The next day, Frederick was up and gone before Yorick rose. Over breakfast Yorick regaled his mother with stories of how he selected his trees yesterday, how deep the snow was this year up on the far hill and how he planned on tapping the two trees he identified yesterday.
After donning the appropriate winter gear, packing his bag with the needed spiels and tubing, Yorick set out from the barn toward the far hill like he did yesterday, with his mother waving from the kitchen window.
Yorick trudged through the hip deep snow along the same path he made yesterday, stopping to examine yesterday’s work at all the trees he tapped and making sure everything with the tubing was tight. He continued on past his work area from yesterday and stepped up to a sugar maple he picked out for today, farther up the far hill.
As taught, Yorick used a specialty hammer to tap on the tree to listen for hollow spots or defects before he chose the spot to place the spiel. Yorick’s father used particularly long spiels for his taps because he believed the deeper the better for the tapping of sap, so one had to be extra careful.
Yorick held the spiel into the chosen spot and commenced tapping on it with his hammer, like he had done so many times before. As Yorick pounded the spiel harder and harder into the hard wood of the maple tree deeper and deeper an unknown and unseen fault in the tree’s interior caused a major weakness to give way to the weight of the tree above it, causing the whole tree to break in half and come toppling down. It had all happened so fast, poor Yorick had no chance to jump clear through the heavy snow.
The End.
Zillah
Zillah lived with her ancient grandmother in a rundown and ramshackle house on the outskirts of a small town in eastern Czechoslovakia, when it was still one country. Back in the good old days, as Zillah’s grandmother likes to remind people, she had been a burlesque dancer, young and beautiful and fleet of foot and form. She had married a wealthy merchant who had built a beautiful house for her. Unfortunately, this particular merchant had an eye for other beautiful young women also, and though Zillah’s grandmother had a house maid, and was rich by the town’s standards, she was not very happy through the long years of her marriage.
One day very late in life, but many years before Zillah, Zillah’s grandmother finally became pregnant with a child, and in due course gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. Even though the merchant’s finances and business deals had faltered, these were the happiest days of her life. The young handsome boy was a joy to know and was doted on by the whole town. When the young man turned seventeen, he in turn took a young wife, and they set to producing their own child. This would become Zillah.
Now just about this time, the young newly married man who would be Zillah’s father, was called away to fight in some border skirmish that had been ongoing for hundreds of years. Sadly, before he could learn that he was to become a father, he was killed on the battlefield. Upon hearing this terrible news, his young wife became so despondent she forgot the will to live and perished in child birth.
Zillah was born an orphan and would be raised solely by her once again unhappy grandmother, her grandfather having also disappeared. Many in the town say he just got up one day and walked away, but Zillah’s grandmother wouldn’t talk about it at all, so no one really knows.
As time passed and Zillah’s little family become poorer and poorer, her grandmother grew unhappier and unhappier, finally giving in to the urge to stay drunk the whole day. Zillah’s grandmother would sit morosely in the dark and dusty parlor, on the flower-patterned camel-back sofa purchased in Paris, drinking daily mostly vodka but anything would do in a pinch. To raise money for her habit, she started to sell off her and Zillah’s only possessions, the home’s antique furnishings.
At first, these items brought in quite a bit of coin, hers being the nicest house in town, and the furnishings and what-nots coming from all over Europe. There were carpets and rugs from Iran and India, tables and chairs, sofas and stands, Tiffany bowls and Steuben vases and statues galore to sell. Eventually as the townsfolk bought all they needed, wanted or could afford, it became harder and harder to sell off the old stuff. There came a day when the cupboards were bare, the best of the furnishings mostly gone, and no hope in sight.
The neighbors, knowing their plight did what they could to help out. Freshly picked vegetables would show up on the back stoop without warning, neighbors scurrying away, crossing themselves less some of the family’s bad luck attract to them. Eggs and meats and cheeses would also appear randomly, wrapped in cloths or left in baskets, all with a little muttered prayer for protection from evil. Though this largesse was needed, it caused more and more despondency in Zillah’s grandmother, who once was a beauty and one of the wealthiest people in town and now was looked upon as someone cursed and in need of charity so much misfortune had befallen her.
Zillah would amble off to school most days in her out of date hand me downs. Her shoes were usually too small and often mismatched, her long hair un-brushed and she would sit quietly in the back, until it was time to hurry back home to the old, dark and dusty mansion and to her usually inebriated grandmother.
Zillah had few friends, well truth be told she had none. The other children warned by their parents to avoid Zillah and the cursed grandmother, did just that. Zillah would go to school, sit by herself and then return home immediately to be alone. Rarely her grandmother was still in that sweet spot between a buzz and totally drunk that she would call Zillah into the parlor and tell her stories of the better days. Zillah loved those days best, the days she could sit with her gram and hear about her father’s childhood or her grandmother’s dancing.
On the days she was left to her own devices she would go upstairs and fabricate complex fantasies in her mind with the help of her only doll, whom she named Zoe. She was a famous dancer, like her grandmother and Zoe was the adoring audience. She was a queen in a castle and Zoe was her worshipping subject. She was the mother, and Zoe her beautiful daughter whom she cared carefully for. She had tea parties at her little table, though there was no tea set or tea, Zoe the only guest. She would pretend they all lived as a happy family, grandmother, mother and father with Zillah and Zoe. On the worst days, she would pretend she wasn’t hungry and lonely.
One day a traveler came through town and headed straight to Zillah’s house. He was an antiques dealer and found her grandmother in an alert state, it still being morning. Zillah was enraptured by this stranger who had invaded their lives, though she stayed mostly hidden behind her grandmother. After much looking around and poking through things he and her grandmother came to an understanding and much money was exchanged for many of the homes remaining treasures.
It was a happy day in Zillah’s life that day as they immediately set off to the shops in town center to purchase many things. Zillah got a new pair of shoes and a new hat, plus a pretty flowered dress she saw in the window. They bought pastries and candies, the like of which Zillah had never seen. They went to the green grocer and the butchers and stocked their pantry full, and they also went to the tavern and bought many bottles of vodka and whiskey and gin.
The news spread through the little town like a wildfire. Zillah and her grandmother were on a spending spree, buying out half the shops, so it seemed. The women of the town gathered and behind their hands clucked over every purchase, especially the liquor with a tsk, tsk, tsk.
There were happy days ahead for Zillah and her grandmother, with a kitchen stocked full, and a new dress to wear. Zillah’s grandmother even walked Zillah to school the first few days after the largesse had fallen on them. But as time does, it wears things down and away and eventually her grandmother fell back into her daily alcohol fueled stupor, largely ignoring Zillah on most days.
One day after school, Zillah was having one of her famous tea parties with Zoe, regaling her yet again with a story about the day she and her grandmother went shopping, when she realized she could now provide herself and Zoe with a better tea party repast than normal.
Zil
lah scampered down the stairs, first to cast an eye on her grandmother, who by this time in the afternoon was quietly snoring on the divan in the parlor, then into the pantry to see what was still available. It had been sometime since the shopping day and the pantry was again starting to show signs of despair.
Zillah spied a tin of tea up on the high shelf, but tea was difficult to make without being able to use the stove and Zillah was expressly forbidden from doing that. Down lower was a collection of half full liquor bottles just waiting to be used for a great tea party. She chose carefully from the selection offered, passing by something called ‘becherovka’ and ended up with something called ‘gin’.
In her hurry to get upstairs to show her acquisition to Zoe, Zillah forgot to carry any actual cups or glasses up with her. ‘No mind’, she thought, ‘I can just sip a little from the bottle.’ Zoe was still sitting in her carefully arranged place at the table, and Zillah set the bottle down between them. At this tea party, Zillah decided, she would be the town’s wealthy lady and Zoe an adoring neighbor come to visit.
Zillah found the first few sips from the bottle to be a burning, terrible tasting thing but, with Zoe’s encouragement, she preserved until more than half the bottle was emptied.
That was Zillah and Zoe’s last tea party.
The End.
26 Absurdities of Tragic Proportions Page 15
