Over the crest of the highway, where you would expect to see more rolling hills laced with golden rows of corn, there is- surprisingly -a flat, rocky area with grass along the edges. A baseball field, with thirty foot base paths and a backstop made out of double wooden panels left over from the construction of the chicken coop. In dead centerfield, facing into the trees, a single juniper bush, the only obstacle in the way of a baserunner. Otherwise, the field was good, despite its limits and utter modesty.

Billy hated inconveniences. He went to his father a hundred times about that juniper bush.

“Dad, why can’t we just uproot it and move it down the lane?”

And Dad wouldn’t move from his recliner, only continuing to stare at his book about British pilots in the second World War, hand shaking just a little. “Because Franklin would be mad. That bush is on his property.”

“I don’t think he would care too much.” Billy would say, naively. And then Dad would set down his book on the armrest, spine crinkling the way teachers told you not to let them. And he would pick himself up and drag Billy outside to show him the property line for the ten thousandth time. 

Drawing a line in the dirt; “Billy, Franklin owns all the fields up into this point. This his problem, and ours…” he’d point toward the sunken house and ten acres of swaying wheat. “Is back here. That be his business.”

“But Franklin nevers comes over here.” says Billy.

“Somebody gotta come here some time to take care of that row. Whether that’s old Franklin or somebody else with a heavy-handed tractor.”

Billy would never be truly satisfied, and one particularly warm afternoon, he brought up the age old saying.

“That ain’t fair.”

Dad had wiped his peeling brow and crossed his muscular arms. “You won’t be no one to say life ain’t fair, Billy.” he said. “When I was a kid, my daddy was working the strawberry fields up north and I would be stuck at home throwing rocks at the old studebaker in the pond. That was where our house was, see, right up against the swamp. And we’d play ball and skip stones until daddy came home in trash yarns stained with strawberry mush. And for nothing, because we still had to wash our loafers in the swamp water and eat bread that we made ourselves.” He’d lifted his arm as if to display his dry fields. “Now I own these twelve acres and you go to public school. What goes around comes around, Billy.”

“A strawberry ain’t even a berry.” Billy muttered. 

“Robert Smalls was once a slave but he escaped. And when the war was over, he was a rich man who came back to buy the plantation he was once owned on. That’s fairness. Billy.”

“You weren’t a slave, Daddy.” Billy disputed. 

“And neither are you.” 

Billy’s dad was not a man who say much more than was needed to be said. Suppose that was his main complaint with his son, who always made you explain yourself. Whether the answer was clear or not in the first place, there was always more ‘socratic-ing’ that Billy made you do. Which makes it all the more interesting that his strange companion couldn’t speak back, no matter how easy the question. For it was when Billy was about nine that he took up conversing with the juniper.

Somebody had to answer for that stupid bush. And it sure wasn’t going to be the bush itself, obviously. It also wasn’t going to be Franklin or any of his white farmhands. But with a distinct lack of friends out in the sweltering fields, the voice of the bush was an absolute necessity. The first time was when Billy hit a baseball from home plate which rolled and rolled and rolled along the dry dirt until it had rolled itself right into the heart of the prickly juniper. Billy whipped his bat into the ground and stormed up past his pitcher’s mound and second base until he loomed right above the tentacled plant, hands on his hips.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” he boomed. “I have no words, frankly. Although I’m sick and tired of you sucking up my baseballs.” 

The bush said nothing. 

“It’s so mean, too, like you’re just trying to put needles in my arm. Are you a sicko? Are you some sort of slave owner like Dad told me about? Are you just trying to annoy me as much as you can? Well guess what? I’m not even gonna try to get that ball out of you because I know you’re just trying to be a big jerk about it. Take that!”

Then he gave one fan of the bush a good kick, which felt like swiping at sharp snow. Worn cleat covered in pine needles, Billy turned around and stomped inside to get a new baseball. That was the worst thing about juniper bushes- you couldn’t even give them a swift kick without getting at least some needles stuck in you.

To be continued (probably)