Land of a Hundred Wonders

On the Lamb

After I kiss good-bye the picture of Mama above my bed, Clever and me squirm out my bedroom window, sneaking around the sheriff and Willard like a couple of tenderfooted Apaches. Of course I have my Eveready flashlight in my briefcase, but I dare not switch it on until we are farther down the path. On account of Clever’s tummy being so protruding, we can’t belly-crawl, even though that’s what Billy woulda suggested. All we can do to stay hidden from the two of them is to crouch over like a coupla old crones and make our way steady toward Hundred Wonders.

When a who… whoo… whoo comes from somewhere behind us, Clever lets loose with a squeal. “They’re comin’. Run, Butch!”

“It’s just the horned owl,” I say, grabbing for her. “Hush, they’ll hear us.” You never got to light a fire and breathe on it hard to convince Clever Lever to haul ass, but she’s especially jittery this evening. Must be ’cause she’s about to become a mother. Mothers can become quite alarmed when their children are in peril. My mama came looking for me in the gully after we crashed. Miss Lydia told me she called my name over and over, arms outstretched and smoking. It took all the fireman’s muscles to get her into the ambulance.

“Ya think we’re far enough away to slow down?” Clever pants out when we come up to the fork in the path.

Glancing back, I say, “Seems like they lost our scent for now, but I wouldn’t count on that being a permanent situation. You know what an excellent tracker the sheriff is.” (He’s not the best in the county, that would be an honor taken by the Brandish Boys. But ole LeRoy, he’s pretty damn good.)

“Oh, the hell with the sheriff and Willard. I gotta pee,” Clever says, hopping from foot to foot and eyeing the bushes.

“Careful,” I say, sorta laughing when I remember the day she got her driver’s license and somehow talked Grampa into borrowing his truck so she could take us to the drive-in to celebrate. Halfway through The Appaloosa, she had to tinkle, but you know Clever, she wouldn’t miss a chase scene if her life depended on it, so she ended up squatting in the scrub that rims the 57 and came back howling with stinging nettles in a most inconvenient place and…

Oh, Jesus.

“You okay?” Clever asks. “You’re tremblin’.”

“I… I… don’t know. I’m not sure, but I think I just remembered something from…”

“Well, good,” she says, disappearing behind a leafy bush.

I collapse against the oh-so-familiar sugar maple that lets you know you’re halfway to Hundred Wonders. I haven’t been able to do that since the crash. Recall something so clear from so long ago, like that stinging nettle memory. I’m shocked. This remembering doesn’t feel good like I thought it would. Like getting to sleep between your own cool sheets after coming home from a long, hot trip. No, it doesn’t feel that way at all. It feels scary and sorta foreign. Like I’m paying a visit to a strange place and that strange place is me. I rub my cheek against the maple bark. Focus, Gib, focus. You’re all right. Probably just recalling a dream. You’re just worn down, is all. I open up my leather-like and remove my blue spiral. Shine the flashlight on my VERY IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO list, which always gets me back on track.

1. Solve the murder of Mr. Buster Malloy and write an awfully good story so Mama can rest in peace eternal and I can get Quite Right.

2. Check out apartment listings in Cairo.

Yes! That’s exactly what I should be doing instead of running around these woods with Clever, trying to stay two steps ahead of that obnoxious sheriff and that scheming Yankee, thinking my memory’s coming back. I should be looking for clues to solve the murder and starting up my search for Egyptian housing.

But I can’t do that without proof. The Importance of Perception in Meticulous Investigation; Proof:A reporter cannot state facts unequivocally unless he or she has proof of said crime. Proof is similar to evidence, but not the same. Proof is what is obtained once a reporter sifts through the evidence.

I don’t recall picking up the pictures from Bob’s Drug Emporium, but here they are in a still-sealed envelope with RUSH stamped across the top.

Clever whispers loud from outta the bushes, “Ya got a tissue or something?”

Am I remembering? Or is my brain playing fever tricks like it did in the hospital? I check my forehead. Warm, but not sickly so.

“Gib!”

“Drip dry, for crissakes!”

I got to focus. I got to. Forget about the remembering. Get to the pictures.

First off in the stack, there’s a real nice shot of Grampa in his lake chair, Keeper at his side, also snoozing. Just like in the hospital. I need him so badly to be here with me. To say, “I’d call this an interesting turn of events, wouldn’t you?” That’s what he always tells me when something unexpected springs up. But what would he say to me right this minute? Nose to the grindstone, Gibby girl. Yes, yes, that’s what he’d say.

Maybe something’ll turn up in the pictures that I took of dead Mr. Buster. Maybe the murderer left an item behind that’d right off let me know who he is, like… I don’t know… something that I’d recognize as belonging to that person. Like if Grampa murdered him for instance, I’d see a fishing lure half buried in the sand, or if Willard did it, I’d see a Mallomar wrapper stuck in the Geronimo tree branches. Ya know, something real telling like that.

There are a lot of snapshots of the lake in the envelope. Five bird pictures. Two of crows, which happen to be my favorite. Two cardinals, who have the same crappy disposition as Clever’s mama. A redbreast. The one of Miss Cheryl and Miss DeeDee at the pump. Every hair on my body is rearing up. Where ARE they? I rifle through the packet. Where are the shots I took of Mr. Buster lying on the beach, dead as can be?

“What ya got there? Pictures?” Clever says, coming out of the bushes. She kneels down next to me, yanks them out of my hand. “This is a nice one of Grampa and Keep.”

Feels like a beehive got into my head. My brain’s buzzing. I have to know, so I ask, “Do you recall the day ya got your driver’s license and…” Suddenly, I feel too ascared for her to say-Why, yes, that’s exactly what happened, or what if she says, Why, no, that never did. Damn, Gib, looks like your NQRness is spreading faster than Miss Florida’s behind-so I chicken out and go instead with, “Ya know how everybody is searchin’ for Mr. Buster?”

“Hmmm.” Clever’s not really paying attention, too busy sniffing the photos, which she’s always loved the vinegary smell of.

“Well, I found him.”

“Ya already told me and Miss Florida that,” she says, so damn uppity that I’m real relieved that I didn’t mention that 57 Outdoor nettles memory to her.

“Did I also tell ya that he was dead when I found him?”

“Ya did,” she says, STILL not believing me.

“Jesus in a jumpsuit, Clever!” I say, knocking the pictures outta her hand.

“What?” she says, indignant.

“Listen to me good. Mr. Buster IS dead. I found him lyin’ over on Browntown Beach stabbed in the heart four times with his head about twisted off.”

Maybe it’s how testy I say it, I can tell Clever finally believes me by the look of pure excitement on her face. “Mr. Butter is gonna be planted in the marble orchard? Oooeee! Let’s get over there and take a look at him.”

“We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“ ’Cause his body’s disappeared.”

“No kiddin’. Well, knowin’ you, ya took a picture, right?” she asks, gathering the photos off the ground and searching frantically for Mr. Buster’s parting shot.

“That’s the thing. I did take pictures, I know I did, but now I can’t find ’em and nobody’s gonna believe NQR me without-”

We both hear it at the same time. Branches stirring, birds shushing. I cover the flashlight beam with my shirt, clamp my hand over Clever’s mouth.

Rustle… snap… rustle… snap… snap.

Damn. It’s gotta be the sheriff and Willard. We got to stay still, not even breathe. I take a sip of air. I gesture for Clever to do the same.

Nuthin’ but night for a bit, but then out of the blackness comes, “Gibby?”

Clever and me let out our breaths in a great haaa, and I say into the trees, “Well, for godssakes, Billy. You ’bout scared the skin right off us!” I didn’t even consider it was him. He’s usually so sneaky-footed. “Where the hell ya been?”

Swooping down from a thick branch, he lands in a squat in front of us.

“Little Billy!” Clever rushes to give him a hug and almost bowls him over. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

Clever’s certainly acting Exuberant: Extremely joyful and vigorous, forgetting how Billy doesn’t much go in for touching. If I could see his face, I know it’d be the color of ripe raspberries.

Me? I’m not feeling so joyful or vigorous. Where’s he been all day? He’s supposed to be guardian angeling me and this is the first I’ve seen of him since I told him I wanted to run my tongue down his juicy neck the other afternoon. What the heck got into me? Musta been this devil heat seeping into my pores and making me all hot sexish because yes, that’s what those hungry feelings were, all right. Not sure how I know that, but I do.

“We heard you,” I scold Billy. “You should be ashamed of yourself.” In the military, he was a sniper, which meant his life depended on him being wily until he could get a bead on somebody with the intention of shooting them dead.

“I got some new boots,” he apologizes down to the creaking leather.

“Good for you,” I say, giving him a disappointed look, which is not at all like me since I got firsthand knowledge of how bad that kind of look can wound. And so does Billy. It’s the same look his daddy’s always got papered on his face.

“You all right?” he asks, toeing the dirt.

“No thanks to you,” I tell him with a huff.

“I meant, are you handling Grampa being in the hospital?”

I must have a confused look on my face ’cause Clever says, “He got that heart attack?”

It comes back to me in a sorrowful swoosh. What if he doesn’t get better? What if…

“Soon as I heard, I went up to check on him,” Billy says. He’s got a nice voice. Deep, but not scarily so. Sorta like Grampa’s. “Miz Tanner told me he’s doin’ as well as can be expected.”

Feeling awfully bad about my previous wretched tone, I reach into the special slot in the briefcase where I keep them and peel off four well-deserved gold stars. “You are a good Sumerian, ” I say, pressing them onto his shirt pocket. Up close like this, he smells of sweat and a certain dog. “How’s Keeper holdin’ up?”

“Don’t waste your time worrying about him,” Billy says with a foxy grin. “Got all the nurses eatin’ outta his hand.”

Oh, poor, poor Billy. I worry about him so. Besides his overall jumpiness, he’s afflicted with Flashbacks: An intensely vivid mental image of a past traumatic experience that make him think he’s someplace he’s not, and that these people called the gooks are coming for him with bayonets and jungle thread, and off he runs like a panicked animal. Or sometimes he sobs hard. Or gets awfully mixed up, like he is now. He should know by now that Keeper has paws, not hands.

“Guess what, Billy?” Clever trills. “I’m gonna have a baby.”

“I can see that.” Not being of a judgmental nature, Billy smiles and says, “That’s nice,” like she just told him she’s gonna have a haircut, which wouldn’t be a half-bad idea. She’s starting to look kinda witchy, if ya ask me.

“And we’re on the lam,” Clever adds.

Just as I start to explain it all to Billy, the horned owl, with the kind of well-timed interrogation technique that I can only dream of musterin’, jumps in with, “Whoo.”

“The sheriff is chasin’ us down. Willard, too,” I say, suddenly wanting Billy to pet me. A lot. All over the place. What the heck? Focus, Gibby, focus.

I tick off on my fingers:

“The What: The treasure map. The Where: In my briefcase. The When: Right this minute. The Why: Must be valuable as hell.”

Billy scrunches his face up, which is mighty adorable. “A treasure map? What kind of treasure?”

We’ve gotten comfortable in a powwow circle. When me and Clever were escaping out the bedroom window, I slipped one of the squat candles into my shorts pocket. I’ve lit it up and the shadows are two-stepping under our chins. This reminds me of something. I can’t recall what, but I can feel the edges of a memory forming. Billy sure looks appealing with those cheek-bones that remind me of a sheer cliff and popped cherry lips and…

“I don’t know what the treasure is. Willard never said. But I think Gibby is right,” Clever says, in a juiced-up way. “It’s buried someplace on the Malloy land, and you and me and her are going to go dig it up and use it to buy diapers and food for the baby so I don’t have to give it up to a social. Show ’em, Butch.”

Between the candle, the full moon, and the flashlight, we’re doing okay vision-wise. I remove the map from my briefcase and spread it out on the ground. Billy’s hair is lovely in the firelight. I would adore caressing it, I know I would. Just wrap those ringlets right around my fingers.

“Oh, man,” Billy says.

“What?” Clever nudges closer, like she owns him or something.

“See that? These rows are a different color ink. They’re red and all the other rows”-Billy runs his hand over the map- “they’re black.”

What the heck is wrong with me? I’m about to write the story that’ll go down in the anus of Cray Ridge history and all I can seem to think about is touching Billy’s tummy to see if it’s as hard as it looks. “What do you think those red rows are?” I ask, struggling to get involved the way a trained reporter should. “Prime burley tobacco? Do you think that’s what the treasure could be?”

Maybe this all has something to do with Mr. Frank Reynolds from New York City since that’s where Willard is from. Even though he finally ended up telling me, it woulda been just a matter of time before I perceived where he hailed from on account of his accent, which resembles that Streisand gal’s in the movie Funny Girl, which was not at all funny, by the way.

Holy smokes. I bet Bishop Malloy, Mr. Buster’s son, who Willard is being clandestine with, is going to steal that tobacco off the farm and take it to Mr. Frank Reynolds in New York City for a reward, on account of Mr. Reynolds’s concern about cigarettes causing cancer. Just like one of those rattler roundups that Grampa told me they have down in Texas. Bring in a sack of sidewinders-ya get ten bucks reward. That has to be Willard’s plan. Rustle up the tobacco and haul it north for cash money. Yes, I’m absolutely certain that’s what he’s up to.

Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.

Am I jumping to conclusions AGAIN?

What if Willard doesn’t work for Mr. Frank Reynolds at all? What if… what if… he works as an operative for Mr. Howard Redmond, also from New York City, who has sent him to Cray Ridge to check up on my investigative techniques?

I grab my camera out of my briefcase, ready to snap a picture of the treasure map. Just to make sure. In case Willard is reporting back to Mr. Howard Redmond, I want to be extra thorough.

But when the flash cube pops, I see more than I bargained for. Peering through the trees at us is Sneaky Tim Ray Holloway. An up-to-no-good grin on his greasy lips.