Iva Honeysuckle Discovers the World (2 page)

T
he next morning Iva sat up in bed with her pillow propped behind her back. Her dog, Sweetlips, dozed next to her, snoring lightly. She had named him after one of George Washington's foxhounds. Most people didn't know that George Washington was a discoverer before he became president.

Iva held a small black book with crumbling edges.
Weber Tire Company Record Book, Browning 8-8770
was printed on the front cover. At first Iva thought
Browning 8-8770
was a code. Then she figured out it was an old-fashioned phone number.

She touched the book reverently, as if it were an artifact from King Tut's tomb. Earlier that year, Iva's father had cleaned out their attic. He came across some of his grandfather's belongings. He gave Iva her great-grandfather Ludwell Honeycutt's tire record book, a geography bee medal dated 1923, and a stack of old
National Geographic
magazines.

At night she leafed through the musty magazines, marveling at the black-and-white photographs of people living in foreign lands. One night as she was reading, two things fell out of the July 1949 issue.

The first was a letter from the secretary of the National Geographic Society in Washington,

D.C. It was addressed to
Lowell Hunnicutt
. Iva had frowned at the misspelling of her great-grandfather's name. In the letter, the secretary told Ludwell he needed to actually
discover
something to be considered for membership.

Iva realized Ludwell must have written to the National Geographic Society, asking to belong.

She knew he never became a member of the Society.

But
she
would. She would carry out Ludwell's great dream.

Now she opened the cover of the black book. All the inside pages were labeled
Tire Pressure
. She picked up a mechanical pencil she had swiped from Arden. Iva believed mechanical pencils were reserved for geniuses, but why her older sister had one was a mystery.

On the first page, Iva crossed out
Tire Pressure
and printed
The Book of Great Discoveries Made by Iva Honeycutt.
She clicked the pencil against her teeth. Something didn't look right. She erased her last name and wrote something above it.

Now the heading read,
The Book of Great Discoveries Made by Iva Honeysuckle.
That was the name she'd called herself in first grade. When she made her great discoveries, she wouldn't have the same last name as Heaven Honeycutt. Nobody would guess they were even related.

Iva leaped out of bed and dressed in corduroy shorts and a T-shirt. The
National Geographic
magazine pictures always showed discoverers wearing shorts.

For her first great discovery, she could find the missing boundary line. Their town was called Uncertain because it was next to the invisible line that divided Hopewell County from Dinwiddie County. No one had ever figured out where the line was. That would be an easy job for Iva.

But she had something much more important to discover.

She took the second special thing that had fallen from the
National Geographic
magazine and tucked it in her pocket, along with a packet of tinfoil.

As she opened her bedroom door, something pink streaked down the hall.

“Lily Pearl!” Iva hollered. “Better not let Mama catch you!”

“I'm Naked Witch!” Lily Pearl flashed past, a rhinestone bracelet spinning around her thin wrist, white-blond hair flying behind her like a bird.

Iva walked into the kitchen. Arden was slouched at the table, her alto sax in her lap. Arden's almost-exact-same-age cousin, Hunter, Heaven's older sister, sat across from her reading a Nancy Drew book. Hunter's summer project was to read every single Nancy Drew in order.

Iva's mother stood at the stove, flipping corn cakes. Lily Pearl zipped by, snatching a piece of bacon from the plate on the table.

“Lily Pearl!” Mrs. Honeycutt yelled. “Quit running in your naked strip and put some clothes on!”

“Can't! I'm Naked Witch!”

Iva slid into her chair and helped herself to a piece of bacon. “Can I have three corn cakes, Mama?”

Her mother looked at her. “
What
are you doing wearing corduroy when it's hotter than the inside of the devil's belly button? I'm having a heat stroke just looking at you.”

“These are my discovery shorts. All discoverers wear shorts.” Iva chewed her bacon thoughtfully. “Well, except Admiral Byrd. He would have froze to death at the South Pole if he had on shorts. Mama, I was reading one of Ludwell's
National Geographic
magazines last night. It was from October 1933!”

“Mama, you really ought to burn those moldy old things,” Arden said.

Iva stuck her tongue out. “Anyway, I was reading about this place called Chosen.” Iva pronounced it as it looked, “chosen.” “It's called Korea now, but in the old days—”

Arden put the sax reed to her lips and blew. A wrenching sound came from it, like a rusty nail yanked from a board.

“Could you tell that was ‘Ring of Fire'?” she asked.

“Oh, honey, I don't think you can play ‘Ring of Fire' on a saxophone.” Mrs. Honeycutt set a platter of corn cakes on the table.

Iva forked three of the crispy, brown-edged cakes onto her plate before Arden could beat her to it. Arden was a huge pain, but probably all twelve-year-old girls were.

This summer, Arden was in love with an old country-western singer, Johnny Cash. His songs wailed from her room night and day, and so did the screeching from her sax as she tried to play “I Walk the Line” and “Folsom Prison Blues.”

“I need lessons,” Arden said. “Somebody to teach me to play real good.”

“Nobody in the world can do that,” Iva said, slathering butter on her corn cakes.

“Do you hear anything?”Arden said to Hunter.

Hunter turned the page of her book. “Must be the wind.”

Lily Pearl darted through again, her hair like the tail of a comet.

“Lily Pearl!” Mrs. Honeycutt yelled at Lily Pearl's naked back. “Is that my good rhinestone bracelet?”

“Mama, this place Chosen used to be the Land of Morning Calm. Isn't that pretty? And there's another place called the Hermit Kingdom—”

Arden's sax shrieked so loud, the lid of the sugar bowl jittered.

“Will you be quiet!” Iva shouted.

“No yelling,” her mother said, then bellowed, “Lily Pearl! Get dressed right this minute, missy!”

“—and people go to the Diamond Mountains and they find diamonds on the ground. They just pick them up.” Iva glared at Arden, daring her to interrupt again.

“Listen to this,” Hunter said. “‘Carson Drew emptied the tumbler at one draught and fastened his eyes on Nathan Gombet.' What's a
draught
?”

“Mama, the Chosen ladies beat their clothes on rocks in the river. And then they club their clothes to make them smooth, on a sticklike thing. Mama, can we do that? Wash our clothes in the river? We could go down to Calfpasture Creek and—”

“No.”

Iva gave up. Just flat out quit. She scraped her chair back and flung open the screen door, leaving two of her three corn cakes.

Nobody cared the least little bit that Iva Honeysuckle was off to be a great discoverer. All they cared about were naked witches and country-western singers. If she found a new pyramid, her family wouldn't even notice.

As she walked across the porch, Iva saw something that made her want to run back inside.

Heaven sat on the top porch step, praying. Unlike other people, Heaven prayed out loud any old time. In the market; on the playground at school; in front of the statue of the Uncertain Soldier. And now she was praying on Iva's porch.

“Do you have to do that here?” Iva said.

“I'm going to be a Sunday-school teacher. You have to be good at praying.”

Iva couldn't believe that all Heaven aimed to be in life was a Sunday-school teacher.

With her face lifted toward the sky, Iva's cousin intoned, “Bless Mama and Daddy and Hunter and Howard and Arden and Lily Pearl and Aunt Sissy One and Uncle Sonny—” She paused to draw breath.

Iva thought Heaven was going to name her next, but instead Heaven said, “And can you make Daddy foreman at the box factory?”

Iva was a little peeved Heaven had left her off the list. “Why don't you ask for Uncle Buddy to be made
president
of the box factory?” she said. “That's a whole lot better.”

“Daddy likes his job,” Heaven said. “He just wants to be off the night shift so he can be home with me. And the other kids, too,” she added, as if her sister and brother were nodding acquaintances.

Iva thought this was funny, considering Heaven had just finished blessing them all over the place. Her own father was away a lot, too. He was a long-distance trucker for traveling exhibits. Last summer he drove the Declaration of Independence clear to California. Now he was on the road with the Candy Unwrapped Sweet and Sour Taste show.

Heaven jumped up as if she'd been sitting on an anthill. “You're right on time. Let's go before everybody else gets Cazy Sparkle's good stuff.”

“How do you know I'm on time?” Iva narrowed her eyes at Heaven.

“The sun is in the eight o'clock position in the sky.” Heaven pointed to the sun, already hazy from the heat. “See? Eight o'clock on the dot.”

Iva felt a prickle of irritation.
She
should know what time it was by the sun. That was the first thing a discoverer learned, in case they dropped their watch in a tar pit.

“Come
on
,” Heaven said. She put her hands on her hips in that bossy way of hers.

Iva did
not
want her discovering plans messed up by Heaven. Since the day Iva was born, Heaven had bothered her like a rock in her shoe. This summer, things would be different.

“I forgot my money,” she said. “I have to go back in.”

“Hurry up, then.”

Iva raced back in the house, slamming the screen door behind her.

“Iva, how many times—” her mother began, but Iva whizzed past.

She burst through the door of her room, startling Sweetlips. He thumped his tan-and-white tail, but Iva didn't stop to pet him.

She heaved the window open. As she climbed up on the sill, she thought, This is what real discoverers do! They jump off cliffs and out of jungle trees!

Her window was only two feet off the ground, but the thrill of adventure made her feel dangerously brave.

Without hesitation, Iva leaped. She landed in the hydrangea bush. Her mother wouldn't be happy about that, but Iva didn't care.

She ran across the backyard, delighted she had outsmarted Heaven. When she reached her father's shed, she stopped, sweating and breathless. She pulled the special something from her pocket and unfolded the creased yellow paper.

Ludwell's map.