A Little Piece of Something Broken
“Abandoned” by Sarah E. N. Kohrs
Sunchokes overran the church lawn. The dendrochronologist pulled up to the chapel.
She was dating church pews by counting tree rings. A backwards prophet decoding climatological phenomenon in vascular tissue. The rise and fall of civilizations was written in tree scars. She related to the damage. Long sleeve shirts, trauma razored into her arms, brutal winters, humid summers, the overgrowth of wildflowers on the side of the road, staring at the woods upside down from the driver’s seat of her car.
The lab needed the information hidden in the churches’ wood. Boards from old growth forests contained the history of the region, meteorological phenomena, floods, droughts, bolides that crashed through earth’s atmosphere. The quality of a ring could confirm written records, how the sky lit up, and the earth shook one night.
The dendrochronologist sampled mostly churches. Holy relics were better preserved and unique in their timescales. Weird things happened between the time people figured out how to fell cedar and record the past on parchment. Strange things happened before that, but the answers were in a different language, geological patterns telling stories. Old temples, and the forests that made them, were one of the greatest links scientists had to understanding the past.
The sanctuary smelled of varnish, bodies, funeral flowers. The dendrochronologist ran her hand along the aisles, remembered the summers her parents sent her to Bible Camp. The night sky, a mountain reflected in the lake. Kids singing, the smell of sweat, black flies beneath whirring ceiling fans. She worked in the kitchen gutting chickens, chopping onions. Sometimes she’d venture into the woods with a field guide and try to identify fungi between oaks.
Standing by a stream, sunlight filtering through the canopy, a figure appeared in the woods. A shadow by the rock wall her sister said predated some historical estimates. Her blood ran cold. Far off, kids were laughing, traversing ropes courses, singing praise and worship songs. She understood the appeal of a personal savior. Her father’s stoicism, her mother’s mania, the world spinning louder than she could hear. There were no answers, and no one came to rescue her.
The dendrochronologist heard a splash behind the altar and walked to the front of the chapel. She ascended the pulpit steps and opened the gate to the choral section, following the sound of water. A shirtless elderly man sat in the baptistry. Two sets of steps descended on either side, like a small swimming pool.
The dendrochronologist apologized for the intrusion. The elderly man smiled and gestured for her to join him. His wrinkled body was covered in age spots, white hairs curled from his chest. He said he had led the congregation for thirty years, but was recently diagnosed with a degenerative brain condition.
“I’m losing my mind,” he said.
The dendrochronologist peeled her shirt and shorts off and waded down the baptistry stairs.
The preacher told her about his years in the church, how his father, and his father’s father, for several generations had been preachers there. The building had gone through renovations, fires, storms, weddings, and funerals. The world changed, but the word of God hadn’t, he said, pointing to a family Bible on a nearby ledge. The Bible was the one thing that reminded him of who he was day after day, year after year, stories, visions, names scrawled in the ledger, continuity, ritual.
The dendrochronologist said that’s why she counted tree rings. Every trunk had a story to tell, even after life. There were ways of figuring out the truth, about what happened, even if the path was circuitous, fragmented. There were people, objects, scattered across the landscape, some had more information than others.
“Feels like we’re all a little piece of something broken,” she said.
The preacher asked if she wanted some grape juice. He stood up, water dripping from his skin. He held the rail as he ascended the steps, shuffling around a wall.
The dendrochronologist sat in the pool. Sunlight filtered through tall windows. The sanctuary was quiet, and she could hear the wind outside. After a few minutes, the preacher hadn’t returned, she was getting cold, and starting to worry. She stood up, water rolled down her limbs. She had nothing to dry herself off with, and tried her best not to slip. She called to the preacher, asking if he was okay.
All was silent.
Behind the wall of the baptistry, was a dark corridor, and an antique cabinet made of gnarled wood. There were no doors, nowhere the preacher could have gone. His wet footprints stopped in front of the wardrobe. The dendrochronologist thought about opening the armoire. She could feel the hair rise on the back of her arms and neck, still unsure of where the pastor had gone, her phone was with her equipment. She hurried back to her clothing, scooping up her things, and running to her work bag. A bird sang somewhere in the distance.
She ran from the church, got into her car, and called the police, worried that the preacher had gone somewhere, somewhere she was too afraid to look.
About the author
Gabrielle Griffis (she/hers) is a musician, writer, and multimedia artist. She works as a librarian on Cape Cod. Her fiction has been published in Wigleaf, Split Lip Magazine, Monkeybicycle, XRAY, Necessary Fiction, CHEAP POP, Matchbook, and elsewhere. Visit her website at gabriellegriffis.com or follow her at @ggriffiss.
About the Artist
Sarah E. N. Kohrs is an artist and writer with over 125 poems and photographs published in literary journals. SENK is a potter and award-winning photographer, who contributes to The Foundation for Photo/Art in Hospitals. She is the recipient of Poetry Society of Virginia's 2023 Judah, Sarah, Grace, and Tom Memorial prize. Her chapbook, Chameleon Sky, received the 2022 Kingdoms in the Wild Poetry Award. Sarah has a BA in Classical Languages and Archaeology from College of Wooster, Ohio, and a Virginia teaching license endorsed in Latin and Visual Arts. She serves as a board member and president of VECCA; and is an NSVMGA master gardener. http://senkohrs.com.