Bone Valley

by Claire Matturro

  One of my neighbors said, “We’ve called the police. He was trying to break into your house, only Dolly stopped him.”

  “Oh, mierda,” I shouted. “That’s my brother.” Apparently it had never occurred to Delvon that long, red hair and a torn T-shirt worn over cutoffs that also had big holes in them, and black chukka boots on pale, skinny legs, wouldn’t, like, you know, raise an eyebrow in a sedate, suburban, Sarasota neighborhood.

  I pushed my way between Delvon and Dolly, who finally landed a punch, but on me, because I made the mistake of standing still in front of her. Fortunately, being as she’s about eighty, it didn’t hurt that much. I yelled a lot at everybody to stop it, I told Dolly to tell the police that it was all a mistake, and then I dragged Delvon back to my Honda and we sped away.

  No way I wanted the local police to have a look at Delvon.

  “How’d you get here?” I asked.

  “Traded a bag of crip for an old car.”

  “Crip?”

  “Man, you’re out of touch. It’s a superpot. I grow it by—”

  “You traded a bag of pot for a car?”

  “Yep.”

  “Get a title?”

  “What I need a title for?”

  I sighed. “So you can get auto insurance.”

  “What I need car insurance for?”

  “It’s the law. Under Florida law, you need a title and car insurance.”

  “Want to show me where it says that in the Ten Commandments?”

  I sighed again, longer and slower. “Where’s the car?”

  “Oh, I traded it to a guy on I-75 for a ride to your house and a six-pack. He dropped me off at your place and I was just minding my own business when that crazy lady came over and started beating on me.”

  There was probably a chapter missing in the story of the frequently traded car. But I didn’t care to know it any more than I wanted to know how he’d gotten out of the airport with a band of highly trained federal security personnel chasing him.

  Instead, I explained about Lenora, and the birds, and the chemo, and the big piles of messes, and the cages of hungry creatures, and how she needed more help than Jimmie alone could provide.

  “Cool,” Delvon said. “I can help. Lift and tote. Get a prayer circle going for her.”

  “She might need some medicinal marijuana. It helps with the side effects.”

  “Cool. I got some. Organic. Not the crip, I had to trade that for the car, outside the Atlanta terminal. Man, that place sucks.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In Atlanta. Man, where else would the Atlanta airport be?”

  “I mean the pot.”

  “Oh, I stashed it in your carport, behind the potting soil, in that little storage room.”

  Frigging great. With my luck, Dolly had seen Delvon stash it, assumed it was a bomb, and would lead the police right to it.

  “You still got that ferret?” Delvon asked.

  “No.”

  “Too bad, that was a cool little dude.”

  We drove the rest of the way to Lenora’s exchanging non sequiturs. Once we pulled up to the house, I was relieved to see that Jimmie’s car, and therefore presumably Jimmie himself, was still there. Delvon and I piled out, and Jimmie, reeking of bleach, tumbled out the front door, his fatigue apparent.

  “Damnation, that fish and wildlife guy like to wear me out,” he said. Then he looked at Delvon.

  “Praise Jesus,” Delvon said. “The FBI is out after me ’cause—”

  “Delvon,” I said, “shut up.”

  “Oh, this here’s your brother, the religious ’un. Pleased to meet you. I’m Jimmie.”

  “Delvon, can you stay here and help Jimmie as long as y’all can this evening? There’s at least an hour of daylight left. Maybe there’s a place here where Delvon can shower and sleep? Or maybe he can stay with you, Jimmie?” I asked, thinking a wanted airport terrorist staying with me so soon after Dolly the helpful neighbor had alerted the police to strange doings at my house might not be a totally great notion.

  “Not much of a spot to sleep and the shower don’t work and it’s full of stuff, anyways.”

  “I guess there’s an epidemic of that,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “You know, your shower doesn’t work.”

  “Huh?…Oh, yeah, that. Like I’s saying, they’s a hose out back hung up in a tree that I done used for a shower, you don’t mind cold water and getting naked in the great outdoors. Sure plenty to do. And they’s some real cute critters out here.”

  While Jimmie and I chattered, Delvon had been looking around. Then he beamed and said, “Cool.”

  “Well, come on, then,” Jimmie said to Delvon, “and let me show you what that bossy old wildlife man said I should be doing. I reckon we can both sleep in my car.”

  I watched the two of them wander off. No doubt by the time I got home, they’d be drinking and smoking and trading arrest stories. I wrote a note of explanation, folded it, addressed it to Lenora, and put it under a magnet on the refrigerator, emptied my wallet of cash for Delvon and Jimmie, with a note that they should run to the nearest store for supplies and food, and then I prepared to flee the scene.

  Then it hit me: Why would Jimmie sleep in his car?

  I caught up with them in the backyard, where Jimmie was explaining about feeding the raccoons, and I interrupted. “Lenora doesn’t stay here at night. Why are you?”

  “Why am I what?” Jimmie asked.

  “Sleeping in your car? If there’s no place to sleep, I don’t think you need to stay here at night. I just thought it’d be a good place for Delvon to sleep—temporarily, that’s all. So why are you going to sleep here in your car?”

  “Oh, I…” Jimmie stopped talking and looked down at the raccoon. “You know them things can carry rabies virus without being sick, so less’n you’ve had the shots, you ain’t suppose to play with them.”

  “Jimmie, why are you sleeping in your car?”

  “’Cause that’s where I been living. See, ’cause I kinda got kicked out a my apartment.”

  “What do you mean, you got kicked out?”

  “I got kicked out.”

  Okay, that articulated the problem better. “What’d you do?”

  “I didn’t pay any rent for a couple a months.”

  Well, that’d pretty much do it for an eviction, I thought. Plus, that explained why he was hanging around my house. The poor man was homeless.

  I sighed. Deeply. Confronted with a desire to help and a desire not to have Jimmie and Delvon both living with me, coldheartedness sounded pretty good at the moment.

  “We’ll be jes’ fine, don’t you worry,” Jimmie said.

  “Jesus slept outside,” Delvon said.

  “Just come to my house when you’re done here,” I said, knowing full well I’d regret this. “We’ll work out something more permanent tomorrow. One of you can have the futon and one of you can have the couch.”

  “Cool,” Delvon said.

  “You always was a good-hearted woman,” Jimmie said.

  Internally, I cursed the thought of funding a new apartment for Jimmie in the land of high rents and wondered what Delvon’s cash reserves were, as he was certainly going to need to buy some clothes, normal ones at that, and I think I said my good-byes, but, anyway, I got in my car and drove off.

  No doubt the police and possession charges awaited me at my house, but I went home anyway. Instead, I was actually rather pleased to see Bonita, her daughter, Carmen, and Armando, the more squat of her mismatched twin boys, all waiting for me inside the carport, by my side door. Dolly was entertaining them with a story that involved a lot of hand waving, and the rest of the neighbors had left. Johnny Winter, the albino ferret that once saved my life, was wrapped around Armando’s neck, and neither of them seemed happy to see me.

  “I need to return the bird,” Bonita said, and held up the cage in my general direction.

  “Why?” I asked, pointedly not reaching for
the cage.

  “Johnny the ferret was most determined to eat it,” she said.

  “You could take Armando and Johnny and leave me the bird,” Carmen said, in her happy, hopeful, seven-year-old voice.

  I glanced at Armando and Johnny. They glared back at me.

  I reached for the birdcage. “Thank you for trying,” I said.

  “Henry is bringing pizza if you would like to join us for supper,” Bonita said, no doubt prompted by guilt at returning the bird to invite me to join her faithful suitor and her five children for supper.

  “Thank you, but I have plans,” I said.

  “I’m not taking that bird,” Dolly said. “It’s bad enough I have to take care of your dog.”

  This from the woman who had alienated the affections of my own dog and then, in effect, stolen Bearess from right under my nose, was too much, and I opened my mouth to say rude things, but Carmen tugged at my arm.

  I looked down at her perfect, sweet face. “What, Carmen?”

  “I bet if you gave him a nicer name, he’d be nicer,” she said.

  “What?”

  “The bird,” Bonita said. “Carmen thinks Rasputin is a bad name.” So explaining, Bonita gathered up her two children and the ferret and they left.

  As Bonita drove off, Dolly managed to squeeze out enough information between her complaints that I gathered she had told the police it was all a big mistake and they’d left. Neither of us mentioned the organic marijuana now stored in the little room off my carport, and I decided not to say rude things to my neighbor after all, but went conventional: “Thank you.”

  After Dolly left, I took the stupid jay into the house, where I realized I was about half starved, and I put the birdcage on the patio table on the screened-in back porch and walked back to the kitchen, where I triple-washed my hands and grabbed a sack of sunflower seeds and a box of Save the Forest trail mix bars. Seeds for the jay, trail mix bars for me—just to tide me over until I could shower and fix a decent meal.

  Rasputin raised hell and refused to eat the sunflower seeds.

  After I explained to him in careful detail exactly why it was in his best interests to shut up and, no, I wasn’t going to fetch him any bugs, I bit into my trail mix bar. Organic, free of high-fructose syrup, but sweetened with rice-bran syrup and honey.

  As I chewed, Rasputin danced and pranced and screamed.

  I looked at the bird. Then I looked at the trail mix bar. What the heck, it’s mostly oatmeal, seeds, and tasty, healthy dried fruit, I thought, and broke off a piece and shoved it in the cage.

  Rasputin pecked at it, then he ate it. Then he looked at me with a look that, I swear, said, “More please.” I gave him the rest of the bar and watched him eat it.

  For the first time since I’d known the bird, it curled up, calm and quiet, and just sat there, looking rather serene in a fluffy juvenile-bird sort of way.

  Well, I’ll be damned. All the poor thing needed was something sweet.

  I could relate. I ate another trail mix bar and headed toward my shower.

  A half hour later, dressed in an old camp shirt and a pair of threadbare yard-work shorts, minus bra and panties, I was contentedly washing and chopping produce for a big salad when the doorbell rang. Figuring it for Delvon and Jimmie, I didn’t bother to fluff my shower-damp hair or worry that I was dressed like riffraff.

  But when I opened the door, Miguel jumped into my living room and into my arms.

  Who grabbed who first I couldn’t say. But we were hot and full of hands and hugs and tongues even before I got the door shut.

  He kissed me like the scene in the movie right before the soldier boy goes off to war, and I kissed him like I knew he’d never come home to me.

  I could not get enough of this man. I pressed so hard against him he almost stumbled backward. His hands slipped up under my shirt and I was glad I hadn’t bothered with a bra. His trained Rolfer’s fingers flicked at my nipples, and, as if it had a mind entirely of its own, my right leg rose and curled about his, and I thanked my yoga teacher for all those cursed hours of flexibility training.

  Just about the time I was going to rip his shirt off him, I remembered something: Who knew my brain could work at that stage of excitement, but this man, my mind reminded my body, was the man who had suspiciously stepped aside from an explosion with almost premeditated precision.

  I pulled out of his embrace and demanded to know what was going on.

  “Don’t worry. I parked my truck at the community center. In case anyone is watching your house,” Miguel said, slightly panting, as I unwound my leg from his.

  “Why would anybody be watching my house? Are you watching my house? What the hell is going on?” I asked, rather shrilly given my ardor seconds before. “And how’d you get your truck back?”

  His hands crept out from under my shirt, and wrapped themselves around my neck, and I tensed, realizing I was alone with a suspicious man who had just put his hands around my neck in the classic TV setup for strangulation.

  Then he began to massage my neck and the tops of my shoulders. “You need to relax,” he said, his voice hypnotic. “Let me help you relax.”

  “How’d you get your truck back?” I asked, leaning into the massage.

  “Easy enough. We think alike, you and me. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”

  “How’d you get your truck back?” I repeated, pulling out of the massage in my frustration. I wanted to know what was going on more than I wanted his hands all over me.

  “After I knew Angus was dead…” Miguel said, and then paused, his fingers still, his face sad.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He dropped his hands and walked toward the couch in the living room, where he more or less collapsed.

  “Once I knew he was dead, there wasn’t any point in hanging around. The cops were coming, I heard the sirens. People were shouting and diving into the water, looking for survivors, I guess. So I ran.”

  “Why’d you run?”

  Miguel studied me for a moment after that question, then shrugged. “Seemed the thing to do. I hid out until I dried off, then I hitchhiked to your house. My truck wasn’t in your driveway, but there was this old car I think was your yardman’s. And another car, looked like a fancy lawyer car.”

  Yeah, I thought, Jimmie’s wreck and Philip’s Lexus.

  “So, I just cased the neighborhood, and then started thinking where I would have put my truck if I’d been you. The community center seemed a good spot, and, there it was. Like you radioed me a mental message.”

  “I didn’t leave it there for you, I left it there so the cops wouldn’t find it at my place and ask me a lot of hard questions.”

  “Good thinking,” he said.

  “Why did you tell me to run away?”

  “Oh, Lilly, sweet Lilly, I didn’t want you in the middle. I didn’t want you hurt.” Miguel smiled at me, a slow, sensual smile. “Sit,” he said, and patted the couch.

  I collapsed on the couch next to him. But I didn’t smile back. I didn’t smile back, sensually or otherwise, because I kept thinking how terribly convenient his stepping away from the boat had been. But if he knew the boat was going to blow up, why invite me to be a witness?

  While I tried to make this make sense, Miguel pulled me into another ardent embrace as if I had smiled sensually back at him.

  While I struggled hard enough to be emphatic, he resisted my resistance until his fingers and his tongue changed my mind. My pulse was so loud in my ears I could hardly hear, and I had definitely stopped thinking.

  This time I had my hands under his shirt, and I rubbed my thumbs over his nipples until they hardened. We tumbled farther down into my couch, and before my mind could proffer any more reasons not to—like, say, Philip or the possibility that Miguel was a really bad person—we had our shirts off.

  His mouth was making me glad my breasts were free and clear of cloth, and my hands wandered below his beltway and were playfully fingering his zipper. Miguel
did something delicious with his tongue and my nipple, and my fingers slipped that zipper down just a tad before my shower-fetish-obsession-thing kicked in, and I wondered if I needed to shower again before we consummated our obvious passion. I mean, before I’d showered for sleeping, not for sex.

  And then, there was the possibility Miguel would shower with me.

  Obsessing, or fantasizing, or whatever about another shower made me realize that for an apparent fugitive on the run, Miguel smelled—well, not just clean, but powdered and pampered and perfumed in his cleanness. I pulled away from him, not without considerable effort, both mental and physical, and I asked, “Where have you been staying since your boat blew up?”

  “Around,” he said.

  Oh, yeah, I heard that soft tone of his voice and I took one more sniff—sandalwood, and a fine product at that—and deduced that “around” was a woman, and one with good taste in toiletries, and this chilled my ardor enough for me to regain my good sense and my blouse.

  “What just happened?” Miguel asked as I buttoned the last button on my shirt.

  “There is too much I need to know—”

  My front door burst open and Delvon and Jimmie tumbled in, still reeking of bleach, but with an overtone of marijuana and wine. Delvon carried a box of pizza with the lid opened, and tomato sauce ran down his chin.

  Thank goodness I had had time to put my shirt back on, even if Miguel hadn’t.

  “Uh-oh,” Delvon said. “Bad timing.”

  “Perfect timing,” I said, knowing full well Miguel would have had me fully naked in another half hour, tops, if he and Jimmie hadn’t burst back into my house.

  Miguel, perfectly lovely in his shirtless state, stood up and offered his hand to Delvon. “Miguel,” he said.

  “Delvon,” my brother answered, and shook his hand.

  “I knows you for the devil you are,” Jimmie said, a bit too loud, and poked a rude finger in Miguel’s chest.

  “I’m just leaving,” Miguel said.

  “Then put your clothes back on,” Jimmie said. “You wants the neighbors talking?”