Land of a Hundred Wonders (21 page)

“Ya don't say.” Clever's returning smirk could win a blue ribbon,because, really, when it gets down to it, me and Billy and Miss Florida and Grampa are the only friends she's got, and not one of us is sitting down at the sheriff station behind those black bars. “And who might that friend be?” she asks, so sure of herself.

The sheriff slips the chaw behind his lip and says, “Why, that'd be Cooter Smith.”

(Damn it. I forgot about Cooter.)

Clever gasps, and Billy's struggling to keep his breathing regular and not doing that good a job.

“But that's not right, that's not . . . ,” I yell before Billy shakes his head at me ever so slightly, letting me know now's not the time.

The sheriff says, “We got that uppity boy dead to rights this time. Even got an eyewitness.”

Clearly shaken, but refusing to back down, Clever sasses, “And who'd that be?”

The sheriff looks as smug as a bug in a rug. “Tim Ray Holloway will testify in a court of law that him and Cooter and Buster were playin' a game of craps over in back of Mamie's and when the dice didn't go his way, Cooter lost this temper and beat on Buster 'til he was dead. And threatened he'd do the same to Tim Ray if'n he didn't help him drag Buster's body onto the dump so he could set it afire.”

It takes mighty
focus
for me not to shout out, Why, you lyin' red-faced baboons! Even though everybody knows that Mr. Buster Malloy had a love of craps, he's been dead for days already over at Browntown Beach!

Nuts. I bet I know what he did. When I went back to look for Mr. Buster the other afternoon? And I found that he had up and disappeared like Mr. Harry Houdini? The sheriff musta stole him right out from under my nose! And then he dragged that dead body over to the dump for the sole purpose of trying to pin this crime on Cooter Smith because he hates him with his whole heart.

(I believe this would be considered a perfect example of what Mr. Howard Redmond calls in his excellent book:
A frame-up: A fraudulent incrimination of an innocent person.
)

But ha! on you, sheriff. I got
proof
Mr. Buster was murdered on that Browntown sand and NOT the dump. I got pictures!

Uh-oh.

Just remembered those shots of Mr. Buster are missing from my stack. Maybe somebody from down at Bob's Drug Emporium put them in the wrong envelope? Right after my visit to Grampa at the hospital, I'm gonna make a beeline over there.

“Well, been real nice visitin' with y'all, but I got a prisoner to tend to.” Turning to leave, the sheriff stops with a chuckle. “Just recalled the main reason I came up here in the first place.” Pointing back and forth between me and Clever, he says, “I believe the two of you got something that belongs to that gentleman who lives next door.” He takes out a pad from his back pocket and flips a few pages. “Mr. Willard called down to the station last night to report that he's missin' a map of some sort. Said y'all stole it from him.” LeRoy takes a giant step back toward the picnic table, saying, “Ya don't mind I have a look in your briefcase for it, do ya, Miss Gibby?” Before I can answer, I certainly do, Sheriff, I mind a whole lot, he's already plucking at one of the leather-like's compartments with his porky fingers. Then another. Rustling around the bottom, and not finding what he's looking for, he slams it shut with a lotta show and says to Clever, “Maybe you's the one hiding that map, Carol.”

“Map? What map?” she says in her most innocent-of-all-wrongdoin's voice. “I have no idea what you're talkin' about.”

“Ya weren't over at Browntown last night, were ya? Spendin' the night with the Smith boy? Maybe ya even helped him murder Buster. I know how ya favor the coloreds.” He comes in close enough to sniff Clever, maybe for dump smoke. Or barbecue sauce.

Clever hawks and spits to the side, says, “Why, no I wasn't, and no I didn't, LeRoy. Ya know, I could swear I already tol' you that. Seems to me”—she bobs her eyebrows at me—“what we got here is a failure to communicate.”

Oh, my cool-handed Clever!

“But thanks ever so much for worryin' about my whereabouts, ” she says so realistically, even
I
believe her.

Shifting his weight toward me, LeRoy asks, “How about you, Miss Gibby? Ya over to Browntown las' night?” I can tell he'd love to add on, “You who are dumber than anthracite coal.”

“She was with me,” Billy says, trying to maintain a hold of Keeper, whose appetite must be returning 'cause he's eyeing the sheriff like he's a chicken-fried steak.

“And just exactly where was
you
?” he asks, politing his voice some since Billy's daddy, Big Bill Brown of High Hopes Farm, is the richest man in Grant County. It's not likely the sheriff is ready to belly flop into that kind of hot water. Not with an election coming.

Billy says, “I was with Gibby.”

“Sheriff, ya hear anything new about my grampa?” I ask, suddenly remembering. If anybody knows what's happening over at the hospital, it'd be busybody him.

LeRoy gives us the once-over one more time, and then with a turn of his heel heads back up the lawn.

“Sheriff Johnson?” I call, chasing after him. “Grampa?”

“Gibby?” Billy calls after me, worried.

“I'm fine,” I yell back at him, and then to Clever, “Stay put,” 'cause I can tell she's just itching to skedaddle.

Hustling, I catch up with LeRoy just as he's pulling open his cruiser door out back near the road. I'm about to ask him again about Grampa's condition when he warns, “Keep your trap shut about findin' Buster on the beach or else.”

OH MY GOODNESS! HE KNOWS I KNOW!

Or is he just warning me about spreading gossip that can't be proved?
Slander: A malicious false statement
.

“I'm givin' you fair warnin'.” He grabs on to a handful of my hair hard enough to wrench my head to my shoulder. “Ya hear?”

“I'll . . . I'll write a story in my newspaper. Everybody in Cray Ridge will know that you're trying to blame Cooter for something he didn't do.”

“Be my guest,” LeRoy scoffs. “Who ya think they're gonna believe? The man who's been the law of this county for eight years or some . . . imbecile.”

Seconds after he backs out, siren blaring, Keeper whips past me. He musta been eavesdropping and no longer able to contain himself, 'cause he full-out chases that squad car down Lake Mary Road. “Careful,” I shout after him, even though I know he won't heed me. That's the thing with that dog. He's brave, almost recklessly so, and doesn't EVER give up. No. Keeper will take it on himself like a sworn duty not to let the sheriff outta his sight. I read the whole book out loud to him, placing special emphasis on chapter 16:
Tracking
.
A good hunting dog can be indispensable. And tenacious.
So I'm not worrying about the sheriff's threats as I turn back to the cottage.

But ya know who should be worried, don'tcha? Cooter Smith, that's who. Because no matter how rascally he's been acting lately, we'd all feel real bad if he was found twisting on the end of a rope in Wally's Woods, the sheriff not bothering to hide a revolting grin when he announces to the town, “He up and escaped. I have no idea who strung the boy up like that. What a goddamn shame.”

Yes, indeed. Cooter Smith should be worryin' his fool head off.

Cheating

While Billy and Clever are in the kitchen stirring us up some lunch, I'm picking through Grampa's dresser drawers. His worn-at-the-seat jeans. The bleached undershirts he wears no matter how hot. I run my finger across the pearl buttons of one of his Texas shirts. The kind you see on rodeo riders. I've never been in his room without him. Pressing my face into his pillow, there's a faint smell of trout twisting out of the lake. My salty tears aren't helping. They're only reminding me how the two of us had planned on doing some ocean fishing someday. “The Atlantic spreads out like a Texas prairie,” Grampa told me, thrilled. “Fish the size of calves. Ya'd have to see it to believe it.”

Above his cherrywood bed there's a portrait of him and Gramma Kitty. They don't look much older than me and Billy. I'd give up my favorite No. 2 if I could climb into that picture and feel all that love blanketing me and . . .
focus, Gib, focus
. What does he always tell me when I get to yearning like this? “What sense does it make cravin' something ya can never have? That's like a whippoorwill wishin' it were a sparrow.”

Oh, Grampa.

What else is he gonna need in the hospital? His deerskin slipper? Yes, he's awfully fond of that slipper. I check under the bed for it, sending dust bunnies on high. There it is, next to what looks like a wooden hatbox. As I slide them both out and set them on top of his chenille spread, a voice in my head tells me to go ahead and open the box, and it isn't Grampa's. He'd raise holy hell if he knew I was going through his personals. I trace the smooth raised-up letters. A M. Addy Murphy. Bet he whittled this box for Mama when she was a little girl. Wonder why he never showed me this before. The top comes right off. There's a jumble of stuff inside, but what catches my eye right off is the pink ribbon tied around a curl of dusty brown hair. And a letter.

Well, goodness. Daddy was cheating an art dealer? So that's why Miss Lydia can never see him up in heaven when she does one of her ACTUATIONS. This also answers my pestering question as to why he's not buried with my mama. My grampa despises cheating of any kind.

“Soup's almost on.” Clever sticks in her head, and seeing what I'm doing, gets herself comfy on his bed. “Whatcha got there?” Boy, she could stand a bath. She smells like giblet stuffing right after you scoop it out of the bird.

I hand over the letter from Mama I found in the box. Clever moves her lips when she reads, so it takes her some time. When she's done, she shakes her head. “Another man shows his good-for-nuthin' side,” she says, mimicking her mama to a T, but then adds with some wistfulness, “Do ya think they're
all
like that?”

“
My
man doesn't have a good-for-nuthin' side,” I say. “He wouldn't cheat an art dealer.” (Billy doesn't even like art all that much. He's more the rugged outdoor type.)

“You gonna be all right?” Clever asks, eyeing some coins Grampa left on his bedside table. “ 'Bout your daddy, I mean.”

“A course I am. If he wouldn'ta died in the crash, I'm sure he woulda paid that art dealer back.” I set Grampa's red-striped pajamas into the packing box next to his whittling knife and records. “Bad timin' is all.”

“But that's not what . . . ,” Clever says, choked up some since
daddy
talk is generally considered
Verboten: A taboo subject
between us. (Her not knowing . . . you understand.)

“Yes, my daddy was
another
man who truly loved his woman.” I'm back to gazing adoringly at the picture above the bed. By the blissful smiles on their faces, anybody can see that Grampa and Gramma were enraptured in love just like me and Billy and Mama and Daddy. “True love must run deep in our family, wouldn't ya say?”

“Deep as hell,” Clever replies,
real
huffy.

(Jealous, is all she is.)

“Well, I'm gonna give Miss Jessie a jingle down at the hospital, ” I say, replacing Mama's letter in the hatbox and putting it back under the bed. “Put those coins back on the bedside table, hear?”

Out in the parlor, I dial up the numbers printed on the hospital card and say, “Charlie Murphy's room, please.”

On the other end of the line, the phone's ringing and ringing. Miss Jessie finally picks up and says in a running-out-of-breath voice, “Hello?”

“Hey, Miss Jessie. I'm just about set to head over to the hos—”

She interrupts with, “Oh, Gib, where ya been? Ya better get down here quick. Time's runnin' out,” and hangs up without even saying see ya later alligator.

Clever is plumb wore out. It musta been all that daddy talk drained her or maybe it's coming up with THE PLAN that made her get-up-and-go get up and go. I got her set up real nice on the flowered sofa on the screened-in porch. Two pillows. A packet of crackers sitting alongside her bowl of chicken noodle. Billy, him being such a long drink of water, managed to tape her beloved movie poster up on the ceiling so Mr. Paul Newman and Mr. Robert Redford can watch over her while she rests. Billy and Keeper've gone off to check on the mooring of Grampa's boat to the dock, so me and Clever are alone when she asks, “What'd Miss Jessie say?”

“She said time was runnin' out, but I could tell that she was in a hurry. She musta read the clock wrong.”

I checked the hospital card AGAIN after speaking to her, just to be sure. Visiting hours are
definitely
'til two o'clock. I got plenty of time to get done what I gotta get done and still get over there.

Clever asks, “We clear on the plan?”

“Maybe ya better go over it again.”

She sets her spoon in her bowl, and says, “First off, don't you dare tell Billy what you're up to. He'll try to stop you, on account a him being so righteous.”

“Check.”

“Second off, go and break Cooter out of jail. Miss Florida will never forgive us if he's found hung, and 'sides that, we owe him. From the old days.”