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“Is that a tree or a bush?”
“Both,” he says. “Kind of.”
He taps the steering wheel with flattened fingers. His left knee jumps, jiggling up and down, and then he adds, “It’s a tree, but most of them are short like a bush. Oregon’s got too many of them. They’re a pest now, crowding other stuff out. The landscaper I work for uses the lumber for decking and edging, but I’ve seen it in cabinets and stuff, too. They make—”
He stops short. When he glances at me, I catch a strained sort of helplessness in his expression, as though he’s dismayed by how difficult it is to keep himself from talking about juniper trees.
He swallows. “I was chipping up scrap wood for mulch. That’s why I stink.”
I wait. His knee is still jittering.
Come on, I think. Talk to me.
“They make gin from juniper berries,” he says finally. “Not the Western juniper we have here. The common juniper over in Europe.”
“Is that sloe gin?”
“No. Sloe gin is made with blackthorn berries and sugar. You start with gin and pour it over the other stuff and let it sit forever.”
For the first time since I landed, I feel like smiling. Whatever’s wrong with him, however twisted and broken he is, this guy beside me is West. My West. When it comes to trivia like gin berries and juniper bushes, he can’t help himself. West is a crow about useless information, zooming down to pluck shiny gum wrappers off the ground and carry them back to his nest.
The girl who took my place—does she listen when he does this? Does it make her like him more?
If there even is a girl.
That same intrusive thought I’ve had a hundred times. A thousand.
Whoever she is, she’s not the one he called last night.
“I like the smell,” I tell him.
“When I’m here, I don’t smell it. But when I fly from Putnam to Portland, it’s the first thing I notice getting off the plane.” This time when he glances at me, his eyes don’t give anything away. “It was, I mean. When I used to do that.”
“I bet when I get back to Iowa, I’ll smell manure.”
“Only if you time it right.”
The silence is more comfortable this time, for me at least. West remains edgy, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel.
“Is this your truck?” I ask.
“It’s Bo’s. He lets me use it.”
Bo is West’s mom’s ex. She and Frankie lived with Bo until she left him for West’s dad.
Bo was at the trailer when West’s dad got shot.
Sticky subject.
“Is he still in jail?”
“No. They questioned him and let him go.”
“Was he …” I take a deep breath. “Did he really kill your dad?”
“He won’t say. He was there, shots were fired. There were two guns. I don’t know which one discharged, or if it was both or what. For all I know, it could’ve been suicide.” The anger is back, flattening out his voice so he sounds almost bored.
“Not likely, though, if they took Bo in for questioning.”
