The Cedar Tree (Love Is Not Enough) (3 page)

Tears swelled over her lashes and ran down her cheeks. "Gil, please. I'm begging you to stop all this. Do you not understand where you're going to end up?"

Spud bounded back with the stick and dropped it. Tight jawed, he leaned forward to pick up the stick, throwing it again. The dog brought it back twice more while his mother sat with her face in her hands.

He broke the silence. "My life's a bunch of crap, Mama."

She looked up. "Honey—"

"I can't ride rodeo with a blown out knee, and they won't take me in the Marines, now, either. I'd kinda thought that me and Maria might settle down one of these days, but she married somebody else." He rubbed a hand over his hair. "Everything I wanted to do with my life ain't gonna work out now, and everybody seems to think I'll end up like Dad." He jerked to his feet and threw Spud's stick with unnecessary force. "Maybe they're right. I think there's somethin' wrong with me." He turned and thumped his chest over his heart. "In here."

She frowned, instantly worried. "Did you get hurt in the wreck?"

He shook his head impatiently. "No, but I should have." He turned to look over the Saw Tooth Range, its jagged peaks still snowcapped. "I shouldn't have got out of that car alive. It looked like a smashed pop can, but it was like—" he shrugged—"I don't know. Like somebody lifted me out and laid me on the ground. Ever since then it's been like…nothin's the same to me."

The screen door behind them kicked open. He turned and his jaw tightened. His father stood in the doorway holding a Pepsi can—no doubt half-filled with whiskey—then slouched onto the porch and dropped into a chair against the wall. Tipping back, he lifted his boots to the porch railing and pushed back the brim of his dusty Stetson, exposing sweaty black hair plastered in stark contrast to his white forehead. Aiming at a weed in the flowerbed, his father spit a stream of tobacco juice onto it then wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his denim shirt.

"Come home to watch the old man go down in flames Saturday, boy?" his father asked, his dark lashed eyes bloodshot and puffy. "That oughta make you and your mother happy."

His mother's shoulders sagged, making her smaller and more forlorn than ever. He stiffened, his stance with his hands on his hips belligerent. Spud brought back the stick, but he ignored him.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

His father took a swallow from the can and grimaced. "It means if you'd stayed home and helped out after Antonio left, I could've held this place together, but you had to go off chasin' skirts and—"

"I learned everything I know about that from you." The resentment bordering on hatred in his father's eyes exactly mirrored his own emotions.

His father swore. "At least I ain't never killed one of 'em."

"I didn't kill her. She was tryin' to kill me."

His father gave him a humorless grin. "Too bad she didn't get it done."

"Roy!" His mother's head jerked up. 

"Shut your mouth, Irene. You've worked all his life to turn him against me. Dee, too. If it hadn't been for you—"

With a bellowed curse, he lunged up the steps toward his father, a red haze shadowing his vision. The chair legs crashed to the floor as his father scrambled upright. He caught his father halfway up and grabbed his shirt at the throat, slamming him against the wall. The black Stetson fell to the floor.

"Don't you start on Mama," he said through gritted teeth, eye to eye with his father. The veins on his neck swelled, throbbing. "This is all your doin'. If you wanna know who turned me against you, go look in the mirror."

His father swore. "You get yourself tied to a woman like your mother and you'll see the same thing I see in the mirror—"

"If it hadn't been for Mama through the years—" he roared, slamming his father against the wall again with a satisfying crack of skull against wood siding—"you wouldn't be any different from any old drunk layin' behind a beer joint in an alley beggin' money off hookers."

The Pepsi can hit the board floor, splattering his boots with whiskey.

His father worked his hands between their chests, shoving back, his eyes ugly and unrepentant. "If it hadn't been for her, I'd—"

Pulling back his fist, he drove it into his father's lean middle. Roy doubled over, gasping, and then he lunged, driving his shoulder into Gil's stomach. He staggered. His father drove forward again. He avoided the rush with a step to the side. His father's momentum propelled him into the porch railing with his head. The dry wood snapped with a sound like a pistol shot. His mother screamed and rushed down the steps, sobbing as his father toppled onto the flowerbed beneath.

A moment later, he reluctantly followed. He rolled his unconscious father over to reveal a bleeding gash on his head then he grabbed Roy beneath the arms and hauled him onto the overgrown lawn.

With his chest heaving for air, he straightened and met his mother's horrified gaze. "I wish I'd killed him," he panted. "It would've solved a lot of problems."

All the color left her face, leaving the scattering of freckles across her small nose standing out in sharp relief. Her face contorted with anger and pain.

"It wouldn't have solved anything, Gil," she screamed. "Why can't you understand that?" She gestured at his father with an angry movement. "Do you want to end up like this?" She fell to her knees, and her tears dripped onto the dark whisker stubble on his cheek. She gently patted his face. "Roy, can you hear me?"

He stared at his mother. She was mad at
him
?

Spud crept up on his belly to his father and licked his hand with a worried whine. Even the dog…

In that instant he made a decision he hadn't even known he had been considering.

He was going to Colorado. He wanted to see his grandfather.

Chapter Two

A June dawn rimmed a volcanic upthrust of black boulders and cedar trees with gold, filling the sky above it with the deep blue of the high altitudes. Mellow sunlight suddenly spilled over the top of the hill, illuminating the weathered grey of the barn and corral where an aging gelding, Shorty, lipped up the last of a measure of oats in a rusty metal tub. Gil's grandfather, Gene Howard, leaned on the top corral pole, his dark gaze on the snow covered peaks far across the valley, cast into sharp relief by the sunrise.

Gil leaned next to the old man, eyeing the horse disgustedly. This late in the year, Shorty's coat should have reflected deep, glossy chestnut. Instead, patches of his winter coat remained, absorbing the early morning sunlight. His hide looked tired and dusty, like the moth-eaten hair on a fledgling taxidermist's forgotten experiment. Seemingly unmoved by his poor opinion, Shorty snuffled around in the tub for the last grains.

He turned to his grandfather. "That's the laziest horse I've ever flung a leg over, Gramps."

Even he recognized the striking resemblance between him and his grandfather even though the old man's full head of hair had turned steel-grey and his lined and weather-beaten face reflected over seventy years of living.

"Son, at my age, the lazier the better," his grandfather's booming voice rumbled over the quiet of the morning. Hard of hearing, he compensated by raising his voice even in normal conversation.

"You can't be that old."

The old man laughed, deepening the maze of lines around his eyes. He reached a rough hand to scratch behind barrel-chested, fat-rumped Shorty's ears. "Don't be so hard on ol' Shorty. He's a good feller."

He shook his head, but he grinned. "He's a lazy bucket of lard, Gramps."

The nose of his grandfather's black and white shepherd, Chief, nudged against his jeans. He looked down at the dog and spit a stream of tobacco juice. "I'm not bendin' down there to scratch your ears, Pooch," he said, but he reached for Chief's greying head, scratching his ears.

Chief gave a groan of pure delight and collapsed onto his well-padded side.

He rubbed the dog's belly. "In fact, every animal on this place is a lazy bucket of lard."

"Son, we're all gettin' old. We ain't so full of juice as we used to be."

"If I'm gonna help you get your cattle gathered and ready to move to the mountain before I leave, Shorty's gonna have to get some juice somewhere."

The old man eyed him for a moment. "What's your hurry about leavin'?"

"I need to get a job one of these days." He straightened, leaning on the pole again.

His grandfather cleared his throat. "You haven't told me why you came here, yet, Son."

He studied the patchwork of green ranch fields across the valley, now flooded with light. "You remember that time I almost got sent to juvie when I was fourteen or so? When Mama called you and had you talk to me?"

The old man nodded.

"I've always remembered that."

His grandfather's gaze probed his. "You in some kind of trouble?"

He grinned crookedly. "The sheriff suggested a change of scenery, but…that's not it." Removing his hat, he rubbed his hand through his hair, curling over his ears and shirt collar. He didn't want to talk about the thing with Darlene. "I don't know why I came."

"You got trouble with your dad?"

He shrugged. "Nothin' new there."

His grandfather stood looking down at his big-knuckled hands. "Why don't you just stay and work for me? With you here we could buy some more cows and break out that forty acres down by the creek for a hay field. We could make it a partnership, or I could just pay you."

He grinned wryly. "With what?"

"Well, it might be with just a place to live and somethin' to eat for a while, but we'll sell calves this fall and next year—"

He chuckled. "All you old farts on the ranch live for next year. The year it's all gonna come together."

The old man grinned. "It's called faith."

"Mama calls it gamblin'."

His grandfather's hearty laugh boomed. "She may be right."

Together they turned at the sound of a pickup coming fast down the dirt lane toward them.

The man driving stopped the truck in a cloud of dust and leaned out the window. "Gene, I think Maggie might've broken her foot."

"All-righty. I'll come take a look." His grandfather turned. "Son, I'll be back after a while, but I'm gonna draw you a map to Jon Campbell's place. He's got a good horse for sale, and if you decide to stay with me—"

"Gramps—"

The old man seemed not to hear his protest, and went on-" you'll need a horse." He looked at the man in the truck. "You got anything to write on, Owen?"

Owen shuffled through a mess of curling edged papers on his dash. He handed out an envelope, and the old man removed a pen from his shirt pocket.

Without looking up, he said, "Son, run up to the house and get my bone bag out of the bottom of that closet under the stairs."

He stared. "Your bone bag?"

His grandfather looked up and grinned. "Black bag. Don't be scared. It ain't full of bones."

In the house, he looked in the bag—an assortment of splints and boxes of casting plaster filled it—and then he carried it to his grandfather. The old man handed him the envelope with the map on it then got into the pickup with Owen.

He stood looking after the truck's dust trail until the pickup turned onto the blacktop at the end of the lane then he turned to lean on the corral pole again. Shorty now stood hip-shot, eyes half-closed, idly flicking his tail as the sun drove away the chill of the early morning.

Should he take up his grandfather on his offer?

When the old man had opened the door to him two weeks before, his grandfather had been just the same as he'd remembered from childhood. A little shorter, and a little greyer, maybe, but his eyes still held the quick humor and wisdom he hadn't forgotten. Instantly at ease with the old man, he'd experienced an almost embarrassing sense of relief just as intense and puzzling as the sense he'd had at Darlene's funeral he didn't belong with his friends anymore.

He couldn't just move in with his grandfather, though—he was twenty-three years old. That'd be about as bad as bumming a place to sleep on Don's couch. And there were things that might work into problems if he stayed.

Not only was his grandfather a minister, the old man's faith was his life. From the long blessings over the meals, to his conversation laced with biblical quotes and church attendance two or three times a week, his faith and position as an ordained elder in his church affected every minute of his day. Since his beliefs included faith healing, his church people dragged him out all hours of the day and night to attend to sickness or injuries. And the calls didn't stop there. People called him for all kinds of other emergencies—one evening to referee a domestic dispute, and another time to pray with a single mother having financial problems. The old man never said so, but he suspected his grandfather had eased her way from his own strained bank account.

Add all that to the morning's call for his grandfather's 'bone bag' and no pay for any of it, and they ended up with a situation like the one now…him waiting on a broke old man who needed to be sorting his cows instead of playing doctor. If his grandfather wanted to live that way it was up to him, but he was pretty sure living in the same house with the old man's religion would wear thin in a hurry.

He shook his head and spit. So, why was he so reluctant to leave?

He stared out across the valley again. The truth was, he couldn't think of anywhere else he wanted to go, or anything else he wanted to do.

He sighed and straightened from the corral pole, glancing at the crude map on the envelope in his hand.

It probably couldn't hurt anything to go look at the horse.

***

Twenty minutes later, he stopped his truck near a twisted cedar tree at a graveled crossroads, still unsure if he should have turned after he crossed the creek a mile back down the road. A half-mile to the west, a horse and rider jogged along the road, so he tossed the map onto the seat and turned toward the pair. In the sparsely populated countryside, whoever was on the horse would know where Jon Campbell lived.