Joseph put his hand on Glory’s shoulder. “See? Now they’ll head down as a team.”
The sight of the aluminum stretcher made Glory’s knees buckle. She sat down hard, right there in the road. One by one, the climbers disappeared from sight. A volunteer came over and handed them bottles of water. “It’s only a matter of time now, ma’am. We’re bringing your little girl home.”
Glory said, “Joseph? Tell me. Could that kind of fall be fatal?”
“How about you let me hear that speech you’re going to give her father?” Joseph said.
Oh, the arrogancia in him. Joseph told Glory that judges not only allowed victims to address their perpetrators at trials, they allowed loved ones to speak, too, so she might possibily meet Juniper’s father face-to-face. Tell him what she felt. Glory said, “ ‘Explain to me how losing one daughter led to abandoning another. There are ways to get help. I would sell everything I own to keep Juniper with me. You weren’t here to listen to her crying herself to sleep. You haven’t seen her tenderness with baby goats. Do you have any idea how much courage it took for her to love Cadillac? You should be the one gone over this cliff, not her.’ How’s that?”
Joseph said, “I think you should add a couple of cuss words. In Spanish.”
Following a small avalanche of rubble and dirt that briefly clouded the view, they heard one climber holler, and as in one of those relay games, his words were repeated by the person above him, and so on, sending up the news.
A cop turned to them and said, “Unconscious, but breathing. Notify EMS they’re sending up the stretcher.”
JUNIPER
Are you sure you want this? the tattoo artist asked me. You can’t rub it off, you know.
More than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life, I said.
I don’t work for free.
I left. I returned with five DVDs, all good movies. Is this enough?
That’s a start, he said. But I need something else.
Like what? I said.
He unbuttoned my shirt and then I knew. I took off my clothes. I told myself this is what happened to Casey and I owed it to her because of the sweater and the fight and I said, Will this be enough? and he nodded.
My sister looked so pretty in blue. Then, like the finish on the buttons, she disappeared. Flew away. Make it look real, I said when he drilled the ink into my skin. I want it right there on my neck, so everyone can see it.
JOSEPH
Before Juniper went into surgery to put her fractured ankle back together, she said, “Cadillac, don’t forget to feed Cadillac.”
On the drive home from the hospital, Glory told Joseph, “Turn onto G18. We have to find the dog.”
“Glory, it’s dark out. We’ll look again in the morning.”
She bit her cuticles and went silent.
Arriving home, she walked in the front door only to head out the back door. Cadillac wasn’t there either.
“Let me feed the animals,” Joseph said, but not quickly enough. Dodge ran to the empty kennels and started barking. “Glory, go indoors and have some whiskey. You’re spooking the horses.”
Two days later, Caddy was still missing. Both days, in the morning before visiting hours at the hospital, Glory rode Cricket into the forest as far as she could go. Joseph walked topside, carrying a walkie-talkie borrowed from Lorna. They covered five long, punishing miles, and no sight of the dog. S&R was long gone, their job completed. People said, it was only a dog, after all.
GLORY
The Narcan took care of the oxycodone, but the acetaminophen level was still a concern. Once the general anesthetic from the ankle surgery cleared Juniper’s system, Glory knew there was no putting things off. She stashed Edsel in her purse and drove to the hospital, hoping she could keep up her run of good luck of not running into Juniper’s father. He wasn’t there. Alone in the room with Juniper, Glory shut the door and brought out Edsel. “I couldn’t fit Cadillac in my purse,” she said, faking a laugh.
Juniper burst into tears. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“He’s lost.”
“It’s my fault.” Juniper began to sob, reminding Glory of their first night together, Thanksgiving and pirates and her headache and the unlikely reunion that eventually led them through all kinds of strife only to arrive at this terrible moment of pain and loss that seemed as if it would never end.
“He could still come back. But if he doesn’t, know that he had a good life with you, Juniper. The best months of his life.”
After the tears, Juniper was stony. She wouldn’t eat the vanilla pudding Glory brought, wouldn’t take a sip of her Diet Vanilla Coke, and the red-velvet cupcakes sat there on her hospital tray turning stale.
“Try to nap,” Glory said. “I’ll be right back.”
She stepped into the hall, found a family lounge, and called Caroline. “Where’s her father? I thought he was so anxious to see her. She needs him right now.”
Caroline huffed into the phone, “I don’t know how to tell her.”
“Tell her what?”
“Apparently this whole debacle of her missing spread all over the news scared him off. He called Lois to cancel, and that’s the last we’ve heard from him. I don’t know. Maybe it was too much exposure. Like a replay of Casey.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
Caroline sighed. “You know, Glo, I think I’ll retire this year. Sit on my porch and watch the weeds grow.”
“Don’t you dare. What would happen to kids like Juniper without you? Go take a rest and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Glory called her mother next. “What do I do, Mom? The dog, her father, her ankle; she’s in bad shape and I don’t know what to do.”
“Mothers are only human,” Ave said. “You turn it over to God and then you just wing it.”
In the hospital cafeteria, Glory ordered coffee. While she waited for it to cool, she nodded off. When she woke, she was leaning her head on her hand, and her entire arm had gone to pins and needles. Dan, she thought. I have to go to him. He needs me. But by the time she reached the elevator, she remembered it was Juniper who waited for her, not Dan, and Glory stopped still because she couldn’t walk into that poor girl’s room without some kind of plan.
Desperate, she called Halle, who remarkably wasn’t having a drinks party at the moment. “I need your help,” Glory said, then unloaded on her sister as she hadn’t since childhood: Glory sleeping with Joseph, Juniper’s father letting her down yet again, the lost dog, the lack of sleep, Joseph’s invitation to New Mexico, pending wedding events she’d taken deposits on, the animals that depended on her to provide meals and exercise and attention—and Caddy. It all came back to Cadillac, the black-and-white border collie who’d finally found his human only to lose his life. “Everything’s such a mess. You were right, Halle. Tell me what to do.”
Halle was silent a minute, then said, “So you can’t bring the dog back. It’s tragic, but you can find her another dog. You’re so good at that it makes me green with jealousy. What am I good at? Shopping? Making drinks? Traveling to other countries and shopping there so I can try new drinks? Well, let me tell you, Glory. I plan to make you the best drink ever made the second I arrive, and I’m leaving right now so not another word out of you. I’m not sure I can feed those farm animals of yours, so we’ll have to hire someone, one of your former fosters? I’ll collect eggs, but I must have a fresh pair of latex gloves every time. As soon as Juniper is ready to travel, I’ll bring her to Santa Rosa, and you are getting on that airplane and flying into your future. We’ll be fine without you. I’ll teach her to play bunco and hopefully do something with her god-awful hair.”
That night, after Glory called the Paso Robles hospital supply and rented both a bed and a wheelchair, she remembered the plein air painters scheduled for the day after tomorrow. She retrieved their paperwork from her binder and called the contact number. “I’m sorry to call you on short notice,” she said, “but I was wondering if there was any chance we
could switch your group to the following weekend? My daughter’s coming home from the hospital tomorrow and things are stressful because her dog’s lost and … ”
The excuse sounded pathetic even to her ears, and she wasn’t surprised when her suggestion was rejected outright. The president of the painting society, who was also a lawyer, was more than happy to point out the lack of cancellation clause in her agreement form. “This contract of yours is a joke,” he said. “You really should hire an attorney to create one for you.”
What was that supposed to mean? Did he expect her to ask him to do it? Glory would rather pass a kidney stone than give this man one dollar. “Then I guess I’ll see you folks this weekend.”
She walked into her kitchen, stood in the center of things, and shut her eyes. Behind her was the sink with the rough spot around the drain; washing three generations’ worth of dishes eroded enamel over cast iron. To the left of the sink was the four-burner cooktop that was fifty years old but still worked. To the right, her double ovens had baked countless meals, and the dishwasher to the left of that was on its last legs. Her kitchen was her compass, her true north. In here, she knew who she was and what needed to be done, so she put aside thinking about the dog and how difficult the next few days would be and did what she did best, which was lose herself in a menu that began with local-greens salad and traveled to chicken Kiev and came to an end with a fondant artist’s-palette cake and a sculpting-chocolate paintbrush.
Juniper begged to be wheeled outside so she could sit on the porch all day, waiting for the impossible, Cadillac’s return. Halle kept her company while Glory handed out gourmet box lunches to the painters. Each had a single-serving bottle of California chardonnay from a new winery that she hoped would give the attorney/painter a headache from drinking in the sun.
Some of these painters had real talent, apparent in every brushstroke. The layers of paint, a sense of color, and the attention to detail were right there. Glory looked at their renderings of the oak tree and could tell they saw the history in it, but somehow, not its soul. The other painters seemed to have professional outfits and equipment—smocks and visors and field easels made of beautiful hardwoods. Glory searched each canvas, looking for the one painter who’d managed to capture the oak tree, but so far, no one had. Maybe no one could. Maybe it was only there to frustrate photographers and evade painters and to inspire pirate weddings. Joseph walked among the group taking pictures, being friendly and outgoing. When he and Glory passed each other, he whispered, “Your tree’s outfoxed every last one of them,” and Glory smiled because Joseph made her know that while losing Cadillac would always hurt, they would make it through these difficult days and come out on the other side. That there was another side to aim for.
While the painters finished up their salad greens and moved on to the chicken Kiev, the roar of motorcycles cut into the air, and Glory wondered if someone was lost, or a biker gang wanted to throw a weenie-roast wedding in her chapel. Why not? Money was money. She walked around the property to the front porch to see what was happening.
Lorna Candelaria walked up the driveway dressed in chaps, boots, and the pink cowboy hat that was her signature style. In one hand she held a paper lunch sack, and in the other she held by the collar a burr-infested, seen-better-days, emaciated border collie. “Glory!” she called. “Get a load of what me and my posse found.”
The lump that rose in Glory’s throat prevented any reply, but she heard yelling, then she saw Juniper launch herself out of the wheelchair and hop on one leg to her beloved, who dropped and belly-crawled up to meet her like the first—no, this was the third—time they met. Glory heard the click of a camera and knew that Joseph Vigil was right behind her. He didn’t stop to ask questions or argue over wages; he recognized a photo opportunity and seized it. Glory thought, Oh, Dan. This must be what you meant by faith.
A few of the bikers were openly crying when Juniper reached her friend. Between choking sobs, Glory asked, “Where on earth did you find him? I thought we’d covered every inch.”
“A mile or so past the Cueva Pintada, the Painted Cave, give or take. I had no idea there was another cave just beyond it, much smaller. In fact, I think we might be the first people to step inside it in a hundred and some years.”
Glory reached out to hug her friend. “Thank you, Lorna.”
“You’re welcome, honey. But don’t get slaphappy just yet.”
“Why not?”
“We found your pooch next to a pile of bones. Took me a whole package of lunch meat to wrestle this one away from him.”
Glory knew they were all thinking the same thing: Casey.
JOSEPH
“May I see it?” Joseph asked. He unrolled the bag until the earth-colored bone was exposed. It had wisdom teeth and molars, too old for Casey. “Were the other bones also human?”
Before the cops got involved, Joseph got in the Land Cruiser and drove to Santa Cruz, located the university’s anthropology department, and knocked on the department chair’s door. No one answered, but the door was unlocked, so he went inside. The man’s desk was a jumble of files and books, papers everywhere: This was higher education? He found a course catalog and checked the man’s teaching schedule. He asked directions from a student and walked to the lecture hall where the professor was teaching. He waited by the door for the man to finish, gather his files, load up his briefcase, and amble toward the exit.
“Professor, it’s Joseph Vigil, again. I’m here about the bones I left you yesterday. Have you had a chance to look at them?”
“I was planning to call you this afternoon,” the professor said, and Joseph thought, mierda, manure, you forgot the second you were done looking at them, but stood his ground. “Very interesting, your jawbone.”
“What did you find out?”
“It’s obviously a female jaw, since the lines run in a curve from the earlobe to the chin—”
“Yes, I know,” Joseph said impatiently. “Were you able to determine its age?”
“The late 1890s is my guess. I’d place her age at twenty to thirty-five when she died; hard to pin that down without more of the skeleton. The other bones were from a female toddler, no more than two years of age. If you want to whittle out any more info than that, you’re going to have to go to Stanford. Their equipment puts ours to shame. State university budgets, you know.”
They walked to his office, and Joseph was impressed that he found the bones without tearing the messy office apart.
“Intriguing,” he said as he handed them over. “Found in a place that could have remained undisturbed forever, but for a girl running away and her dog going after her, and those motorcyclists keeping at things, eh?”
The thought of his own role in Cadillac’s disappearance still took Joseph’s breath away. If not for Lorna—well, he tried not to think about it.
“So where will the bones go? We’d be happy to give them a home.”
“That’s something you and the Jolon Indians will have to work out,” Joseph said.
JUNIPER
For as long as there have been boulders big enough to perch on and sunshine to warm the rocks, people have been lolling around asking each other questions about the meaning of life, which so far no one has the answer to. If you want to know the meaning of something, you need more than reference books. You need imagination and you have to be willing to experiment and take risks. Without alternative ways of thinking you can only go so far in the world. For example, take stories passed down from long ago when there were no books, just oral history. Also, music, poetry, and even jokes can tell you something. You can’t just go by facts. Facts are not even the half of it.
In The Folklore of Eternity, Comparative Lit 101, Tuesdays and Thursdays, eight A.M. to noon, I read a story about when Plato was a baby. When he slept in his rush basket or papoose or whatever passed for cribs back then, bees supposedly landed on his lips as if they were the sweetest flowers on earth. Stinging bees, but they never stung him. Were the b
ees giving him sweetness or taking it from him? Science says bees land where they do for one of three purposes: to load up on pollen, get a drink, or they’ve arrived home and want to protect their queen and make honeycombs.
But the design of the bee shows that flight is impossible.
GLORY
Glory and Joseph changed planes in Phoenix on their way to Albuquerque, and Glory had second thoughts, third thoughts, and so on.
“I’m going to call home, to make sure everything’s going all right,” she said as they walked from one gate to the other, passing gift shops selling tabloid newspapers and sewing kits and neck pillows for absurdly inflated prices.
“They’re fine,” he said. “I have a better idea. Pay attention to me. I’ll buy you a Grande latte. Or would you rather have Venti? Maybe colossal?”
“Do they have small?” She laughed.
“Bueno. Laugh more. You’ll need your sense of humor to survive the Vigils. Our parties go on all night.”
Glory looked out the plate-glass windows at the jets, amazed at the number of people traveling when it wasn’t even a national holiday—just traveling.
They sat down in the waiting area of the gate for their flight. She could tell Joseph’s back was hurting him and she rubbed his shoulder. He leaned in closer. “That feels good,” he said.
“You’re welcome.”
“Before I get your coffee, I’ve been wondering about something.”
“What?”
“You’ve got half a dozen weddings under your belt now, all different kinds. If you were to get married again—theoretically—what kind of ceremony would you choose? Traditional? Civil ceremony? Take your time.”
“I don’t need to take my time.”
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense. What kind?”
She smiled. “Without a doubt, pirate.”
E P I L O G U E
THE WORST THING to happen in 2004 was not my father not showing up, it was the Boxing Day earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.
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