My sister would roll her eyes and say, “As if,” while I’d slump beneath the window and pray for the light to change before Juli squealed my name for the world to hear.
I did try to climb it once in the fifth grade. It was the day after Juli had rescued my kite from its mutant toy-eating foliage. She climbed miles up to get my kite, and when she came down, she was actually very cool about it. She didn’t hold my kite hostage and stick her lips out like I was afraid she might. She just handed it over and then backed away.
I was relieved, but I also felt like a weenie. When I’d seen where my kite was trapped, I was sure it was a goner. Not Juli. She scrambled up and got it down in no time. Man, it was embarrassing.
So I made a mental picture of how high she’d climbed, and the next day I set off to outdo her by at least two branches. I made it past the crook, up a few limbs, and then — just to see how I was doing — I looked down.
Mis-take! It felt like I was on top of the Empire State Building without a bungee. I tried looking up to where my kite had been, but it was hopeless. I was indeed a tree-climbing weenie.
Then junior high started and my dream of a Juli-free existence shattered. I had to take the bus, and you-know-who did, too. There were about eight kids altogether at our bus stop, which created a buffer zone, but it was no comfort zone. Juli always tried to stand beside me, or talk to me, or in some other way mortify me.
And then she started climbing. The girl is in the seventh grade, and she’s climbing a tree — way, way up in a tree. And why does she do it? So she can yell down at us that the bus is five! four! three blocks away! Blow-by-blow traffic watch from a tree — what every kid in junior high feels like hearing first thing in the morning.
She tried to get me to come up there with her, too. “Bryce, come on! You won’t believe the colors! It’s absolutely magnificent! Bryce, you’ve got to come up here!”
Yeah, I could just hear it: “Bryce and Juli sitting in a tree … ” Was I ever going to leave the second grade behind?
One morning I was specifically not looking up when out of nowhere she swings down from a branch and practically knocks me over. Heart a-ttack! I dropped my backpack and wrenched my neck, and that did it. I refused to wait under that tree with that maniac monkey on the loose anymore. I started leaving the house at the very last minute. I made up my own waiting spot, and when I’d see the bus pull up, I’d truck up the hill and get on board.
No Juli, no problem.
And that, my friend, took care of the rest of seventh grade and almost all of eighth, too, until one day a few months ago. That’s when I heard a commotion up the hill and could see some big trucks parked up on Collier Street where the bus pulls in. There were some men shouting stuff up at Juli, who was, of course, five stories up in the tree.
All the other kids started to gather under the tree, too, and I could hear them telling her she had to come down. She was fine — that was obvious to anyone with a pair of ears — but I couldn’t figure out what they were all arguing about.
I trucked up the hill, and as I got closer and saw what the men were holding, I figured out in a hurry what was making Juli refuse to come out of the tree.
Chain saws.
Don’t get me wrong here, okay? The tree was an ugly mutant tangle of gnarly branches. The girl arguing with those men was Juli — the world’s peskiest, bossiest, most know-it-all female. But all of a sudden my stomach completely bailed on me. Juli loved that tree. Stupid as it was, she loved that tree, and cutting it down would be like cutting out her heart.
Everyone tried to talk her down. Even me. But she said she wasn’t coming down, not ever, and then she tried to talk us up. “Bryce, please! Come up here with me. They won’t cut it down if we’re all up here!”
For a second I considered it. But then the bus arrived and I talked myself out of it. It wasn’t my tree, and even though she acted like it was, it wasn’t Juli’s, either.
We boarded the bus and left her behind, but school was pretty much a waste. I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about Juli. Was she still up in the tree? Were they going to arrest her?
When the bus dropped us off that afternoon, Juli was gone and so was half the tree. The top branches, the place my kite had been stuck, her favorite perch — they were all gone.
We watched them work for a little while, the chain saws gunning at full throttle, smoking as they chewed through wood. The tree looked lopsided and naked, and after a few minutes I had to get out of there. It was like watching someone dismember a body, and for the first time in ages, I felt like crying. Crying. Over a stupid tree that I hated.
I went home and tried to shake it off, but I kept wondering, Should I have gone up the tree with her? Would it have done any good?
I thought about calling Juli to tell her I was sorry they’d cut it down, but I didn’t. It would’ve been too, I don’t know, weird.
She didn’t show at the bus stop the next morning and didn’t ride the bus home that afternoon, either.
Then that night, right before dinner, my grandfather summoned me into the front room. He didn’t call to me as I was walking by — that would have bordered on friendliness. What he did was talk to my mother, who talked to me. “I don’t know what it’s about, honey,” she said. “Maybe he’s just ready to get to know you a little better.”
Great. The man’s had a year and a half to get acquainted, and he chooses now to get to know me. But I couldn’t exactly blow him off.
My grandfather’s a big man with a meaty nose and greased-back salt-and-pepper hair. He lives in house slippers and a sports coat, and I’ve never seen a whisker on him. They grow, but he shaves them off like three times a day. It’s a real recreational activity for him.
Besides his meaty nose, he’s also got big meaty hands. I suppose you’d notice his hands regardless, but what makes you realize just how beefy they are is his wedding ring. That thing’s never going to come off, and even though my mother says that’s how it should be, I think he ought to get it cut off. Another few pounds and that ring’s going to amputate his finger.
When I went in to see him, those big hands of his were woven together, resting on the newspaper in his lap. I said, “Granddad? You wanted to see me?”
“Have a seat, son.”
Son? Half the time he didn’t seem to know who I was, and now suddenly I was “son”? I sat in the chair opposite him and waited.
“Tell me about your friend Juli Baker.”
“Juli? She’s not exactly my friend … !”
“Why is that?” he asked. Calmly. Like he had prior knowledge.
I started to justify it, then stopped myself and asked, “Why do you want to know?”
He opened the paper and pressed down the crease, and that’s when I realized that Juli Baker had made the front page of the Mayfield Times. There was a huge picture of her in the tree, surrounded by a fire brigade and policemen, and then some smaller photos I couldn’t make out very well. “Can I see that?”
He folded it up but didn’t hand it over. “Why isn’t she your friend, Bryce?”
“Because she’s … ” I shook my head and said, “You’d have to know Juli.”
“I’d like to.”
“What? Why?”
“Because the girl’s got an iron backbone. Why don’t you invite her over sometime?”
“An iron backbone? Granddad, you don’t understand! That girl is a royal pain. She’s a show-off, she’s a know-it-all, and she is pushy beyond belief!”
“Is that so.”
“Yes! That’s absolutely so! And she’s been stalking me since the second grade!”
He frowned, then looked out the window and asked, “They’ve lived there that long?”
“I think they were all born there!”
He frowned some more before he looked back at me and said, “A girl like that doesn’t live next door to everyone, you know.”
“Lucky them!”
He studied me, long and hard. I said, “What?
” but he didn’t flinch. He just kept staring at me, and I couldn’t take it — I had to look away.
Keep in mind that this was the first real conversation I’d had with my grandfather. This was the first time he’d made the effort to talk to me about something besides passing the salt. And does he want to get to know me? No! He wants to know about Juli!
I couldn’t just stand up and leave, even though that’s what I felt like doing. Somehow I knew if I left like that, he’d quit talking to me at all. Even about salt. So I sat there feeling sort of tortured. Was he mad at me? How could he be mad at me? I hadn’t done anything wrong!
When I looked up, he was sitting there holding out the newspaper to me. “Read this,” he said. “Without prejudice.”
I took it, and when he went back to looking out the window, I knew — I’d been dismissed.
By the time I got down to my room, I was mad. I slammed my bedroom door and flopped down on the bed, and after fuming about my sorry excuse for a grandfather for a while, I shoved the newspaper in the bottom drawer of my desk. Like I needed to know any more about Juli Baker.
At dinner my mother asked me why I was so sulky, and she kept looking from me to my grandfather. Granddad didn’t seem to need any salt, which was a good thing because I might have thrown the shaker at him.
My sister and dad were all business as usual, though. Lynetta ate about two raisins out of her carrot salad, then peeled the skin and meat off her chicken wing and nibbled gristle off the bone, while my father filled up airspace talking about office politics and the need for a shakedown in upper management.
No one was listening to him — no one ever does when he gets on one of his if-I-ran-the-circus jags — but for once Mom wasn’t even pretending. And for once she wasn’t trying to convince Lynetta that dinner was delicious either. She just kept eyeing me and Granddad, trying to pick up on why we were miffed at each other.
Not that he had anything to be miffed at me about. What had I done to him, anyway? Nothing. Nada. But he was, I could tell. And I completely avoided looking at him until about halfway through dinner, when I sneaked a peek.
He was studying me, all right. And even though it wasn’t a mean stare, or a hard stare, it was, you know, firm. Steady. And it weirded me out. What was his deal?
I didn’t look at him again. Or at my mother. I just went back to eating and pretended to listen to my dad. And the first chance I got, I excused myself and holed up in my room.
I was planning to call my friend Garrett like I usually do when I’m bent about something. I even punched in his number, but I don’t know. I just hung up.
And later when my mom came in, I faked like I was sleeping. I haven’t done that in years. The whole night was weird like that. I just wanted to be left alone.
Juli wasn’t at the bus stop the next morning. Or Friday morning. She was at school, but you’d never know it if you didn’t actually look. She didn’t whip her hand through the air trying to get the teacher to call on her or charge through the halls getting to class. She didn’t make unsolicited comments for the teacher’s edification or challenge the kids who took cuts in the milk line. She just sat. Quiet.
I told myself I should be glad about it — it was like she wasn’t even there, and isn’t that what I’d always wanted? But still, I felt bad. About her tree, about how she hurried off to eat by herself in the library at lunch, about how her eyes were red around the edges. I wanted to tell her, Man, I’m sorry about your sycamore tree, but the words never seemed to come out.
By the middle of the next week, they’d finished taking down the tree. They cleared the lot and even tried to pull up the stump, but that sucker would not budge, so they wound up grinding it down into the dirt.
Juli still didn’t show at the bus stop, and by the end of the week I learned from Garrett that she was riding a bike. He said he’d seen her on the side of the road twice that week, putting the chain back on the derailleur of a rusty old ten-speed.
I figured she’d be back. It was a long ride out to Mayfield Junior High, and once she got over the tree, she’d start riding the bus again. I even caught myself looking for her. Not on the lookout, just looking.
Then one day it rained and I thought for sure she’d be up at the bus stop, but no. Garrett said he saw her trucking along on her bike in a bright yellow poncho, and in math I noticed that her pants were still soaked from the knees down.
When math let out, I started to chase after her to tell her that she ought to try riding the bus again, but I stopped myself in the nick of time. What was I thinking? That Juli wouldn’t take a little friendly concern and completely misinterpret it? Whoa now, buddy, beware! Better to just leave well enough alone.
After all, the last thing I needed was for Juli Baker to think I missed her.
Juli: The Sycamore Tree
I love to watch my father paint. Or really, I love to hear him talk while he paints. The words always come out soft and somehow heavy when he’s brushing on the layers of a landscape. Not sad. Weary, maybe, but peaceful.
My father doesn’t have a studio or anything, and since the garage is stuffed with things that everyone thinks they need but no one ever uses, he paints outside.
Outside is where the best landscapes are, only they’re nowhere near our house. So what he does is keep a camera in his truck. His job as a mason takes him to lots of different locations, and he’s always on the lookout for a great sunrise or sunset, or even just a nice field with sheep or cows. Then he picks out one of the snapshots, clips it to his easel, and paints.
The paintings come out fine, but I’ve always felt a little sorry for him, having to paint beautiful scenes in our backyard, which is not exactly picturesque. It never was much of a yard, but after I started raising chickens, things didn’t exactly improve.
Dad doesn’t seem to see the backyard or the chickens when he’s painting, though. It’s not just the snapshot or the canvas he sees either. It’s something much bigger. He gets this look in his eye like he’s transcended the yard, the neighborhood, the world. And as his big, callused hands sweep a tiny brush against the canvas, it’s almost like his body has been possessed by some graceful spiritual being.
When I was little, my dad would let me sit beside him on the porch while he painted, as long as I’d be quiet. I don’t do quiet easily, but I discovered that after five or ten minutes without a peep, he’d start talking.
I’ve learned a lot about my dad that way. He told me all sorts of stories about what he’d done when he was my age, and other things, too—like how he got his first job delivering hay, and how he wished he’d finished college.
When I got a little older, he still talked about himself and his childhood, but he also started asking questions about me. What were we learning at school? What book was I currently reading? What did I think about this or that.
Then one time he surprised me and asked me about Bryce. Why was I so crazy about Bryce?
I told him about his eyes and his hair and the way his cheeks blush, but I don’t think I explained it very well because when I was done Dad shook his head and told me in soft, heavy words that I needed to start looking at the whole landscape.
I didn’t really know what he meant by that, but it made me want to argue with him. How could he possibly understand about Bryce? He didn’t know him!
But this was not an arguing spot. Those were scattered throughout the house, but not out here.
We were both quiet for a record-breaking amount of time before he kissed me on the forehead and said, “Proper lighting is everything, Julianna.”
Proper lighting? What was that supposed to mean? I sat there wondering, but I was afraid that by asking I’d be admitting that I wasn’t mature enough to understand, and for some reason it felt obvious. Like I should understand.
After that he didn’t talk so much about events as he did about ideas. And the older I got, the more philosophical he seemed to get. I don’t know if he really got more philosophical or if he just though
t I could handle it now that I was in the double digits.
Mostly the things he talked about floated around me, but once in a while something would happen and I would understand exactly what he had meant. “A painting is more than the sum of its parts,” he would tell me, and then go on to explain how the cow by itself is just a cow, and the meadow by itself is just grass and flowers, and the sun peeking through the trees is just a beam of light, but put them all together and you’ve got magic.
I understood what he was saying, but I never felt what he was saying until one day when I was up in the sycamore tree.
The sycamore tree had been at the top of the hill forever. It was on a big vacant lot, giving shade in the summer and a place for birds to nest in the spring. It had a built-in slide for us, too. Its trunk bent up and around in almost a complete spiral, and it was so much fun to ride down. My mom told me she thought the tree must have been damaged as a sapling but survived, and now, maybe a hundred years later, it was still there, the biggest tree she’d ever seen. “A testimony to endurance” is what she called it.
I had always played in the tree, but I didn’t become a serious climber until the fifth grade, when I went up to rescue a kite that was stuck in its branches. I’d first spotted the kite floating free through the air and then saw it dive-bomb somewhere up the hill by the sycamore tree.
I’ve flown kites before and I know—sometimes they’re gone forever, and sometimes they’re just waiting in the middle of the road for you to rescue them. Kites can be lucky or they can be ornery. I’ve had both kinds, and a lucky kite is definitely worth chasing after.
This kite looked lucky to me. It wasn’t anything fancy, just an old-fashioned diamond with blue and yellow stripes. But it stuttered along in a friendly way, and when it dive-bombed, it seemed to do so from exhaustion as opposed to spite. Ornery kites dive-bomb out of spite. They never get exhausted because they won’t stay up long enough to poop out. Thirty feet up they just sort of smirk at you and crash for the fun of it.
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