Odell the First
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

I got a letter from my mother, the first in five years. She told me she was dying and that I’d better come home. More of a command than a request. I was ready to toss the letter aside and ignore it, but I suppose I still had something in me like a conscience. I loaded all my worldly goods in my old station wagon, vacated my apartment and headed north.

I drove the three hundred and fifty miles over two days, spending the night in a cheap roadside motel where the crickets wouldn’t let me sleep. When I got home it was two in the a.m. I knew the doors would be locked so I let myself in by a window in the hallway off the kitchen, a trick I had learned when I was twelve years old. I hoped my mother wouldn’t shoot me for a burglar as I made me way through the dark house and up the stairs to my old room. I took off my shoes and lay on the bed in my clothes without getting under the covers and soon I was asleep, more tired than I thought.

When I woke up the next morning and saw it was after ten, I started to get up and realized my mother was standing in the doorway looking at me.

“You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you,” she said.

“If you had a telephone,” I said, “I would have called.”

“Don’t want one,” she said.

When I went down to the kitchen, she was cooking eggs and ham. I took my place at the table as if I hadn’t been away for decades. She poured me a cup of tea—we were never coffee drinkers—and set a plate of food in front of me.

“You home to stay?” she asked.

“It depends,” I said as I started to eat.

“On what? On whether there’s anything in it for you?”

“Well, is there?”

“The house is in your name. When I’m gone, it’s yours to do with as you please. You can sell it.”

“Nobody would ever want it. It’s too far from town.”

“You can live here, then, as long as you live or as long as you want, and take care of him.”

 I looked at her as if I couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of her mouth.

“That’s no kind of life,” I said. “I think I might get lonely.”

“Get yourself a wife and have some children.”

“Phhft!” I said, almost choking on the tea. “We’ll forget you ever said that!”

“You know why I wanted you here,” she said.

“Maybe you need to remind me.”

“I’ll be dead soon.”

“I don’t believe it. You’ll outlive everybody I know.”

“When the time comes, I have specific instructions. I’ve written them down. Call the funeral home in town. I want a simple service and I want to go into the ground beside your father.”

“Ugh! That’s no kind of talk for the breakfast table.”

“I’ve never asked anything of you in your life,” she said.

“I know.”

“I wouldn’t be asking you now if there was anybody else.”

“That’s so sweet!” I said.

“The main thing is Odell.”

“I know.”

“I want you to take care of him after I’m gone.”

“Mother, I can’t do that!” I said, setting the cup down with a clatter. “I’m not going to devote my whole life to taking care of a person who isn’t my responsibility.”

“I know it’s asking a lot,” she said, “but there’s nobody else.”

“There’s places for people like him,” I said.

“I know there are places,” she said, “but I’ve always kept him with me. This is his home.”

“I won’t promise that I won’t put him in a hospital for the criminally insane the minute your back is turned.”

“Well, we’ll see,” she said mildly, and I knew the subject, for the time being at least, was closed.

After breakfast she took me down to the basement where Odell was kept. It was more like a room in the house now than the dungeon it had been before I went away. The chains were gone and had been replaced by bars on the windows. There was a regular bed with sheets and pillows instead of a mat on the floor, and other comforts, such as a table, a lamp and pictures on the wall, one of a horse standing in a field and another of a sunset over the ocean.

When Odell saw me, a spark in his eyes told me he remembered me.

“Brother?” he said.

“He’s talking now?” I asked.

“Yes, he’s learned a few words,” mother said. “I think he seems less like an animal when he speaks.”

He was sitting in an old upholstered chair by the bed. She went over to him and pulled him to his feet. He opened his mouth wide as if to receive food and she laughed.

“No, it’s not time to eat,” she said. “I want you to stand up and greet your brother.”

Odell looked at me over mother’s shoulder as I stepped closer to him. The sharp, fox-like face was the same, but his look had softened somehow. He was less like an animal now and more human-like. His face was shaved and his hair clipped and combed. The teeth had been filed down.

“You’ve done wonders with him!” I said, genuinely surprised.

“You don’t think they could have done anything for him in one of those places, do you?” she said.

At mealtime she showed me how to prepare his food: one slice of bread and a piece of meat cut up into tiny pieces, served on a large tin plate. That’s all he wanted, she said, three times a day.

When it was time to change the sheets on his bed or straighten up the room or groom Odell, she made me go down to the basement with her and watch how it was done. I knew she was preparing me to take over for her after she was gone, but I still wasn’t ready to assume that responsibility.

“He likes to look at pictures in magazines,” she said. “When you go to town, buy him a couple of new ones with lots of pictures. Or comic books. He loves comic books.”

“Does he read them?”

“No, but he looks at the words and pretends he’s reading.”

“Teach him to read and maybe he can get a job teaching in a university.”

“Read to him when you get the chance. He loves Dickens.”

“Dickens?”

 “Yes, we’re about halfway through The Old Curiosity Shop.”

“He’s more human now than he was before, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but he’s still a wild animal. Be gentle with him or he’ll rip your arm out of its socket.”

“I’ll certainly remember that!” I said.

A week later she died, simply and without fanfare, in her sleep. I think she knew exactly when it was going to happen, down to the minute. I hoped that when my time came, I could go with such grace and ease.

I called the funeral home and they took care of everything, including registering the death certificate. The graveside service was sparsely attended. Besides me, there was the minister to intone a couple of Bible verses, two funeral home men and two old ladies from town who probably never met my mother but who had certainly heard her name. As I left the cemetery, I felt relieved of a terrible burden and I planned, over the next week or so, to find a good place to put Odell, where he would be safe and comfortable and as happy as it was possible for him to be. Then I would move on.

I put the house on the market but I was sure nobody would want to buy it. There were too many rooms and it was too hard to heat in the winter. If nobody wanted to live there, somebody might open a haunted house and charge admission. I was sure I had seen a ghost or two walking the halls.

The day after mother’s funeral I saw that Odell knew something was wrong. I took him his food and he ate it but finally he looked at me with his sad eyes and said, “Mother?”

I knew the moment would come when I would have to tell him. I sat down in the chair beside the bed and put my hands on my thighs—a gesture of trust, I hoped.

“Mother gone away,” I said.

“Where?”

“Remember father?” I asked.

“Father?”

“Yes. Remember when he want away?”

“Father?”

“Well, mother has gone to be with father. One day we’ll see her again.”

“Not come back?”

“No, but you don’t need to worry. I’m here and I’m going to take care of you.”

“Mother!” he said, beginning to cry.

“I know,” I said, “but I’m afraid you’re just going to have to get used to the idea.”

He began scowling at me whenever I went down to the basement, disappointed that I wasn’t mother. He still remained manageable and docile, though. I took him some new magazines with pictures of animals and airplanes and he seemed happy with them. He ate all his food and when I told him he had to take a bath I filled the tub with hot water and he got in and washed himself all over.

Every evening when I took him his supper, he would gesture toward the barred window.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Me,” he said. “Outside.”

“I’m afraid you can’t go outside. It’s dangerous for you out there.”

“No! I walk.”

“You want me to take you for a walk?”

“No! Alone.”

“How do I know you’d come back?” I ask.

“Come back!”

“What if you get into trouble?”

“No!”

His pleas to go outside at night became more emphatic and more-oft repeated. He had been locked up in the basement for I don’t know how many years without respite. He wanted desperately to get out on his own, out of the basement, for just a little while, and who could blame him? It might make him more manageable when the time came for me to uproot him and place him in an institution. I decided we would try it one night and see how it went.

On a Friday evening in October I stayed with him while he ate his supper and when he was finished and pushed the plate aside I pulled him to his feet. When he looked at me questioningly, I put father’s old jacket on him, an old fedora hat and some battle-scarred boots and then I pointed toward the door.

“Where?” he asked.

“You wanted to go for a walk,” I said. “Then go for a walk.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, but I have to tell you if you don’t come back before morning you won’t go out again.”

“Morning,” he said.

“And if you get into any trouble or cause any mischief, I’ll say you got out on your own and I didn’t know about it.”

“My own.”

I took him by the arm and propelled him toward the door. “Remember,” I said. “Come back before daylight. And don’t wake me up. I’ll leave the door unlocked for you.”

That night was the first cold night of autumn and I slept soundly. When I got up the next morning, the first thing I did was to go down to the basement to make sure Odell made it back. He was asleep. The jacket was draped neatly over the chair and the boots were side by side on the floor beside the bed.

He wanted to go out the next night and the night after that and I didn’t object. I wondered where he was going but I knew if I asked him he wouldn’t be able to tell me. I pictured him wandering around in the woods and fields, marveling at the wonders of nature, and running like a scared rabbit if he saw anybody.

On the fourth night, Monday, it was raining and I thought to keep him at home, but after he ate his dinner I knew he was planning on going out again and I hated to disappoint him. As he went out the door, I said, “Remember. You have to be back before the sun comes up.” He nodded his head and I knew he understood what I was saying.

The next morning I woke up early, barely daylight, with a bad headache. I went downstairs to the kitchen to find some aspirin and when I looked out the window I saw Odell coming into the yard from the back pasture. He was carrying something in his arms. I ran out the door in my bathrobe.

“What is that?” I said, but by then it was apparent it was a limp body.

He laid his burden down on the flagstone walk and smiled at me. “Mother,” he said.

“Oh, my god!” I said. “What have you done?”

“Mother!” he said again.

“That’s not mother! You’ve killed somebody!”

It was a stout middle aged woman with gray hair, bearing little or no resemblance to mother. She was considerably mauled and obviously dead. Her eyes were open and also her mouth, as if she had screamed in the middle of dying.

“Where did you find this woman?” I said.

He pointed vaguely over his shoulder and laughed.

“It’s not funny!” I said. “Do you know what they’ll do you when they find out you did this?”

“Hurt,” he said.

“Yes, they’ll hurt you. They’ll do worse than that. They’ll lock you up forever and ever and they won’t let you come home again.”

“No!” he said, his eyes filling with fear.

“Yes! That was a very naughty thing for you to do! People don’t look kindly on that sort of thing!”

“Nobody see!”

“You’d better hope nobody saw or your goose is cooked!”

“Goose?”

“Never mind! Go into the shed and get a shovel and take this deep into the woods and bury it. Bury it deep. If they ever find out what you’ve done, they’ll be very angry with you. Do you understand? Go get the shovel and take it into the woods and bury it where nobody will find it!”

While he ran off to the shed to get the shovel, I took an old horse blanket from the back porch and covered the woman’s face and upper body with it so I wouldn’t have to look at her eyes.

It rained all morning. Odell came home about eleven o’clock, covered with mud. He went to put the shovel away and when he came into the house I was waiting for him.

“Did you do what I said?” I asked.

“Bury deep,” he said.

“Where?”

“Deep in woods. Nobody go there.”

“Go to your room and get yourself cleaned up,” I said.

For the rest of the day I expected a squad of police officers to show up at the door, but I saw no one. The next day I went into town to buy a newspaper, a carton of milk and a loaf of bread.

“Did you hear about the mayor’s wife?” the cashier asked as I paid for my purchases.

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “What about her?”

“She disappeared.”

“Where?”

“She went out for a walk after supper and when she didn’t come home the mayor called the po-lice.”

“As he should have,” I said.

“There’s all kinds of rumors about what happened to her, but I’m not sure I believe any of them. What I do believe is that she had a lover.”

“A lover?”

“Yeah. You know. A man from the city. Everybody knew she had been cheatin’ on the mayor ever since they was married.”

“No!” I said.

“Everybody’s out looking for her now. When they find her, they’ll bring her back and it won’t be pretty. The mayor will probably want a divorce now.”

“I can’t say I blame him.”

I went out to my car and unfolded the newspaper. In a sleepy town where not much ever happens, the disappearance of the wife of an important man is big news. I could tell from the pictures that it was the same woman that Odell had brought home. All I could do now was pretend I knew nothing about it and hope that Odell had done a thorough and complete job of burying the body.

That evening after Odell ate his supper, I knew he was expecting to go out again, but I told him very emphatically that he could not. He became enraged and I knew he could easily break me in half if he had wanted to. I didn’t know how to control him when he was that way, so I locked him in for the night and went back upstairs. I hoped he would be better by the next day.

When I took him his breakfast in the morning, he glared at me with something like hatred because I wasn’t mother.

“Mother?” he said.

“She’s gone,” I said with impatience, “and she’s not coming back.”

“Where?”

“She’s dead, Odell. She’s in heaven with the angels.”

“I find,” he said.

“No, you won’t find her unless you go to Windy Hill Cemetery and dig up her grave.”

“I dig,” he said, reaching for the jacket and boots he had worn when he went out before.

“No, no, no!” I said. “You are in serious trouble! You murdered a woman that you thought was mother and now you have to keep yourself hidden away!”

“Go out!” he said, pointing to the door.

“You can’t go out! All I can do for you now is to keep you hidden away. If they come for you, I’ll have to give you up.”

“Give me up?”

He came at me with his glaring hatred and I got out as fast as I could. Now I was afraid of him. I wanted to keep both my arms in their sockets, as well as my legs and other body parts.

I expected every day for somebody to come and take Odell away, but nobody ever came. At night I could hear him wailing with grief for mother and I covered my head with my pillow. I was glad that nobody else was close enough to hear.

I didn’t know what I was going to do with him, but I believed I owed it to him to protect him as long as I could. I didn’t want to see him face punishment in prison for something he didn’t understand. I also didn’t want to see the ignorant hillbillies in and around town try to take justice into their own hands and lynch him. I had heard of such things happening before.

After two weeks, I figured we were safe. The prevailing belief was that the mayor’s wife had run off with her lover and might never be found. Because I was afraid of Odell, I no longer groomed him properly, bathed him or straightened up his room. I only opened his door wide enough to put his food inside.

One night my mother came to me in a dream. She stood beside my bed and told me to do what needed to be done. I didn’t know what she meant at first and then I remembered she always kept a loaded pistol in the drawer of the table next to her bed. She was telling me to get the pistol and pop a cap into Odell’s head from behind when he wasn’t looking.

The gun was where I thought it would be, and fully loaded. I would only need one bullet, unless, of course, I decided to do away with myself after I did away with Odell. I took The Old Curiosity Shop with me when I took him his supper and had the gun in my pocket where he couldn’t see it.

He seemed calm now and almost glad to see me. I read a few pages out loud while he ate his food and then I stopped reading and moved around behind him. I took the gun out and pointed it at the back of his head as he chewed. When he turned around and looked at me, I slid the gun back into my pocket. I knew I would never have the courage to shoot him. I would sooner be able to shoot myself.

“Mother,” he said.

“You need a haircut,” I said.

“Mother. Bring here.”

“I’m going to teach you to string words together into sentences so we can have a real conversation,” I said.

“Mother.”

I went to bed early and about one o’clock I got out of bed and looked out the window. The yard and trees were beautiful in the moonlight. I got dressed without turning on a light, put on my boots and hat and went down to the basement and woke Odell. I helped him into his clothes and boots and then led him out to my car. We drove out to lonely Windy Hill Cemetery and dug up my mother’s grave. He was much stronger than I was and, after we had dug down so far, he was able to lift the coffin out of the ground and together we carried it to the car. Then we smoothed out what had been her grave to make it seem undisturbed, except by maybe a groundhog or two.

I drove slow with headlights off and the back door partly open. Odell rode in the back to make sure the thing stayed steady. When we got home, we carried it in and set it on sawhorses in the basement where he would be able to look at it whenever he wanted. I opened the lid and he gasped with astonishment, his eyes filling with tears. She looked as if she would wake up any second and speak to us.

Copyright © 2025 by Allen Kopp