The Cedar Tree (Love Is Not Enough)

by McGriffith, Danni

  He'd done it.

  She might never want to see him again, but in some strange way he could breathe again.

  ***

  An hour later, he stood at the door of a house at 1524 North First Street.

  "She's just the sweetest thing," Mrs. Mosier's voice sounded like she had gravel in her throat as she led him to the living room. She eyed him over a cigarette dangling from her loose, horse-like lips as he fumbled a tiny black and white Chihuahua puppy from the basket where it lay with two litter mates.

  The old gal took a drag at the cigarette. Ash dropped onto the stained house dress covering her shapeless body. "The only thing is, she don't—"

  The puppy sank needle sharp teeth into his thumb. He yelled, dropping it into the basket.

  "—like men," she finished.

  He shook his hand, scowling. Mrs. Mosier peered at his thumb, smoke trickling like shreds of fog through her wrinkled lips.

  "You're bleedin', poor thing." She looked into the basket, clucking her tongue. "You've made this good-lookin' boy bleed, Precious."

  "Do any of these dogs like men?" He pulled his handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed at the blood running down his finger.

  "Oh, darlin', no." She removed the handkerchief from him and wrapped his thumb, eyeing him from bright eyes nearly hidden in watery folds of flesh. "I'm surprised at you wantin' a little lap dog, anyhow. Guy like you."

  He stared at her in disbelief. "Geez. No. She's for my girlfr—fiancée."

  "Lucky girl." Mrs. Mosier rolled her eyes in an alarmingly flirtatious way, wheezing with laughter. The cigarette trembled but retained a miraculous hold on her bottom lip. "My Precious ought to work out just right long as you don't try to cuddle your girl while she's holdin' her."

  He paid Mrs. Mosier, still breathless from her joke, and left. Later, his grandfather roared with laughter as he sat stroking the tiny pup—smaller than a rat—on his knee.

  "Hey. It hurts," he said, cleaning his thumb at the kitchen sink.

  "Sure it does, Son."

  He grinned sheepishly. "You'd better watch that little mutt or she'll give you an unnecessary amputation. Or rabies."

  His grandfather rubbed a gnarled hand over the puppy, irritatingly docile now. "What'll you call her?"

  He snorted derisively. "That ol' gal called her Precious."

  "I think you oughta call her Molly. She looks like a Molly to me."

  The puppy gnawed his grandfather's finger, but didn't draw blood.

  He shrugged. "Katie can name her."

  Just before dark, he checked the tree. Empty. He sat in the truck with his stomach knotted and his forehead on the steering wheel.

  He shouldn't have written that letter. What'd he know about what God wanted him to do, anyway? Nothing. He'd made a huge mistake. He could've probably taken the whole thing to his grave with him. Katie would've never had to know. What had he been thinking?

  Later, Molly set up a shrill howl in her little bed next to the living room stove. He turned off the lights and made his painful way to bed, but the relentless noise penetrated his bedroom door like an armor piercing bullet. He covered his head with a pillow.

  An hour later, he limped downstairs in his shorts, his skin rising up in goose-pimples in the cold air. He gathered up Precious, or Molly, or whatever her name was, and her bed.

  She howled in his room, too. At midnight, he shoved her under the covers with him. She curled up against his legs and touched her cold nose to his calf. He grimaced disgustedly and moved. She growled and snapped at him.

  After that, he lay perfectly still and prayed Katie wouldn't dump him in spite of the letter.

  He wanted her not to dump him on so many levels, but…he seriously needed to get rid of that dog.

  ***

  The next morning, fresh boot tracks led to the old tree.

  Thank you for telling me everything. I can't say I'm not upset, I just wish you had told me before. Maybe I wouldn't have made such a little fool of myself. The five hundred times Dad has told me what kind of guy he thinks you are, I fought him and defended you. It hurts to know he was right. He kept saying I can look forward to a lifetime of heartache because you won't stay with one woman. That you're wild and you'll get bored with me and move on, or because my heart is true I'd just love you blind and ignore the women you gather up through the years. He says that's the kind of effect guys like you have on women. He can't be right. I don't want him to be. After what you wrote, I won't believe him. I don't want to.

  I showed him your letter. He hasn't said much since.

  Since you can drive now, please come see me. I need to see your eyes…

  With his fingers shaking, he opened his notebook across his leg.

  Katie, if you could see my eyes right now, you'd know that everything stops with you. You're the one. And not a fool. Never a fool. Please believe me. There won't be anyone else, ever. A few months ago, your dad was right about me. He's not now. You weren't wrong to trust me. I'm not going anywhere.

  I want to see you. I can hardly think of anything else. But I've got something I need to figure out until Sunday. I've got to make sure about something. Not about you. I'm sure about you.

  I know you pray for me. Don't stop…

  ***

  Sunday morning, pale winter sunlight filtered through the tall windows on the east side of the church, filling the sanctuary with a hazy, golden glow. His grandfather's booming voice rose over the rest of the congregation as he sang with his head thrown back and his eyes closed.

  We're marching to Zion, beautiful, beautiful Zion…

  Gil sat with his elbows on his knees. He didn't join in the hymn although he knew the words, now. Each time the door in the foyer opened, he glanced over his shoulder, hoping to see Katie. He tensely rubbed his sweaty palm on his jeans.

  If she didn't come, he'd still go through with it. He'd made the right decision, but…he needed her there.

  Ten minutes later, she squeezed down the row of girls toward him. Avoiding his eyes, she sat beside him to stare down at her hands twisting in her lap. He reached to stop the nervous movement.

  She slowly raised her gaze, deeply unhappy and shadowed with wariness. A hard knot balled in his stomach, but he regarded her steadily, willing her to find whatever assurance she needed in his gaze.

  Her eyes slowly filled with tears. With a quiet sob, she twisted on the seat to embrace him.

  Unmindful of anyone else in the room, he held her in his arm, his face against her hair. "Are we okay?" he whispered.

  She nodded. A moment later, she pulled away to give him a shaky smile. Almost weak with relief at the love in her eyes, he reached for her hand and wove his fingers between hers, holding it openly throughout the rest of the service.

  Later that afternoon, a current of cold air suspended a bald eagle in motionless flight against the sky above the river. Pale sunlight glinted off its wings and sparkled across a flotilla of ice plates bobbing along on the rush of clear, steel grey water beneath it. Bare cottonwood branches gently swayed against winter blue sky, waving lines of light and shadow across the congregation singing on the riverbank.

  Yes, we'll gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river, gather with the saints at the river, that flows by the throne of God…

  The hymn, muted by the immensity of water, sky and rocky canyon walls, drifted peacefully across the water. The breeze ruffled his hair where he stood waist deep and shivering with Will O'Neil in the river.

  "You ready for this?" Will asked, grinning with his teeth clenched.

  His teeth chattered, but he grinned back. "Let's do it."

  Will buried him in baptism. An instant later, he surged up from the water like an arrow of pure joy from a bow, clean and forgiven.

  Blowing and gasping, and with icy rivulets pouring from him, he wiped the water from his eyes. He searched the riverbank for Katie's wide smile and then his grandfather's.

  With a grin of happiness so broad it hurt
his jaws, he pumped his fist in the air and waded out of the river into a new life.

  ***

  That night, the telephone rang with heart stopping insistence. Gil woke, fumbling for the clock beside his bed. Three o'clock. Downstairs, his grandfather stumbled out of his room to the phone.

  "What?" Sharp disbelief filled the old man's tone.

  He sat up, fully awake, and then headed to the top of the stairs.

  "I'll be there soon as I can." The old man hung up the phone.

  "What's goin' on, Gramps?"

  "That was Jon. Somethin's happened with Becky."

  "Should I come with you?"

  "No. The midwives are there."

  "She's havin' the baby?" He frowned. "She's not due, is she?"

  "You'd better get dressed." His grandfather turned away. "I'll call you after a while."

  The phone rang two hours and twenty minutes later.

  "Go ahead and come over," his grandfather said, strangely quiet.

  His skin prickled apprehensively. "What's happened?"

  "Becky had her baby." The old man paused. "She didn't make it."

  Chapter Fourteen

  At the corner near the cedar tree, the headlights flashed over a shiny black station wagon driven by a man in a suit. Gil's stomach knotted. He pushed the accelerator to the floor. In the Campbell drive, vehicles filled the churned snow and mud.

  He parked on the lawn and shoved open the pickup door to an unmistakable wail of grief from inside the house. The blue heelers seemed confused and didn't bark as he headed for the house at a limping run.

  He burst into the kitchen then stopped short. Katie's high pitched keening twisted through the motionless room in a red band of pain. Yellow light from two feeble bulbs over the table leached the color and life from everything in the room, stripping faces of flesh, leaving harsh slabs and caverns of bone slashed across by mouths slack with shock.

  Heavy whisker-stubble darkened the waxy pallor of Jon's jaws. His eyes red and sick, he slumped heavily against the kitchen wall like he'd been gut shot. Karl stood next to him, his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans, his deep-set gaze filled with stunned disbelief. Katie's Uncle Dan leaned a shoulder against the doorway into the living room, his eyes watering, but his face expressionless. Dave sat at the kitchen table wearing a black patch over his injured eye, his thin jaws clenched tight.

  Across from Dave, the aged midwife, Esther, sagged wearily in a chair, cradling a cup of tea in her knobby hands, her kindly face heavy with strain. Behind her, Irvin and his grandfather stood against the counter near the sink. The old man held Tim while the boy's wide, bony shoulders shook with silent sobs. The Navajo girl, Annie, stood near the kitchen stove concentrating on a tiny bundle she held in her arms.

  In disbelief at the devastation in the room, he met his grandfather's gaze. The old man nodded slightly toward Katie's awful crying coming from another room. He followed the sound to a hallway off the kitchen, passing a bedroom where the younger midwife, Jeanette, snapped a clean sheet over a bed. She glanced at him as he passed, her honey-colored hair disheveled, her cheeks wet.

  At a bathroom near the end of the hall, he stopped short. Katie huddled on the white linoleum in a green flannel robe over a long nightgown. She rocked back and forth with her hands over her head as if protecting herself from a blow, her anguish rising and falling like a wave.

  Jon's sister, Rachel, sat on the edge of the bathtub with her hand on Katie's shoulder. The glare from the lights over the mirror washed all the color from the older woman's tear streaked face. She brushed away a strand of greying, dark hair from her cheek and motioned him into the room.

  "If you'll see about her," she whispered, "I'll tend to Jon."

  He nodded. Rachel brushed past him. He squatted beside Katie.

  "Katie," he said gently, laying his hand on her shoulder. "I'm here."

  No response.

  He hesitantly rubbed her slender back. The tone of her grief didn't change. Helpless, he sat down beside her on the floor, stroking the braid of hair down her back.

  Suddenly, the wailing stopped. She lurched toward the toilet. He grabbed her braid just as she vomited. When she finished, he rose to wet a cloth under the tap. Trembling uncontrollably, she received the cloth without glancing at him.

  He gently lifted her to a seat on the edge of the bathtub beside him and tried to ease her head to his chest, but she sat stiff and unyielding. She held the cloth to her face for a moment longer then staggered to her feet. The washcloth fell from her hands onto his boot. She stumbled toward the door, her bare feet pale and silent on the linoleum.

  He stared after her, frowning. Had she even known he was there?

  He picked up the washcloth. It left a wet spot on the scuffed leather of his boot. He placed the cloth on the counter next to the sink then followed her down the hall. The midwife had finished making the bed—the room sat dark and empty.

  Katie stood in the center of the kitchen. "Where's Dad?"

  "He went outside, honey," Rachel said, standing near the stove with Annie and Jeanette.

  "Where's Karl?"

  "He went out with him."

  She turned a circle, scanning the room with frantic eyes. Her gaze passed over him as if he wasn't there.

  He bewilderedly sought his grandfather's gaze. The old man shook his head, his eyes as old as time and helpless.

  "Where's Dad?" Katie asked again. Moving around the table next to Dave, she leaned over it on her hands. The table shook with the trembling of her body. "I want Dad," she said loudly, a wavering note of hysteria in her voice.

  Dave scowled at her. "Katie, get a hold of yourself, for Pete's sake. We don't need to deal with you, too."

  She stared at Dave as though she didn't see him. Esther labored to her feet. Painfully straightening as much as her stooped shoulders allowed, she shuffled around the table to gather Katie into her arms.

  "Hush, now…" the old midwife murmured, holding Katie's disheveled blonde head to her sagging breast.

  Esther's calm voice seemed to soothe her. Gradually, some of the trembling rigidity left her slight frame.

  "Come with me, Sweetheart." Esther guided her toward the hallway. "I need to lay down on the bed, and you can lay down with me. We'll turn this over to the Lord."

  He stepped aside for them to pass. The midwife met his gaze with gentle compassion, but Katie didn't lift her head. She stumbled down the hall beside Esther to a door at the end. The door clicked shut behind them.

  He stared at the closed door like he'd been hit with a meat axe.

  He didn't know what he had expected to find, but not that.

  Never that.

  ***

  An hour later, first grey light seeped slowly through a heavy blanket of clouds, tinting the vehicles and buildings in the Campbell yard with the washed out shades of an old movie. He stood undecidedly on the porch hunched into his coat, his eyes watering from the biting cold. Snowflakes, wet and feathery, drifted down like slow tears.

  Should he leave and come back later? Should he stay? He'd never been in such a position.

  Karl stepped out of the barn. Relieved by something to do, he limped to meet Karl through the churned mud and snow of the driveway.

  "I'm so sorry, man," he said.

  "Thanks," Karl said in a tone as colorless as his face.

  "Can I do anything to help? Chores?"

  Karl eyed his arm in its sling. "Can you drive?"

  "Sure."

  "I could use some help feedin' then. Tim's not up to it, and Uncle Dan needs to help Dad…" Karl shrugged. "You know. Take care of things."

  He and Karl finished the feeding chores by late morning then he returned to the house. More cars crowded the yard. He stepped into the kitchen where a murmur of voices from the living room met him. His grandfather's snores rose over the voices, his sock feet visible on a recliner footrest just inside the living room doorway.

  Alone in the kitchen, Annie sat in a rocking
chair holding the baby near an old-fashioned cooking range of bright turquoise with nickel trim. A fire roared in the stove's fire-box. Stepping close to it, he held out his hand to the warmth, curiously scanning the room.

  Everything in the ranch kitchen appeared to be a tired relic from the past—the range, a rounded top refrigerator, a cupboard with flour and sugar bins over a zinc covered stretch of counter, and the table made of long pine planks, any finish long since scrubbed away.

  Annie glanced at him then back down at the baby.

  He shifted awkwardly. He'd never actually met the beautiful girl—she didn't ever hang around after church.

  He cleared his throat. "I've seen you at church. I'm Gil Howard."

  She nodded.

  "How's the…er…baby?"

  "He is very small."

  He strained to hear her quiet, carefully spoken words with their slight Navajo inflection. Stepping closer, he peered into the nest of blankets. Only a tiny red nose and mouth showed.

  He moved back to the stove and cleared his throat again. "Is Katie…?" He nodded toward her bedroom.

  Annie raised large, almond shaped eyes to his. "She is still asleep with my grandmother."

  "That's good." He held her gaze uncertainly. "Ain't it?"

  "Yes."

  "Are they all still goin' to the funeral home this afternoon?"

  "Yes."

  "I need to go home and do chores, but will you tell her to call me and I'll go with her?"

  Annie nodded. The door opened and Karl entered. Jaw tight, he pulled off his boots and his stocking cap with a Denver Broncos logo then he hung his wet coat on a hook beside the door. Without glancing at the silent young woman holding his new brother, he crossed to the stairs just inside the living room doorway then disappeared up them. Her gaze followed Karl with a shade of worried bewilderment, quickly smoothed away.

  From his place at the stove, he eyed Annie.

  He knew just how she felt.

  ***