An earthquake is a rupture. Plates shift where they are not whole. This one measured 9.1 to 9.3, lasted ten minutes, and was so strong that it made planet Earth vibrate, triggering earthquakes as far away as Alaska. The good part was that plain old regular people opened their pockets and donated more than $7 billion in aid.
Something else good that happened in 2004 was the discovery of Homo floresiensis, “the Hobbit,” a complete female skeleton standing three foot and three inches tall, found on the Indonesian island of Flores. In the swampy environment her bones did not ossify, so anthropologists could only take a brief look. They learned she was thirty years old at the time of her death, and that for eighteen thousand years she lay there alongside pygmy elephants and miniature Komodo dragons, tiny versions of the species we think of today as huge.
That same year, the world’s rarest bird, the Hawaiian honeycreeper, went extinct. Dr. Alan Lieberman, who devoted his life to its study, said, “I held [the last known po’ouli] when it was alive and when it was dead. If there’s a more fitting example of extinction, it’s impossible to imagine.”
But nature is unpredictable. Fourteen years after being declared extinct, the Large Blue butterfly (Phengaris arion) showed up in the garden of a group of Englishwomen attending a tea at Mrs. Hortense Childs’s home in Suffolk, England. She said, “I just turned round and there it was!”
In 2004, the skeleton of a female toddler was found in a previously unknown cave in the wilderness area between Jolon, California, and the coast of the Pacific Ocean. The nearest source of freshwater was two miles away. A dog can survive a long time without food, but death by dehydration can occur in twenty-four hours. Because I ran away rather than face my father, my dog, Caddy, found a woman’s jawbone and the skeleton of a child.
On the Internet, you can find just about anybody, if you want to.
In Anthropology 106, you learn that bones tell a story. Wisdom teeth mark the transition from teenager to adult. Ossification, which occurs in eight hundred parts of the skeleton, backs up that fact. But if you have only a jawbone to go on, there are limited provable facts, and everything else is a guess.
Finding human bones stirs things up. People who’ve lost a loved one hope the bones will end the wondering and the waiting. In some cultures, bones are sacred remains, deserving of dignity, burial, and prayer. In others, bones are meant to be cut in half and studied. They are all stories waiting to be told.
To law enforcement, bones are evidence.
In 2004, the University of California, Santa Cruz, department of anthropology requested the exhumation of Mrs. Alice Halloran’s grave on the Fort Hunter Liggett military base. They wanted a DNA sample from her skeleton to see if it matched the jawbone. After months of newspaper stories and name-calling, Lorna Candelaria, proprietor of the Butterfly Creek General Store (which is no longer for sale), and who can trace her ancestors back to before the mission era, accused the university of desecration. “Bury that child next to Mrs. Halloran and be done with it,” she was quoted as saying. “It took a hundred and six years for them to be reunited. Who are we to keep a mother and daughter apart?”
After my ankle surgery, I returned “home” with Mrs. Solomon.
My father never came to see me.
“Never let the future disturb you,” said Marcus Aurelius in the second century. “You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”
Three years have passed, and now I’m in college at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, studying—you guessed it—forensic anthropology. I hope it doesn’t take a hundred years to find Casey’s bones. The odds are not in my favor, but here’s my best guess: Someday someone will cut a trail into wilderness, fall down a cliff into a ravine (like me), discover a hidden cave, or dig up land to prepare it for a building’s foundation, and they will find my sister. I might not be alive by then. If you look at the timeline of events in 1898, when Alice and Clara Halloran disappeared, it’s clear that for every mistake a human makes, a hundred good things happen. Maybe even a thousand. My adoptive father, nature photographer Joseph Vigil, calls that the Theory of Greater Abundance, which is the story of how we met at a wedding for pirates. He misjudged a staged sword fight for the real thing, his cop instinct kicked in, and that was the first time he laid eyes on my mother and me. A day that started with his camera ended with a pirate-ship cake. He tells the story whenever he gets the chance, because he says he’s never stopped appreciating the collision of events that caused our paths to cross and become a family.
People make mistakes. They want immediate answers to life’s many mysteries. If you wait a few generations, you learn bigger truths than you would have if you found answers right away.
My name is Juniper Tree McGuire Solomon Vigil.
My sister’s full name was Acacia Tree McGuire, but everyone called her Casey.
My mother, who was in too much pain to stay on earth, and may she rest in peace, loved trees so much that she gave us names to make us put down roots, stand up to the weather, and hold fast, like Solomon’s Oak. Then she blew away like a leaf in the wind, uncovering the rest of my life.
That’s how it will be for my sister. The earth will fall away and her white bones will feel the sun upon them, and rise up.
I just know it.
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
Grateful acknowledgment to Debra Utacia Krol for the use of her mother’s, Mary Bishop Larson’s, traditional Jolon Indian story “The Headless Lady of Jolon.” Mrs. Larson is one of the documented few to have actually seen Mrs. Halloran’s ghost.
Robert Latham and Karen Broughton generously helped me with pirate-wedding research and gifted me with the DVD of their inspirational ceremony. Varieties of the pirate-wedding vows appear all over the Internet, on such sites as favoriteideas.com, talklikeapirate.com, blackravenadventures.com, thebeenews.com, fantaseaweddings.com.
Bash’s (1644–94) poem “The Oak Tree” has been translated by many and can be found in anthologies, and all over the Internet. This is my humble interpretation.
Many thanks to Judi Hendricks for the use of two sentences from her wonderful novel The Laws of Harmony.
Thank you to Jeffrey Eugenides for my borrowing of his dog’s name, Edsel.
Thank you to Laura C. Martin for her wonderful books on the folklore of trees, flowers, and animals. They have inspired me throughout my writing days and continue to be a source I turn to often.
Gracious thanks and love to my agent and dear friend, Deborah Schneider, for her steadfast belief in me, and in this book. Also to her entire office staff, especially Cathy Gleason, who pretty much always knows the answer to every question I ask.
I am thankful and grateful beyond words to Nancy Miller at Bloomsbury USA and Helen Garnons-Williams at Bloomsbury UK for their enthusiasm regarding this book. Also to my copy editor, Steve Boldt, production editor, Laura Phillips, and the sales force for supporting this book.
Thank you also to Dorothy Massey at Collected Works, who is always generous and supportive, and who owns the finest indie bookshop in Santa Fe.
When a writer utters the words “This book could not have been written without the support and encouragement of so many people,” what she really means is to acknowledge and truly appreciate the people who put up with her inattentiveness, glum outlook, and whining. A few of my biggest supporters and best friends include Sherry Simpson, Earlene Fowler, Judi Hendricks, Rich Chiappone, David Stevenson, Anne Caston, Kathleen Tarr, Jodi Picoult, Jennifer Olds-Huffman; and my son, Jack, and his wife, Olivia Barrick; my sisters, Lee and C.J.; my brothers, John and Jim; and my mother, Mary, who told me wonderful stories all my life. Without you, I wouldn’t ever finish anything.
Dogs (Verbena, Cricket, Henry, Piper, and Rufus) make even the hardest parts of life bearable, and often entertaining.
My husband, Stewart Allison, cheers me on when I’m down, makes me laugh when I’m overly serious, and has loved me all thes
e years. You have so many times over earned your gold crown in heaven that it is blindingly bright with gems. Thank you for believing me to be a keeper.
A N O T E O N T H E A U T H O R
Jo-Ann Mapson is the author of nine previous novels, including the beloved Hank & Chloe, Blue Rodeo (CBS TV movie), and the Los Angeles Times bestsellers The Wilder Sisters and Bad Girl Creek, a book-club favorite. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her husband and their five dogs. Visit her Web site at www.joannmapson.com.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Owl & Moon Café
The Wilder Sisters
Loving Chloe
Shadow Ranch
Blue Rodeo
Hank & Chloe
Fault Line (stories)
The Bad Girl Creek trilogy:
Bad Girl Creek
Along Came Mary
Goodbye, Earl
Copyright © 2010 by Jo-Ann Mapson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Mapson, Jo-Ann.
Solomon’s oak : a novel / Jo-Ann Mapson. —1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-60819-330-1
1. Loss (Psychology)—Fiction. 2. Self-actualization (Psychology) —Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3563.A62S65 2010
813’.54—dc22
2010009792
First published by Bloomsbury USA in 2010
This e-book edition published in 2010
E-book ISBN: 978-1-60819-408-7
www.bloomsburyusa.com
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