The Hole Tree

 The unraveling began on a Saturday just before dinner. As Alice was dropping pasta into a boiling pot, she heard her husband Jesse pull into the driveway. One car door slammed, and then there was a pause while Jesse got their son Owen out of his car seat, followed by the slam of a second door.

Soon, Owen’s little feet stomped from the front door to the living room, making more noise than one would think an eight-year-old could. Pots and plates rattled in the cabinets as he sped into the kitchen.

“Mommy!” He slammed into her knees.

“Sweetie, I missed you. How was the birthday party?” Alice hunched down and hugged him.

“It was fun.” His breath tickled her ears as she squeezed him. “There was a clown. He did magic.”

“Did you like him?”

Owen pulled away and shrugged. “Are we having spaghetti?”

“Your favorite. Did you make any friends?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

They had moved into their new town only a few weeks, but she was anxious for her son to forge some friendships. She had shifted from one foster home to another for years, and she knew how hard it was to start over.

Owen climbed a barstool and sat at the little kitchen island, swiping his shoulder-length, brown hair out of his eyes. Alice smiled, and he smiled back. That’s when she saw it.

“Owen! You lost a tooth.”

“Yeah,” Owen said. He stuck a finger into the gap. “I can feel the tip of the new one.”

Jesse walked into the kitchen, barely making a sound. Unlike their little freight train of a son, Jesse was always light on his feet for a man who was six-foot-four. His hands were smeared black with car grease after a day spent at his brother’s house, helping him restore a classic car.

“Don’t you dare hug me with those hands,” Alice said.

“Of course not.” He winked and leaned in to kiss the top of her head. He turned to the sink and flipped on the water.

Full of energy, Owen started slapping a rhythm on the countertop with his hands.

“Owen, did you put your tooth under your pillow?” Alice asked.

“No.” He shrugged and spun himself on the stool.

“Why not? Where is it?”

“I don’t know.” He rolled his eyes.

“Did you lose it?”

Owen climbed off the stool. “I’m going to play.”

“Wait a second,” Alice said. But it was too late. Owen was bolting up the stairs to his room.

Jesse toweled his hands and pressed his hip against hers. “Hey babe.”

“Do you know what happened to his tooth?”

“I didn’t even notice he lost it. Maybe it’s in his bed or something. Fell out while he was sleeping.”

Alice frowned. Owen had lost three teeth this year, and he was always thrilled by a visit from the tooth fairy.

“He’s being so nonchalant about it,” she said.

“It’s not a big deal,” Jesse said.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “I don’t want him to miss out on things like this.”

“Like the tooth fairy?” Jesse said. He smirked. “It’s just kid stuff.”

“Most of foster parents didn’t bother to put money under my pillow. They didn’t bother with Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, either.”

Memories of childhood drove Alice to reach her right hand into the left sleeve of her blouse, where her fingertips drifted over the dozens of thin scars crisscrossing the outside of her forearm. Her thumb slid over a second set of scars on the inner forearm. She remembered the first time the tooth fairy didn’t come, when she woke up and found her tooth still sitting there. The other foster kids made fun of her for crying. That was the day her two imaginary friends, Bella and Button, first appeared to her, with their pale faces and long, wet black hair. “We understand why you’re sad,” Bella had said. “We’ll be your friends,” Button added.

Alice pulled her hand away from her scars and took a deep breath. “You know why I care about this stuff,” she whispered.

Jesse’s smirk was gone. His gaze dropped, and his face reddened. “I’m sorry, Alice. I know you missed out on a lot, but maybe Owen just doesn’t care about this kid stuff. You can’t force it on him.”

Alice fought to keep her voice level. She knew she was getting more upset than she needed to be. A missing tooth wasn’t worth an argument. “He’s a kid. Of course kid stuff should matter to him.”

Jesse stirred the sauce and cast a bashful glance at her. “I get it. Look, you should go search for the tooth. Maybe it’s in his bedsheets or something. I’ll finish dinner.”

His suggestion was a kind of apology. Jesse was an engineer who was sometimes impatient with things that he described as “the squishy stuff.” When he thought Alice was coddling Owen, Jesse’s occasional smirks and eye-rolls did not go unnoticed. Sometimes Alice wondered what kind of child Jesse had been. She half suspected that he’d gone from five to thirty overnight.

When Alice reached the top of the stairs, she found Owen’s door closed, which was unusual. She lifted a hand to knock, but her son’s voice made her pause.

“I have another one that’s loose,” Owen said. “But it’s not ready yet.”

She opened the door without knocking. “Who are you talking to, honey?”

Owen was on the floor, building a house with a mismatched set of Lego blocks. He started a little at her words and dropped a couple of blocks.

“No one.” The upward pitch of Owen’s voice told Alice that he was fibbing.

“Do you have an imaginary friend?”

“Nope.” He picked up the dropped Legos and snapped them into place, completing a wall.

“It’s okay if you do,” she said. She blushed at her words, a small fib, if she was being totally honest with herself. Her own imaginary friends had made her feel less lonely when she was little, but she had let Bella and Button get the best of her later on.

“I don’t make up friends, mommy.”

She wasn’t entirely convinced, but she let it go. “Are you sure you don’t know where your tooth is? The tooth fairy will want it.” Alice walked to his little bed and pulled the blanket down. She ran her hands along the top sheet, feeling for the tooth.

“I don’t know, Mommy. Stop asking!”

“Grown-ups are allowed to asked questions. It’s our job.”

He sighed. “Sorry.”

“It’s almost time for dinner. Wash your hands and go set the table.”

“Okay.” He dropped some loose Lego blocks and jumped to his feet. He paused at the door. “I’m sorry about my tooth.”

“Oh, don’t be sorry. I just feel bad you won’t get any money from the tooth fairy.”

Owen thundered down the stairs on his tiny feet, and Alice remade his bed. She looked around his room, smiling at how lived in it looked after only a few weeks. Drawings on the walls, a bookshelf full of books, his toys scattered. It was a little messy.

One drawing on the wall caught her eye. It depicted a tree and a little boy. The boy was wearing yellow sneakers, which told her it was Owen. He loved his yellow Nikes. In the drawing, Owen was holding a branch of the tree, almost like he was holding its hand. And the tree had a face. Blank eyes, a little nub of a nose, and a big black, circular mouth. A vast “O” of a mouth.

Her eyes drifted to the bedroom window, and her breath caught. The massive, ancient beech tree that dominated their backyard was framed perfectly by the window. From her vantage, in the early evening, she could just make out the black circle of a great hollow in the tree, a hole big enough for a whole family of raccoons to fit through. She had never really looked at the tree from Owen’s room before, and she had never noticed the hole.

Their realtor had said the beech was older than the house by many decades, which explained perhaps why it was so close to the building. Some of the branches occasionally scraped against the side of the house on windy days. Jesse had promised to hire a contractor to bring the tree down before winter.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that the tree was watching her. Remembering that Owen had been speaking to someone before she opened his door, Alice glanced again at the picture of her son holding hands with the tree. It reminded her of the pictures she had drawn when she was little, of her with Bella and Button.

A teacher had found some of those pictures in her school desk when Alice was ten.

“Alice,” the teacher had said. “What are these?”

“They are my friends, Button and Bella.”

“Are they imaginary?”

“I guess imaginary. Why?”

“It’s just… well, real little girls usually have eyes.”

#

Two weeks later, another tooth disappeared.

Alice walked into Owen’s bedroom that morning and found him curled in a ball in his bed.

“Wake up, honey. Daddy made pancakes.”

“Pancakes? Yum.” He stretched his arms and legs as she pulled the covers off him. He smiled and sat up.

“You lost another tooth,” Alice said. One of his upper front teeth was missing, leaving another dark gap in his smile.

Owen stuck a finger in his mouth. “Yep.” He climbed down from the bed and walked out of the room.

Alice followed him down the stairs. “Did you save this one for the tooth fairy?”

He shrugged.

“Did you lose it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Owen.” Alice grabbed his shoulder and turned him around. “Where is your tooth?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. The tooth fairy isn’t real.”

“Who told you that?”

“My friend,” he said. He walked into the dining room, where Jesse was placing plates of pancakes and bacon on the table.

“Hey kiddo,” Jesse said. “Good morning.”

Jesse’s hair was a mess — the terrible bedhead that meant he’d gone too long between haircuts. She couldn’t resist stretching up and running a hand through it as she walked past him. His hair was thick, like Owen’s. Her own black hair was finer, but glossier than both of theirs.

“Owen lost another tooth, but he doesn’t know where it is.”

“Did you swallow it or something?” Jesse asked.

“No.” Owen giggled.

“Well, where is it?” Jesse said. “Your mom wants to make sure the tooth fairy can pay you for it. It’s bad luck to disappoint fairies twice in a row.”

“A friend told Owen that the tooth fairy isn’t real, apparently.” Alice lifted Owen into a seat and started cutting his pancakes for him.

“Well that friend is lying,” Jesse said. “Right, Mom?

“That’s right,” Alice said. “You should really find that tooth, sweetie. Who told you that tooth fairy isn’t real?”

“Just a friend. You don’t know them,” Owen said.

“A few days ago, you were complaining that you miss all your old friends and that you hate all the kids at your new school,” Jesse said. “Now you have some new friend who is telling you these things?”

Owen shrugged and stuffed a forkful of pancake into his mouth.

“Was it the tree?” Alice asked.

Owen’s fork paused halfway to his mouth. He looked sidelong at Alice. “Huh?”

“What tree?” Jesse said.

“The one outside his window,” Alice said.

“That’s stupid,” Owen said. “Trees don’t talk.”

“If you say so,” she said.

“What about the tree?” Jesse asked.

“It’s huge and it’s right up against the house,” Alice said. “When are you going to take it down?”

“I told you I’d do it before winter.”

“You can’t chop that tree down.” Owen slammed his fork on the table.

“Why not?” Alice asked.

His eyes darted back and forth from Alice to Jesse.  “It’s important. The tree is important. We need it.”

“It’s just a tree,” Jesse said.

Alice leaned into Jesse. “It’s his imaginary friend,” she whispered in his ear.

“Don’t whisper about my tree!” Owen yelled.

Jesse pointed a finger at Owen. “Watch yourself, Owen.”

Alice pulled Jesse’s hand down. “It’s okay, honey,” she said. She turned to Owen. “We’re not keeping secrets. But you should learn to take better care of your teeth for the tooth fairy, which is real, by the way. And that tree is just a tree. Please remember that.”

She watched uneasily as Owen ate breakfast.

The beech tree, thick with silvery bark, lingered in Alice’s mind.

After breakfast, Alice did some gardening in the backyard. They had inherited an overgrown perennial garden that lined the old stockade fence along their rear property line. Years of neglect had left it choked with weeds.

Flowers didn’t interest Alice. She wanted a vegetable garden, but she felt bad about pulling the flowers that the previous owner had planted here. Maybe next season she would plant vegetables. For now, she would content herself with clearing the weeds.

It was a chilly October morning, but she was sweating as she tossed some pigweed into her yard-waste barrel. She wiped her forehead and looked around. Owen was sitting at the base of the beech tree. He patted the trunk with his right hand, almost like he was soothing it.

Alice stood up with a groan as her knees protested hours of kneeling. She limped across the yard. "Hey, Owen. What are you up to?”

Owen’s head snapped round. He had a nervous expression, like she’d caught him sneaking cookies out of the kitchen. “Nothing, just resting.”

Alice felt a sudden urge to get Owen away from the tree. It simply wasn’t healthy for him to focus on it so much.

“I see. Well, I have an idea. Would you like to help me with the garden?”

“No thanks.”

“I could use your help. Why don’t you go inside and change into some of your grubby clothes? Your junky jeans.”

Owen rolled his eyes. “All right. But you should pay me.”

“Why should I do that?”

Owen ran to the backdoor. “Because the garden isn’t one of my chores. That’s extra!”. He slammed the door behind him.

Alice smiled. Her son was already a tough negotiator who knew what he was worth.

A plastic red shovel caught her eye. Owen had left it at the base of the beech, near a disturbed patch of dirt. She kneeled and touched the soil. It was soft, freshly turned.

She grabbed her trowel from her gardening belt and started digging. After half a minute the trowel hit metal. Alice cleared soil from the object with her hands, uncovering a tin Band Aid box with a hinged lid. She recognized it from her medicine cabinet. It had disappeared two weeks ago, leaving behind a messy pile of Band Aids on a shelf.

Alice lifted the box out of the hole and something rattled inside. She opened it.

Two little teeth dropped into the palm of her hand. One had a speck of red on it, a little spot of dried blood. Goosebumps spread from her hand and up her arm.

“What the fuck?” she whispered.

Alice put the Band Aid box aside and poked around the hole with her trowel, wondering if her son had buried anything else. She struck something solid, and dug around it. This object was bigger, rectangular, and it felt like wood. She pried at the thing with her fingers until it popped free from the soil.

It was a wooden cigar box with a faded illustration on the lid that depicted a woman with bright red lips and a shawl wrapped around her head and shoulders.

Alice opened the box. “Jesus!” She dropped it to the ground and at least a dozen little teeth spilled into the dirt.

She grabbed her trowel and dug furiously, going deeper. Again she struck something. She pulled out a tiny rusted box and popped the lid free. More baby teeth. Nine or ten of them, yellow with age.

She kept going and struck something wooden. She pulled it out, hearing the teeth rattle inside. She didn’t bother to open it. She tossed it aside and kept digging. She struck something that broke under her trowel, the shards rattling like pottery.

“Put those back!” Owen yelled. He ran to the hole and starting picking up teeth. “Bad, Mommy! The teeth make the tree strong.”

Alice grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him away from the tree.

“Jesse!” she yelled.

“No! Mommy, let me go!” Owen’s scream pierced the air.

“Jesse! Come out here! I need you.”

#

Six dirty containers lay on the dining table between Alice and Jesse, including the Band Aid tin with Owen’s teeth. Jesse opened the cigar box and closed it again. As he looked up at her, his eyebrows scrunched together.

“What is this?” he asked.

“It’s scary. That’s what it is.”

He reached for Band Aid box. “Are you sure these are Owen’s?” He rattled the teeth in the tin.

“He said so.”

Jesse lay the Band Aid tin on the table and picked up a rusty steel box. “I’ve seen one of these before. It’s an ammunition box from World War Two.” He opened it. Alice heard the teeth inside slide back and forth.

“It’s like all the neighborhood’s kids buried their teeth in our backyard,” Alice said. “And they’ve been doing it for years.”

Jesse frowned and lifted a tooth out of the steel box. He held it up in the light. “These teeth are stained and pitted, like they’ve been buried for a really long time.”

“Yeah, I googled the cigar box. It’s 100 years old. Do they all look like baby teeth to you? I’m getting an image of grown-ups pulling their teeth with pliers and burying them under our son’s window.”

Jesse grimaced. “No, these are all baby teeth.”

Alice rubbed her fingers over the knuckles of her right hand. The skin was dry and rough. With Jesse watching, she willed herself not to touch the scars on her forearm. He knew what they were, but she didn’t like to call attention to them. She thought about the first time Button had told her to cut herself. “It will give you control,” Button had said. “No one else can hurt you but you.”

She pushed the memory aside. She hadn’t cut herself in eight years. It had been even longer since she had seen Bella or Button.

Owen’s feet stomped in his bedroom upstairs, and Alice flinched. They had ordered him to his room while they talked. Alice looked at the ceiling. She could almost feel its weight pressing down on her.

“Obviously a lot of kids have buried teeth there over the years. What would compel generations of them to do it in the same spot?” Jesse asked.

“Like I said, Owen thinks the tree needs them. He talks to it.”

Jesse slouched. He scratched at a fresh pimple on his cheek. “We should ask him some questions.”

“Okay,” Alice said. “Owen! Come down here, please.”

Owen stormed down the stairs and flew around the corner into the room. When he saw the boxes on the table, he froze.

“You need to put everything back,” Owen said.

“Sit down with us,” Alice said.

Owen huffed and dragged his feet to the table. He took a seat beside Alice, and she placed a hand on his back. The tension in his little muscles surprised her, but she kept her hand there, rubbing small circles on his back to ease the tension.

“Why do we need to put them back?”

“The Hole Tree needs them. They make him strong.”

“The tree outside your window needs the teeth?” Alice asked.

“Yes, it’s not safe.”

“It’s just a tree,” Jesse said.

“The Hole Tree is my friend. He keeps us safe. Now he’s weak. He needs the teeth.”

Jesse smacked his hand on the table. The teeth rattled in their boxes. “Stop making stuff up and tell us who gave you this idea to bury your teeth.”

“I told you.” Owen sobbed.

Alice hugged him to her chest. He snuffled against her. “What does the tree protect you from?” Alice asked.

“Don’t indulge him,” Jesse said.

“Just let him explain,” she said softly. “What is the tree protecting you from?”

“The hoss bills in the ground,” Owen said.

“The what?” Alice asked.

“The hoss bills.”

“House bills?” she asked.

Owen closed his eyes and shook his head. “Hoss bills. They are very bad. They come from the ground.”

“Have you talked to any people in the neighborhood about this? About the tree? About teeth?” Jesse asked.

“The tree says he keeps us safe,” Owen said. “But he needs teeth.”

“Are these hoss bills people?” Alice asked. “Did they tell you to bury teeth?”

“Not people. They come out of the ground.” Owen shrugged. His gaze was locked on the Band Aid box.

Alice picked up the Band Aid box from the table and held it out to Owen. She wasn’t getting through to him. But she wasn’t going to let him be scared either. “You can go back to the tree and bury these.”

“What about the rest?” Owen asked.

“Just bury these,” Alice said. “Daddy and I need to talk.”

“It won’t be enough.”

Alice shook her head. “I’m sorry, but this is the way it has to be for now. Daddy and I need to talk.”

Owen looked like he was about to cry, but he bit his lip and took the tin. His teeth rattled as he ran into the kitchen to the back door.  “It isn’t enough.” He closed the door softly for once.

“It’s insane,” Jesse said. “You shouldn’t have indulged him like that.”

“Jesse, relax,” Alice said. His eyes flashed at her, but softened quickly at her own warning expression. Alice admired how logical Jesse’s world was, but Alice had to draw the line here. He needed to bend sometimes, see the world through the eyes of their son.

“I’m sorry,” Jesse murmured. “But we can’t give in to him on this. It’s crazy.”

“We’ll let him re-bury his teeth,” Alice said. “He’s convinced he needs the rest of these boxes, but when he sees that he’s safe with just his own teeth, that will show him he’s wrong. The tree is just a tree.”

Jesse nodded. “That’s a good idea.”

“Let’s lock the rest of this stuff in that safe.”

“Why down there?”

“Do you want to put this creepy shit at the top of your closet?” she asked.

“No, I guess not.” Jesse’s laughed mirthlessly.

They gathered the boxes and Alice led the way to the cellar door, in the corridor just off the kitchen. Each wooden stair creaked under her feet until they reached the dirt floor of the cellar.

Jesse followed her to the floor safe, an iron monstrosity that they had found when they first moved in. The safe was black, with specks of rust here and there. “Victory Safe and Lock Company” was stenciled on the front. It weighed hundreds of pounds, so they hadn’t moved it. The cellar stairs would probably collapse under its weight.

The safe had been open when they found it, and Jesse had worked out how to set a new combination. Still, they had left it empty until now.

Jesse crouched down and stacked the boxes of teeth inside. The door swung closed easily enough, despite weighing at least a hundred pounds. It barely made a noise as it clicked into place. Jesse spun the combination dial and straightened up.

“Maybe we should tell the police about this,” Alice said.

Jesse shrugged. “And tell them what?”

She shrugged. “I guess it isn’t a crime to do strange things with your baby teeth.”

They walked upstairs. Jesse turned off the cellar light and closed the door behind them.

“There are some other things we could do, besides going to the police,” he said. “I think we should talk to the previous owner. Maybe they know something.”

“We can try. Mrs. Sancheti was in in her eighties at least. Her children would have lived here decades ago. I’ll try to track her down.”

“Maybe we could research the history of the house, too,” Jesse said. “We might find some answers in the town records.”

Alice shrugged. “It can’t hurt.

It was in that moment that Alice made a sudden connection with something the real estate agent had said off-hand, by way of explanation for why the Mrs. Sancheti, whom they did not meet, was selling. She had outlived all her children. There had been no one to leave her house to when she moved into an assisted-living home.

#

#

On Monday morning, Alice stood in the living room and watched Jesse back his car out of the driveway. He was convinced he could pull records at town hall that would explain what was happening. She couldn’t imagine him finding any answers.

People don’t file official documents about a neighborhood’s children burying their teeth under an old beech tree.

She shook her head and reached into her pocket for her phone. She called Karen Pierce, the real estate agent who had sold them the house. Alice made up a half-true story about wanting to ask to Mrs. Sancheti about some of the “quirky parts” of the house. Karen said she would make some calls and try to set up a visit at the assisted-living facility.

Karen would come through, Alice assured herself. Now she simply had to wait, even if waiting felt impossible in the moment. She wanted to do something. She wanted to find answers.

Quietly, Alice walked upstairs. Owen’s door was open, and he was standing at the window, silently looking at the tree.

“Owen?”

He turned to look at her. “Hi, Mommy.” His voice was flat. “I’m ready for school. Are we going now?”

“Soon. How does the tree… How does it feel with your teeth back where they belong?”

“I told you that he needs more. I’m scared.”

She walked to him and put her hand on top of his head. His hair was so soft.

“Can you tell me more about the hoss bills? You said they are in the ground. What do they look like?”

“I haven’t seen one, but the tree says you have.”

Alice almost laughed despite everything. She had outgrown childhood fantasies years ago. “I don’t remember seeing anything.”

Owen shook his head. “Not here. Before. When you were small.”

“I don’t understand.”

Owen scratched at his scalp, searching for words. “They were called… I can’t remember. Oh, I know. Button and Bella.”

Alice felt ice fill her veins. Her head buzzed. A thousand thoughts flitted through her mind, dizzying her.

“Where did you hear those names?”

“Tree told me about them. You saw them a long time ago. They made you do things. Scary things. The tree says they were like the hoss bills. Different… and the same, the tree said.”

Alice backed away from Owen. “Who told you about them?”

“Mommy, I already said. The Hole Tree.”

 She shook her head. In the window, the tree’s hollow gaped at her, a black, hungry circle. She wanted to reach inside and tear its heart out.

Owen watched her. “Mommy, are you scared, too?”

“Stop it, Owen.” She stumbled to his bed and sat down. Her fingers drifted across her left forearm, where her deepest scars were. She could feel some of them through her sleeve.

“Stop lying to me,” she said.

He shook his head, his eyes watering. The mix of fear and confusion in his face told her enough. He wasn’t lying. He wasn’t being malicious or mischievous. He was simply telling her what he knew. But how did he know? She had never told anyone about Bella and Button. Not even Jesse.

Alice tried to steady her breathing. “Owen. Can you show me where the hoss bills are?”

He let out a long, tired breath. It made him look so much older than eight. “The tree told me where they are, but it’s not safe.”

“Lead me to them.”

“It’s not safe.”

“I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”

#

Alice walked beside Owen as he led the way across the backyard. She held his little hand precariously. Her fingers were slick with sweat, and his hand nearly slipped from her grip with each step they took. They passed the beech tree and the garden and walked up to the stockade fence that separated their property from the woods.

The ancient wooden stakes of the fence were gray and soft, almost rotten in places. A gate blocked their way to the woods beyond. She pulled the rusted chain on the latch, but it didn’t budge. Letting go of Owen, Alice gripped the chain with both hands and pulled hard. The chain broke, but the latch held.

“Damnit!”

“Mommy, don’t swear.”

Alice glanced at her son, expecting a sarcastic look on his face. He looked only scared. More scared than she was.

She kicked the gate. Something cracked but the gate held.

“Mommy, be careful.”

She kicked it again, and her foot punched a hole in one of its wooden slats. She pulled her leg free and kicked a more solid-looking crossbeam, and the latch snapped. The gate flew open.

The trees were thick behind the house. A mix of pine and maple, with tangles of brush along the ground. The late morning sun glowed in the pine needles.

“Okay, can you show the way?” she asked.

Owen stared uneasily at the forest. “Maybe we should wait for Daddy to come home.”

“Daddy is busy. I want to see where these hoss bills are.” She took his hand. “Come on. It will be all right. Do you trust me?”

Owen’s hand tightened on her fingers, but he didn’t move.

“I know you’re scared, but you need to help me understand.”

Owen closed his eyes and nodded. When she pulled on his arm, he followed.

They pushed into the forest, looking for spaces between the underbrush. They made slow progress. Where the brush was thick, Alice lifted Owen over her head, protecting him from the thorns.

After ten minutes of trudging, they reached a clearing with thickets of younger trees, but no brush.

“I think it’s here,” Owen said. His fingers dug into Alice’s palm.

Alice looked around. Across the clearing lay several massive rectangular stones. Some were anchored in the earth. A few others were tumbled about. She led Owen to the stones to get a closer look.

One stone had a year carved into it. 1839.

“I think these are foundation stones,” she said.

“What are they?”

“Part of a building.”

“I don’t like it here.”

She knelt down to be face to face with Owen. “It’s all right. Is this where the hoss bills are?”

“Yes. Can you hear them.”

“Hear what?”

“Voices,” Owen said.

“I don’t hear anything.”

Owen backed away. She grabbed his hand. “Stay with me. We’re all right. Where is the sound coming from?”

“Over there.” He pointed at the foundation stones.

She moved closer. One of the big granite stones was laying across another, the two of them forming an X. There was a hole under them, where the stones intersected. She crept closer.

“Can you hear it, Mommy?”

“I don’t hear anything.”

ALLY-ALLY-ALICE.

Alice froze. That voice.

alice-alice-ally.

Another voice. She knew them both. Button and Bella. It had been at least twelve years.

YOU WILL PLAY WITH US.

we will love you forever and ever.

PLAY WITH US!

Suddenly Alice was a little orphan again. Lonely. Scared. Those voices. She remembered the knife cutting her skin. YES ALLY-ALLY-ALICE. CUT. CUT. She remembered other things they urged her do. Pills. The thuggish boys she tried to make love her. That one burglary when she was fourteen. She had scars that would never fade, because she did what Button and Bella said to do.

Those voices shattered her. They anchored her to the very ground. She couldn’t move.

White fingers stirred in the hollow under the stones. Pale, wrinkly things. Dead fingers. They reached for her. She turned to look at her son, her only blood.

“Mommy? Do you hear the hoss bills?”

Fingers grabbed at her ankles. Ice spread from their touch.

“Run,” she whispered as darkness overcame her.

#

Alice opened her eyes. She was flat on her back in the clearing. She lay very still and listened. Nothing. No voices.

She sat up and felt her ankle. It was intensely sore, tender to the touch. She stood and tested her weight on it. It would hold.

This was all wrong. Bella and Button had never touched her when she was little. They had shown themselves to her. They had taunted her and urged her to do ugly things. But never had they touched her.

When Alice was a teenager, she had banished Bella and Button by convincing herself that they didn’t exist. They had gone away, but now they were back.

Where was Owen? She had told him to run. She prayed that he had found his way home.

Alice pushed into the brush toward the house, letting thorns tear at her jeans and scrape her thighs. They cut bloody grooves into her arms. She ignored the pain and kept going until she found the fence and stumbled through broken gate.

“Owen! Owen, where are you?”

Her son was sitting beneath the beech tree. “Mommy, are you okay?”

“Yes.” She stumbled and collapsed to her knees in front of him. There was blood on his lips and chin. “Are you hurt?” she asked.

“No, I’m fine.”

Owen was holding pliers.

“Where did you get those?”

Owen smiled. “It’s okay, Mommy. I saved you. But we need the old teeth, too. I don’t have enough.”

Alice screamed. Owen’s smile had too many dark, bloody spots where teeth had been.

#

“That fucking tree!” Jesse screamed. He threw his keys on the kitchen table.

Alice tried to stop her hands from shaking as she leaned back against the counter. She was barely able to stay on her feet. But she needed to be strong right now. She had given Owen some children’s Tylenol and put him to bed. Then she had called Jesse.

“They were baby teeth,” she said. “His teeth will grow in. He’ll be all right.”

“All right? Our son took pliers to himself. He ripped out four teeth and buried them. He’s-“ Jesse’s voice caught on his words. “He’s going crazy,” he whispered.

“No, he’s not.”

Jesse stared at her. “How can you say that? You saw it.”

Alice needed to tell him about the clearing in the woods and Button and Bella, the bruise on her ankle where they had grabbed her. How could she tell Jesse about it without him thinking she was crazy?

“You’re going to go upstairs and wake him and we are going to take him to a doctor.”

If Jesse had only been there with them, he would have seen the hands. He would have heard the voices. But he wasn’t there. He was at town hall, looking for answers. Answers.

She stood up straight and walked around the kitchen table. She put a hand on Jesse’s arm. The muscles were clenched tight under her fingers. “What did you find at town hall?”

“Alice, we don’t have time for this.”

She squeezed his arm hard, making him flinch. “What did you find, Jesse?”

“This house used to be part of a hospital. A lunatic asylum. It was the director’s residence. This whole subdivision was built on the site of the hospital grounds. Most of it was torn down eighty years ago. Our house is all that’s left.”

“Hoss bills,” Alice mumbled. “What about the land behind our house, beyond the fence?

“The woods?” He reached into his coat and pulled folded papers from a pocket. He unfolded them and sorted through the sheets. “I made a copy of a map. The Malden Lunatic Asylum, they called it.”

She grabbed the paper from him and scanned it. It was an old hand-drawn map, with roads and buildings labeled with neatly written script.

“I circled our house with a blue pen,” Jesse said.

She found the house, and oriented herself. The clearing in the woods had been the site of a building. It was labeled “Parker Research Bldg.”

“Alice, we need to take Owen to a doctor.”

“Jesse, I want you to do something for me. I need you to do it. I’ll take Owen to the doctor right now. But I need you to do this one thing while we’re gone.”

“What is it?”

“I need you to take all the teeth out of the safe and rebury them under the tree.”

“Jesus Christ, Alice.”

“Please. Just do it.”

“This is fucking crazy.”

“Promise me you’ll do it.”

“Fine.”

#

As she drove to the hospital, Alice looked at Owen’s reflection in the rear-view mirror. He was strapped safely into his car seat.

“Daddy is going to put all the teeth back,” she said. “He promised. You don’t need to do anything like that again.”

Owen’s head was turned to the side. He was watching the neighborhoods pass by. “Good,” he said. “My mouth aches.”

“We’ll take care of that at the hospital.” She paused, trying to concentrate on the road. “Do you… think that’s why they’re called hoss bills? Because they come from an old hospital?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. The Hole Tree’s voice is funny. I guess it’s hard to hear what it says sometimes.”

“Did you see anything in the woods?”

“Yes.”

“Were they hoss bills?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay, we won’t.”

Alice’s phone range in her purse. She clicked a button on her steering wheel and the background noise on the other end of a phone call filled her car. “Hello?” she said.

“Hello, Alice. This is Karen Pierce.”

“Hi Karen, were you able to get in touch with Mrs. Sancheti?”

“Uh, no. I’m sorry.”

“Why not?”

Karen was quiet.

“What’s going on, Karen?”

“Mrs. Sancheti is dead.”

“What?”

“She killed herself a few hours ago. It’s terrible. I called her assisted-living place. The woman who picked up was crying. There were people screaming in the background. Oh God, Alice. It’s horrible. She cut herself.”

Alice remembered Owen was in the car. She hung up the phone and looked at him in the mirror. He looked tired. “Owen, I’m sorry you had to hear that.”

“The hoss bills got her.”

“No, Owen. That’s not what happened.”

He looked directly at her, his eyes wide with fury. “How do you know?” he yelled. “They got her. They’re getting stronger. You and Daddy wouldn’t listen.”

They hadn’t listened. She and Jesse hadn’t believed him. How could they? It was all something out of a terrible movie.

She was listening now. She believed. Her ankle still ached. The finger-shaped bruises were impossible to deny. She should have shown them to Jesse. It was tangible proof that all this insanity was real.

Proof. Jesse was an engineer. He dealt with hard numbers and facts. He made decisions based on what he saw, what he could understand. There was no guesswork, no mystery in his world. Only a mathematical approach to the problems in front of him. He had promised to bury all teeth, but the Jesse she knew wouldn’t do something so childish and superstitious.

She turned the car around.

“Where are we going, Mommy?”

“Home.”

#

As Alice made a left onto their street, she dialed one last time. Jesse was not picking up his phone. She had called him five times in the twenty minutes since she had turned the car around.

“Why isn’t daddy answering?” Owen asked.

“I don’t know, honey. But don’t worry. Everything is fine.”

“No, it’s not. Stop lying!”

She took the turn into the driveway too fast and hit the curb. Owen started crying.

“Unbuckle your seat. We need to hurry.”

She opened the back door and Owen shot out of the car. He ran for the front door. She limped behind him. Owen opened the door.

“Daddy?” he called.

“Jesse, where are you?” Alice said.

There was no answer. Alice sprinted down the hall to the kitchen. The cellar door was open. She called for him down the stairs, but there was no answer.

A buzzing sound started from somewhere outside. It sounded like a scooter or dirt bike. She walked back to the window and looked outside. “No!”

Alice pushed through the backdoor and ran to the Hole Tree.

Jesse was crouched beside it with his back to her, pressing a chainsaw to the trunk.

“Jesse, stop!”

He didn’t react. He was wearing earplugs.

Something grabbed Alice’s hand. She looked down to find Owen beside her, his eyes wide. He looked up at her, his mouth hanging open, at a loss for what to say or do. Just like her.

She knelt down so that he could hear her over the sound of the chainsaw. Just as she did, the pitch of the chainsaw shifted. Jesse was cutting into the tree now.

“Owen, go inside. I will take care of this.”

He didn’t hesitate. He spun right around and ran through the still open kitchen door.

Alice stood up straight and faced her husband. She thought about her options. He couldn’t hear her. She didn’t want to startle him while he was using the chainsaw, but she needed to get his attention. She needed him to see her.

She circled around him and the tree, giving them a wide berth. Just before she got in front of him, a loud metallic screech erupted from the chainsaw. The blade cracked, and a chunk of metal flew through the kitchen window. The shard had shot right through the space where she had been standing with Owen just moments before.

The chainsaw engine died, and smoke poured from it. “Fuck!” Jesse yelled. He dropped the thing. That’s when he noticed Alice.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“What are you doing?” she countered.

He leaned over and picked up an axe that she hadn’t noticed.

“I’m cutting down this damn tree.”

“Jesse, that’s not going to solve anything.”

That was when she noticed how wild his eyes were under his safety goggles. This wasn’t the logical husband she knew.

“It all started with this tree,” he said.

He swung the axe. Alice watched it strike the tree. The chainsaw had made very little progress before it shattered. She was no arborist but Alice thought the tree hadn’t yet suffered any serious injury. 

“Jesse, please stop. Just come inside. Let’s have some coffee and think about what we do next.”

“Alice, he pulled his teeth out.” He sobbed as he swung the axe again.

“He did it to save me.”

“Save you? From what? This is insane.”

He swung the axe again. It struck the beech with a loud crack, and the blade and wooden handle parted ways. The blade bounded off the tree and landed in the grass with a thump.

Jesse fell to his knees and wept. “Why won’t you die?”

Alice looked around. She saw Owen watching them from the broken window. Don’t step on the glass, she thought to herself. She walked closer to her husband and put a hand on his shoulder.

“I need to tell you about what happened to me in the woods today,” she said. “And I need to tell you about some things from when I was little. But first, before we do anything else, I want you to help me bury all those teeth right now.”

Jesse pulled the safety goggles off and craned his neck back, a desperate, searching look in his eyes.

Where are the teeth?” she asked.

His head drooped. “The safe.”

She grabbed his hand and pulled. He rose to his feet, a dazed look on his face. He followed her into the house and down to the cellar. Owen watched them go, but stayed upstairs.

When they stood in front of the safe, the fog emerged from whatever fog he had been in and his eyes hardened. “No, Alice. This is nuts.”

“Please, just believe. For Owen.”

Jesse bit his lip and looked away. “You need to take Owen to the hospital. I’ll go with you.”

“No, it’s— “

ALLY-ALLY-ALICE.

“Oh, god,” she said.

alice-alice-ally.

She turned in a circle, looking at the corners of the cellar. She couldn’t tell where the voices were coming from. “Do you hear it?” she asked.

“Hear what?”

ALICE, WE WILL PLAY WITH YOU. AND OWEN.

owen and you. you and owen.

THERE ARE SO MANY MORE HERE, TOO.

in the ground below us, ready to play.

“No!” she screamed.

“Alice, calm down,” Jesse said.

Hands like ice and iron gripped both her ankles, ice that burrowed into her and chilled her blood and bones. The hands came right out of the dirt of the cellar floor.

The hands were white, with black nails, the black fingernails that Button and Bella had always brandished at her when she was little. Their points dug into her flesh now and she screamed.

“What’s wrong, Alice,” Jesse said.

Alice struggled to stay on her feet. “Do you see?” She pointed down at the hands.

Jesse followed her gesture, his head shaking back and forth. “See what?”

The hands jerked, and she fell. They dragged her across the floor, away from Jesse and the safe.

“Jesus!” Jesse said. He leapt forward, chasing Alice as she glided away.

“No, Jesse. The teeth. Bury the teeth!”

He paused for a moment, looking at her and then the safe. He turned and started spinning the combination lock.

The hands gripping her feet released her. Two more hands emerged from the dirt, forming two pairs, and braced the floor, as if readying to lift two bodies from under the dirt.

“Hurry,” she said.

Jesse opened the safe and started taking the containers of teeth out. “I’ll do it. I’ll do it.”

He looked at her with his arms full.

“Go!” she said.

The white hands pushed and the tops of two heads emerged, dirt cascading from black, slick hair.

Jesse ran up the stairs.

THIS PLACE IS SO THIN.

a thin place, so easy to pass through.

WE CAN HEAR YOU AGAIN.

and see you again after so long.

“Mommy?” Owen’s voice carried down from the top of the stairs.

Alice closed her eyes. She couldn’t look at the eyeless faces.

“Don’t come down, Owen. It isn’t safe. Go help Daddy. Go help him bury the teeth.”

A second of silence. Such sweet and agonizing silence. Bella and Button were quiet, but so was Owen. She hoped in that second that he wouldn’t come down. She didn’t want him to see.

“Okay, Mommy.” His heavy steps thundered away, out the back door.

“They will get it done,” she told herself. “The tree will keep them safe. I believe. I believe in the tree.”

Reading Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest in a Time of Trump

What a strange experience it was to read a book like David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest in a time of Trump. This book reveals how monumentally hard it is to run the federal government. If a bunch of highly educated, well-credential men could lead us to disaster in the 1960s, imagine what the clowns working in the Trump Administration are leading us toward. I’d say the worst is yet to come, and I type this as the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic has eclipsed 100,000 in this country.

I’ve had this book on my shelf for more than 25 years, but only now, in this time of stay-at-home orders did I finally get around to reading it. For the longest time, I thought the title, The Best and the Brightest, referred to the the soldiers who the United States sent to fight and die in a disastrous war in Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands of men plucked from their lives and sent to fight when they could have been dong great things at home. Of course, I was wrong

Halberstam’s title is ironic. It refers to the men who flocked to Washington, DC in 1961 to serve in John F. Kennedy's administration and who stayed to serve Lyndon Johnson after JFK was murdered. These were the so-called best and brightest. They were the elite of the elite in our country.

There were upper class “Establishment” types — WASPy, highly educated, and well connected. There were working class men who had trudged their way to the top with PhDs, MBAs, and law degrees. And there were career public servants, men who had served in previous administrations as ambassadors and undersecretaries, who were now ready to take cabinet-level positions. And yes, they were all men. The only women mentioned in the book are wives.

They came to Washington because they saw JFK as a transformative leader and they wanted to be part of that transformation.

They encountered a bureaucracy that itself was staffed by its own breed of brilliant men, experts and lifers in the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the CIA. There were men in these bureaucracies who had good ideas. And there were men who had bad ideas. There were men who were realists, who saw the futility of propping up a failed state in South Vietnam. And there were others who believe that the United States could conjure a thriving democracy there by killing communist guerrillas and pouring money into Saigon.

The "Best and the Brightest" who came to DC to serve JFK had to do one thing in that moment. They had to figure out which ideas were good and which ones were bad. They had to confront reality. They had to smell bullshit and recognize it for what it was. They had to listen to experts and comprehend complex subjects.

These men were prepared for the job. Before the Kennedy years, these “Best and Brightest” had led massive companies, taught at elite universities, negotiated international treaties, and crushed the Nazis in Europe as generals.

Outside of Vietnam, they did get the job done in many ways. They solved the Cuban Missile Crisis. They pushed the Civil Rights Act. They laid the groundwork to getting us to the Moon and spawn a technology revolution. But when it came to Vietnam, too many of them listened to the wrong people. They ignored inconvenient facts. They tried to please Lyndon Johnson, who wanted simple answers to complex questions. They were afraid to confront him with hard truths. The result was tragic. Blood and treasure wasted. A nation divided. Scars that still haven’t healed.

The book’s lesson is that governing a nation as large and powerful as the United States is extremely difficult. There are millions of moving parts. From the Oval Office to the White House switchboard, the people who work in a presidential administrative must possess wisdom, patience, humility, and humanity. It was hard in the 1960s. It’s even more daunting today. There is a reason why every two-term president over the last century has left office looking 20 years old than the day he first took office.

As I read this book, I often found myself thinking of Trump and the people he has surrounded himself with, those he hasn’t fired or driven away. They are all so mediocre, petty, and cowardly. It truly astounds me, how unfit and unworthy they all are.

We don’t need overly educated, upper-class elites in the White House, like those Best and Brightest who failed us in Vietnam. But we do need smart, decent, hard-working people who can face facts, tell the truth, and lead us. Just lead us.

We have none of that today. We have a conspiracy theorist who sees enemies everywhere, who is a slave to his endless craving for adulation. He doesn’t want the job. He isn’t trying to do the job. There is no administration. There is no president. The million moving parts of this government are useless without a leader, and we have none. We deserve better.