Shades of Simon Gray

by Joyce McDonald

  “The branches, Simon. Grab one of the branches,” Liz yelled.

  Simon’s cries became the barking caws of crows outside her window. They grew so loud they punctured Liz’s dream, like a pin popping a balloon.

  She bolted upright and blinked into the glare of moonlight streaking across her bed. Something was wrong. Horribly wrong. She threw the covers back and grabbed a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from the floor. She scribbled a note to her mother, left it on the kitchen table, and snapped up the car keys.

  The stars were still out when Liz pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. She entered through the emergency room and made her way to the west wing, which housed the intensive care unit. She might not be able to get into the ICU, but she could badger the hell out of any doctor or nurse coming down the hall, keep at them until she wore them down enough to get some information on Simon.

  The second she came through the door of the waiting room and found Courtney, her face red, eyes wet and swollen, Liz knew Simon had taken a turn for the worse.

  The sky was still a predawn gray when Courtney slipped behind the garage to smoke a joint. She was so messed up she thought she might fly right out of her skin.

  Dr. Greenberg had insisted Courtney and her father go home and get some rest, insisted Simon’s condition was stable for now. They planned to go back to the hospital later that morning. Courtney knew she should try to get some sleep, but she was too wired. Even the marijuana wasn’t helping.

  Last night Simon had almost died. Courtney had been alone in the room with him, holding his hand, hoping his finger would move for her the way it had for Liz Shapiro. Suddenly she saw one of the colored lines on the monitor go from sharp pointed mountains to gentle sloping hills, then almost flat.

  Three nurses and two doctors came through the door so fast Courtney thought they had materialized out of thin air. One of the nurses wheeled a crash cart in front of her. Another slapped a blue switch—marked Code 99—on the wall above Simon’s bed, while the third took Courtney’s arm and tried to escort her to the waiting room. But Courtney held back. She demanded to know what was going on.

  “You can’t be in here,” the nurse said. She put her hands on Courtney’s shoulders and attempted to steer her through the door. “Let’s let the doctors do their job, okay?”

  Courtney hated the woman’s condescending tone. She wasn’t stupid, for god’s sake. She knew there was every chance Simon had just died. And not one of those people would let her be with him. Simon needed someone to call him back. She didn’t know why she thought this, but she did. The feeling was so strong that she’d begun to scream Simon’s name as loudly as she could. Three or four times she managed to call him, while her flailing arms battled back the startled nurse. Another nurse came to help the first, and between them they all but lifted Courtney off the floor and carried her out of the room.

  She sat all night in the cramped waiting room, while her father paced the halls of the hospital and the surrounding grounds, stopping in the cafeteria for an occasional cup of coffee. She made notes in a pocket notebook she took with her to the hospital each day. She had taken to asking the nurses all kinds of questions: about the equipment, the med station, about comas. She’d about worn out her welcome in the intensive care unit. She could tell by the looks on the nurses’ faces each time she came through those double metal doors. But she didn’t much care. If something happened to Simon, if he died in this place as their mother had, Courtney had notes, a log. She had information. Maybe evidence. They weren’t going to get away with this twice.

  Courtney took a long toke from her joint and looked out beyond the field. The sycamore in the cemetery was black with crows. A streak of sunlight appeared on the dark horizon, bathing the headstones in orange light. She couldn’t help thinking how Simon had almost ended up there, in a plot right next to their mother. He still might. It had taken the doctors two hours to finally stabilize him.

  They had gotten this news a few minutes after Liz Shapiro had come storming into the waiting room. Courtney had been so upset about Simon, it never occurred to her how odd it was for Liz to be there at four in the morning. And not once did Liz offer an explanation, tell her why she’d suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

  Even worse, she’d totally lost it. She’d let Liz put her arm around her, had soaked Liz’s T-shirt with her tears. But when Liz asked about Simon, about what had happened, Courtney had stiffened and sat upright.

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” she snapped. “You’re the one he seems to be communicating with. Maybe he can spell it all out for you with his finger. You know, draw letters in your hand or something.” The hurt on Liz’s face had only made it worse. Courtney had to look away. She had no idea why she was being such a jerk.

  She took another toke of her joint and stared out over the cemetery. The crows lifted out of the sycamore, hundreds of them, and flew toward her. When they reached her backyard, they formed a swirling circle overhead, like an upside-down funnel cloud. If Courtney didn’t know better, she might have thought she was looking down into a whirlpool instead of up at the sky. She had the eerie feeling of being sucked up into the air. That was the exact moment she squashed the joint into the dirt and headed for the back door.

  IT WAS ALMOST DAWN. A HEAVY MIST HOVERED ABOVE the ground. A few yards away, four men surrounded Jessup Wildemere beneath the Liberty Tree. One of the men pulled Jessup’s hands behind him and tied his wrists with leather thongs. Simon stood nearby, unable to move or speak.

  He was just beginning to understand that there had been no trial. Jessup had not been kept in the jail overnight. He had not been tried in the local tavern. Simon knew this because the blood soaking Jessup’s clothes was still wet. The men had found him waiting here for Hannah and were going to execute him with their own hands. And Simon was sure the reason they had come here in such short order was because Hannah Dobbler had told them exactly where to find Jessup.

  He forced his body to take a step forward, out of the mist. Jessup looked over at him, his expression distant. Simon realized that the other men, who all wore clothes similar to Jessup’s, had no idea he was there.

  One of the men asked Jessup if he wanted to pray. Jessup stared straight at him, saying nothing. Another man bound Jessup’s ankles with thongs. Jessup turned his gaze back to Simon. When their eyes met, Simon felt the surface of his skin buzz and the fine hair on his arms stand straight up as if he were surrounded by an electrical current. He wanted to look away, but Jessup held him with his eyes.

  Simon could not stop what had already taken place more than two hundred years earlier. His stomach lurched as one of the men put the rope around Jessup’s neck and tossed it over a low branch; another tied the end to his saddle. There would be no drop, only the backward step of the horse pulling Jessup a few inches from the ground.

  It was a messy affair. The sight of Jessup’s jerking, twisting body, his face swelling, black with congestion, eyes bulging, brought Simon to his knees. He could barely breathe, himself. He squeezed his eyes shut.

  The spasmodic strangling sounds stopped, and when Simon looked up, the four men had vanished. Only he and Jessup remained in the gray dawn.

  The wind began to blow so fiercely Jessup Wildemere’s body swayed back and forth like a pendulum. Simon sat on the ground and leaned back against the oak, eye level with Jessup’s boots, for what seemed like an eternity. The gray dawn finally gave way to the glare of mid-morning, a sharp intense light that made his eyes ache.

  He wanted to let himself off the hook. He knew there was nothing he could have done to stop the hanging. Still, his stomach continued to churn so badly he was sure he was going to be sick. But it was the tears that truly caught him off guard. They dripped off his chin and left splotches on his hospital gown. He cried for Jessup, for what couldn’t be undone, and most of all, for the injustice. An innocent man had died. His only crime had been to fall in love with the wrong woman.

  Simon, his back against the tar-
coated wound, thought of all the things Jessup could have done differently, not the least of which would have been to leave town before the men came to arrest him. But all he’d cared about was Hannah.

  He stared up at the body that had once housed Jessup Wildemere, at the open mouth, the swollen tongue, the bulging eyes, the engorged plum-colored face. He knew Jessup believed himself to be a partner in the murder of Cornelius Dobbler, although he’d had no way of knowing Hannah would kill her own father. Nor had he ever held the knife in his own hands. Still, if they had not fallen in love, none of this would have happened. From the look on Jessup’s face, right before the men hanged him, Simon could tell Jessup had accepted his fate, maybe even believed himself guilty. But he also knew, when Jessup had held him with his gaze in those last few seconds, that he wanted something from Simon. The men who took Jessup’s life had broken the law. There had been no trial, no jury, no judge. Jessup had been hanged without benefit of counsel and without mercy. What Jessup wanted, what anyone in his position would want, as Simon saw it, was justice.

  But how was he going to right a two-hundred-year-old wrong? The men who had hanged Jessup were nothing but moldering dust.

  A deep anger welled up in Simon. He was furious at Jessup for being so stupid. “This was your life,” he shouted to the empty shell overhead. He raised his fist in the air, punched at it in a rage. “You blew it, man. You really blew it!”

  He leaned sideways, turning away from the sight hanging a few feet away, and pressed one palm against the gash in the tree. He felt the jagged edge of the scar as he got to his feet. Suddenly the memory of that night—the night of the accident—came crashing into his mind. Simon thought his heart might stop beating. For in that moment he knew his foot hadn’t come down on the gas pedal by mistake. He knew he could have slammed on the brakes as soon as he realized what was happening, could have lessened the impact. But in that split second, with the tree looming ahead of him, he had seen his chance, his way out, and gone for it.

  Liz was in the hospital cafeteria. She was on her third cup of coffee since she’d arrived early that morning. A plate of cold, half-eaten scrambled eggs and toast sat in front of her.

  Courtney and her father had gone home to get a few hours of sleep and would be back later. But Liz couldn’t bring herself to leave. All her instincts told her Simon wasn’t out of the woods yet. The doctors might have stabilized him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t slip away from them again.

  She wished she had brought something with her to read; even Lucinda Alderman’s daily account of her boring, backbreaking life would have been better than nothing. Liz was sorry she didn’t have her notebook with her. She could have been working on her oral report, which was scheduled for Tuesday.

  She would have to give one fantastic, knock-their-socks-off presentation on Jessup Wildemere if she was going to save her grade in history. The paper she’d dashed off in the wee hours of Friday morning might net her a C if Mrs. Rosen was in a generous mood. But more than likely Liz thought she would end up with a C minus. She didn’t doubt for a minute she deserved it. It was her own fault for not reading Lucinda’s diary as soon as she’d brought it home. The journal had ended up having far more information than she could have ever processed in those few hours before she had to turn in her paper.

  Liz felt in her pocket for a pen. Nothing. She wondered if there was one in the glove compartment out in the car, then decided to see if the woman behind the counter had one. The woman, whose eyes were ringed with dark liner, rummaged around beneath the counter and found an extra pencil. Liz grabbed a handful of paper napkins from the dispenser and returned to her table. She planned to use this waiting time to make notes on how she wanted to present her findings to the class on Tuesday.

  She hoped Mrs. Rosen would be as blown away as she had been when she discovered how Lucinda Alderman had suspected Jessup was falling in love with Hannah Dobbler. Hannah Dobbler, Cornelius’s daughter, had been engaged to their neighbor, Elias Belcher. Lucinda had worried about what Hannah’s father or Elias Belcher would do if they found out. But Lucinda had been afraid to say anything to Jessup. She didn’t want him to know she suspected anything.

  Liz had actually leaped off her bed and danced around the room when she finally came upon a passage about Jessup’s hanging.

  Joseph has gone back to cut down Jessup’s body. He will bury Jessup beneath the tree where he was hanged, although it is not hallowed ground. Reverend Townsend will not allow a murderer to be buried in the churchyard.

  I cannot understand why Thomas Byrnes and the others could not wait for a judge to be summoned from Trenton. It would have been a matter of only a few months at most. Instead, they took it upon themselves to do what they called “God’s will.” They would not listen to Joseph, who tried to reason with them. They hanged poor Jessup within minutes of tracking him down.

  Joseph has told me the men found Jessup sitting beneath the oak near the boundary of our land. He thinks Jessup may have been waiting for Hannah. The poor lad made no attempt to run away. Such news troubles me. I have not been able to sleep for thinking of it. This has been a dark day, indeed, for the people of Havenhill.

  Liz had sat on her bed, the journal open on her lap. She shook her head in wonder. Somewhere nestled within the roots of the Hanging Tree, perhaps beneath the asphalt or under the sidewalk, rested the remains of Jessup Wildemere, undisturbed for more than two hundred years. Like everyone else in Bellehaven, she might well have walked over his bones hundreds of times, maybe thousands, considering she passed by the tree every day on her way to school. As if this wasn’t unsettling enough, the journal entry that followed, written two days later, was even more disturbing.

  I stood by Hannah Dobbler at her father’s funeral yesterday morning. She looked as white as the corpse, with eyes as dark and vacant. She never spoke a word, though everyone in attendance stopped to pay their respects.

  Sarah Byrnes, whose husband had been present at the execution, told me that it was Hannah herself who came pounding on their door in the middle of the night. Sarah said the poor girl was covered in blood and weeping hysterically. She gave Sarah and Thomas a horrifying account of how she had tried to stop Jessup from killing her father but had run from the house, fearing for her own life and the lives of her brothers. Such a painful tragedy for one so young. I pray for her daily. May the Lord grant her strength to see her through these dark days.

  We brought food to the Dobbler house after the burial, and sat with Hannah and her siblings. Still, she did not speak. It was as if no one else was in the room. To have lost her father and Jessup (if he and Hannah were indeed in love) in one night is a tragedy beyond words.

  Two days have passed since the hanging and still I cannot sleep. Jessup comes to me in dreams. His mouth moves, but like Hannah’s, no words come out.

  Though I have not said so to anyone, out of respect for the Dobbler family, I do not believe Jessup murdered Cornelius. Despite Hannah Dobbler’s account and the blood they found on Jessup, I know in my heart it was not in his sweet nature to commit such a foul and horrible deed.

  Liz paced her bedroom as she read this last entry. When she had finished it, she sat on the edge of the bed and held the open journal in her lap, tried to take it all in. She reread it several times. To all appearances, Jessup did indeed kill Cornelius Dobbler. But why? Was it because Hannah’s father had promised her to Elias Belcher? Killing the father of one’s beloved wouldn’t exactly endear him to her. Maybe Jessup had been provoked by Cornelius. Or maybe Cornelius had attacked him. Maybe it was self-defense.

  And so it had gone. Liz had more questions after her discovery than she had before she found the journal. In the end, with only a few hours before school, she had pounded away at the keyboard and printed out an eight-page paper, half of which was comprised of direct quotes from Lucinda Alderman’s diary. The paper was supposed to be at least fifteen pages.

  Liz pushed the cold scrambled eggs around the plate with her fo
rk, lost in thought. Forget the C minus. She’d be lucky if Rosen gave her a D plus.

  When Devin came to the hospital later that morning with her father, she was surprised to find Liz Shapiro in the waiting room outside the intensive care unit, slouched in one of the chairs, her head against the wall, sleeping. Liz looked as if she’d spent the night in the chair. Her clothes were wrinkled and her hair was an uncombed tangle. Devin suspected Liz was there because of Simon and wondered if there had been a change in his condition. She thought of waking her to ask but decided against it.

  She took a seat directly across from Liz, while her father headed to the ICU to see his mother. Later it would be Devin’s turn. She knew they would be there the entire day, and that was fine with her. Now that she had legitimate access to the ICU, she hoped to slip in to see Simon, even if it was for just a few minutes. He was as much on her mind these days as her grandmother.

  A short time later Courtney walked in. The moment she came through the door, Devin felt an electric charge so powerful it made the hairs on her arms stand straight up and her scalp tingle. Had Courtney felt it too? Had Liz? Devin thought she had seen Liz’s legs twitch, although she didn’t wake up.

  Courtney mumbled “Hi” to Devin and took a seat against the third wall of the small room, while her father went in to see Simon. She and Devin had shared this waiting room quite a bit over the past few days, ever since Devin’s grandmother had been moved to the ICU. But they had little to say to each other.

  Devin looked from Courtney to Liz and realized that the three of them were each seated in front of a different wall. The room was scarcely eight feet wide. If the girls stretched out their legs, their feet would have met in the middle. This seating arrangement struck her as odd, almost territorial. But then, it wasn’t as if they were friends.