Solomon's Oak

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  “I thought we were going to take pictures today.”

  “We are, when you memorize the dialogue and show me that you know the math problems in chapter four.”

  “You’re not a real teacher,” Juniper said, and bent her head and began reading. “Hola, Carmen. Vas a la bib-li-oh-tee-ka?”

  Joseph looked up into the oak tree, which was green and full of birdsong. Juniper and Glory were part of his life now. Dinner companions, dog training, late-night phone calls. When he thought of it like that it sounded like a single’s ad:

  DLM ISO SF (troubled teenage children okay),

  for short walks, long talks, and distraction

  from the pain in his back.

  “Bib-li-o-tec-a,” he pronounced. Poor old Juan had been asking for directions to the library for fifty years.

  GLORY

  Lorna let the Butterfly Creek General Store door slam shut behind her and handed Glory a shopping bag.

  “Jeepers. What’s in here?” Glory asked. “Granite?”

  “Don’t sass me, child. It’s just a few additions to our picnic doings, that’s all.” Lorna pointed to the sign for the creek trail. “Let’s take the path to the water. The spring runoff is the highest I’ve ever seen. Come on. What’s got you moving so poky this morning? I’ve seen crippled snails outpace you.”

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Insomnia’s the sign of a guilty conscience. What do you need to confess?”

  “Nothing a pound of Valium couldn’t cure.”

  “Then walk faster. That’ll get your endorphins pumping like an oil rig. Plus, you sweat out all your sorrow if you put your back into it. Know what I do when I feel down in the dumps? I walk it off. Some days it takes five miles, but it’s never failed me yet.”

  Even with her cigarette habit, Lorna could keep up with New Yorkers. “Walking” to Lorna was racing to anyone else.

  “Just smell this spring air,” she said. “What a treat to sit with my favorite girlfriend on Butterfly Rock and have lunch.”

  Though Glory had been up half the night, she plodded down the trail until they reached the railroad ties, arranged like stairs in the earth, leading to the creek bank, which was rutted with tree roots and stones. The hard-packed dirt was stubbly with native grass that had already turned green. In a few weeks, when temperatures rose another twenty degrees, the landscape would turn golden and as flammable as a gasoline-soaked rag. Dan would still be dead. Joseph would be gone. Juniper would have a whole new bag of tricks with which to torture her foster mother.

  “This is a nice spot,” Lorna said. “Hand me a napkin so I can wipe the squirrel poop off that boulder.”

  Glory collapsed more than sat, her breath heaving. “I told myself to live this day like any other. But that turned out to be worse than making a big deal out of it. How can grief take so much out of a person?” The shallow creek had a swift, noisy current as it flowed down the creek bed on its way to the river.

  “Did you run Dan’s anniversary obituary like I told you to? Ask the mission church to say a mass in his name?”

  “No,” Glory said. “That’s part of your culture, not mine.”

  “Well, then, Miss Smarty-pants, what is your culture?”

  “I’m white and religion-free. The absence of culture creates its own culture.”

  “I never heard such a load. Actually, you’re pinker than white, and something as ordinary as blow-drying your hair qualifies as a ritual. Time set aside to remember, to mark certain days as special, that’s what makes us function. You know I’m always willing to lend you my culture.”

  “I’ll survive,” Glory said, and that was the problem. Survival was being stuck in the same place for months without a shred of comfort—except for Joseph, who was a great comfort—but not for long.

  “Fine.” Lorna sat down to open her red-and-white food container. “Ah, fried rice. Tastes as good as it smells, and how many things can you say that about? So what do you have planned for today?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s not so. You’re lunching with your friend, who’s known you for almost twenty years. We’re sitting by a precious resource we can’t live without. If that’s not enough for you, go sit in the chapel your husband built for a while. Silence is holy.”

  “So’s a nap.” Glory yawned. She set the container of moo shu pork down on the rock. Inside the bag Lorna had given her was a gallon jar of pickled eggs. Glory had lugged a gallon jar of pickled eggs down the trail for what? Dessert? Was Lorna’s mind starting to go?

  “But you won’t do either, will you?”

  “I might. I might even do both.”

  Lorna snorted. “Glory Bea, do you think that if you wait grief out, it will just go away?”

  “That’s what I’ve been counting on.”

  Lorna rattled off a heated response in Spanish. “Encontrarse como un pulpo en un garaje!”

  “What?” Glory tried to translate, but surely she was mistaken, otherwise, her friend had just accused her of behaving like an octopus in a parking place.

  “Look,” Lorna said. “If you live in chaos, I can’t stop you. But I don’t have to listen to it. Let’s change the subject.”

  “To what?”

  “Well, my son’s still in prison and nobody’s offered a dime to buy the store. You have the misbehaving teenager and the company of a certain New Mexican who, if I’m not mistaken, has feelings for you that are veering off that friendship trail into uncharted territory.”

  “Lorna, you read too many tabloids. There’s nothing there except this notion that he can reach Juniper.”

  “Oh, that’s right. What do I know? I’m just an old lady who makes sandwiches and sweeps up after bikers and says ‘Thank you for your patronage’ a thousand times a day.”

  “I know how hard you work. If I had the money, I’d buy your store. Your life is much more interesting, believe me. Mine’s like trying to separate necklaces when the chains get knotted up.”

  “That’s what happens if you don’t put things away carefully.”

  Glory leaned back against the rock and put her unwrapped chopsticks down on a napkin. When she began to cry, Lorna patted her leg. “You know we are sitting in the very spot. Before everything was dammed up, this creek was ten feet deep and one wild river. It grabbed up Mrs. Michael Halloran and her baby daughter like they were toothpicks. The testarudo husband refused to listen to the Indians and tried to cross the river after they told him how rough it was. What a mistake! So much lost, all from distrust. If he’d waited just a few more weeks, who knows how those three lives would had gone? The mother might have had more children, the daughter could have grown up to be a famous architect like that Julia Morgan. If only he’d listened.”

  “The Constitution says people are entitled to make their own choices, even if they’re stupid ones.”

  “Sí, but sometimes it pays to do something someone else tells you to do, even if you’re not certain of the outcome.”

  Analogies made Glory’s head ache. What was there to say? The story of Michael Halloran’s headless wife was probably a fable, a warning to young girls not to stray far from home. Glory wanted the river back, to jump in and have the current deliver her anywhere else. She wanted to sit here until it was dark, so still that she wouldn’t frighten the deer that came out of the woods to drink from the creek. Maybe an owl would fly by. It didn’t have to be a great horned, necessarily, but that was her favorite kind. She picked the almond off one of the cookies but didn’t eat it. When Lorna finished her lunch, she broke apart a fortune cookie and fed Glory the sweet, curved cookie. Because it was too much effort to turn her head and spit it out, Glory chewed and swallowed and felt the juices in her mouth turn sour. What had she learned in a year? That grief was saying good-bye constantly. If she knew that, why didn’t it help?

  JOSEPH

  “Time for lunch,” Joseph said. Juniper had butchered Spanish and cried over algebra, leaving biology and language arts for the
afternoon. As always, Glory had left a meal for them—this time peanut butter sandwiches, chips, and Diet Vanilla Pepsi, Juniper’s favorite soda. Glory had not telephoned. Joseph hoped the break from Juniper would lift her spirits.

  “I’ll bet you a hundred dollars you don’t know who invented peanut butter,” Joseph said, cutting his sandwich in half.

  “Bet I do,” Juniper answered, then crammed hers into her mouth. “George Washington Carver,” she mumbled around the lump of sandwich. “Pay up.”

  Joseph smiled. “You’re wrong.”

  “I am not!”

  “Prove it.” If there was one thing Juniper hated, it was being wrong.

  “I read it online.”

  “How many sources?”

  “One’s enough.”

  He shook his head no. “No, ése. Guess what ethnic groups we know for sure ate peanut butter?”

  Juniper slumped in her chair and groaned. “Let me guess. Pre-Columbian.”

  “Bingo.”

  She peeled the crusts off her sandwich. “Do you spend your nights researching Pre-Columbian facts to spank me with?”

  “That’s a good idea. Should I add a hundred dollars to the fifty K you already owe me?”

  “Not until I check two or more sources,” Juniper said, going to the computer.

  When the information came up, Joseph watched Juniper’s lips moving as she read. When she took her hands off the keyboard, he said, “Remember this moment for the rest of your life. Admitting you’re wrong is the first step in educating yourself. Come on. Let’s clean up and go take pictures.”

  “What about language arts?”

  “We’ll combine it with photography. You’ll see. It’ll be fun.”

  “I seriously doubt that.”

  “We could sit here and write a five-paragraph essay if you’d rather.”

  “No, no.” She quickly bused their dishes, fetched Cadillac, and was back before Joseph had time to swallow his pain pill. Feeling her watching him, he wanted to tell her, I hope you never get to this place, but compared to his kind of pain, hers was off the scale.

  Out walking around the ranch, Juniper pointed out an old fence post missing its rails. Midway up, inside one of the notches, was a bird’s nest. “I think that nest has eggs,” Juniper said. “The bird flies away the second I come near.”

  “Take a picture,” Joseph said. “See if you can identify her by her nest.”

  They visited the goats next, and it was a good thing that Cadillac and Dodge were both leashed because Caddy was sure it was time to herd the hugely pregnant Nanny. Joseph held both leashes while Juniper photographed the goat’s eye, with its strange, slotlike pupil. Then he handed Juniper nail clippers. “Cut a lock,” he said, and held out an envelope for her to deposit the hair into, then sealed it up.

  “Why would I want hair from a pregnant goat?”

  “Because UC Santa Cruz can run a DNA panel and I thought learning about genetics this way might be more fun than reading about it.”

  “Well, it isn’t so far.”

  “Do you think you know all there is to know about DNA?”

  “I think I know enough to get me through life.”

  “Really? Suppose you came on the scene of a murder before the cops arrived. They’d automatically arrest you for looking guilty. DNA analysis could clear you, but, oops, it’s a waste of time. Yeah, you know all you need to know. Forget it. Throw the goat hair away, and I’ll drive you to the nearest McDonald’s so you can apply for a job. How’s that sound?”

  “Do you know how much worse homeschooling is than high school?”

  Joseph smiled. “I know you’re using your mind instead of your fists, and that’s all I care about.”

  Later, Dodge provided a canine hair sample, and Joseph plucked hair from his own scalp. They sat on the porch studying them under a cheapo microscope, and he told Juniper to draw what she saw.

  “Get serious,” she said. “I’m not an artist.”

  “If scientists had to draw like artists, we’d still think the earth was flat. Draw.”

  As the afternoon wore on, they classified the white oak by phylum, genus, and species, copied down the Latin names, and tried writing in calligraphy. They consulted a Bible concordance for mention of oak trees, which led to the folklore of trees, which led to Greek myths, which led to the politics of oak trees in California, endangered-species laws, and lastly Joseph brought out his secret weapon: poetry. He read aloud “The Oak Tree,” by Matsuo Bash.

  “ ‘The white oak / sees cherry blossoms / in the river.’ What do you think?” he asked Juniper.

  “Is that the whole poem?”

  “It’s called haiku.”

  “I don’t care if they call it sushi, it sounds more like a joke than a poem. I thought poems were supposed to be about something.”

  “That poem is about plenty of something. Think about it. That’s all I ask. Open your mind. Now let’s go take pictures.”

  “Finally!” Juniper crowed, but Joseph made her put her books indoors before they took off with cameras and dogs. He put Edsel on leash, feeling sorry for the dog, cooped up all day like a house cat. Edsel strained at the leash with all of his ten pounds and peed on anything more than an inch tall, proving Joseph’s theory that given the opportunity, the little dog would man up.

  Did it qualify as a miracle that Juniper had made it one entire day without cussing or punching another human being?

  Joseph made sure that they photographed the visual component of everything they’d studied today. Close-ups of the color patterns on the goats’ hides; panoramic shots of the ranch; the three dogs vying for the lead position; the two horses’ heads straining over the fence, their tails swishing in unison; and when they’d filled up the memory card, Joseph made Juniper sit and cull the pictures on the computer. “Dump any picture you consider pretty,” Joseph said.

  “But I want to keep those.”

  “Nope, get rid of ’em. They’re only pictures. You’ll take thousands more. But first you have to cut them apart, find out how they work. Save your most intriguing shot, and the ones you hate.”

  “This is not how to learn to take pictures.”

  “How do you know if you don’t try it? It’s an assignment. Take ten minutes to study them. Be prepared to explain why you feel that way. I’m going to stretch out my back.”

  While he walked around the house, he took inventory of Glory’s things. The pitcher collection started with a two-inch-high creamer and ended with what he believed was called a ewer, made of a blue calico-pattern pottery that looked old and heavy. Dog-eared cookbooks were stacked on the tile counter. She had an array of pots and pans that hung from hooks on the wall. A life in objects that would fill a moving van. Meanwhile, his life fit into a suitcase. With the warm weather drying everything up, Joseph’s clock ticked. Only a few more weeks.

  “I’m finished,” Juniper called. “I hope the ugliest photographs ever taken give you a thrill. They make me want to hurl.”

  He was pleased to see the landscape of the goat pasture, the ground bare except for scattered turds and a toppled-over bucket. The background showed a stretch of road and the faint blur of a car passing by. Up close and also out of focus was the mailbox, protruding into the shot, ruining everything. Juniper said, “This one is so bad it makes me want to scream.”

  “What makes it bad?”

  She shrugged. “Everything’s fighting to be the important part. Plus it’s all ordinary stuff. Ugly. Pictures should be pretty.”

  He ignored her comment. “Okay, Juniper. You photographed that composition by accident. Now let’s try doing one just like it, on purpose.”

  “You want me to take ugly pictures on purpose?”

  “I sure do.”

  The light was beginning to fade when Glory drove up in the truck. She saddled up Cricket and ponied Piper alongside and headed up the hillside. The dogs were straining to join her, but Joseph kept them back. “We’re done for today,” he said once
Glory was out of sight. He handed Edsel and Caddy off to Juniper and took hold of Dodge’s leash. “Better go get dinner started. I have to go.”

  “Don’t you want to have dinner with us?”

  “Not tonight. I’ll see you on Monday. Practice your Spanish.”

  He drove away with Dodge sitting in the front seat and hoped Glory didn’t see that he’d abandoned her rule of crating the dog when he drove places. Dodge whined a little when they pulled onto the highway, but quickly settled down when Joseph turned up the radio. “That’s right, you’re an NPR dog. Let’s listen to ‘All Things Considered.’ ”

  At the post office, a package was waiting, a large box that weighed little. The return address was his parents’. He set it into the back of the Land Cruiser and drove home. Inside the cabin while he heated up water for coffee and leftover Swamp Juan pizza for dinner, he prepared Dodge’s supper, adding canned pumpkin and a few sardines; fish oil for a shiny coat; pumpkin to keep him lean. After a quick trot down to the lake, a swim, and a game of fetch that could never go on long enough so far as Dodge was concerned, the dog lay down in front of the wood stove and Joseph heaved a sigh of relief.

  After dinner, he slit the tape on the package and opened the box. On top of many crumpled Hatch, New Mexico, Citizens was an envelope addressed to him written in his father’s handwriting. He opened it and a disability check fell out. He’d had his mail forwarded to his parents, rather than here. He looked at the numbers on it, thought of Fidela opening her check, and how they would both burn them to bring Rico back. Finally he set the check aside, pulled off the newspaper article paper-clipped to the letter to read later. His dad wasn’t big on letters or talk.

  Primo,

  We have had some nice weather. Still, your mother worries about her apricot trees almost as much as she worries about you.

  Your padre

  Under more crumpled paper was a three-foot-long, dried chile ristra enclosed in Bubble Wrap, clearly his mother’s handiwork. Hang one on your portal—porch—and good luck would come to you all year round. He bent his head and inhaled deeply. The faint burn in his nose made him shut his eyes. He could almost smell the sage. The pull to get in his car and drive east was visceral. Why send it to him when he was returning in a few weeks? Maybe he’d leave it with Lorna. She could use some good luck.