Arboricide - A Short Story

"He just pulled it out from the underbrush. Brought it to me. Like he wanted to play with it." The lady spoke in brief bursts, skittering her eyes over at the dog, hesitant, embarrassed, but scraped to scrupulous honesty by her horror. She had to tell. She had to share the clinging poison, diffuse the responsibility of knowledge. He had seen it before. The Investigator was very patient. He no longer knew if that patience came from a sympathetic humanity in his soul, or simple expediency. You couldn't force someone to look at something like this squarely, dispassionately, and relay it to you documentary-style. They had to give you a thousand affirmations, verbal and otherwise that they were moral, normal people, that this was something alien, completely separate from their daily lives.

"How long are they going to leave it sitting out like that?" She stood staring at the corpse, her hand at her throat as if it were her left dismembered and putrefying on the ground. "Can't they take it away, cover it . . . .?"

"As soon as we finish the investigation, Ma'am."

"But it's just sitting there, out in the open."

"As soon as we can."

"But, people will see, what if a child . . ."

Children had seen worse, over the eons, he thought. He knew of children who had done worse, or had worse done to them, but he did not want to think about that right now, and he certainly did not want to point it out to this stanchion of middle class respectability standing there trembling, trying to cope with this little glimpse of the dark world outside her own.

"We're here, Ma'am. We're doing what we can. The examiner is on her way."

"But. . . Get Away! GO! GO AWAY!" This last was to the dog. The dog, a rangy, multicolored mutt with an appealing puppy-like demeanor, was snuffling about the lady, trying to understand the nature of the offense.

"Ma'am, the dog didn't know. It didn't do anything wrong."

"I . . . just keep seeing him with . . . it . . . in his mouth. Looking up at me. Wiggling his tail like he'd found a toy."

"He doesn't know what he did wrong. He's just an innocent. Take him home. Play with him. Get it out of your mind."

She looked doubtfully at the dog. "I'll try."

"Look at it this way. It's better that he did what he did so that we found out about this crime, so we can get the guy who did this. We can stop him so it doesn't happen again."

After a moment of thought she nodded, steeled herself, and began talking baby-talk to the dog, who seemed greatly reassured. When the dog looked as if he might dart off in the underbrush after another grisly toy, she gasped and caught the animal, dragging him back down the sidewalk to continue their interrupted walk.

That left it to the professionals to document, tag and remove the bits of evidence. The Investigator remembered once speaking with the examiner about how much one could tell about a victim's past life from the corpse. The hardships, past injuries, diseases and poisons were all there, waiting to show themselves in scars and test tubes, and strange little artifacts imbedded in the corpse itself.

But would it tell them who the perpetrator was? All he could see was that whoever it was had a penchant for chainsaws. The surgical neatness of the severed parts was somehow more appalling than the raggedness of more low-tech, handheld tools. And, of course, there was the smell, the sweet, vaguely burned smell. At least when one had to hack away, over and over, one had a chance to perceive the enormity of the crime. This machine ease and efficiency seemed an especial desecration.

But, they would look for the evidence, of course. Perhaps bits of cloth or skin scraped away in the last plunge, maybe even a bit of blood might have been scored before the end. And their search proved fruitful. Though many traveled in the park, some bit of special proof led them to an anonymous apartment in an irrelevant town. And, in that anonymous apartment in the irrelevant town, a useless bit of human garbage sprawled, smirking on a filthy green couch and tried to convince them of his right to pollute the planet with his pseudo-poignant ponderences.

"They're not like us," he had insisted, "Not like real people. They don't even fight."

"They die," someone pointed out, but their prisoner merely shrugged that away.

Of course, the perpetrator was a free citizen, and could think whatever pestilent little thoughts infested his brain. There were lots of stupid, wrong-headed people. It was just this particular free citizen felt an obligation to express his opinion on the victim in the park, one whose very nature was inoculated with an innocence against such stupidities. The idiot, though, was caught now. He blathered about family traditions and heroic histories, trying to loose himself and his guilt in a past that was long and well gone. Soon, the perp was read his rights and shuffled off and they were left to gather the evidence and string up the police tape.

The officer could not help wondering what the lady with the dog would have thought of this little apartment. It was a holdout from a different, more barbaric era. The walls were covered in paneling, the floor was naked wood, the pictures and posters scattered about drew one's eye like a car wreck. Image after image of scroungy men posed, leaning against the trunks or propping one foot on the stumps. There were images of huge, ancient trees with holes; tunnels hacked through to allow cars to pass through. In the images they held the implements in their hands, the saws and axes. The pride on the men's faces was mystifying. What could the trees do, run away?

Grimly, quietly, the squad did its work. The pictures, the lumberjack implements, even the chainsaw with bits of tree still stuck in the teeth were gathered up. The forensic scientists would no doubt confirm that the pitiful little bits of wood in the chainsaw matched, and the Arboricide Squad will have closed another case.

So, what can one little person do for the environment? Well, you can manage your own little household. Pay attention to what goes into your house via shopping trips and what comes out of your house via the trash bin.

1.) Go vegetarian. The amount of grain to make the flour to make a slice of bread is much less than the amount of grain to feed the cow to make the calf to raise the calf to make the burger. We consume way too much and way too inefficiently, and it's killing us, in the United States. We die of over consumption related diseases: heart attacks, diabetes, morbid obesity. If you do eat meat, eat items such as chicken or fish, that mature quickly, rather than a cow that has to be fed and medicated for over a year before it's slaughtered.

2.) Drink faucet juice. It's good for you. It's cheap. Where do you think bottled water comes from? Some faucet. It's no better or worse than what comes from the faucet in your house and you save all the processing and packaging, and are more like like to consume what you need, rather than sipping a few sips and then forgetting the bottle somewhere.

3.) Avoid buying single serving sized packages. Most of what you buy is packaging. All that packaging ends up as garbage. We don't need more garbage. Plus, if you buy a box or bottle of it, you are more likely to finish off the serving, even if it is more than you want, simply because it's there.

4.) Don't rely on city recycling plans for plastic. Plastic is not cost-effective to recycle. Even if you put it in the recycling bin at the curb, and the big green truck takes it, it is likely it just dumps it somewhere, as they do in my hometown. Economics dictate that they dump it. This can be true of other "recyclables" as well. So, don't expect someone to take care of it for you. When you throw something away, always remember, it doesn't really go anywhere. Disposable is bad. Single use is bad.

5.) Buy local. It may mean plums and apricots at the farmer's market rather than red delicious apples trucked in from half a country away.

6.) Avoid driving. Walking is good exercise. Biking, also. It means planning ahead, maybe wearing tennis shoes walking to the bus stop and carrying your work heels in a bag.

7.) Pack a lunch to work.

Support this lens and others like it. If you like it, like what it says, then highlight the stars at the top of the lens. If you don't like it, leave a comment and let me know what I need to work on. As always, please visit my CafePress store if you want to see more designs and artwork like what is featured in this lens.