The Cedar Tree (Love Is Not Enough)

by McGriffith, Danni

  "Gil?" she whispered against his shirt. Her arms hesitantly encircled his waist. "I don't want to do this anymore."

  His heart jolted, but he stared into the darkness over her head. Was it her talking, or exhaustion? What if she felt different in the morning…what would he do then? He didn't have any more cards to play.

  "It's been a long day, Katie," he said, gently disengaging her arms. "I don't think you're in any shape for a big discussion right now." Holding her around the shoulders, he urged her toward the light burning on the porch.

  Outside the kitchen door, she turned to him. Engulfed in his jacket, her hair in wild disarray, her eyes seemed too big in her face. "Gil, please."

  He wanted nothing more than to take advantage of the soft pleading in her gaze, but he stopped her with his thumb against her lips. "You might change your mind by mornin'." He stroked his fingers across her cheek then dropped his hand. "If you don't, you can let me know."

  She hesitated then gave a small nod. The kitchen door closed behind her with a soft click. He stared at the spot where she had disappeared.

  Maybe he was crazy, but he didn't want to win while she was dead tired, cold, and miserable. He wanted to win when the sun was shining on her hair and she was smiling at him.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Ten days later, oven-like heat radiated from the ring of massive sandstone boulders around the spring at Sunnyside. Sweat soaked Gil's hat, dripped off his nose, and burned the blisters on his palms inside his gloves. His shovel scraped along the bottom of a waist-deep trench, the blade grinding against stone like the grit between his teeth. Behind him, Dave sat with his legs dangling into the ditch, gluing together two joints of plastic water pipe.

  He heaved a shovel-full of rocky, powder dry dirt onto the growing mound beside the trench. A motor sounded in the distance. He eagerly turned, but it was only Annie's old Cadillac with rusting, olive-green paint and peeling top that crowned the hill and stopped on the sandstone slab.

  He sighed heavily, lifting his hat to wipe his face on his denim shirtsleeve. Not Katie. Still.

  Annie opened the car door. Her small son hopped out behind her then ran toward Dave. She followed, wearing a baggy white tee shirt with a faded pink skirt flowing gracefully around her long legs. The sun struck a deep blue gloss on her hair, bound up Navajo fashion with a white strip of cloth. In spite of the ragged clothes she always wore, she really was stunning. Karl needed his head examined for running off. Must be a Campbell thing…not seeing what was right in front of their faces.

  "Hey, Joe," Dave exclaimed, laughing.

  The boy launched himself and Dave caught him, eyeing Annie over the boy's head. Grinning, he raised his hand, palm out. "How, Girl-who-drive-boat," he said in a gruff tone, mocking her boat-like old car.

  Her teeth flashed white, erasing the usual aloof appearance of her smooth, brown face. She raised her hand. "How, Man-who-make-funny-joke."

  She turned her gaze from Dave to where he stood in the ditch. Unhurriedly, she studied him with the veiled but curiously observant look peculiar to her. She nodded in greeting.

  He reached for the red water jug at the edge of the ditch. "Doin' okay, Annie?"

  She nodded again then turned to Dave who had removed his sweat stained grey Stetson and was pulling his eye patch over his hair, releasing it to her boy's grasping hands. The boy fixed it over his own eye while Dave slipped his dark glasses from his shirt pocket then settled the glasses on his face and smoothed down his hair before he looked up at her.

  "What's up, Indun Girl?"

  "Your father thought you could use help with Baby."

  "Yeah. Baby ain't much help with ditch diggin'." Dave grinned wryly, glancing at him. "I think Uncle Gil's ready to put him in and cover him up. He don't like kids."

  "I love kids." He tipped up the jug. The water made a long trail of coolness down his throat. He lowered the jug, grimacing, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "I like how they taste."

  Dave gave Annie a knowing grin. A soft dimple appeared in her cheek.

  Dave's gaze lingered on her then he flushed and turned away abruptly, nodding toward the kid sleeping on a quilt in a cedar tree's shade. "You wanna wait until the little pest wakes up?"

  She nodded, stooping to pick up one of three black and white puppies tumbling around her shabby blue sneakers. Smiling, she held the fuzzy pup against her and pulled herself to a seat on a boulder.

  Dave picked up his glue can and resumed the conversation they had been having before Annie's arrival. "The thing is, dude, Rodrigo's givin' me grey hairs and I'm not even twenty yet. One of these days we'll see a big smoke. It'll be him…caught the whole forest on fire."

  "What'd'you want me to do about it?" he asked testily. He'd hired seventeen-year-old Rodrigo—another relative from Juan's murky gene pool—to stay with the sheep on the mountain while he and Dave installed the water line. Naturally, it must be his fault Rodrigo was about as much help as a hole in the head. "I won't have Manuel around with his hands all over—"

  "How would he even see Katie up there at camp?" Dave shoved away one of the puppies trying to climb onto his lap. "You're paranoid, dude."

  Without replying, he dropped into the ditch. He hurled out a shovel-full of stones.

  "We should at least find somebody without a mustache," Dave said. "Rodrigo can't leave his little mustache alone long enough to watch the sheep."

  He turned. "You're so jealous."

  "Dude. I've got a mustache." Dave grasped the puppy and thrust it at Annie's little boy. "I have a mustache don't I, Joe?"

  The boy clasped the squirming pup to his chest, peering at the blond fuzz of Dave's whisker stubble. "No," the child said, turning away with the puppy.

  He laughed in spite of himself.

  Dave grinned sheepishly. "Navajo guys don't have much facial hair, do they, Annie? It's not necessarily the measure of a man."

  She smiled widely, but didn't say anything.

  "Last week, I went to camp and found five sheep the coyotes had killed," Dave said to her. "Rodrigo was asleep in the trailer. Then yesterday when he heard me comin', he tried to burn a—" He flushed, glancing at her. "Er…a men's magazine on the camp stove. He tried to stomp out the fire, but couldn't. If I hadn't been haulin' a barrel of water in the truck, we wouldn't have got it out before it got into the brush."

  "What did you do to him?" Annie asked.

  Dave chuckled. "I ripped him up in my good English and mangled Spanish. Confused him a little, but I think he understood I'd—What's the word for strangle in Spanish?"

  "Estrangular."

  "Yeah. That's it. I'd estrangle him if he lit the stove or anything else before I brought somebody to take his place." Dave turned. "He's gotta go, Gil. If he catches the forest on fire we'll spend the rest of our lives payin' for it."

  He picked up an iron bar beside the ditch and drove it down on a boulder. A few rock chips hopped halfheartedly into the air like the shrapnel from the world's smallest bomb. He needed dynamite. Maybe he'd get some. Blow the whole place up.

  He drove down the bar again, trying to turn his thoughts to the hired help problem. Katie had been good help. He wanted her back. She might've been sassy, but she worked hard and she had some sense. And she was miles better to look at than Dave or Rodrigo. He'd give just about anything to have her here right now arguing with him about how to dig a ditch. So much better than not seeing her, missing her, wishing…

  Anyway, where'd Dave think he was supposed to find decent help for what they could pay? Rodrigo's brother was rumored to be a good hand, but he stayed hired out. They'd have to try to entice him with big wages, and he might not—

  "I can stay with the sheep." Annie's quiet voice interrupted his thoughts.

  "No way," Dave said. "We're not sendin' you up there by yourself."

  "Dave's right, Annie. That's no kind of job for you way back there in the boonies." He looked at Dave. "Throw me the pick."

  Annie drew up wi
th the quiet dignity characteristic of her. "I spent every summer of my life with my grandmother's flock in the Chuska Mountains."

  "You're not on the reservation here," Dave tossed the pick to him in the trench then labored to stand.

  "I would like to do this." She did not look away from Dave's painful progress. "Very much."

  Dave stopped with his gaze on her then turned in silent appeal.

  "Again…bad as I hate to admit it, Dave's right, Annie," he said. "It's miles away from anything back there and there's the weather to consider, and the dogs ain't much protection against varmints." The camp was completely primitive and her old car wouldn't make it up the four-wheel-drive track. She'd be on the mountain without a vehicle. "What would you do if you or your boy got hurt?"

  Dave picked up another pipe. "Last week sheriff's deputies were crawlin' all over up there lookin' for that guy that killed his wife, too."

  "I would have a horse if I had to get out," she said.

  Dave lowered himself to the edge of the trench with a grunt. "You and Joe'd probably get murdered and the fugitive would ride away on the horse. Besides, you wouldn't be able to go to church if you're up there."

  "You do not worry about going to church."

  Dave's jaw tightened. "We're not talkin' about me. I know you don't like to miss church, is all."

  She stroked the puppy asleep on her lap. "I have an uncle who works as a shepherd in the summer. It will take a few days to get word to him, but I could stay until he comes."

  Dave turned to her. "Thomas Spottedhorse?"

  She nodded.

  "When could he get here?" Gil asked.

  "Oh—" Dave irritably broke in—"just as soon as she gets a letter to the trading post at Two Grey Hills in New Mexico then somebody who lives out there within fifty miles of her grandma's place tells somebody, who tells somebody else, who might tell somebody else he has a letter. It could take weeks. And then he might not come."

  He stared at Dave, surprised by his in-depth knowledge of Annie's life. He turned to her. "Is that right?"

  She shrugged. "It might not be so long."

  He glanced at Dave. "Maybe—"

  Dave interrupted him with a meaningful glare and a motion of his head. He left the trench, following Dave around the boulders out of Annie's view.

  "I don't want her up there," Dave said, "so shut your trap."

  "She probably knows what she's talkin' about. We need the help, man."

  "I'll just stay up there myself. You can handle things down here."

  "What'll we do over the next month or so while we're hayin'?"

  Dave lifted his hat, rubbing his hand through his sweaty hair in frustration. "I don't know. Rodrigo said he's seen a couple of bears. I thought he was lyin', but what if he wasn't?"

  He stepped around the boulder pile. "Annie, can you shoot?"

  "Yes," she called.

  He stepped back. "There we go. She can shoot the bears. And she don't even have a mustache."

  "You make me mad," Dave snapped, color rising in his sun-browned cheeks. "Would you want Katie up there by herself?"

  "Don't bring her into this, pal. I'm sick of you—"

  "You wouldn't want her up there and you know it."

  "Well, the bears wouldn't stand a chance," he said bitterly.

  "You're just pathetic. I hope I'm never as stupid about An—anybody as you are about Katie." Dave turned to limp toward Annie where she now stood beneath the cedar tree holding the newly awakened kid in her arms. "Okay, Indun Girl, have it your way, but I'll stay on weekends and on Wednesdays so you can go to church." He unsmilingly held her gaze. "I don't like this one bit. Nothin' better happen to you and Joe."

  "I am not a white girl. I have lived a life white girls do not live."

  "Annie, you're only half Indian," he said irritably. "Half of you don't know what to do when bears come ransack your camp in the night."

  The dimple in her cheek showed. She gave one of her rare laughs. "You are funny. Stop worrying, please. You are reminding me of my grandfather."

  An odd flinch crossed Dave's face. He turned away. "Well, at least take care of Joe." He lifted her boy onto his shoulders without looking at her. "He's mostly white, poor little kid."

  The dimple showed again. She lightly touched Dave's arm. "Thank you for this."

  Dave flushed deeply then headed for her old car. "Just drop Chris off at Dad's. Katie went to town, but she's probably home by now."

  She followed with the baby on her hip.

  "Hey, Annie. Wait," he called from the ditch, driven by desperation.

  She stopped.

  "Has Katie said anything to you about what happened the day we moved the sheep?"

  She shifted uncomfortably. "A little."

  "What'd she say?"

  She hesitated. "She…spoke to me in confidence."

  "Annie, I gotta have somethin' to go on here."

  She hesitated.

  "Please."

  Her dark eyes softened. "Go see her."

  "She wouldn't even look at me last night after church. I can't—" He stopped. "You think I should?"

  "That is all I can say."

  He'd taken his last stand. How could he back down, now? "Annie, I can't—"

  "Dude, if Annie says go see her, just do it," Dave broke in. "Put us out of your misery."

  With the boy on his shoulders, Dave walked to the car beside Annie and the baby. A few moments later, she pulled away in the Cadillac. Just before the turn in the track, she raised a slender brown arm out the window. Dave waved back and stared after the car until it disappeared then limped back to the trench.

  He finished breaking the boulder with the pick and bar then turned to Dave. "Does she know what she's talkin' about usually?"

  "She never just shoots off her mouth."

  He shoveled the rock from the ditch then got out, stuffing his gloves into his back pocket. "I'll go to your dad's and get that piece of pipe we need."

  Dave eyed him. "Chris'll be there. Won't be very romantic."

  He scowled, nodding in the direction Annie had gone. "You an expert on romance now?"

  Dave flushed. "A girl like that wouldn't look at me." He turned away. "I think she's got a thing for Karl, anyhow."

  "Looks to me like she's got a thing for you."

  Color rose above Dave's shirt collar. "Just hurry up over there."

  ***

  At the Campbell place, the old station wagon sat in the drive—Katie was home. Gil slapped at the dust on his jeans with his hat then climbed the porch steps to knock on the screen door. Across from him, the valley shimmered in a heat haze, but in the porch's shade the breeze cooled his sweaty skin.

  The smell of freshly baked cookies drifted through the screen. He knocked again, but no footsteps sounded in the silent house. She was either hiding from him or she was outside somewhere.

  He opened the door, crossing the kitchen to the cookies on the counter. Chocolate chip that time. He sat at the table with a handful. Picking up a scrap of paper, he read down the list in Katie's handwriting.

  Clean milking stall

  change everybody's sheets

  defrost fridge

  cookies

  pick beans

  remind Dad deposit check

  mow lawn

  With the pen on the table, he drew a line through clean milking stall then finished his cookies and headed for the barn. The pitchfork leaned in the corner of the stall where she milked the cow and the kid's goat. He pitched the soiled straw out the door into the corral then headed for the scrap iron pile behind the barn.

  Heat radiated from the mound of fatigued and rusting metal. He shifted through pieces of pipe, plow parts, an old metal bed frame, some milk cans with holes rusted through the bottoms, and the fenders from a Model T Ford. A wind gust carried indistinct sounds of a child's cry and a female voice up the hill.

  Wiping the sweat from his face on his shirttail, he stepped to the corner of the barn. Down the
slope at the edge of a fenced garden plot, Katie's slender form leaned over the kid's blond head, gleaming just above grass height. She said something to him then turned to stoop over a row of vegetables.

  If he went down there right now, maybe—

  No.

  He'd told her to let him know. She hadn't. It could mean only one thing—she hoped he got fat and bald, too, and while he was at it, he could drop dead. Buster.

  He removed the piece of pipe he needed from the end of a rusted out water heater then headed back to his truck where he sat, undecided. Finally, he shook his head and drove away.

  At the crossroads, he turned toward Sunnyside. A few yards later, he stopped. She'd thought he should be able to read her mind if he cared. He hadn't checked the cedar tree since that night three months before.

  Was it possible…?

  He backed the truck to the cedar and got out. Small sandal prints had scuffed the packed soil near it. Recently. His heart began to knock like a blown motor piston.

  The hollow in the tree, packed with his love notes and letters a few months before, held only a single envelope with his name on it. She'd dated the letter inside the day after they moved the sheep.

  You wouldn't listen to me last night because you thought I might feel different today, but I don't, Gil. I never will.

  I wish I had been able to explain everything to you, but I couldn't get to the words. It hurt too bad. The bottom fell out of my world so fast. The letter you wrote me about your past shook me up, made me feel like I didn't really know you, and then Mom died. I was scared and confused and I just wanted everything to be like it was before, when life was simple. I couldn't stop thinking about those last weeks before she died, the lies I'd told her, the hateful things I'd said. I tried to make up for it, do everything like she would've wanted. I thought if I tried hard enough, I could make everything okay. But I couldn't.

  I wasn't trying to hurt you, Gil, I was just in everything so far over my head. I didn't have anything to give you. I had a baby all of a sudden. I was trying to hold Dad up, trying to keep the family going, trying to understand why everything happened like it did. I felt guilty, like it was my fault everything was out of control. If I had done things different, maybe Mom wouldn't have been so worried and stressed out about me, maybe she'd still be here. At least, she and Dad wouldn't have had so many arguments the last few weeks of her life.