“There they hang,
Legs swinging free,
Strung up from
The Gallows Tree.
Beware lad,
For where it grows
The Gallows Tree
Bears fruit of woes.”
It was an old rhyme, one the kids used to sing-song in the school yard. Didn’t think much of it until I happened to sing it at home. My ma whopped me a good one and told me never to mention such a thing again. Was the only time my ma ever hit me, and when I think back to the fear in her eyes, I know it wasn’t really anything I did. Something about that rhyme had her scared worse than I’d ever seen.
I didn’t think much about the whole thing until a year later, when they found Jeramiah swinging from the beech tree in his backyard.
I was too young to understand at the time, but I remember hearing the adults whisper among themselves. I never caught much—we kids were always getting “sent out to play” when it was time for “grown-up talk.” But a phrase always catches in my mind from when Aunt Jenny came to visit—she never was any good at being quiet.
“It’s happening all over again.”
My ma shushed her. “We don’t know that. It’s just one. These things happen all the time.”
Didn’t mean anything at the time. Just another mystery for my child mind to mull over, then discard. But it came back to me, like a camera flash in the dark, in the spring of sixth grade, when Jeramiah’s best friend, Clark, was found swinging from the old oak in front of the high school.
I was old enough to know what it meant by that point. Rumors flew about why he did it—got caught with someone else’s girl—got caught with a boy—got caught with Jerry’s old jersey, lying stained in his bed. All just speaking ill of the dead, as far as I know. But small towns and small minds, you know?
It was just a tragedy, like anything else. Clark and Jeramiah were like brothers—it made sense that Clark would be going through it after Jerry’s death.
Eventually, the talk died down. The rumor mill moved on to the living and their many scandals. It seemed like everything had blown over.
Until the next death.
Teddy’s mom was the one who found him, hanging from the tree on the edge of their property. The poor woman—Teddy was Clark’s younger brother, and just 15. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose both your kids that way.
This one hit me especially hard. I didn’t know Teddy that well—we were more acquaintances that actual friends—but he was going with my best friend, Bea, for nearly a year. I held her during the funeral—I don’t know if she heard a word said, she was sobbing so hard.
Bea just wasn’t the same after. It was like a light went out inside her. I wanted so badly to fix it, but no matter what I tried, it was met with the same empty look.
She stopped going to the roller rink, even though it was something we’d done every Friday for years. She quit the cheerleading team, even though she loved it, and she was on varsity this year. Her grades plummeted, and she was failing chem, even though she’d always loved science.
I spent a lot of time at her house trying to coax her back to herself. She let me—I think because we’d been friends for so long. We were more like sisters at that point. But it wasn’t helping, not really. She had this faraway look, as though she wasn’t seeing anything here. She was looking beyond, somewhere I couldn’t reach.
“It’s like something’s waiting for me,” she said that night. I was sleeping over, and we lay cuddled in her bed against the winter cold. Outside, the wind howled, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was already snowing. Bea looked more herself than she had all year—more awake, like she’d been sleepwalking this whole time. “Something heavy and cold. It’s waiting for me to bow under the weight of it.”
I held her close, and I told her that I would help her carry it. Whatever it was, we would carry it together. I thought she was talking about grief, back then. Lord knows, it fit the description.
I woke up in the early morning, the sky still dark. Bea’s side of the bed was empty and cold.
Not wanting to wake up Bea’s parents, I got up as quietly as I could, donning my robe and slippers in the chilly morning air. The bathroom was empty, so I crept to the kitchen, thinking she might’ve gotten up for a glass of water. There was no Bea in the kitchen…but the backdoor was open, a light dusting of snow across the linoleum. And a pair of footprints led out into the darkness.
It was all so dream-like. I felt like a part of me had stepped out of my skin and was just watching it all play out, like a movie in a theater. I wanted to yell out, tell that girl on the screen not to go. But my feet carried me anyway, out into the still, soft snow.
Everything was so dark. I could only make out shapes in the distance. I kept my head down, eyes on the footprints, knowing they’d lead me to Bea. Eventually, they ended. Above them, swinging in the winter wind, hung a pair of blue-tinged feet and the fluttering hem of a nightgown.
I didn’t want to look up. But it felt like abandoning Bea if I didn’t. Like I was rejecting her in her last moments.
So, I looked.
I stood there a long time. I didn’t feel the cold. Didn’t feel tired. I just stood and watched my best friend swinging.
Eventually, Bea’s parents woke up. When they realized we weren’t in bed, they went looking for us. I guess they found me there, just standing, and Bea, hanging from the tree. I don’t really remember it. I don’t remember a lot for a long time.
Well, except one thing.
The next thing I properly remember is the hospital. I had pneumonia, a complication of hypothermia, from standing out in the cold for so long.
My ma cried when I opened my eyes and knew who she was. I guess during the fever, I’d said strange things. Hallucinations, my ma said. I let her hold me, and I let her believe it. Because that was the one thing I did remember, and I knew it was real.
When I was strong enough, the doctors let me go home. My body’s not the same, though. I ache when I move too much, and I lose my breath just walking upstairs. The doctors say it’s normal, and those things will go away, given time.
But I don’t think I’ve got time.
I spend most days in my room, propped up in bed, watching TV or reading. Sometimes I just spend my day watching out the window. I’ve got a good view of the front yard and street. I watch the other kids go about their days, watch the neighbors do chores, come and go from work.
But most of all, I watch the tree.
It’s waiting for me, you know. Just like it was waiting for Bea. I know what I saw that morning. I stared at it for hours.
Bea wasn’t hanging from a rope or cord or wire. There was bark around her throat, like the tree had grown around her and picked her right up.
It figures to get me, too. I can tell. The lowest branch—there’s something growing on it. Like a vine or twig, but it’s wrong. It grows straight down, and then it splits, the two branches swelling outward before growing back toward each other.
No one else sees it. All those people going about their lives. Not one of them sees what’s growing in my own damn front yard.
Not that it matters. It’s kind of a relief, knowing it’s there. ‘Cause when I woke up in that hospital, my first thought was that I wish I hadn’t woken up at all. Not without Bea. I don’t want to live in a world without Bea in it.
And maybe, just maybe, she’s still out there, somewhere beyond. Waiting for me.
So, I watch the tree. And I watch that little bit, that inch, that grows between dusk and dawn. And I wait.
Because when it’s finished, I know I’ll walk out there, into the gallows. Just like the rest of them.