There was a rich and famous lawyer who liked to imagine that he was a tree. In taxi cabs and restaurants, in unpleasant provincial hotel rooms, airplanes and at family meals he would find himself imagining his roots stretching thirstily into damp earth while his branches reached joyfully toward the sky. He was a cottonwood growing by a creek on the high plains. All summer the wind blew through his leaves and he drew water from his roots to fling invisible at the parched sky. In winter he drew into himself, quietly keeping life going in his core as the icy wind tore at his branches. His favorite season was fall when he felt his leaves cut themselves off from him and float away. Spring he found painful as his sap rose up through his winter dry limbs. And then the buds popping. Excruciating.
His wife did not know about the tree. She sensed the distance growing between them. He was busy she knew. And perhaps he had a lover. She herself had two lovers. They entertained her by the pool on hot summer afternoons while her husband sighed in the wind on trans-Pacific flights. They loved each other still, in carefully sequestered corners of their hearts. Places closed to pool side lovers and cottonwood trees. But the secret places in their hearts grew cooler, smaller.
The lawyer was defending a famous news anchor who had pushed his lover off a cigarette boat going seventy off Catalina Island. On the first day of the trial the lawyer found it more and more difficult to resist becoming a tree. The tree was pulling at him and he was tired. He went to see his psychiatrist. The psychiatrist thought wistfully that he would enjoy being a tree himself. At first he was going to tell the lawyer to succumb to the tree, but then he noticed a certain arboreal quality about his patient.
``You don't want to be a tree!'' he said.
``Stuck in one place. Unable to speak. Bark beetles under your skin. Birds itching in your hair - you have to fight. Fight it off!''
The next day in court the tree was pulling at him harder and harder. For one short moment the tree won. Not every one saw it. The judge was looking out the window. Nine jurors were looking at the judge who had a band aid across the bridge of his nose for some reason. But three members of the jury, six people in the audience, a prosecutor and two guards saw it. Just for a moment the lawyer became a tree. A perfect, mature but slightly miniaturized cottonwood, presiding serenely over the court room, leaves shimmering in an unfelt summer wind.
With Herculean effort the lawyer regained control. The tree receded. There was a move for a mistrial. Denied.
At dinner that night the lawyer looked at his wife and decided she was more beautiful than a tree - in some ways at least.
Out on the plains west of Council Bluff the cottonwood sighed and cast about in the wind for another victim.