The Juniper Tree

by Asotir

  They had dinner by candlelight.

  ‘Did you find everything you needed?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course! But what could be more boring than listening to me talk about dusting and cooking! Tell me about the mill.’

  ‘Well, the mill itself is one thing, but the big problem is feeding it. You see, it’s owning the right timberland that makes for true wealth in this field. What?’

  ‘Oh! Nothing. You’re so serious about it, all your money, all the things you take to yourself and own. It’s funny, that’s all.’

  After dinner he remembered the child. Rayn took him to the big bedroom and they tucked the child in for the night.

  ‘He won’t stay quiet long,’ Bjorn warned her.

  ‘Well now! We’ll see about that. Mr Falco and I are reaching an understanding, aren’t we, little sir?’

  They closed the door until it was just ajar. They stood out in the hall. Rayn pushed open the door to the small bedroom.

  ‘I took this old room, I’ll send for my things later – it’s all right, isn’t it, Mr Hansen?’

  ‘Yes…’

  She leaned against the doorjamb, humming. Her eyes were bright.

  ‘So, you will stay?’

  ‘If you’ll take me, Mr Hansen.’

  ‘Don’t call me Mr Hansen, please, you make me feel older than the trees.’

  ‘All right.’

  He didn’t know what he was saying anymore. It all sounded like nonsense in his ears, like something in a language he never learned. He breathed her scent, like wood-smoke. She was smiling at him but he didn’t know if she was saying anything or not. He took her head in his hands and kissed her.

  Her glass dropped and ice cubes scattered down the stairs.

  ‘I’ll get that.’

  ‘No. Leave it. Leave it, Rayn.’

  ‘Well now. Mr Hansen. Well now.’

  He kissed her again. Or maybe she was kissing him. She was the one who broke it. She leaned back again breathing hard.

  ‘Whew! One gets so out of breath.’

  He nodded. He was breathing hard too.

  She looked up at him from the corner of her eye. It was a shy sly smile. It was almost a leer. She tugged on his hand and he came. She drew him into the little room and he went.

  Outside in the darkness the Juniper Tree kept guard. Through the high window it could see the little bedroom was dark but in the big bedroom a night light was burning. In the crib, the child kicked his legs and whimpered.

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAY was Sunday. The man and the redheaded woman didn’t leave the house. They didn’t get dressed, either. When the darkness came back the redheaded woman turned on all the lights except for the big bedroom upstairs. She didn’t wear much and neither did the man. They went at each other on the couch, on the floor, on the counter in the kitchen, and in the antique Morris chair.

  The lights stayed on all night.

  Two weeks later, on Wednesday, a hearse drove out of the woods.

  Two mill-workers got out, walked to the back and slid out onto the gravel a Trunk. It was made of wood and iron and painted like Danish furniture from hundreds of years ago.

  Rayn stepped onto the back porch in a green blouse and tight blue jeans.

  ‘Oh! It’s here, Bjorn, come and see!’

  The man came out. He wore old slacks and a fisherman’s sweater.

  The mill-workers waved to him and drove off. The white dog barked and jumped around the chest.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘‘What is it?’ Money Bags says. It’s my Mommie’s Trunk, silly, it’s her chest with all her things in it, her wonderful, special things!’

  ‘From your father?’

  ‘It’s all that’s left of her since she died.’

  ‘See, your father isn’t so bad.’

  She crouched down and kissed the Trunk, lots of little pecks.

  ‘He’s horrible, I hate him. I do.’

  ‘He sent you the Trunk.’

  ‘He can afford to. As if he could make a present out of something that belongs to me anyway! And after he practically drove her into her grave.’

  ‘It looks heavy.’

  ‘Well now! Will you stop teasing and carry it in – quick, before it gets wet!’

  Bjorn hoisted the end of the chest onto his back. He staggered under the weight. He started up to the porch.

  And the rain started for real.

  Rayn held the door open for him.

  ‘Wait.’

  He went in and Rayn took a turn about the porch, nodding to the dog.

  ‘Yes! Yes, silly puppy! It’s here! We have it back again!’

  Bjorn stepped back out.

  ‘Now let’s do it properly, shall we, Mrs Hansen?’

  ‘By all means, Mr Hansen.’

  He carried her over the threshold.

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT the redheaded woman went through the Trunk. Bjorn had set it in the middle bedroom and stood in the doorway watching her rummage through her things. Little lace underthings were the first things she pulled out. They filled the atmosphere of the room with their perfumes, smoky and deadly. Bjorn got a little dizzy from their intoxication.

  The Juniper Tree shuddered in the wind.

  Bjorn stuck his head out the window to the big bedroom and closed the shutters.

  He closed the window. Now there was only his shadow crossing the slats in the shutters.

  Inside the room, Bjorn stepped over to the crib. When the child saw his face again, he couldn’t help it, he had to whimper a little.

  ‘Oh, Rayn will see to you, just wait.’

  Bjorn carried him in the crib across the room out into the hall.

  ‘You can’t go on crying forever, Falco.’

  He shut the door behind him and locked it. He stood for a moment, looking at the door. Then his hand closed over the key and pushed it deep into his pocket.

  ‘Good-bye, Ari,’ he said.

  He picked up the crib and went up into the attic. Falco swung in the crib, looking back down as the door to his Mother’s room disappeared down the stairs.

  4

  Years went by. Nobody killed anybody, nobody died. I got a little sister. They called her Greta. And they were all happy together, the three of them, like cookies and ice-cream. But I didn’t get any.

  AFTER BJORN married Rayn, White Quill changed. It didn’t even look the same, though you’d have a hard time saying how. The big bedroom was kept locked and not even Bjorn went in there anymore. He slept with Rayn in the middle bedroom, though the room showed no sign of him and they all called it Rayn’s room. Men came and sealed off the master bath from the big bedroom and opened it to Rayn’s room instead. She had them redo all the fixtures and put in a big red tub. Their daughter Greta slept in the small bedroom across the hall.

  That left no place for the boy, so Falco was put in a room in the attic at the top of those twisting narrow stairs. The room held an old dusty washstand, a small iron cot, and cardboard boxes under the bed where Falco kept his clothes.

  He made his own toys with bits of cardboard and paper he got out of the garbage. He pulled Rayn’s fashion magazines out of the recycling and looked at the pictures of pretty women. They were all smiling and laughing like Rayn. He pasted their faces onto cardboard bird shapes and hung them on strings. When the wind blew into the window, the birds danced around over his head. He lay on the cot and stared up at the birds and how they flew under the ceiling.

  He spent a lot of time in his room. He must’ve done a lot of bad things, because Rayn was always sending him to his room.

  If he stood on the end of his cot on the iron foot bar, he could see the back yard through his window. He could see the water and the end of the lawn and the Juniper Tree standing guard at the Beak. Whenever he looked out the window, the Juniper Tree nodded back to say Hello. Falco waved back but he didn’t tell anybody about it. He didn’t tell them much.

  The rain fell and the sun shone on the
Juniper Tree. Birds sang in his branches. They sang sad songs, lonely and mournful and hurting.

  Falco put pictures of birds on the walls when he found them in the magazines. He used to dream about birds sometimes. He dreamed he could fly. But he couldn’t.

  Sometimes he cut out pictures of kids in the magazines. He took the pictures into the bathroom with him and he looked at the pictures and then he looked at his face in the mirror over the sink. He was eight years old – he only got to be eight before it happened. He looked at the pictures of the kids, all fat and happy in clothes from the ads. Falco didn’t look like them. But sometimes he found pictures from articles about other countries where there was some disaster or something and everybody died. They had pictures of kids starving and dirty. They were more like him. He couldn’t read the articles too well but he thought they were all about the people who went flying around the world giving those kids food and new houses and clothes and whatever they wanted. He used to wish somebody would fly around here and give him food and clothes and a new house. He knew it wouldn’t happen.

  His room was once a cabinet or closet up under the rafters. The cot was tucked under the eaves with just a space between the door and the window. That was okay so long as nobody came in and slapped him or nothing.

  He used to save scraps of bread in his pockets. He found a tin pie plate in the attic and he put it on the windowsill with crumbs on it and opened the window. Rayn said it was a dirty habit and Falco was a dirty boy and she was ashamed of him. She told him to shut the window and keep it shut, all sorts of nasty things could come in, but he left it open anyway when he thought she wouldn’t find out.

  Sometimes a bird came to picked at the crumbs.

  Falco sat on the cot and stared at the bird.

  The bird cocked his head. Falco cocked his head.

  Downstairs he could hear Rayn singing. That’s why he didn’t want to go down.

  Fridays were bad days. Rayn was prettiest on Friday, she laughed a lot and smiled and put on extra perfume and wore naughty things all day. Friday they sent Falco home from school early, and he had to be alone with Rayn all afternoon. But Saturdays were worse.

  On Saturday Falco’s dad still went to work all day but there wasn’t any school at all. And all day long Rayn had her eye on him. All the bad things she said he did on Friday just to make her mad, she saved them all for Saturday.

  On Saturday morning, Falco lay on the floor inside his door and looked down through the rails. From there he could just peek into Rayn’s bedroom. He didn’t want to go down yet. He didn’t want to get noticed.

  Rayn was singing and stripping her bed. She did wash on Saturday. Her sheets were hot pink with roses and flames sewn in. Greta was in there too. She was always hanging around. She must have been four then. She was probably playing on the floor with her dinosaur toys. She got all the toys she wanted.

  Greta was pretty, but she was chubby on account of they fed her so much. She used to go around all the time in designer dresses even when she was just playing. That was all right with Falco. She was a girl. She was okay, he didn’t have anything against her except she cried so easy. It wouldn’t take anything to start her bawling. Then he usually got a slap and Rayn would pick up Greta and hold her and kiss her over and over. Falco never saw the point in crying. It didn’t get him anywhere.

  He listened to Rayn singing. Her voice was something. Back then he was half in love with her. When he heard her singing like that he had to sneak downstairs and hang on the railing so he could peek deeper into her room. He could see her bending over her Trunk, still singing.

  ‘Would you like a sweet, little goose? A special, special sweet from my Mommie’s Trunk?’

  She gave Greta a piece of candy or something from far away. Greta played with it.

  ‘Did you know you have a rich Daddy? Yes! He’s Mr Money Bags! And because you’re such a pretty girl, he loves you best of all!’

  She put the sheets in the basket, plopped Greta on top and carried her downstairs, singing all the way.

  Falco ducked back out of sight until it was safe to sneak downstairs.

  Downstairs the Thanksgiving decorations were already up. Rayn put the basket by the Morris chair. It had a sign on it, the sign they put on it every Thanksgiving:

  The

  Thanksgiving

  King

  Greta tried to climb up the chair. Rayn kissed her again.

  ‘Well now! What a clever girl you are! You know what that is, don’t you? That’s your chair! That’s the chair for the Thanksgiving King! Two weeks to Thanksgiving, and then you’ll get to sit in it, just you and you and you!’

  She tumbled Greta back into the basket and carried her out the door.

  Out in the sun Rayn hung her sheets on the clotheslines. The wind made the sheets billow like flags or sails or big tongues of fire. Rayn’s dress billowed too, bright like fire.

  Falco crept under the porch. It was covered with crossed white laths so they couldn’t see him. He hung on the laths like on bars on a cage and watched them.

  When she had the sheets up, Rayn started hanging up her naughty things. Her underthings and such. Greta played in the grass with her dinosaurs. Greta was nuts for dinosaurs. They gave her a set that was all bones of dinosaurs and she tried to snap them together but she never got the shape right and the head usually ended up on the tail or something like that.

  When everything was up, Rayn put Greta in the empty basket and took her back inside. Her high heels stabbed the porch boards over Falco’s head. He was thinking about coming out when the porch door creaked open again and she came out with the dog.

  Tang-Tang was always growling at Falco and trying to bite him. He had a lot of scars from the white dog. When Tang-Tang bit Falco, Rayn would laugh and give him a dog-cookie and let him lick her face. So when she brought him out, Falco crawled back under the porch as far as he could.

  But the white dog went bounding after her. She lured him across the yard, away from the Juniper Tree to the landing on the cliff. Tang-Tang ran on down the steps in front of her, but Rayn paused and looked back at the house and smiled. Falco was at the lath cage then but he pulled back when she looked. He thought she was looking at him. But he must have guessed wrong, because she didn’t come back and scold him, she just skipped down the steps.

  After a while it seemed safe so he came out. He went over to the clothesline and looked up at Rayn’s things dancing in the wind. She had the prettiest things and they always smelled like nothing else in the world.

  Then he went over to the Juniper Tree.

  ‘Hello, Juniper Tree,’ he said.

  The Juniper Tree bowed to him.

  Sometimes Falco tried to look into the Juniper Tree and see what its face looked like. He was sure the tree had a face but he could never make it out. But sometimes he could feel what its face would’ve looked like if he could’ve seen it. Sometimes Falco knew the Juniper Tree was smiling, and sometimes he knew it was frowning, and sometimes it was like it was trying to warn him or something, that kind of a look.

  Under the Juniper Tree there was a seat made out of stone. They used to pile logs under it for the fireplace sometimes. His Dad did anyway, Rayn didn’t like it and told him not to, which was funny, because she was always lighting candles and setting fires.

  Next to the seat there was a stone that stuck up from the ground a little. On the stone they had carved three words Falco knew by heart:

  Ariela

  Flew Away

  He sat down on the grass and stroked the stone. His dad said his Mother was curled up in the ground underneath that stone like a chick inside its shell.

  He could hear Rayn laughing. He got up and went to the landing.

  The waves crashed into the rocks on the shore. Rayn was down there playing with Tang-Tang.

  She waved a stick in front of Tang-Tang’s face. He tried to bite it but she pulled it away at the last minute so he couldn’t get any. She laughed and talked to him. She used th
e pretty words she had that Falco never understood. His dad said those were words Rayn learned far away in another country someplace. When she used those words Falco used to feel funny inside. He used to call them Rayn’s magic words.

  She threw the stick when Tang-Tang was worked up so much Falco was afraid he was going to bite her, even her. The white dog growled and tore after it. He pulled it out of the water and ran back to her, so proud. Big deal, anybody could’ve done that. But then seagulls came and Rayn said more magic words to Tang-Tang, and he went chasing after the birds.

  ‘Watch it birds!’ Falco said. They didn’t listen though. They thought they were safe with their wings. But they didn’t know Tang-Tang the way Falco did.

  Most of the birds scattered in the air and it looked like they were all going to get away. Then Tang-Tang caught one. His jaw worked on it and Rayn laughed. Tang-Tang dropped the gull on the rocks in front of her naked toes. The gull was bent and its head flopped the wrong way and after that it didn’t move. Rayn clapped her hands and sent the white dog off again. Tang-Tang must have killed six or seven gulls that way. They made a little heap in front of Rayn. Even from the cliff Falco could see the broken feathers and the blood. There was blood on Tang-Tang’s jaws too when Rayn bent down and kissed him and let him lick her face.

  He felt kind of sick. He couldn’t stop staring at the dead birds. He wondered if that was what his Mother looked like in the ground beneath the stone.

  Rayn and Tang-Tang started back. Tang-Tang romped up the steps with his tail straight up like he was saying, ‘Come on, hurry up!’ Then he raced back down to her and nosed around her skirts.

  When she reached the Red Step, Rayn stopped and looked up and Falco ducked back down so she wouldn’t catch him spying. In a bit he peeked over the grass again. She was on her hands and knees and reaching under the Red Step. He couldn’t make out what she was doing. Tang-Tang poked his big nose in and she pushed him away and said something to him. He bounded up the steps, shaking the whole pile of them. He was almost at the landing when Falco turned and raced back to the house. He crawled under the porch again, barely in time. The white dog stood growling at him through the laths.

  Rayn popped up and walked toward the house. She petted the dog, as pretty as ever. How could she do things like kiss Tang-Tang over the dead birds and still look so pretty? But she only looked prettier when she did mean things.

  She came back to the porch. She was looking right at Falco through the cage. Maybe she wasn’t, because she didn’t say anything. But it sure felt like she did, so he crawled back deeper.