Bone Valley by Claire Matturro Read Free Book Online

trash.
    “Oh, Bonita done give it back to me. Says you was too busy hep’ing them wild boys to read poetry right now. I’ll get it back to you, but after I got it all in my memory.”
    “No hurry.” I washed my hands and sat down to eat.
    As we ate, Jimmie prattled about stuff around my house that needed his special handyman touch, soffits and eaves and trims and door hinges and such, and I calculated that at his current speed, he’d managed to find about two years’ worth of work. Before I could dodge his pitch, the doorbell rang.
    “Might could be that Dolly woman agin. She done been over bitchin’ ’bout my car, twiced now. Says I can’t leave it out in the open like that.”
    “We do have neighborhood covenants,” I said, hoping to imply that Dolly was correct. But when Jimmie didn’t respond, I went to answer the door.
    Miguel and Angus stood there, Miguel with a come-home-with-me grin and Angus with a scowl. I matched Miguel’s grin and hoped I didn’t have beet greens stuck in my teeth.
    “How’d you find out where I lived?” I asked.
    “Olivia,” Miguel said.
    If it had been just Angus, I’d have sent him on his way and fussed later at Olivia. But Miguel made it a different matter, and I stepped back and invited them in, curious as to what they might want.
    “We’re going for a hike on the Antheus property, thought you might want to come with us. So you can see what it is we do,” Miguel said.
    “It’s a pretty warm afternoon for hiking,” Angus said. “I’d understand, you didn’t want to go.”
    Jimmie came out of the kitchen with a handful of French fries. “What you boys doing here?” he asked, sounding a little fatherly for my tastes.
    “Where’s Antheus?” I asked.
    “It’s out in the Four Corners area of east Manatee County, where Manatee, Hillsborough, Desoto, and Hardee Counties all touch. Acres of prime woodlands, wetlands, and Florida hammocks,” Miguel said.
    “What is it, a new park?” I asked, innocently enough, not knowing what a can of worms that was going to be.
    “Don’t you read the newspaper?” Angus asked.
    “It’s the proposed site for a new phosphate mine, first phase of mining is planned for Hardee County. Eventually, if the company gets its way, it will mine in Manatee.”
    “Oh, that. Yes, Olivia has”—ranted, cursed, and yelled were the appropriate words, but I was in sociable mode and wordsmithed this a bit—“mentioned that to me. By Horse Creek. And, yes, Angus, I do read the newspaper.”
    Headlines count as reading, right? “So, y’all are going hiking on the Antheus property?” I flipped my hair, widened my eyes, and smiled at Miguel so he would pay attention to me, not my lack of radical environmental politics. “Hiking? By invitation?”
    Angus and Miguel both laughed.
    Oh, okay, a trespassing hike was at hand. Oddly enough that made it more enticing. Not as enticing as Miguel made it, of course, but there’s nothing like a little breaking of the law in the courtship ritual to get my blood going. Someday I might pay a psychiatrist to explain that, but for now I was just going to go with it.
    I aimed a slow, sensual smile at Miguel, bypassing entirely both Angus and Jimmie. Then I thought about all the bugs, plus my piddling but still necessary work back at the office, and I started an internal debate.
    “If you’re gonna go, I reckon I’ll go too,” Jimmie said. “You needs somebody to look out fer you.”
    “Oh, we’ll look out for her,” Miguel said, matching my smile and making my sap rise.
    “Besides, Jimmie, you promised to cut the grass. Remember?” I added.
    “Maybe you best not run off with these two,” Jimmie said. “I don’t reckon you should go.”
    Okay, that settled it. When a man tells me to do something, I usually don’t—obedience to the male voice not being one of my character traits—oh, except for Jackson. Everyone obeys him. I bet he could tell God what to do.
    “So, this will be fun,” I