Why I Wrote "The Shaking Tree"

By: J. Lucas Waters

 

From where does a story come? When and where is it born?

 

The Shaking Tree is a story that I have long been courting and planning to write. In fact, its earliest seeds can be found in weekend trips home while I was still in college. On a curvy Kentucky road winding its way across the green mountains that separate my alma mater and the old home place there is a brief intermission from the steep hills where the land flattens out into a green field. There, in the center of this field, like an ancient king upon his throne who surveys all about him, stands an old oak tree, its branches and boughs raised in adoration of the tender sky above him. I have no earthly idea how old this regal, sylvan masterpiece is, but it has no doubt seen centuries of heartbreak and happiness, despair and delight, bitterness and hope.

 

The image of this tree has haunted my waking hours. I dream sometimes that I sit under its peaceful canopy writing my verses and drinking full the bounty of the natural world. As the roots of the giant soak up water from the ground, I soak in the images that it provides. I have known for a while that this tree must be alive in my stories. Others must see the grandeur of God’s creation as I have.

 

But what form should this kind of revelation take?

 

I determined once that the image that inspired me must be supremely grandiose in my writing. I would make an epic, set in the hills of Kentucky, and the tree would play his part: a silent spectator among the triumphs and catastrophes of mankind. But, no matter how much I planned, it all seemed convoluted and unnecessarily long and tiresome. Everything I wanted to write could be written anywhere. It wasn’t tied to this place, or to the emotions elicited by the area. It was, as is so much fiction today, just a story. I had not torn my heart out and beaten it into the page, nor did the story I had devised merited such painful work. I abandoned it, tree and all – to my shame.

 

Time passed by. Every time I would cross paths with my old friend, he would silently remind me of my debt. For a poet, a debt is exacted whenever beauty is allowed to be seen. God does not give coins to be buried, but to be well-spent in His service. I knew what was expected of me. I should use that which was given me in such a way that it would be given anew to the world in honor of He Who gave it.

 

With this new realization, I decided that I would write a short story, the tree being the centerpiece. Oh! How I loved that story! I had it so entwined in my mind that even now, the final creation being extant, some of the original plotlines still play in my soul (and in the play). For example, the relationship between Jubal and Sarah are remnants of that short story. Even though I held that incarnation dearly, it never made its way to paper. The short story and the novel forms of The Shaking Tree are buried, perhaps forever, in the cemetery of unrealized works. This may be for the better, maybe for the worse. But it is, and that is certain.

 

Nonetheless, the story still remained to be told. I know now that the story would not have worked with such force then as it has now gained. I had not suffered enough to write it. I had not been fully bedecked in the garments of pain to properly host the gala the story deserved. If what Hemingway said is true, that there is nothing to writing but to sit at a typewriter and bleed, then I had not enough blood to fill the pages you will see performed before you. I was too immature and careless to write what I have written in this play. The effect that literature has on someone is the same for the author of the piece as it is for the reader. Stories affect us where we are. I’m certain that even as I age, the story I have written will continue to speak to me as it has done as I wrote it, but I will also see new things in my own writing than I see now.

I want you to know, reader and audience member, that when you see this play, you are not seeing pointless words being delivered by simple pretenders. You will see honest men and women attempting to create an illusion that will demonstrate what has been so very real for me, and has been real for many who have already read the script. Though it may be but a play, my blood is upon every page of this work, in every word, and I, a father sending forth his child into the world, gladly accept it as my own.

The day may come when the tree reappears in another form, be it novel, poem, or short story; but what you will see in the performance of this play is, to date, the best form I have found to tell the story and to reveal the splendid and tragic vision that the tree, and I, its infant pupil, have seen. I hope you enjoy it.