Small Things
The old man and the Lorax spend a fair bit of time together, though not every moment or even every day. Now that the trees are growing back, there'll soon be a forest again, which gives the forest guardian plenty to do. Taking care of the seedlings, for one. The Once-ler tends to the ones outside his Lerkim, but the children of the last seed have taken hold for miles, and he can't just roam the valley like he did in his youth. Too far along the river and his hips are bothering him, then his back; he shakes his head, calls himself a dinosaur (fossil, the Lorax adds), and turns around to head home.
So the Lorax watches over the rest of the young trees, and helps the animals settle in, and calls on the humans pitching camp throughout the valley. Expatriates of Thneedville, mostly, attracted to the re-emerging beauty of nature and eager to put down roots amidst it – study it, paint it, help it along. There's a simplicity to life here impossible in a city, or so the Lorax is told.
He keeps careful tabs on the people he allows to move in here (fool me once, shame on you, he thinks; fool me twice, well—who doesn't know how that ends?), regularly re-evaluating their intentions over whatever sweets they have on hand when he comes around. He doesn't want to turn everyone away – the forest could probably use a handful of humans on its side – but he has to be picky. Not a month back, he chased a lady out for a vase of cut flowers on an end table, and he wasn't the least bit sorry.
His favorite transplant is a small family not too far from the Lerkim – a young couple with a daughter about two years old. They trundled into the valley a few months ago, built a small house with sky-colored shutters and a door that lists slightly to the left, and have caused remarkably little trouble since. The man keeps a garden, tending to his plants in the morning and the surrounding trees after lunch; the woman, once a doctor in Thneedville, has set herself up as a vet for the growing animal population. The little girl has a habit of tugging on his mustache, but other than that, she's okay.
When he's not visiting them or the other settlers, or welcoming returning animals, or checking up on the Truffula saplings, he shoots the breeze with his very good acquaintance, the Once-ler. Usually, when he shows up, he doesn't even have to knock on the door. Most of what the old man does – strumming his guitar (he's out of practice, he says, so you can hardly call it playing, but it'll get there soon enough), feeding the baby swans in the nest by his window, knitting sweaters and toilet-seat covers out of miff-muffered moof – he does outside, in a shabby armchair dragged out into the yard. The Lorax doesn't have to ask why.
It can't be a very exciting life, but maybe he's had enough excitement. He seems happy this way. Often they'll be sitting outside the Lerkim, talking, not talking, and the Lorax looks over to see that the old man's eyes have fallen shut, his head against the back of his chair. He's not asleep (as the Lorax learned after the first time, when his shout of WAKE UP, BEANPOLE! earned him a startled slap in the face), just…drifting, breathing. Enjoying the sun on his face. These small things, he says, are what count for him now.
When they do talk, they talk about the shapes of the clouds, the smell of rain in the air. They talk about what's new in the valley – well, mostly the Lorax talks and the Once-ler listens, having little to contribute but the daily growth of the saplings in his yard. More than once, the Lorax has tried to tell him about the settlers, the family with the garden especially – you'd like 'em, he says; they're kinda dippy, like you – but he's not interested. He's sure they're fine people, he says, but the less he has to do with them, the more likely they'll stay that way. He holes up in the Lerkim when they come by.
They don't talk about the past. It's an unspoken agreement – when the topic comes up, it's quickly switched to the weather. The Lorax isn't sure how much time the Once-ler has left, but he knows it can't be much, and figures it's better not to waste it salting old wounds. It wouldn't do any good.
Time. To the Lorax, it's a foreign concern. He's a part of the Earth, like the seasons, like the wind, and like the seasons and the wind he sometimes sleeps, but never dies. He's never really had to think about time, or not having enough of it. Never until now, when he looks up at the Once-ler in the shadow of the Lerkim, and realizes that the first tree he felled had lived longer than he will.
It's all right, the old man says once, watching the wind blow a dandelion bare. I'm at peace with it. My problem was never too little time, anyway – it was too much. Too much time regretting, being angry, being sad. For so many years, I thought I would die without ever seeing the sky again, or being able to face myself in the mirror—so—it's all right, you know? Sure, there's more I would've liked to do, but I can't ask for that. It's enough to be able to fix my mistakes.
He closes his eyes then, and for a little while, the Lorax just looks at him. Tries to see the young man he once knew through this layer of dust. Tries to think of a way – any way – things could have happened differently
than they did.
One day, the Lorax's visit to the Lerkim begins with a not-unusual sight: the Once-ler sitting in his armchair, plucking the strings of his guitar. But this time, for the first time, it's begun to sound like a song. Not bad, the Lorax says, and the old man stops, smiles. You think? he asks, sounding, for a moment, like he did when they first met. Excitement makes him look young. Maybe I'll get good in time to play something for my funeral, he adds wryly, checking himself, and the years cave in on his face again.
Yeesh, lighten up, will ya? the Lorax says. The old man laughs as he returns to his playing. He doesn't seem to notice that the Lorax didn't correct him, or even really comfort him – doesn't notice, or maybe doesn't mind. He knows that the Lorax doesn't lie. I like that, he said once. It's refreshing. Annoying, but at the same time—refreshing. Life is too short for lies.
The Lorax, being a part of the Earth, can sense its natural rhythms. He couldn't speak for the trees if he couldn't hear their voices. He hears the life in everything, like music; it tells him when the river will flood, when the flowers will bloom, and when the nestlings outside the old man's window will be able to fly. Today, the Once-ler's song – like the song of the forest when the RV first rumbled through it – tells him it will be over soon.
He can't even say hey, one day at a time, beanpole, like he usually does when the conversation takes these turns. Not without lying, because at this point, he's not sure there'll be another day. Not for the old man, anyway. Not for him, not for them, not for this: sitting in the gentle warmth of the early afternoon sun, listening to the echo of birdsong. Pretending that the Once-ler is still young, with the luxury of being stupid, and that the Lorax won't spend the rest of forever carrying his sadness and hope – wearing it, like a heavy coat. Like a thneed, he would joke with the old man, if this were the kind of thing they could talk about.
But they don't talk about it. Just the weather and the saplings, and the Once-ler plays his guitar. It's a nice song, the one he's playing, and the Lorax can almost confuse it with the sunset-song only he can hear—except he can't, he never can. It never gets any easier. Billions of living things die every day, cells and plants and insects and animals and old men in threadbare gloves and coats that drag the ground, and it never gets any easier.
After awhile, the sounds of plucked strings grow fewer and farther in between. The song becomes a series of notes, like pebbles skipped on a pond, and eventually fade into silence. The Once-ler's eyes close and his hands slacken, settling for cradling the guitar – one hand resting on the strings, the other curled around the neck – instead of playing it. His breaths come slower, heavier, the way they do when he drifts.
The Lorax wants to walk away. Remember all the living things that died because of him, he thinks, wanting to want to walk away. I'd be doing him a favor just to stay until the end. Well, okay, maybe he owes the old man that much – they do, after all, spend a fair bit of time together, and it would be hard to say they're not friends. Maybe the Once-ler deserves to die in the company of a friend. But certainly no more than that. I can't ask for that, the Once-ler had said himself, and it was true.
But he hadn't asked. The Lorax had just thought. It isn't necessarily in his nature to be generous, at least not with humans, but he's thought for some time now about unasked-for favors – about gifts. Humans give gifts on birthdays, he knows. If the Lorax has a birthday, only the Earth herself is old enough to remember it, so he has only a passing familiarity with the traditions surrounding them: cake, songs, gifts.
A memory floats to the surface of his mind – one day in the old forest, back when everything still seemed like it might be okay, and no one would have to learn their lesson the hard way. The Once-ler was baking something in his kitchen when the Lorax and a pack of assorted animals blew through his little house, caught up in a game of tag. For about ten seconds, the house was plunged into chaos, a hurricane of squirmy bodies knocking things over, bouncing off the walls, and chasing each other across every surface in sight before exploding back out the door.
The Lorax had stayed behind a second, to catch his breath and make sure the Once-ler wasn't too peeved by their impromptu intrusion. He turned at the doorway to see the young man cleaning something up off the floor, a frown carved into his forehead. Hey, sorry about that, the Lorax said, trotting over to get a look at the heap of white goo and crumbs. What were you making, anyway?
The Once-ler sighed. A birthday cake, if you have to know. The Lorax raised his eyebrows. Whose birthday is it? The Once-ler scraped the last of the mess into his dustpan, straightened up and dumped it out in the garbage, brow still knit with…anger? Sadness? Mine. I was making it for myself, since no one's here to celebrate with me. Not like they would have, anyway, he added under his breath.
Well what are we, chopped liver? the Lorax had said, but the Once-ler refused to be mollified. He'd shooed the Lorax out and sulked inside for the rest of that day, and no more was ever said of birthdays or celebrations. Everyone in the valley liked a party, and they'd have been more than happy to help the Once-ler eat that cake – but if he was going to be like that, the Lorax had thought, better to leave well enough alone. Humans could be extraordinarily touchy.
So maybe a gift is owed (though the idea that it's a birthday gift strikes him as both appropriate and inappropriate at once). A small gift, of course, since anything more would definitely be inappropriate, and since small things are what count now, anyway. And though to the old man that might mean sunlight or a clean breath, to the Lorax, who is as old as the Earth herself, a human life seems a very small thing.
Once the thought has become a decision, he looks up at the old man and waits, listening carefully for just the right note in his ebbing song. There are, after all, limits to the Lorax's powers. He can't restore life to something dead (if he could, none of this would've had to happen), and he can't just lay hands on any old thing and transform it, not at just any old time. There's a moment, at the very end of a creature's life, when the spirit begins ungluing from the flesh—not so much that body becomes shell, but enough that the right sculptor can reshape its clay. Enough that the song can be rewound.
You're gonna owe me big, beanpole, the Lorax mutters, too quietly to be the last thing the old man hears. Then he reaches out to touch him, with one small orange paw, and the valley is engulfed in light.
Billions of living things are born every day. Cells and plants and insects and animals and babies, pink, plump-faced babies wriggling in a pile of green fabric, blinking up at the Lorax when the light fades. He's always been a little nervous around human babies – finds them disconcertingly helpless, lacking the instincts of animal young. Baby hummingfish burst from their eggs swimming, and barbaloot pups go rooting for a teat as soon as they're licked clean, but human babies just…lie there, staring at you. When they're not squalling their throats raw, that is.
At least this one is quiet, and the eyes looking up at him are familiar. He shouldn't remember anything – not now, not for as long as he lives – but he still looks at the Lorax with distant, milky recognition, as you might look at someone you think you met in a dream. Maybe, the Lorax thinks as he wraps the baby in his old pink thneed, gathering him carefully into his arms, there are some ties that never break.
There must be something comforting about the way the Lorax carries him, because the baby drops off to sleep as they cross the valley, curled up in the soft folds of the thneed. The Lorax stops on the hill overlooking the house with the sky-colored shutters, making sure his timing is right: no one digging in the garden, no one at the window looking out. The family will be inside, eating lunch, and the man won't come out to water the saplings until the Lorax is long gone.
There's a makeshift fence around the house and garden; the creak of its gate wakes the baby. He makes a noise – sort of a squeak, sort of a mew – and the Lorax shushes him, claps a paw over his mouth as they approach the left-leaning door. On the doorstep, the Lorax feels the wet flicker of a tongue against his palm. Cripes! he yelps, then flinches, bracing to dart into the bushes should someone come out to investigate. They must not have heard him, though, because the door doesn't open, and he lets out a silent sigh of relief. The baby laughs.
The Lorax shakes his head as he deposits his bundle on the doorstep, as gently as he can. Lingering just a moment before leaving, he realizes that even though this isn't his old friend's last day, this is their last day together—maybe not forever, but for a long time. He won't be visiting this family for awhile. It's better that way, he thinks – better not to have him slipping on inside jokes the kid won't remember, or freaking out every time he pulls up a clover. It's better if he doesn't know about his old life, and the Lorax was too much a part of that life to stick around now.
But maybe someday. Maybe eventually, when the kid is older – when he has a new name and a new life, and he's grown back into his long limbs – the Lorax will come back, and they'll be friends again.
You done good, beanpole, he says softly before he goes. Maybe even better this time around.