Sunshine Walkingstick Omnibus

by Celia Roman

  The motorcycle slowed immediately, gearing down in a muted roar as David eased it to a stop in front of the painter. I got off and fumbled with my helmet, and side-stepped outta the way while David slung his leg over the bike and dismounted.

  “Here,” he said, then his hands brushed mine away and the helmet’s fastening give way under his nimble fingers.

  I slid the helmet off and muttered a brief thanks, walked toward the painter and sniffed. The air was pure, tinged only by the faint odor of rotting leaves and an even fainter hint of water. A nearby creek, like as not. Water run plentiful amongst the rolling hills. It was the painter what was outta place. The Eastern cougar, locally known as a mountain lion or painter (panther to outlanders), went extinct decades back. Some Western cougars had showed up since, a distinct subspecies if them in the know could be believed, but they was shy critters. Hardly nobody ever spotted one, and when they did, it was the common tan furred’un they seen, not the rare black painter like the one me and David stumbled upon. Far as I knowed, the so called melanin painters was considered to be a product of folklore. Nobody’d ever done more’n spot ‘em outta the corner of their eye or whatnot, let alone examined one up close.

  First time for ever thing.

  I knelt beside this’un and eyed the carcass. No bullet wounds, no claw marks, not on the up side nohow. The fur was unruffled and gleamed blue-black under the sunlight streaming through the autumn touched trees.

  I poked gently at one massive paw with a gloved finger. It was stiff, ungiving. First frost hadn’t hit yet. The nights was cool, but not yet cold. Probably hadn’t died of exposure, ‘less it’d got disoriented and lost its way. How could a creature of the deep wood do that, though, ‘specially one as fit and young as this’un seemed to be?

  David’s feet scuffed across sparse gravel through fallen leaves. He knelt beside me, pulled off a glove, and run a bare palm across the painter’s fur. “Still warm.”

  I sat back on my haunches. Rigor mortis had set in, yet the body was still warm? The hairs on the back of my neck tingled and my shoulders hunched under the armored mesh jacket David forced on me before we set off. I weren’t no mortician, but even I knowed that weren’t right.

  I snagged his elbow and tugged. “Don’t touch it no more, ya hear?”

  David withdrew his hand and rested it on his jean-clad thigh. “Foul play?”

  “I don’t know.”

  But I knowed who might. Riley worked with Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources. Patterson Gap Road cut through national forest, outside of Riley’s jurisdiction, but he probably played nice with the forest rangers and had contact numbers and whatnot for ‘em.

  I fished my cellphone out of a jacket pocket and waggled it at David. “Gimme a minute.”

  David tilted his head toward me and smirked. “Tell Ranger Rick I said hello.”

  I snorted out a laugh, then stood and paced away from him. Riley liked David well enough, ‘cept when I was around. For some reason, he had this notion planted in his head that David wanted me, which was plumb crazy. David was gay. I was a woman. He was a big flirt, sure, but that was all there was to it.

  Just to be on the safe side, I put another dozen feet between me and David, then punched the preset call button for Riley. Five rings later, an automated message played and I was dumped into his cellphone’s voicemail. Weren’t a huge surprise. It was Sunday morning. Riley’d be in church with his mama, just like he was ever Sunday morning. He tried talking me into going, but I parted ways with the Christ child when my boy Henry died, God rest him, and ain’t found my way back since.

  I outlined what we found, hesitated a bit. Me and Riley been dating nigh on a month now and it was still a mite awkward, for my part anyhow. I glanced over my shoulder. David had his back to me, so I made a soft kissy noise into the phone and hung up with my cheeks flaming hot.

  This dating thing was tough going sometimes.

  I shoved my phone into my back jeans pocket as I shambled over to David, still crouched beside the fallen painter. “Left a message for him.”

  David glanced up at me, his eyes squinted against the sun hanging in a pure azure sky. “Should we move her out of the road?”

  I shook my head reflexively, paused. Not a lot of traffic out here, what with the road being so bad and all, but if a Jeep or truck topped that hill near dusk, the driver might miss the painter. It was big enough to cause a vehicle to flip or otherwise do real damage.

  I sighed. “Yeah, we better. I got the front paws.”

  David nodded and stood, and I bent over. On the way down, the painter’s eyes, permanently open in death, caught my gaze and I stopped in mid-stoop. Human eyes stared back at me, deep brown, round of pupil. Eyes about like I had before that no good scoundrel Teus changed ‘em blue.

  Well, crap. This weren’t no painter after all, not a natural one nohow, and I had no idea what to do about it.

  I didn’t tell David about the painter’s eyes. No sense worrying him. He been through enough here of late and didn’t react well to monsters nohow. This’un was deader’n a doorknob, but I couldn’t afford to have David flip his lid, seeing as how I had no idea how to run that bike of his and didn’t particularly wanna be stranded miles from the nearest house.

  We ended up heaving the recently deceased off the road and up the slope into a bed of aster and goldenrod, outta the way of any vehicles passing by. I marked the spot with a rough stacked pyramid of creek rock pulled from the ditch so I could find the location again.

  Meanwhile, a million questions tumbled around in my noggin, the biggest one being, who’d this painter been when she was human?

  Right behind that trotted a more concerning thought. I never encountered a shifter before, though I read the myths and caught plenty of rumor. Folks was fascinated by the idea of transforming into something more powerful and vicious and nigh on unstoppable. No doubt that’s why werewolf and other such lore persisted. But nobody I knowed, including me, believed it was actually possible for a human to morph into an animal and back again.

  I knuckled the ache taking shape behind my forehead. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I seen something what weren’t there. Wouldn’t be the first time. Probably wouldn’t be the last neither.

  Them eyes bore into my mind, human as my own, and a dark foreboding tightened my spine. No, I weren’t mistaken. Pretty sure someday soon I’d wish I was. Weren’t that the way it always followed?

  Me and David geared up not long after and finished our ride across Patterson Gap Road into the Betty’s Creek area of the county. When we stopped to eat in Dillard at Moon Pie Pizzeria, the new Italian place, neither one of us had much to say, a rarity if ever there was one.

  We finished the ride without much passing between us. David dropped me off at my trailer, pecked an absent-minded kiss to my cheek, and left looking glum as ever.

  I rubbed the back of my neck as I watched his motorcycle disappear down the newly graveled driveway. This cajoling thing better start working soon, else I was gonna have to figure out another way to prod him outta the blues. A few weeks ago, right about the time me and him first met, he mentioned throwing a shindig to celebrate autumn. Maybe that’d be the very thing to take his mind off his troubles.

  I trudged up the steps onto the porch, my mind whirling with possibilities. Beer and rock ‘n roll, he’d said, and a big ol’ gumbo stew. We’d need something pumpkin, too. Some kinda dessert maybe. He’d be the one to think that up, but weren’t no reason I couldn’t do a little thinking on my own, nor cooking neither. I was handy enough in the kitchen. Riley liked the results anyhow, and a man’s stomach was often the best judge of a woman’s cooking.

  And vice versa, too.

  I grinned as I opened the door and stepped into the living room. Riley had a fair hand at the grill, a skill he was planning on demonstrating later when I drove over to his apartment for our weekly movie date.

  A little thrill run down my spine and I shivered. Chances was good we’d have more�
�n a meal and a movie. Why, if them steaks was tasty as they usually was, I might even gift the cook with a kiss, maybe two if he brung out a big chunk of cheesecake.

  I plugged my phone in to charge and stripped outta my clothes whilst walking down the hallway to the bathroom, headache forgotten. Cleaning first, in the oldest clothes I owned, then a shower, and then flirting with Riley. These things had their own pace, as we was both learning firsthand.

  Darned if I weren’t beginning to enjoy it.

  Later that evening, I pulled into the parking lot adjacent Riley’s apartment complex and parked Daddy’s IROC in a guest spot. The rich scent of grilling meat floated to me on a light breeze. I knocked on the door, waited a polite minute, then turned the doorknob and went in.

  Riley’s apartment was a Spartan testament to bachelorhood decorated a scant step and a half above a college dorm room. The furniture was leather and wood, serviceable and sturdy and in good shape, but there weren’t much of it. A long, black couch dominated the room, offset by a matching recliner. They was arranged around a solid wood coffee table and a simple floor lamp. A hand-pieced monkey’s wrench quilt hung over the back of the black leather couch, its cheery reds and greens the only real color in the room aside from framed pictures of Riley’s folks set atop the faux mantle.

  The real eye catcher was the entertainment center situated on one wall across from the couch. It held about the biggest TV I ever seen along with a Blu-Ray/DVD player, an Xbox and enough movies and games to keep a man busy for a month straight. A football game played out across the TV’s screen. The sound was turned too low for me to hear. Wouldn’ta mattered none nohow. Football was one of them sports I could take or leave. I only watched it now if Riley wanted to, and that was pretty much ever time a game was on.

  Once a football player, always a football player.

  I leaned over and untied my boots, toed ‘em off and set ‘em to one side behind the front door. Through the bay window in the living room, I spotted steam coming off the covered grill and frowned. I was right on time, just like always, and here he done started without me.

  The door leading onto the deck opened and Riley stepped into the living room, an empty plate in one hand. His handsome face melted into a grin soon as he spotted me. “Hey, baby.”

  I tried not to look pleased. The endearment was fairly new, something Riley started doing right about the time Belinda Arrowood clocked his noggin and had Harley Jimpson toss me to a lake monster. Teus took care of my scars when he gifted me the tattoos on my left breast, but Riley weren’t so fortunate as to have a minor deity on his side. He was still recovering from the blow to that auburn head of his, and to his manhood, too, I reckoned. Having a woman take him down with a shovel musta stung, even if she done it behind his back, the sneak.

  I never liked Belinda. That tidbit was widely knowed and only served to prick my own wounded pride, so I let it go. Live in the moment. That was my new motto. Or it would be if I had a motto.

  “You started without me,” I said.

  “Couldn’t wait.”

  “You get my message?”

  “Yeah. Got a call in to a local forest ranger. I’ll let you know when he calls me back.”

  He crossed the room on bare feet, bent down and captured my mouth with his, and tingling heat rushed through me quicker’n spit. I tilted my head up and kissed him back, and was so caught up in the passion sparking between us, I almost missed the catch in his breathing.

  That’d sounded more like pain than passion.

  I pulled away and dropped back on my heels. “You ok?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  Yeah, and I was the Queen of England. “Your hip bothering you again?”

  “I’m fine, baby.” His gaze slid away from mine and landed somewhere across my right shoulder. “Mama made a coconut cake yesterday. Sent two big slabs home with me after church.”

  My stomach growled right on cue. Anne Treadwell’s coconut cake was not to be missed. That was a firm rule during my childhood and it weren’t one I was liable to break now. I also weren’t fool enough to let that hitched in breath go.

  “What’d you do this afternoon?” I asked.

  Riley backed up a step, then swiveled around and headed toward the kitchen. “Went out on the boat.”

  “Water skiing?” His shoulders bunched up ever so slightly under the thin fabric of an old Army t-shirt, and I sighed. “Your hip is bothering you.”

  “Only a little. Not enough to keep me from enjoying the company.”

  But maybe enough for him to have to take a pain pill. They put him right out more often than not, and that spelled an early evening for both of us. A tiny shaft of disappointment wormed its way through the sheer thrill of just being with him, and I pushed it right back out again. Riley couldn’t help the shrapnel what’d torn his hip up when he was serving Uncle Sam. I had no call resenting his service, nor what it’d done to him neither.

  I followed him into the kitchen, scrooched my hand up under the hem of his shirt, and hooked a finger around a belt loop. “We can skip the movie tonight.”

  He cast a narrow-eyed glance over his shoulder at me. “Forget it, Sunny. Sunday is for dinner and a movie.”

  “I let you have your way, ever night’d be dinner and a movie night,” I retorted, and let go of his pants. “You’re stretching out on the couch after supper and that’s that.”

  He set the plate in the sink, then turned all the way around and settled his hands on my hips, an oddly satisfied expression on his face. “We’ll both stretch out, but the movie plays.”

  I huffed out a breath right into another kiss. That devil. He been trying to sweet talk me into sex one baby step at a time, and I played right into his hands. I relaxed into the kiss anyhow, enjoying it same as him. Oh, well. Couldn’t pretend I didn’t want more with Riley, seeing as how I wanted him since I figured out what men and women was supposed to do together. That was a long time to wait for one man, but I reckoned he was worth ever second I spent on him and then some.

  Chapter Two

  I got up early the next morning and hustled through a shower, grinning like an idjit the whole time. Sure enough, Riley took a pain pill after supper and about passed out on me, but we ended up spending a good half hour cuddled up on the couch before then. I left right after the first time he slumped into me, but not before he sneaked a final kiss.

  I snickered into the hot spray pouring over my face. Even half doped up, Riley Treadwell’s kisses could scorch paint off a porch swing.

  BobbiJean was waiting at the kitchen table when I got outta the shower and dressed. She was gnawing on her thumbnail and a frown creased her pretty forehead. A brown lunch sack sat on the table in front of her.

  I pulled out a chair across from her and tugged on a boot. “Morning. Is that a sack full of Jazz’ biscuits?”

  “Filled with country ham.” She tucked her hands into her lap and attempted a wobbly smile. “Hope you don’t mind me waiting here for you. When you didn’t answer the door, I figured your date ran over last night.”

  I shook my head, sending strands of still-wet hair swishing around my neck. It had run over, but not the way she meant. “You come on in whenever you need to. How’s the wedding plans coming along?”

  The worry lifted off her face, replaced by a bright smile. “Oh, they’re all set. You’re still bringing Riley, right?”

  “Far as I know.” I tugged the other boot on over Daddy’s hunting knife and adjusted both to each other. “I appreciate you taking time to go shopping with me again.”

  “Well, if it gets you into another dress.”

  “Funny.”

  Last time I wore a dress was my first real date with Riley. He took me to Rhapsody in Rabun, a big charity shindig. BobbiJean and Missy, my uncle Fame’s gal, carried me shopping back then, but that dress was a mite too fancy for a simple country wedding where the guests sat on hay bales and passed home brewed moonshine amongst themselves between vows.

  “
What’s eating your craw?” I asked.

  Her bow mouth pursed into a moue. “Something got into the chickens last night. Ate about half of ‘em up. Jazz is fit to be tied, and the wedding just around the corner, too.”

  I checked the ties on my boots, stomped ‘em against the floor good just to make sure they was on tight. “Probably a fox. Want me to check it out?”

  She leaned forward and pressed one palm against the table in front of me. “Oh, would you Sunny? It’d be such a load off my mind.”

  I patted her hand, about as affectionate as I got with folks outside my family, Riley excepted. “Don’t you worry none a’tall, BobbiJean. That fox is as good as got.”

  Before we left, I jotted down a note in the brand new, handy dandy organizer I got with some of the money the Greenwood Five paid me to solve their monster problem. It’d put ‘em in trouble with the law, so I hadn’t expected to get paid, but David made good on his word and choked fair shares outta ever body. The fee was enough to keep me in the black for months, on top of getting the driveway scraped and graveled, and having a mechanic work over Daddy’s IROC.

  Fame’d got a kick outta the irony, particularly where Belinda was concerned. Weren’t no love lost there and never had been, but that was on account of him taking me in when Mama killed Daddy the way she done. Calling Fame overprotective of his favorite niece was an understatement if ever there was one.

  Notes made, me and BobbiJean headed out for a round of shopping. I practiced my cajoling skills on her, and danged if by the end of the day, her mind weren’t firmly back on her upcoming nuptials, exactly where it shoulda been all along.

  It was near dark when I turned into my driveway, parked, and said goodbye to a glowing BobbiJean. Sky was clear all day, that crisp blue only October brings. A chill hung in the air, not near enough to keep a body indoors when something called ‘em out, the way it done me. It’d been three days since I visited Henry’s spot, and that was about two days too long, far as I was concerned.