refrigerator with bottled water?”
“Yep,” Angus said.
Miguel turned on a dirt road, then bumped along until he cut left on a branch that I would have considered a primitive trail not meant for motorized vehicles. Bump, lurch, rub went my thigh against Miguel. Definitely foreplay potential.
“You ought to see these roads after a good rain, hardly passable at all. The Manatee River is just right over there, behind those water oaks,” Angus said, pointing to a stand of oaks to the left of the truck, and once more breaking my sexual reverie.
Okay, the cosmic forces had assigned Angus the role of keeping me from getting in too over my head with Miguel. I should be grateful. No, Philip the almost forgotten should be grateful.
On that disrupted note, Miguel drove through a tunnel of loblolly pines and live oaks, and turned left toward the hidden river, into a wide opening. When he stopped the truck, I looked about. I couldn’t see the river, but I could smell its wet-moss and primordial scent. In front of me, I saw a collection of Florida-cracker outbuildings, a barn with a rusted tin roof, and a dog-trot house, well past its prime. By, say, like a lifetime. A boxy Volvo was parked under a tree, and, given its dings and bangs, I figured it for an old one.
Lots of plastic animal cages, a pump, a metal watering trough, piles of stuff, and more piles of stuff. My can’t-stand-piles-of-stuff inner alarm went off—big time. On the other hand, I felt like I had just been transported back to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s time and place. The dog-trot house with its central hallway and tin roof had a certain charm.
As Miguel and Angus jumped out of their respective sides of the truck, I followed, watching closely where my feet landed. When I looked up, a woman was standing in the doorway of the old house. She was wearing a blue scarf around her head, turban style, and had the taut yellow skin of someone seriously ill. Then I realized there was no hair showing beneath the turban. Her lips were drawn and narrow, deep lines and purple shadows surrounded her eyes, and her thinness had passed fashionable about ten pounds back.
“Angus, Miguel, you boys are a sight for sore eyes. Come on in and help me feed the baby birds.” Her voice was light, chipper.
“Lenora, we’d like to introduce you to our friend Lilly. She’s our lawyer.” Miguel offered a hand to Lenora and she took it, squeezed it, and smiled.
But Angus barreled past me, straight into Lenora, and he hugged her until I worried he would crack a rib.
“Lilly, delighted,” she said, when Angus finally let her go. “If you are their lawyer, you must be smart and dedicated. Do you like birds?”
Nodding, I held my ground and didn’t move toward her. I was still nervous about all the piles of stuff, and, okay, a little nervous about her. I don’t always know how to act around sick people; crazy people, yes, but there I’ve had plenty of experience.
Nervous or not, the next thing I knew I was inside the dog-trot cabin, listening to a raucous chorus of feed-me-feed-me chirps and shoving dampened chunks of puppy chow mix down the throats of baby birds, while Lenora coached me. “Easy, easy. Just a little bit at a time. They’ve got tiny throats.”
Well, okay, at least I didn’t have to regurgitate worms.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Miguel and Angus were working a row of cages, feeding the baby birds with a rhythm that suggested knowledge and comfort with the routine.
Once assured that I wasn’t going to strangle a bird, Lenora turned to her own brood, feeding, sweet-talking, and making a kind of a humming noise about it all.
“What are they? I mean, what kind?” I asked.
“Mockingbirds, a lot of them, wrens, cardinals, red-wing blackbirds, chickadees, jays.” She ran the names of the birds past me in a quiet voice until even their names sounded like humming.
“Where do they all come from?”
“From everywhere. Domestic cats get their
“Yep,” Angus said.
Miguel turned on a dirt road, then bumped along until he cut left on a branch that I would have considered a primitive trail not meant for motorized vehicles. Bump, lurch, rub went my thigh against Miguel. Definitely foreplay potential.
“You ought to see these roads after a good rain, hardly passable at all. The Manatee River is just right over there, behind those water oaks,” Angus said, pointing to a stand of oaks to the left of the truck, and once more breaking my sexual reverie.
Okay, the cosmic forces had assigned Angus the role of keeping me from getting in too over my head with Miguel. I should be grateful. No, Philip the almost forgotten should be grateful.
On that disrupted note, Miguel drove through a tunnel of loblolly pines and live oaks, and turned left toward the hidden river, into a wide opening. When he stopped the truck, I looked about. I couldn’t see the river, but I could smell its wet-moss and primordial scent. In front of me, I saw a collection of Florida-cracker outbuildings, a barn with a rusted tin roof, and a dog-trot house, well past its prime. By, say, like a lifetime. A boxy Volvo was parked under a tree, and, given its dings and bangs, I figured it for an old one.
Lots of plastic animal cages, a pump, a metal watering trough, piles of stuff, and more piles of stuff. My can’t-stand-piles-of-stuff inner alarm went off—big time. On the other hand, I felt like I had just been transported back to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s time and place. The dog-trot house with its central hallway and tin roof had a certain charm.
As Miguel and Angus jumped out of their respective sides of the truck, I followed, watching closely where my feet landed. When I looked up, a woman was standing in the doorway of the old house. She was wearing a blue scarf around her head, turban style, and had the taut yellow skin of someone seriously ill. Then I realized there was no hair showing beneath the turban. Her lips were drawn and narrow, deep lines and purple shadows surrounded her eyes, and her thinness had passed fashionable about ten pounds back.
“Angus, Miguel, you boys are a sight for sore eyes. Come on in and help me feed the baby birds.” Her voice was light, chipper.
“Lenora, we’d like to introduce you to our friend Lilly. She’s our lawyer.” Miguel offered a hand to Lenora and she took it, squeezed it, and smiled.
But Angus barreled past me, straight into Lenora, and he hugged her until I worried he would crack a rib.
“Lilly, delighted,” she said, when Angus finally let her go. “If you are their lawyer, you must be smart and dedicated. Do you like birds?”
Nodding, I held my ground and didn’t move toward her. I was still nervous about all the piles of stuff, and, okay, a little nervous about her. I don’t always know how to act around sick people; crazy people, yes, but there I’ve had plenty of experience.
Nervous or not, the next thing I knew I was inside the dog-trot cabin, listening to a raucous chorus of feed-me-feed-me chirps and shoving dampened chunks of puppy chow mix down the throats of baby birds, while Lenora coached me. “Easy, easy. Just a little bit at a time. They’ve got tiny throats.”
Well, okay, at least I didn’t have to regurgitate worms.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Miguel and Angus were working a row of cages, feeding the baby birds with a rhythm that suggested knowledge and comfort with the routine.
Once assured that I wasn’t going to strangle a bird, Lenora turned to her own brood, feeding, sweet-talking, and making a kind of a humming noise about it all.
“What are they? I mean, what kind?” I asked.
“Mockingbirds, a lot of them, wrens, cardinals, red-wing blackbirds, chickadees, jays.” She ran the names of the birds past me in a quiet voice until even their names sounded like humming.
“Where do they all come from?”
“From everywhere. Domestic cats get their