by Ellen Datlow
I expected her to snap at me but she only shrugged. “I’ll have to ask my shrink.”
“You have a shrink?”
“Yeah. I’m getting divorced.” She gave me a sideways look under half-closed eyelids. “Thought you knew.”
“Mom! Seriously—”
“That’s private.” She got up and started clearing the table.
“Wait,” I pleaded, “I have more questions.”
She leaned against the kitchen counter. “Give it a rest, will you? It was horrible but it’s over. You have no good reason to bring it up.”
“Actually, someone else brought it up,” I said. “A few days ago.”
• • •
My mother didn’t march over to Ralph Costa’s house immediately, or even the next morning, which surprised me. I asked her what she was going to do but all she said was, “I’m thinking,” and warned me not to ask again. I thought the suspense was going to kill me, but then something unbelievable happened.
Gideon O’Dell came back.
• • •
He looked completely different without the long hair, beard, and moustache, but I recognized him immediately.
I was reading a book under the redbud tree in the front yard. My mother had said it would have to go this summer. I was sulking about it when a truck with a crew of tree men from Green & Serene pulled up in front of the house next door, and Gideon O’Dell hopped out of the driver’s side. For a second, I thought he actually was a ghost, except he was wearing Green & Serene overalls and cap.
I froze.
Everybody had said he’d be in prison for the rest of his life. Had he escaped? If so, wouldn’t he have tried to get as far away from here as possible?
Sure—unless he was hiding in plain sight to throw everyone off. Only he didn’t act like someone in hiding. He and the rest of the crew went to work trimming the trees in the Coopermans’ front yard like they were all just guys and none of them had killed his wife in the middle of this very street. Because they didn’t know, I thought; if they had, they wouldn’t have given him any tools with sharp edges.
Eventually, they went into the Coopermans’ backyard and I bolted for the house.
• • •
I didn’t tell my mother. She was an office manager now for a small law firm (a different one than her lawyer’s) and the job had really perked her up. New wardrobe, new hairstyle, even new friends she went out with on the weekends. It made me realize how little I’d seen her smile or heard her laugh in the last few years, even before the divorce. The last thing I wanted to do was spoil everything. Maybe it wouldn’t have but I was pretty sure she wouldn’t think it was good news. At the same time, I was bursting to tell her because maybe someone at her job would know why he was walking around free.
Telling my father during one of our weekend visits was even more out of the question. I’d never told him about Ralph Costa because I was afraid he’d drive up on the guy’s lawn and take a swing at him. Plus, he wasn’t doing as well as my mother, morale-wise, although I thought that was the condo. It felt more like a long-stay hotel than a real home. I asked my father if he were going to look for something else once the divorce was settled.
He was actually surprised at the question. “Of course not. I got a good deal on it. This is home for the foreseeable future.” He gave a short laugh that didn’t have much humor in it. “Assuming any part of the future is foreseeable.”
Oh, Dad, I thought, you have no idea.
Nobody did, just me. And Gideon O’Dell. Like we were the only two people on the planet.
• • •
Whenever the Green & Serene crews were around, I stayed in, which was a lot, since everybody in the neighborhood used them. Every so often, I’d peek out a window to see what they were doing (what he was doing). But what really happened was, every so often, I didn’t peek out a window. I watched Gideon O’Dell like a hawk, and to be honest, it was pretty boring, All he did was work hard.
Well, so far. Just because he only cut branches now didn’t mean he was reformed.
And he looked so criminal. The saggy tank tops he wore didn’t cover much; using binoculars, I could see how crappy his tattoos were. On the left side of his chest there was a wide rectangular patch that looked like several layers of skin had been scraped off.
He’d had a tattoo removed, I realized; probably something with Lily’s name. His second try at cutting her out of his life like she’d never existed. If so, she’d left a pretty big scar.
Not just on him, either. I thought of Mr. Grafton and Ralph Costa, and even my parents. And me, of course, with the only scar no one could see.
Dammit, how the fuck was Gideon O’Dell out of prison?
• • •
Strangely enough, a cop show rerun gave me the answer. A guy who had killed someone in a fit of rage took a plea bargain for manslaughter instead of murder and got ten years instead of life. I almost fell off the sofa.
“Does that really happen?” I asked my mother as she came in from the kitchen with a bowl of popcorn. She looked puzzled so I gave her a quick summary. “But that’s just TV, right? Or just in big cities, right?”
“Not always,” she said and my heart sank. “One of our lawyers just had a murder case. She got the client a plea bargain, although I can’t remember offhand what it was.”
“Do people know that?”
She frowned slightly. “It’s a matter of public record.”
“That doesn’t mean anyone knows,” I said. “I mean, if it didn’t make the news.”
“Most things don’t, unless they’re high profile.”
“Like the O’Dell murder?” I said, before I could think better of it.
I expected her to give me grief for bringing it up again but she only nodded. “They moved the O’Dell trial to a different venue. His lawyer said it wasn’t possible to get an impartial jury. He was probably right. It was so lurid, the town was glad to be shut of it.”
“You sure picked up a lot since you got that job,” I said.
“I’m a quick study.” She pushed the bowl at me. “Don’t make me eat all this myself. Because I can and I will. Unless you save me.”
It seemed like that was all I ever did.
• • •
Two days later, I saw Ralph Costa talking to a couple of Green & Serene guys, including Gideon O’Dell. It was all very ordinary, a man talking to tree service guys about the hackberry tree beside his house. No earth tremors, no thunder and lightning, no frogs falling from the sky, or fire, or blood. No apparitions and no ghosts, either. Ralph Costa obviously had no idea.
The discussion was short and friendly—Gideon O’Dell actually patted Ralph on the arm before he walked away. Ralph didn’t suddenly cry out in horrified recognition. But then, Ralph had never seen him except as—
As what—a ghost? But Gideon O’Dell wasn’t dead. So how could Ralph Costa or Mr. Grafton have seen him murdering Lily?
Maybe it was the ghost of his old life? That sounded stupid even just in my head.
Unbidden, my mother’s words came to me: Stains like that don’t wash out so easily.
Maybe that was it—Lily was a ghost, Gideon was a stain.
That should have sounded just as stupid, but it didn’t.
• • •
Even at this point, I didn’t consider talking to my friends. The few who weren’t away spending two months with a divorced parent had soccer or swim team or were in summer school. That’s what I told myself, anyway. In reality, I just didn’t want to tell them about my parents. They’d have understood; a lot of them had already been through it. It seemed like most of the kids I knew lived either with single parents or in what the magazines called blended families, because that made step-parents and step-brothers and step-sisters sound sweet, like a smoothie rather than something out of the Brothers Grimm.
My friends would all be very sympathetic. Then they’d start rehashing their own horror stories along with the ones they’d heard
secondhand. Talk about Grimm. But they were actually supposed to make you feel better about your own shitstorm. See how much worse it could be?
Except I did know. My friends all knew about Saddle Hills’ worst-ever crime. But none of them had grown up within sight of Lily O’Dell’s murder, or seen Mr. Grafton trying over and over to wash it off the road. And none of them had a murderer for a tree man.
Then it occurred to me while I was brooding up in my room one afternoon: what if I told them I did?
Hey, guys, you’re never gonna believe this—
They’d all be in such a rush to tell everyone else, they probably wouldn’t even notice my father had moved out.
But then what?
Would people call the police? Cancel their tree service? Would there be emergency Neighborhood Watch meetings? Would everyone march on City Hall? Or would the villagers simply descend on Green & Serene with pitchforks and torches to drag the monster out and throw him over the cliff themselves?
It was entirely possible, I thought uneasily, that if people did know, Gideon O’Dell might not be safe. For real.
Yeah, ask his wife how that feels, a voice in my head whispered nastily. Screw him. He’s a murderer who should be doing life in prison, not pruning elms. He got off easy, not even ten years. You know who didn’t get a deal? Lily O’Dell—she’s dead forever. He deserves whatever he gets. If he’s not a real ghost, he ought to be.
After a bit, I realized I’d been sitting with my fists balled up so tightly my palms were starting to cramp. It was one of the few times I was glad I was a nail-biter because otherwise my palms would have been bleeding. Gideon O’Dell had made me that angry.
Gideon O’Dell had made me that angry?
Well, not just him—my parents and their divorce bullshit and every other grown-up who just tromped around only caring about themselves. My parents probably thought I was adjusting and maybe sometimes I thought so too. As if anything could really be that easy! Like fucking up my life was no big deal. They were as bad as Gideon O’Dell.
Part of me knew the comparison was out of proportion but that was more mature than I wanted to be just then. It was grown-up thinking, and seeing as how I couldn’t do anything else they did, like drink or drive or join the army or just fuck shit up for the hell of it, I wasn’t going to be an adult about this, either.
• • •
“What’s going on next door?” I asked, looking out the dining room window at all the G&S trucks pulling in. “Are the Coopermans having a party for the tree men? Or are they just luring them in for a mass baptism?” The Coopermans left pamphlets in our mailbox about the joys of being baptized once a month.
“They’re cutting down the elm in their backyard,” my mother said. “Deborah Cooperman asked if I wanted any for firewood.”
“Oh shit.” I moved to the patio doors to watch the tree men setting up. “I love that tree. How could they?”
“Language,” my mother said but without any real feeling. She was engrossed in a computer magazine. “All elms in this country have Dutch elm disease and eventually, there’s nothing you can do.”
“Theirs still looks okay to me,” I grumbled.
“G&S gave them an estimate of what the upkeep would cost. They decided to keep their kids instead.” She chuckled. “If I had to choose between our elm tree and you, I’d choose you.”
I glared at her, suppressing a remark about grown-ups’ choices.
“Probably,” she added, smiling with half her mouth. “On a good day, for sure. But I also have bad days. You have been warned.”
I couldn’t help laughing. All of a sudden, I was tired of being mad at her and my father, fed up with being fed up. I sat down next to her on the sofa and let her tell me about the computer she’d learned to use at her job and how it was changing everything. She was talking about the office network when I suddenly felt cold, like the temperature had dropped from eighty-five to fifty-five, and I knew Gideon O’Dell had arrived. I got up and went to the patio door.
“Gale?” my mother asked, puzzled. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything,” I said.
• • •
Why would Gideon O’Dell come back here instead of going just about anywhere else? For all the happy memories? To find himself? To find America?
Christ, why did grown-ups do anything ?
Because it was the worst possible idea, of course.
Made sense.
• • •
It took three days for them to reduce the Coopermans’ elm to firewood and toothpicks, and I watched pretty much the whole thing. Or rather, I watched Gideon O’Dell while I sat out on the patio pretending to read A Tale of Two Cities. I’d already read it for school so if anybody asked what section I was pretending to be on, I could answer. Not that anyone would—my mother was at work all day and none of the tree men were going to wander over to the fence on a break to ask me what else I’d read by Dickens. There was a small risk of the Coopermans sending over one of their kids with a pamphlet; if so, I’d pretend to use it as a bookmark and toss it later.
But no one bothered with me. Mrs. Cooperman was busy making lemonade and iced tea for the G&S guys and even gave them lunch. I suppose it was a good Christian thing to do since killing the elm was such hard work. She smiled and waved at me a couple of times and I waved back, fantasizing about telling her who was in her backyard. If Mary had been outside, she’d have probably been telling all the tree men how great Jesus was. Jesus loves you. Jesus loves everybody.
But did Mrs. Cooperman? How much Christian charity would she have for Gideon O’Dell? Would she judge not, or cast the first stone? I was tempted to find out, except I had a very strong feeling it would somehow backfire. Either my parents would be furious with me for not telling them right away, or it would turn out the guy wasn’t really Gideon O’Dell after all.
Or worst of all, he was Gideon O’Dell with a fake ID, and he’d come back later to shut me up.
Right now, he was high up in the tree with a chain saw. All of the leafy branches had been cut away and now they were starting on the thicker arms. He seemed to be having a good time. Guys with power tools were basically kids with toys. But it was more than that, I thought. He was killing a live thing.
That’s why he came back, I thought suddenly. My heart was pounding like a jackhammer in slow motion: Bang . . . bang . . . bang . . . Because secateurs and machetes and chain saws are more fun than a cheap steak knife.
I walked over to lean on the fence. I’d been so worried about him seeing me, but now I wanted him to. I wanted him to know I was onto him.
But when he did finally look in my direction, his gaze slid away without interest before I could even hold my breath. Talk about an anticlimax. I actually felt cheated. Disrespected, even.
But maybe he’d been too busy killing his wife to notice me that night. Now he was too busy killing a tree. Or trying to; the chain saw jammed suddenly, then cut out altogether. Was that as frustrating as a broken steak knife?
Lily O’Dell had still been alive when the blade broke off but she hadn’t been screaming. She’d had no breath left. Her left lung had collapsed and the right one was about to. The adrenaline that had powered her desperate sprint was gone. She’d used the last of her energy to punch through the top of the screen door and grab at me. Then Gideon O’Dell dragged her away by her hair into the street, where he stabbed her and stabbed her and stabbed her until the handle of the knife was so slippery with blood it slid out of his hand.
My head cleared and I found myself sitting on the ground beside the fence with the sun in my eyes. I went back to my chair on the patio wondering what the hell had come over me. Some kind of vivid waking dream? Not a memory—or rather, not my memory. What I had seen in my mind’s eye had all been from Lily O’Dell’s point of view.
• • •
It only took one day for Gideon O’Dell to cut down the redbud tree in our front yard, working alone. Two other guys deep-watered the elm bes
ide the house and the walnut tree in the backyard, and explained how to harvest the walnuts. We couldn’t just pick them off the tree like apples, which was disappointing. It all sounded like a lot of tedious effort for a few nuts. Even having a murderer in our front yard didn’t make it less boring.
I sat on the carpet a couple of feet back from the screen door pretending to read Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination. As usual, Gideon O’Dell worked away like nothing had ever happened here, like he wasn’t twenty feet away from the very spot where he stabbed his wife to death.
How could he not feel weird being here?
Maybe he had amnesia. Maybe he got beaten up so many times in prison he had brain damage.
Abruptly, he put down the chain saw, looked directly at me. I stared back; the book resting on my folded legs fell shut. If he hadn’t seen me before, he had now. Hadn’t he? No, he hadn’t; his eyes weren’t focused on me at all, I realized, watching as he took the bandanna around his neck off, wiped his face with it, then tied it around his head.
What are you doing here? What do you want? I asked him silently. His face gave nothing away. The only thing I could read was the name tag pinned to the front of his overalls: GO. What kind of a name was that?
His initials, of course, what his buddies used to call him. Also his family, including L—
I shook my head to clear it. Gideon O’Dell, aka GO, was now staring thoughtfully at the roof. I went up to my room.
I stayed back from the window, watching the rest of the redbud’s destruction with binoculars. Occasionally, I turned to the forever-unclean spot on the road, like I might see something besides old dirty asphalt. Like Lily O’Dell’s blood might come bubbling up out of the ground in outrage.
Nothing happened, of course, except GO finished demolishing the redbud.
• • •
The son of a bitch came back on Sunday afternoon. Parked his truck in our driveway, trotted up the stairs, and rang the doorbell. I stayed in my room, wondering if he’d finally decided to force his way in and kill us. It was broad daylight, everyone in the neighborhood was home, and kids were outside playing, but a mad killer might not care.