Interlude - the Oak

There is a park about halfway down the street. It's not very big - about a city block's worth - and consists mostly of an open field with a few scattered trees around the margin. There is a bank that slopes somewhat steeply down to the sidewalk on the Indian street side, particularly as you head farther down the hill. In the winter, people have been known to "surf" down this hill, standing on sheets of cardboard, on one of the few truly snowy days of the year. In the spring, the rugby team from the college up the street churns the field to mud, and every year the Katehausians discuss buying a big bag of grass seed and replanting the field, though naturally due to broke-ness and apathy, nothing ever gets done.

Mabel Celeste has a tree in the park. She calls it hers, at least, as have a dozen or so disenchanted college students to pass through this town. It is a huge old oak, off by itself at the Northern end of the park. There the bank drops off to the alley where there is always a row of student vehicles parked for free, in varying states of decaying shabbiness. The tree has gnarled roots that bench lowly above the ground, forming an outdoor parlor where one can sit in relative comfort if you don't mind dirt. Leaning up against the bole and looking east, you can see the Great Houses all in a row - Katehaus, the Zoo, El Porto Rojo, Lame` Guy House.

This tree has heard more stories. MC comes here to sit, and sometimes smoke, and sometimes cry or bitch about her friends. The tree listens, sometimes the friend she is with listens too. If there is a party, the lights and muffled noises often carry across the field, and as her heart breaks and breaks again she finds comfort in this outer room, leaning against the tree. She imagines the roots going deep into the ground; one thing constant and aged in a kaleidoscopic neighborhood where people (including herself) sometimes migrate before the ink is dry on the lease, where the span of Katehaus is unimaginably ancient at five years. She leans back and closes her eyes. The wind comes up, rustling the leaves and cooling her, drying the uncried tears on her cheek. Once she stood in the center of this park as the heavens opened and the first spring rain poured down with drops huge and heavy, insistent, almost pregnant, sexual. Once she pounded her fists on the trunk and wept tears that felt as large as those raindrops when she learned (again) that her love had been rejected. Once, in the dawn, with a black candle and a blacker cat, she and her company mourned the passing of the Great Houses and the death of childhood. This tree had been her roots for so long when she herself was rootless; but humans, unlike trees, up stakes and move on. MC gets up and dusts herself off and heads down the hill, looking forward with her eyes, but backward with her heart.

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