The Great Remembering
[ Maggie Nerz Iribarne ]

The parking lot was empty. 

One by one, all the stores in the mall closed, so we knocked it down, leaving the entire lot empty. Of course the taxpayers complained bitterly, said it was a terrible blight, all that emptiness, the cracked pavement, the weeds. 

Almost anything is prettier than that, they said, wagging fingers or jerking heads toward the empty lot. Why not build a lovely mixed-use building? they said, though no one really knew what that was, mixed-use. Why not higher-end clothing stores, restaurants? Let’s transform Edgartown! Let’s make it the beautiful place it once was, they said. Almost everyone remembered an earlier Edgartown that was nicer than the current town. I was the reluctant mayor, an outsider, born and raised in Ohio. My ex-wife, Katie, was born there, wanted to raise kids in Edgartown, but the kids never came, and Katie wanted a different kind of husband and life, renamed herself Katherine and left Edgartown, and me. 

So, the empty parking lot, the mixed-use buildings, the high-end stores. But, you know how it goes, there was a hell of a lot of red tape. As an elected official, I was always banging my gavel to disrupt all the angry taxpayers, my neighbors, acquaintances (no real friends), reassuring them that soon their high-end retail dreams would come true. Soon, very soon, I told them, they’d be eating fancy bread made with local ingredients paired with all that expensive beer and wine they liked so much.  

“Sheesh, I wish they’d take that energy down to my place,” Sharye, the lady who ran the soup kitchen and was also on the town board, said, her hippy hair gone grey from public service. I wasn’t far behind. 

“Ha!” I said, having grown cynical about human nature across my tenure as mayor. Although, I didn’t help at the soup kitchen either. 

***

One Monday morning, the day after Easter, the empty lot was overtaken by a forest. A forest. That’s right. Take a minute to let that seep in. A thick band of trees, a dense green mass of ash, birch, and maple trees grew up from what was once the mall and its parking lot. 

I awoke to my buzzing phone. 

“Pete, you seen the mall?” 

“God, Jay, I just woke up.”

I recognized the voice of the teacher/coach immediately. 

“Well someone pulled the prank of the century. You better go take a look.”

And sure enough, every foot of space of that damned lot was covered in trees. A crowd of  disheveled, half-awake townspeople gawked, mumbling in muted tones. Of course, the police cars were there, walkie talkies squawking, siren lights swirling. I left my car door hanging as I wandered over to the edge to join them. I looked down to my scuffed work boot, placed exactly where the empty lot would have been. A bed of dirt, shrubs, wet leaves spread, covered the once paved spot. I leaned in, listened, stuck my head in the trees, town sounds diminishing. 

“Be careful, man!” someone yelled.

I shrugged off the warning, doubting that a bunch of trees was going to hurt me. I could already hear the counter argument. 

“No a bunch of trees couldn’t hurt you but a god-damned forest that appears overnight might!”

Maybe that argument was correct, but I couldn’t resist leaning in and smelling the freshness, listening to a strange cacophony of birds, enjoying the rush of cool wind, a clean sigh blowing in my face. I had to pull back, resist the tug of the woods. 

“Alright, alright, folks, let’s get on with our days. We’ll have some people from the university here this afternoon. We’ll get this figured out, I promise,” I called over a megaphone. 

The Forest Crisis canceled school and work for most people that day. 

Then, you guessed it, fear took root quickly, flowered, spread its own kind of branches. My phone rang off the hook. 

“Mayor, we gotta get this under control. We gotta know exactly what we’re dealing with. We can’t let our children out to play with this-this-”

“Forest?” I said, feeling silly in saying that word in response to the  bourgeoning anxiety.

The university scientists entered into the forest with their hazmat suits, the helicopters flew overhead, the out-of-state reporters swarmed. I reported every single day, telling everyone where we stood on the situation, even though I had no idea myself. I thought maybe people would be happy about the generated business, with all this outsiders in  town, all the craziness, but fear is more powerful than any other emotion, that’s what I learned. 

The scientists emerged from the forest,

“That’s old growth, Peter. Those trees are older than my dead grandma, way older,” one said. 

“How? What?” all I could muster. 

“This has never been seen,” another scientist said. 

So, we taped the forest off, barricaded the streets surrounding it, made it a felony to enter.

Of course, some people tried to get in. Teenagers with camping gear. Homeless people. Demented people from the nursing home. Even the two remaining nuns left in the convent. They were apprehended, sent back to wherever they came from. We secured 24/7 security and cameras. 

Spring turned to summer, and the forest grew greener, more lush, exuded depth, stillness, the antithesis to Edgartown’s honking horns, sirens, stretches of pavement. 

We received no answers from the experts, reporters, podcasters, investigators, psychics who came to put in their two cents. I found myself confronted by a gang of angry taxpayers. 

“This is not right. I don’t know who did this, what kind of a prank, but it’s got to go,” the guy who owned the grocery store said, hands on his skinny hips. 

“What about how trees purify the air? One of the university guys told me that, and they do a hell of a lot more, too,” I said, words surprising me.

That’s when they called in the big guns. 

Tim Hobart, who owned the lot and about half the real estate in town, arrived by private jet, toothpick rammed in one side of his mouth, told me we’d chop it, sell the wood to the local sawmill. We were standing outside the forest. I noticed we were exactly the same unimpressive heights with totally different bodies. He was tight, compact, square. I was loose, kind of blubbery. 

“Shouldn’t we vote on it or something?” I said. 

“No vote. This is an emergency. As the biggest investor in this community I say chop it down. Pronto. Call in the tree people tomorrow. Don’t make a big deal about it. This forest should disappear as quickly as it came, not another word about it.”

At first I was energized by the decisiveness, but after it was all over, the sound of the interminable buzz saws haunted. I couldn’t shake them. I drove past the empty lot. Stumps, dirt mounds, branches, all that was left behind. Somehow, I heard screaming in stillness they left behind.  

I need to tell you about my dreams. Almost as soon as the forest appeared I dreamt of fishing as a child with my father and brother, Cam, along the bank of the canal that ran through town. The dreams were incredibly clear and tranquil. I felt the wiggly worm as I pierced it with the hook. The sun shown on the water as I dropped my line. Even the taste of the peanut butter sandwiches we made for the day lingered in my mouth. My father and Cam died in a car accident thirty years before. The dreams continued, strong and vivid, night after night, even after the forest was destroyed. 

***

When the forest returned the following day, it felt like a relief, a miracle. 

“This is even worse than the first time. Way worse,” Tim Hobart said, on the phone this time. I could hear his mind working, busy thinking. I imagined him tapping squared, clipped fingernails on a mahogany desk somewhere.

The dreams continued. I awoke with the smell of fish, the memory of a carp flipping and wriggling out of my hands, the burn of sun on my cheeks. I walked to the forest at night. I heard running water. I envisioned a stream running through the forest, ample fish swimming. 

***

Pretty much all the same things happened as before, the news, the helicopters, the scientists in Hazmat suits, the taping off, the forbidding entrance. Tim decided something more extreme was necessary.

“Well, Mayor, (He always said mayor like it was a joke, or something unpleasant),” he said. “We’re between a rock and a hard place. We gotta poison. Then build. Build and build. A forest can’t grow when it’s been poisoned or when something’s been built on top of it, right?  Plus you’ll finally get your mixed-use building,” Tim said. 

That night the forest’s leaves whooshed into my bedroom window, cool air moved across my body, lulling me to sleep. I dreamt of Katie in her wedding dress, tasted the fluffy white cake her aunt had made for our wedding. I held her in my arms and cried. My thumb ran over the wedding band I never removed. 

Before the tree fumigation the home schooling family, all five of them, disappeared into the forest. Then the retired biologist couple. That made things more complicated. The poisoning was suspended and helicopters with strobe lights hovered above the forest, but the people weren’t found. By the end of the month, one hundred people had disappeared or “were swallowed” by the forest, according to the media. 

Was it a kind of suicide? the taxpayers asked.

I had no answers. 

We built barriers, high walls around the forest. Still the tops of the trees could still be seen, hands reaching up, over. 

The days passed. My duties as mayor seemed less and less important.

The town’s objectives, ordinances, budgets, road pavings, faded into the background. 

The forest spoke to me always, its lush tones revealing long memory, rippling across the centuries. It told me time was slow, it had seen, absorbed, witnessed all the spinning acts of humanity. It told me about the obliteration suffered at our hands, the eradication, the paving and property, the trampling feet and rolling trucks. It told me of its resilience, its plans to deepen, grow, take stock of the Earth beneath, its commitment to rebirth, its final domination. The forest told me to never, ever forget.

***

I know how this part of my story will end: 

I will choose a clear night. I will abandon my house empty-handed, wearing jeans, a tee shirt, my wedding band, always that, no wallet or keys or car.  I will walk to the forest, climb the fence. The sirens in the distance will wail as I scale the wall, dive into the forest, descend into its vastness, its acceptance, its magnanimous embrace. 

I will not be missed. 

END

Maggie Nerz Iribarne is a 55 year old woman, lives in Syracuse, NY, writes about witches, priests/nuns, the very very old, struggling teachers, neighborhood ghosts, and whatever else strikes her fancy. She keeps a portfolio of her published work at https://www.maggienerziribarne.com.