The Trees Swallow People: Part 5

It was one of the Tuesdays when I would go to the post office down the village when I saw Shepard again. He was standing atop a raised brim of a monument on Main Street, tucked away between a taxi rank, car park, and corner shop, opposite the road, a credit union, and a pub, yet that didn’t stop him from preaching, as he called it. I could hear him raving from down the street, first as incoherent calls, then becoming clearer in its lunacy as I got closer.

Once I finally spotted him, wildly looking for anyone passing by to proselytise to, I recognised him as the man praying in the park. In the daylight I could finally see Shepard has a youthful face, yet his hair had a band of grey around his head beneath his brunette crown. His angular, long face was peppered by day old stubble. His long winter coat, slacks, and leather slip-ons gave the impression he had a sense of style. I thought he was rather handsome, but then I heard what he was saying.

Come! Family of God; the Creator has blessed this nation, this community, with a miracle! Fear not, as the angels cry; what we have comes from him! God has given what is meant for us! What is intended! God has blessed us! God has blessed the trees! The trees are for us!

There was more, but I just continued on. Luckily I didn’t catch Shepard’s eye. It didn’t seem like anyone did, though the odd few people walking the street, entering the credit union, the shop, or the pub did stare, with only two stopping for a moment before scoffing. There were jeers but they fell silent once they realised Shepard wasn’t stopping. Nothing was interrupting his tirade into the air. He was clearly unhinged. I just did what I had to and returned up the hill.

I heard during the week that he was by the monument daily since then, from noon until three, calling out at the top of his lungs. The guards couldn’t stop him other than give a verbal warning; it was a public space, he wasn’t blocking the path, he wasn’t doing it at night. When I went down the next Tuesday, I saw he was joined by someone. A squat woman with a tangle of greying hair, searching, from the foot of the monument in Shepard’s shadow, for anyone to give one of the pamphlets she clutched to her chest. As I made my way to the post office, I overheard someone passing her saying where she can put her pamphlet. Shepard was still at it.

All is an instrument in God’s orchestra, to be conducted by his divinity! Just as the prophets fulfilled his glory, so too have miracles! The hungry fed from one basket! Seas parted for the exodus! Just as God acted through Muhammad, through Moses, through Abraham, so too he acts through the trees! The trees are an act of God!

You can laugh at madmen, but you can’t be bored by them. Even though the overall mood was one of confused bemusement and mockery, I couldn’t help but notice people were slowing down more, lingering a little longer to watch, unintentionally hearing more of what he had to say. Even in the post office, where you could just make out his howling, people in line were paying attention, to the point I had to ask the person ahead of me they were next to be served. Even the post clerks were distracted, pausing, tilting their heads to absorb more of the maddening rhetoric.

As I left, I noticed someone else had stopped completed before Shepard, gazing up at him with mystified eyes of awe. I wasn’t surprised, though disappointed, when I found this same person had joined Shepard and the other woman the following week. What did surprise me was the sudden shift in his preaching.

The Lord in Heaven came down to save the world from sin as a man! The Lord appeared to Moses to save the chosen people, as a bush! And now he has come to us as the trees! Yes, God is the trees! The trees are God! Rejoice! He is here! He calls us! He has returned!

I had to weave around people frozen on the street watching. The opened windows of the town houses were perches for those who wished to listen from their homes. Even businesses were abandoned, the employees standing outside, equally enraptured. When I noticed the post clears were also outside, I thought I should leave, as the atmosphere was uncomfortable.

Gone were the derisive snorts, smirking shakes of the head, and the apathetic, rolled eyes. The patient watching, the anticipating standing, the feeling something was going to happen took their place. And those pamphlets were no longer hanging out longingly for a passive hand to politely take them. The stack was being circulated, practically snatches at amongst the crowd. In shock, I took the stack and only had a second or so to take in the cover before Sean Fergus, a dopey lad I went to school with, now moderate publican, yanked the stack from me, impatient to add to the five or so he was already holding. In that second, it made an impression on me.

Learn the truth with Shepard! Felling lost? Scared? Unsure? Fear not, the angels proclaim! The truth is yours to follow!

In between these words was a vector graphic of the tree of life. Whether this was intentionally to allude to the trees or just a convenient way to tie Shepard back to something larger than himself, I don’t know. I went to leave.

YOU!

Can you imagine what silence magnified sounds like? It is not quiet. It is the sound of hundreds of feet shuffling, clothes ruffling, the swish of turning heads all at the same time. I knew instantly, before I had even turned to face those deranged eyes, that authoritative stretched out finger, the towering stance even at a distance, that Shepard was talking to me directly.

I met everyone else’s eyes, filled with distant intrigue one would give a fascinating animal in an enclosure, before I finally landed on him. I could feel my face grow hot with the mounting tension. I suddenly became aware of how hard the sun was working to penetrate the overcast sky and how strong whatever I stepped in smelled. My attention readjusted back onto Shepard, as though he willed my senses against me. And then he spoke. No yell, no shout, no command. He spoke like we were discussing something privately and not surrounded by a street full of people.

The will of God is not to be tested… The boy leaves his flock to find the stray not because it is more valuable, but because it is his… you are called… do not wane God’s patience.

Silence.

I tried willing my legs to move, to take me home, to allow me to vomit my nerves up in privacy, but they refused. The church bell a little further down the street rang three. Shepard jumped down, reminding me that it was his elevation that made him look so tall; he was on the shorter side of average, about five six. And he left. It’s almost funny looking at it now. He just left. I comforted myself later that night, after I felt better and empty, with the imagine of Shepard entering one of the apartments by Louisa Bridge Station, kicking off his boots in favour of pink fluffy slippers and a microwaved lasagna in bed, watching Ru Paul’s Drag Race.

The others began to leave. Some still stared at me for a moment longer. Others blinked rapidly and shook themselves awake, as though coming out of a trance. Eventually, my legs listened to my internal pleading, carrying me home as my focus was drowned in a cascading sea of rumination. What just happened? What did he mean? The trees, the disappearances, the wannabe Alan Watts impersonator; when would this all madness end?

The answer to that last one, I could never imagine, would involve me hauling Shepard’s limp and beaten body over my head and tossing him into the pit of those damn ravenous trees.