Solomon's Oak (25 page)

Joseph tried the vine-covered gate, but it wouldn’t open. Like a fool, he boosted himself up the fence, then sat down on the top rail, his back muscles clenching so badly he had to push his fist into his side to stop the cramp. Okay, so he’d have to sit awhile for his back to settle down before he could get down. A few minutes—that was no big deal.

Except to the little brown dog spinning circles in his kennel. To him this man on his fence was cause for absolute hysteria. After Cadillac started howling, Joseph worried his eardrums would burst. When a dog barked on his father’s farm, it meant coyote, horse wreck, or cow/ewe/dam/mare having trouble calving. Joseph tried to ease down from the fence, but when he leaned forward, the pain was worse. He gritted his teeth and pushed himself forward until the ground was under his feet. He went down on his knees and stayed there awhile, winded from the pain. When he could stand upright again, he unlatched the brown dog’s kennel door. The dog went immediately for the barn, returning with a tennis ball.

“That’s all you wanted? Don’t expect much. I can only pitch underhand.”

After a half hour of fetch, the brown dog was tired out and panting, and Joseph felt feverish with pain. He let the dog have a long drink from the hose, then returned him to his kennel. From inside the fence, surely the latch would be easier to unlock. He ran his hand along the vines until he came to the gate. Yes, pulling the upper latch was easy, but to reach the one on the bottom of the gate, he could neither squat down nor could he trust that if he went down on all fours, he could get up from there without help. He wasn’t climbing the fence again. While he pondered the dilemma, he stroked the horses’ necks for a while, missing his dad’s farm and remembering how in winter a light snow would fall, dusting the horses’ backs, and quickly melting. He was photographing the horses when Glory pulled up.

She threw the pickup into park and ran to the fence so quickly she left the driver’s door hanging open. She was up and over the fence in no time, a shotgun in her arms. “Whoa,” Joseph said.

“What the hell are you doing in my yard?”

He could see someone else in the truck. He raised his hands. “Passing time waiting for you. That’s all.”

“Oh, it’s you.” She pointed the shotgun to the ground. “Joseph, you shouldn’t be on my property when I’m not here. What if you’d gotten hurt?”

He couldn’t help smiling, because could he get any more hurt? “I grew up with horses, dogs, and sheep. I know what I’m doing.”

“That doesn’t matter! You could have gotten bitten, stepped on, let the horses loose … ” She was killing mad, her face tight. Where was the woman he’d danced with on Christmas Eve?

“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“Please just leave.”

“Mom, what’s going on?” Juniper said, leaning over the fence, but Glory held up her hand to silence her.

“Believe me, I’ve tried,” Joseph said. “It’s too long a story, but here’s the gist of it. I can’t open the gate.”

“How did you get in here?”

“Got this youthful notion I could climb the fence. I could, but apparently it was a onetime deal.”

Glory walked to the fence, knelt down, and opened the lower latch, revealing the camouflaged hinge.

Juniper opened the gate from the other side and walked in. “Hey, Copper, guess I’m not the only one getting in trouble today. Oh, my gosh, how cool is it that you’re both packing heat? Did you ever see that movie
Tombstone
? Both of you could totally be in it. Joseph, will you show me your gun just once? I’d love to hold one, to see what it feels like, and Mrs. Solomon won’t even let me know where she keeps the shotgun shells. How was your Christmas? Did you get any good presents? How come you never came back to give me a photography lesson?”

“Juniper,” Glory said. “Go indoors.”

“No way. Joe’s my friend. He came to visit me.”

Joseph hobbled toward the gate, embarrassed for them to see his limp. “Nice to hear I have a friend. But I came to see your mom.”

“Why her?”

He held up the camera, feeling stupid. “To ask if I could photograph the tree today.”

Glory looked at him. “It’s forty-five degrees out, muddy, and the sun will be down in an hour. Why would you want to take pictures today?”

“I know, I know,” Juniper said. “Because when the shadows are long, the light’s better. That makes it the best time of day to take pictures.”

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said again, shifting his weight in an effort to escape the pain that crawled up his spine and squeezed. “Truthfully, I read the article in today’s paper, thought of the tree, and Juniper’s correct, this is the optimum time frame to shoot the tree. I should have called.”

“What article?” Glory said.

The shotgun was nearly as tall as she was, and Joseph wondered if she’d ever fired it. “The one in today’s
Los Angeles Times
about your chapel. Great publicity. You’ll get a ton of calls from it. Didn’t you see it?”

Glory pushed her hair back from her face and tied it in a bun. “The reporter said he’d call me if they ran it.”

“Eh, you know reporters,” Joseph said. “Deadlines.”

“Am I in it?” Juniper asked.

“There’s a copy in my car. You’re welcome to it.”

“I’ll get it!” Juniper was out the gate in seconds. It looked as if her hair had grown another inch since the last time he’d seen her. She’d grown, too. In the high desert of New Mexico, junipers were hardy trees the color of a pup tent. The dusty blue berries they produced were good for cooking venison and making gin, but not so many knew what his grandmother had told him: Plant juniper trees by your front door. No
brujas
can pass without counting the exact number of needles on the tree, and as everyone knows, witches lack patience. In this case, it was Juniper who lacked patience. She opened the car door and leaned over until she was on her stomach, reaching for the paper he’d left on the passenger side of the floor. Joseph smiled because kids did what they felt compelled to do without running it past manners first, and when they could no longer get away with it, life became a lot less fun. Glory rubbed her chin, one finger pressed against her mouth as if she were keeping something that wanted to come out penned up and vine-covered like the gate. Yet as soon as Juniper opened the paper to show her the feature article, Glory’s expression changed entirely. The hand pressed against her mouth went over her heart. The tension in her face departed. She no longer stood in her backyard reading a paper while two dogs flung themselves against the kennel door to get out. Lorna had told him on Christmas Eve that she’d never seen two people more in love than Glory and Dan. Glory was in the cupped hands of grief, reading the facts of her husband’s death typeset in a newspaper for the world to see.

After she stopped reading, she looked up at Joseph and she was a different woman, calmer, her anger tamped down like pipe tobacco, but still there. “Thank you for bringing us the article, Joseph. Go take your pictures. If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do inside.”

“Can I go with him?” Juniper asked. “Please, Glory, please? I promise I’ll be back in time to set the table. Please? I want to learn to take pictures so bad.”

“Go ahead. But we’re going to talk later.”

“I can go? Really?”

A kid admittedly in trouble for something that sounded serious getting a reprieve? It was no surprise to Joseph. His father saved all the articles about Rico so that Joseph could read them when he was well enough. Glory Solomon needed that alone time to digest the newspaper story privately. She needed it more than she needed to keep a rein on her handful-and-then-some foster daughter.

“I’m just going to ask you straight out, Joe. Why do you limp?” Juniper asked on their hike toward the oak. “I mean, I noticed it at the pirate wedding, and at the Christmas party, but it’s way worse today. Did you sprain your ankle? Sometimes a sprain hurts worse than a break. Do you think using a cane would help?”

“My legs are fine. I’m out of shape is all. When I couldn’t reach the bottom latch, I did a foolish thing, climbing your fence.”

“So are you in pain?”

“A little, but I can handle it.”

“Do you want some aspirin, or ibuprofen?”

“No, thanks.”

“So if it doesn’t hurt killing bad, then why are you gritting your teeth?”

“I’m gonna take a wild guess here. Your hobby is asking questions?”

“Only rich people have hobbies. How else can a person find things out if they don’t ask questions? Now tell me about photography. What is your plan with the tree? Do you like the ‘lonely tree’ kind of composition, or are you looking for the patterns the branches make?”

“You know something? Sometimes being quiet and observing teaches you more.”

Juniper pulled her jacket tighter. “That is totally something a cop would say.”

“I already told you, I’m not a cop anymore.”

Juniper pointed her finger at his chest. “That doesn’t mean you aren’t one in your heart. You can’t unlearn how to look at stuff. Believe me, I know.”

Hoping for some quiet, he didn’t answer. They slogged a hundred feet or so over muddy ground. Joseph tried not to limp. Though aspirin upset his gut, he would have chewed up a dry handful just to take the edge off. Instead, he studied the tree. Ansel Adams would see a stark tree, with the sky as definition. Wynn Bullock would pose a nude woman by the tree and turn her into a wood spirit. Jerry Uelsmann would plant a human fist inside the tree and sheep floating across the sky. Joseph Vigil couldn’t see past anything other than branches that seemed to pierce the darkening sky so jaggedly you expected it to drip blood.

“The Christmas pictures you took came out great,” Juniper said. “My foster grandmother really liked them, so maybe you should change subjects from trees to people. I mean, under a tree’s a good place to sit for shade, but what else is there? They don’t do anything exciting except maybe once in a while get struck by lightning.”

He spoke without looking at her. “This isn’t any tree, Juniper. It’s Solomon’s Oak.”

“Stop right there because I’ve heard all about it being magical and improbable and good luck and having a spirit and all that. It didn’t help when Mr. Solomon got sick, did it, and his family took care of it all these years so you would think if it was going to help anybody, it should have been him.” She placed one hand on the trunk and twirled around, getting her shoes even muddier, demolishing any interesting patterns the rain had left behind.

“Can you be still? We’re burning daylight. If I get the picture I want, I won’t have to come back again or annoy your mother.”

“Okay, okay.” Juniper tucked her arms under her armpits for warmth. “If I stand still, I still get to talk, right?”

“No, you may not. Not for a few minutes. Be silent.” Joseph took several pictures from a distance, then he zoomed in his lens for close-ups. The rutted bark was home to dusty green lichen. Up close it looked as if someone had ripped the fabric of the universe, and the tree had no choice but to continue its journey. But he couldn’t communicate its height. “Stand next to it,” he said.

“But I thought you only wanted pictures of the tree.”

“You’re only in the picture to be perspective.”

“Thanks a lot.” Juniper stood there, hands in her pockets. “You know what I think? I think your back hurts more than you let on. I think it’s a good thing you brought me along, because what if you hurt yourself on that fence and we were maybe out of town and you needed help getting up? It’s kind of like riding a horse in the woods by yourself. Dangerous.”

“Hey, did I bust you with your mom?”

“No.”

He turned around to go back to his car. “Then cut me a break.”

She hurried up beside him. “I will if you stay for dinner. It’s my night to make the salad.”

“Somehow I doubt your mother would be up for that.”

“But you’re
my
friend.” She stuck out her lower lip. “I could really use the support.”

“Why? Are things not going so well? You looked pretty happy at the Christmas Eve shindig.”

“I got suspended for fighting today.”

“Fighting, as in fists?”

“It was a total misunderstanding.”

“Why do I doubt that?”

“I don’t know because I’m telling the truth. Sure, I’ve messed up in the past, but I only did the things I did for really good reasons. Like when I accidentally took some money, I gave it back. I gave back the pills, too.”

“Are you talking about street drugs?”

Juniper looked away. “Be serious. They were prescription, just not my prescription.”

“So why steal them?”

She sighed. “I was worried, okay? My real mom OD’d, and when I met Mrs. Solomon, she was so sad I thought she might try it, so I had to hide the pills. I should have flushed them. Then she never would have known. I was stupid not to think of that, but you know what they say, ‘All drains lead to the ocean,’ and drugs in the water are bad for the environment. But it sure got me in trouble.”

“I’m not convinced you should be talking about this to me.”

“Why not? You’re my friend. You’re kind of her friend. You guys danced. She’s nice. Dogs love her. She works really hard. I guess you can tell that without me saying. But I know lots of stuff that wasn’t in the article, like, her hair went gray when she was my age, so she’s not as old as she looks, she’s just tired from working and dealing with me and needs hair dye and a makeover really badly. Her dad died before she could have him walk her down the aisle at her wedding. Then her husband, who was like some kind of saint, died. Stay to dinner, Joseph, please, please, please?”