Love and Ordinary Creatures

by Gwyn Hyman Rubio

  “Chef Louie might keep the Treasure Chest open this winter.”

  “I wouldn’t line-cook for that sleazeball if that was the only job around.”

  “Well, then, what about Caruso?”

  “We’re taking him with us.”

  “But he’s never liked Joe.”

  “His attitude is changing.”

  “I could take care of him while you’re gone.”

  “Leave Caruso?” Clarissa says, her tone incredulous.

  “For just a few months,” Beryl says. “He’d keep me company.”

  “I’d never do that.”

  “Still…”

  “No way I’d leave him behind.”

  “Ya sure don’t mind leaving me.”

  “Oh, so that’s where this is heading.”

  “Who will I talk to?”

  “Let’s see—your huge family, the Art League crowd, and every person on this island you’ve known since you were a kid.”

  “Hain’t none of ’em you,” Beryl says in a pouting voice.

  “Other than art school in Savannah and the trip you took to Mexico, you’ve never wanted to be anywhere else but here.”

  “True, but here won’t be the same without you.”

  “I’ll miss you, too,” Clarissa says.

  “You’ll get bored,” Beryl warns her.

  “No, I’ll get to know him better.”

  “He’ll be away a lot—studying.”

  “Beryl, there are restaurants in Chapel Hill. I can work, you know.”

  “Well, I want a letter a week from ya, when the mail’s called over.”

  “And I’ll be coming back every few weeks to check on the cottage. We’ll be seeing each other all the time.”

  “Ya gonna marry him?” Beryl asks, out of nowhere.

  “He hasn’t asked me,” Clarissa says.

  “If he did, what would ya say?”

  “A few days ago, I would’ve screamed no! Today, I think yes, but you’re moving way too fast for me, Beryl.”

  Yes, Caruso thinks. That simple word rains down on him, waterlogs his feathers, and renders him as flightless as the kakapo. If Clarissa says yes to Joe, what will become of him?

  “I’ll be right back,” Clarissa says when someone knocks loudly at the front door.

  Rap. Rap. Rap. This sound has been weighing on Caruso lately.

  She blows him a kiss en route to the living room. “Hey, Rick,” she says seconds later. “What brings you here? What’s going on?”

  “Hurricane watch,” he says. “Emily’s official now. Wanted to make sure you’d heard.”

  “No, I hadn’t,” she tells him.

  “Could be here by this weekend.”

  “Tropical storm one second, hurricane the next. I guess she’s finally made up her mind,” Clarissa says, laughing.

  As always, they discuss their plan. She’ll talk to his uncle. Rick will pick up the supplies at the hardware store. The staff will batten down Crab Cakes. For it is the way of humans to prepare for storms, to listen to forecasts, to decide if they’ll stay or leave. Their nature demands a game plan.

  Caruso sends his thoughts back to his homeland—to the brilliant scarlet wings of Australian king parrots and the green wings of their hens streaking west across the sky, to the feathered tribes of Major Mitchell’s Cockatoos winging toward the outback, to the white flocks of Short-billed Corellas flying away from the paddocks. All birds are intuitively aware of approaching storms. They send out a universal shriek of alarm and immediately head inland—seeking shelter beneath cliffs and in forests—anywhere far from the water. For it is the way of birds to trust their instincts—to fly away from dangerous weather.

  Thirty-three

  “I plan to ride this one out,” Skeeter says, revealing a newly acquired tattoo of a blue mermaid on his upper right arm.

  In his cage beneath the sprawling live oak, Caruso watches the staff’s ebb and flow as they crisscross one another’s paths, looking more like worker ants than human beings.

  “Uh-huh, and have you even been through one before?” Pops asks, a touch of ridicule in his voice.

  “No, this will be my first,” Skeeter says, hoisting up two patio chairs in the crook of each elbow.

  “It won’t be exciting, if that’s what you think,” Pops says. “You’ll be bored one minute, terrified the next, and if you survive it, you’ll never want to do it again.”

  Although Skeeter has no comeback, Caruso can tell from his locked jaw that he’s determined to stay and from Pops’s annoyed face that he thinks Skeeter’s a fool.

  Sallie clumps past Devon, who is shuffling through a stack of plywood sheets in the middle of the patio. “Are you worried about the hurricane?” she asks Caruso, peeking into his cage.

  He greets her with a squawk.

  “I overheard the two lovers talking. Said there’s no way they’re gonna stay here. Gonna slip you into the back of the van and catch the ferry to the mainland. I don’t blame them. A category three, maybe. Hundred-mile-an-hour winds,” she says, whistling through her teeth.

  She didn’t have to tell him that Clarissa would leave. Time and again, she has vowed never to ride out a hurricane, regardless of its strength. Last year, the instant she finished boarding up, they had taken an early ferry to Cedar Island and then driven inland.

  “Guess she’ll see how y’all get along,” Sallie says, craning her neck toward him. “Just a little experiment before she moves to Chapel Hill. What do you think about that, Caruso?”

  He gives her a wary, upward glance.

  “Naturally, she’ll take you with her,” Sallie goes on. “No matter what, Miss Goody-Goody will do the right thing, but it won’t be like it is here on the island. Chapel Hill is a big city, with rules and regulations, and life there will be different.” She runs her long fingernails across the bars of his cage. “What will you do with yourself when they leave you for hours all alone? What if she likes it there and decides to stay? What if they get married?”

  Uneasy, he looks away.

  “She’s in a tough place, Caruso. She loves Joe but feels responsible for you.” Sallie hesitates for a second, breathing heavily through her nose; then, in a soft, secretive voice, she says, “But I know what she could do.”

  He faces her again. She pauses, her eyes as round as magnifying glasses burning through him. “She could give you to me,” she says. “We get along pretty well, don’t we? This way, you could stay here, right here on our little island, and Clarissa could visit you anytime she wanted.”

  He fidgets on his perch, swings his head—no.

  “I mean it,” she says, her tone earnest. “I could speak to her right now, if you like.”

  Caruso hears the pleading in her voice.

  “Think it over, Caruso. I could be your new Clarissa.”

  “I heard that,” Devon says, making his way toward her with a plywood sheet beneath his arm.

  “Heard what?” Sallie sniffs.

  “We’re all working our asses off,” Devon says. “All you do is torment that poor bird.”

  “That’s not true,” Sallie says, raring back her shoulders. “I really would take him.”

  “But Clarissa didn’t ask you, did she?”

  “I only wanted to help,” she says as he starts for the side yard.

  “Don’t mistreat him then,” Devon says over his shoulder.

  “I’d never hurt an animal,” Sallie says, her eyes crackling with emotion. “’Specially not Caruso. I love him.”

  “I know you do,” Pops says, walking over.

  “Devon never understands me,” she says in a wounded voice.

  “That’s because he hasn’t known you for as long as I have,” Pops says, squeezing her shoulder. “We need you back in the kitchen.”

  “Okay. Okay,” she says as they retrace their steps to the glass-paneled door, leaving Caruso alone.

  He listens to the anxious scritching of sparrows flying above the patio and to the buzzing of
a drill as Joe and Clarissa hang the metal shutters up front. Hammers pound as nearby businesses nail plywood over panes of glass. Winches grind while sportsmen secure boats. Cars grumble in line to board the ferries. Every O’cocker is battening down his island home.

  Swooping above the harbor, the seagulls shriek shrilly, aware of the changing weather. In the distance, the wild ponies whicker and neigh. How will they manage? Caruso wonders, although he knows they’ve been enduring these storms for years. Back when Blackbeard sailed the waters, they survived shipwrecks, swam to shore, and thrived in the saltwater marshes and scraggly woods, digging beneath the sand to find pockets of rainwater, a lifesaving gift from the same storms that threatened them. Weaving through all of this racket, as clear and pure as Jean Ritchie’s voice, is the chiming of the church bells on Sunday.

  “You’ve done enough. You should leave tonight,” Clarissa is saying to Joe when they round the corner.

  “Not before I board up your cottage,” he says.

  “Beryl’s brothers always help me.”

  “We’re gonna load my van, and the three of us will leave together,” Joe insists. “I won’t have it any other way.” Wrapping his arms around her waist, he plants a kiss on her forehead.

  Just like lovebirds, Caruso thinks.

  “You’re so damn stubborn,” she says, laughing, pulling away from him. “Why can’t you behave like all the other tourists?”

  “They don’t have you,” he says.

  On tiptoes, she kisses his cheek.

  Radiant in love is she, Caruso thinks, his heart bittersweet.

  The two of them start walking once more, every few steps pausing to kiss in the hazy sunlight. Caruso lifts his head and sees Jorge, Amelia, and Sallie stashing pots and pans into cabinets, just as Rick whisks by with locks looped around his middle fingers. Next, Caruso shifts toward the dining room and, through the bushy hedge, spots Manuel with a stack of tablecloths. Behind him, Pops is carefully removing two large oil paintings of Pamlico Sound. After a few seconds, Pops draws open the barroom door, pokes his head out, and yells, “Clarissa, where do you want me to put these paintings?”

  She turns in the direction of his voice. “Hang on,” she says, setting out toward him. “I’ll help you with them.” Meanwhile, Joe squats beside the plywood sheets.

  Caruso closes his eyes and breathes in the scent of salt, much stronger now. The crape myrtles rustle in the short bursts of wind, and the limbs of the live oak rasp above his cage. From the bakery next door comes a thunderous crash, followed by a rush of curse words. Somewhere, a door slams, and a child begins to wail.

  Caruso fixes his eyes again on Clarissa, who once more has her eyes on Joe as he sorts through the stack of plywood, choosing the biggest sheets to nail over the fragile panes of glass.

  Life from beginning to end is a struggle, Caruso thinks. Mates loving and protecting each other, mates loving and protecting their young. From the bottom of inland cliffs, the barnacle geese of Greenland call to their chicks, and they respond fearlessly, skidding down the rock face, toppling head over heels between boulders, dropping off the edges of bluffs until they reach their parents and follow them to the nearest brook. Baby grebes climb atop the backs of their mothers, who upraise their wings to prevent them from falling off as they glide through the water. A robin will sacrifice itself to protect its offspring.

  Life is a struggle for every bird on this planet, Caruso muses, for every living creature, for every human being. Life is fraught with danger but also, he believes, made bearable by love. Sallie wants to take care of him because she longs to love and be loved. And Caruso knows now that Joe loves him—that, like any other creature protecting its young, he will do what he must to keep him from harm, to keep Clarissa’s tender heart from breaking.

  Thirty-four

  “I’ve never cut it this close before,” Clarissa says, nervously biting her bottom lip.

  Earlier this morning, she and Joe had boarded up the replaced glass top of the kitchen door and about half of the windows in the sunroom before she had suddenly realized they were running late.

  “Don’t worry,” Joe reassures her. “This storm is moving like frozen molasses. Besides, there’ll be more ferries leaving later on today.”

  Clarissa stares over his shoulder beyond him into space. “I’ve dealt with tornadoes my whole life,” she explains. “They’re hit and miss. Might skip over you, might not, but hurricanes are a different kind of animal. They spare no one.”

  What kind of creature might a hurricane be? Caruso wonders. Not like a lone shark—stealthy, quick, and focused when it attacks. More like a school of sharks—high on the scent of blood, frenzied and unstoppable, when they strike. But then, what does Caruso know? Once he had compared Joe to a shark simply because he resented the man. Blinded by self-deception, Caruso had spared no one but himself.

  “Look,” Joe says, thrusting out his rough but steady hands. “Am I nervous?”

  “Nope,” she says with a faint half-grin.

  “Emily’s two hundred miles away.”

  “So?”

  “So…we’ve got plenty of time.”

  She eyes him dubiously.

  “Trust me,” he says with authority. “The ferries will only stop running when the wind gets too strong…hours from now.”

  From his cage, Caruso watches as she gathers together a box of keepsakes—the photograph of her grandmother from the bookshelf, the fragmented pieces of the Wedgwood plate carefully wrapped in tissue paper, along with her favorite cookbooks and parrot books. She hurries over to the table, from which she grabs his almost-depleted bag of parrot pellets, his yellow rattle, and two pinecones. “Here,” she says to Joe.

  “How about a Ziploc bag to put these in?”

  “Sure,” she says, making a beeline to the kitchen.

  Caruso listens to the grating of wood against metal as she opens and closes a counter drawer.

  “Big enough?” she asks from the doorway, a gallon-sized bag dangling from her fingers.

  “Yeah, that’ll do,” Joe says, shambling over. He takes the bag, brings her hand to his lips, and kisses it. It is an elegant David Niven gesture. “You’re soft everywhere,” he says dreamily. “When you’re ninety, you’ll still be soft.”

  “Right now, I’m not sure I’ll be around next week,” she jokes back.

  “Oh, ye of little faith.”

  “Oh, ye of too much,” she counters, flashing him a big smile.

  Holding hands, they cross over the threshold into the kitchen. “I’m not about to leave my cast-iron pot,” she says, thumping it into a box.

  “It could survive anything,” Joe says with a laugh.

  “And certainly not my knife.”

  Caruso envisions her meticulously folding a tea towel around its ergonomic handle and blade of German steel.

  “Now, what else?” she asks moments later. “Let’s see…the deck furniture should be locked in the toolshed. Doggone it!” she says. “Where did I put that lock and key?”

  “In a very safe place, I bet,” he says ironically. She asks him to guess where it might be, and he says, “Tucked away with your extra house key.”

  “Maybe,” she says as they come back into the sunroom. Going over to the painted chest, she eases out the bottom drawer, shuffles some papers, and brings up a manila envelope. Opening the flap, she thrusts her hand in and fishes out the house key along with a delicate silver bracelet that Caruso has never seen before. “I’ve been hunting for this since last summer,” she says, swinging it from her index finger. “But no lock and key,” she sighs, giving the envelope a shake.

  “On a hook inside the shed,” he offers.

  “I’ll check,” she says, putting the envelope back, leaving.

  “She needs me to balance her out, doesn’t she, Caruso?” Joe says after the screen door bangs.

  Erecting his crown of feathers, Caruso squawks.

  “Whenever she’s cooking, she never forgets a thing, never mis
ses a detail, no matter how small, how trivial, but the rest of the time, she’s a big-picture kind of gal.”

  But she remembers every little detail when it comes to me, Caruso thinks proudly. Pride cometh before the fall, he recalls and immediately admonishes himself.

  “I’m the detail guy,” Joe says, his tone thoughtful. “I guess what they say is true—opposites do attract.”

  He’ll get no argument from me, Caruso thinks. After all, isn’t he, a parrot, attracted to a human being?

  “It’s our differences that make us work,” Joe goes on. “I’m easygoing, while she’s intense. I’m happy with myself, but she’s always wondering if she did the right thing. I don’t ask too many questions, whereas she can’t stop asking them. And you, my fine feathered friend, are a perfect blend of the two of us. So, taken together, we’re a trio—a healthy whole.”

  A trio…a healthy whole, Caruso thinks dolefully.

  “I love Clarissa, and you love Clarissa,” he says. “She loves both of us, and she and I love you.”

  Aren’t we right back where we started? Caruso thinks, confused. Another human game plan—choosing the proper role for him in their relationship, defining his essence, determining his fate.

  “I found it!” Clarissa yells, her voice booming through the open window.

  “Duty calls, buddy,” Joe says on his way to the back door.

  Through the windows, Caruso sees them carrying each chair into the tool shed, and after that the small patio table. Clarissa waits beside the shed door while Joe departs again and then returns with the heavy wooden lounger. Together they maneuver it through the empty space. No sooner do they step outside than she ropes her arms around his waist, leans in, and kisses him, her red hair flying in the blustery wind. A pang of jealousy nips at Caruso, and he turns away from them to see blossoms of crape myrtle whipping through the air like white and pink confetti. Plywood sheets are nailed over the windows next door, and the car is not in the driveway, letting him know that Ruthie and her parents have already left. Caruso wonders if Skeeter is hunkering down, if he stocked up on plastic gallons of water and tins of food, if he bought a flashlight and a battery-powered radio. Yesterday he asked Clarissa if he could take a few hours off to secure his bungalow. When he came back to Crab Cakes, he was wearing a cap with No Fear stitched above the brim. “Let’s see how fearless you are when the wind blows the water out of Pamlico Sound,” Pops told him.