Now, Juli Baker did not wind up on the front page of the Mayfield Times for being an eight
h- grade Einstein, like you might suspect. No, myfriend, she got front-page coverage becau
se she refused to climb out of a sycamore tree. Not that I could tell a sycamore from a m
aple or a birch for that matter, but Juli, of course,knew what kind of tree it was and pas
sed that knowledge along to every creature in her wake.So this tree, this sycamore tree
, was up the hill on a vacant lot on Collier Street, and it was massive. Massive and ugly.
It was twisted and gnarledand bent, and I kept expecting the thing to blow over in the wi
nd.One day last year I'd finally had enough of her yakking about that stupid tree. I came
right out and told her that it was not a magnificent sycamore,it was, in reality, the ugli
est tree known to man. And you know what she said? She said I was visually challenged. Vis
ually challenged! This from thegirl who lives in a house that's the scourge of the neighbo
rhood. They've got bushes growing over windows, weeds sticking out all over the place,and
a barnyard's worth of animals running wild. I'm talking dogs, cats, chickens, even snakes.
I swear to God, her brothers have a boa constrictor intheir room. They dragged me in ther
e when I was about ten and made me watch it eat a rat. A live, beady-eyed rat. They held t
hat rodent up by itstail and gulp, the boa swallowed it whole. That snake gave me nightmar
es for a month.Anyway, normally I wouldn't care about someone's yard, but the Bakers' mess
bugged my dad big-time, and he channeled his frustration into ouryard. He said it was our
neighborly duty to show them what a yard's supposed to look like. So while Mike and Matt
are busy plumping up their boa,I'm having to mow and edge our yard, then sweep the walkway
s and gutter, which is going a little overboard, if you ask me.And you'd think Juli's dad—
who's a big, strong, bricklaying dude — would fix the place up, but no. According to my mo
m, he spends all his freetime painting. His landscapes don't seem like anything special to
me, but judging by his price tags, he thinks quite a lot of them. We see them everyyear a
t the Mayfield County Fair, and my parents always say the same thing: "The world would hav
e more beauty in it if he'd fix up the yard instead."Mom and Juli's mom do talk some. I th
ink my mom feels sorry for Mrs. Baker — she saysshe married a dreamer, and because of that
, one of the two of them will always be unhappy.Whatever. Maybe Juli's aesthetic sensibili
ties have been permanently screwed up by her father and none of this is her fault, but Jul
i has alwaysthought that that sycamore tree was God's gift to our little corner of the uni
verse.Back in the third and fourth grades she used to clown around with her brothers in th
e branches or peel big chunks of bark off so they could slidedown the crook in its trunk.
It seemed like they were playing in it whenever my mom took us somewhere in the car. Juli'
d be swinging from thebranches, ready to fall and break every bone in her body, while we w
ere waiting at the stoplight, and my mom would shake her head and say, "Don'tyou ever clim
b that tree like that, do you hear me, Bryce? I never want to see you doing that! You eith
er, Lynetta. That is much too dangerous."My sister would roll her eyes and say, "As if," w
hile I'd slump beneath the window and prayfor 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 a
fter Juli had rescued my kite from its mutant toy-eating foliage. She climbed miles up tog
et my kite, and when she came down, she was actually very cool about it. She didn't holdmy
kite hostage and stick her lips out like I was afraidshe might. She just handed it over a
nd then backed away.