The Ocelot and The Three Mikes, Installment #2

 The Ocelot and The Three Mikes, Installment #2 

Short Fiction (as usual: in progress, blemishes and all, minimally edited) by Jennifer McAuley

And so the story of  Beverly and Jeff, Grandmother and Grandson, continues. See my last post for the beginning of the story. Full disclosure: I may go back and edit old posts. After all, these are all works in progress . . .

Fire Curl Twins

After switching to the car, they stopped only twice. Once to grab necessities at a squatting strip mall with a grocery store and a Walmart, and then to pick up the twins. Sandy and the kids were sitting on the front steps waiting, front door wide and letting in flies, basking in the summer sun that had arrived so early that year.

“Your Dad’s been calling, leaving messages, says you’ve kidnapped your Grandma?” Sandy stood, pushing Kaleb’s back pack toward Jeffery. The twins disappeared into the house to collect their shoes and afterthoughts.

“You say anything?” Under his sunglasses she could see his eyes blink once, twice, but couldn’t make out their shape.

“Nah.” Sandy’s green eyes drifted to the Cherokee where Beverly’s white corona of hair bobbed above the dash.

Sandy knew how to keep secrets. Jeffery paid her every month, double what he had to legally. In cash. More if she needed it. Mostly punctual picking up Samantha and Kaleb. Whenever he could be. And he was great with the kids. Sandy wished he had loved her half as much as he loved the twins. She had figured out long ago Jeffery’s vines twisted in the opposite direction, nothing she could so about that.

“Well, don’t.” he said. “not a word.” She squinted at him then, trying to read him through the lenses, studying his mouth which was a grim line. She planted kisses on the children when they re-emerged, forced them into hugs, though they were excited to go.

“Go on then. But Jeff? We need to talk soon, ok?” Samantha and Kaleb had settled in the Cherokee’s dusty back seats and Beverly had rolled down the window to wave at Sandy.

East

They waved out the windows and headed east. Sky, water and lots of green. Emerald, olive, moss, smaragdine. Close enough that the drive couldn’t be called arduous. Far enough that cel phones didn’t work. Close enough that there was a paved road for a while, far enough that once the pavement ran out there was a long curl of gravel. There were neighbors, close enough that they might hear the occasional dog barking or the echo of a shotgun, far enough that conversations were private and the curtains could be left open.

They got to the cabin before dusk. They stood on the wood deck that Grandpa Al had built watching the sky go crazy before it let go of the sun. The sunset was reflected, upside down and backwards, in the still lake. The twins’ red curls clutched at the light making it appear as though their heads had caught fire. Beverly used Al’s old walker to shuffle around, inspecting for weak spots in the wood. Then she sat down on a rusted deck chair and studied her favorite grandson and her two great grandkids as they watched the sky. Her eyes landed again on Jeffery’s leather vest, the fearsome cat that had defined his whole adult life. After a moment she turned and said, “Did I ever tell you story about the Golden Ocelot?”

The Cabin

After a simple dinner, steamy Ramen noodles floating with snap peas, the twins settled onto the old sagging sofa in the dusty cabin, leaving the recliner for Beverly. The cabin had not been used much in recent years, but other than the dust, it was just as Beverly remembered. The long bookshelf along one wall, the pine walls that stared out everywhere with knotty, contorted faces. The curtains she had sewn out of Al’s old ties, a celebration of his retirement. The oval rag-rug her mother had made on the plywood floor Al never got the chance to finish properly. The gun cabinet, also of pine, locked tight and beckoning to her from it’s corner by the river rock fireplace.

Jeffery set about tidying up in the small kitchen, his hands lingering in the soapy water, his eyes drifting to the dusky field and darkening forest framed by the small window above the sink. Beverly’s lilting voice reminded him of his time with her as a boy. Wild stories, either about riding horses and shooting gophers or about foreign lands and magical creatures. They were the catechism of his childhood, a Sunday School that really mattered, if he had only managed to listen a little deeper. He had been distracted by his own fantasy, by the escape. The Ocelots.

“Many people believe,” Beverly started, “that Ocelots are found only in the humid jungles of South America, where the Mayan pyramids reach up to the sky in jagged steps. You’ve seen those in pictures, right? Hundreds of little steps like rows of pointy teeth.” Jeffery glanced over to see one garnet head nodding up and down, the other side to side. “Well, tomorrow, if you’re so inclined, you can probably find more about them in one of those.” She waved a hand towards the roughly hewn bookshelf filled with dated National Geographics, their yellow spines monopolizing three whole rows. On the shelf above those, a set of ancient encyclopedias, cream faux leather with fancy gold script, the edges of the pages gilded.

“In the ancient world there was a rare and mystical creature that lived in the far east. It was the Golden Ocelot, born in the Papyrus marshes that used to exist there, back before all of Egypt turned to sand. . .”

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