Sanibel Scribbles

by Christine Lemmon

  “Then give me a hand, come on,” said Evelyn, stepping onto Vicki’s reluctant hand. “We have no choice. We need fluid in our bodies. I’ll be back with refreshments in a minute. It’s a matter of life or death.”

  She made her way through the tiny window frame like a spider disappearing through a crack.

  Vicki waited outside the darkened window until she suddenly heard a bloodcurdling scream followed by what sounded like someone practicing the drums, only there was nothing musical about it.

  “Clear the way,” yelled Evelyn’s voice from inside. Just then, a small, dark figure came hurtling out the window and right over Vicki’s head. “A flying rat,” screamed Evelyn. “Take cover.”

  Vicki screamed the way a woman might if a flying rat were just over head. In fact, that’s exactly what was happening, only she didn’t know if the thing was alive or dead, nor exactly where it had landed.

  “Okay, so now I’m a rat murderer,” said Evelyn, poking her head out the window. “Here, catch.” She tossed a bag of marshmallows followed by heavy logs and a bottle of rum out the window with the same velocity as she had thrown the rat. Vicki caught the bottle of rum and let the rest of the items crash into a pile on the sand.

  “Evelyn! Where’s the ice tea? Where’s the ice? What’s all of this?” she asked.

  “Trust me,” answered Evelyn.

  “Why should I trust you?” she asked in disbelief. “Follow me,” said Evelyn.

  “I don’t know if I want to.” But she did, and they caught the trail to the spot where Denver had told them not to light a bonfire. Evelyn bent down and tossed some logs in place.

  “Why are there logs here if we’re not to build a fire?” Vicki asked.

  “Who knows. Nothing in life makes any sense to me,” said Evelyn as she pulled a hidden container of lighter fluid out from under her pajama shirt. She poured it onto the logs, then pulled matches out from her pocket. Within minutes, the women were roasting marshmallows over a horribly weak bonfire on an unbearably hot Florida summer night.

  “If we get caught, we’ll get kicked off the island,” said Vicki.

  “How are we gonna get caught? This fire is no bigger than the smoke from my cigarette.”

  “That’s true, but the fact that we’re standing here roasting marshmallows over a cigarette-sized bonfire is absolutely nuts,” declared Vicki as she opened a Hershey’s bar and smeared it onto her marshmallow. “I already knew you were crazy, but now I’m starting to think I’m crazy.”

  “Well, don’t look at me. I’m just a chick with PMS. It’s the only time I eat chocolate. It’s the only time I eat anything the least bit sweet. I hate sweet stuff.”

  Vicki stared for a moment at Evelyn and started to laugh. She couldn’t stop. Tired, irritated from bugs and from heat and now from the summer bonfire that might get them both kicked off the island, she couldn’t stop laughing. Tears rolled down her cheeks and her stomach hurt. Evelyn stared at her with a smile, then lit her cigarette in the fire.

  “Babe, you’re still in the sweet stage.”

  “What?” Vicki wiped the tears from her eyes.

  “The sweet stage. Tell me something—how do you like your coffee?”

  “My coffee?” asked Vicki, landing from her flight of laughter as she answered.

  “Yeah, your coffee, and be specific. Order it like you’d order it in one of those coffee shops.”

  “Okay.” She stared into the fire, not sure where this was leading. “Well, come on. We don’t have all night,” snapped Evelyn.

  “I’m in line,” said Vicki. “I’m at a coffee shop, right?”

  “It’s two o’clock in the morning, and you think there’s a line for coffee?”

  “Okay. I’ll have a tall, nonfat mocha with whipped cream, please.”

  “Ya want extra chocolate?” Evelyn asked in a fake tone.

  “Chocolate shavings on top will do just fine, and a few chocolate- covered espresso beans, please.”

  “Evelyn pretended to be fixing a make-believe cup of coffee, then reached over to hand Vicki the bottle of rum, looking like the old lady handing over the goods in Hansel and Gretel.

  “No lid. I eat the whipped cream right away.”

  Evelyn rolled her eyes in frustration. “What else, dearie? Any added sugar?” she asked sarcastically.

  “Yes, one blue packet. I’ll add it myself. Oh, and a chocolate-covered almond biscotti. That’s all.”

  “I knew it. I knew it.” Evelyn grabbed the bottle back and took a swig. “Let me tell you something, babe. I drink Folgers, and I drink it black. I brew, pour, and drink. Nothing more. You see, life, like coffee, progresses. And as you grow older and move through life, you’ll eventually skip the sugar, the chocolate, and the whipped cream, all in stages. You’ll go to that one or two percent milk and you’ll only drink non-flavored beans, the more bitter the better. But hey, it’s all part of growing old. But soon, you’ll tolerate it less and less sweet, and come to my age, you’ll drink black coffee and you’ll like it.”

  “I haven’t ordered a caffè mocha in months. I don’t even remember switching to caffè lattes.”

  “Told ya. It’s happening already,” said Evelyn.

  “In fact, whenever I brew my own coffee, I don’t squeeze chocolate in it anymore.”

  “You’re on the fast track to being bitter,” added Evelyn. “Your taste buds are changing. Me? I skipped the sweet stage altogether.”

  “Evelyn, you said earlier, when we were on the bridge, that your present life is Hell. Let’s figure out some way to make your life better.”

  “Oh, shut up! What are you going to do? Plop some whipped cream in my coffee?”

  “That’s not what I had in mind,” said Vicki.

  “No, I don’t deserve better. When I was a little girl I dreamed of Prince Charming picking me up on his pony and taking me off to Fort Myers Beach and all. I wanted to live in a mansion with hanging glass chandeliers someday.”

  “Evelyn, you can live within that mansion. You can build it yourself, one brick at a time,” said Vicki.

  “Oh yeah? You sound like Ruth. She says I can surround myself with positive people and build peaceful, beautiful walls around myself. I told her I prefer surrounding myself with angry, dangerous men. I like living within the crumbled-down walls of a dump.”

  “I do not believe you. I don’t think you like how or where you’re living,” said Vicki.

  “Yeah, well, I’ve never had much to offer. No brains, no money, no education.”

  “Tell me, when did those cards of yours stop predicting your future and instead start dictating it?”

  “Whoa! You like getting kind of deep. Couldn’t tell ya that.”

  “Evelyn, you deserve peace of mind, happiness. You deserve to be treated well, nothing less. It’s your right to be treated like a person.”

  “And how do I make men treat me like a person?”

  “Treat yourself like that first, and set some protective boundaries.”

  “Ahh, get a grip, my little romanticist. You still believe in those rosy little happily ever after tales, don’t you? My prince came for me in a broken-down truck. Yep, he tied me up and tossed me in. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Oh, come on. I’m teasing.”

  “I don’t think it’s that funny.”

  “Girl, you’ve never been treated badly by a man in your life, so what do you want to say to me?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. You will survive!” Now she knew that dancing and singing to Gloria Gaynor’s music with Rebecca did serve a higher purpose.

  “You think so?” asked Evelyn. “You think I’ll survive?”

  “Sure. You will survive. I’m assuming that at first you were afraid, you were petrified, I mean, how he did you wrong, and how to get along,” She said, quoting from the song.

  Evelyn stared with interest, so she continued, “And now he’s back, from outer space.”

  “He sure is, babe. And it’s not even Mars,” added Evelyn. “There�
�s gotta be a planet way far out there that these men come from, and it’s definitely not Mars. It’s worse.”

  “Well, you should have changed that stupid lock,” recited Vicki. “If you had known for just one second he’d be back to bother you.”

  “True,” added Evelyn. “But I was falling apart mentally, you know, at him trying to get to me.”

  “Of course, you thought you’d crumble,” she said, still quoting. “You thought you’d lie down and die.”

  “Exactly. That’s exactly how I felt.”

  “Oh no, not you, Evelyn! You’re not that chained-up little person.”

  “I don’t want to be,” she said.

  “You’re not! And ya know, why? You’re saving all your loving for someone who will love you!”

  Evelyn wiped her nose and sniffled. “Vicki?”

  “Yes, Evelyn?”

  “We’re building a bonfire in summer, and we’re drunk.”

  “Speak for yourself. I’m not drunk,” said Vicki. “And you’re the one who built the fire.”

  “Then I’m drunk, and I built a summer bonfire, and now it’s growing. Did Denver give you that strange tour of the island?” she asked.

  “He sure did. According to Denver, this bonfire spot is the ‘no-no’ point.”

  “I don’t know how deep an individual you are, but I’m pretty deep,” said Evelyn. “I figured his tour out. The boathouse is both birth and death. This is the toddler stage where we learn what we can and cannot do in life. The picnic table symbolizes falling in love, and the lighthouse is like a midlife crisis, where we put to rest some of the things we wanted to do in life and continue on with others.”

  “And the bridge is that point in life when we all look back,” added Vicki.

  “Hey, I didn’t catch on to that one. You’re good,” she said. “But Denver, he’s a strange one.”

  “He is who he is,” said Vicki. “He’d probably call you and me two disobedient toddlers playing with fire.”

  “Probably, and our fire is growing, you know. Maybe we better kill it before it burns the island down.”

  “How?” asked Vicki. “How are you going to put it out?”

  “I don’t know. You gotta go pee?”

  “Don’t even think about it,” said Vicki.

  “Relax, just kidding,” she said. “We’ll pour the rest of the rum over it.”

  The next night Old Mr. Two-Face’s fever was gone, but he looked unusually dark and lonely, perhaps because Simon had taken Ruth, Howard, Denver, and the others by boat to Captiva Island to go dancing. Vicki felt tired and once again planned a quiet, restful night alone as she kicked open Mr. Screened Front Door. As she walked down the hall, she could hear Evelyn ranting and raving, her voice ringing out like a lighthouse foghorn gone mad.

  “Vicki, is that you? Girl, you’ve gotta help me!” she cried out from her room upstairs.

  Vicki ran up the narrow flight of stairs leading into Evelyn’s attic to find her frantically hanging a pillowcase over the window facing the water with thumbtacks.

  “I hate this window. I hate what I see when I look out.”

  “What do you see?”

  “Too much. Way too much.”

  “It’s just water,” said Vicki.

  “Wide-open water,” added Evelyn.

  Once the last thumbtack was secured, Evelyn rushed over to her closet and began searching the insides of her shoes. “Oh, honey, we’re all in danger. You, me, everyone living here.” Her mascara streaked her face and made her look like a rabid zebra. “Oh, damn, where’s my sage? I brought a ton of it out here so I could burn it and rid this place of negative energy.”

  Vicki walked over to the dresser and spotted the deck of cards. “Tarot cards, O Tarot cards, tell us, where is Evelyn’s sage?” She waited. “Evelyn, they’re telling me it’s under the bed.”

  Evelyn jumped up from the closet floor, then walked over to the bed and lifted the bed skirt, peeking under. “Well honey, I sure ain’t looking for this, although it could come in handy!”

  She pulled a huge knife out from under the bed. It resembled a sword from medieval days and might have been a souvenir from a Renaissance Fair.

  “Evelyn! What are you doing with that thing?”

  “This might just save my life, your life, and everyone’s on the island life,” she said, sliding the weapon back under her bed. “But that’s not what I’m looking for. Help me! My sage has gotta be in here somewhere, unless someone stole it.”

  “Sage is for cooking,” said Vicki. “What are you going to make?”

  “I’m not cooking a thing. I already told you. It’s for cleansing the air of negative energies.”

  “What kind of negative energies?”

  “I don’t know, but I sense a lot of negativity up here in this old attic. I also sense my crazy boyfriend may come to the island and do us all harm.”

  Together, they continued searching each of Evelyn’s shoes and eventually found the bag of sage stuffed inside her smelly white tennis shoe.

  “Honey, you seem uptight. Before we rid this place of evil, I think you need a reading,” said Evelyn, grabbing her deck of cards.

  “I don’t know,” said Vicki. “I’ve given it thought and don’t feel good looking to a deck of cards for information concerning my life, my future.”

  Evelyn sat down on the floor and dumped her deck of cards out of the box. “You crossed paths with me for a reason,” she told Vicki. “I have access to the spirits, working through these cards, and I believe I am supposed to give you an important message. This is probably why you and I have met in the first place. Let’s begin.”

  Vicki fidgeted with the tiny gold cross hanging around her neck and, for a moment, felt ashamed that it shared the chain with a shark tooth. “Should I be thinking about anything right now?” asked Vicki, taking the cards in her hands.

  “Yes. As you shuffle, I want you to think about something you want an answer about.”

  As the cards flipped through Vicki’s hands, her mind began to silently pray. Dear Heavenly Father, I want to trust in you. I want to face uncertainty in life like a confident vessel moving forward through dark waters. I also want to know when storms are coming my way so I don’t get hit. How can I turn around or take another route in time if I don’t even know they’re approaching? This is why I am sitting here on the floor touching these cards.

  Suddenly, in an attempt to form a bridge with the pictorial cards, Vicki missed, and they flew all over.

  “Now, now, girl, shuffling ain’t your talent, so don’t try overachieving.” Evelyn laughed raucously.

  Starting over, Vicki shuffled conservatively; no bridges this time. Evelyn took the large deck—fifty-six suit cards plus twenty-two cards with special images—and arranged the cards on the floor.

  “These pictures represent the forces of nature and virtues and vices of humanity,” she explained. “Okay, according to this first card, hmm. That’s odd. There seems to be a block on you tonight.”

  “What kind of block?” asked Vicki.

  “A spiritual force of some sort, honey.”

  “What else are they saying?”

  “Nothing, but I’m getting a powerful feeling that we’re done with the cards tonight. Who’s Jeremy?”

  “I don’t know a Jeremy. Are the cards telling you that?”

  “No, it’s not coming from the cards. I’m just getting an urge to tell you the name Jeremy will come to mean something to you.”

  “Nope. I don’t know a Jeremy and never have.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You will soon. That’s all. Your reading is done for now.”

  Evelyn jumped up, walked over to her bed, and picked up the bag of sage. She pulled it out of the bag, struck a match, and lit it. Once the tip of the sage had begun to burn, she lightly blew out the fire and let it smoke. She broke off a smoking piece of the sage and handed it to Vicki.

  “Here. Walk around the room with me as you hold up this burning sage.”r />
  “What?”

  “Just do it, quickly, before it burns out. It’ll rid the room of negativity.”

  Evelyn opened a tiny box on top of her nightstand and pulled out a flash card. “This is a picture of Michael the Archangel. I’m going to hold it as I walk so he can guide us.”

  Together the women walked to each of the corners of the room, holding the burning sage high above their heads as they went.

  “This stuff smells a whole lot better atop a turkey,” said Vicki. “Or is it rosemary that goes on turkey?”

  “Quiet. Concentrate on getting rid of the negative energies. Michael the Archangel will help us.”

  “Evelyn,” said Vicki a minute later. “Open that drawer over there.”

  “What drawer?”

  “That bottom one,” stated Vicki.

  “Why?”

  “There’s a Bible in it.”

  “I didn’t bring any Bible out here.”

  “Doesn’t matter. There’s one in there.”

  “How do you know?” asked Evelyn.

  “There’s almost always a Bible in a nightstand drawer.”

  Evelyn set her flashcard of Michael the Archangel down on the floor, knelt down, and opened the drawer next to her bed. She tossed a pile of old magazines on the floor and, under used tissues, found a red Bible.

  “Have you been snooping in my room?” she asked Vicki.

  “Of course not. Here, let me see it,” Vicki said, taking the Bible from Evelyn, then placing it on the floor. With her right arm holding the burning sage high up in the air, she closed her eyes and flipped the Bible open randomly with her left hand. She opened her eyes, glanced down and read out loud Jeremiah 44:33-34 for the first time in her life: “‘They provoked me to anger by burning incense and by worshipping other gods that neither they nor you nor your fathers ever knew. Again and again I sent my servants and the prophets, who said, “Do not do this detestable thing that I hate!”’

  Vicki could feel her mouth falling open and tears forming in her eyes.

  “Evelyn, come with me. We’ve got to rinse this incense immediately. We’re not supposed to be doing this. God loves us, and apparently He doesn’t want us burning this to some entity we do not know.”