Storm Season

“A tenant,” Violet corrected.

“But he’s not a paying tenant,” Bessie added. “More like a guest.”

I gazed into the tiny house through the open back door but couldn’t spot anyone inside, and I was beginning to wonder if this mysterious tenant wasn’t senility’s equivalent of an imaginary friend.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Over there.” Bessie pointed to a toolshed at the rear of the yard that backed up to the Pinellas Trail, a linear park built on an old railroad bed that ran the length of the county.

I narrowed my eyes, but the shed door was shut, and I caught no flicker of movement inside. With the windows closed and the Florida sun beating on the roof, the interior temperature had to be over a hundred degrees. If their “guest” was in there, he was well done by now.

“Oh…kay,” I said, not wanting to call her crazy to her face.

“He’s not there now, Bessie.” Violet’s condescending older sister voice reminded me of my own sibling, Caroline. “He’s gone out.”

“You have a man living in your garden shed?” I felt like Alice who’d tumbled down the rabbit hole.

Bessie nodded.

“What’s his name?” The investigator in me couldn’t help asking, while the saner part of my nature chided me for encouraging their delusions.

“He doesn’t have a name,” Violet said, “so we call him J.D.”

Curiouser and curiouser. The ladies had obviously lost it.

“J.D. for John Doe,” Bessie said. “He’s a lovely man.”

“Who doesn’t have a name.” An incipient ache flared behind my eyes.

“Well, he had a name at one time—” Violet began.

“—but he can’t remember it,” Bessie finished. “Can’t remember anything. Who he is, where he came from, not even his age, although I’d put him in his early sixties, if I had to guess.” She chomped the last bite of her third cookie, sans nuts.

“He has the nicest manners,” Violet said, “or we wouldn’t tolerate him. Why, for the longest time, we didn’t even know he was there.”

“We wouldn’t have known at all,” Bessie agreed, “if it hadn’t been for the Turk’s Cap bush.”

Violet nodded.

I was beginning to wonder if I were the one losing it. Nothing either of them said made any sense.

“That bush grew so high during the summer rains,” Bessie explained, “that it blocked the view from my bedroom window. So I went to the shed for the clippers.”

“We don’t use the shed much any longer,” Violet said, “since that nice young neighbor—”

“Mr. Moore,” Bessie said.

“Don’t interrupt,” her sister snapped.

“But you’d forgotten his name.”

“I didn’t forget. I hadn’t gotten to it yet.”

“So you don’t use the shed…” I prompted Violet in hopes of ending the bickering.

Bessie answered. “Mr. Moore mows our grass when he does his yard. He’s very thoughtful.”

“Thoughtful, my eye,” Violet said. “He got sick of looking at the jungle over here.”

While Bessie searched for a suitable comeback, I plunged into the void. “What did you find in the shed, Bessie?”

“Come and see for yourself.”

I set aside my glass of tea, pushed to my feet from the ancient metal glider and followed Bessie out the screen door. Violet, amazingly agile for a centenarian, dogged our steps as if afraid she’d miss something.

We followed a path of popcorn stone, set in thick St. Augustine grass, to the shed, constructed of the same concrete block as the house and apparently built at the same time, around 1940. The wooden door showed signs of rot, and several asphalt shingles were missing from the roof. A square of cardboard replaced a missing pane in one of two sash windows visible on the side of the shed that faced the house.

Bessie knocked on the door. “J.D., you home?”

When no one answered, she tugged open the warped door, reached inside and flipped a switch. Light from the bare bulb, which extended from a cord in the center of the ceiling, illuminated the opposite of what I’d expected.

Instead of a jumble of old tools, broken pots and other junk covered in dust and spiderwebs, the space was immaculate. The concrete floor had been recently swept, every surface dusted, the windowpanes sparkled in the sun and tools and garden implements hung in an orderly array on makeshift wall pegs. On an ancient wooden workbench in front of the east window sat rows of healthy green herbs in small pots. Next to the herbs were a single-burner electric hot plate, a battered but clean saucepan and a few cans of beans and franks. Beneath the bench stood a jug of drinking water and an old but sturdy Igloo cooler.

On the opposite side of the shed, under the west windows, a rough bed frame had been constructed from scraps of plywood and old lumber. Several ragged and faded blankets, neatly folded, lay beside a stained pillow. On a peg above the bed hung a heavy army jacket.

Either the Lassiter sisters had staged an elaborate set for their delusion, or the mysterious J.D. wasn’t a figment of their imagination but real flesh and blood.

My concern for the frail and elderly ladies skyrocketed. “Have you called the sheriff’s office?”

“Oh, no,” Bessie said in a horrified tone.

“We wanted to,” Violet said, “but police make J.D. nervous, poor man.”

“So you want me to evict him?” I thought I’d finally gotten a handle on why the sisters had summoned me.

“Evict him?” Bessie’s eyes widened with alarm. “Of course not. That would be inhospitable.”

“We want you to find out who he is,” Violet explained in the same exasperated voice she used on her sister. “He’s such a dear man, we’re sure he has a family somewhere who love him and miss him. In the meantime, we’re happy to have him stay with us.”

“We even offered to share our meals,” Bessie added, “but he didn’t want to impose.”

“How does he support himself?” I asked.

“He doesn’t beg, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Violet said sharply.

The old lady was quick. That J.D. was a panhandler, at best, was exactly what I’d been thinking.

“He’s too proud,” Bessie said. “He’d never take charity. He insists on doing odd jobs around our house to pay his rent. He stopped our faucet from dripping, planed a closet door that always stuck and mended a window screen. He also trims the shrubbery and weeds the flower beds. And as soon as we can afford a new pane, he’s going to repair the shed window.”