The Red Tree

A big red tree adorned the lawn of the house, an old man played guitar in its warm shadow. The sun had blazed but sank low, halfway below the horizon, still casting warmth before it, and beautiful soft colour saturated the sky. Ulysses had walked a way from where his car had been parked, and the scene was good, it stirred his imagination, and lit up corners of his memory.

The man looked up as Ulysses strode slowly, but purposefully through the gate. He smiled and added a little riff to the blues standard he played. His lyrics finally lightly dusting Ulysses's ear-drums. He had a voice tinged with many things, and it had a worldly but friendly tone. Ulysses walked the long driveway, the music lending itself beautifully to the dusk that placed itself slowly across Ulysses's view of earth.

The man on the guitar stopped.

"Before you come any closer stranger, praytell, what your first name," he spoke in a low easy voice, "I would take a measure of thee, from the vision I see before me, coupled with the name they parents chose and who I perceive you to be after I have heard you speak."

Ulysses hailed him from the fifteen yards that remained between him and the man.
"My name sir is Ulysses, my parents named me for the Greek hero, but in the Roman tongue. I have walked about ten miles, after my car went to rest further back down your road."

The old man chuckled, "My road? It is no road of mine, just as the red tree that stands above me is not mine either. I am but someone who dwells in the vicinity of these things. The government say they own the road, but they do not. It is something that remains for a time, and in that time many use it, many more than ever pay for it, I was just the ten minutes gone singing an ode to that road."

" I would like to hear that." Ulysses said carefully, a half smile creeping onto his face.

The old man lowered his eyes for a moment and spoke slowly, "Would you now? Would you now?"

"Come over and sit down then, on the log there."

Ulysses walked to the log, it was several years old, but solid enough to have retained itself well against the weathering of time. Mushrooms grew in part of the bark, and an enchanting turquoise flowered vine wrapped it self about the base of the trunk, along what had been its upright side. It looked a comfortable seat, especially after the trek he had endured.

"alright then, the man spoke, I will play you my song."

He shifted his seat slightly, before quickly going about checking if the sound of the guitar was right for what he would try to do. He smiled briefly, before hitting the strings with his fingers and beginning.

The sound was strange, morose but optimistic, with undertones of love and violence, and the odd moment of pure beauty. Ulysses sat rapt, the music flooding his being.

The old man started to sing, a song about another man, who lived on the road many years ago. The music rose and fell, as the story weaved through the chords, setting itself a-flight, airborne on sound-wavws. Ulysses was astonished, he had never expected something so penetratingly magnificent. He was almost aghast, and felt tingling down the base of his spine.

The song carried him into its legend, he became the protagonist, moving through the music. The old man's hands rhythmic and blurred, then still and beating, as the music changed up and down.

The sun sat on the edge of the world, the last light creeping across the plain. As the last strains of the song reverberated in his brain, Ulysses hoped he would be able to lodge in the house that sat off behind the man.

"What do you think?" the old man croaked, voice crackling under the strain of the song it had sung.

"Amazing man, can you tell me your name?"

The old man smiled, the same smile of earlier, though a little more haunting.
"My name? Haha, I am no-one, you are alone in this field."

Ulysses started, there was no one there, no old man, and no guitar, nothing save a large magpie that looked at him with a quick quizzical eye before flying off into the gumtree that sat, now menacingly, above the deserted house. He got up, it was almost dark, and this was a strange road.