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Bryan Gruley: The Hanging Tree

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Bryan Gruley The Hanging Tree

The Hanging Tree: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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“Why did she hang herself? Why would she do that?”

Though I could not answer them, the questions themselves didn’t baffle me as much as why my mother was asking them. Did she really think there was something more to know other than that Gracie’s entire life seemed to point to an end like this one?

“I know you loved Gracie. But it’s not like this is shocking.”

“It may not be shocking, but it is a shock, at least to me.” She looked up at me. I saw fresh tears in her eyes, more angry than sad. “Gracie did not deserve this, Gus. She did not deserve this. She was starting to come around. She was starting to settle down.”

I thought, How could she not deserve what she chose? But I did not say anything. I dropped to a knee and put a hand on one of my mother’s. “Mom, she was sleeping with Soupy. She was drinking with Soupy. That isn’t quite settling down.”

“Soupy has a good heart.”

“Yes. And a hollow leg and the maturity of a ninth grader.”

Soupy Campbell was my oldest friend. We had played hockey together since we were kids. He was one of the boys who had climbed atop Gracie’s orange VW on that drunken high school night. I could still see him swaying his hips as he chugged from a quart bottle of beer.

Something about that memory bothered me.

“What is it you always say about your work?” Mom said. “‘You don’t know…’” Her voice trailed off. She was struggling to remember. She had been doing a lot of that lately.

I started to say, “You don’t know what the story-” but she cut me off: “Don’t.” She stared at my hand on her knee. “‘You don’t know what the story is… until it’s in the paper.’ ”

“Yes.”

She lifted her head. “You’re making assumptions here.” She hesitated. “I hate to say this, but I think you may be letting your emotions cloud your judgment.”

“What emotions?” I said.

“Please, Gus.”

My cell phone rang in my pocket. “Excuse me,” I said, pulling it out.

“Those things will be the death of civilization. Why couldn’t they, just leave them down in Detroit with the rest of the rat race?”

“Get with it, Mom,” I said as the phone rang again. “Media North is bringing us into the twenty-first century.”

“This one’s plenty hard enough. Put that down.”

I figured it was Darlene, and I wanted to talk with her, though not in front of Mom. I stopped the ring. “Sorry. Where were we?”

Mom hesitated, then said, “It’s not your fault that you were an only child, honey.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“An only child gets used to having things his way. Then you suddenly had Gracie in your world.”

“She liked having things her way too.”

“And you didn’t appreciate it. You didn’t like Gracie.”

“That’s not true.”

It really wasn’t. I didn’t dislike Gracie any more than she disliked me. Our house just wasn’t big enough for both of us. Or maybe Mom wasn’t.

Over the years we had found a way to coexist, largely by avoiding each other, even after Gracie returned to Starvation the year before. When I saw her at the wheel of the Zamboni, I usually called out, “Hey, Gracie,” and she’d nod, if not smile. I sent her a drink or two when I saw her sitting on her stool at the back of Enright’s, her Kools and Bic lighter at the ready. Sometimes she acknowledged it, sometimes she didn’t.

But now, as my mother prodded me, I was thinking of Gracie’s old VW. She’d gotten rid of it a long time ago, of course, and I was trying to remember what she had been driving recently, besides a Zamboni.

I stood again.

“Gus?” Mom said.

“Do you remember what kind of car Gracie had?”

Mother looked at me blankly.

“Mom,” I said. “Did you go to the doctor?”

“The what? Oh. Yes. I mean-yes. Yes, I did. Yesterday.”

“Yesterday was Sunday, Mom.”

I walked into the kitchen and stared outside at the garage. Mom’s car, a tomato red 1995 Buick LeSabre, was parked inside. Gracie had driven an old lady’s car too. It had been in a photograph on an inside page of the Pilot. After a long Two-fer-Tuesday evening at Enright’s, Soupy had nearly driven it off the Estelle Street Bridge into the Hungry River.

I walked back into the living room.

“What’s with all the rosemary on the pork roast?” I said. “It looks like a pine branch.”

Mom furrowed her brow. “It’s good for you,” she said. “I saw it on that channel, the one that, you know. With all the recipes. They said it’s good for your digestion and circulation. Gets the blood flowing to your brain.”

Ah, I thought, a home remedy for creeping senility.

“Hey,” I said. “What kind of car did Aunt Helene drive when she used to come up from Bay City?”

“That was years ago.”

Long enough ago that Mom might remember.

“A Ford, wasn’t it?” she said, brightening. “A hideous green thing.”

“Yeah. An LTD. That’s what Gracie drove. Not quite as big, but just as green and ugly. With a big rust spot-a hole actually-in the back of the trunk lid.”

“Why does this matter?”

I stood there remembering the night before. My mind’s eye traveled up and down the snowbanks on either side of the road. I saw police cruisers, the ambulance, the fire truck. I did not see an ugly green Ford LTD with a rust hole in the trunk lid.

“I would have noticed that,” I said, thinking aloud.

“What?” Mom said.

“Gracie’s car, it wasn’t there.”

“Where?”

“At the shoe tree.”

“No?”

“No. How the hell did she get out there? She couldn’t have walked in that storm, although I suppose-” My cell phone rang. “Hang on.” I didn’t want to miss Darlene twice. I answered. “Yeah?”

“Beech here.”

Philo. I wished I hadn’t picked up. “What’s up?”

“It’s on with Haskell. Eleven fifteen.”

“Sorry?”

He paused. “Laird Haskell. Your appointment.”

“Oh, right, sorry. OK. I’ll be there. You coming?”

“Unfortunately, no, I have a meeting in Traverse City. Buzz me when you’re done, OK?”

“I’ll try.”

“Gus.”

“Yeah?”

“Just… just keep in mind now is really not the time to stand on principle.”

I was too stunned to answer right away. Philo said, “Talk later,” and hung up the phone.

“What’s wrong?” Mom said. “You look surprised.”

Surprised wasn’t quite the word.

“Nothing,” I said. “Where was I? Gracie’s car. That’s right. It wasn’t there. I guess-”

“No, Gus.”

“-she could have walked.”

“No.”

No.

As a reporter for the Detroit Times, I had written plenty of stories about people killed in or by cars and trucks. Regardless of whether I saw the blood spilled across asphalt or just heard about it from a police sergeant over the phone, I felt for the dead. I felt they’d been wronged, whether it was by a faulty steering suspension or a drunk driver or even their own innocent mistake. I felt for them even though they were strangers. Or perhaps, more accurately, because they were strangers. Because I knew nothing of their flaws. How they always grabbed the last piece of French toast for themselves. How they sucked up to their bosses and lied to their wives. How they used silence to punish their children.

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