The Juniper Tree

by John Kessel

  “All you care about is getting into Eva's bed,” Roz told the shoes. “She's using you, and she'll just dump you after she's had enough, like all these other cousins.”

  “You think that little of my choices?”

  That made her look at him. Her face was screwed into a furious scowl. The music of the drum band stopped suddenly, and the people applauded. “How do you know Eva's not going to try to get me into bed with her, too?”

  Jack laughed. “I don't think so.”

  She stood up. “God, you are so smug! I can't tell you anything!”

  “Roz, what is this—”

  She turned and stalked off. “Roz!” he called after her. She did not turn back.

  Next to him, a thin black woman holding a toddler had been eavesdropping. Jack walked away to escape her gaze. The band started another song. Inwardly churning, he listened to the music for a few minutes, watching the people dance. Whatever his failings, hadn't he always done his best for Roz? He didn't expect her to agree with him all the time, but she had to know how much he loved her.

  The amused detachment with which he'd entered the plaza was gone. The steel drums gave him a headache. He crossed the plaza. Before he had gone ten paces he saw Eva. She was in the crowd of dancers, paired with a round faced woman. The woman was grinning fiercely; she bumped against Eva, slid her belly up against Eva's. Eva had her arms raised into the air and was smiling too, grinding her hips.

  As Jack stood watching, someone sidled up to him. It was Hal Keikosson, who worked in Agriculture. Hal was in his forties and still living with his mother—a common situation among the cousins.

  “Hey, Jack. Who was that girl I saw you talking to? That red hair? Cute.”

  Jack kept watching Eva and the woman. Eva had not noticed him yet. “That was my daughter,” he told Hal.

  “Interesting.” Hal swayed a bit, clutching a squeeze cup in his sweaty hand.

  Jack ought to let it go, but he couldn't. “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. She must be fourteen or fifteen already, right?”

  “She's fourteen.”

  “And maybe she isn't your daughter.” Hal giggled.

  Jack stared at him. “What?”

  “I mean, how could her mother be sure—or maybe she lied to you.”

  “Shut the fuck up before I belt you.”

  “Hey, it's none of my business who you sleep with.”

  “I'm not sleeping with her.”

  “Calm down, calm down, cousin.” Hal took a sip from his cup. He looked benignly over at the figures writhing in the shadows beneath the trees. “Too bad,” he said quietly, and chuckled.

  Jack stalked away to keep from taking a swing at him.

  The drum band was louder now, and so was the babble of the increasing crowd. He passed a group of drunken singers. Near the amphitheater he saw one of the acrobat children staggering around in circles, giggling. Jamira Tamlasdaughter, a friend of Eva's, tried to say hello, but he passed her by with a wave. Jack's head throbbed. Beyond the trees that marked the border of Sobieski Park he followed a path through fields of dry-lands soybeans, corn, potatoes. There was no one out here—most of the cousins were at the festival now.

  A kilometer later the path turned upward into the open lands of the crater slopes. Low, hardy blue-white grass covered the ground. But the sound of the band still floated over the fields, and turning, Jack could see the central tower lit by the colored lights. The foliage was side lit only by that distant light and the projected starlight from the dome. Somewhere off to his left a night bird sang in a scraggly pine. He turned his back to the festival.

  It was an easy climb in one-sixth G, and when he hit the concrete rim of the crater that supported the dome, he followed the perimeter road around toward the north airlock. He wanted out. The best refuge he could think of was the biotech lab.

  Because of the festival, the airlock was deserted. Jack took his pressure suit from his locker, suited up, and cycled through the personnel lock. He passed through the radiation baffles to the surface.

  Though it was night inside the dome, out here it was lunar afternoon. Harsh shadows lay beneath the fields of solar collectors lining the road to the labs. Jack skipped along the tracked-up roadway, kicking up a powder of fines. Over the throb of his headache he listened to the sound of his own breathing in his earphones.

  The fight he'd had with Roz was just like one of his final spats with Helen, full of buried resentments and false assumptions. Roz's accusations stung because there was an element of truth in them. But Roz was wrong to say Jack didn't care about her. From the moment of her birth Jack had committed himself to Roz without reservation. Clearly he hadn't paid enough attention to her troubles, but he would do anything to protect her.

  Roz didn't understand that things were hard for Jack. “All men are boys,” the cousins said. In the case of a jerk like Keikosson, he could admit the saying's truth. But it was as much a product of the way they lived as of the men themselves. The women of the cousins indulged their boys their pleasures, kept them adolescents far into their adulthood. It was a form of control-by-privilege.

  Jack chafed at the way a male in the colony was seldom respected for his achievements, but rather for who his mother and grandmother were. He hated the way women deferred to him once it got around that he was Eva Maggiesdaughter's latest partner. He hated the sidelong glances he got about his relationship to Roz. He was Roz's father. He was not anyone's boy.

  The biotech labs were located in a bunker a kilometer north of Fowler. He entered the personnel lock, air-blasted the fines from his suit and removed it. Like the airlock, the lab was deserted. He passed through the greenhouse's rows of juniper and piñon seedlings to the soils lab. The temperature on his latest batch of nematode soil was 30 centigrade. He drew on some boots, rolled back the cover on the reservoir and waded into the loamy earth. The rich smell of nitrogen compounds filled his lungs, and he felt momentarily dizzy with relaxation.

  Taking a cermet rake from the tool cabinet, he worked over the surface of the soil. His nematodes were doing their jobs nicely, increasing the water content, breaking down organics and hosting the nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Once his team got the okay from the colony's environmental committee, they would start a trial planting using the soil and the greenhouse seedlings on Fowler's east slope.

  He had not been working long when he heard the airlock alert. Startled, he dropped the rake and stood up. Some minutes later a figure emerged from the greenhouse and peered from around the rock crusher. “Jack?”

  “Over here, Carey,” Jack said.

  The boy came over. He was taller than his mother, and blond instead of dark. Jack wondered once again who his father was. Carey was still wearing his pressure suit, helmet off.

  “What are you doing here?” Jack asked. “How did you know I was here?”

  “I was coming into the north airlock when I saw you cycling out,” Carey said. “By the time I got my suit on you were gone, but I figured you might be here. I wanted to speak with you about Roz, Jack.”

  “What about her?”

  “I think she's having a hard time,” Carey said. “I think you might want to pay more attention to what's going on with her. Fathers like you do that, right?”

  “Fathers like what?”

  “Come on, Jack, you know—earth fathers.”

  “What's wrong with Roz?” Jack asked.

  “She seems to have some sexual hang-ups. She hasn't talked with you about it? She talks about you all the time.”

  “I don't think there's anything wrong with Roz. Besides, it's none of your business, Carey.”

  “Well, it sort of is. At least if she's not telling you these things, and you care about her, then I guess I need to tell you. Like after we slept together the first time, she cried.”

  “You slept with her.” Jack's own voice sounded leaden in his ears.

  “Sure. I thought you knew.” Carey was completely unselfconscious. “I mean, we're all
in the same apartment. She didn't tell you that, either?”

  “No.”

  “She needs help. She's making some progress with the kids on the hockey team, but for every step forward she takes one back. I think she's too hung up on you, Jack.”

  “Don't call me Jack.”

  Carey looked confused. “Excuse me?”

  “Don't call me Jack, you little pissant. You don't know a thing about me and Roz.”

  “I know you're immigrants and don't understand everything. But a lot of people are starting to think you need to live separately. You don't own Roz.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “She's a woman. She can make up her own mind.”

  The boy's face was an open map of earnest, smug innocence. Jack couldn't stand it. “Damn you, she's not your whore!”

  Carey laughed. “A whore? That's an earth thing, right? One of those sexual ownership practices?”

  Jack took one step, grabbed the collar of the boy's pressure suit and yanked him forward. Carey's feet caught on the edge of the reservoir. As he fell, he twisted around; Jack lost his own balance and shoved Carey downward to keep from falling himself. Much faster than normal in lunar-G, Carey hit the ground. His head snapped sideways against the rake.

  Catching his balance, Jack waited for Carey to get up. But he didn't get up. Jack crouched over the boy. Carey had fallen onto the head of the rake; one of the six-centimeter ceramic tines had penetrated his temple. Blood seeped into the soil.

  Carefully, Jack drew out the tines, rolled him over. Carey shuddered and the blood flowed more freely. The boy's breathing was shallow, his eyes unfocused. As Jack watched, Carey's breathing stopped.

  After ten minutes of futile CPR, Jack fell back from Carey's limp body and sat down heavily on the edge of the reservoir.

  Jesus Christ. What had he done? What was he going to do now? Eva!—what would she think?

  It was an accident. But that didn't matter. He was an immigrant, an outsider, a man. Someone would surely accuse him of murder. They would drug him into insensibility, cut up his brain. At best they would expel him from the colony, and Roz with him—or worse still, they might not expel Roz. He sat there facing the cold reality of his thirty-eight years of screwed up life.

  Carey's head lolled back into the muck, his mouth open. “You arrogant prick,” Jack whispered to the dead boy. “You fucked it all up.”

  He looked around the room. In front of him was the reduction chamber, the crusher, the soil reservoir. Shuddering, he went back to the tool chest and found a machete. He dragged Carey's body over the edge of the reservoir, getting dirt up to his own elbows. The soil was rich with the heat of decomposition.

  Jack was about to begin cutting off Carey's arms when the airlock alert sounded again. He panicked. He stumbled out of the reservoir, trying to heft Carey's body into the hopper of the crusher. Before he could conceal the body he heard steps behind him.

  It was Roz. She stood for a moment staring at him as he held Carey's bare ankle in his hand. “Dad?”

  “Go away, Roz.”

  She came over to him. “Dad, what's going on?” She saw the body. “Jesus, Dad, what happened?”

  “An accident. The less you know about it the better.”

  She took a couple of steps closer. “Carey? Is he all right?”

  “Go away, Roz.”

  Roz put her hand to her mouth. “Is he dead?”

  Jack let go of Carey and came over to her. “It was an accident, Roz. I didn't mean to hurt him. He fell down.”

  “Carey!” She rushed over, then backed away until she bumped into the rock crusher. “He's dead! What happened? Dad! Why did you do this?”

  Jack didn't know what to do. He looked back at Carey, lying awkwardly on the concrete floor, the machete beside his leg. “It was an accident, Roz. I grabbed him, he fell. I didn't mean to—”

  “Carey,” she said. “Carey.” She would not look at Jack.

  “Roz, I would never have hurt him on purpose. I—”

  “What were you fighting about?”

  “It wasn't a fight. He told me you had slept together. I was shocked, I guess. I—”

  Roz slumped to the floor. “It was my fault?”

  “No. It was an accident.”

  “I don't believe this,” she said. She looked at Carey's body. Jack thought about the last time she must have seen him naked. “You're going to go to jail!” Roz said. “They might even kill you. Who's going to take care of me?”

  “I'm going to take care of you. Please, Roz, don't think about this. You need to get out of here.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “You're not going to do anything except get out! Don't you understand?”

  Roz stared at him a long moment. “I can help.”

  Jack felt chilled. “I don't want your help! I'm your father, damn it!”

  She sat there, her eyes welling with tears. It was a nightmare. He sat down next to her and put his arm around her. She cried against his shoulder. A long time passed, and neither of them spoke.

  Finally she pulled away from him. “It's my fault,” she said. “I should have told you I loved him.”

  Jack closed his eyes. He could hear his own pulse in his ears. The earth of the reservoir smelled as rich as ever. “Please, don't say any more.”

  “Oh, god, how could you do this?” he heard her whisper. “Carey ... “ She cried against Jack's shoulder some more.

  Then, after a while, swallowing her tears, Roz said, “If we get rid of his suit ... if we get rid of his suit, they'll think he got lost on the surface.”

  He opened his eyes and looked at her. Now he was scared. Who was this girl?

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  * * * *

  Eating

  Eva expected Jack would turn up at the festival eventually, and she didn't want to miss the partying. Her mother came by with some of her cronies, and then Eva found herself dancing with Angela Angelasdaughter, the colony's most notorious artist. Ten years ago, any gossip session in the sauna would devote ten minutes to the sexy sculptress and her physicist lover. Since then Angela had gained a pot belly, but her smile was as wicked as ever.

  During a break in the music, Eva shared a drink with Jamira Tamlasdaughter. Jamira told Eva she had seen Jack earlier. “He's so handsome, Eva,” Jamira said. “You're so lucky. He's like a god.”

  Eva smiled, thinking of Jack's taut body stretched across her bed. “Where did he go?”

  “I don't know. I expect he's here somewhere.”

  But Jack did not show up. What with one thing and another it was well after midnight when Eva returned to her apartment. Jack was sitting on the floor with a glass in front of him.

  “So here you are,” Eva said. “I thought we would meet at the festival.”

  He looked up at her, and his blue eyes were so soulfully sad that she melted. “I couldn't find you,” he said quietly.

  She sat down next to him. “I got caught up at the lab.” She and Victor had been working overtime on assembler programming. “Are Carey and Roz here?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Then we can entertain ourselves—unless this stuff you pour into yourself makes that unnecessary.”

  Jack put his arms around her, pulled her to him, and rested his forehead against hers. “You know I always need you,” he whispered. Eva could smell spiced alcohol on his breath. She pulled him back onto the floor, and they kissed furiously.

  They eventually found their way to the bedroom. Afterward, she was ravenously hungry. As a member of the Board, she had earned the privilege of a small kitchen: she padded in, naked, and returned to the room with a plate, a knife, an apple and a hunk of cheese.

  Jack was stretched across the bed just as she had imagined him, the muscles of his belly thrown into relief by the low light. She sat cross-legged beside him, cut a slice from the apple and offered it to him. “Here we are, in the Garden. Eve offers you an apple.”r />
  “No, thanks.”

  “Come on, Adam. Have some fun.”

  His eyes flicked away from her, the corner of his mouth twitched. “I've had too much fun already,” he said to the ceiling.

  She drew the apple slice across his chest, down to his navel. “There's always more where that came from.”

  “I'm worried about Roz. She shouldn't be out this late.”

  “Your daughter's too sensible to do anything risky.” Eva heard the door to the apartment open, the sound of someone coming down the hall and entering Rosalind's room. “See?” Eva said. “There she is.”

  “What about Carey?”

  “Carey, on the other hand, is no doubt is busy getting into some sort of trouble. We'll deal with him in the morning. “

  She brushed her hand over his penis, and it stiffened. He said nothing, but eventually his hand came up to touch her hair, and then he pulled close and made love to her with an intensity that left her breathless and relaxed. He fell asleep beside her, and she lay watching the plate and the apple slices in the faint light. Soon, she thought, soon, they would be able to reproduce anything. She would prove that the cousins were not some backward-looking female-dominated hive. They would stun the world. Dreaming of this, Jack's arm around her, she fell asleep.

  In the morning Carey had not returned.

  Over breakfast—Eva finished the apple, now turned brown—she asked Roz what had happened after hockey practice. After denying anything, Roz finally admitted that Carey and some others had used the cover of the festival to sneak out of the colony onto the surface. The “First Imprints Club.” In the dead lunar surface their markings in the dust would last as long as if etched in stone.

  That sounded like Carey, right down to the wasting of water. Eva called Carey's friends. She discovered that Carey had left them at the festival, telling them he would catch up with them at the airlock. After waiting for him, they had gone out without him, expecting that he'd meet them on Shiva Ridge.