The Olive Tree

As you can imagine, I get thousands upon thousands of letters every day from readers of this blog. These letters say things like: "Brian, you're an amazing writer. Your gift for prose is unparalleled. I wish that I could be you, even if only for a day. But your blog posts are erratic. Why is this?"

To these letter writers I would like to say two things. 

First: Why are you taking the time to write me letters when it would be so much more convenient for everyone involved if you would contact me directly via the email widget to the right?

Second: Lately--and for the foreseeable future--most of my writing energy is being focused on a long-form fiction project, which leaves me little time to work on delightful little gems like this. For those of you (i.e., pretty much all of you) who are absolutely desperate for new material, here is a small chunk from the aforementioned larger project. I think it functions relatively well as a stand-alone piece, though on its own it is much more bleak than the whole of the story.

And since we're on the subject, to those of you who have taken any amount of interest in what I do: Your support is much appreciated, and I thank you. Writing is lonely work.

But, please, in the interest of eco-consciousness, stop wasting paper and just send me an email.

Here's "The Olive Tree":

*****

The Olive Tree

Jared woke while the sky was still bruise blue, his eyes wide in panic, his bladder stinging. A fat moon hung just beyond the canopy of the olive tree that served as his only shelter. Its silver light relieved him; though he’d had decades to rid himself of it, he still feared the dark of night, and couldn’t help but wonder each morning if the Sun would fail to emerge from behind its hill.

From where he lay atop the mound, nearest the tree, he could just make out the shapes of his kin on the grass around him. There were dozens of them, but in this light they appeared as a single mass, their breath coordinated in sleep, rising and falling in waves. Jared shuddered, and did his best to banish the image from his mind’s eye.

To his left, Beraka groaned softly. She stirred and rolled over, slapping her arm across his belly. Jared winced at the shock to his already distended bladder. He took care not to wake her as he lifted her arm and eased himself to his feet. Some nights ago she had witnessed him relieving himself in the dark, and since then she seemed to look at him differently. In the time since Mahallalel had gone on without having been felled, many (especially the younger ones) had begun to look upon their seniors with a new—possibly dangerous—curiosity.

Like most men in those days, Jared was thick-limbed and squat, but he stepped nimbly between the tangled extremities of his family. Their naked bodies were so intertwined that it was impossible to tell where each man, woman or child ended and the next began. There were not so many people in those days, and it was not unusual for a man’s mother or daughter or sister to be taken as a wife as well. Rules about such circumstances had not yet been considered.

There was a field beyond the mound of the olive tree where the grass grew long enough to tickle Jared’s thighs as he moved through it. The ground below, hidden in the dark, was alive with insects and the night snakes that hunted them. It had always been a gift of Jared’s people to understand the silent languages of the lower beasts. Lately, though, they spoke less and less to Jared. He sometimes wondered if the youngest of his people could hear them at all. Right now, if he strained, he could make out the rumbling hunger of a snake as it slipped over his toes, and the moaning terror of the cricket it pursued. He was comforted by the sound of the hunt—it reminded him of how things once were, and gave him hope that things now were still not so different from then. A few paces behind and to his right, the snake felled the cricket with a tremendous silent roar, and Jared smiled to himself in the dark.

The hair on Jared’s limbs had still been thin and soft on the day Mahallalel had gone on. For days the family had observed the ancient man’s sudden physical decline with something like awe. When Mahallalel’s already milky eyes finally dimmed, and he stopped taking breaths, Jared spent little time contemplating the implications. He knew how his father had become the patriarch. Jared felled three of his brothers that night as they slept, as well as their child-bearing wives.

The younger of his kin had been raised with fearsome stories of Jared’s strength and swift brutality, and so for decades his reputation had remained untested. But if Beraka were to disclose what she was obviously coming to suspect, his authority would almost certainly be challenged by one or more of the younger ones.

The decision was reached swiftly. Had he reason to try, he would not have been able to recall the exact moment he reached it.

But first, his bladder.

Jared emerged from the far side of the field at the base of a large hill spotted with bush. This was the Sun’s hill, and Jared’s people refused to venture beyond it. Most would not even approach its base, which made it an ideal place for him to do business such as this in private. He squatted behind the nearest shrub. At first his bladder refused to unclench, despite being achingly full. He grunted and strained for some time, and was rewarded only with a reluctant trickle. Jared cursed under his breath, and tried not to imagine what Beraka or his sons would think if they could see him here, moaning and heaving over a simple piss. Finally, his urine came in a painful torrent, splashing mud onto his feet and ankles.

When he was finished he walked in slow circles at the foot of the hill, eyes fixed on the ground. The sky was beginning to grow lighter, and it took little time for him to find a stone to his liking. He hefted it in his palm, and admired one jagged edge with his thumb. There were not so many people in those days, but there were enough from which to take a new wife.

He waded back into the grass, his steps lighter now, unburdened by the weight of indecision. He was not yet halfway through the field, but the olive tree was clearly visible. The Sun would soon appear from behind its hill. His family would soon wake—if not before Beraka, then during.

Beraka’s features were darker than his peoples’, and she was of smaller stature than any woman he had known. She had been found by a group gathering food, some distance from the mound of the olive tree. She was bloodied and unconscious—abandoned, presumably, by her kin. She was not yet old enough to bear children then. Even in those days Jared and his people knew of other families, but they were rare, and—as a rule—avoided. The gatherers carried Beraka’s broken body back to Jared at the mound, and he took her as a wife even before she woke.

Jared stopped short midway between the Sun’s hill and the mound of the olive tree. He cocked his head. He heard only the whisper of the tall grass. Even so, he turned. He was just far enough away to view the rounded peak of Sun’s hill, where an enormous, motionless figure stood, silhouetted by the rising Sun. In those days, there were still giants upon the Earth.

The hairs on Jared’s arms prickled. Though he was much too far away to see the creature’s face, he could feel its cool eyes upon him. Unafraid, he returned the sentinel’s gaze. The flesh above his eye teeth tingled, and his upper lip twitched. His fist tightened around his stone.

It was thought by most that the giants lived beyond the Sun’s hill. Some believed that they had sprung forth from the Sun itself, but Jared scoffed at such conjecture. The giants may have made their home in the resting place of the Sun, but he was certain that they were not of the Sun, or of its brother, Moon.

As he stared back at the colossus on the hill, Jared thought of the snake and the cricket, and despite his relatively diminutive stature, he imagined himself as the snake, his jaw unhinging and his mouth stretching wide enough to swallow the giant whole… And after this one, all of the others, one by one, until the Earth was empty of them once again.

Jared turned his back to the giant and resumed his trek back to the olive tree. He could still feel its gaze on his back, but he was unafraid. He did not need to look back to know when the behemoth had gone from the hill.

Of all the wives Jared had taken, Beraka had been the least reliably fertile. She had—by his count—produced but one child. But of all the wives Jared had taken, Beraka had been the most compliant. She looked to Jared like a daughter to her father as often as (perhaps more often than) she looked to him as a wife to her husband. He recognized her difference, and until that night she had watched him pissing in the dark, he had looked upon this difference favorably.

He strode with renewed purpose back to the mound, energized by his encounter with the giant. He had lost track of time in the grassy field, and by now the Sun had emerged from behind its hill. Most of his kin were already awake as he approached the olive tree—many rutting furiously in pairs and trios. Others stretched, or shat, or searched the ground for something to chew. Beraka knelt near the base of the tree, her back to Jared, combing grass and dirt from the dark hair of her only child.

Jared moved through the throng indelicately, stepping on fingers and ankles, and kicking those unfortunate enough to remain sleeping in his path. Beraka noticed him first by his scent, when he was only a few paces behind her. She turned to greet him, her eyes rested and bright, her mouth widening in a smile, and he swung the sharp edge of his stone into the side of her face, collapsing the fragile landscape beneath her right eye.

Beraka’s dark-haired child shrieked and scrambled away from Jared, her face speckled with her mother’s blood. Beraka collapsed into a silent heap at the base of the olive tree. Jared had no doubt that she had already gone on, but still he straddled her body. The stone rose and fell again and again. All rutting and eating ceased. The whole of Jared’s family looked on silently as he did his work.

When he was finished, he stood—one foot planted on either side of his dead wife—and faced his children. His eyes moved unblinkingly over each of them in turn. They looked to the ground, to their feet, to the grassy field. (Some looked to the Sun’s hill. Of these, Jared took note.) They looked anywhere but at their father, and with this Jared was satisfied. He relaxed his grip on his stone. He thought again of the night snakes and the crickets, and he thought again of the giants on the far side of the Sun’s hill, and still he was unafraid.