[ Sunday, May 16, 2004 ]
FIG TREE FAIRY
PUNISHES THE
DISREPECTFUL
The fig tree was 42 years old, according to the man who had planted it and who now invited total strangers into his yard to pick its abundant fruit. When other plants had died, it had flourished. When other trees fell to storms, it stood strong.
The figs were large, moist and ripe, but no birds had stripped out the red hearts nor bugs burrowed into them. That is, the figs were somehow immune to predators that so often made them unattractive or inedible.
The tree itself seemed designed for human access to its fruit. It was not overly tall, and its limbs were supple enough to be bent safely downward for picking. At regular intervals, lower limbs opened so that one could slip between them, stand in the tangled center of the plant and reach the deepest fruit.
Perfect figs on a perfect tree.
While the owner leaned against a fence post and smoked a pipe, the strangers — a man and wife — circled the tree and filled their baskets. It seemed that no matter how many figs they picked, there were always more to be had.
The man squatted in the midst of the limbs, eyes darting from fig to brown fig, hands moving a moment behind his eyes. In this trance of harvesting, his eyes scanned right past the tiny man dressed in brown who perched on an inner limb — but in the split-second later that the vision registered on his brain and his eyes flashed back to the spot, the little man was gone.
In his place sat a broken branch covered over by wrinkled fig leaves. Thin twigs jutted out of the leaves where arms and legs might be, and a dried fig perched at the top like a puckered face.
The man paused and laughed at himself. Then he wagged a finger at the bundle of dead fig tree matter and berated it.
“You can’t fool me. I saw you.”
He picked another couple of figs and thought better of what he had said. To see such a thing was a gift, he realized. The spirit of the tree had smiled on him, not played a joke.
“I apologize. I should have thanked you,” he said to the brittle bundle of leaves.
But it was too late. Sprites and spirits, old as they are, have little patience for disrespect and are quick to anger. Their favor is capricious.
The man’s skin began to burn. Red spots broke out across his arms, neck and face. Any exposed skin itched like he’d bathed in toxic chemicals. He started sweating and scratching, scratching, scratching.
“You must be allergic,” someone told him later — after he’d washed himself with vinegar to stop the itching. “I had an aunt, she had to cut down all her fig trees ‘cause she was allergic to them.”
“Yeah, I guess,” he said.
But he knew better. He knew what he had seen and why he had been punished.
And he didn’t give a fig what they said.
**
(The preceding was one of my weekly columns, "Undercurrents," found in The News Herald, Panama City, FL. For more, see the online archive at www.newsherald.com)
Unknown [4:08 PM]
