“The Arborist” by Luis Ortiz / The Missouri Review
Sometimes the mind creates memories to help us see things more clearly.
When I ask writers what they think the most vital element in a short story is, the one that comes up before all others—before setting, plot, central conflict, theme, point-of-view, pacing—is character.
If a story is going to reach readers emotionally, it needs to come by way of a proxy; a stand-in for you.
This character, whether it’s a person, a pig who befriends a spider, a Black Beauty of a horse, a wooden marionette with a telescoping proboscis, a murderbot, will feel everything the writer wants you to feel. And if the job is done well, you’ll be transported.
It’s that radical act of empathy—the ability to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, hooves, murderboots—that makes writers the very best people.
…that is, assuming that they’re hitting their daily word counts. If they’re not, just get the hell out of there ;)
“The Arborist” (3,700 words) by Luis Ortiz in The Missouri Review is, first and foremost, a character study. A very entertaining and achingly poignant one.
We never find out our main character’s name, nor do we get a physical description. We don’t know if he’s tall or short, frail or husky, blonde or brunette. We wouldn’t even know he’s a he, but for it being mentioned once, offhandedly, that he’s a “barber’s son.”
I’ve always appreciated that approach. Why be saddled with someone else’s vision of a character when we can cobble together an image on our own, based on what we can infer about who they are? I’m a much more attentive reader when I’m called on to co-create in this way, because the story is partially mine.
What we do get from Luis Ortiz is our MC’s thoughts, and plenty of them. His mind is a roaring furnace. Most importantly, we get his thoughts about trees, about which he is fully obsessed.
It starts with a robust declaration of the majesty that is the tree:
“A tree can become stone. It can turn into fire. It can purify water. It can talk to other trees. It is a village unto itself for all kinds of creatures. It supports mile-long, ten-thousand-ton freight trains. It gives us air and shade. It feeds us. It shelters us both above and, when the time comes, belowground in our eternal rest. It does all this and more. Trees are the living bones of the world. This is not meant to be poetic.”
And then, immediately, before we’re locked into non-fiction-essay mode, we get this:
“My father doesn’t get it.”
…from the universal to the personal. Who is this character? And further, a central dilemma—just the hint of a plot.
We do get a plot here, but it’s a gossamer thing. It’s the kite string that keeps the heady ideas grounded. It’s the rolled-paper tubing that cotton candy is spun around.
The narrator’s father has uprooted his son’s life (they lived in a city high-rise) to move to a place that recalled his ideal, when he was growing up on a farm in Puerto Rico. But in his son’s eyes, it was movement in the wrong direction. This new, small town—which has even less trees than their city neighborhood, having replaced them with “utility poles stripped of branches and laden with wires”—is ironically named Greenwood.
His mother, on the other hand, is awake to the wonder in the world:
“Mamí has told me, more than once, that she visited city parks when I was in her womb so that I could experience the rustling of their leaves in the breeze. She said I was a spring/summer/fall baby and wanted me to hear the entire aural foliage cycle. Her mantra is ‘Trees are old magic.’”
The narrator’s thoughts of his mother and father are as individuals, the thoughts so distant from one another that they imply the couple’s separation, which is confirmed toward the story’s end. We get no temporal sense of scale. We don’t know how old the narrator is for much of the story before the telling places us with him in school. We only learn later that his thoughts are a reflection on his past. We don’t know until the end if that reflection is coming from an old man…it seems to be for what passes for wisdom, though it might just be conviction…but he is not an old man. All of that kept me unsettled while reading, as if I was in a fog of memory and loss.
Then we’re introduced to the story of La Madremonte, “a guardian of nature who can manifest as anything in the living world.” The narrator’s mother claimed she saw it in the Columbian rainforest:
“it appeared as a leviathan of phosphorescent mist, foamy and arborescent against the dark, with defined edges like a cloud. Only she saw it. She said, ‘Most wouldn’t recognize it, or understand it.’”
The narrator’s only contemporary is another isolated young person, an awkward girl named Vera. A great name, implying “truth.” The idea of romance hovers over everything about their connection—considering their circumstances, we very much want the two of them to have it—but it doesn’t come to that. The consummation of their relationship arrives in the simple act of understanding during a conversation. As I’ve opined in these appreciations before, this is craft of the highest order: setting an expectation and then defying it for something more sublime,
What I love about “The Arborist” is its slow-release. Our understanding of the main character is incremental, the mystery of him more than enough of a stand-in for plot. The whole of the character (and the story) is like a jigsaw puzzle, but we don’t get the benefit of a quickly-snapped-together, smooth-edged border to contain it. It gathers like a hazy image, like something appearing in the mist, like Madremonte.
It’s the story of a woman who is entranced with trees, raised by “only her father,” who gives birth to a son, in whom she fosters that love of trees. And that boy is also raised by his father—a father who “doesn’t get it.”
A boy who then navigates the world alone.
“A tree by itself is a lonely sight,” Luis Ortiz tells us. “In a forest, we lose sight of that.”
And as if that weren’t enough: “Sometimes the mind creates memories to help us see things more clearly.”
Which sounds like fiction in a nut shell to me.
The Missouri Review was founded in 1978. For the past five decades, they’ve upheld a reputation for finding and publishing the very best writers first. They are based at the University of Missouri and publish four print issues each year, as well as online-exclusive poetry, prose, and features.
Publications are selected from unsolicited submissions sent by writers from around the world.
The Missouri Review is a not-for-profit organization made possible in part by the generous support of subscribers and patrons. They help shape the contemporary literary scene by offering the finest work of today’s writers and by discovering the brightest new voices.
Editors invite submissions of fiction year round. They should be double-spaced. There are no length restrictions and standard response time is 10–12 weeks. Simultaneous submissions are OK as long as you notify them if accepted elsewhere. Authors are paid $25 per printed page. Works that do not fit the needs of a given issue may still be considered for their online exclusive feature, BLAST. BLAST authors are paid $100 per story.
They currently invite entries for the 2026 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize. Winners in fiction will receive $5,000 and publication in their spring 2027 issue. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: October 1, 2026.
Luis Ortiz has authored three biographies/art books on artists, including the Hugo Award nominee and Locus Award finalist Emshwiller: Infinity x Two, and edited numerous books, including Cult Magazines: A to Z with Earl Kemp. His writings have appeared in diverse periodicals including Illustration magazine and FilmFax. He is a partner and senior editor at Nonstop Press.
Many thanks to Luis Ortiz and The Missouri Review for the massive shade tree that is “The Arborist.”
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