Work Text:
Sam
I used to talk to trees.
The live oaks that summer in Savannah were my favorite, the Spanish moss. Even before all of this, I thought of those trees as angels. Pretty sick fucking irony, I guess. Those trees, their thousand branches like arms stretched toward heaven. I called it heaven then.
I always took my shirt off. God, I know it sounds weird, but just. I’d sit with my back against the trunk and in the pain of the scrape I could imagine every single moment, every year that tree stood, all at once, and the roots in the ground underneath me spreading out and out and out from one end of time to the other. I could feel all of it. I’d hear the tree whisper and thought I was going crazy. But I wasn’t afraid. Whatever it was, I let myself accept it. I was so desperate back then. You know for what.
And then one day the whispers turned to a word. Up until then it had been…not words, at least none I could understand. But this time, spine to bark, I heard a voice. Or no, that’s not right. (It’s so hard to explain, which is why I’ve never told you, why I never will. I’m so scared of messing it up.) It sounded like one voice but I knew somehow that it was more, a chorus, or a—a legion. A leaf fell into my palm, and clear and warm in the center of my head I heard them. They said, Sh’mael. Just that, over and over. I couldn’t move and everything around me disappeared, the park disappeared, my body disappeared. Only thing I was aware of was the voice and the tree, or maybe the voice was the tree, speaking directly into me and filling me with warmth and, and…peace. Just saying my name over and over, but the—you know, the original version. (If I were really telling you this you’d make fun of me for knowing the etymology, but the you in my imagination is humoring me. Okay?)
My name. It’s a contraction of the Hebrew phrase, Šəʾīltīv mēʾĒl.
Sh’ma, hear. El, God.
God has heard. Comes from the book of Samuel.
So they were saying my name, again and again and again, but it also felt like they were promising me, reassuring me that—
Anyway.
I went back to the tree every day. You and Dad were gone for so long. Lost track of how long, and for the first time I didn’t even care, because I had something that was mine, someone that was only for me. I knew that was true, though I had no idea how I knew.
I started talking to them. Said…everything. I asked the tree if it was an angel and I said that I didn’t understand how I could feel so lonely when I had my dad and my brother and I asked why there was something ugly inside me and I told them about Mom and I told them about the girl in Lorraine I had a crush on and I told them so much about you, you and you and you. How could I not? When half of what I knew in the world was you. Would talk myself hoarse, all day long, and they’d answer back through the leaves of the oak, only ever my name, Sh’mael, Sh’mael, Sh’mael, and you’d think that wouldn’t be enough, right? For all the answers I was searching for you’d think it wouldn’t be enough. But it was.
Eventually I’d come back to myself and it’d be dark outside and the park would be empty and my body would be empty and yet more filled than it had ever been. I didn’t understand any of it and I didn’t want to. Those weeks were the only time in my entire life that I didn’t feel alone. (Do you see why I can’t tell you this?)
And then one day I went to the tree and started talking like usual, rattled on for probably an hour before I noticed the silence. Silence like the end of time. Like a vacuum. Like I was the only person left on earth. I said, hello? I said, tree? I said, angel? I realized I had no idea what to call it, them, whatever. I said every word I could think of and was met with the atomic bomb of their silence. I said my own name, as if to remind them who I was, that I was there. I tried speaking with inexpressible groanings—something I’d read about in the Bible earlier that summer, when your mind doesn’t know the words to say but your spirit does. I focused my every cell on calling out to them.
Nothing. The voice was just gone.
I asked Cas about it once. If angels ever spoke through trees. He said it was possible, of course. He looked at me, looked into me. He said, Sam, who spoke to you? I couldn’t answer. You can’t imagine how pathetic I felt, still carrying that betrayal, that abandonment, so many years later. He said he’d ask around if I wanted him to. He was so gentle about it. I told him not to bother.
For years after that summer I tried to find them again. One weekend when I was at Stanford I took the bus all the way to Savannah, to that same park. Dug my bare back into the live oak, whispered to the trunk. I begged and begged and begged.