Silver Lake by Peter Gadol

Author:Peter Gadol
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9781440530722
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2009-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

4

THERE WAS NEVER ANY QUESTION in Carlo’s mind that whoever had thrown the trash around the yard had come back to commit another act of vandalism, this time to do more harm, and no matter Robbie’s denial—what kind of wind could partially uproot the saplings and their stakes and snap the trunks!—the near-felling of two trees was unambiguously symbolic: two broken trees, two broken men.

In the morning he tried again to lift a fractured bough back in place, wondering what magical regrafting might occur were he to secure the split wood at the break. He was kidding himself. He retrieved the handsaw from the garage, got down on his knees, and pressed the roots of the tree back in the earth, patting down the mud into a berm, all the while trying to hold the trunk steady. He began sawing the trunk beneath the break, but it had rained overnight, making the bark slippery, and he could see he was doing more harm than good, not so much cutting through the wood as scarring it. He tried again at a different angle because he thought maybe if he cut the trunk cleanly, and the roots were reestablished, then the tree might survive the shock and continue to grow and eventually develop new buds, which would yield new branches, and with proper nurturing, one day the tree might look no different than its siblings.

For about fifteen minutes, this was a potent fantasy. However, he couldn’t saw the tree the way he wanted, and also, the root ball was more disturbed than he was admitting. He told himself he was doing the right thing when he went back to the garage for a shovel, and dug at the roots and uprooted the sapling (which proved to be more of a chore than he’d imagined), and dragged the ruined thing around to the side of the house, out of sight. Then he went at the second tree and removed it, as well. He kicked what mud he could into the cone-shaped craters where the trees had stood.

The yard work had been messy and he had to take a second shower of the morning, and meanwhile Robbie slept, which maybe was best. Carlo didn’t want to talk about the plum trees, he didn’t want to argue about where to lay blame, and while Robbie’s inability to perceive a blatant threat was infuriating, Carlo also didn’t want to drift back into conversation that would bleed into a larger meditation on Tom—blessedly, Tom hadn’t come up at all recently, and Carlo wanted to keep it that way. It was better not to involve Robbie and handle things on his own, and besides, any further back-and-forth about why anyone would harass them was pointless: action was required.

All morning at his desk, he pondered what to do, and one thought was to drive over to the nursery and pick up two new saplings. Like whitewashing graffiti the morning after it was sprayed (not that they had done anything

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