Land of a Hundred Wonders

The Odd and the Otter

There’s a shortcut to Tanner Farm through the woods behind the diner that empties out into Cubby’s Curios and Cool Drinks. Like I previously mentioned, Mr. Cubby St. James is well known as a taxidermist. That’s a person who plumps critters’ insides up once they are dead. He told me once he’d be happy to do that to Keeper after he moved on to that great kennel in the sky, no charge. “Ya know, like Roy Rogers done with Trigger.” I, of course, thanked him for his kind offer despite the fact that I was having a hard time not losing my peanut butter and honey all over him.

Scattered about Mr. Cubby’s backyard showroom, in no particular order, there’s all sorts of stuffed stuff, including a grizzly bear lying down on a webbed recliner and reading a newspaper. (Mine.) A wide assortment of writhing snakes. An otter with a trout in his paws. Interest in taxidermy must run in families because Mr. Cubby’s brother, Mr. Owen St. James? He’s the proprietor of Owen’s Oddities out near the highway. Mr. Cubby’s business runs a tad on the slow side, but his brother’s place is thriving. That’s ’cause along with his stuffed animals, Mr. Owen’s got a pettin’ zoo with a five-legged pig that is a real crowd pleaser.

Keeper, who normally goes pretty nuts for shortcuts, has not followed me through the trees into the showroom, but instead has chosen to take the long way around. (Don’t think he cares much for the way Mr. Cubby eyes him.)

Weaving fast through the attractions, I am already waiting for Keeper next to the stuffed squirrel Mr. Cubby’s got sitting on top of his mailbox. “We don’t have all day,” I shout out to the part of the road that I know my dog’ll be coming down. “Ya better get on it, son. Looks like the weather’s turnin’.”

That’ll get his attention. Keeper doesn’t care much for storms, and sure enough, here he comes, whipping down Tanner Road, neck and neck with a black VW bus.

“Why did you run off?” Willard asks, when he slows at my side. He’s slouched up against the van door, chocolate frosting dotting the corners of his mouth and a cloud of hemp smoke riding shotgun. “Can I give you a ride?”

“No, thank you.”

“You never answered me back at the diner,” he says. “Have you or have you not seen Carol lately?”

“Ready-set?” I say, acting like it takes all my concentration to throw Keeper’s fetching stick for him.

“She’s got something of mine that she needs to return immediately.”

Could he mean the baby? Has he changed his mind about giving it up to the social? “What’s she got that you need so bad?”

Leaves are juddering. Branches vibrating. There’s another storm coming and it ain’t dawdling. “You remember that map I showed the two of you a few nights ago?” he asks, so reasonable.

“N-o.”

“Well, I showed it to you.”

“What was it a map of?”

“It’s a… treasure map.”

I hadn’t realized how far we’d come on account of us conversating, but here we are already on the edge of Miz Tanner’s property. The Smith brothers are jogging horses back up to the barn from the paddocks. Teddy sees me, points up to the whirling dervish clouds. “Hurry on up here,” Vern hollers.

“Be right there,” I yell back, attempting to cross to the other side of the road.

Willard guns his engine, cuts me off. “How about if you and I make a deal? I’ll give you part of the treasure if you get that map from Carol and bring it to me.”

I think real fast, much faster than I thought I was able. If there really is a treasure, then Clever and me could find it and then she’d have some money to buy diapers for her baby and some food. Everything could go back to the way it was before. Even better maybe, because I’ve always liked babies’ toes a whole lot. “Okay, it’s a deal. If I see Clever, I’ll get her to give me that treasure map and bring it to you straightaway. Swear on a stack.”

(Boy, when I get my briefcase back, I’m giving myself two, no, three gold stars. I’m becoming a crackerjack liar!)

“You find that map and bring it to me or else I’ll have to report Carol to the authorities for stealing and she’d have to go to jail,” Willard says, not sounding so reasonable anymore.

The kind of thunder that turns tonsils into a tuning fork rumbles overhead and with a look of apology, Keeper takes off, butt scraping up Miz Tanner’s drive. (Lightning’s the only real thing that seizes him up.)

“Already swore I’d bring ya the map, didn’t I?” I say, scooting behind the bus so he can’t run over me. I wouldn’t put anything past him at this point. He’s got a look of desperateness about him.

“I’m warning you,” Willard yells. “Bring me the map tonight or there’ll be hell to pay.”

Standing there, watching him take off down the road under the threatening sky, I’m left to thinking that man’s got an even darker side to him than I’d previously perceived. In fact, it’s clear as can be that Mr. Willard DuPree of New York City has got a whole lot more sympathy for the devil than he does for my Clever.

By the time I stagger through Miz Tanner’s barn doors, the storm has shared half of itself with me. “Keeper?” I call out, swiping the wet off. Popping his head out of the tack room, he gives me a nod, but slinks back fast under a saddle rack. (I’d go and comfort him, but he doesn’t go in for that sort of thing.) “I’m gonna get the leather-like, be right back.” Because no way am I waitin’ until the sky has finished throwing its hissy fit. I need my briefcase back NOW. I’ve been feeling as unbalanced as a tightrope walker without a pole. Inching out beneath the barn overhang, when I get to the bushes where I left it, I steady myself against the soaked barn wood, reach in and grope for the worn handle, but it’s nowhere there.

“Gib? What… rain… doin’?” Miss Jessie yells. I didn’t notice her on my way up, but I shoulda known she’d be out on the porch in her bentwood rocker since she and I have more than once enjoyed watching a good gully washer together.

I wave, but go right back to searching. Where the heck is it? With slipping feet, I try further down the side of the barn, around the evergreen bushes. Oh my God of heaven and earth. Did I put it somewhere else and don’t remember?

Next I look up, here comes Miss Jessie jogging across the yard with a red umbrella. Adjusting it over both our heads, she says, “Well, this was sure unexpected.”

I’m not sure if she means me or the rain.

“What are you doin’?” she asks.

“I’m lookin’ for my briefcase. I set it in these bushes when I came for the egg order and went home without it. My blue spiral’s in it and some film that I need to get right over to Bob’s Drug Emporium for developin’.”

“I guess you and me are in the same boat. I can’t find Tim Ray and I need him to do some fence mendin’ once this storm passes. A couple of the herd broke through that back pasture this mornin’. Ya haven’t seen him, have ya?”

I slide toward the hedge closest to the barn door and hatchet my arm straight down, but my hand comes back with nothing but scratches. “Can’t recall exactly,” I say, worried sick.

“Be best if we come back and look for our lost items once this lets up.” It really is coming down almost biblical. “Let’s make a dash for the house,” Miss Jessie says, tugging on my arm.

I don’t want to go with her. I need to keep looking for my leather-like, but I also don’t want her telling Grampa that I don’t have enough sense to get out of the rain. So given no choice, I call, "C’mon outta there, Keep,” and the three of us take off.

“Have you by any chance seen my briefcase? It’s black. Leather-like,” I huff out when Miss Jessie tosses me a tan towel from outta the mudroom off the porch. “I put it in those bushes outside the barn when I came to pick up the egg order and now I can’t find it.”

“Ya already asked me that, hon,” she says, easing into the back of her rocker in sort of a pooped-out way. “Ya sure it was those bushes you left it in? Tim Ray trimmed that side of the barn yesterday and didn’t say a thing about findin’ your briefcase.”

Lord.

Of course you understand by now how deadly important that briefcase is to me at this point in my investigation. Looks like my next order of business will be locating that scannel Sneaky Tim Ray to negotiate a ransom. I feel like I ate a whole loaf of greasy bread.

“Blot your hair,” Miss Jessie tells me, demonstrating on Keeper.

What a sweet and helpful woman. I can’t hardly spend any time with her without thinking what a nice wedded couple she and Grampa would make. Besides all the other things they enjoy doin’ together, like their bird-watching and square dancing, Charles Michael Murphy, hailing from Abilene, Texas, knows the front end from the back end of a horse so would be a real help around the farm. Sadly, I believe I know exactly why he doesn’t go full bore on romancing her. He yearns for Gramma Kitty some. “Do you ever miss your dead husband?” I ask her.

“Whatever brought that up?” she says, frowning.

Tilting forward in my chair to run the towel down my dripping legs, I get a view of the hayloft. Up against the crackling sky, Sneaky Tim Ray is leaning against the half-open doors, dangling my briefcase from his putrid fingertips.

“Look! There he is,” I yell, pointing.

Miss Jessie rocks forward, but by the time she gets the right angle, Sneaky Tim Ray’s already backed up into the shadows. On her rock back, she shoots me one of those looks she gives a horse when she’s checking its trot for lameness. “You all right, Gib?”

I pounce to my feet. “No, I am not! Tim Ray’s up in the loft with my briefcase.” (I never call him Sneaky to her face. Even though she’s not fond of him, he’s still her kin.) “I’m goin’ up there.”

“You can forget that. You’ll get soaked worse than you already are. Catch your death of cold. Your grampa wouldn’t like that,” she says, nurse-like ’cause she used to be a practical one up in Louisville before she got married to her dead husband.

“We really oughta close those loft doors. Ya don’t want your hay to get wet,” I urge, still raring to go.

“The rain’s not comin’ from that direction. The hay’ll be fine.” When she pats my chair, I reluctantly sit down on the edge because I also don’t want her telling Grampa I forgot my manners. I’ll bide my time, my eyes locked on the loft. According to The Importance of Perception in Meticulous Investigation: The Stakeout:Patience is a virtue when an operative is observing a suspect. One must remain alert and ready.

When he shows himself again, I’ll be quick.

“What was your husband’s name again?” I ask, refusing to blink.

“Har-”

Sneaky Tim Ray scutters back into view.

“There!”

By the time she’s tilted up next to me, he’s vanished again. That tricky butthole.

Miss Jessie gives me another diagnosing look and says, “That reminds me, speaking of the dearly departed, I was pickin’ up some pies this mornin’ down at the diner and Miss Florida told me that you told her that ya found Buster Malloy dead. Is that right?”

“No, ma’am. Why would I tell her that?”

“Look at me, Gib.”

This reporter does not take her eyes off the loft.

“You tellin’ me the truth?” Miss Jessie asks, getting me by the chin.

“Cross my heart,” I say, even though I am lying. I don’t want her to know about dead Mr. Buster Malloy because she could tell Grampa, who would immediately put the kibosh on my investigation, and where would that leave my mama? I’ll tell ya where. Knowing for all eternity that I might never get Right again. I’d rather be planning my own funeral than let that happen.

“Ya positive ya didn’t tell Florida you found Buster dead?” Miss Jessie asks.

“A hundred percent,” I say, pulling out of her grasp. Sneaky Tim Ray has not reappeared. I know what he wants. He wants me to lie down in the hay with him and lift up my shirt and won’t give me back my briefcase until I do.

“His name was Harry,” she says, settling back again.

“Whose name was Harry?”

“My husband’s. You remember him, don’t you? He and your grampa were the ones that taught ya to ride when you were just a bit of a thing.”

Harry? Doesn’t ring a bell, but I say, “He was such a nice man, Miss Jessie. A real nice Harry.” I spring outta my chair even though I can tell it’s important to her that we sit and remember him together. I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but, well, the rain is letting up some and I got a fish to fry.

“Life sure is peculiar, ain’t it,” she says. “The way a warm body is keepin’ you close, takin’ care of you and then just like that.” She snaps her fingers. “You’re one instead of two.”

Or one instead of three.

Memories are washing across Miss Jessie’s face. What a comfort that must be, to recollect whatever you want, whenever you want. To wade right into those good old days. When there was a mama and daddy. And a me that is no more. When… for crissakes. What a complete dope I am. Why in the world did I bring up her dead husband when the purpose of this whole conversation was to glue Grampa and her together in a love collage?

“Ya know how ya been askin’ me to help you move some of that hay from the loft down to the feed room?” I switch subjects, hoping she’ll do the same. “Now would be a real good time for me to do that for ya.”

“What?” she answers.

“I said, I’ll move that hay outta the loft for you today.”

“Oh. Well, thanks for the offer, but that’s a job for two and I gotta get into town. I’m on the food committee for Cray Ridge Days and we got our final meetin’ this afternoon,” she says, setting Keeper down. "C’mon, I’ll give you a ride back to the diner.”

Crap on a cracker. I can’t say, Don’t trouble yourself, I’m looking forward to walking back through this hellacious storm. No. Miss Jessie’s a sharp cookie. That would make her suspicious as hell. I look back up at the loft. There he is. Giving me one of those movie-star smiles of his. Those pictures of Miss Cheryl and Miss DeeDee sitting in their car in front of the pumps are in that briefcase. And, more important, the ones of Buster Malloy dead on the beach are in there, too. The leather-like is locked so Sneaky Tim Ray can’t get at them unless he breaks it open. But I’m pretty certain that’s not what he wants to get into.

“Gosh, I just remembered something,” I say, walking beside Miss Jessie on the way to her truck. “I told Peaches I’d give her a bath.”

“Ya sure you wanna do that today?”

“Ya know how I get when I set a plan, Miss Jessie. Ya know what a goddamn terrier I can be.”

“Matter of fact, I do,” she says, giving me a caring look that ends by her hooking my bangs over my ear. “All right, I guess that donkey could use a rinse off. She’s one of ’em that broke through that fencin’ today and she’s caked up good. Use the soap in my trunk.” Once she gets herself situated behind the wheel, she turns to me and says in her most full-hearted way, “Life has a short wick, Gib. Burn bright whenever you can, hear?”

“I will, Miss Jessie. I promise.” I am struggling to hold myself back from smothering that adorable face of hers in kisses. She’s so nice. Sorta innocent. I don’t believe there’s any point to snuffing out all that goodness by telling her that I don’t believe anything that I’m about to do with her rotten cousin by marriage would be considered enlightening, here, there, or anywhere.