Chew on This - Flash Fiction by Angela Townsend

 

Chew on This

Flash Fiction

by Angela Townsend

Sometimes you must go undercover.

Cover of darkness. Cover of velveteen. Cover of the quilt between light and greater light.

Trip the light fantastic with me.

You have your story. It’s more than a fable, more magnificent than a myth. We're dealing not in Little Golden Books, but of Great Coverless Tomes.

And yet, as glorious as your story is, there's a livelier thread still.

You, like every brave peculiar creature of the forest, are gifted with an understory.

Among trees, the understory is the quietly riotous, confidently content layer of capital-L Life. It thrums between the floor and the canopy. Seedlings and saplings and green grinning things fill the void between the ground that gives you courage and the branches that give you hope.

Warm and sheltering, a plentiful pantry, it's neither earth nor sky. It's easy to ignore the understory. Far better to let it lead you on an adventure.

Among animals, the understory is the essence of the elegance or arrogance that sprouts to the surface. It is the meaning behind the mysteries and histories we think we grasp.

At the cat sanctuary, I am learning from a mossy feral named Chewbacca.

How the sad-eyed sapling came to share his name with a Wookiee, we shall never know. The HELP that splashed across our headlines came from somewhere far below the star clusters, tangled in leafless trees and empty cans of Chef Boyardee.

Chewie was found in a restaurant basement.

And so the story goes. You read it scratched into the bark of every shelter: Chewie was in a hopeless situation. Chewie needed mercy like leaves need light. Chewie needed meat product. Chewie had never been properly socialized to human beings, since Mr. Boyardee had sadly never visited him.

Years and pages scrawled more story. Chewie was not what you might call a smiley Spaghetti-O. Chewie committed to his quiet ways. Chewie chose the hidden hollow of the tree rather than the hands of humans who would climb sequoias for the chance of cuddling him.

That was Chewie's story. But no woodsy soul is simply a story.

Beneath the canopy of his curmudgeonly ways, above the floor of his anxiety, Chewie gardened. Right beneath our nosy noses and human yearnings, the chunky botanist with the saddest eyes was a one-cat arbor for verdant, victorious joy.

Beneath the sky, Chewie was cherishing saplings.

He was nurturing bonds.

He was nourishing wobbly plants, staking them on the strength of his devotion, willing them into sunlight by the sheer force of his love.

Under the story of The Unadoptable Cat, Chewie was unfurling the understory of The Unfailing Friend.

One by one, twigs took strength under Chewie's venerable cantaloupe head. He purred nervous new cats into strength. He held them close until they could release their walking sticks. He loved them enough to let them go, full-grown hikers down a road he would demurely decline for himself.

Who can tell how many cats burst through the canopy into adopters' arms, thanks to Chewbacca the Quiet and Good?

Who can tell how many lost hikers found water, granola, and a fresh canteen of grace through Chewie's quiet choices?

Who can tell any of our understories until the last page is written?

Despise not the little things, the sacred things, the whispers between earth and sky. There may be days where all you can see are exploded cans of noodles and lonely rolling meatballs.

But somewhere in the midst, pressed like a leaf between your pages, a green grinning tale takes shape.

You, no less than Chewbacca, are an arboretum. Let sunlight hit all your layers, even the ones you can't understand. Especially those.

Who knows what wee creatures you're nurturing?

Who knows what may yet grow in the forest? Past and present are smiling and smooching, and we're wise to let the questions and answers grow together.

Angela Townsend is Development Director at Tabby’s Place: a Cat Sanctuary, where she bears witness to mercy for all beings. She has an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary and B.A. from Vassar College. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Amethyst Review, Braided Way, Cagibi, Fathom Magazine, The Razor, and Young Ravens Literary Review, among others. Angie loves life dearly.