1. How it all Came to Be

I just happened to be lazy and I took to lollygagging around a galaxy when I came here to die. It was a beautiful place, a round blue ball with green and brown but mostly all blue except for wonderful seemingly random gatherings of white but beneath them was a place I would not be bothered.

I made a huge tree of a kind I had not seen on the planet and ringed it with tall bushes ten or twelve feet high with a path leading into the tree. There was a township road nearby that meandered through countless numbers of small lakes and only one cabin anywhere near it where I made shills, a small boy, his parents and an aged grandmother with a big yard, a huge garage and the cabin was large but the boy had no one to play with for there were no neighbors not even resorts and the boat landing was at the other end of the lake.

Well, I had to have something to do. I had ten maybe twenty years left to go and my angel, a shill with a large mind that was God's mind who had taken the place of a deranged one that when embarrassed threatened to make a God with a larger mind than God which was witch talk. Such a thing was crazy and insanity is nothing to play with considering he had my power. God took him out, made a God out of him which is someone nobody knows and who knows no one in heaven and killed the other one and left him in the cemetery in heaven guarded by Michael a God that used to be an angel whom I was subject to for a while.

The boy, I am not going to give him a name since shills do not actually have names unless the other shills call them something, got tired of having nothing to do and no one to play with so he went out to the road. Then I had him come see me for sort of a housewarming gift to myself and led him right to my tree.

'This is really really neat!' I had him think when he got there. 'What a big tree standing out here all by itself!'

“Hello,” I said inside his brain.

“You speak!!!” he shouted amazed that a tree should speak.

“You will see more than that,” I said. “Do have anything that worries you?”

“One thing,” he said.

“Like what?” I said.

“I will be here all summer and we do not even have any neighbors. I have no one to play with. But you. Say? Will you play with me. I suppose not. How can a tree play with a little boy?”

“You might be surprised,” I said.

He closed his eyes and looked up at the tree I was surrounding looking for me in his mind, the only place I had spoken to him though he spoke out loud and why not? There was no one but him and me around.

“What are you doing?”

“I hear you in my head. I thought maybe I could see you in there somewhere.”

“If you ever see me that is where you will see me. But for now just pretend I am in this little tree.”

“Little! Why it is the biggest tree I have ever seen, bigger than I could ever imagine.”

“I am like that.”

“Like what?”

“You cannot imagine me.”

“How come I hear you then. I must be imagining.”

“No. You hear my voice because I made you hear my voice but I did not want to scare you so I made it sound like it was just in your head. Would you rather I spoke out loud?”

“Can you do that?”

“I can do anything but God has made we promise not to use all my power. So I can only do what God can do.”

“Could you make ten bucks appear right here in my hand?”

“I could. But I am not like that.”

“You are like a genie that has limited its power.

Tell me the truth. I am just pretending to be talking to you. But first by the way? You have a voice that makes me feel all safe and comfortable but you do not speak loud enough. Your voice is softer than a whisper.”

“You heard my voice?”

He nodded.

“Because you heard my voice you will be my spokesman.”

His chest puffed up and his eyes got big.

“But you must tell no one about me, not a one, not your mother, not your grandmother and most of all not your dad. I will be your secret. You may tell them things I say but you cannot say where you got it from.”

He cast his head down to look at the roots and let out a sigh.

“Well, it has to be does it not? A talking tree! They will think you have gone screwy.”

“No they will not! Honest. They will just think I am a little boy saying things little boys imagine.”

He was right. They were shills. It probably would not go much further than that. Shills as a rule do not have much of an imagination. Some do not even think much not to mention talk much or ponder the things around them unless someone gives them a spirit to do such things. With the right spirit they are just like humans almost.

“Okay. You can tell your grandma and your parents. But no one else. Okay? But the fact I am as real as you are will be our secret.”

“What is your name?”

“You name me.”

“I call you John.”

How did he know to call me John? Did I make him do it or is someone muscling in on my story? Shills cannot just know things. It has to be told to them. It is like me speaking both parts.

“John it is then. But you had better run along. Your mother is worried about you. This being your first day there and all.”

When he got home his dad was on his way to the house for dinner from the garage which served him as a machine shop with all the latest equipment. I had in put into his brain how to overhaul the pickup not that it needed it. But he did not know the difference. He was only doing what I had him doing.

“Daddy!” he said, “Do you know what?”

“What?”

“I made a friend,” he said, “A talking tree.”

“Is he nice?”

“I like him tons.”

“That is nice. But what would you have to say to a tree? How are your leaves shaking today?”

“Do you believe me!!”

“I believe everything I hear.”

As he came through the door he said, “Mama, Mama! I have been talking to a tree all this time.”

“What does a tree have to say?” she asked. “Would it talk to me?”

“Do not be silly,” his grandma said, “Trees do not talk. Well they are like words or anything else I suppose but beyond that-? Well, that is hard to believe. It is not like you to lie. Why? I have not heard one of us lie in so long I might have forgotten it was ever possible.”

“Mother! You always doubt everything except that things just come to us and we have no say in the matter.”

“I doubt that too.”

The truth is that the grandmother is right. Shills are completely under my control. I speak both parts. His belief. His dad's belief. His mother's rare curiosity was what I told her to think. And, his grandmother's doubt. It is true. I swear by my power having nothing higher to swear by. Why cannot I do such a thing? All Gods can. Even humans in put some things in their brains like the idea they are human also and all that silly stuff they tell them in school. They are no more than a character in a story. They know only what you say they do and what in put you put in their software and what to do with their bodies.

They ate and while the women did the dishes except grandma she was too busy jabbering about words she had found in her word searches and the like but they watched the Walton's and westerns all evening and turned in about eight o'clock and went to bed.

Then they said goodnight.

“Goodnight Son,” said his mother.

“Goodnight Mama.”

“Goodnight Son,” said his dad..

“Goodnight Daddy.”

“Goodnight my little one and just forget about talking trees.”

“I will try. Goodnight Grandma."

“Goodnight,” the parents called to the grandmother who never replied.

Goodnight readers. Goodnight John Boy.