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Part 1
Giants in the Trees
an online short story: part 1 of 3
Description: When Jim agreed to give Paul Taulbee a ride home from work, he unwittingly entered his older colleague’s private corner of hell.
I had not wanted to give Paul Taulbee a ride home from work that day. Indeed, I generally avoided time alone with Paul whenever I could. The prospect of thirty minutes in the car with him wasn’t exactly a pleasant end to what had been a long day at the office.
I would have escaped if I had not lingered at my desk until long after five o’clock. (Even more importantly, I would have avoided that hour at Paul’s house—but these are details which I will relate to you shortly.)
I was about to pack up my things and call it a day when Paul broke the silence of the empty office. His gravelly voice—coated with the phlegm of a lifelong smoker—startled me as I was contemplating the glorious work-free evening that lay ahead.
“Say Jim,” he said. “Not quite six o’clock and it’s just you and me here now.”
He leaned back in his chair and laced the fingers of both hands across his considerable beer belly. He regarded me through rheumy eyes, which I could barely see because of the glare of the overhead fluorescent lights on his glasses. The bulky frames were twenty-five years out style. Much of Paul’s wardrobe was out of style: he favored the wide ties that had been in vogue around the time Ronald Reagan was in the White House.
“Well, Paul,” I said cautiously. “Next week is closing, right? I’ve got to get every last sale in the bag if I’m going to hit my quota this month. Same with you, right?”
“But I’m an old dog,” Paul replied. “And we old dogs are notoriously slow. A young guy like you—a guy with a lovely wife and child waiting at home for him…..I’d think you would want to pack up shop and leave at 5:01. It’s different with me. I’ve got nothing to go home to, after all.”
There seemed to be something vaguely sarcastic in Paul’s tone when he referred to me as “a young guy like you.” I wasn’t sure; and in any case, I wasn’t about to take the bait. Similarly, Paul’s oblique reference to his own situation was territory best left alone. I knew that Paul had had a wife and child once—everyone in the office knew that. And I had also heard the stories about what had happened to them. There was no way that I was going to open that particular can of worms.
“Like I said Paul, I’ve get to get caught up before closing.”
“I understand.” He stood up, and a few wispy strands of white hair fell across his pinkish forehead. Not for the first time, I noticed the red spider web patches of veins on Paul’s cheeks and nose. The telltale signs of a longtime alcoholic. How long had Paul been a problem drinker? Probably longer than I had been alive.
“But I was wondering, Jim, if you would do me a favor?”
“Favor?” I asked warily.
“I need a ride home,” he said. “My Buick is in the shop. Something with the transmission. I don’t know exactly what—an issue with the damn software, I think. You’ve got to be a computer scientist to work on a car these days. Anyway, one of my neighbors dropped me off this morning; but he’s been unexpectedly called out of town. So I’m stuck here…..Unless, that is, you would be kind enough to drop me off on your way home. It’s on your way, I think.”
I nodded. Paul’s house was in fact on my way home. It would be no more than a ten-minute detour. And since there was no one else here to give Paul a ride, there was no way I could refuse—not without looking like a total asshole.
“No problem, Paul,” I said. “Let’s get going.”
We walked across the parking lot through an early spring drizzle to my car. Paul was huffing and wheezing the whole way. He tossed his blazer—a plaid relic from the seventies—into the back seat of my Honda. As he squeezed himself into the front seat, I was assaulted by his peculiar mix of odors—sweat, mothballs, cough drops, and tobacco smoke. I thought that I could also detect a whiff of alcohol. Paul was rumored to take a furtive nip now and then during the workday.
“I live off Exit 10,” Paul supplied. “Right off the highway, on Nead-Moore Road.”
“Got it,” I said, turning the key in the ignition. “I know exactly where that is.”
As I merged into the highway traffic, the Honda’s four cylinders strained a bit as I tried to accelerate past a Ford Mustang. The Mustang driver cut me off. Then he blared his horn and flipped me the bird. Fuming, I took my place in traffic behind him. I was tempted to escalate the altercation but held back. I just wanted to get home. The last thing I needed right now was to become a main character in a sorry road rage drama.
“If you owned a six-cylinder American-made car you would have gotten ahead of him.” Paul observed. “No offense, mind you, but this flimsy Japanese stuff is overrated.”
I was about to ask Paul why—if this were true—was his brand-new Buick in the repair shop—while my ten-year-old Honda had so far subsisted on nothing but routine maintenance and oil changes. Once again I held back. As Paul had noted, my wife and child were waiting at home for me. James Jr. had just learned to say “dad;” and Monica had called me at lunch to suggest that we indulge ourselves in some marital bliss tonight after little Jimmy went to sleep. My mind was on them—not on Paul’s opinion about Japanese-made cars.
I turned off the highway at Exit 10 and began the trek down Nead-Moore Road. This was a semi-rural area, a few miles removed from the city. New subdivisions of expensive dream homes dotted a landscape that had been mostly farmland only a few years ago. The strip malls were invading too. Signs advertising carryout pizza and video rentals stood out from the recently cleared woods.
Paul touched my arm as we approached a convenience store. “Would you mind stopping?” he asked.
He must have noticed my hesitation, as he added: “It will only take a moment. I’ll be quick, I promise.”
I signaled and pulled into the parking lot of the 7-Eleven. I left the car running as Paul ambled inside.
Paul’s “moment” stretched into a full ten minutes. “There was a line,” he said matter-of-factly as he climbed back into my car. “Couldn’t help it.”
I said nothing, eager to deposit Paul Taulbee at his front door and be rid of him. The 7-Eleven bag was translucent and it revealed what he had bought—the items that were so important that he asked me to make a special stop for them. Paul hadn’t purchased any essential food items—no; he had bought a bottle of red wine and two packs of cigars. Paul smoked cheap cigars of the especially malodorous variety—Titans, Swisher Sweets, and occasionally Dutch Masters.
I had to rely on him for directions as we drove the rest of the way to his house. His home was built in a clearing of almost virgin woods. Across the road was a new housing development that was under construction; there were apparently no occupants as yet.
My Honda (“flimsy Japanese stuff!”) crunched up Paul’s long gravel driveway. His house was not new; my guess was that it had been there for thirty years. In fact, Paul’s wife and daughter had probably lived here before—well, before they weren’t here anymore.
But there was no way I was going to confirm this hypothesis with Paul.
Paul gathered up his briefcase, his blazer, and his 7-Eleven bag. He leaned back into the car on the passenger side before closing the door.
“I sure appreciate this,” he said.
“It was no trouble. Anytime,” I replied, desperately hoping that Paul would perceive the white lie and ask someone else for a ride home the next time his Buick was in the shop.
As I watched Paul ascend the fieldstone and cement steps that led to his front door, it occurred to me that I really should call Monica and tell her that I was on my way home. I had told her previously of my plans to work late tonight. But the detour trip to Paul’s house had not been on the schedule then, and I had already burned a half hour since I turned onto Exit 10.
The car idled in Paul’s driveway. I removed my cell phone from my pocket and hit the on button. When I flipped the cell phone open, the first thing I noticed was the low battery light. I would have to be fast.
I pressed the speed dial button for my home phone. The word “Dialing” appeared on the phone’s status screen—for about five seconds. Then the status screen went blank.
The battery had gone dead.
That left me with one choice. I killed the Honda’s ignition and called out Paul’s name just as he was fumbling with the key to his front door.
The old man turned to face me.
“Can I use your phone, Paul?”
He had set his briefcase and his 7-Eleven bag down on the porch while he fiddled with the lock. He picked them back up and pushed the door open with his backside. He disappeared into the darkness of the house.
“Come on in,” he called out.
I knew right away that my earlier guess about Paul’s house was correct. A wife and a little girl had indeed lived here once. In another decade, this had been a family home. There were wall hangings and other signs of a feminine presence—the sort of details that a man living alone would habitually neglect.
But none of these things had been updated in years. The fixtures, the furniture, the wallpaper: they were all well chosen details from a bygone era. Atop this old layer of domesticity another layer had grown: dust, hastily strewn clothing, old newspapers and magazines, even a pile of laundry. This was the debris of a man living alone. A man living with nothing but regrets, I thought.
“The phone’s here in the kitchen,” Paul called. I heard him place his bottle of wine inside the refrigerator. The kitchen was a similar disaster area: dirty dishes in the sink, a garbage can that badly needed to be emptied. A computer had been inappropriately set up in the middle of the kitchen table.
I lifted the handset of Paul’s telephone from the wall, suddenly very grateful for my own lot in life.
Monica answered on the second ring and I gave her a brief account of the evening’s circumstances. I’ll be home shortly, I promised. Yes, I love you too.
I hung up the phone and thanked Paul. Then my gaze wandered into the family room; it was directly adjacent to the kitchen.
I saw the portrait and I could not help lingering over it for a few seconds longer than I should have. It was hanging on the wall above the fireplace in the family room. The young woman in the professionally developed photograph was about thirty years in age. She had her arm around a little blond girl whose hair was done up in pigtails. She was perhaps four or five years old. The little girl was holding a teddy bear and smiling exuberantly for the camera.
The woman’s dress and hairstyle told me that the portrait must have been taken around three decades ago. I did not need to be told that these two people in the portrait were Paul’s wife and daughter. Who else would they be, after all?
But Paul answered the unspoken question for me anyway when he noticed me staring at the portrait.
“Yes, Jim, that’s them. They’re the ones you’ve heard about.”
“When was it taken?” I asked. This detail wasn’t really important; but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“November of nineteen eighty-two. Frances was not quite four then and Ginny, my wife, was thirty-two.”
Again I was at a loss for words. “I’m sorry.”
“No need to be sorry, Jim. You had nothing to do with what happened. And it was a long time ago. To put it in perspective, you and Frances would be about the same age—if she had lived.”
I did a bit of mental math. Paul’s deceased daughter would actually be a few years older than me—if she had been four in 1982. While this detail put the time involved into perspective, it did not seem worth noting aloud.
“I know you’ve heard the stories at work,” Paul said. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, Jim—I know what they say behind my back. I may have a drinking problem. I admit that I do. But I’m not an idiot.” He tapped his forehead. “There are still a few brain cells left up here that haven’t been pickled.”
In fact I had heard the stories. And it would be disingenuous for me to assert otherwise.
“Yes. I’ve heard them,” I said. “But all the same, it really isn’t any of my business. That’s between you and—“ I gestured in the direction of the portrait. “That’s all between you and them, I suppose. It doesn’t concern me.”
Paul put an unwanted hand on my shoulder. “That’s very generous of you to say, Jim. But I imagine that you’ve speculated all the same.”
“Not really,” I lied.
“You mean your curiosity hasn’t been the least bit peaked—when our esteemed colleagues told you that I murdered my wife and child?”
I felt the blood rush to my face. That was exactly what several of our coworkers said about Paul behind his back—although I knew that the truth was more complex than that.
“Why don’t you sit down for a minute and I’ll tell you the whole truth, Jim? Have one for the road, as they say.”
“Paul, I really have to be—“
“This won’t take long. And when will we have a chance to talk alone like this again? Think of it as humoring an old man, if you like. It will give me a chance to get some things off my chest…to come clean.”
“Well…” I was trying to think of a decorous way to get out of that house as soon as I could.
“And there’s more, Jim, something you weren’t expecting—but something that I know you’ll like.”
“And what would that be?”
“I’ve noticed those paperbacks that you sometimes read at lunchtime. Stephen King and Dean Koontz. Even the occasional H.P. Lovecraft. You like a scary story. Well, I have a scary story for you.”
Then he must have read a skeptical expression in my face, as he said: “Don’t worry, Jim. I’m not going to tell you that the ghost of my daughter walks the halls of this house at night, or that I communicate with my wife through mediums.” He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I only wish that it were so. But I regret to inform you that since the day of the accident, I have had absolutely no contact with either Ginny or Frances. Wherever they are, they are unable or, perhaps, unwilling to communicate with me.”
I wanted to insist that I had to leave. It would be easy enough for me to do, as I had just told my wife that I was on my way home. But now I felt a twinge of pity for Paul—or at least that was what I allowed myself to believe.
And I still believe that this was part of the reason for my decision to accept his invitation for a drink. But there was something more: Paul had peaked my curiosity.
Truth be told, I never have been able to resist a scary story.
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Copyright 2009 Edward Trimnell All rights reserved