A Valentine's Day Mess Pt. 02

She guided her brother west to where a well-packed dirt trail wound its way south by a grove of cottonwood and elm. They hadn't walked far before an irrigation ditch joined the trail. In the almost still night they could sense the moisture from the ditch and hear the hiss of the water flowing between its banks. Cars on the distant boulevard and an occasional splash from the ditch were the only sounds that reminded them that they weren't entirely alone.

They walked and talked in hushed tones. Claudia said, "Manny, I'm not in a mood to hurry back—we're going to have all night—but when we do get back I want to climb into bed with you and have you tell me a story."

The quiet of the night was broken by the hoot of an owl that perched on a limb overhanging the trail. It turned its head to them then launched into the night and sailed silently west toward the river.

Claudia stopped and wrapped herself in her arms. "Manny," she said, "That was a bad thing. The Indians say that when an owl flies away it's flying to tell the brujos in the forest where you are and what you said." She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and went on, "I changed my mind. Let's go back to the house."

They were on the patio again when Manny said, "I should text my mom so she doesn't worry. What should I tell her?"

Claudia laughed, "Don't tell her the whole truth. Why not tell her that you're here and we're drinking beer so you're going to sleep on our couch tonight? That doesn't make you sound like a saint, but it does make you sound kinda responsible—not like 'I'm going to stay here and do my little sister all night long.'"

Manny sent his message while Claudia unlocked the kitchen door, then she pulled him inside and turned to lock the door behind them. Manny wrapped his arm around Claudia's waist and leaned over to kiss her neck, and when she tipped her head back against his shoulder his hands passed up to cup her breasts.

Claudia first relaxed into Manny's touch then tensed and twisted around to face him. She clutched his shirt, pulled herself close, and said, "Take us to bed—Marisol and me. Take us both to bed."

Manny swept Claudia off her feet, and she kissed his jaw and his throat while he carried her away. When he set Claudia down by her bed she pushed away from him and said, "We need to stop in the bathroom. Don't go away."

The moonlight spilled through the bedroom window and fell on the wall by the bed. Manny took the condoms from his pocket, left them on the bedside table, and stood at the window. While he undressed he watched a small, four-legged figure trot from shed to shed through the moonlight. The bathroom door opened and Claudia stepped up behind him. Without turning away from the window he asked, "Do you have coyotes here?"

"Yeah," Claudia said. "They take a stray chicken or a cat now and then. It seems like the coyotes are mostly after the wild rabbits so we let them be."

Claudia sat naked on the edge of the bed, and when Manny turned away from the window she feigned surprise. "Ooo! Look what I found!" she said, and wrapped her hands around his cock.

Manny got hard so fast that it surprised him, and Claudia laughed when her brother flinched and snorted. Manny found a condom where he left them on the bedside table and Claudia rolled it onto his cock. She was smoothing it down and tumbling his balls in her fingers when she looked up and asked, "Would you tell me the last thing you remember from Manuel?"

Manny pushed his sister down on the bed and climbed over her. He said, "The last thing I remember is making love to Marisol. They had an apartment in San Salvador and it was on a night like this. The moon lit the balcony over the street and it lit the room where they played on the bed."

Neither Manny nor Claudia realized when it happened, but both of them gave themselves up to their parents' memories. The rambling house in the valley faded away and was replaced by the apartment, and the noise, and the smells from the streets of San Salvador.

Manuel pinned Marisol down to the bed with her breasts in his hands. He rolled her nipples between his fingers, and she raised her arms over her head to enjoy his touch. "What happened today?" she asked. "You were so happy when you came home, there must have been something."

Manuel had a surprise that he had kept to himself. "I got a promotion today," he told her. "And a big raise. I expect that your father had something to do with that. He wants grandkids, you know."

Marisol wrapped him in her arms and pulled herself up to kiss his face and his neck. "Manuel!" she whispered with her lips close by his ear, "You work hard for the bank; it wasn't Papa who made it happen, it was you."

They always told themselves that they would wait for babies until the war was over and they had more money. Now it seemed like the war would never end—there was gunfire in the distance even as they whispered in the moonlight—but now they would have the money.

Manuel lifted himself off Marisol's hips and knelt between her thighs. She lifted her legs around him while his fingers explored her. The creases and folds between her legs were already wet with anticipation.

Marisol studied her husband's face then asked, "Do we have to wait any longer? Manuel, I want your babies, and the way things are going—you never know—we may not have a lot more chances."

Even in the moonlight, Manuel could see the need in his wife's expression. As he watched her, he admitted the truth that he had become accustomed to denying. He wanted a baby; he wanted a son. He caught his breath and nodded his agreement.

Marisol wrapped him in her hand and peeled his condom off. She pulled his hard cock to her and rubbed its head against her sensitive button, then down beneath her lips and into position.

He took her slowly at first, but the sensations of being unsheathed in her sent waves of excitement through his body. Their bodies slapped and ground together. Marisol arched her back under him and groaned, "Ay Manuel, ahora!"

Marisol wrapped Manuel in her legs and locked her ankles behind his back. She clutched at his shoulders while he plunged into her; she kissed then bit his throat. The sudden pain triggered Manuel's orgasm like she knew it would. He filled her with his essence and kept pumping in her even after he was empty, then he slipped out and gasped for breath on the bed next to her.

The apartment in San Salvador faded again, and gave way to the moonlit bedroom in the valley. Manny blinked at the ceiling, and Claudia rolled to her brother and kissed his face; she kissed his ears and his throat. Manny touched his unprotected cock and found it wet with the thick mix of his cream and his sister's nectar, and she picked up his hand to kiss it off his fingers.

Claudia whispered in her brothers ear, "Manny, that was when they made you; the memories that you inherited have to end there. Their memories go on for me, but for me the last thing I remember is another night like that, but with more questions about how long Manuel would be there."

Manny asked. "Did we just get pregnant, like Manuel and Marisol?"

"No," Claudia said, and giggled softly in his ear. "Marisol was fertile that night and she knew it. I'm not fertile tonight. I'm too late in my cycle to get pregnant."

She slipped her fingers around Manny's cock and started coaxing him. "We're not done, are we?"

Manny studied Claudia's face in the moonlight then said, "No. But am I going to love my girlfriend, my sister, my wife, or my mother?"

"Yes," Claudia said. "They're all me, Manny. I'm every woman you ever loved, and you are every man we ever loved." She wrapped Manny with her arms and legs and felt his cock stiffen again. His body grew tense.

They were too immersed in each other to notice the coyote that rose on its hind legs and peered through the window. They wrestled together on the sheets until exhaustion took them both, and then the coyote slipped away into the dawn.

3. Fire!

It was Claudia who got up first, so Manny found himself alone in bed. He rolled on his back and stared at the ceiling while he searched his mind for Manuel. What he found was a quiet calm in Manuel's place.

Manny pulled himself from bed and checked the mirror. His jaw bore a day's growth of stubble. He would need to buy or borrow a razor somewhere, but he wasn't going to worry about it. He went looking for Claudia instead.

Claudia leaned against the kitchen counter and sipped from a tall glass of milk. She set the glass aside and crossed her arms under her gray sports bra. Her tan legs were bare from her knit shorts to her running shoes.

"Going for a run?" he asked.

"I need to." She said. "Wanna come run with me?"

"Before breakfast?" Manny asked. He hadn't run for a couple weeks, and he felt a little out of shape.

"Have a glass of milk." Claudia said, and offered him her own. "We can have real breakfast after we get back." She looked at his doubtful expression and stood up close to her brother to coax him. "You're wearing running shoes, aren't you? Pascual's track clothes are in the clean laundry and they should fit you—if you don't mind wearing Cougar gold, anyway."

Manny didn't mind wearing Pascual's high school colors, but he changed the subject. "Manuel is gone," he said.

Claudia nodded, "So is Marisol. It's as if they were finally able to rest. Now there are others." She flipped her hand in the air, "And they all have their own story. Drink your milk and let's go run before it gets icky out."

Manny changed into Pascual's track uniform, and they stopped behind the house to stretch and warm up.

"Two miles?" Claudia asked. She looked at her brother's long and muscular legs and expected that it might be hard to keep pace with him. She said, "That's down the trail we walked last night—all the way to the boulevard, then up to the north end of the farm and back again along the same trail."

Manny was hardly paying attention to his sister. "Let's go," he said, and set off without waiting for her. She caught up in seconds and they ran in silence but for the sound of their shoes hitting the ground, first on the packed dirt of the farm trail then along the boulevard's asphalt.

It was late morning, and the air was starting to warm up and to dry out. Manny broke a sweat while Claudia glided beside him without noticeable effort. Her pony tail bobbed behind her while they dodged the dog walkers and waved to people who ambled along the roadside, or who rode horseback on the ditch trails.

Manny drew deep breaths of the clean air. He got caught up in the way his feet fell on the road and by the growing strain in his lungs, so he was taken by surprise when Claudia turned off the boulevard and crossed the ditch on a dirt trail. Claudia laughed while Manny turned back to catch up.

The farm sheds were visible far ahead as they ran south between a field of lavender on the left and groves of elm and cottonwood on the right. A battered old pickup the color of primer and sun-burned paint sat beside the trail where they turned off toward the house.

Claudia kept her eyes on the truck while she gradually slowed, then stopped beside Concha's barn. She bent over with her hands on her knees and panted, "You run a fast pace."

"You could have said something if you wanted to slow down," Manny said. He was gulping air himself, but he saw where Claudia's eyes were fixed and asked, "Who's pickup is that?"

"I don't know," Claudia replied. Manny walked in circles around his sister while he cooled down, and Claudia bent to stretch her legs. She said, "I thought maybe it was some friend of Tío Pedro's." She motioned toward a figure walking toward them, knee-deep in an alfalfa field, "But there's Tío Pedro, and he's alone."

Concha whinnied and kicked at her stall, and a coyote darted out of the barn and skittered to a stop in a cloud of dust. "Que?" Claudia asked. "Coyotes aren't supposed to be out in the middle of the day." The animal eyed them then ran for the trees. It slowed beside the hay shed and looked back before it disappeared around the corner.

Claudia waved to get Tío Pedro's attention then went to see Concha. The horse was nervous, but she didn't seem to be hurt. Claudia was still calming her mare when Manny sniffed the air and asked, "Is that smoke?"

"Shit!" was Claudia's only reply. She tore away from Concha and ran out of the barn with Manny close behind. They looked first to the house and to the out buildings, then to the trees behind the hay shed. Black smoke billowed up behind the shed, and flames licked up through a scrubby elm tree.

Claudia cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, "Fire!" toward Tío Pedro. "Call the county and get the water truck!"

Claudia snatched a rake from the barn and thrust it at Manny. "It's been so dry!" she said. "Those trees are going to light up like matches. We need to keep it away from the hay shed." They ran for the trees; Claudia stopped in the shed to find another rake while Manny went around behind it.

The fire jumped from the elm to an old cottonwood that spread across the trail, then to a salt cedar. Flames spread along the ground through the litter and dried grass. Manny and Claudia both turned their backs on the blazing heat and raked the flames back away from the shed.

They choked and coughed in the acrid smoke while they worked. It was hard for Manny to see anything through his watering eyes, or to hear anything over the fire that roared behind him. He didn't hear the crack as the burning cottonwood split.

Claudia looked up in time to see the shattered tree lean over Manny. She yelled, "Manny!" as it toppled toward her brother. In an instant it engulfed him in a shower of flames and embers.

She threw her rake aside and lunged for her brother, but a hand reached from behind her and gripped her arm. She glanced down at the thick, dark fingers that wrapped her arm, then up at the scarred face of the gray-haired Indian who held her. Claudia tried to push and slap him away, but he hooked her other arm and trapped them both behind her back. He grunted and laughed in her ear while he dragged her, kicking and screaming, toward the old pickup.

Manny was lucky. The tree didn't fall across his back; it hit his shoulder and scraped down his right side. It twisted as it fell and a burning limb swung into his right leg. The tree knocked him to the ground and sent pain shooting through his knee. He scrambled away and dove blindly out of the flames, then slapped embers out of his hair and off Pascual's uniform.

When Manny looked up he found Claudia with her arms pinned behind her back, struggling to pull away from a broad, stocky man. His long hair was tied back and a coyote pelt draped on his back like a cape. He pulled her to him and seemed to say something in her ear, and whatever he said made Claudia's struggle more violent.

Manny pushed himself off the ground and looked for anything he could use as a weapon. He found a flaming branch on the ground next to him, but he had no way to use it while the man held his sister between them. With pain stabbing at his knee he hardly had any way to maneuver around her.

Claudia solved his problem when she stamped her heel down on the arch of her attacker's foot and thrust herself away from him. She opened just enough space between them.

Manny swung the flaming branch at the man's head while Claudia ducked and pulled herself away. She fell against the wall of the hay shed and spun about to watch Manny step forward and swing again to force the man back. The burning branch flared when he swung, and a roaring wall of flames leaped into the elms at the old man's back. Manny thought he had him trapped, but then the old Indian lifted his chin and gave Manny a defiant glare. The fire seemed to engulf him, and he was gone.

"Where'd he go?" Claudia gasped. Manny stood in the blazing heat of the fire and poked through the burning weeds and litter, then tossed the branch aside. A motion caught their attention and they both turned to watch a coyote jump from the brush and run toward the battered old truck, trailing wisps of smoke behind it.

The coyote disappeared under the truck, then Manny turned back to his sister. "Are you okay?" he asked. "Who was that? Did he hurt you?"

"I've never seen him before, but he wanted my blood. That's what he said—he was going to take my blood." Claudia was almost hysterical. "The fire... The shed... I'm okay I think. Are you okay?"

Manny couldn't keep up with his sister's racing thoughts. He touched the bruises that appeared on her arms where the man gripped her, then he pulled her into a hug and tried to calm her down.

Claudia caught her breath then pushed away to examine Manny. "How did you get out of that?" she asked. "Are you burned!"

"I dove and rolled, that's all I know." Manny said. "I'm not too burned, but I haven't had time..."

Manny's answer was cut off when Tío Pedro unleashed a thick stream from the water truck's hose. It shot past Manny and Claudia to where the fallen tree threatened the shed. Then Claudia pulled and tugged her brother out of the way while Pedro hosed down the wall.

"I hurt my knee," Manny explained. He leaned against the wall to watch Tío Pedro work, and he listened to the sound of distant sirens growing closer. Tío Pedro beat the fire back from the shed before the county's wildfire trucks pulled up, so the county crew concentrated their effort on the flames burning north along the trail.

"Look," Claudia said, and pointed past the water truck. "The pickup's gone." She turned back to her brother and said, "Let's get out of the way. Tío Pedro can take care of this. Can you walk?"

Manny tested his knee, then put weight on it. "It hurts," he said, "but I can walk."

"Lean on me," Claudia said.

Manny steadied himself on his sister's shoulder, and they started back to the house. He walked off the pain, and once they reached the house he was able to stand with Claudia on the patio and watch fire crews work.

The flames raced north to where the old pickup once sat, but there the crews cleared a break in the trees and knocked the fire down before it spread farther. The wind was growing and its gusts whipped ash and embers into the air. Tío Pedro and the county crew wet down a few spot fires, but most of the embers fell along the trail or in the irrigated lavender where there was little to burn.

Manny and Claudia watched until the wind whipped dust into their eyes, then they retreated indoors. Claudia settled her brother on the sofa with his foot raised on an ottoman and examined his body.

"Pascual's uniform is ruined," Claudia said, "but it looks like it did a pretty good job of keeping you from getting burned." His hair was singed, and she found burns on his shoulder and his leg. He had reddened scrapes all down his right arm and leg all the way to his knee and they were seeping a little blood.

"I'm sore," Manny said and worked his arm to loosen his shoulder, "But it's not as bad as my knee."

"I'll get ice. Don't go anywhere," Claudia said. When she came back she had a bag of ice and an elastic bandage that she used to strap the ice to his knee. She was quiet while she worked, and then she settled down on the couch beside Manny—on his left side, not on his sore right side—and squeezed herself against him.

"I thought you might be gone," She said, "I don't think I would be here now if you were."

Claudia laid her head on her brother's bare shoulder and Manny wrapped her with one arm. He held her and inhaled her scent—strong and smoky, but at least still there—until he felt her body shudder. A hot tear fell and rolled slowly down his chest. He pulled his sister closer and picked dried grass and bits of leaves from her hair.

"Manny," Claudia said, "I wish we could be normal, but I don't think we can ever be normal again." She looked up with tears streaking her cheeks.