Solomon's Oak

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  “Uh, thanks?” he said, when she had placed her left hand on his shoulder and offered her right hand to him.

  “You’re saving my sister’s life because I’m about ready to duct-tape her mouth shut and cut off her air supply.”

  He laughed. With small steps they moved around the crowded deck. The strength of her hand in his surprised him. She smelled like a kitchen, something between cinnamon and just-baked bread. All the sensations made for an enormous contrast to the ache in his back. When he caught sight of Lorna, he smiled, expecting a thumbs-up for his efforts. Instead of applauding, she folded her arms across her pink vest and gave him a hard look. Now what? Maybe her suggestion had an exclusivity clause. He was free to dance with any woman except Glory Solomon.

  When the music stopped, they let go of one another and clapped, standing shoulder to shoulder. “Thank you,” Glory said. “I think my blood pressure’s back down to normal.”

  “You’re welcome. If the next song’s slow, want to dance again?”

  Before she could answer, the band launched into “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” and Mrs. Smith got to her feet and began clogging. Glory’s face went from shock to worry to delight. Everyone around her mother began to clap in time to cheer her on. Everyone except Halle, who was scowling.

  “She won’t be able to get out of bed in the morning,” Glory whispered to Joseph.

  “It’ll be worth it.”

  Ave Smith stopped herself before Halle could scold her. She was red in the face but smiling.

  Joseph shook her hand. “Ma’am, that is definitely some Clovis-style clogging.”

  “Shh.” She pointed to the stage where Lorna now stood in front of the microphone.

  With Lorna, you never knew what might come out of her mouth. Joseph hoped she was about to say merry Christmas, or that the Butterfly Creek was happy to give a ride home to anyone who’d drunk too much, but when Lorna opened her mouth, out came a song Joseph had never before heard. Her raspy voice sawed through the night air, gathering strength as she sang. “Oh, man,” Joseph said when she was halfway through the first verse.

  Glory said, “It’s called ‘I’m That Sparrow,’ by Chaz Bosarge. Lorna sang it at my husband’s memorial service.”

  Some songs invited dancing, others clogging. The song Lorna belted out demanded a witness. By the end, Joseph was too choked up to look Glory in the face.

  She touched his arm. “I’m sorry my sister called you Senor Gardener. I’d say she means well if it were true, but I don’t think that’s the case. If it helps, you dancing with me will have her digesting her pancreas for months. And thanks for what you said about Juniper. You see things in her I don’t, at least not yet. She admires your pictures, and there isn’t much she does admire. Any chance you might give her a photography lesson sometime?”

  “It would have to be soon. I’m out of here in April.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know that.”

  He found his composure before he looked at her. “My cabin. As soon as the rainy season ends, they’re taking a bulldozer to it.”

  “That’s criminal.”

  “Nah, it’s inevitable. Place is falling down anyway.”

  “And you’re all right with it?”

  “What else can I be?”

  “Right.” She hesitated a minute. “Look, I don’t mean to sound crass, but if there’s anything there you might be willing to part with, like old floorboards, cupboards, or an old woodstove, I’d love to buy them from you. I’m trying to fix up my barn for parties.”

  “Sure. Come by after Christmas. Tell Juniper I’ll give her a camera lesson if she keeps out of trouble.”

  “Joseph,” Glory said before she gathered her family to go, “are you ever going to cash the check I sent you?”

  He smiled. “Outlook doubtful.”

  She looked at him, puzzled. “Merry Christmas.”

  She left him standing there. He watched the family make their way across the parking lot, Halle’s spiky heels tap-tapping like a woodpecker.

  Lorna stood next to him not two minutes later. She marched him over to a picnic table. “That one is off-limits, José.”

  “Why?”

  “I never saw two people more in love with each other than Glory and Dan. Her sorrow runs deep and she’s vulnerable. Take advantage of her and I’ll shave off your eyebrows.”

  “Just so you know, she asked me to dance.”

  She tsked. “I am going to tell you something you don’t know about Glory Beatrice Smith Solomon. She is blind to that jealous sister of hers. I swear, Halle is so envious of what Glory had with Dan that when she chews gum, her teeth squeak. No trips to Europe or diamond wristwatches can make that go away. Glory, bless her heart, confuses her sister’s remarks with disapproval. No matter how many times I tell her Halle’s jealous, she doesn’t hear me. And that Halle! Bosses that poor husband of hers around so much, you watch, someday she’s going to lose him. I ought to know. I have sisters and ex-brothers-in-law coming out of my cornucopia.”

  “Glory’s fortunate to have you as her friend.”

  Lorna straightened Joseph’s jacket. “Are you going to push her into something she isn’t ready for, such as your bed?”

  “Furthest thing from my mind.”

  “Tread carefully, Joe Camera. I may be a vieja, but I can vapulear a alguien as good as the next person.”

  He had no doubt that she could kick his ass. “No te preocupes, not to worry. I’m headed back to New Mexico. I have nothing to keep me here.”

  Lorna laughed. “How the heck can you be Penny’s grandson and so seriously deluded? You’re not going anywhere. You’ve just arrived. Feliz Navidad, Joseph.”

  “Y próspero año to you, Lorna. You sang the culo off that song.”

  “I sure did, didn’t I?” She walked away.

  Just before Joseph got out of bed on Christmas morning, he experienced a brief glittery moment when he wondered if during the night he’d crossed from the mortal coil to the hereafter. Until he moved his body, the pain was absent. He could pretend the shooting never happened. Though this phenomenon had occurred enough times for him to no longer be surprised by it, he still expected that when he opened his eyes, he’d see Rico sitting on the foot of his hospital bed. Hey, amigo, he’d say. Some people will do anything to get out of work.

  The last time he’d seen his friend, Joseph lay on a hospital gurney hooked up to three IVs and a heart and blood-pressure monitor. All around him piles of bloody gauze turned from bright red blood into mulberry dark stains. Rico had been examined, treated, and released. He had a through-and-through in his biceps and a grazing flesh wound from a bullet that had glanced off a rib in the lower left quadrant of his belly that was pronounced “superficial” and covered with a large Band-Aid. He patted his shirt pocket where he’d tucked his prescription for antibiotics. “Joe, all I have to do is flex my arm and show this bad-boy scar. Fidela will swoon at my bravery, make my favorite dinner, let me have the television remote, and later, when the boys are asleep?” Rico clicked his tongue. “You, on the other hand, will have to take off your shirt, turn over, and explain your injury. Women don’t have that kind of patience anymore.”

  “What do I care?” Joseph remembered saying as he floated in and out of the drug-induced state that kept him free of pain until he was rolled into the OR. “After Isabel, I’m off women.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do so.”

  Rico laughed. “Isabel would have made a terrible old lady. That is how you find the perfect woman. You look at her and think, fifty years from now she is making you a tuna fish sandwich and begging you to take her to Sandia Casino. If that makes you smile, you have found your soul mate. Someday soon you’re going to need that heart, buddy. Tell them to fix it, too, while you’re under the knife.”

  The orderly arrived and pulled up the side of Joseph’s bed until it locked. He knew it was serious when they did not remove the board from the paramedics’ gurney. His ne
ck was immobilized in one of those collars that reminded him of his high school football uniform. They only wanted to move him once, transferring him to the OR table.

  The surgeon hadn’t said much. “Son, I will get you through this surgery, but I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Your chances of walking are optimistically twenty-five percent.”

  Joseph recognized the accent, Texas Hill Country. With surgeons and airplane pilots, you wanted a fearless Texan in charge. “I don’t want to be Christopher Reeve. Something like that happens, accidentally shut off a machine.”

  “You have an advance directive?”

  “No, sir. But I’ll sign one now.”

  “Doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid.” The surgeon plunged a syringe into the IV tubing, and a small amount of clear liquid made Joseph’s head swim. The surgeon called out to the techs standing by, “Fentanyl on board. Let’s roll. Guess I’m going to have to save your life. I’ll do my best with your legs.” He turned to Rico. “You family?”

  “I am. How long will the surgery take?”

  “However long it takes. Give the nurse your name and phone number and we’ll call you as soon as he’s in recovery.”

  “Go home,” Joseph told Rico. News cameras were trying to angle their way into the ER, and too many people were rushing around as it was. “Go kiss your wife and show the boys your war wounds.”

  “Nah, I’m staying. I want to be the first person you see when you wake up. Hasta la vista, compañero!”

  See you later, partner. As if Rico considered their bond intact.

  At discharge Rico had been ordered to see his family doctor in a week. They gave him his X-rays in a manila envelope. Any shooting put a cop on desk duty for a while, but Joseph knew Rico would find a way around that.

  Joseph’s surgery lasted four hours. The bullets were delicately removed and saved in a plastic evidence baggie. He was put into traction and parked in the ICU until he stabilized. The first two days post-op passed in a blur—he remembered his mother’s face, the priest she dragged into the room to pray over him, his co-workers allowed in for a few minutes every hour. Joseph concentrated on moving his toes when ordered to, though he wasn’t always sure he succeeded. Every time the doctors ran the tuning fork over his soles and whispered to each other, Joseph pictured Grandma Penny’s cabin by the lake. Blue water. Horsetails. Pollywogs. The feel of the wind, the lap of the water.

  When his head had cleared enough for him to become aware of his surroundings, three of his cop friends and the captain came into his room with the look on their faces that meant they’d been waiting to tell him the terrible part.

  Joseph swore under his breath. “Tell me everything,” he said. “I have to know.”

  Christmas morning and no canciónes, no Christmas carols or hymns. Joseph moved his legs and the pain bracketed his spine like the metal teeth on an animal trap. He sat up, waited for things to adjust, then hobbled into the kitchen to nuke a bowl of instant oatmeal so he could take his pain pill. In exactly forty-one minutes, the time it took to fully kick in, he called his parents. “Happy Christmas, Mami,” he said when she answered.

  She started crying and handed the phone to his father, who said, “Your mother misses you,” which was code for when are you coming home? This foolish idea of staying in a falling-down cabin all winter with no heat? Bah.

  Feliz Navidad.

  Ya’at’eeh Keshmish.

  Merry Christmas.

  Good-bye.

  He didn’t want to make the call, but it would be cowardly not to call Fidela on Christmas Day. He pressed the speed-dial number for his friend, wishing for the millionth time Rico would answer.

  In Albuquerque, if you left your tree at the curb with trash, the city would pick it up for a few bucks. The collected trees were ground up, made into mulch, free for the taking. Maybe the newly elected governor, Schwarzenegger, didn’t have the budget, because in the weeks after Christmas, in Joseph’s daily meanderings from the Butterfly Creek to the Woodpecker to the Chevron station, he saw tree after tree tossed into what had formerly been an open meadow, a farmer’s field, the beginning to the oak forest where he’d saved Juniper and received a ration for it. After the fifth tree, he stopped, took out his camera, and began taking pictures. Some still had tinsel on their branches. One was strung with lights and had a few broken bulbs. When possible, he propped them up, but mostly he photographed them as they lay, symbols of America’s favorite holiday, abandoned. Why cut down a tree to throw it away?

  OFFBEAT WEDDINGS INCREASINGLY POPULAR

  Los Angeles Times—January 5, 2004

  When Central Coast carpenter Dan Solomon died unexpectedly last year, his widow, Glory, faced surmounting hospital bills in addition to their mortgage. Her passion for rehabilitating death-row dogs and finding them families looked as if it might have to end.

  The Solomons’ ranch is known for the unusual tree growing there. Specifically, a white oak, the only one in the state, estimated by UCSC horticulture professor Jane Frederick-Collins to be two hundred plus years old.

  Last October a visitor knocked on Mrs. Solomon’s door with an unusual request. Would she permit a band of modern-day pirates to use the chapel on her property for their wedding ceremony?

  The stone-and-oak chapel her husband built on a whim has quickly become a coveted locale for couples planning unconventional nuptials. …

  Joseph studied the picture accompanying the article. The photographer had imposed a tic-tac-toe grid over the shot, dividing it into nine squares. Where the lines met were the “points of interest.” He had posed Glory just right of center. Behind her, the chapel, slightly out of focus, looked like a scene from a fairy tale. Her long silver hair lay across her shoulders. The story this photograph told was this: You cannot own this magical place, but you can rent it, make memories, and take them with you when you go on home.

  “What’ll it be today?” Katie Jay asked Joseph.

  “Tuna sandwich, please.”

  “Excuse me while I get my nitroglycerin.”

  When the rain let up, Joseph drove to the Chevron station and gassed up his car. At the market, he grocery-shopped for paper towels, toilet tissue, a six-pack of Coke, and birdseed. Two hours from sunset, he headed to the Solomon Ranch intent on photographing the damn oak tree once and for all. He parked his car by the house and knocked on the front door. No one answered, but the dogs started barking. Maybe Glory was in the barn. Around back of the house, a few brave chickens doddered in the rain, but most of them were in the coop staying dry, and who could blame them. The two horses he’d seen on Christmas Eve when he escorted Juniper home crowded the fence, hoping for handouts, and he wished he had apples. The little brown dog in his kennel sat on top of his doghouse, howling as if rain falling meant the end of the world. “If you don’t want to get wet, go inside,” he said.

  The dog only barked louder. He was pretty worked up.

  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.”

  Af
ter 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.”