Blue Bottle Tree
Page 23
“Not today, Victor.”
Out of nowhere, Seven sprang and tackled him to the ground. Thank God. Victor was bigger and they wrestled, his cast made a formidable club. Victor grunted and held Seven down, choked him with his cast. The vial had rolled toward me and I grabbed it. I came out from hiding and made ready to splash it all in Victor’s face. But he stopped and relaxed, loosened his grip on Seven.
“No, Penny, you don’t want to do that.” Hoof retreated, slid off Seven like a snail. Seven scooted toward me. “Be careful. Be careful, now.” He was up on his feet again and smiling the smug smile of a psychopath. Defeat only gave him more spirit for the next fight. He turned from us and ran.
Seven’s hair was more mussed than usual, which was saying a lot, and he had leaves stuck in it and all over his old flannel shirt. He was taking casual to another level, with three top buttons open and the sleeves cut off. He stood and I turned his shoulders like a grandmother doting on her precious. I picked off a little crumble of bark, bits of moss and dirt.
“Did you miss me, Longstocking?”
I shoved him away. “I didn’t know if you were coming,” I said.
“So, you were here to meet him? Oh, Penny, how could you? Tsk, tsk.”
“No, I was…” He had a way of disarming me like this. He took pleasure in making me admit that I liked him, while he was too cool to say anything. Just gloat. He was good at gloating.
“You smell nice,” he said. He stepped toward me and took my hands. He must have stood on a rock, or on his tiptoes so he could be taller, and he kissed me. I floated off for a minute, into time and space, into this kiss that I had been missing for days, and then it was over. He was leading me out of the woods. “Do you think he meant to put us both in here?”
We stopped at the medieval prison cell.
“Someone would miss us if he did.”
“You’d be surprised. No one seemed to care when I was …dead.” Seven walked around the structure to a plastic, blue kiddie pool. It was upside down and cracked. He turned it over and revealed a deep hole. “No one missed me when I was in here.”
“We thought you were gone.”
He dropped the kiddie pool back down, musing. “You know, a real zombie is further from dead than most people know. What’s this?” I gave him the vial and he popped the cork, sniffed the green liquid. He coughed. “Datura. Zombie cucumber. I think he was going to drug you.” He corked the vial.
“This place is creeping me out,” I said. I tested the door on Hoof’s prison cell and it clanged shut. “Is it always going to be like this?”
Seven shrugged. “I got used to it.”
“I mean, Hoof. Victor. Is he going to hold it against me forever? I can’t even remember what happened. It wasn’t me.”
“No, it wasn’t you. I’ve never seen a loa ride anyone like that. And my grandmother has… Let’s just say I’ve seen some pretty wild stuff.”
“I know you have. But I never meant to be in the middle of it. Can’t Victor understand that it wasn’t me? Marie said I was like a glass that once held fine wine. But I’m not the wine. I’m not the loa.”
“I was there. You went nuts. I actually kept you from killing him. And Velvet. You went totally berserk. You were like a monster. That was more than just the wine talking.”
“I didn’t drink any wine. I was not the wine. I was the glass that held the wine.”
“You sound like my grandmother.”
“Yes, your grandmother said it. And you’ve been spending too much time with Mad Dog. I think he’s dumbing you down.”
“And a beautiful light passed through you, right? Just before it happened.”
“You don’t get it.”
“Well, I get Victor Radcliffe. He’ll go back to Vandy in the fall. His hoof will heal. He’ll get over it. He has to.”
“But I don’t think he will. He’s crazy. He might kill me. He almost killed you!”
“I know, Long…” Seven could see I was serious. My teeth gritted and this was no time for jokes. “I know, Penny.”
“He’s evil. You know what he’s capable of.”
He hugged me and we held each other, just breathing together.
He pulled away to arm’s length and took a protective tone. “If he tries anything, I’ll be here.”
“Barely.” I shook the vial of green liquid, reminding him that I almost got splashed with it. “He could have burned my face off with this.”
“That’s not how it works.” He marveled at a cat prancing toward us. “You should come over to my house this weekend. We’ll sit down with my grandmother and figure it out.”
“Oh, I’m so flattered you can spare a minute for me.”
“What?”
“Where the hell have you been?”
He was taken aback. As if it never occurred to him that I would miss him. That I would want—need to see my boyfriend. Every day.
“I’ve been… You know. Figuring out how to trap animals, in case we get stranded in the woods somehow, and I have to keep us alive.”
“Have you succeeded, yet? Or eaten anything you didn’t actually bring from home?”
“Umm… no. But wilderness survival is important. You’ll appreciate me someday if we get in a pinch.”
“You need to appreciate me now.”
“I do. I do. You know I do.” He gave me a peck on the cheek.
“No. Not good enough.”
“Come on, Longstocking. You know me—I’m a hundred percent full freak!” He bobbled his head, crossed his eyes, clowning like a fool. Then he swished a hand over his face, erasing the stupid expression and replacing it with absolute seriousness. “I’ve had a premonition,” he said. “It’s about you. And me. And a rabbit that can’t breathe.”
“You are a hundred percent full freak.”
He made the sound of a sad trombone, like it wasn’t so funny when I said it. “Anyway, my grandmother will know what to do about Hoof. This has been a thing in my family for a long time.”
“It’s not a thing in my family.”
He took the little bottle and tossed it onto the pile of garbage. “We don’t use stuff like that.”
A calico cat meowed up at Seven, weaving between his legs with tail held high and talking like an old friend. She was a mix of black and white and orange, a skinny patchwork of blending colors with deep yellow eyes.
Seven said, “If Hoof had put us in that cell …at least the cats are friendly, and we could have…” He nuzzled up against my neck like the cat was nuzzling him, “…gotten to know each other better.” The cat rubbed her cheek against one of the silver buckles on Seven’s boot, which distracted him. “Oh, and this is my little bud,” he said.
He stooped and petted the cat. She rolled over on her back. Seven scratched under her chin and the cat luxuriated, stretched her neck out farther.
“Yes, this is the one. She kept me company when I was…” Seven looked back at the blue kiddie pool and frowned. Unable to continue his thought, not wanting to. He spoke to the cat. “Hard times. Right, Mottle? Hard times.”
The cat meowed, in perfect agreement. When Seven petted the cat, I could see the edginess drain out of him. As I was thinking how magical it was that the cat had begged his attention and then commanded it in this very artful way, the cat cocked her head at me and blinked. Slowly, so slowly to a squint without completely closing, then popped eyes open wide again. Giving me time to get lost in her colors. A magician taking me into a trance. I shook it off, but Seven was clearly past any worries about Hoof. He was suddenly aloof from all dangers, petting the cat. The cat kept staring into my eyes and I was floating on her pupils, reflections of myself there flying, dreaming, drifting away.
Seven stood again, and gave me a shove. “Hey, where’d you go?” He stretched, and the cat arched her back and stretched too, watching Seven, imitating him. “Do you need a cat, Longstocking?”
I came back around, not sure if I had gone somewhere else or not.
&
nbsp; “I’ll be moving into a dorm in the fall. I don’t think I can have a cat there.” In the back of my mind I heard Ava giggling. “But I think my sister does. She said it yesterday. And today’s her birthday. She’s having a party. An exclusive party. With Mad Dog. She’s convinced they’re going to get married.”
“Mad Dog is a weird guy. Seniors in high school should not hang out with nine-year-old girls.”
“Ten. As of today. And Ava’s not a normal little girl. She’s got him working for her.”
“Cool.”
“He told me you would be here. Are you guys friends again?”
“I don’t know. He’s always up to something with Hoof. Curses. They do all these rituals and stuff. Do you want to give Ava the cat?”
I shrugged. Mottle sauntered a few feet away, tail swishing in the air and glanced back at me. “Meow.”
She had led me to something and I bent down. There was a tin of cat food, unopened and I reached into the pile of garbage and got it for her, popped the top and tapped it out.
“Well, Mottle?” Seven asked the cat. The cat blinked at him and gobbled up the food, meowed in what sounded like the affirmative. We walked around the huge pile of rubble that was the city dump, to the dirt path back to Bellin. The cat followed, flouncing at our heels, then she darted ahead and stopped abruptly, groomed herself and waited for us to catch up.
“Are you going to miss me when you go to college?”
“I’m not really going anywhere, Seven. Madrid is only the next town over.”
“But you’ll forget about me. Jocks and smart dudes and frat boys and all that. While I’m just a high school boy.”
“You’re a senior.”
“Wow.”
“You’ll be dating an older woman. Total rock star. Don’t quit band, though. I think you should stay in band.”
“I was only in it because you were.”
We left the woods behind and the calico cat hopped up on a curb that marked the beginning and simultaneously the end of Bellin. On smoother ground now, Seven and I held hands and kissed while walking, our heads sailing through the air like we were playing a song in marching band.
About the Author
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Beaird Glover grew up on a farm in rural Tennessee. He graduated from The Evergreen State College of Olympia, Washington, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in creative writing. He then moved to Southern California and wrote Secret Ciphers of the 1876 Presidential Election (Aegean Park Press). He has traveled extensively and lived in eleven of the United Sates, and Taipei and Buenos Aires. His poems have been published in the New York Quarterly and his chapbook of poetry was selected by the Austin Chronicle as one of the Top 10 Best of 1994. More recently, he acquired a Bachelor of Science degree from Long Island University in Brooklyn and has worked as a physician assistant. Beaird now lives in New Orleans with his wife Kim and their cats.
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