The Hangman's Tree

The Hangman's Tree

The thick polyethylene rope chafes against my calloused skin—a wound I know too well. A heavy-set man yells, then cackles, while he crunches a beer can and throws it at my body. It thuds to the ground, rigid and hollow.

In the distant brush, a band of coyotes yap at the full moon. Their answering wild cries juxtapose the odd and cumbrous foreign shapes of men—their calls like the wails of witches in the night.

A second man backs away from my form after the animals' calls grow closer. They are hunting.

"Let's make this quick. I've heard too many ghost stories about this place."

A grunt from the big one. "You chickenin' out, Rick?"

"No man, no way." But even as he says this, his voice hitches. He doesn't want to be here.

"Buck, buck, buck." A wiry man circles behind Rick, flapping his skinny arms.

"Quit it. I'm not afraid."

"Alright then, prove it."

The leader of the three men, the man with the fetid breath and crackling snicker, shoves the tail end of the orange rope into Rick's hands.

"The faster you pull, the faster we can leave."

My outstretched arms sway toward a fourth and final man, poised for him to join us.

The man below is hooded in black, his hands and feet bound so tight his fingers turn purple. His muffled whines escape from beneath the laden cowl. A trickle of urine soaks his torn jeans and pools around his sneakers. Soon it will be over.

It was not always like this. My limbs were not always scarred and etched by rope, bare from the years of pulling and hanging fruits. I did not always take lives.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The acorn slipped from the Tongva woman's burden basket. It rolled down the dry grass hill of the Los Angeles Basin and settled next to a dainty, crystal-blue stream. And here I grew happily. With yellow warblers chirping songs of joy in my budding leaves and basking in the clean air that made my new bark shine.

This was me. And it is not me. Not me as I am today. Worn and taken. No green leaves bloom. And my branches, my swollen, draconian things now gnarled and twisted into shapes I do not recognize.

Fifteen years passed, and I was yet a sapling. Beauty still granted its essence upon my form. The daughter of that same Native Tongva woman who lost her acorn, a youth not past her tenth year, came to me. With willowy legs and tears beyond her years. Her face and arms specked in red, she rested her rosy cheek against my sprig.

"Sheveh," the word on the wind and brushed on her lips. Her tiny fingers stroked a fallen waxy leaf. And when the two Spanish monks and her dear mother found her there, kneeling at my feet, she was gone.

This enslaved being was the first to bond, and we became one. A new branch began to grow. A new voice called within, and we were not alone. Recollections of chasing black-tailed jackrabbits, learning which seeds to gather, and weaving fine Juncus baskets invaded my stem. Darker memories of our families being burned and scattered saturated the sap. They took us to a strange fortress where the stars no longer shined. It was here we grew sick, and here we hardened into hate.

It was not 'til one hundred years had passed did we receive our title. On this day, two men were lynched for stealing six ounces of California gold. However, their shoeless feet and threadbare clothes told a different tale.