If These Trees Could Talk

by Brian W. Smith

  Stevie had been thinking about this idea long before he ever mentioned it to Josh. He already had a plan formulated, but wanted to give it to Josh in bite size portions instead of serving the plan up like a four course meal; an approach that would have surely scared the heck out of his co-conspirator.

  He stopped pacing and looked over at Josh. “I know how to do it and we won’t get caught.” Josh’s reluctance to look at him or reply didn’t stop the determined child from stating his plan. “All you gotta do is get Dutch to come out here in these woods. I’ma do the same thing with Bennie. When we get them out here we can kill’em both.”

  Josh finally removed his eyes from the baseball cards. A puzzled look dominated his face as he looked at Stevie. “How we gon’ kill’em? I ain’t got no gun.”

  Stevie looked annoyed as he watched Josh search for an excuse to pull out of their agreement. His thick eyebrows moved closer together as frown lines slowly started to spread across his forehead. He scrunched his lips and shook his head once he realized that selling his plan to Josh would take more effort than he anticipated. “We ain’t gon’ use a gun—that’s gon’ make too much noise. We’re gonna use a knife. We’re gonna stab both of dem fools.”

  Josh reached into his pocket and pulled out a rusty pocket knife that was small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. “I can’t kill somebody with this little bitty knife Stevie.”

  “Boy, I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout using that ole’ raggedy knife. I’m talkin’ ‘bout using one of the big knives at my house. My mama just bought some new knives. She put the old knives in a box, and made me go put them up in the attic. I’ma get one of those big butcher knives from that box—we can use that.”

  Josh looked like he was ready to wet his pants. He stood up—slowly. “I don’t know Stevie. How we gon’ get them to come out here?”

  “I can go to your house and tell Dutch you got hurt out here in the woods. When he comes out to check on you we can kill’em. Then you can go to my house and do the same thing with Bennie.”

  “What if your mama sees me?” asked Josh, nervously biting his bottom lip.

  “We gon’ do it around this time when our mama’s ain’t home. I told you my mama is a nurse at the hospital, and she works at night. You said yo mama be cleanin’ up the hospital at night—so they ain’t gon’ be home.”

  “Where we gonna put them?”

  Stevie released a loud sigh, and pointed at a spot on the ground. “We gon’ dig a grave—like they do in the movies.”

  “I don’t know how to dig a grave Stevie.”

  “All you gotta do is use a shovel and dig the hole. I saw a man do it in a movie one time. All you gotta do is make sure the hole is six feet deep so the body won’t come out the ground.”

  “How you know so much ‘bout graves Stevie?”

  “I told you, I watch movies and stuff. Don’t you watch movies at home?”

  “We only got one television. The only time I get to watch it is when Dutch ain’t home. That ain’t never the case because he don’t work. All he does all day is sit on the couch with his hands in his drawers, drinkin’ beer, and watching the television.”

  “Well, you gon’ get to watch the t.v. whenever you want to once he ain’t around no more.”

  Josh slowly sat on the sofa. He grimaced when his butt touched the fake leather. Although he initially agreed to go through with the plan, a blind man could see that he would change his mind once he heard the actual details.

  Stevie could see the reluctance on his friend’s face. He’d given his plan a lot of thought. But, although he was the mastermind, he knew he couldn’t do it without Josh’s complete buy-in.

  “Josh, does your butt hurt?”

  Embarrassed and humiliated, Josh hesitantly replied, “Yes.”

  “Do you want to keep lettin’ him make you feel like that?”

  Josh didn’t answer. He just looked down at the ground and shook his head.

  “Well, if you want him to stop you gon’ have to do this with me,” Stevie insisted.

  “Why can’t we tell somebody? We can tell the police or our teachers.”

  “Didn’t you tell me he was gon’ kill your mama if you told somebody all that stuff he be doing to you?”

  Josh nodded in agreement. “He told me he was gon’ chop her head off and throw it in the river. And then he said he was gon’ kill me too.”

  “Ya see…you can’t tell anybody. Do you wanna see yo’ mama head in the river?” Stevie asked, knowing the imagery alone would be enough to move Josh into action.

  “No,” Josh replied, his eyes filling with water.

  “I don’t want that to happen either. Bennie told me he was gonna kill my mama too. He’s always saying that to me. I used to be scared, but I ain’t scared no more. I’m tired of him tryin’ to scare me. I’m tired of him making me…” Stevie paused. His hands started to shake.

  “What’s wrong Stevie? You see somebody?” Josh started looking around trying to spot the person or thing that caused Stevie to stop mid sentence.

  Even the strongest willed kid struggles to cope with the hidden affects of sexual abuse. The desire to vomit at the thought of being forced to perform oral sex on the abuser. Trying not to take notice to the lingering stench of an unwashed crotch once the smell latches on to ones nose hairs. Struggling to sleep at night and then being awakened by the grunting and moaning sounds that spill from the abusers mouth and take up residence on ones ear drums and refuse to be evicted.

  While the disgusting images of his victimization controlled his thoughts, the contents of Stevie’s stomach begin to slosh around like the water in a fish bowl. His knees got weak. The cookies that he’d enjoyed swallowing a few minutes earlier were now ascending to his throat. It wasn’t long before those cookies, and the eggs and bacon he’d eaten for breakfast, escaped his jaws like water gushing from a hose pipe.

  Stevie spent the next thirty seconds or so bent over as he expelled everything his stomach held. Just when he thought the ordeal was over, the dry heaves started. When he finished vomiting he felt light headed, but his ego wouldn’t let him drop to his knees. He used his t-shirt to wipe his tongue and the corners of his mouth. Teardrops teetered on the edge of his eye lids, and a sour smell seeped from his partially opened mouth. He grabbed an old wrinkled newspaper that lay on the ground a few feet away, and wiped the front of his shirt.

  Stevie avoided eye contact with Josh. Since they’d first revealed their secrets to each other, he had been the strong one of the two. The person responsible for giving the comforting hugs and words of encouragement. The one who decided to make a small swath of land in the middle of the woods their safe haven. Since he came from the more affluent household, it was usually his responsibility to supply the snacks and drinks at their meetings. Josh looked to him for guidance—a role Stevie relished. It was the only sense of empowerment he had at the time.

  “Are you okay Stevie?”

  Stevie continued to look away. He spit out a few chunks of food that got trapped by his teeth. “Yeah,” he barked. After moments of staring at the trees he finally looked in the direction of Josh. “I swear I’m gon’ kill Dutch and Bennie…and you gon’ help me.” He threw the vomit stained newspaper into the bushes. “Meet me here tomorrow evening. We gon’ start diggin’ the graves.”

  “We ain’t got no shovels.”

  “Get one Josh!” Stevie shouted, unconcerned with whether his tone was intimidating to his friend. “I can’t do everything! I’m gon’ bring a shovel so you need to find one too. Everybody got a shovel somewhere around their house.” Stevie walked over towards his entry point, and took one step into the bushes. But, before he disappeared he turned around and looked at Josh one last time. “I’m comin’ out here tomorrow to dig the holes…and you’d better be here!”

  Chapter 2

  May 18, 2004

  The sun rose and set as God commanded. Josh and Stevie slept in their traditional manners—one eye open. Josh kept his b
edroom light on all night, much to the chagrin of his mother. He had two ways of sleeping at night: either he slept with his back up against the wall every night so that he could have a better view of the bedroom door should it mysteriously open. Sleeping with his back up against the wall proved to be an effective method of staying alert, but it often left him with stiffness in his neck the next morning. More often than not, he opted to sleep on his back; his face staring up at the ceiling. His mother always teased him about sleeping that way, saying he looked like a mummy or a dead person in a casket at a funeral. Little did she know, her child was in survivor mode—even while he slept.

  After another night of sparse shut eye, Josh finally started to doze off into a deep slumber around five o’clock. Unfortunately, his rest only lasted a few hours. Just as his body found that cozy spot under his covers and his head sunk deep into the cool side of his pillow, he was awakened by the raspy sounding voice of his inattentive, chain smoking mother, Charity.

  Charity spent her afternoons whipping up latte’s at the local Starbucks until it closed at eight o’clock. She then changed out of her Starbucks gear and put on her hospital scrubs so that she could go and work the graveyard shift in the hospital’s Housekeeping Department.

  You could set your watch to her routine. She’d come home from work grumpy—mad that her supervisor still hadn’t offered her a daytime shift at the hospital. She’d throw her purse on the sofa and then go straight to the kitchen cabinet and grab a can of Community coffee. While the coffee grounds started to percolate, and the rich scent started to permeate throughout the house, Charity would light a cigarette and start peppering Dutch with questions. Her questions were almost always a precursor to the two of them arguing. And just like numerous times before, their customary argument started.

  Josh wasn’t sure what the issue was this time, but he figured the argument started as a result of one of the usual reasons: Dutch not bringing home any money; Dutch sneaking off and seeing some other woman; or Dutch disrespecting her in some way.

  Josh was never too disturbed by the arguments between his mother and Dutch. He’d spoken to enough classmates to deduce that arguments between adults in relationships were commonplace.

  He used to stand next to his bedroom door with his ear pressed against it struggling to decipher what they were saying, but trying to eavesdrop through a door proved to be a challenge. The only thing that he could ever hear clearly was the sound of dishes being shattered and the gut wrenching echo of someone being slapped—repeatedly.

  The days of trembling while standing next to a closed door—often times with his feet wading in a puddle of urine—were over. Josh developed a technique to help him ignore the chaos. He relied on a distracter—his baseball cards.

  Whenever the shouting started he would pull out the shoebox full of baseball cards that he kept under his bed. Once he started focusing on the statistics that covered the backside of each card he could no longer hear Dutch shouting “fuck you” or calling his mother “whore”.

  Over time, Josh became less bothered by the arguing and fighting. In fact, he became somewhat immune to it. But what he could never get past was the fact that the source of his mother’s anger always seemed to be about everything inside and outside of their tiny, eight hundred square foot, wooden “shotgun” style house; but, never about the most important topic—him.

  “When are you gonna marry me Dutch?”

  “Not that again Charity…I’m tryin’ to watch t.v.”

  “You’re always watchin’ the damn television. You go to sleep watchin’ television and you wake up watchin’ the damn television. I need you to spend more time watchin’ me. You just lay here all day doing nothin’! You don’t take me anywhere. You don’t even spend time with Josh.”

  “What in the hell are you talkin’ ‘bout woman? I’m here all night with that bad ass boy while you’re at work. What else you want me to do with him?”

  “You know he likes baseball, why don’t you go play catch with him sometime?”

  Josh’s ears perked up at the mentioning of his name. They must have thought he was still sleeping because they didn’t bother lowering their tone.

  “Girl, get outta here with that noise. I spend enough time with him. I take care of him everyday. Hell, if it wasn’t for me he wouldn’t eat everyday!”

  “Oh really?” Charity stood there with one hand planted firmly on her hip, and a cigarette wedged between the index and middle finger on her free hand. “I’m glad you brought up eating. Josh tells me he’s been eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches everyday. I bought ten cans of spaghetti and ravioli last week. All you have to do is open up the damn can, put the stuff on a plate, and shove it in the microwave so that my boy can have a hot meal.”

  Josh’s heart rate sped up. The baseball card he cherished the most—the Barry Bonds card—was now being crushed by his tiny hand as his nerves got the best of him. No mama, don’t tell him I said that. You told me you weren’t gonna tell him what we talk about. Now he’s gonna be mad at me. He’s gonna get me when you ain’t home.

  “Bullshit!” Dutch barked, and waived his hand dismissively.

  “No it ain’t bullshit!” Charity walked over to the cabinet and opened the one closest to the refrigerator. It was the cabinet where she kept all of the canned food: peas, beans, corn, spaghetti, and Josh’s favorite—ravioli. “I know I bought ten cans last week. There are only two cans of ravioli left. Where did the other eight go? I know Josh didn’t eat the ravioli so where did they go Dutch?”

  Dutch lit a cigarette and took a sip from his coffee mug. He didn’t bother to turn around and look at her, but he did offer a response. “I don’t know. Maybe that little bastard got up in the middle of the night and ate the damn ravioli while I was sleeping. You think he’s gon’ tell you the truth? You know he doesn’t want us to be together anyway. Ain’t no tellin’ what kind of lies he’s around here makin’ up ‘bout me.”

  No other words were uttered by Charity or Dutch after Dutch’s last remark. Charity may have been small in stature, weighing in at a measly one hundred pounds, and barely breaking the five feet tall mark, but she had a temper that seemed more fitting for a boxer than a petite woman. And it didn’t take much to ignite her fighting spirit. Had Dutch turned around he would have seen the look on her face signifying the scene was about to get ugly. But he continued to watch television—wrong move.

  Charity went into stealth mode. She crept closer to Dutch and uttered, “I told you to stop callin’ my boy a bastard!” Without saying or doing anything else to alert Dutch of what was about to happen, she swung and connected flush with the back of his head just as he was preparing to lift the coffee mug up to his mouth. The mug, the coffee in it, and the cigarette that had been dangling helplessly from his crusty lips seconds earlier went flying across the room.

  “You bitch!” Dutch paused long enough to feel the back of his head. Enraged by what appeared to be a knot growing, the result of her blow, he angrily grabbed Charity’s flailing arms.

  A few of Charity’s punches landed on his shoulders and chest, but none connected flush on his face. Standing 6’2” tall and a sloppy 235 lbs., the few blows he did receive were the equivalent of trying to spank an elephant with a fly swatter.

  “Woman, I dun’ told you ‘bout slappin’ me!” He used his massive hand to corral her right wrist. Once he had the first wrist secured, he used his free hand to swat away the haymaker she tried to hit him with. He then pulled both of her boney wrists together—using one hand to secure them. When he wrapped his long fingers around her wrists it looked like a baseball player grabbing the handle of his favorite bat.

  The urge to hear what was happening took over Josh’s instinct to retreat. His ear was now pressed against the door once again. Mama just leave him alone. He gon’ hurt you. He gon’ cut yo head off one day.

  “Since you wanna slap me I’m gon’ show you how it feels.” Dutch slapped Charity as hard as he could across the crown of
her head. He hit her so hard that she literally saw dots and her knees buckled. Charity’s body went limp, but Dutch kept her from falling by elevating his hand higher—never letting go of her wrists. He held his hand so high that her feet nearly came off of the floor. Charity looked like she’d been hung from a tree.

  Dutch squeezed with so much force that blood appeared to stop circulating to her hands; causing her already pale white skin to lose any color that may have existed.

  “Stop Dutch,” Charity managed to mumble, her eyes rolling backwards until the whites of her cornea were all that could be seen.

  “Nawh, it’s too late for that now. You gon’ come here accusin’ me of shit and punchin’ me. Now you want me to stop? Nawh, that ain’t how shit gonna go down around here. You wanna slap? I’ma show you how it feel to get slapped.”

  Dutch wrapped his free arm around her waist. He lifted Charity up and positioned her behind the sofa—never once releasing her wrist. Charity regained her mental faculties long enough to glance over at Josh’s bedroom door. She could see his shadow in the space between the bottom of the door and the wooden floor. After several bouts of domestic violence, glancing at that space had become commonplace for her. Sometimes she would even instruct him to get in the bed if she saw his shadow. But at that moment, she was still too groggy to say much of anything.

  Dutch finally released her wrist, but it was only so that he could plant his hand between her shoulder blades to keep her body from wiggling. He shoved the upper half of her body forward. Charity did a face plant right into the couch’s stained pillows. He kept his hand lodged in her back to keep her bent over while he pulled the blue scrub pants she wore down around her ankles. Almost effortlessly, he ripped her cotton panties off.