You can run but you can't hide

The leaf blower was on the fritz again. Somehow this always happened when Eddie was behind schedule. He had to be at the Goddard’s by ten or he would be late for the Jablonski’s. He had promised the latter that he’d have their lawn mowed and their weeds trimmed before two, in time for their barbecue. He shook the cord again, flipping the on/off toggle switch up and down.
“Son of a bitch.” He hissed, cursing the fact that he didn’t have a back up.
These were the hassles of his trade. Equipment that didn’t work, rainy weather causing him delays-sometimes loss of work-irritated clients who refused to pay or paid him with bad checks, heavy traffic making him late from one job to the next…the list went on and on but still it was better than working a ‘real’ job, one in which he had to punch a time clock and endure harassment by an overzealous manager with a hard-on for company policy. He didn’t miss his days at the foundry where that uptight bastard Aaron Olsen used to hover over him, his breath smelling of rotgut whisky, his skin greasy, eyes glassy, but the name tag on his shirt had ‘Manager’ written above it so he had the right to pester Eddie about every little thing he did, right or wrong.
“You’re two minutes late Eddie! I’m docking you an hour for that!” The fucker would bellow so everyone on the floor could hear it. The Johnson twins would always look up from the steel they were pouring and snicker, maybe make lewd gestures at him with their hands-everyone knew that they were incestuous homo’s-and the other guys would laugh as the sweat poured down their faces in the intense heat, toxins seeping out of their pores from the booze and the methamphetamine they consumed nightly just to tolerate this hell they called a job. Nope, Eddie didn’t miss that at all.
He’d started his lawn service company with the best of intentions, being his own boss, choosing his own hours, working in the great outdoors, and all those things combined were what kept him afloat when he was having a bad day, but sometimes the technical difficulties bothered him to no end. Being the owner and operator of this business meant that he had to service all of his gear himself and pay for his own health insurance, which he currently didn’t have. He’d developed a pain in his groin about three weeks ago that so far hadn’t gone away and he was damned if he knew what it was but was still waiting for it to magically disappear before he was going to pony up the bread to see a doctor. After being misdiagnosed several times by insensitive, uncaring doctors he didn’t hold much faith in them.
The best part of his business was his location in Carlsbad, California. The demand for landscaping was year round so he only had a couple of slow months to contend with. Business had started out rather tepid in January but my March he had more work then he knew what to do with. He often thought about hiring an employee but then he would have to share what he made, and what with the alimony and the child support payments-not to mention the debts he had incurred during his brief but costly crack cocaine habit-he needed every dime for himself. Hiring someone would have to wait until he was really raking it in, no pun intended.
He jiggled the switch again and when nothing happened he looked down the length of the cord, following it with his eyes to the outlet on the back of the house to make sure it was still plugged in…
“Well I’ll be damned.” He said, louder than he should have because there might be little kids around. The cord was unplugged. He set the blower down carefully-now that he assumed it was probably working-and walked over to the house. On his way there he noticed with some surprise that it was wrapped around the base of a large tree, but how it had come to be like that he had no recollection. He had plugged it in and walked over to where he was going to commence cleaning off the back patio; he hadn’t then walked around that tree on the way over here.
Approaching the outlet, he removed the plug and walked back over to the tree with the intention of straightening it out when something caught his eye, something improbable in the midst of the normal, suburban yard. He almost laughed out loud.
“You gotta be kidding me,” he said mirthfully, shaking his head. He had never imagined that the Swenson’s were so whimsical about their taste in lawn ornamentation.
What he was looking at appeared to be a tiny door in the base of the tree, an ornate, stately looking door for the comings and goings of people that would have to stand no higher then three inches tall. It was funny though, he couldn’t remember ever seeing it there before, and he had been working for the Swenson’s for over seven months. Maybe it was a project that one of their kids was working on, something to make their yard more baroque.
He knelt down on one knee and looked at it closer. He marveled at the design of the hinges and the quality of its texture. It didn’t look like plastic, it looked like real wood, he thought, noting the grain running through it. Without thinking about what he was doing he reached down and rapped his knuckles against it, knocking several times just for kicks, but was surprised when the sound it made suggested that there was an opening behind it, that it wasn’t something that was nailed or glued to the tree. It made a dull, hollow sound. At once Eddie felt somewhat uneasy, but he wasn’t quite sure why. He shook his head. Maybe they put it there to cover up an existing hole in the tree, possibly made by small animals-squirrels or something-and that there was an opening behind it was no big surprise, but it wasn’t like something lived there…
A breeze suddenly whipped up-at least that was what Eddie thought because the leaves on the tree began to rustle. Almost imperceptible to the human eye, the tree seemed to vibrate.
“No way.” He whispered. That was a hell of a coincidence, but hey, what did he expect? Some three-inch dude to throw open the door and ask him what it was he wanted? Maybe point out the ‘no solicitors’ sign? He quickly stood up and brushed the knees of his pants off. Shit, he had work to do. He didn’t have time to sit here and fool around with some bit of arts and crafts that the Swenson’s had dreamed up to make their yard a little more snazzy when they had their Dungeons and Dragons friends over for a day of medieval fun…
At once the door opened a crack, maybe a few millimeters, the hinges squeaking ever so lightly. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead, followed by several others. He’d been sober since he’d quit working at the foundry, not a drop of alcohol or a single rock since the day he walked out of that place for good. Surely he couldn’t be seeing things. He blinked his eyes rapidly several times, and then squinted hard at the door. It was standing open a little bit, swinging inward.
“What the hell?” Eddie got back down on his knees again, crouched over low, reaching out with his right hand tentatively. With a single finger he pushed the door the rest of the way open, not even realizing that he was holding his breath.
And then she appeared, wearing a plain cotton dress, her red hair swept back in a messy ponytail, one hand clutching a tiny cell phone.
“I tried to call you three times but all I got was your voice mail. Where the hell have you been?” It was his wife-well, ex-wife-and her pale green eyes were red from crying but sparkling lividly with anger. “Have you been out with your crack head buddies?”
“Janet?” He said, his voice quivering, the blood suddenly pounding in his head. This wasn’t right, this was…impossible…she was in Phoenix living with their two kids at her mother’s place…
“Who the fuck did you think it was going to be? That whore from Sully’s that I know you’ve been screwing around with? It’s about time you came home!”
And at once he was looking at her face to face and he realized that she was as big as he was or, no…it couldn’t be…he was as small as she was and he was standing in the open door, the smell of something burning coming from behind her, from the kitchen…the kitchen? In a tree? He turned around to look at the Swenson’s lawn but it was gone and it was the neighborhood that they had lived in in Oceanside, west of the 5. Across the street Benny Melendez was washing his El Camino, listening to the Spanish radio station at full volume as he sang along. He turned back to Janet and there was the crappy foyer leading into the even crappier living room where Judge Judy was blaring on the TV. His son Kyle was sitting on the dirty carpet in a soiled diaper, thumb stuck in his mouth as he stared at the television, hypnotized. God, he’d hated that house but it was all he could afford. One block over was Crips territory and at any given time of the day you could score crack, meth, powder cocaine, weed, whatever you wanted. It had been the ruin of him. Of course he hated that his family had to be in that environment but what could he do, where could they go? Back to his parents in Chicago and live in the ghetto they called home? He couldn’t afford to get them out of such abject poverty and Janet hated him for it. When they had gotten engaged he’d promised her a better life then this.
“You lousy son of a bitch you smell like ass and crack smoke! What, you think I’m stupid?”
“But honey, this, uh, this isn’t happening, this isn’t real…”
“Isn’t real? Isn’t real?” Her voice rose sharply and then she turned and threw the phone at the wall, the device shattering in a spray of plastic fragments. “What isn’t real? Where the hell have you been? What have you been doing?”
Dizziness crept over Eddie and he felt himself swooning. He had to reach out and grab the doorframe to steady himself. This had been the worst period of his life, the most horrific time he had had to endure because he knew what he was doing to himself and his family but he just couldn’t stop it. He hated himself, simply hated the fact that he was so weak that he had to hide behind a haze of drugs because his reality was a waking nightmare. Everyday he and Janet fought, over money, his drug problem, their kids future-or lack thereof-their own future together, and nothing ever got resolved, nothing could possibly be said to make anything right.
“I wish you would die.” Janet whispered harshly, her voice cold, devoid of any emotion save resignation. “I wish you would just die and leave us alone.”
“What…” He said, his voice cracking, fat tears rolling down his face. “What do you want me to do?”
“This.” She said, holding out her hands. In them was an industrial size orange extension cord. “Use this and finish it. Finish it now.”
Eddie fell to his knees, sobbing, his chest heaving, his breathing jagged.
“I swear I loved you, I did! I just, just…couldn’t make anything better for us…”
“Well here is your chance to make things right.” She said, her voice calm now, her demeanor poised, the cadence of her speech almost soothing his frayed nerves. “Do this for me.” She said, her face grim. “Do this for your children.”
“Mommy, why is daddy crying?” April asked, walking into the room in her Barney the Dinosaur PJ’s, a cup of apple juice clutched in one of her chubby little hands. Her blondish brown hair was unwashed and uncombed and there was a purple bruise on the right side of her face. When she spoke he saw that she was missing several of her front teeth and, if memory served him right, it wasn’t because she had lost them to the tooth fairy.
“Daddy is crying because he’s sorry for what he did to you, for what he did to all of us.”
“Can I make it all better?” She asked, her voice so sweet, so perfectly uncomprehending that Eddie’s heart broke.
“No honey, only daddy can do that.”
Through his haze of tears Eddie reached out for the cord, took it in his hands.
“I want you to know that I really am very, very sorry.” He said but his voice seemed lost to him, he couldn’t really hear it anymore, and at once he found that he couldn’t breathe, something was blocking the passage of air to his lungs. As his sight began to fade all he could make out were Janet and the kids standing over him, looking down at him with icy, detached eyes…unblinking…none of them reaching out a hand to help him…
* * *
“Shit, looks like it’s going to be one of those days.” Sgt. Cory Dunn told his partner as they got out of the squad car and walked the length of the yard to the tree in the back of 2345 Calle Barcelona. The woman who lived there was sitting on the lawn, knees drawn up to her chin, her eyes vacant, spooked.
“Mrs. Swenson?” Sgt Dunn said, approaching her slowly. “Are you the one that called us?”
She turned her head slightly, unable to tear her gaze away from the tree.
“Yes.” She said softly, and by the tone of her voice Dunn could tell that she was in shock.
“What happened?”
“I came home and, and…I found him like this.”
“Who is he ma’am?” Dunn’s partner, Roy Carlton asked.
“He is, um, was our gardener.”
“Any idea why he would do this?”
“None.” She said simply, her eyes moving back and forth as a light breeze played through the leaves of the tree. “He seemed like a very happy, well adjusted person.” She looked up at them finally, catching Sgt. Dunn’s eyes. “I guess that just goes to show you how much you know about anybody. Really know about them I mean.” “Could be.” Sgt. Dunn said, looking up at the body dangling from the tree, an orange extension cord wrapped around his neck, swaying gently back and forth in the mild spring air.