Mighty Old Bones (5 page)

“Look here, Rowdy. Get down to it or the next thing you know, you might be pooping in Kansas with Toto.”

He seemed to get my gist. I turned toward the door, acting like I didn’t care if he followed me our not. By the time I got the screen door open, there he was coming up the steps.

“After you,” I said. He swept by me like the king of England and went straight to the bowl of water I’d set out. “Hey. Watch it. Don’t you drink too much of that, you hear?”

L
arge raindrops splatted on my windshield as I drove from the town square to Phoebe’s house. A broken branch fell across the glass as I steered into her driveway, the leaves completely obscuring my view for a few moments. Thank goodness I was off the street and could brake quickly without causing an accident. A strong gust of wind rocked the car back and forth. With an even stronger surge, the wind whistled and picked the branch up and hurled it across Phoebe’s front yard.

Leaves and debris weren’t the only things flying through the air. As I looked forward through the windshield, I saw one of Phoebe’s windows at the side of her house being raised up in spite of the storm. A bare white arm emerged. It cocked and threw a square object with great force into the wet grass, then retreated inside to close the window once more.

I felt under the passenger seat for the folding umbrella I kept there. “Oh, drat.” I muttered at my foolishness. The week before, I’d put it in the trunk along with a few other stray items when I vacuumed the seats and floorboards. I had forgotten to return it to its usual place. No matter. In this storm, it would probably only fold inside-out the instant I stepped out of the car. Instead, I emptied the contents of a plastic shopping bag, took my keys from the ignition, covered my head as best I could with the bag, and ran for it.

I spared a glance in the direction of the object Phoebe had tossed out the window. It was a paperback book. To my surprise, I noticed it had joined two others in what now constituted a small pile. The latest addition had landed on top in comparatively pristine condition to the others that were waterlogged and dirty, as if they had been in their present position some time. I think perhaps one of them had also been torn. It looked as if it had been ripped in two. I assumed Phoebe did not share the bookstore owner’s enthusiasm for her recent purchases.

Phoebe had already opened her door when I reached her screened-in porch. “Thank you, dear.”

“What are you still doing out in this mess?”

“I shopped a bit more than I intended.” My clothes dripped on the green Astroturf mat. I held the plastic bag close to me so it wouldn’t drip on the floor.

“You don’t have to stand there like that, Jane. This porch is used to rain. Come on in here before we get blown away.” I did as she asked, though I didn’t intend to stay. I slipped off my shoes and set them by the door just inside her living room.

“Phoebe, I only stopped to see if you wanted to come home with me to wait out the storm. I heard tornado warnings had been issued.”

“Yeah, we get a lot of those this time of year. We don’t usually get actual tornados, though. They like to skip over Tullulah. But I sure wouldn’t want to be in the valley in a trailer right now.” She spoke as she walked away from me and into the hallway that led to her kitchen. “Let’s go get you a towel.”

“Really, I shouldn’t stay. Why not come along with me? My basement is quite comfortable. We’d be safe there.”

“Aw, relax. Nothing’s going to touch down. Why don’t you just stay here with me until it passes?” She paused at the bathroom door and turned to me. “No sense in getting back out in that mess, Jane. You don’t know what might come flying through the air or down the road at you.”

“You’re right, but I need to get to the house. I’m worried about Homer. He has been out all afternoon and I want to get him inside.”

“You want another one to take with you?”

“Another what?”

In answer, she merely pointed downward toward the interior of the bathroom. “Another mutt to keep Homer company.”

I stepped closer and peered inside. There on the white tile floor sat a small dog. “Oh, my. Hello, dear.” It returned my gaze and gave a single yap. “Phoebe, I had the impression you didn’t particularly care for dogs.”

“I don’t.”

“And that you said you’d never allow one in your house.”

“I did. My flighty sister dumped this fleabag on me.”

The little dog was adorable, even in its present state. He reminded me of another dog, though I couldn’t remember where I had known one like him. Someone close, though I was too scatterbrained at the moment to think. The dog’s hair, normally long, silky, and flat against its body I presumed, now stood on end, thick and fluffed out. It looked as if it had been styled into a red-and-white Afro. I presumed Phoebe had just given it a bath from the citrus and lavender scents that hung in the air.

“It’s certainly clean,” I said.

“I’ll give him this, he didn’t mind taking a bath a bit. Though I’m afraid I might have put too much styling gel in his hair. All I had was a thickening formula.”

Loud sheets of rain lashed the roof. “Phoebe, please. Do come home with me. You and…em…”

“Rowdy.”

I arched an eyebrow. “You and Rowdy would be most welcome.”

She shook her head. “We’re fine. But if you intend to get home, you better go on. It’s looking bad out there.”

“Yes. All right. I’ll call you a little later tonight, okay? If the phones work.”

“I’ll be here.”

Once again braving the rain with my plastic grocery bag as umbrella, I hopped in my car and closed the door with relief. The rain beat steadily on my way home, pounding the car and the streets until I reached the outskirts of Tullulah. Then the wipers that had worked so feverishly to keep the windshield clear were suddenly scraping across almost dry glass as I passed through spots where no rain fell at all.

The road to my house cut through a flat area with fields on the left and a marshy bird sanctuary to the right. Its waters drew close and almost as high as the road. Ahead, black clouds loomed over the forest in disturbing, striated patterns that moved more swiftly across my view than any I had ever witnessed. Just as disturbing as their color and speed was a sudden realization. They traveled north to south, when normally they should be going west to east. Their fast churning terrified me.

Though I traveled in a rainless pocket at the moment, I could see a wide gray swath of dark clouds in the distance, striped with white and silver from cloud to horizon that looked as if it now stormed beyond my property. Perhaps if it stayed there a little longer, I’d get inside the house without getting drenched after all. Now if only Homer was near enough to hear me when I drove up, all would be well.

The column of rain and the foreboding striations of fast-moving clouds mesmerized me as I drove toward them. Deep darkness lurked behind the silvery sheets of rain. Between watching them and trying to keep my eyes on the road, I almost missed an even more unusual sight off to my left.

I’d passed the edge of the marshes and now drove up through a series of small hillocks. They were bright, almost emerald green in the oddly green-tinged air, due to shafts of the burnished late-afternoon sunlight peeking through on my far right. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of something moving. I turned to see what it was, and had to do a quick double take to be sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me.

It was a man, walking in a field beside the county road. The rain flattened his dark shoulder-length hair. Water dripped off the long tunic he wore and soaked his brown boots. He carried something on his back, a cylindrical bag of some kind. When he turned, his eyes dazzled me, for they were young, yet deep, as if an old soul peered out of them.

I braked and stopped to offer him a ride. Just as I motioned through the window, a crash of thunder deafened me and a brilliant light split the sky. A second crash, louder and more resonant, followed immediately with another blinding flash of light. I looked up and to the left. Both lightning strikes still etched jagged lines of light in the dark as I watched. They and numerous other bolts struck from a whirling mass of black-gray clouds down to the top of the bluff, the highest point on my land. Their white and purple flashes danced on a large outcrop of rock, electrifying the surrounding trees.

The clouds moved swiftly forward, as what sounded like a long, slow ripping of the very sky tore at my ears and sent a chill of fear through me. The ripping ended suddenly in a crash, a low bass boom like a ship’s cannon fire. It echoed down into the valley and rolled outward in a wave that made my bones shiver.

I brought myself up quick. I had forgotten the man. He had not come to get in the car. I looked out all the windows but didn’t see him. Rain pouring down the glass made it difficult to be sure. I braced myself and opened the door, ready to be soaked.

He was not in the field where I’d last seen him. I ran toward the back of the car, looked down the road behind me, then around the other side, scanning fields there and back to the driver’s door. I was completely alone. The man had disappeared.

I
had to fight the screen door a little bit to get it closed against the gusts of wind that were coming harder now. This was going to be a big one. Rowdy sat on the floor, watching my every move, like I was his entertainment for the evening.

“For my next number, I believe I’ll go get some candles and matches so we won’t be sitting in the dark.”

Rowdy yapped and wiggled his tail. Sarcasm didn’t seem to work on him. He came over and followed right at my heels. There was a flashlight in the same drawer as the candles so I grabbed that, too. I don’t have a basement or we’d have gone down in it.

I unplugged all the appliances and lamps all over the house. When I came through the living room again, I grabbed up my craft basket and carried it to the dining room where I’d set the candlesticks. That was the middle of the house. I figured if a tornado came, the two of us could run to the bathroom and jump in the tub. I snapped my fingers.

“That tub is still wet from your bath. Let me go wipe it out good.” He trotted along with me again, watched me grab towels off the rack and rub down the tub. I took some clean towels out of the linen closet and spread them out inside. “We might as well be comfortable, huh?” He looked at me like he approved.

A big clap of thunder boomed right over the house. Rowdy yelped and lunged for me. He nearly knocked me over, even though he couldn’t weigh more than five pounds.

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” He shook like a leaf in my arms and started whining. “Look here, shhhh, we’re okay.” He whimpered as more rumbles followed the big one. His little wet nose snuggled up under my chin and he started kissing me.

“Honey, darling,” I said trying to calm him down. I couldn’t believe I said that. My mouth moved and I heard the words, but it was like somebody else took over my body. “Okay, now, here’s the thing, just so you understand. You’re gonna have to stop that licking stuff. I can’t stand it. But you’re not too bad for a little fur ball, and if you can stop kissing me, I can put up with you, okay?” I sat him down on the floor. “For a little while. Just until Corene comes back off her whirlwind romance trip. So don’t push it.” I went into the kitchen and looked around to see if I’d forgotten anything. Through the window over the sink, I saw a mimosa branch bobbing up and down, up and down.

I hated to see Jane drive off in that storm. She would have been perfectly safe here in my house. I’ve ridden out many a tornado in my lifetime. You get used to it. Like I told her, the actual tornado funnels never touch down up here on the mountain. They like to skip over and jump down into the valley to follow the river. I felt sorry for anybody down there. They’re the ones who get most of the damage.

I heard the patter of little toenails coming toward me and looked down.

“You still here?”

He sat, polite as he could be, like a kid who had been taught to mind its manners, though I knew my wild sister wouldn’t have had anything to do with that. The old lady who croaked trained him right. Even as much as I despise dogs, I felt a little sorry for this one. It wasn’t his fault that he got tangled up with Corene. He just got unlucky and had no choice, kind of like me being her sister and all. I could relate.

“Let’s get a comb going on that hair,” I said. It had relaxed some and was laying down flatter, more horizontal now instead of vertical like it was doing earlier. I hoped Corene would come back from her love trip before I had to give Rowdy another bath. Otherwise, I would have to buy some special combs and brushes. Or maybe just doggie hair-cutting scissors. He might look good in a burr.

That’s when I remembered that a lady I see at the Beauty Barn told me she was a dog clipper and had a new business down on the town square. If worse came to worst, I could always drop the little mutt off there. No sense in buying stuff I wouldn’t ever need again.

That thunder was something else, let me tell you. It rumbled and raged like the end of time. The munchkin shook all over just about the whole night, even after I wrapped him up in a nice warm towel I heated up in the microwave. I held him up close to me like a baby but he still nearly shook his little self to death. I’ll say this, I didn’t see one flea on him or any scabby places where he had been scratching. It didn’t look like he had any health problems now that he was clean. He was just a squirt. Not even hardly big enough to be called a dog.

I had just set the comb down when all of a sudden,
boom.
The electricity went out, like I figured it would. I reached over to the left real slow and clicked on my flashlight. The squirt shook.

“Don’t worry. It’s nothing,” I told him. “In ancient times, they didn’t have any lights at all, and lived in the dark. That’s why they named it the Dark Ages. They survived, and we’ll survive. We don’t need a TV or an oven. For now.”

I wished I hadn’t said that. Thinking about the oven made me hungry. Rowdy whimpered a little bit and nudged his cold nose against my face and then licked me. “Look here. What did we decide about that already? Now you just quit that right now,” I said, though, to tell the truth, it wasn’t so bad and actually kind of sweet, like he was trying to make me feel better.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea. You hungry?”

He wouldn’t have been able to hear me if he hadn’t been so close to my mouth because outside that rain was flat beating the roof. The whole inside of the house lit up from the lightning flashing outside, on and off, one right after another like you see in war movies when the soldiers are down in the trenches waiting for the bombs to stop.

I’m into war movies. I used to just like action adventure types, like the Stallone I watched this afternoon. But here lately, I have been getting into war. For two reasons. One, because I bought my guns and because Jane and I got into a somewhat war situation ourselves not too long ago. So my mentality has flipped. Two, they’ve started showing a new program on TV where this retired sergeant, real life I’m talking about, not an actor, gets on there and talks about military stuff. My favorite part is when he tests out different guns and other weapons like bows and arrows, and he uses watermelons for targets. What a great idea. The man is a genius. Next summer when the watermelons come in, I fully intend to buy up a truckload and do some target practice.

What an inspiration Jane has been to me. I feel like I’m a new person, now that I’m armed. It has opened my eyes. It’s a little weird. She has enough guns in her house to arm the military of a small nation, but does she care? Not really. She doesn’t give a flip about those guns. Her husband collected them all through his life and, from the looks of them, never sold or traded a one. I know for a fact that Jane has two armoires, nice antique ones, with fancy military rifles stuffed like sardines in there, all styles, serious rifles, and two antique trunks stacked full of handguns. I’ve seen them. No telling what else she has hidden in that big house, which has two floors plus a full basement and a full attic.

Just the other day, I was over there after Jane and I had been shopping. She opened her closet door to put the new shoes she’d bought inside. When she pushed her hanging clothes out of the way, I saw three huge metal cases stacked on top of one another. These things were heavy duty, like something you’d transport an atomic bomb or plutonium in, only bigger. She saw me looking.

“Those are some mighty fine hat boxes you’ve got in there,” I said.

She laughed. “Not hats. More of the Colonel’s acquisitions for his collection, I’m afraid.”

She closed the door and changed the subject. I didn’t ask. I didn’t have to. The sides had military-looking stencils that told what was in them. I made a mental note to look up “MP5” and “vz.61 Škorpion,” and when I did that night, I found out what they were. Submachine guns.

The first box looked like it was U.S. military. The second one had the words “Česká Zbrojovka,” which I recognized because they are also on my CZ 75 handgun.

The third box was different. First of all, it looked military but the writing wasn’t in English. Squiggly slanted foreign lettering covered the side. Even though I couldn’t read that, I did recognize two stenciled words in English. “Israel” and “Uzi.” My jaw like to hit the floor. Didn’t need to look up either one of those. I’m as pro-Israel as you can get without being an actual Israelite. Don’t I wish. Nothing could have impressed me more.

Jane is my hero, even if she doesn’t ever go to church. She can’t help it. She was raised Church of England over yonder, and I don’t think they believe in attending services, so it’s not her fault.

I’m thankful we don’t have much call for self-defense here. But with the TV spreading sick minds nationwide, it’s no wonder things just keep getting worse everywhere. I hope it never spills over into Tullulah. We’re too small of a town and already have our quota of crazy people. If any nasty psycho city fool strolls into town and starts cussing on the street, buddy, I am there. I’d take Smokahontas down off the wall and the two of us would go have a little talk with him on his way out of Dodge. Son, I am sitting on ready.

Thinking about shooting and fighting made me even hungrier. I walked in the dark to the kitchen, holding Rowdy in one arm and aiming the flashlight beam out in front of us with the other. There was cold chicken in the refrigerator, leftovers that I’d cubed to put in salads. I looked at Rowdy and said, “Who knows how long the power will be out. We better not let this chicken go bad.”