Progress

We shuffle a few paces forward -  before coming to a halt again - along a rutted path crawling through a dried-out landscape towards the gates of the Arboretum that lies, so they say, somewhere in the distance. Around me I can hear a few of the Pilgrims muttering a quiet prayer, but mostly people are silent, huddled in their suits, conserving their strength and numbly waiting their turn.

I’m bored, tired, and irritable and I ache all over my body. Sweat puddles inside my helmet.

“Tell story! Tell it! Tell Jesus story!”

A little red and angry face peers up at me through a smeared and dusty faceplate. A little hand tugs at the leg of my tunic. My son, heavy blooded, brain damaged, more cadmium than calcium in his bent little legs, keeps asking me for the story again and again. It makes him happy, the story of how Jesus is coming back to save the trees.

“Shut the fuck up, Charles, Give it a rest!”

Yeah, Jesus - he was a great guy, right. Took the tree didn’t he - carried it on his back, all the way from Eden to the top of fuckin’ Golgotha. But they cut the tree down anyway didn’t they, even with him hanging there, the last fuckin’ tree in the world, turned it into a goddam sun lounger, and that’s why we’re stuck here now, in the middle of this god-fuckin-forsaken desert, waiting for a fuckin’ miracle!

Which is, of course, what I don’t say. The Pilgrims would lynch me to hear me come out with stuff like that. Even though it’s true - we are in the middle of a desert, waiting for a miracle.

Further up the line, I can see rival water peddlers working the Pilgrims. Take your pick: if you’ve got the dollar, you could be cooling off with “Mountain Mist” or slaking your dusty thirst on “Icecap”. Me, I’m busted from the long hike North, bringing Charles to visit the Tree, and so now we’re having to make do with recycled sweat and piss. Not that there’s really any mist up the mountains any more, never mind the icecaps.

It’s not yet three o’clock and already its getting dark. The dirty clouds drag across the sky, making no more progress than we are down here. The heat and the heavy air press down on us like the palm of a huge sweaty hand. We’ve been standing in this ragged queue of grey-backed hopefuls since seven this morning, and still I can’t even see the gates of the Arboretum, that’s how fast we’re shuffling along. I wipe the greasy smudge from the plate of my mask, and peer into the distance but there’s nothing to see but more dust and rock.

Rumours shudder up and down the line of Pilgrims, like the shivers of fever:

‘they’re really making progress, - there’s one, it’s already four summers old, and it has leaves on it that are green...’

‘They’ve actually got one to fruit, they’ve planted the seeds...’

‘When you get there, there’s a whole avenue of them, and you can take your mask off and walk beneath them…’

I’ve never even met anyone that’s seen a tree, and I wonder privately if the damned things even exist, but here I’ve come anyway, half way around the world, hoping that my son, this little damaged piece of radioactive meat, can see a tree before he dies. Assuming we get to the end of this queue before then.

There’s a sudden small commotion in the line up ahead. An old woman, thirty-five, maybe forty years old, has fallen to the ground. I catch a glimpse of her eyes as her head knocks against a stone and comes to rest pointing my way. I can tell from the look in them she won’t be getting up again. The old man she’s with is on his knees at her side, and we all shuffle forward a few steps into the space they’ve vacated.

It’s not much but at least it’s progress.