Bell comes out to see what’s the matter with Shady and when she sees the iguana—its skin green like limes except for the black blocks running down its tail, eyes open and milky white—she says “Oh no,” sadder than Justin has ever heard her be before. “I’ve been knowing that old man for a long time.”

Justin asks if she had named him.

“Oh, no. I don’t believe in naming wild things,” she says, leaning down with her hands atop her knees. “Me and this old man came to an understanding. Every once in a while I left him a treat—leftover collards or mangoes—and so he returned the favor by not eating my garden vegetables.”

“For real?” Justin asks.

Bell nods. “When you respect a wild thing, they return the favor,” she says. “Mostly.”

The iguana is almost the length of Justin’s arm, tail and all, but she says he was actually kind of small for a full-grown one. “I’ve been here twenty years and he’s been here at least fifteen of them,” Bell says. “Poor old thing.”

Justin can’t stop looking at its little claws, which are all curled up, very pitiful.

Bell steps down from the porch and puts her hand on Justin’s shoulder while they look down at the iguana. Justin misses his granny then because allowing this silence to bloom between them is like something she would have done.

Shady edges nervously forward, then takes a step back with his nose near to the ground, wanting to get close enough to get a good whiff of the death-smell but too afraid to venture all the way for fear the iguana might spring back to life and swipe at him.

“Get back!” Bell hollers, very sharp. Afraid that Shady might try to snatch up the iguana, Justin reckons. Shady clicks his ears flat and sits, yawns to feign nonchalance and perches his head atop his paws.

“Should we bury him?”

Bell nods and tells Justin to go ask Evona for the shovel. Evona is in the middle of dividing an enormous aloe vera plant that is too big for its pot, and she points toward the toolshed.

On his way back Justin passes his father, hanging sheets out on the clothesline. Asher watches Justin over the clothespins he’s latching to the line.

“Where you headed with that shovel, buddy?”

“Bell needs it.”

“Love you, little man,” he calls after Justin. Sometimes he says that too much. Justin knows it good and well so there’s no use in him saying it twenty thousand times a day.

Justin looks up at the sky where clouds like bruises are moving slow and low over the island.

Bell has fetched a shoe box and now she has already lain the iguana inside and attached the lid.