CHAPTER NINE
Ezekiel
“This is ridiculous,” Zeek said scowling. The scowl was meant to intimidate, but Sierra continued to secure the sling over his shoulder and adjusted the kit against his chest oblivious to the threat.
“We have to make sure her injuries don’t worsen. She’s an orphan baby, and it’s my job to make sure she’s properly cared for.”
He glanced at Odin sitting bedside Sierra’s leg. His companion, the pup he’d nurtured and raised since he was a month old, spread his jowls wide, silently laughing at him for being forced to carry the kit he’d been hunting just hours before.
“Go ahead and have your little kee-keeing moment, I’m man enough to weather ridicule.”
Sierra smiled up at him, no longer attempting to restrain her humor. The wattage of her smile, man, the warmth in it, burned through him in a way the sun’s searing heat never could.
She smoothed her hand down his chest as if trying to sooth an agitated beast...which her touch was turning him into.
He wanted this woman and her warmth, her ridiculousness, her fearlessness. He wanted her in a way that defied time and mocked every vow to stay away from wild women.
But he’d never met a person who moved through the world so freely.
He wanted it. Wanted to feel that lightness, that ease in connecting after a lifetime of reacting to people and problems with violence and guardedness.
His ability to connect with most people, especially new people, was broken.
Except here on his land, except with Odin, and now, slowly, except with her.
And he hadn’t known this woman a full day.
Zeek felt the kit tense up. She gazed at him as if she sensed his interest in her adoptive mother. Her direct gaze seemed to say she was weighing whether she approved of Zeek’s interest in Sierra or not. Her low growl said she’d decided on not.
“Growl all you want, but if you bite me, I’m biting you back.”
The kit huffed and settled inside the sling.
“Don’t threaten my baby girl,” Sierra warned, her tone sensual and teasing. She reached past him and rummaged through the backpack she’d left on his passenger seat.
He’d driven to a shaded area south of the contamination he’d discovered earlier. He wanted her to see his land, not just the ruined part. Moreover, he didn’t want her to see Montel. If he parked close to his friend’s house, Tel would intrude.
Sierra saturated her skin with sunscreen and swapped her circular gold-rimmed glasses for a pair of black Ray-Bans and a battered Crocodile Dundee-style cloth hat.
Fascinating.
“Alright, I’m ready,” she said with jovial professionalism.
He growled, resisting his attraction; because he liked this version of her as much as he like the awkward and defiant Sierra, the awkward and aroused Sierra, the weirdly maternal Sierra.
Closing the passenger door, he walked in the direction of the dumping site he’d discovered earlier.
“We’re upwind of it now,” he called back. “But if the wind turns you’ll be able to find the area by smell alone.”
She caught up with him and glanced up. “How long have you lived here?” She asked, reaching over to stroke Chupa’s head. “I only ask because the land I’ve seen so far is beautiful and healthy. Well cared for.”
“And you don’t think I’m capable?”
People always misjudged. Were always ready to think there wasn’t more to him than anger and?—
“You’re obviously capable, Zeek. I mean, look at this place. My question is more about how long it’s taken you to make it flourish this way. My father was a migrant farm worker?—”
He frowned down at her. He’d assumed she was African American.
She smiled as if she’d experienced that reaction before.
“No, my people are Foundational Black Americans, both sides. My daddy grew up in North Oakland. He was a radical environmentalist and a farmer like you. He taught folks in the community how to grow food through urban farming. His parents were farmers, came to California by way of Texas when he was a kid. He and his sisters still have land down there but none of them want to move back. My dad loved growing things, he loved working with the earth, but as a Black man who was also an agricultural activist that wanted to empower his community, he was targeted. He spent over a year in prison before his case was thrown out. My aunt said that after he was released he couldn’t be still, struggled with feeling caged, fearing he’d be caged again, so he began migrating all over California working to help others to build their land, which is how he met my mom in the Sierra Mountains. ”
She went unnaturally silent for a while. He waited.
“She died when I was five. My daddy started moving again. With me in tow this time. We kept moving—my aunt said running from grief—until I was in the eighth grade, then my aunts put their collective feet down and made my dad move to Berkeley. They said that I needed to be around kids my age and have a normal childhood.” She laughed.
“They basically meant I was too untamed and needed to learn how to be a woman who could function in the real world.” She leaned over, pressing her shoulder against his and smiled up at him.
“They were too late. But I did get better at being with other kids. I went to Berkeley High, and back then there were a lot of different kind of weird people. Because I was a weird Black person though, people tested me. I fought a lot that first year. But like my aunty Jade said, you whoop enough peoples’ asses they will learn to stop fucking with you.
Working farms with my daddy made me strong, and my dad made sure I could protect myself early.
And as soon as I’d got my Master of Sciences, I went back to roaming the earth until my last job.
I say all that to let you know I know what you’re creating here takes time. ”
“You don’t look like the kind of woman to fight,” he said, stuck on the only part of her story he couldn’t believe.
“I’m not. I’m not a violent person. Especially at my big age. But I can protect myself.”
“Hmm,” he grunted.
Until the last year, physical violence was his first response to aggression and overwhelm.
It might as well have been tattooed across his forehead the way people avoided him.
Except the women he’d dated, they’d all been fighters.
The kind that’d start and end fights, always finding a way to pull him in.
Hell, now that he thought on it, more than two-thirds of the fights he’d been in in the last ten years were started by some hotheaded woman he was dating.
“You ever get married?” he asked.
She snorted. “Nope.”
“Got a boyfriend?”
“I haven’t had a boyfriend for a couple of years, yet here, I already have people trying to set me up.”
He glanced down at her. “You looking to be set up?”
She shrugged. “I’m not against it. I am between the flowering and the ripening phase of my life, Zeek, so yeah, a man is definitely desired. What about you?”
“Nah, I never desired a man.”
She laughed, stumbling into him.
He caught her, securing her firmly against his side.
Her laughter was so infectious it made him smile.
She settled her weight along the length of his body and circled her arm around his waist.
“So are you looking to be set up with a woman?”
“I haven’t been looking to be set up with a woman for a long time.”
Her smile deflated.
He looked forward; wouldn’t let her go.
“If I found the right flower though...I wouldn’t have a problem pollinating the shit out of it.”
She stumbled again. He held her in place. “You’re kind of clumsy, Sierra.”
“More like kind of horny,” she muttered. “Oh my God, what is...that reeks!”
She pulled away from him and reached for her backpack, rapidly digging through it. She pulled out two masks and handed him one. “How long has it been like this?”
“My friend, Montel, called me this morning. He lives in that house there,” he said pointing to a light blue house about two hundred yards away.
“He started smelling it about two days ago.” He put on the mask.
Motioning for Odin to sit in the shade. He placed the kit beside Odin, not wanting them close to the area.
“Initially Montel thought an animal had died near his house. He couldn’t find anything and when the smell got worse, he called his cousin, the one in your department, and she told him about you.”
“I heard about Montel when I was in town.”
He didn’t want her hearing anything about Tel. The man drew women to him like overripe peaches drew fruit flies, and Zeek didn’t want Sierra anywhere around him when she was in a fucking ripe-flower phase of life.
“Unhear it,” he said.
“What?”
“Unhear whatever you heard about Montel.”
“You don’t even know what?—”
“I don’t care.”
She peered up at him. He couldn’t see her eyes behind the dark sunglasses.
She might not know it, but her eyes sometimes broadcast her thoughts and emotions as clearly as her words.
“It doesn’t matter if everything I heard about Montel-the-other-tenant was erased and never to be remembered. Why? Because I’ll be meeting him tonight...making new memories and forming my own thoughts about him.”
“Not if I keep you locked up in my house.”
She stopped abruptly. Had he scared her? Did she now wonder if she was walking beside a man who was the beast in the forest that women and bears ran from?
“And what exactly would you do with me all night...locked up in your house?”
He hadn’t frightened her.
“They’d be real bad things, but they’d feel real good...if you can tolerate a little pain with your pleasure.”
She took a step back and began bouncing on her toes like a track star getting ready to get in starting blocks and take off.
He was having an effect on her, he thought smugly, a real and in the moment effect that seemed to overtake any thought about Montel’s ass.
“Ezekiel Evers, if I hadn’t promised to go to open mic karaoke night at Just Grounds, I might be tempted to show you what a little pain with your pleasure feels like.”
He reached for her, willing to fuck her right here, but she evaded him by jumping out of reach. Before he could make another move, she held out both hands for him to stop.
He reached up and gathered his hair into a loose bun at the crown of his head, preparing.
“We’ve got work to do!” she said and threw something that bounced off his chest and hit the ground. He bent down and picked up her house key and car fob, placed them in his pocket, and grinned.
She reached out her hand demanding it back.
“Fuck no.” He smiled. “Not until I’m good and ready. And like you said, the sooner we get to work the sooner we can begin to play.”
“I never said that,” she said, walking ahead of him.
Zeek dipped his hand in his pocket and stroked the warm metal of her keys as he followed her.
He watched the sway of her ass and wondered if Sierra was the woman Destiny wanted him to meet.
He had two compelling reasons to show up at open mic karaoke now. One, to see if Sierra was the woman Destiny wanted him to set him up with, and two, to stop anything from going down between Sierra and Tel; whether she was the woman Destiny chose for him or not.