Ben Pullar<\/p>\n
My neighbor David Geraldson is a Green Man. I found out one night while I was putting the bins out. I wheeled out the main bin, then the recycling bin, then stopped to admire the green stars, the eggnog moon, various constellations. Then I saw a man over the road in a green robe, yellow sandals, carrying a lantern of fire.<\/p>\n
\u2018Hey, Tom!\u2019 he yelled, waving at me. It was David.<\/p>\n
\u2018Oh, hi, Dave, what are you up to?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Oh, nothing,\u2019 he said, walking off down the hill. \u2018Take care, mate!\u2019<\/p>\n
Well, I didn\u2019t take his word for it of course. David and his wife Edna had been in the street for eighteen months and we hadn\u2019t really got to know them very well. Partly because my wife Jill and I had just had a baby, little Jerry Allen, so we were busy with him. But it had never occurred to me that David was the sort of fellow who would dress in a robe and wander around in thongs.<\/p>\n
I made sure the house was locked up. Then I followed him at a distance down the hill, careful not to make myself seen. I have always been good at making myself invisible. Something to do with growing up on a mountain, you understand foliage at night.<\/p>\n
After walking three blocks David finally came out onto the main road. I saw him stop at the traffic lights. He got out a brass key from a pocket in his robe. I watched him climb up the pole, unlock the pedestrian light box, crawl inside and shut the door. And then I saw a Green Man flash on.<\/p>\n
A few people crossed the road and they had no idea what had just happened. They didn\u2019t notice the vivid bright green light draping the road and the trees and their shoes.<\/p>\n
But that was it for me. That was the moment I first realized David was a Green Man.<\/p>\n
I went home and told Jill.<\/p>\n
\u2018David from next door is a Green Man,\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n
\u2018What, an environmentalist?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018No, a Green Man. Like a walk signal at a traffic light.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018David? How does he fit?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018I don\u2019t know, with great difficulty I suppose,\u2019 I said. \u2018Anyway, that\u2019s him. I saw him. He\u2019s a Green Man.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018How weird,\u2019 said Jill.<\/p>\n
I thought that too. How weird.<\/p>\n
After that I became very interested in talking to David. It was tricky, though, because he mostly kept to himself. My best opportunities were bin nights or in the back garden when he was mowing the lawn or pruning or something.<\/p>\n
Of course I could follow him to his traffic light pole any night I wanted, and I did a few times. It started to feel a bit creepy after a bit. Also it was winter, and I didn\u2019t want to get a cold and pass it on to little Jerry Allen or anything.<\/p>\n
Two nights after seeing David climb that traffic pole, I was braising a chicken in the kitchen when I saw him out in his garden working the sprinkler. I ran out to talk to him. With the chicken. Possibly a foolish thing to do but I didn\u2019t want to miss the opportunity to chat. I ran up to the fence. I waved at him.<\/p>\n
\u2018Hey, dude, what you up to?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Lawn sprinkler,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Yeah, great. Got to keep the back garden green in this drought, for sure.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Been dry,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Hard to keep the grass green at the best of times,\u2019 I suggested. \u2018That nice green colour. I like it like that. Greenish hue. Important. Green.\u2019<\/p>\n
He looked at me oddly. \u2018Yeah,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Do you like that colour?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Pardon?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Green. Do you like it?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Sure,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
And I knew I had gone too far. Not sure how, just a talent I have always had, an ability to understand when I have overreached. I had to back away a bit.<\/p>\n
\u2018Brown is good too,\u2019 I suggested. \u2018I see some of your grass is brown. Nice aesthetic. Well done.\u2019<\/p>\n
David looked at me. Then his eyebrows scrambled up his balding forehead a bit.<\/p>\n
\u2018Yeah, well, that\u2019s the problem, we don\u2019t really like brown grass, hence the sprinkler.\u2019<\/p>\n
An awkward pause.<\/p>\n
\u2018How\u2019s Edna going?\u2019 I asked.<\/p>\n
\u2018Good, working hard. How are Jill and Jerry Allen?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Good. Jerry Allen\u2019s a bit pushy at the moment, he knocked over a kid in his playgroup the other day, stepped on the kid\u2019s left ear, pretty grizzly, lot of blood, Jerry laughed about it but he\u2019s two years old, not a worry.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Hmm.\u2019<\/p>\n
He looked down at my chicken.<\/p>\n
\u2018You making dinner?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Eh? Oh, the chicken. Dinner? No. No.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018What are you doing with it?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Just a hobby. Just braising it. I like to braise chickens.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018But you don\u2019t eat them.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018No.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Jill eat them?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Lot of questions about a chicken,\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n
Things were getting tense. Another pause. I was starting to think David didn\u2019t like me much.<\/p>\n
\u2018Anyway,\u2019 he said. \u2018Got to get rid of this brown grass.\u2019<\/p>\n
I let him get back to his sprinkling.<\/p>\n
I went back inside and put the chicken in the oven, shook my head. How come I\u2019d said I wasn\u2019t cooking the chicken for dinner? Of course I was making the chicken for dinner. Just the way my brain worked, I was always coming out with stupid stuff like that. If I\u2019m not careful, I thought, David is going to think I\u2019m a real idiot. A real big one. I was sure he hadn\u2019t reached that conclusion yet, but if I wasn\u2019t careful . . .<\/p>\n
Over time David\u2019s job as a Green Man, and his unwillingness to share this with me, or anybody, started to make me feel very sad. About life, really. Society. Our inability to talk to each other, to share, really started to disturb me.<\/p>\n
The worst moment was a street barbecue over Christmas. Most of the people in the street came, Jill and Jerry Allen and I went, David and Edna were there, but I couldn\u2019t get David to talk about his Green Man job in front of anybody, no matter how hard I tried.<\/p>\n
He was happy to talk about his work as an accountant. His problems with the brown grass in his lawn. \u2018Man, brown grass is good,\u2019 I offered at one point, \u2018green is better though, right?\u2019 Everyone but David nodded.<\/p>\n
It was just very sad.<\/p>\n
Even Jerry Allen tried to get through to David. He toddled over, stepped on David\u2019s right foot, said \u2018David made of green.\u2019 I hadn\u2019t kept anything from Jill or Jerry Allen. Indeed I had pointed David out to Jerry Allen at different points, said things like, \u2018that man there is a woodland sprite,\u2019 and so on. It\u2019s just an important part of parenting, I\u2019ve found, sharing neighborhood gossip with your child. But David frowned at Jerry Allen. \u2018You\u2019re standing on my foot,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Jerry standing on foot, Daddy,\u2019 said Jerry Allen. Classic moment from Jerry Allen, there. I\u2019m very proud of that boy.<\/p>\n
Later I took a turn at the barbecue, made sure the sausages were well done. When David came for his meal I took a sausage from the grill and dropped it onto his plate with the tongs.<\/p>\n
\u2018There you go, Green Man,\u2019 I said. It was an accident. I didn\u2019t intend to say that. It was a joke that went wrong.<\/p>\n
David raised his eyebrows. Then he shook his head and walked off. I\u2019ve got no idea if he liked the sausage.<\/p>\n
He never told me.<\/p>\n
David started to ignore me after that barbecue. I would run out into the garden with a giant turkey attached to my hand, or I would leap out there carrying a big pot of spaghetti bolognaise, or whatever, and I\u2019d ask: \u2018How\u2019s the brown grass going, mate?\u2019 and he\u2019d run off.<\/p>\n
Again, I just felt sorry for him. Tragic really, not being able to live with your true nature like that. I personally have never had that problem. Well, I have, I suppose, but it didn\u2019t involve municipal hardware or electricity, so it\u2019s a whole other thing, I think.<\/p>\n
One night I put Jerry Allen to bed, and I turned off his nursery light, and I happened to glance out the window. I saw David on the footpath over the road, and he was in his robe, scampering down the hill in the dark holding his lantern up high.<\/p>\n
I felt like following him that night.<\/p>\n
I said to Jerry Allen, \u2018Daddy has to go and spy on the Green Man,\u2019 and he understood. \u2018Daddy catch David Green,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018That\u2019s \u2018Green Man\u2019, Jerry, you weren\u2019t one hundred percent right there, but you\u2019re on the right track.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Jerry on track, Daddy,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018To a degree,\u2019 I said. \u2018We\u2019ll work on it, anyway.\u2019<\/p>\n
I told Jill I had to duck out, that I was just going for soft drinks and chips, then I locked up the house and hurried down that hill.<\/p>\n
I saw David from a distance. He climbed up into the light box. That box instantly flickered to life, casting a deep green haze over the whole street. A group of teenagers crossed over the road, too busy with their hairstyles and their money to notice anything.<\/p>\n
I stood there for a while, just watching that luminous green light. Then I heard a cough. A man walked past me. He was wearing a red robe. Smoking a big cigar.<\/p>\n
He stopped at the traffic light pole. Yelled up.<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019m here,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
The light box door opened, and the Red Man, for it was clearly a Red Man, climbed up it, clambered inside, and shut the door behind him.<\/p>\n
That was an odd one for me. How did these two fellows fit in the one light box? It looked very cramped from where I was standing. Very odd. I wanted to ask them. I wanted to run over to the green light with a braised duck over my shoulder and ask David, but I didn\u2019t think I should do that.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t know what to do. I walked up to the convenience store, bought soft drinks and chips, munched on them as I walked back through the suburb under the moldering stars, the dripping galaxies above.<\/p>\n
The houses and the streets were like a yacht club of magnificent old boats.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
I got home and ate for an hour. I thought and thought ’til my brain hurt, but nothing good came. Finally I went to bed. Jill whispered to me as I got under the covers.<\/p>\n
\u2018You\u2019ve got to let this Green Man stuff go, it\u2019s ruling your life.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018I know,\u2019 I said. \u2018By the way, I saw the Red Man climb up into that light box tonight.\u2019<\/p>\n
There was silence<\/p>\n
\u2018How do they fit?\u2019 she asked.<\/p>\n
\u2018I don\u2019t know. No idea.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Very odd,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
It was.<\/p>\n
I made a decision that night. I lay awake in the dark, looking up at the night ceiling, at the bugs, at the geckos, and I decided that I was going to have to take this up with David. These questions I had. This secrecy. Lying there in bed I devised a plan. We would host a garden party. And I would arrange things so that David would have to own up. He would have to start talking.<\/p>\n
Jerry Allen woke up early in the morning, and I went in to his nursery and told him about my plans.<\/p>\n
\u2018Daddy gonna make Green Man very sad,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018You better believe it, buddy,\u2019 I said. It was good to get his support.<\/p>\n
When I told Jill about my plans, she wasn\u2019t so keen, but I worked on her, and a week later we sent out the invitations.<\/p>\n
Then I got to work.<\/p>\n
I rearranged the garden. I did what I could. I put up large tarps so David and Edna couldn\u2019t see what I was up to.<\/p>\n
Then, on the evening of Friday the fourteenth of January, I opened the gates up. Almost immediately our neighbors started coming through.<\/p>\n
When David and Edna walked through into the garden with their coleslaw and their snags at quarter to eight, I shut the gate behind them, barred the way, watched for their reaction.<\/p>\n
Ahead of them there was the exhibit I had worked up.<\/p>\n
It featured some very significant Green Men of the past. A large woodland spirit effigy, bigger than the mulberry tree. A big Green Man gargoyle, based on the kind you see in churches. Made out of paper mache. Bit messy but you could tell what it was. There was a leafy jack in the green outfit, the sort that used to march through the London Streets on May the first, getting pies thrown at it and so on. There was a big flow chart I made, sketches of different Green Men representations. I also included an essay I had written about the Green Man.<\/p>\n
Finally a big sign. \u2018Be open, be honest, admit you\u2019re a Green Man, David. Thankyou.\u2019 I was quite proud of that sign. I felt I\u2019d done a decent job with the lettering, anyway.<\/p>\n
David looked over the exhibit. He turned to Edna.<\/p>\n
\u2018Screw this,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
And he turned around and he saw me. He made a fist with his right hand.<\/p>\n
\u2018You bastard. You\u2019ve been following me.\u2019<\/p>\n
I pleaded with David. \u2018Why not just tell us? Why did you have to keep it a secret?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018What’s a secret?\u2019 asked Mrs. Phelps, who lived two doors down.<\/p>\n
\u2018That David here is a Green Man at the traffic lights down the road.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Really?\u2019 said Bob Knolls. \u2018How do you fit?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Good question,\u2019 I yelled, \u2018because, get this: He shares his light box with a Red Man!\u2019<\/p>\n
Everyone gasped.<\/p>\n
\u2018It\u2019s simple, right,\u2019 said David, \u2018it\u2019s just like a magician sawing a woman in half, except there\u2019s no magician. And no saw. And er . . . no woman.\u2019<\/p>\n
Nobody said anything. I looked at him. I looked into his eyes.<\/p>\n
\u2018What I want to know, David,\u2019 I said, \u2018is, why the secrecy? Why the mystery?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Because you\u2019re all bloody idiots,\u2019 he yelled.<\/p>\n
That didn\u2019t go down well. People started to murmur.<\/p>\n
\u2018Edna and I moved here to start a new life,\u2019 he said, \u2018a good life together, and all we found were petty idiots with too much time on their hands. Nosey, spiteful. You\u2019re the worst, Tom. Absolutely pathetic.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Well, I\u2019m not lying about my profession,\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Well, why is it any of your business?\u2019<\/p>\n
I sighed.<\/p>\n
\u2018Because we\u2019re raising our kid Jerry Allen here, David. So we have a right to know. It\u2019s called gentleness. Or something. It\u2019s not called gentleness. Respect, maybe? Not sure.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Well, so far you haven\u2019t passed on much gentleness to young Jerry Allen if he\u2019s stepping on people\u2019s ears.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018How dare you,\u2019 I said, raising my voice.<\/p>\n
\u2018He stepped on my foot the other night,\u2019 said David. \u2018He\u2019s out of control.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018You keep my son out of this,\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n
But then Jerry Allen toddled up.<\/p>\n
\u2018Green Man is very strange,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
Well, that really set David off. \u2018You tell your boy to pipe down,\u2019 he snarled.<\/p>\n
And we both had to be held back. I wanted to throttle David, he wanted to throttle me, it got very ugly.<\/p>\n
Finally I said: \u2018Thing is, I reckon you\u2019re not coming clean. I don\u2019t just think you\u2019re a traffic Green Man. I think you\u2019re a Green Man Green Man. I think you\u2019ve come from a church. I think you were in the forest before that. I think you\u2019re a genuine woodland sprite with terrifying green powers. I have a suspicion that you are dangerously powerful. And I think you should own up.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Maybe I am an all-powerful green god,\u2019 he said. And he gave me a very ugly look. His eyes flickered bright green, like his luminous traffic lighting. \u2018Maybe I have walked the forests for ten thousand years. Walked from the Pacific to the Atlantic oceans tending to canopies. Talking to oaks. And maybe I did spend four hundred years up a church ceiling, inspiring saints, whispering to visionaries, guiding human beings along a better, healthier path. And maybe you\u2019ve come in and spoiled things. Interrupted my work. Set me back years. Maybe, and this is something you are going to have to think about, sport . . . Maybe I am dangerous. Maybe you should watch yourself . . . \u2019<\/p>\n
I shook my head.<\/p>\n
\u2018Well, you just sound like you betrayed your own cause, going electric like that. Doesn\u2019t seem quite as holy as perching halfway up a church.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Dylan went electric and he\u2019s still Dylan,\u2019 said David. He was seething.<\/p>\n
\u2018Yeah,\u2019 I said, \u2018but you\u2019re not Dylan, are you. You\u2019re David Geraldson. A whole other thing.\u2019<\/p>\n
David started to growl. We needed almost all of our guests to hold him back after that comment. For me it confirmed everything I had thought about our neighbor.<\/p>\n
\u2018Well,\u2019 I said, \u2018all I\u2019d say about that is if you can\u2019t manage your anger after ten thousand years I wouldn\u2019t trust you with my begonias.\u2019<\/p>\n
He had no answer to that.<\/p>\n
\u2018Come on love,\u2019 he said to Edna, \u2018these people are jerks. Let\u2019s go.\u2019<\/p>\n
They walked off into the night.<\/p>\n
Despite all that unpleasantness between David and me, it ended up being quite a good night. Jill and I had fun. Jerry Allen stayed up late eating ice cream. At one point he threw his spoon at Don Edwards who lives down the street. Got him in the neck.<\/p>\n
\u2018Now, now, Jerry,\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Drop ice cream very bad, Daddy,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018You got it, son.\u2019<\/p>\n
Near the end of the night, just before the garden party ended, Bob Knolls approached me.<\/p>\n
\u2018That guy was a total jerk, well done on exposing him.\u2019<\/p>\n
I felt really good after speaking to Bob. He\u2019s has always been a very honest, very decent guy. If Bob Knolls thought I was on the right track, well, I almost certainly was.<\/p>\n
Bob made my night, really. He really made it good.<\/p>\n
A week later a \u2018for sale\u2019 sign appeared on David and Edna\u2019s lawn. A week after that they were moving out.<\/p>\n
I tried to talk to them, but they ignored me. They buzzed off, and they were replaced a week later by a strange old hippy couple, Leon and Miriam Wallis. Horribly obnoxious bunch of no-hopers, I thought. I worried about their influence on Jerry Allen, what with their beads and the incense they no doubt burnt, though I had no proof about that. Just a hunch. I told Jerry Allen to watch out for the hippies. I told him that all hippies are bad.<\/p>\n
\u2018Hippies very naughty, Daddy,\u2019 said Jerry Allen.<\/p>\n
\u2018You said it Jerry. You said it.\u2019<\/p>\n
I hated those hippies right away, missed David and Edna.<\/p>\n
One night I was putting the bins out, and I looked up, and Leon Wallis was standing there smoking a cigarette, leaning on his front fence.<\/p>\n
\u2018Hi, Tom,\u2019 he said, waving, \u2018lovely night, makes you think about the late sixties, doesn\u2019t it? When just about anything seemed possible?\u2019<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t wearing a robe. Or a lantern. I felt very bored by that.<\/p>\n
I walked down the hill, wandered through the back streets, up to where the traffic lights were. There was David in his light box, flickering green. I walked up to him.<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019m sorry about what I did,\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n
The Red Man spoke on suddenly.<\/p>\n
\u2018Piss off,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
I went.<\/p>\n
I go every night though, now. I watch the Green Man flicker from a distance.<\/p>\n
I tell you, I wish he was back here. David and Edna were much better neighbors, the new ones play a lot of Paul Simon songs. James Taylor. Okay in small doses, but it\u2019s constant. I\u2019m thinking of hosting a garden party featuring flow charts showing how both have a lot of weaknesses as songwriters, but I\u2019ll wait a bit. Wait until they admit how bad their taste in music is.<\/p>\n
\u2018Their music tastes very bad, Daddy,\u2019 says Jerry Allen at the dinner table, throwing spoons at the fridge.<\/p>\n
\u2018It\u2019s the worst, Jerry,\u2019 I say. \u2018They\u2019re going to know it, too.\u2019<\/p>\n
Any day now.<\/p>\n
BEN PULLAR<\/b> lives in Brisbane with his family. He writes stories, novels and songs. He has had stories published in Jersey Devil Press<\/i>, The Journal of Experimental Fiction<\/i>, Metazen<\/i>, and other places.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ben Pullar My neighbor David Geraldson is a Green Man. I found out one night while I was putting the bins out. I wheeled out the main bin, then the recycling bin, then stopped to admire the green stars, the … Continue reading