Real Plastic Trees: cookout on a sunny day

I think it's weird, the different ways in which we react to violent events at different times, in different places, with different people beside and around us. Sometimes you'll hear people argue that anybody with feelings (or, conversely, anybody who isn't a flat-out histrionic) will have to have acted a certain way:

"Look at that picture. How could he have been laughing on that day?"

"That was seven years ago. Don't you think she should be over it by now?"

Even some experts make the mistake of being too limited in their conception of real grief, real shock, real trauma. They say you'll remember every particular: every scent, sight, and sound in crisp, ever-present detail. They say you'll get amnesia and remember nothing at all. They say there's only one way to be and not be bad or broken; too cold or too given to theatrics. Probably the most manichaean and divisive of psychological "experts" are over-represented in the media, though. News loves a controversy. We shouldn't take them too much to heart.

But I've got my theories, too, and I judge. I scrutinize people's reactions, try my hand at scrying their motives and character in the glassy surfaces of their eyes. I'm not at all convinced that we should avoid such attempts; sometimes our intuitions save us. But my own life experience would indicate that it isn't so simple, that you can never really know how a person will act in the face of something outside his normal experience. Or, for that matter, how he'll react to a stressor he has experienced many times before. An unbroken pattern isn't necessarily unbreakable.

Sometimes people who are afraid of blood and death will be the first to plunge forward and get their hands dirty when the situation calls for it, when somebody needs help. Sometimes a know-it-all will piss his pants the moment his bravado is put to the test. Sometimes you're so scared, your facial expressions get away from you and you'll laugh even though there's not a single funny thing around for miles. Sometimes you barely feel anything at all, even though you always would have thought such an event would leave a person scarred for life.

I can't know anything for sure, even about myself. I'm going to contradict myself about myself a few paragraphs from now. I'm going to declare I'm different from what I've said I was like just two days ago. I guess it wasn't ever true then? But I wasn't lying. Perception, mood, outside pressure, the weather--jeez, everything is always changing. I think I tend to hate that.

When I was a little kid, every time I'd find a black, plastic bag in a ditch or a creek I'd be afraid there'd be a body underneath or a fetus wrapped up inside. Maybe I got this idea from a too-young viewing of Stand By Me. Or some news article about a teenage mother hiding a stillbirth. I read the papers too young, too. I'd think to myself: "If I ever saw something like that, I'd just faint, I know it. I'd never be the same again."

Still, sometimes I'd come back with a stick, and I'd poke around the bag, lift it up, look inside.

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Once, in that other place I talk about, I saw a girl my own age gunned down a few meters in front of me.

In my memory I am with a group of friends in a public park. We've been cooking thin slices of meat over a fire, root vegetables in the ashes. Making a picnic. We're laughing.

A man is asking me for advice on attracting American women. I'm in a mischievous mood, steering him in entirely the wrong direction. I'm telling him what I like. This won't be of any help to him at the bars down in Tourist Town, which is ostensibly the kind of situation he's asking about. I'm watching his face to see when he'll figure out that I'm full of it, but he's just staring at me, transfixed, hanging on every word. He's looking like he wishes it were socially acceptable to pull out a pad of paper and take notes. His expression seems so earnest, I'm starting to feel bad. It's time for me to end my little ruse and fess up to having no experience whatsoever in this field. So I do. He drops his own ruse and begins openly flirting. It'll never happen; I've never really gone for clubber types. But the attention feels nice. Everything feels nice--the sun, the conversation, the break from work, the hunger in my belly. Even the dusty, parched grass under my bare ankles feels good and grounding.

I don't recall quite how the thing itself unfolds, even though it wasn't that long ago, only a few years. I think there is some kind of vehicle sound. Maybe a revving engine, squealing tires. Something else? I look up, toward the park entrance. At some point--stupidly!--I stand. There must have been gunfire amidst all of this, probably screaming as well, but in my memory it's like the soundtrack is cut for several seconds. I don't remember the sounds, only a sudden surge of human movement, rippling outward from the unlucky spot.

The young woman is on the ground. Red, brown, black. The soft, dark cloud of her hair. Did she come here alone? No one is acting like her friend now. People only want to get away. Fast. That's how people get trampled, I think.

Do we run, too? I wonder, lamely. But surely it's too late to run. And where would we hide? We're already near the only tree. There's little but flat land, human beings, and picnic paraphernalia in any direction. Maybe a few scrubby bushes. I stay put.

Where is the killer? Gone, I guess. Must have been in that truck.

None of my companions have so much as flinched, not like the wave of bystanders who were closest to the crime. I'm trying now to get a better look at the girl. We should help, I say. No, says a friend. There's nothing you can do. Sometimes they come back to shoot the first ones to come to the victim's aid. And anyhow, she is clearly dead. There are pieces. No movement. He turns the meat.

There's nothing you can do. It's true. I don't want it to be, but I can't help knowing he's right. The statement courses through me like a sedative.

Look, I know you want to. We all want to. But there's nothing any of us can do now. Let it go.

My heart rate slows.

An emergency vehicle pulls up sooner than I thought possible. Or maybe time is flowing strangely for me. They collect the body. There's no point in gathering any evidence or cordoning off the area. Everybody knows the local authorities won't allow the matter to be pursued. Hell to pay if they did. We're all pretty sure we know what happened, anyhow. We talk about it a little.

Tomorrow the paper will say she tried to escape a certain group of people who don't let anybody bow out of their fold and live. The paper is unreliable. So--who knows? It is a plausible story, though. It happens all the time. Poor dear, the baker's daughter will tell us at the till. Slut should have seen it coming, my street-smart alcoholic neighbor will sneer.

For now, other than the dark stains on the ground, which are smaller than I'd imagined they'd be, it's like nothing ever happened. The groundskeeper will wash it away with a hose later this evening. Nobody cries or stays near. Maybe she really was out all alone, although women don't commonly dare to do such a thing here. Maybe her companions simply know better than to draw targets on their own backs. We're not so far away--not in space, not in time--from the mass graves of the war, full up with non-combatants who paid everything for the twain unpardonable sins of Tarrying Too Long and Appearing Too Involved.

So we're eating lunch next to that lonesome, only tree. We got here early and snatched this spot up because we knew it would be a hot day. We're chatting about some newish type of music that some of our parents don't like, reciting lyrics and snarking on the overblown antics of the singers. We're speaking between mouthfuls of seasoned meat and salty, starchy tubers. Someone cracks open a real Coca-Cola and we pass it around.

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