Page 15 of Junie
Chapter Fifteen
As much as she wants to, Junie does not burn the box in the fireplace when she returns home. She shoves it underneath the floorboards, praying that the earth will consume it whole.
There is no sense grieving over someone who never loved her enough to stay.
Even as the pain lingers, the next morning has her occupied yet again by Violet’s courtship. After a lifetime of reading stories about falling in love, Junie imagined she would feel happier witnessing the real thing. Instead, as she hovers a pace behind Violet’s happily-ever-after, she sees that love is a hungry thing, set on devouring everything but the lovers at its center.
She thinks about trying to sell the necklace again, but each of Violet’s and Mr. Taylor’s lingering gazes affirms the truth she can hardly stomach: They are falling for each other. She longs to know if her fate is sealed, but Caleb, the only other person present for all the dates, is hardly a help.
“You really ain’t heard nothing Taylor’s said about Violet? About any intentions?” Junie asks. They’ve settled into their nightly spot in the cotton fields for Caleb’s reading lessons.
“Nothing. All he talks to me about is his horse. Or maybe it was his dog? I don’t remember,” Caleb says with a smile. “I’ve told you before, Delilah June. There ain’t any use paying so much attention to what white folks say.”
Junie wants to tell him that Violet isn’t just one of the white folks—she’s her friend. But she can’t stand the thought of his mocking grin at her sentimentality.
“Maybe you’ve been kicked by a horse too many times.”
He laughs, his lip creeping up on the left side to show the tooth he’d chipped the first time he rode a horse. He has a few laughs: the tongue-out guffaw after a particularly good wisecrack, the polite restrained chuckle to Mr. Taylor’s jokes, the nose-wrinkling belly laugh when something tickles him. The tooth-forward smile is Junie’s favorite; a sign her barb has landed.
“Now, that ain’t fair,” he says with a puppy-dog pout. “Ain’t I remembered lots of helpful things for your little secret mission?”
She hates to admit he has. It’s been a week since she figured out how to open the box. It isn’t his fault the key was in her apron pocket the whole time.
“Fine,” she says. “But your memory’s awful selective. Besides, I don’t think I’ll need your help anymore.”
“You found what you was looking for?” Caleb asks, sitting up straight.
Part of her wants to tell him now about the box, the letter, and the freedom papers. Yet, somehow, speaking Minnie’s betrayal out loud feels too painful.
“No, and I don’t think I’m gonna. I’ve torn up everywhere I can think of and there’s still no sign of it.”
“You know, I’ve heard four eyes are better than two. I could help, if you’d tell me what you’re looking for.”
“I’ve told you. I’m looking for the other half of that squashed-up caterpillar you call a mustache.”
The chipped tooth peeks from underneath his lip.
“You’re something else, Delilah June.”
Delilah June. Always her full name, never the nickname everyone else calls her. Does he notice the different ways that she laughs, too? The book is heavy between them, pressing into the tops of their thighs. The pressure of his leg, leaning against hers—it tingles like mint leaves crushed between teeth.
“It’s late. We ought to start back.” She snatches the book and tucks it into her apron, getting up quickly enough to ensure she’s a few paces ahead of him. They follow their nightly path back to the cabin, and Junie wills herself to stop wishing the sun would wait a few more hours to rise. She nods by way of a good night, her tongue too knotted to speak.
“Wait!” Caleb calls.
“Do you want to get caught? Don’t yell out like that!” Junie exclaims. “What do you want?”
Caleb tucks his hands into his pockets, tipping back and forth on his ungainly legs.
“It’s nothing. Never mind.”
“No, no, out with it,” she says, waving at him to continue.
“It’s just—I’ve been here for a month now, and all I’ve seen is the same song and dance,” Caleb says. “I don’t see how livin’ in the country don’t drive you up the walls.”
“We’re sneaking out to read every night. What more do you want, a magic show?”
“I’m serious, I wanna see something real about this place. Something you only see here,” Caleb says. He points toward the woods. “Like over there, I ain’t seen any of them woods except for that first day with the bees. Do those woods got any good climbing trees?”
“A few,” she answers uneasily.
“See, they don’t got proper trees in New Orleans. I used to climb when I was a boy on the island. I bet if we climbed a big one, we could see all the way to the ocean.”
“You can’t see no ocean from these trees,” she says, laughing.
“How’re you so sure?”
“Because I’ve climbed nearly every one. I could probably climb a few of ’em with my eyes closed by now.”
“Well, I was the best climber on the whole sugar farm, and I was only a boy then. Bet I’m even better now that I’m grown.”
“You ain’t grown, Mr. Peach Fuzz Chin. And I bet you ain’t any better.”
“So what’re we betting, then?” Caleb says, crossing his arms with a smile.
“What bet?” The possibility of competition makes her pulse quicken.
“The bet that you can beat me climbing.”
“I ain’t taking up any bets with you, Caleb,” she says.
“Oh c’mon, I’ll be a gentleman. I’ll let you set the terms.”
“What do you even have to give, other than a headache?” she says.
“I’m going to ignore that tactless comment, Delilah June, because I do have something you might like. See, old Mr. Taylor is always sending off Beau with books, praying he’ll take him something intellectual. Of course, Beau doesn’t touch ’em, pretty sure he’s never even looked at ’em. Thanks to your lessons, I spotted a few books on poetry. You like poetry, don’t you?”
Junie’s eyes swell. Owning her own poetry books is a better prize than she imagined.
“Well, if you beat me, I’ll get them for you.”
“Deal,” she says, shoving her hand out.
“Not so fast. What you gonna do when you lose? Bet’s a bet.”
“Fine. If you win, which you won’t, I’ll do Mr. Taylor’s laundry for the rest of the time he’s here.”
“Deal,” Caleb says. He spits in his palm and sticks it out.
“Ew, I’m not touching your spit!” she says.
“It’s only a proper bet if you spit on it. Go on, you spit, too,” he says.
Junie furrows her brow before weakly spitting in her palm. They shake and she recoils at the wetness. Caleb bursts into a laugh.
“I can’t believe you really did it! You ain’t no lady, you’re a regular clodhopper!”
Junie shoves his chest. “Don’t you play me for a sucker, Caleb. We’ll see who’s laughing when your scared little behind doesn’t make it a foot off the ground.”
“You pick the tree, and I’ll wave at you from the top.”
Junie withers. Climbing trees means going to the woods, a place she’s been hoping to avoid after last night with Minnie.
“Maybe it ain’t safe to be out in the woods,” she says.
“Safe? The first time I met you, you stuck your hand in a beehive. You steal books from white folks and spend nights reading in the doggone cotton field. You tellin’ me now you’re worried about what’s safe?”
Junie pouts. She does miss the view from Old Mother at sunrise.
“Fine. Meet me by the stables before dawn. And you better not be late.”
—
The next morning, she finds Caleb at their meeting spot, buried in Granddaddy’s old flannel jacket, puffing his stubbled cheeks to make breathy rings in the cold. He tilts his head by way of a greeting.
“It don’t get cold in New Orleans?” Junie chuckles, lifting her kerosene lantern toward him.
“Not like this. Besides, my body still thinks I’m an island boy. You ain’t cold?”
Junie shakes her head, shoving her already numb fingers into her apron. She’ll never admit it, but she regrets leaving her sweater in the cabin. She stares up at the tree line; a phalanx of twisted giants, tangling into the dark. Junie wonders if these are the same woods the huntsman abandoned Snow White in, left alone to die.
“Chicken,” Caleb says, laughing.
“I ain’t chicken.” Her skin crawls as she looks around for sparks of gold. “C’mon, we ain’t got long until the sun’s up.”
They snake through the forest, their lantern casting beams and shadows that loom and contract with every step. Junie’s chest aches from portioning her breaths the whole walk.
“Ain’t there a river somewhere near here?” Caleb asks.
When had the river’s moonlit placidity turned to foreboding blackness? The place that used to be her solace is now the site of her nightmares. Another thing that Minnie’s death has ruined.
“We ought not go there. Too close to where boats come through,” she lies.
“You sure are cautious all the sudden, Delilah June.”
“I just ain’t a fool. We’re almost to the tree, anyway.”
In the dawn, Old Mother appears older than the land itself. Her roots protrude like spider’s legs, as though at any moment she could lift herself from the woods and creep into the night. Junie runs her hands over her dry, scaly bark.
“This tree ain’t too much to look at,” Caleb says.
“I didn’t know we were picking trees based on their looks,” Junie comments. “I’m sure I can find you a real nice rosebush to climb if that’s what you’re after.” She pulls off her leather shoes, wiggling her toes in the fallen leaves.
“Why’d you take your shoes off?” Caleb asks.
“That’s how you climb a tree. You can’t expect to climb with those boots clunking on your feet?”
“What if my feet get all roughed up?”
“I thought I was setting the terms of this bet, and I say no shoes. Or are you too chicken, city boy?”
Caleb grunts, kicking off his clean boots to reveal his patched gray socks.
“Socks, too,” Junie says.
“It’s cold as an icebox out here!”
“You can forfeit the bet if you don’t like my rules,” Junie says with a shrug. Caleb moans, stuffing his socks into the boots.
“First one to the top,” she says, positioning herself beneath a low branch. Caleb gets into position on the opposite side.
“Ready, set, go!”
Junie launches herself onto the first bumpy branch. The tree is a maze, with each choice leading to a victory or dead end. The darkness forces her to rely on touch, her skin prickling as she feels her way through Old Mother’s familiar limbs. The dawn light sneaks through the red and orange leaves, turning the forest floor from black to a twilight blue. Despite her nervousness about Minnie, her heart races at each glint of sunlight.
She is home again.
Her branch shakes as Caleb hoists himself onto her bough. She leaps off, catching another before wrapping herself around the trunk for support. A dirty move. Caleb stretches his wiry frame to reach the next branch without jumping.
He’s getting ahead.
She pulls herself up and spots her next option, a sturdy branch with nothing around, nothing above. She studies Caleb, paused and perched on a branch, eyes narrowed in focus on the bough above his head. She smiles; he’s only thinking vertically. She leaps to the next branch and starts to circle the trunk, climbing bough after bough like a spiral staircase. After two loops she is even with Caleb, who still hasn’t figured out how to get to the next branch above him. She beams before throwing herself into the air, catching the higher branch and wrapping her legs around it until she dangles like a squirrel. She waves at Caleb before swinging herself right side up.
The sky shines blue and pink above her. The last of the climbable branches are a body’s length away. She steps up, lounging on a thick branch until Caleb sits on the one next to her.
“You’re lucky I’m enough of a gentleman to let you win,” Caleb pants.
“You ain’t no gentleman. You got stuck, and I won fair and square.”
“I could’ve got that branch.”
“Oh, is that why you sat there like a bump on a log?”
“Quiet! You gonna wake up the whole woods being a sore winner,” Caleb jeers. Junie pokes her tongue out.
The birds chirp to signal the start of morning. The rosy fingers of dawn sparkle on the water and cast a glow over the fields.
“This is…” Caleb says, trailing off.
“It’s something, ain’t it?”
“More than something. This land seems like it goes on forever. On the ground, everything looks so small, feels so small, but up here—”
“It’s limitless.”
“Yeah. That’s the word, limitless .”
They sit in silence for a few moments, listening to the wind brush the autumn leaves from their branches.
Caleb laughs. “Have you always been like this?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, mysterious. I ain’t ever heard you use more than five words to answer something about yourself.”
“I’ve lived my whole life on five hundred acres. Everybody I know remembers me longer than I can remember them. There ain’t much to say.”
“I doubt that,” Caleb says. “Everybody’s got stories, and you’ve heard most of mine.”
Junie swings her legs in the air nervously.
“Fine, I’ll answer something,” she says.
“What is it you’re sneaking around looking for in the house?”
She curls her fingernails into the tree bark, looking for glimmers of gold below.
“It’s something that belonged to my sister.”
“I know that much. But what is it?”
“She had a keepsake box. I found it that day you fetched the parasol in the garden. But I couldn’t find the key.”
“So you’re tearing up everywhere in the house looking for the key?”
“I was,” Junie says, pulling the locket from underneath her collar. “What I said last night, about not finding it, it…it wasn’t the truth. Turns out I had the damned key with me all along.”
“What do you mean?” Caleb says. “The necklace is the key?”
“When you open it up, it fits into a spot on the box and unlocks it.”
“Where in the devil did your sister get that?”
“Beats me,” Junie says. “She was real secretive, Minnie was.”
“That’s rich comin’ from you,” Caleb says with a chuckle.
“I don’t mean to,” Junie says. “I mean, I didn’t used to be this way. Just after…after she died, I…” she trails off. Why is it so hard to be honest? And why is she so tempted to do it with him?
“I bet you miss her a lot, don’t you?” Caleb says.
Junie is silent, watching the horsefly crawling along the branch. She swallows and swats it away.
“I don’t think it’s worth it anymore, missing her,” Junie says. “Once I opened the box up, I found freedom papers inside. They were burnt for some reason, but she’d gotten them all filled out and signed and everything. She was gonna leave me behind, and she didn’t even tell me. Maybe I’m tired of sticking my neck out for somebody who ain’t even here, who didn’t even want to stay. I wish I could burn the thing and be done with it all.”
The words stain her lips like blackberries, something indelible in the truth said out loud. Caleb’s face is inscrutable, a thousand questions and answers darting through his expression. She hears each of the ways he must be judging her, disgusted with her selfishness.
“I shouldn’t have said all that. I don’t know what you must think of me,” Junie mumbles. “Talking bad of the dead.”
She swallows, pushing her palms into the tree bark until it stings. The two remaining scars on her wrist have dulled to a faded brown. The truth pulls like wet mud around her ankles; Minnie is fading into a resented memory, and her ghostly tasks along with her.
“You know, when I got shipped off that island,” Caleb starts, “I had this bracelet my momma made me from a cowrie shell and some string for Christmas. When I was on that boat, I used to rub my fingers on the bracelet and pray the boat would turn around and go back for my momma. Once we docked in New Orleans and I knew I wasn’t going back, I got so mad I ripped that bracelet off and threw it in the ocean.”
He looks straight over the landscape, as though if he squinted hard enough, he could see that island.
“See, I think the things left behind by people we love got bits of their soul left in ’em,” Caleb says. “There ain’t a day that goes by that I don’t regret throwing that bracelet away. You got the right to be mad, you damn well should be mad, but don’t toss something that precious away like I did.”
Junie thinks of moving closer to him, of putting her hand on top of his, squeezing his palm and telling him she knows grief’s many faces, too; rage-filled, stoic, and hopeless. Instead, she stays on her branch, observing the ground beneath her dangling feet.
“Being up here used to make me feel like I was living inside a poem,” Junie says with a sigh.
“Tell me about ’em.”
“About what?”
“The poems. What’s it about ’em that you love so much?”
Junie shifts on her branch. He was doing it again, seeing through her. “Well, this one poet, Wordsworth. He wrote about the feeling of being up here. About being limitless.”
Caleb chuckles. “You mean to tell me a writer’s real name is Wordsworth? How much do you think his words are worth ? Five cents? Ten cents?”
“Be quiet or I’ll shake your branch,” Junie says, laughing.
“Tell me the poem, then. I know you know it by heart.”
Junie rolls her lips in to suck in the cold morning air. She’s never talked to anybody about Wordsworth, let alone recited him for anyone.
“It goes,” she whispers, “?‘…sublime; that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world Is lightened.’?”
“What does that word mean? ‘Sublime’?” Caleb asks.
“I think it means that sometimes we can find places where the world just floats away. Where you look at something so perfect that all the things we don’t understand and won’t understand don’t mean nothing anymore. And we get to feel limitless.”
“Sublime, huh,” Caleb says. “Is that what you like so much about poems?”
“I like grits and butter. I love poetry.”
“Then, have you found this sublime yet?” Junie faces him, her expression giving away her surprise. How did he know she was looking for the sublime? Caleb chuckles. “I ain’t known you long, Delilah June, but I reckon you’d run after anything you love.”
“I don’t think I’ve found it yet. I want to find a place like Wordsworth did—know that feeling he had when he saw that perfect place.”
“That’s all it is, then? Seeing a perfect place that makes you feel something?”
“It’s not just that. The sublime changes your soul. Like, for that moment, you see something that makes your spirit bigger and fuller than it ever was.”
“And what does Miss Violet think of your little quest?”
“She don’t know about it,” Junie says. “I’ve never really told anybody about it.”
“Why’d you tell me, then?”
Why had she told him? Junie grips down on the tree branch as clammy beads of sweat form on her palms.
“I suppose I thought that with your piano playing, you might understand what it is to think different about the world.”
“I think I do understand,” Caleb says, looking down at his knees. “It’s just…Never mind.”
“Go on, you can say what you want to say,” Junie says.
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s a pretty idea and all. It’s just, what’s the good in finding the sublime when you can’t touch it? When you can’t taste it or hear it, and you just gotta sit there looking at it like an old painting?”
Junie digs her fingers into the tree bark. Caleb continues.
“The first time I heard Schubert, I thought I would float off the ground right then and there. It was like my body could slip away to some better place. But it was the day I learned how to play that song that I could feel myself flying. Like I was limitless. To me, it sounds like Wordsworth is just listening. He ain’t flying.”
“But that moment, it changes your spirit,” Junie repeats, embarrassment rising in her belly.
“I’m not trying to be smart or nothing, Delilah June. Really, I’m not. I just wonder if there’s more to it than that. Like, what’s on the other side of sublime? What happens after you see it? You supposed to just go back to your old life, sneaking around and cleaning up after white folks? You just supposed to accept that a view is the closest you’ll ever get to being limitless? If we found that place, I think we’d be better off to go running right into it.”
“So, is that what you do, then? Take off running toward everything you want?” Junie asks.
“Of course not. That’s how it is, ain’t it? We ain’t never gonna be able to take off running, so we just got to sneak in our steps where we can. You know that, with your secret poems.”
“Maybe you don’t understand,” Junie says.
Caleb laughs. “Great day, you really are a stubborn something else. I just think you’re selling yourself short, is all.”
“What do you mean?”
It’s only then that she realizes he’s turned his knees toward her, his feet dangling so close to hers that the breeze from his swinging raises the fine hairs on her legs. His hand, once settled in his lap, now rests inches from her own, his pinky stretching toward her like a sunflower in search of light.
He isn’t looking at the sunrise anymore. He’s looking at her.
“I just think you deserve more than a pretty view, Delilah June. You deserve to take all the beauty of this world and hold it in your hands. You deserve to bite it like a peach and let the juice drip ’til your fingers get sticky.”
Junie wills her tongue to fire back a reply, but her words never make it past her lips. Rosy dawn plays across Caleb’s irises like wind chimes, and she can’t help staring at the light in his eyes, transfixed. Her hand creeps forward, remembering the softness of his palms. When her fingertips brush his, she feels the urge to squint and indulge in the sting, as though she’s stared into a fire for too long. Her senses overwhelmed, she drops her gaze to her toes, with half hope and half terror this moment will end. What would his heartbeat sound like against her ear? How would his hands feel running down her bare shoulders? Would a kiss feel as transformative as the books say?
When she looks up, he’s still looking at her.
His gaze is the kind that could last for centuries; even if the trees withered to stumps and the land eroded into the river, Caleb would still be there, looking at her. As she leans toward him, the smell of fresh grass and tobacco drawing her closer, her heart racing so quickly she’s certain he’ll hear it, she begs her body to slow down enough to let her last for centuries sitting beside him.
Sticks crack on the forest floor. Junie and Caleb both startle and straighten up, clutching their branches before looking back into the distance.
“Sun’s gettin’ high,” Caleb says, rubbing his eyes. “We ought to get going.”
Junie nods, blinking as though waking from a dream. Her belly aches with an unsatiated curiosity. She drops from her branch, hoping to get down the tree without having to look into Caleb’s eyes again. They both carefully climb down, taking their time to move beneath the forest canopy line and closer to the ground.
She’s nearly at the bottom, and Caleb is making no effort to catch up. He’ll leave soon, she repeats to herself as she averts her gaze from him. Ain’t no sense getting attached to someone who’s bound to leave.
But what if he didn’t have to leave her? What if she left with him instead?
If Violet marries Mr. Taylor, Junie’s bound to leave Bellereine to be with the Taylors, anyway. If Violet marries Mr. Taylor, Junie could be near Caleb forever. Her stomach warms at the thought. Could they look down on New Orleans together from the tops of the trees? Could they find new places to sneak off to, reading in the corners of the night? Would the dawn in that faraway city turn Caleb’s eyes that same shade of warm brown, like the last autumn leaf?
She could leave it all behind: the paralyzing grief, the nightmares, the monotony. She could find something new. Isn’t that what Minnie had wanted, had tried to do? Why would putting her hope in Caleb be any different than signing papers to run away, to leave it all behind?
Junie catches the shine of golden light in the corner of her eye. At first, she thinks of her kerosene lantern, left burning at the base of the tree. But as the glow grows in strength, solidifying into limbs, torso, and head, her stomach drops.
Minnie blazes, hair loose over her body, a few paces away from Old Mother’s base. The ghost beckons Junie with her finger, and blackened eyes look up at her, unflinching in their disappointment.
Anger roils in Junie’s gut. Who is Minnie to be disappointed, when she was the one who was set to abandon Junie?
“I ain’t coming with you!” she hisses. “I ain’t listening to you no more!”
Minnie’s face hardens, her jaw setting. She wanders back from Old Mother, slinking behind a tree to hover a few paces toward the water.
“You plannin’ on speedin’ up sometime, slowpoke?” Calebgrins at Junie as he nears her and swings down the last couple of branches. The banter had been so easy on the way up, but she can’t seem to muster an answer now. Can he see Minnie, too? Will he know?
He hits the ground, putting on his boots.
“Sure did brighten up down here while we were up there,” he says. “You wouldn’t think it’d be so light out this early.”
Junie says nothing. Minnie watches Caleb like a judge looking down on a criminal. When she finally meets Junie’s gaze again, the disillusionment across her face speaks clearer than words ever could.
You abandoned me. You abandoned me for him.
Bringing Caleb here was a mistake.
Before Junie can get out of the tree, the ghost disappears into oblivion.
She’d imagined that retribution would at least feel affirming. Instead, it leaves Junie empty as her bare feet finally hit the soil.
If Violet and Taylor don’t marry, she’ll never see Caleb again.
But, if they marry, she’ll never see her family again.
What sick evil lives inside her that she would fantasize about that future? What selfishness within her would encourage her to pick a man she hardly knows over Minnie’s soul, even if she is furious with her?
The woods feel barren now, as though all the leaves fell while she sat at the top of Old Mother. Junie turns toward the river, looking through the branches for any sign of her sister. She looks down at the two scars on her wrist, still a stubborn shade of muted brown. Will these marks forever mar Junie’s skin, a reminder of her failure?
She runs toward the riverbank, ignoring Caleb’s calls at her back. She wants to yell out Minnie’s name, to beg her sister to come back, to tell her she’s not ready to navigate this world without her. She doesn’t know how to stop Violet’s marriage and keep herself at Bellereine. She doesn’t know how to weaken the magnet pulling her toward Caleb.
She doesn’t know how to keep her world afloat when it is set on drowning.
Junie kicks a rock near her foot, but it’s lodged deep in the ground, bruising her instead.
“Seems like you got that rock real good.”
She turns around to see Caleb, carrying their lantern. He has caught up with her.
“I guess so,” Junie says, her tone sharp. She doesn’t want him to see her like this.
“Why’d you take off like that?”
“I’m fine, Caleb.” He’s too close, his pull too strong. She has to break away from him.
“You don’t seem fine.”
“You don’t even know me. How could you know if I’m fine or not?”
“Fine people don’t usually run off out of nowhere, or go around kicking rocks.”
“Why do you care? Why does it matter to you if I’m safe or not? You don’t know nothing about me. We’ve got a deal, that’s all.”
Caleb stops. He bites his lip and looks at the ground. Junie turns her back to him, her arms crossed, unable to hide her sniffling. He kneels down, placing the lantern on the ground in between them.
Junie turns around, the pressure building behind her eyes as they connect with his in the half-light, a weight settling in her stomach. There is no way forward that doesn’t end in loss, but to want the path that leads her away from her family feels tantamount to sin. Junie and Caleb both have no choice but to follow life’s path bridled and blinded. Her life is at Bellereine, his in New Orleans. Why had she let him see some of her real self when life is destined to keep them apart?
“Can you…can you just go?” she says.
“Delilah June, I’m not just gonna leave you—”
The dam breaks as tears, unbidden, rush from her eyes. Caleb reaches to hold her, but before he can, she pushes him away and runs into the dawn.