by A.G. Maxwell
The Sculptor found himself in possession of a section of an old growth tree, roughly twenty three feet in diameter and forty feet tall. No branches or distinguishing features remained; the outside had been seared, with an inch and a quarter deep black. It left a soot film on anything that it touched. When he asked his buyers whether there was anything in particular they would like to see revealed from this new material, the answers were predictably boring: monumental idols, totems, colossal ancestral aquiline men and women. In truth, money mattered little to him, and he judged these works unimportant.
The Sculptor would often walk along the great boulevard outside of his studio, underneath the ancient, twisted, moss-covered trees for inspiration; he would stop and talk to friends and acquaintances, idly asking after so-and-so he hadn’t run into recently and how nieces and nephews of relatives of friends were. However, he realized that his inspiration for this project would not come from the ground, as it usually did, but from what was above on these long walks. As he ran his blackened hands along the bark, he knew the only way to honor the medium was the reshape it into the very vessel from which it emerged: a tree.
The ruined hulk barely fit inside of his studio, though the space was both broad and tall for his usual slabs of stone. It had taken a dozen miserable coughing men and a pulley system to first drag the horizontal trunk in and then tip it right. He gave the men some extra money and thanked them, shaking each of their hands in turn until his palms barely showed their creases. The effect was staggering: the coal reflected in the mirrors covering the walls and ceiling; it was as though the light from the two large windows on the east and west walls was lost in the inky, Stygian blackness. He marveled and was envious of this effect of un-creation, far more powerful than anything he had carved from stone. He had rarely worked with wood, but had come to trust that he was up to the task.
The Sculptor considered the tree. He knew the species – or, at least, he would once he removed the sable skin – but even so had little knowledge of what the tree would have looked like in life. Indeed, there was no way to know how tall it had been, and he began to realize that even if he knew there was no way to remake this part into a whole and that he would have to create instead of copy. Though he felt hopeless, there was little to do but begin to study and prepare. He spent weeks at it, rarely leaving his studio or the attached apartment to walk into the city, sometimes with one of his books. He had the library and bookshop special order old dendrological and xylological tomes filled with sketches that described the anatomy of bark, of branches, of knots. He cared little for expenses, and many of the priciest books were all but worthless, some fanciful, some wrong. He would get food delivered once or twice a day which varied in quality as much as the books – some meals long cold, or textureless, or vegetables unripened or beginning to turn sickly sweet. His apartment grew cluttered, with open books on the floor of his bedroom and surrounding the chair in front of his fireplace.
At first, the Sculptor assumed he would create a smaller version of the thing that had been a tree that sat in his workshop. As he studied, he realized that no matter how well he carved, the miniaturized version of whatever it had originally been would never look real, but would at best be strange and at worst be amusing, a tree fit only for an unconvincing world. So he began to search for a tree that would, at least, fit the correct dimensions, regardless of whether it was coniferous or deciduous. He found himself picking and choosing aspects of some trees he liked: the flowers from genus Cornus, the bark from Betula, leaves from Acer. He was soon enamored with the idea of creating a new, ideal form of tree that encompassed all others; an ideal Tree for a sculptor and a viewer; a Tree that was true both to the notion of nature itself and to himself as a human.
He built a great scaffolding around the megalith with ladders and a platform every six feet that filled his workshop. Dozens of great hollow metal poles were delivered to the alley, thin and light but strong. He brought them in sideways, first on his curled arms in front of his body and then on his shoulders behind when he found he could carry more this way. As he roughed out portions of the wood, he could add scaffolding inwards, supporting and reinforcing that which remained. Thus his previously open workshop quickly became enclosed, full of dust and shadows that he had to duck to move around in.
He began, with some regret, removing the charred outside of the block, trying to chisel off the coal and absolutely nothing more. He found the charcoal harder and more brittle than the wood itself, and his tools began to dull as he coated his workshop in a fine black powder. Soon, he found his medium chisel slipping; many times he hit and the mallet rebounded, or shards flew in all directions when the coal cracked. He worked without much care for himself and at the end of the day would be covered in soot along with the studio. His apartment and bed and clothes were soon a dull grey with ash heaps in the corners; his workshop seemed to have aged centuries over the course of days. He soon quit leaving the area of his apartment and studio, preferring to have packaged, processed meals dropped off at the door to the alley. At some point, though he wasn’t quite sure when, the Sculptor unconsciously came to the notion that it had been preferable not to see other people. It was, after all, a distraction, and one he could ill-afford.
It seemed prudent to start at the bottom and work up. He was worried about a split occurring if he worked downwards. The Sculptor blocked and roughed out the trunk. He worked for full days, using a two-handed hammer with a broad head to smash a firmer chisel the size of his forearm. He grew wiry; if he had been healthy, he would have grown muscle. He soon realized that the amount of scraps coming off of the block was too great to throw away on the street. Even though it was mild outside, he began to take breaks to chop wood and stoke the fire in his apartment, running across the building with shovels full of sawdust and logs and tossing them into the inferno. No doubt others saw the smoke pouring out of his chimney and wondered aloud to each other, but he never stopped. He slept fitfully in between periods of work, sometimes in his bed and sometimes facing the wall tucked in the corners of the room.
Once there was enough space in his workshop, he built a workbench for his hand tools with wood scraps. Before, he had preferred to hide them in the closet behind a mirrored panel. But he did not care for aesthetics anymore and, besides, he needed different gauges of chisel at a moment’s notice. He still used a mallet occasionally, but often he just pushed or dragged hand-carving tools for the ever-finer work. Sometimes, he would find rot or pits in the wood, perhaps areas where insects crawled in and died hundreds or maybe thousands of years ago. Soon the Tree was tan and strong and mushroom shaped. Inside his workshop it was a white beacon.
He starts at the point where roots join the ground, creating bulbous growths that indicate soft soil. As he moves upwards, removing grooves and testing with calipers – at first, the Tree is measured perfectly. However, this has the effect of making the Tree uncannily straight, a neo-classical column. The Sculptor begins to shave millimeters off unevenly.
As he continues upward, other problems present themselves. The stark cleanliness is a poor representation of the being of the Tree, at a glance true but on further inspection unsettling; should he include moss or lichen? Nests of birds, squirrels? What of the hundreds of bugs that call the average tree home, unseen in passing glance but part of the whole, eating the buds of flowers or drinking the sap? Ticks? Perhaps. The Sculptor soon stops bathing himself, or even pretending to clean his space. He uses the fine 11/3 chisel most. Cobwebs grow in the corners of the scaffolding, flies are eaten leisurely by fat spiders. Should there be leaves, clinging onto the branches? He adds a couple of extra inches of diameter to his estimation of the roughed out branches, just in case he wants to later. If he looks out the east window, he would see the leaves on the ground lining the broadway. His beard and hair grow long, knotted, and oily. The more complete the Tree ought to be, the less it seems like it can be finished. More sawdust in the fire, smaller flecks and soft down in the shovelfuls. Without the fire, he would be cold at night.
Ever upward, towards the reflection of the downward mirror. Yes, leaves of course, leaves clinging to the Tree, dead after an early frost but unable to let go. Moss burrows out of the bark like pus, no color to distinguish it from what it has been carved from. Impossibly intricate ants fight on the southern face among the first branches, jaws gnashing, two colonies in a death struggle. A bird’s nest empty with old shell parts covering the bottom. He can see himself above now, though he doesn’t register what he sees.
Eventually a knock. A well-wisher comes to the door, possibly someone he knows but then again maybe not, maybe someone dropping off food who decides to steel herself and check to see whether the untouched bags in the alley mean the place is abandoned, or an acquaintance who had suddenly realized his absence from the boulevard and decided to inquire and leave an encouraging note or sympathetic card. She lets herself in and calls out inside the door and inside his living room, but silences herself. She takes a long time, moving slowly from room to room.
She finds the workshop, and can hear him working at the top. Though she is afraid, she climbs the ladder to the top flat, six flats up, with little headroom, and finds herself looking directly into his desperate, unreadable eyes. Him under the canopy, braced among tangled eaves, worn chisel in hand. He stays quiet.
She looks at the tree first, and then him down and up and Yes she says eyelids drawn open I believe I’ve seen a tree like this before
A.G. Maxwell is a writer and teacher born and raised in Akron, Ohio. He currently lives in Portland, OR, with his incredibly patient partner, Ruth, and his furry, four-legged editor Watson. He is grateful to everyone who helped read, workshop, and edit this piece.