The Color of Trees

by Canaan Parker

  I came in and sat on the windowsill. T.J. sat up on his bed.

  “I can’t come back here, Pete. I don’t ever want to see Thayer anymore. And all the suspicious looks people were giving me.”

  “Was it really that bad?”

  “Yes!” he said with sudden intensity. “I’d go into the shower after tennis practice and everybody would go to the other end of the shower. At one of my matches, somebody told my opponent. After I beat him he told me he doesn’t shake hands with queers.”

  “I didn’t know about all that.” I felt sick at the thought of my king dethroned by prejudice.

  “Anyway, Dean Press advised me to transfer.”

  “I hate Dean Press.”

  “We’ll still see each other, Pete. I promise.”

  I crossed my arms and tried to look as pitiable and dejected as possible. T. J. stared at me sweetly for a moment.

  “Pete, take a ride with me, okay?”

  T. J. and I had rented bicycles for the summer. We rode down the hill, across Route 9, and through the woods. When we came to the railroad tracks, I asked T.J. where we were going.

  “There’s an incredible cliff about a half mile from here.” We walked our bikes over the tracks and rode down a bumpy dirt path through the bushes. The path became less and less passable, crisscrossed with tree roots and studded with rocks. At one point, T.J. said we had to get off our bikes and walk. “You don’t want to be on a bike this close. You might lose control and ride off the cliff.” The dirt trail came to an end in a tangle of blueberry hedges. We pushed through the bushes and found a spread of flat land. The clearing ended at a straight drop-off. From the hedges, I couldn’t see beyond the drop. I stopped, but T.J. walked on.

  “What are you afraid of?” he said.

  “What’s out there?”

  “Come look. You can see the whole river from here.”

  I wasn’t close to the edge. The clearing was thirty yards to the cliff. Still, I was nervous. I took a few steps and stopped.

  “Come on, Peter.” T.J. was now standing on the edge of the cliff.

  My whole body had come alive with fear. Even the air frightened me. The wind was blowing across the clearing, scattering sand and dust. The bushes behind me were rustling. The sun was crashing down on the clearing in full brightness, so that the sand was gleaming gold and bits of quartz were sparkling in the grass. T.J. had sat down in a squat. He rested his rump on the ground and then slowly stretched out his legs. He shunted forward inch by inch until his legs were hanging over the cliff. I wanted to call to him to be careful, but I was afraid of startling him.

  He sat there looking out over the valley. I came closer and stopped again. T.J. looked over his shoulder. “Pete, you’re not going to fall off from ten feet away.”

  I walked until I was standing right behind him. He pointed off to the north. “You can follow the river until it disappears into the mountains.”

  “Aren’t you scared, T. J.?”

  “Shitless,” he said. “I like it.” He pointed to the south. “Through that gap there, that’s the interstate. That’s the road I drive home on.”

  I got down on my knees and edged closer. I was terrified, but not so much of falling off. It was more like I was infused with cosmic fear. The sensations I felt inside were pressing out against my skin, like air inside a balloon. Here I was, on this tiny, airborne sand bar, where the forest had stopped growing for some unknown reason, looking out over the enormous valley.

  “You couldn’t really fall off here,” T.J. said. “It would be an incredibly spastic thing to do. There’s no guarantee, I mean it could happen, but you have to believe you’re not going to spaz out with your whole life on the line. If you spaz out with your life at stake — that’s pathetic. I couldn’t live with that much self-doubt. I just couldn’t get what I want out of life.”

  I inched my legs towards the edge until my feet were just hanging over. I was exhilarated with fear.

  “Close your eyes,” T. J. said.

  “No way.”

  “Just for a minute.” T. J. was sitting with his eyes squeezed shut. I closed my eyes, and my body came even more alive with blindness. It was as though I could feel the entire valley inside of me, the entire vast expanse, the course of the river, the mass of the hills, had been captured in my body, like in a little bottle. I felt electricity under my fingernails, blood pumping in my neck, the wind nipping at my face. My eardrums felt like wind tunnels.

  “How you doing?” T. J. said.

  “Okay.” I opened my eyes and he was looking at me. He turned to look out again and closed his eyes. I sat there for a moment watching my boyfriend, watching him breathe. He squeezed his eyes even tighter.

  “This is life,” he whispered.

  Being gay in boarding school had turned my biological calendar upside down. Most students couldn’t wait for summer or holiday vacations. I could never wait for vacation to end, to get back to my boyfriends. But this summer had been different. Now that I had fallen in love with T.J., I anticipated the end of the summer program with terror. I felt as though I were on death row; the minutes of my last few days with T.J. passed like the last few minutes of life.

  I had difficulty breathing. I alternated between gloom and hyperactive irritation. Everyone noticed, including T.J., who couldn’t figure what was wrong. “Pete, you look so bored,” he said with disapproval as I lay stunned and withered on my bed. I wondered why T.J. wasn’t as depressed as I was.

  On the last morning, we had graduation ceremonies for the summer program kids from Hartford. My favorite student in the program got angry at me for not giving him an award in music class. I had to admit he deserved one, I was just distracted.

  After the ceremonies I helped T.J. pack his belongings in his car — tennis racquet, stereo speakers, air conditioner. My mind was overloaded with static; I had motor capacity but little more. My allotment of minutes was now down to seconds. T.J. was cool, happy to be leaving. He would spend the rest of the summer playing golf and tennis in Point O’ Woods. In the fall he’d go to St. Christopher’s for his senior year. I was headed to New York and then back to Briarwood.

  T.J. was half smiling now as he shoved a box under the car seat with his foot; he’d realized I was distraught over his leaving. I thought I had a few more minutes, but he looked up at me suddenly. “That’s it!” He took two steps towards me, hand outstretched, shook my hand. He held it warmly for a moment. “I’ll see you around, Pete.” He got into his car, closed the door, drove around the main lawn, down the hill, away.

  Somewhere I’d read that if you keep stepping half the distance to a wall, you’d never get to that wall, just each time halfway there, halfway there. I imagined disappearing into a twilight world of microspace, the wall reshaped into bizarre dimensions as I approached infinity. I tried this technique as the end approached, dividing time intervals in half to forestall death forever, but I couldn’t cut the instants finely enough. The last whole micron of time leapfrogged over me like an ocean wave, knocked me down, and swept me under.

  I began to cry. I ran up the dormitory stairs to my room. John Bragg and Moonshot saw me; I’m sure they knew I was crying about T.J. I threw myself on my bed, pounded the pillows, and kicked my legs in fury. I cried like a half-year -old infant.

  I left the dormitory and walked out past the football fields, my eyes still filmed with water. I saw parts of the school campus I’d never seen, but heard about. Senior faculty houses with lovely colored gardens. Fields of tall, yellow grass where criminal students went to smoke pot, where Sean Landport had been caught once screwing a girl. I sobbed and sobbed for T. J. My chest hurt from crying, but I was proud that I could feel so intensely.

  I walked until I came to a roadway. I recognized where I was now — near downtown Green River. I went to the downtown malt shop and had a cheeseburger and milkshake. Then I hitched a ride back to school. I’d walked about three miles. I can hold it together, I thought to myself. I’m not going to die
.

  In the late afternoon the day T.J. left Briarwood, Ashley Downer came onto the campus to visit. He said hello to me, forgetting the trouble between us. I had forgotten it, too. Ashley had changed since the Third Form. He wore his hair longer now, until it curled, and he dressed less conservatively. In his new wire-rimmed glasses, dusty jeans, and pointy boots he struck a mixed posture of scholar and rebel. I looked at him and realized how long it had been since our freshman year.

  Ashley offered to drive me into Hartford so I could catch a train back to New York. I threw my duffel bag into the backseat of his Volkswagen and we left. The campus was empty and quiet. I could hear a few birds singing, their voices echoing off trees. The sun glared off the main lawn. I felt the hot, gold reflection as we drove around the quad. Then we were covered by the shade of the trees along the winding road. We drove down the hill and away.

  Ashley’s father had died the year before. Strangely enough, he wanted to talk about it. The experience had changed him, he said. When his father was ill, he had told Ashley that he loved him. For the first time he’d used the actual words. Ashley was chattering away in some mystical manner, about life and the spirit and love and whatnot. He was getting a little boring. I thought that I liked him better as a bigot. I tuned him out and just nodded in the pauses. The sun was gleaming off the dashboard and I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear or see. And I didn’t want to. T.J. was gone, halfway back to Point O’ Woods by now, and I didn’t know when I’d see him again.

  It’s sad for me to end this book. Someday I might write another one. If you’re interested in what happened to T.J. and me, I’ll tell you just a little. After T.J. graduated from St. Christopher’s, he went to college in London. He wrote me letters, though, and told me all about the English. Well, I don’t think he told me everything. I know there was a fellow with hazel eyes, but I don’t know the details. I went off to college and majored in chemistry. I spent some years that weren’t so good. When T.J. came back stateside, he bought a house in Dutchess County. I moved in five years ago, and that’s where I am now. I can even see the Rip Van Winkle Bridge from my window.

  He’s different, of course, not quite so wild anymore. I call him Jerrett now. I always liked that name better. That’s him in the next room, as a matter of fact, setting the table for dinner. I think I just heard him drop a plate. Sometimes he can still be a bonehead.

  If you should happen to see him, don’t tell him I said that. It’s never any fun when he’s mad at me.

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  CANAAN PARKER

  The author: Canaan Parker grew up in East Harlem and graduated from Williams College in the Berkshires and Harvard University. This mix of city streets and New England woods is reflected in The Color of Trees, his first novel. A pianist and guitarist who only recently discovered a love for books, Parker is active with several gay cultural organizations, including In Our Own Write, Outmusic, and Queer Nation.

  ALYSON

  PUBLICATIONS

  $8.95

  Cover art by Earl House