Bend in the Road

by Sara Biren

  Ted turns off the main road toward the community center. The vendors are set up in the parking lot in front of the building, so we drive around back and park on the street.

  “What does the farmers’ market have to do with Field & Flock?” Ted asks as we get out of the truck and walk around to the front of the building.

  “One of Field & Flock’s main attractions is the farm store. I’m here to steal ideas.”

  “At least you’re honest,” Ted says. “I’ve got some advice, for what it’s worth. Don’t let on that you’re stealing ideas, even for a school project. You’re an outsider, even if you are a Hudson. And whatever you do, don’t let anyone know that you don’t like Juniper. Everyone loves Juniper. Everyone is very protective of Juniper and her family. You don’t want any of these farmers coming after you with a pitchfork.”

  I stumble in the gravel at that. “What do you mean, don’t let anyone know that I don’t like Juniper? Who said I don’t like Juniper? And are you serious about the pitchforks?”

  “Do you like Juniper?”

  “Well . . . well—” I stammer.

  “You see? Do you want to know what I think?”

  I laugh, partly to cover up the fact that he caught me off guard. “I’m sure you’ll tell me whether I want to know or not.”

  “Exactly. I think you need to lighten up and allow the magic of Juniper into your life.”

  I burst out laughing at this. We round the corner and I see her standing at a long table covered with a red-and-white checked tablecloth. Sunlight streams across her face, making her hair—in two long pigtails today—pure white and glowing. She does look a little magical in this light. She lifts a hand to shade her eyes against the glare of the sunlight, and then she smiles—big and genuine—when she sees us, and I can’t help but smile back.

  “Hey!” she calls over the head of a customer who has three very oddly shaped vegetables in front of her on the table. “You made it!”

  “I take my chauffeur duties very seriously,” Ted says. “I smell apple fritters. I’ll be right back. Don’t kill each other while I’m gone.”

  “Goddamn,” I say. “I’ve been craving an apple fritter. Get me two, would you? And one for Blue.”

  “Blue, huh?” Ted says, raising his eyebrows. He takes a bow. “I am at your service.”

  Today, Juniper is the epitome of farm girl fashion: jeans, boots, a black-and-red plaid shirt, and a black puffy vest. No glasses, though. All she needs is a piece of hay to chew on and a cute little lamb to carry around, and she could star in her own sixties sitcom.

  I watch as she spends the next few minutes chatting with a customer and the customer’s young daughter.

  “Mirabella, can you name all the types of squash today?”

  The little girl points at each one and mumbles something I can’t hear. But Juniper beams as she repeats the names.

  “Yes! Butternut, acorn, carnival. Carnival has always been my favorite. I love the stripes and the dots and all the different colors. Every single one is unique!”

  “Thanks, Juniper. Say hi to your mom for us,” the woman says as she holds open a canvas tote and Juniper carefully sets each squash inside. Canvas totes. Perfect for the Field & Flock farm store. We could offer three different sizes. People would eat that up. And we’ll need a logo, but I don’t know anything about graphic design. I wonder if Juniper does, or Ted, or if they know someone who could design a Field & Flock logo.

  I shake my head a little to clear it. Sometimes, when I think about Field & Flock, I think that it’s actually happening, that all these plans we’re making could work at Stone & Wool. Which is ridiculous.

  Juniper hands a small mesh bag to the woman. “Here’s a sample of my latest tea, Fall Fireside. And Mirabella, isn’t tomorrow your birthday? Here’s a fairy to add to your collection! This one is called Tulip.”

  The woman puts her hand on her heart as the girl reaches out for the fairy Juniper’s offering—a diaphanous, delicate doll no more than two inches high with bright pink wings. “You remembered! Thank you! We love your mom’s fairies, don’t we, Mirabella?”

  Juniper reaches across the table and tugs on one of the little girl’s braids. “Bye, Mirabella. Come by the nature center soon!”

  I can see why people love Juniper. She’s friendly. She remembers their birthdays. She gives away small, handmade fairies. Why is she giving away her mom’s fairies and not charging for them?

  “Where did that woman get her canvas tote?” I ask as I step up to Juniper’s picked-over display of squash, pumpkins, and other vegetables that I don’t recognize. “Tell me about these tea samples. Do you have any larger packages available for sale? Or are they a teaser? And why did you give away that fairy? How much is it worth?”

  “The fairies sell for six dollars each,” Juniper says. She frowns. “Hello to you, too.”

  Ah, right. I launched into my questions without even saying hello. “Hey, Blue,” I say quietly with a small grin.

  That seems to do the trick. The muscles in her face relax, and she blows out a breath. “Hi, Gabe. She’s one of our best customers.”

  My grin widens. “I’m sure she is if you give them things for free.”

  “But it’s Mirabella’s birthday!” She turns on the charm again as another customer steps up to her table. “Israel! I’m so happy to see you. And twice in one weekend!”

  The man rubs his frizzy white hair, a stark contrast to his deep brown skin. “The boy and his family showed up last night and surprised me! I’m here for some of your mama’s finest beets.”

  “You’re in luck,” she says. “I happen to have two of our best bunches left. On the house.” She gives me a pointed look and smiles at Israel.

  They chat for another minute or two, laughing about something that happened at the park reserve yesterday, and then Juniper says, “Here’s the Fall Fireside I was telling you about. Tell Rafe I say hello and squeeze that baby’s cheeks for me!”

  Israel waves as he walks away with two bunches of beets.

  “Now, what were you saying about a tote?” Juniper lifts her hand to shield her eyes again.

  “Don’t you have sunglasses?” I ask. I slip mine off and hand them to her. “You need them more than I do.”

  She looks down at the sunglasses in her hands, then looks back up at me, eyes wide. “Thanks?” she says, like she’s not entirely sure. Like what I’ve done is completely out of character. Which, I guess, it might be.

  “The totes. The woman who was here a few minutes ago put her squash in a tote. Did she get that somewhere at the market?”

  Juniper shrugs. “It’s a canvas tote, Gabe. You can get them anywhere. The market encourages reusable bags. Most people bring their own, but we keep a small supply of paper bags on hand in case.”

  “Right. I see. I was thinking Field & Flock should sell some. Do you think you could design a logo?”

  She shakes her head. “No, but Amelia could throw something together for us.”

  “Great. Can you ask her? I’m going to walk around and get a feel for the market. Do you need anything?”

  She shakes her head again and finally slips the sunglasses on. They’re black, like her vest. “Thanks,” she says again, this time like she means it.

  She looks good in my overly expensive sunglasses. I wish I had that money back, and the money I’ve spent on all kinds of shit over the years: shoes and watches and even guitars. Not that I’d be able to bring myself to sell my guitars.

  But I don’t want to think about that mess right now.

  “See you around,” I call as I walk away to catch up with Ted.

  The truth is, I’d rather hang out here and watch Juniper with her customers than find Ted and eat apple fritters.

  The truth is, Juniper Blue is growing on me.

  Later that afternoon, I’m restless. I make myself a sandwich and nose around the kitchen. The cabinets are bursting with old Pyrex glassware, teal and white with a snowflake pattern, green an
d white with daisies. Heavy ceramic mixing bowls. Lightweight plastic mixing bowls. I pull open the drawers, crammed with utensils. Eggbeaters, whisks, a large device with a canister covered in small holes and two red metal handles with the paint chipping off. A quick Internet search tells me that this is a potato ricer, commonly used for preparing potatoes for lefse or mashing. (Youa would love this thing.)

  I move from the kitchen to the study off the living room and snoop through the drawers in Gran’s rolltop desk. Receipts from the country store from ten years ago. Old electric bills. Black-and-white photographs with yellowed edges. Prayer cards from funerals. Shit. She really didn’t throw anything away, did she?

  I move upstairs to Chris’s bedroom with its big walk-in cedar closets, racks and shelves filled with clothing and shoes, men’s and women’s. The pungent odor of cedar feels like a comfortable blanket, and I lift one of Gran’s sweaters to my nose, hoping that it still holds her sweet, cakey smell, like buttercream frosting. It doesn’t. I open a shoebox that’s filled with dried roses and baby’s breath. The petals crumble beneath my fingers.

  It’s getting late and I might as well go to bed, so I move down the hall, cool wood floors creaking, to Chris’s childhood bedroom, my room now. I pull open a deep drawer of a desk that looks to be handmade. Lined notebook papers filled with meticulous, fading handwriting. Old comic books and magazines, including an old Spin from August of 1991—right before Chris left Minnesota for Seattle—with Paul Westerberg of the Replacements on the cover. The headlines read: Paul Westerberg: Rock’s Last Bastard and the Cult of the Replacements and In Search of the Soul of Rock ’n’ Roll: Is Rock Dead? SPIN’s Writers Cross America to Find Out. Chris is still a huge ’Mats fan. I pull this one out to read later.

  There’s a folded sheet of graph paper stuck to the back of the magazine. I gently peel it off and unfold it. The handwriting on it is misshapen and of various sizes—if I had to guess, that of a ten-year-old who maybe didn’t like school all that much (or so I hear). Chris drew a map of the farm, sketched and labeled all of the buildings. The round barn’s in the center. From there, he must have used a compass to fill in a series of concentric circles out from the round barn. Silo, farmhouse, big barn, climbing tree, garage, machine shed, river, east field, west field, the Beehive.

  The Beehive—Juniper’s house.

  The circles continue.

  Town

  School

  Fred Lake

  Big Louie

  River (again)

  Airport California

  The Sunshine, The Sea, The Wild Air The World

  I sit down on the bed, the map clutched in my hand, amazed at how Chris knew from such a young age where he wanted to go. For him, everything began at the round barn and moved outward, and he knew that one day, he would see the world. He mapped it out. He’s moved away from the round barn his whole life.

  I’m moving inward.

  Chapter Twenty

  JUNIPER

  We fall into something of a routine. Gabe comes up to the house a couple of times a week for dinner and to work on our project. Amelia designed a simple logo with a sheep’s head surrounded by a wreath of wheat, although wheat is not a crop on our fake farm. She was proud of her work, Gabe said it was good enough for a fake farm, and that was good enough for me.

  We still argue a fair amount, but that seems to be the nature of our friendship. Friendship—not a word I ever thought I’d use to describe our relationship. One day, we spent fifteen minutes of class time debating whether we should have dressing rooms in the farm market so that people could try on the wool sweaters in privacy. I insisted on customer privacy, but Gabe figured a mirror near the sweater display would be sufficient and deter shoplifters from taking things into the dressing room and stuffing them into their canvas totes.

  “Are you kidding me?” I asked. “Who is going to shoplift from a market on a farm?” I blurted out, loudly enough that Marxen glared at me from her desk at the front of the room. “This isn’t LA, Gabe. Honestly!”

  “You don’t know that! I’ve seen some dodgy people at the SuperValu hanging around the candy aisle. The same people who are tempted to stash a Snickers bar down their pants might have the same urge to pinch a . . . I don’t know . . . one of your mom’s six-dollar fairies!”

  “Oh my God, you’re never going to let that go, are you?” I laughed.

  “Never.” He grinned and brushed one of his deep black curls out of his eyes.

  “Bell! Hudson! Keep your voices down or you’re outta here,” Marxen warned.

  In the end, I gave in with a shake of my head and another laugh. No dressing rooms.

  Some nights, we study World History together even though I’m in a different class. He regales me with facts he’s learning in Horticulture, and he even helps me with some of my end-of-season tasks in the greenhouse.

  “What is this?” he asks the afternoon we harvest the last of the mint. He’s standing in front of my tea plant, which has grown to about two feet tall.

  “Camellia sinensis. A tea plant.”

  “A tea plant? How do you grow tea?”

  I laugh. “Where do you think tea comes from? I planted this two years ago. In the summer, it lives here in the greenhouse, and then I bring it into the house for the winter. There’s a small chance I might be able to harvest some of the leaves for next summer, but more likely it’ll still need another couple of years.”

  “Hold. On,” he says. “Are you telling me that you’re growing a plant that takes three to five years to produce anything?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re willing to wait three to five years.”

  “Totally worth it. Right now, I have to buy the tea to add to my blends. This way, I’ll be able to experiment with drying times to develop different flavors.”

  “That’s amazing, Blue. Sounds like writing music. Fuck, I couldn’t even wait three months to have Chris help me with my album. Maybe I should grow a tea plant and learn some patience.” He laughs but it sounds hollow.

  “That’s why you didn’t wait for Chris? Because you weren’t patient?”

  He shakes his head. “No. I mean, that was part of it. But a bigger part was that I thought I was invincible, right? ‘Burden’ was a huge hit, the album was making me a ton of money, and, I don’t know, I figured I was talented enough to bang out a new album without really doing the hard work to get there.”

  “I’m sorry.” I don’t know what else to say, but I’m glad that he feels comfortable enough to open up to me.

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” he says.

  “Have you ever wanted to do anything besides music?”

  He shakes his head and moves over to the sink to wash the dirt from his hands. “For about half a year, I went to this rad school for kindergarten where they didn’t teach the alphabet or anything like that, but we learned by ‘experiencing life.’” He makes air quotes with his fingers. “We went on field trips to the fire station and museums, and we got to throw paint at big canvases on the walls and call it art. So back then, I thought it would be cool to be a firefighter or an artist like every other kid in my class. But other than that, no. Music has always been my thing. I miss my guitars. I brought one of my acoustics with me, but I’m thinking about having the rest shipped here. Or I won’t have the patience and I’ll go buy some new ones.” He laughs again.

  “Patience is definitely one thing you learn when you grow up on a farm,” I say as I pluck stems from the mint leaves and place the leaves on a cookie sheet. I’ll warm them in the oven to dry them when I go back up to the house. “We used to have this small garden behind the house where Mom would grow vegetables for our family. It was so hard for me to wait for the vegetables to mature. I’d pull carrots up too early and wipe the dirt off on my shirt and take a big bite of this bitter, earthy thing. When the peas were finally ready, I’d sit down between the rows and pop the pods open right there.”

  I look over at Gabe to see him smil
ing at me. He doesn’t say anything.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I can picture you with dirt all over your face and your clothes. It’s pretty easy, considering half the time you still have dirt all over your face and clothes.” He smirks.

  “Ba-dum-bum. He’s here all week, folks.”

  “Didn’t the carrots, you know? Taste like dirt?”

  “That’s part of the charm,” I say.

  “That’s part of the reason why I don’t like vegetables,” he says.

  “I’ll make it my life’s mission to change your mind.”

  “You’re on.” He smiles.

  Mom invites Gabe and the girls over for dinner Friday night before the home football game. Gabe declines because Chris is finally coming back from LA, and Bunny has to work a short shift at the drugstore, so only Amelia and Youa ride home with us after school. We drop Gabe off, and I bring iced tea out to the front porch. It’s sunny today, and even though the air is a bit crisp, we want to take advantage of one of the last days of nice weather.

  Amelia sits down and puts her feet up on the railing, tilting her face toward the sky and closing her eyes. “The sun feels so good.”

  “God, I know,” Youa agrees. “The weather’s got to hold. We’ve got that big festival at church on Sunday. I will die if it rains like it did last year.”

  “What are you doing this year?” Amelia asks.

  “We’re running the ring toss,” she says. “Boring. You’re coming, right?”

  Amelia rolls her eyes. “Oh, I’ll be there. Your mom roped me and Kat into working the popcorn stand.”

  “Ha!” Youa says. “Welcome to my world. Juniper, you should stop by.”

  “Thanks for the invite.” Mom and I don’t go to church, but I’ve gone to the carnival a handful of times. “I’ll try.”

  “You should bring Gabe,” Amelia says. “The two of you seem pretty chummy these days.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Youa agrees. “He was talking about you and your e-biz project the other day in World History, and it was like you walked on water. And he called you Blue. What’s that about?”