on his cheek.
“I just couldn’t accept your moods. You wanted to leave me, to run out on our future. And you wanted me to accept that, as if all I was made to do was stand next to your side for all eternity.”
“I thought that’s what soulmates did—stand next to each other.”
“You lied to me, Troy.”
“I told you half-truths, Ian. It’s not the same thing.”
Troy sighed and stood up, intending to walk away and forget all of this. He didn’t need to get into an argument with a speck of his subconscious. He didn’t need to be called a liar again. He didn’t need to hear words shot at him from a verbal cannon. He could feel it coming—the yelling, the name-calling, the emptiness in the pit of his stomach every time he realized he hurt Ian.
He wasn’t even real!
Troy smirked. He looked around in silence, taking in the view from the clearing. The Ponderosa trees—or what remained of them—stood like sentinels, pointing defiantly toward Heaven, like they outlasted the worst God could throw at them and still stood proud. Water would rejuvenate them, they would sprout needles, and they would turn green again. All around, plant life would return, the animals would find shelter, the seeds would fall and germinate. Life would be reborn.
“Why did you leave me, Ian?” It was a question he knew the answer to, but he asked nonetheless. Perhaps deep down, the ghost of Ian—the shrink in his brain—would have another reason found buried between what his heart knew and his mind let go.
“I never left you.”
“You ran off with him.”
“You let me go.”
“No. I never let go of you.”
“Ignoring me, Troy, not meeting the needs I had as a human being.” A tear fell from his eyes. “That was letting me go. I couldn’t take it.”
“Did you ever think of giving me another chance? Did you ever think all I needed to do was grow up and accept the way I was?”
Ian scoffed, turned away from Troy, and walked over to the campfire. “And what was I supposed to do? Wait forever? I had needs.”
Troy sat back down on the ground next to the ferns. He stared at the green fronds; so stark their color was against the pitted grey of the forest floor. The two ferns shared what little water there might be underground in their struggle to start over amidst the ruins.
The sun slid behind a cloud, and for a moment cast an eerie shadow on the clearing. Ian stood by the campfire, looking down. He was much more real than the misty vision he’d seen as he was walking up. Perhaps this place was magic, a sacred burial ground of old memories and lost loves, capable of pulling even the deepest of receding dreams and making them real. It certainly felt that way.
Troy brushed his leg against something sharp. He winced and looked down under the ferns. Poking through the dirt was the rusted claw of a hammer.
“I didn’t mean to do it, Troy.” Ian’s voice was soft, almost lost in the calm.
Troy pushed the ferns aside and dug around the hammer, trying to pull it free.
Ian turned around, a tear crawling down a cheek. His lips quivered. “I just wanted to be free. I wanted to be free of complications.”
Troy dug faster, finally pulling the hammer out of the dirt. “What is this?”
“Do you remember now?” Ian’s words seemed to emanate from inside Troy. They charged a billion synapses firing at once. Memories flooded forward as the dam holding it back was destroyed. They careened off the cortices of his mind, pounding waves of everything imaginable in a rush of revelation.
“No,” Troy whispered. The hammer dropped through his shaking hand.
Ian took a few slow steps, the brittle sticks and burnt needles snapping under his feet. “I knew it would kill you to see me get married. Despite all I ever did to you, I loved you.”
“You…”
“It took everything I had to hit you. I loved you, Troy.”
Troy stood quickly, feeling surges of nausea. His legs felt light, and he wobbled.
“Do you remember now?”
“I never lost that time, did I?”
“No. You never it to lose.”
Troy again stood inside the forest for the first time since the fires. Devastated Ponderosa trees, now nothing more than black sticks, stabbed heavenward, pathetic vestiges of what they once were. Nature had unleashed its fury, pummeling the earth with chaotic slivers of searing heat, setting an inferno that cost the life of one person.
Or was that two?
He had to go forward, to walk further into the forest to find what he knew was there.
While this story does not appear in my collection Regarding Dead Things on the Side of the Road, many others like it do. Check it out.
Read more Short Stories, Excerpts and Poems
All text copyright 2003, Benjamin X. Wretlind
