Land of a Hundred Wonders (29 page)

“No time for ruminatin'. We gotta keep movin',” Cooter says, trotting past me.

This graveyard is where Grampa will be buried. I hope later rather than sooner. Right over there next to Gramma Kitty and Mama.

“Hey,” Cooter hollers back at me. "Y' all right?”

I'm really not, but like Grampa always says, “Go ahead and cry . . . nobody's listenin'.”

“We could use her phone to call over to the hospital. Ya think she's home?” Cooter says, when I join back up with him. He's trying to lighten the mood. Everybody knows Miss Lydia never sets foot off her property. She's sworn to tend to the spirits day and night. “Cannot fall asleep at the wheel,” is what she'd tell ya.

“Man, the place looks a lot worse than the last time I was over here,” Cooter says, gingerly lifting his hurt leg over Dancer's back and sliding down.

It's true the shutters are half off the house. The paint back-bending. And a couple of the boards on the front porch are missing, but that's only because Miss Lydia doesn't care that much about what she calls “the Corporal,” which I have figured out has not a thing to do with the army, but means the
outside
of things. No. What she's mostly concerned with is “the Private,” which means the
inside
of things.

Land of a Hundred Wonders—I don't care what everybody else thinks—the parlor where my spiritual advisor does her crystal readings and fortune-telling . . . the baptizing creek . . . the graveyard . . . the honey and potion stand—is more than just a tourist attraction. It's my
Sanctuary: A sacred place of refuge.
Think
Divine: Beautiful. Blissful. Hallowed.
Now triple it.

Colored glass hangs from every bush, mostly red, since that's the color well-known for its awe-inspiring properties. And there is good growing dirt where healing herbs are thriving. Plants when ground up or liquefied or baked in the oven will help people feel better about being alive. There's plenty of
bush basil
for nervous headaches and wandering rheumatism.
Balmony
for piles.
Daisies
, whose roots you can milk boil and feed to puppies so they'll get no bigger, thrive along her rickety fence. And there's so many
sunflowers.
Their seeds get brewed into a drink that ya can give to babies suffering with whooping coughs. (Remember Miss DeeDee from the Miss Cheryl and Miss DeeDee story? Miss Lydia helped her eyes by making her a potion out of baby carrots.)

But despite my spiritual advisor's vast and miraculous powers, she doesn't have something for
everything
that ails. “Ya got a plant for
memory
you could give me?” I have asked her time and time again, 'cause I don't remember 'til it's too late that she'll always reply, “Sometimes not rememberin' . . . it's a blessin',” looking sad beyond anything I previously thought was considered sad-looking. A kind of sorrowfulness so vast, so churning, that if you're not careful, you could lose your footing and slip into it.

No matter what the rest of the place looks like, the Hundred Signs of Wonder that line the front of her house in no particular order are always painted fresh and easy to read. Each one more deep in its thinking than the next.

WONDER #
57
THY MUST SUMMON COURAGE UPON ENCOUNTERING
THE EVERLASTING FLAME

WONDER # 26
SINNERS MUST MAKE RESTITUTION FIRST IF THEY
SEEKETH REDEMPTION

Like everybody else who comes to Miss Lydia for spiritual advice, I've spent hours upon hours pondering her words of wisdom. I bend down to straighten:

WONDER # 15
THE HIGHWAY OF LIFE HARDLY EVER TAKES YOU TO
WHERE YOU'RE HEADING

"Ain't that the God's honest truth,” Cooter says, reading over my shoulder. He's tied the horse and donkey up to a sycamore branch, leaving enough rein so they can graze.

“Gib?” Miss Lydia calls out from her porch in that raspy voice she's got. “Cooter?”

“Yes'm,” he calls back. “It's the two of us.”

Miss Lydia looks like a left-behind rag doll in the wide-back chair. She'll never talk about it, but I heard she used to be quite a bit taller. The explosion she was in melted her some, I guess. Like always, she's got on a gauzy scarf of purple, the forgiveness color, that wraps around her head and hides the side of her scarred face. She NEVER takes that scarf off. Says it gives her an air of mystery.

“Where's Keeper at?” she asks as we come up the steps to her veranda.

I look both ways, shrug. “Thought he was right behind us,” I say, not really bothered since I know that dog can take care of himself. So does Miss Lydia. (Just so ya know, even though she will not admit to it, I believe she was the one left Keeper back out next to the Dumpster at Top O' the Mornin' for me to find right after I got home from the hospital.
After
teaching him his few good tricks.)

The lavender shawl I crocheted her is set on her shoulders 'cause even though it is sopping warm, Miss Lydia is almost always on the chilly side. Shuckin' beans into a white bowl she's got on her lap, she tells me, “Your mama's been missin' you.” And then to Cooter, “What happened to your leg?”

“The sheriff.”

Miss Lydia puts her bean bowl off to the side and goes through the door of her house, leaving behind the smell of the camphor oil she massages into her puckered skin, wind chimes tinkling in her wake. There's gotta be a thousand of 'em hanging off of every tree. (Besides their favorite—soul music—Miss Lydia tells me the dead truly appreciate hearing the wind stroking the willows.)

Cooter says to me, “Don't get comfortable. The posse's gotta be on our tail.”

Coming back out the screen door, Miss Lydia's holding one of her special poultices that she makes out of clay and peppermint oil. “This'll draw out the pain,” she tells Cooter. “Bring me your knee.” Removing the bandage, she smooths on the mixture in gentle strokes, and asks me, “Billy do it?”

“WHAT?”

“The knee, Gib,” she asks. “Did Billy doctor the knee?” Miss Lydia's just been making mannerly conversation since we got here, 'cause a course, she
already
knows the sheriff was the one that messed up Cooter AND that Billy was the one who doctored his knee. That's because she is
Omniscient: All knowing.
E.G., she can hear things only an animal can. Knows when a storm is coming days before the wind changes direction. And if you are still doubting her mystical powers, this should convince ya. Miss Lydia knows things about the crash and she wasn't even there.

“What's troublin' ya?” she asks me, still applying the poultice.

I hardly know where to begin. “Well . . . Grampa is in Texas and Clever is havin' her baby and the Brandish Boys are comin' for us 'cause the sheriff lied and told them that Cooter is guilty of murderin' . . .” She might not know about the deceasing of her brother, Mr. Buster Malloy. Then again, she's got extra-strong communication with the spirits, and they've probably already informed her that Buster has joined up with them. NOT the ones residing in heaven. Not after what he did to her. “We gotta call up to the hospital to check on Billy and Clever. May we use your phone?”

“Ya could if the storm hadn'ta knocked it out,” she says, wiping the leftover clay onto the grass and replacing the bandage. “Ya better put the animals in the shed.”

"Pardon me?” I say.

“They're comin'.” She pats Cooter's leg, and he doesn't wince at all. “Git now.”

Ya think she's right in her head or wrong in her head, Miss Lydia is not the kind of person you question, so Cooter scurries even faster than me toward Dancer and Peaches. Of course, this is the moment Peaches has chosen to show off her stubborn. She's dug in.

Miss Lydia calls from the porch, “Leave her, Gib. Go quick.”

The shed's just a piece from the house, closer than the barn. Cooter's already halfway there, dragging Dancer behind him, and swearing a streak.

I hear the posse now, too, on the other side of the trees. They're arguing about what direction to go off in. They could head toward Cray Ridge, Browntown, or make the turn our way. Above the rustling, the grunting, the sneeze of a horse, the sheriff hollers out, “Looks to me like the tracks lead off to Lydia's. We got 'em now, boys.”

I can imagine him fingering the rope on the side of his saddle. Bet Cooter can, too, 'cause I barely get the door closed behind us and he's off in the corner, attempting to shrink invisible. This shed is where Miss Lydia keeps her gardening tools and old tack and worn-out bushel baskets and plows but nothing large enough to hide either under or behind.

The sound of hooves and leather comes roaring into the yard.

One of the Brandish Boys—it has to be one of them because neither the sheriff nor Deputy Boyd has got a voice that sounds like a bone getting ground up in a disposal—shouts, “Well, ain't this convenient.” Peeking through a wormhole in the shed door, I can see the one with the seeping skin condition pointing up at the Hundred Wonders Cemetery sign. “We can string him up and bury him all in the same place,” he shouts again, following up with a laugh that is tremendously
Bloodthirsty: Encouraging violence.

“Mornin', Lydia,” the sheriff says, pulling his horse up to the porch steps.

"LeRoy,” she says politely, but doesn't look up from her shuckin'. “What can I do for you and your friends this fine after-a-storm mornin'? A calmin' elixir, perhaps?”

The Boys' heads are swiveling like a pair of lazy Susans.

“The McGraw girl or Cooter Smith been by this morning?” the sheriff asks as he steps down out of his stirrup.

Cooter wails softly from the corner of the shed. “Can ya see 'em? Are they comin'?”

“
Shhhhh
. . . they're gonna hear ya.”

“What ya do to your skull, LeRoy?” Miss Lydia asks, her eyes still not meetin' his. “Might have a little something for that.”

The sheriff reaches up to where Cooter knocked him on the head with the limestone rock. The white bandage is dotted with blood. “Ya
sure
ya ain't seen those two?”

Miss Lydia strokes her calico cat with her long-fingered good hand. “Nobody's been by yet today.”

The sheriff bends his leg onto the lowest porch step and with a bowing of his head says, “Ya know Buster is dead, don'tcha?”

Cool as one of her bush cucumbers, she doesn't answer him with words, just points off to the Wonders sign that LeRoy's standing next to, like she planned it, which she probably did:

WONDER # 12
ANGER IS AT ITS BEST WHEN BURIED

The Brandish Boys aren't paying any attention to this exchange of words between the sheriff and Miss Lydia. The other one's got off his horse now, too, and they're making their way over to Peaches, not so much walking like normal people, more like a kind of half slither. The long-eared one seems to be the boss, 'cause when he points down at Peaches's hoof, the other one obediently bends down and scrapes out what she's got collected in there, which is an old tracker's trick. Ya can tell where somebody's been by what your animal has collected in their feet. “This your donkey?” the Brandish Boy yells out to Miss Lydia.

His voice is . . . it's . . . it's . . . I can't really describe it, that's how genuinely horrible it is. Maybe swampish? Yes. That's what comes to my mind anyways. A swamp at midnight on Friday the thirteenth.

Miss Lydia lifts her eyes up to the sheriff and says from behind her purple scarf, “Any harm come to that girl, ya best be makin' sure your will is signed and dated. Same goes for Florida's grandbaby.”

Ascared as a pumpkin on Halloween, but not being able to stand not knowin', Cooter joins me at the shed peephole. “They's worse close-up,” he whispers. “Real worse.”

Like they heard him, the Boys turn away from Peaches and start coming our way.

Miss Lydia calls to their backs, “Wouldn't go into that shed I was you.”

The Boys flick her warning off like ya do a gnat.

“We got us a warrant.” Sheriff Johnson passes it to Miss Lydia. “The Smith boy killed your brother and we're gonna see that justice is done.”

"You and me both know that ain't true, don't we, LeRoy?” she says, letting the paper flutter to the ground. “On both counts.”

The Boys can't be twenty yards from us now. Mouths hanging slack, they're eyeing the shed like it's fresh meat. I can
feel
their hunger, and I believe Cooter can as well. He can barely swallow.

Without one word, Miss Lydia reaches behind her chair so fast and brings out a double barrel that she lifts up to her shoulder, aiming at the backs of the Brandishes as she shouts, “Got a dog with rabies locked in that shed.”

Either they don't believe Miss Lydia or the Boys'd purely relish a roll-around with a dyin' dog, 'cause they keep on comin'.

“Put the gun down, Lydia,” the sheriff orders. “No matter how much you hated Buster he was still your kin. Don'tcha wanna see right done by him?”

“Call off the Boys now, LeRoy, 'fore I ventilate the both of 'em.”

The sheriff comes up one more step, and it looks like he's fixin' to stroke her calico cat, but with a move so daring, he grabs out for the barrel of her gun and snatches it away.

I step back right quick, 'cause on the other side of the shed door, the pock-faced brother is reaching out his gloved hand for the handle. The metal latch swings up, but catches. Over and over. Hand to his heart, Cooter chokes out, “We gotta . . .”

I gesture to him to follow me as I move to the shed's back door. I know it's also locked, but from the
outside
. With a chunky wood latch held in a bracket. Hundred Wonders is our home away from home. I know its every nook and cranny. So does my dog. I realize now that's where he disappeared to earlier. He had to get himself into his lookout position.