Pineapple Turtles

Elizabeth. Maybe borrow some of T.K.’s clothes.”
Frank spotted Tommy already on his way back and his shoulders slumped. “Looks like he got breakfast from T.K.’s garage.”
Tommy approached and lowered a six pack of beer to the ground at their feet. He pointed at the green plastic sheeting beneath them. “Hey, give me my rain slicker.”
Mac pulled another modified trash bag out from under him and handed it to Tommy.
Frank jerked a beer from the six pack and held it up for Tommy to see. “I was thinking more like a donut.”
Tommy shrugged. “Beer’s the same thing. It’s liquid bread.”
Frank decided it wouldn’t be wise to deal with the marauders while wearing his uniform and smelling of beer, particularly at seven o’clock in the morning. He put down his unopened beer. Tommy and Mac drank their breakfast and appreciated the wonder of T.K.’s final home-improvement project. Three weeks before he died, tired of being bed-ridden and confined to a life of afternoon talk shows, T.K. had dragged the bombs he’d collected as a child out of the garage. The yellow-grey dummies now stood like sentries around his smallest tomato field, the one located closest to his house. Four coveted dud silver bombs marked the corners. Spaced much too far apart to be useful, the bomb fence wouldn’t stop furry pests unless they happened to be a marauding band of tomato-eating cattle, but they added a feeling of security to the crop.
For a man with T.K.’s advanced case of lung cancer, building a bomb fence proved to be a poor sort of relaxation. Elizabeth returned from the food store that fateful day to find him collapsed on his compost heap, dead.
Tommy pulled a candy bar from the pocket of his jacket and proceeded to pick the fuzzies from its half-eaten end. “We gotta get a plan rollin’ here.”
Frank’s stomach growled. “We’ll talk to that bastard when he gets here, tell him we need time to go over the papers. At eight I’ll call the judge and get him to stop this.”
“What if they don’t listen?” asked Mac.
“All we can do—” Frank’s gaze settled on Tommy’s candy bar. “What is that?”
“Candy bar. I had it in my jacket. Want some?”
Frank grimaced. “No.”
Mac looked as if he was about to snatch the candy from Tommy, but then he cocked his head. “Hey, you hear something?”
The low grumble Frank thought was his stomach grew louder. He stood. Beyond the field, he saw dust rising from the road.
He hung his thumbs behind his soggy belt. “Here they come.”

 
 
Chapter Nine
Angelina walked into the room on the tenth and uppermost floor of the Loggerhead Inn, her teacup Yorkshire terrier, Harley, tucked in the crook of her elbow. She nodded to the nurse sitting in a padded chair in the corner of the suite.
“I’ve got him for a bit,” she said.
Without word, the nurse gathered the book she’d been reading and left. Angelina moved to the door separating the sitting room from the adjoining bedroom and rapped on it.
“Mick, it’s Angelina. I’m coming in. Pull up your pants.”
She always said that. It was their thing.
She opened the door. In a hospital-style bed a salt-and-pepper-haired man lay still, his eyes closed, arms at his side. Chrome safety bars rose on either side of him to keep him from falling out of the bed during one of his occasional seizures. Light filtered through the thin orange draperies, giving the room a strange after-the-bomb yellow glow.
But it sort of is the end of the world for you, isn’t it, Mick?
Surprised to be caught off guard by Mick’s stillness again, Angelina opened the drapes to let in more natural light and cracked open the window. January in South Florida had the winter breezes picking up and the air cooled the skin instead of just pushing the humidity back and forth. Angelina knew Mick liked the smell of the outdoors. If he were dreaming, somewhere in that locked skull of his, it might be nice for him to believe he was outside, where he belonged.
She took a seat in a wicker chair beside the bed, shifting when a cracked piece of cane poked at her spine. Months of the nurse and herself sitting, standing and sitting again had turned the relatively new chair shabby-chic before its time. She made a mental note to get a new one. Something more sturdy, yet comfortable.
“How are you doing today, sport?” she asked, patting his hand.
He didn’t answer. She wasn’t surprised.
“Good. Me too. Same as always. Except, one thing. I think there’s someone downstairs looking for Siofra.” She paused and smiled. “I know. Who isn’t looking for her, right? I’m just not sure what to tell her. Tell the young lady, that is, not Siofra. Do you want me to tell her the truth?”
Angelina placed Harley on Mick’s chest and the little dog circled twice before laying down. Angelina continued.
“She says she has a picture and the call came from Charity, Florida, over on the other side. You know the place. I saw her as she was coming in. Just a glimpse, but she looks like—” She grimaced.
He doesn’t need to know that yet.
“It’s all pretty weird,” she said instead.
Angelina figure-eighted the tip of her index finger between his knuckles. His permanent tan had faded. Age spots had grown more prominent. His skin felt crêpey, so she added another item to her mental list.
Moisturize his hands more often.
“Ah, Mickey. I wish you were here.”
Angelina lay her head on his chest beside Harley and let her head rise and fall with his breathing. The dog stood and licked her forehead once before pouncing on her face. She sat up and tucked the dog back into her crooked elbow.
“I guess I’ll play it by ear.