Land of a Hundred Wonders (5 page)

“No . . . no. Not what
just
happened. I mean, about the other night.” Billy points to the top of my legs.

I woke up yesterday with bruises on my thighs. Budding lilac now. “Oh, goodness. I've been wonderin' about those. How did I get them?”

“Ya don't recall?”

“No, I . . . wait a minute. Clever and me were up to the Outdoor a coupla nights ago. Could I have fallen or somethin'?” Movie watching is our favorite hobby. Shoot-'em-ups most of all. That giant sheet out there turns into something completely different in the summer, in the dark. Us two girls just about pass out with utter adoration gazing at those stars on the screen and God's up above.

“Yeah, that's right,” Billy agrees real fast. “Ya musta fell. Ya know how uneven that ground is up at the Outdoor.”

To quote Mr. Howard Redmond of New York City, New York:
An operative must pay special attention to the eyes of a subject during an interrogation. If they are darting, this is a sign of lying.
Billy's eyes look like leaves getting chased by a rake. What's this boy trying to hide?

Stretching his long self even longer, he says, “I got traps to tend to. See ya later.”

“Not if I see you first, little old lady who,” I yell out to his broad back that blends quick into the bushes that his laugh does not come back out of. Because Billy doesn't get jokes anymore neither. And since
his
sense of humor got lost way over on the other side of the world, there is little chance of him recovering it. Poor, poor Billy Brown.

Well, I suppose it's my Christian duty to check on Sneaky Tim Ray to make sure he's still breathing. Reaching into my leather-like for my compact mirror, I hold it under his nose until it clouds up, a trick mentioned in the pages of
The Importance of Perception in Meticulous Investigation
. He's fine. Well, maybe not fine, but he
is
still breathing. I turn to head back to the drive, but then, I swear, I don't know what crashes down on top of me at times like a wave. This overwhelming desire to commit such wickedness. I'm helpless to restrain myself. I'm
NQR
, you know.

I command, “Piddle,” and Keeper readily obliges by lifting his back leg, smiling toothily at the steady stream spewing onto Sneaky Tim Ray's grimy ankle.

(Already mentioned to you that this dog knows a couple of good tricks, didn't I?)

Making Hay While the Sun Shines

Miz Tanner is sitting on the porch steps of her yellow farmhouse with Keeper, who scooted on ahead. She's distracting him with half a sandwich so she can check under his white bandage. I wonder why Billy didn't mention that bandage. Being of a medical nature, that'd be something that'd usually pique his interest. Guess beating on Sneaky Tim Ray piqued his interest more, which is exactly what is expected of him. It was my grampa who assigned Billy to guardian angel me.

“Hey, Miss Jessie,” I shout, skipping up the last part of the drive, 'cause I always feel tail-waggin' happy upon seeing her.

“Where you been?” she yells back. “Your grampa just called. Said he dropped you off twenty minutes ago.”

(He keeps a stopwatch on me 'cause I get lost. A lot.)

“I ran into Billy,” I say, coming up and crouching down on the step below her. Miss Jessie's husband got thrown from a horse some years back and died on the spot, so just her and Sneaky Tim Ray live on the farm now. I'm not gonna tell her about this cousin of hers jumping me in the woods a little bit ago. No. That'd be purely foolish. Nuthin' bad can happen to my dog.

Miss Jessie sets the bandage back down on Keeper's head. Tamps the edges with her short-cut nails. “The stitches look nice and clean. Should heal up fine.”

I remember now when Keeper got that cut. It was the night when I came home late from Hundred Wonders, mussed up with mud and my dog in my arms. When Grampa yelled, “What happened? ” all I could do was shrug, and say, “Miss Lydia doctored him,” because I couldn't recall exactly
how
Keep's head got split open. Still don't.

Noticing my new locket that feels so cool and smooth between my fingers, Miss Jessie asks, “What do ya have there?” Her eyes widen when she sees what's inside. “I remember the day those pictures were taken. He's a good man, Billy Brown is.”

Gee, I never thought of him that way. As a man. But he is now, I guess. He smells that certain way men do. A little gamey, I'd call it. And even if he takes time down at the creek in the morning to shave with his straight edge, by the afternoon his beard can get all prickery looking. Since he spends so much time cutting wood and hunting, he's also got muscles in his arms and back that look hard, but slick to the touch.

“Billy'd make some girl a fine husband, don'tcha think?” she says, giving me a mysterious smile. “Ya gonna ride today?”

I don't answer right off because I'm still wondering what that smile is all about, but to be quite frank with you, I get so tired asking people what this thing means or that, it really does wear me to the bone some days.

“Peaches?” Miss Jessie asks.

“No, thank you, ma'am. I had a helluva breakfast.”

She strokes my hair and I do the same back to her curls, white as a wedding. “Hon, I meant . . . are you gonna
ride
Peaches today?”

“A course I'm ridin' Peaches today. But would you mind if we look at the filly first?”

“I already collected your eggs for ya, includin' a few from Henrietta, so I don't see why not.” Miss Jessie points behind her to a brimming wire basket, which I am mighty grateful to see and tell her so. (Just in case you're not familiar, chicken coops smell the exact opposite of how eggs taste.)

Leaving Keeper to his sun nap, I follow behind Miss Jessie's lean-as-a-pole-bean self toward the barn. “How's your grampa been?” she asks, all
Nonchalant: Unexcited.

But she can't fool this investigative reporter. She's chalant as hell. Who wouldn't be? Grampa's got eyes the color of whiskey. Has all his own teeth, too. And he really does return Miss Jessie's affections. Maybe not quite as much as she sends out, because he thinks he's got to use up most of his love supply taking care of me, but I can tell he's got genuine feelings for her.

“Grampa's been fine,” I tell her, giving the outside of the barn an admiring once-over. “Heavens to Betsy . . . what a terrific job the boys did!”

Vern and Teddy Smith, who are Miss Jessie's help, and younger brothers to dishwashing-pie baking Miss Florida from the diner, spent all last week painting the barn stop sign red, and I'm not sure, but I believe this is the first time I've seen it done.

“Where are the two of 'em anyway?” I pop open the clasp on my leather-like. “They deserve gold stars.”

“Gave 'em the afternoon off,” Miss Jessie says as we step inside the barn. “Florida needed some roof tarrin' done.”

“Well, when ya see 'em next, could ya tell 'em—” I cut off, since there's nothing in this world, next to the smell of sizzling pork sausage and lilies-of-the-valley, that enters your nose as sweetly as a clean horse barn. Alfalfa hay and curly shavings and soaped leather mixing in with the perfume Miss Jessie calls oh de horse manure. Her breeding operation is a small one, but she does all right since she's got a nice stud named Handsome, who sired a Derby runner. She's also got a few retired racehorses she keeps for trail riding. Mostly nobody around here would keep a horse that doesn't earn its keep, but Miss Jessie, she's the kind type. Like allowing that vermin Sneaky Tim Ray to live with her. (I'm certain she doesn't realize that he's only laying low here at the farm until the trouble he instigated in Leesburg blows over. Even though he brags on it to me every chance he gets, I'm not gonna tell Miss Jessie that her cousin by marriage hoodwinked “some old bat” out of her cookie jar savings. Or that he is absolutely NOT staying here at the farm so he can help out around the place like he told her he would. It is a sad, horrible thing to be
Disillusioned: The condition of being disenchanted
.)

The barn's got twenty stalls lined up ten across ten. A tack room full of bridles and saddles and trunks full of medicine and traveling bandages. Washing sinks and hoses for watering. And a feed room with sacks of grain. Upstairs, there's a hayloft full of mice. That's where Sneaky Tim Ray sleeps and hides his hooch. Just to be safe, I close up my precious briefcase and slide it under the bushes outside the barn. In case Holloway comes to and wanders up here, don't want my leather-like getting disappeared by a certain someone who'd steal the gold outta your teeth if you fell asleep with your mouth open.

“She's down here,” Miss Jessie reminds, 'cause she thinks I'll've forgotten the whereabouts of the filly, and she's right.

Snug in their stalls and busy picking at their afternoon hay, the horses
nicker nicker
, begging for something sweet when we walk by. Down on the far side of the aisle, backed against the birthing stall, are the old mare, Whinny, and her new foal, Gibby, named after me, that I got to see getting born. You know who helped deliver this baby? Billy. He's going to be a Vietnam veterinarian as soon as he gets over his nervousness sickness.

“Did you hear a rumor down at the diner this mornin' about Buster Malloy goin' missin'?” Miss Jessie asks, sliding open the stall door.

“Mr. Malloy has gone missin'? Really? How come nobody told me?” I ask, shocked. He's an important man around here. His disappearance would make a whopper of a headline in next Friday's paper. “Maybe I better not ride today. Maybe I should head over to the Malloy farm instead and have a look around for some clues. Mr. Howard Redmond of New York City says clues are real important to solvin' any mystery and that would include a missin' person, I believe.”

Stopping her fussing with the filly, Miss Jessie says, “I don't think that's such a good idea, Gib. Ya better leave that sort of serious detectin' up to Sheriff Johnson. Pretty sure your grampa wouldn't want ya to get mixed up in something like that.”

“All right,” I answer, but I think I must be lying, which I am trying to do on a daily basis, since it's another good step in the right direction.
Q
uite
R
ight people lie. All over the place.

Done wrestling the halter on, Miss Jessie stands back and admires the baby, whose blaze is shaped like a question mark that makes her face seem curious. “She's a looker if I do say so myself.”

“Will she race, ya think?”

“Sure hope so. Handsome is her sire and—” But then the barn phone starts ringing, and Miss Jessie says on her dash outta the stall, “Be right back. You keep pettin' on her. She's gotta get used to being handled.”

“Okey-dokey,” I say, going toward the filly on soft feet. I want to lay my cheek against her toasty neck 'cause these foals always smell delicious, but she shakes me off like a fly and darts under her mother for comfort, and her doing that, that makes the saddest feeling sweep over me. I work real hard at not allowing myself to miss my mama much, but sometimes the deep yearning for her seeps outta my heart and pools into a spot I've found is best not dove into.

“Well, this is gettin' more interestin' by the second,” Miss Jessie says, bustling back down the aisle with a saddle and bridle that she sets down on the rack outside Peaches's stall. “Seems it's not a rumor anymore. Nobody's seen Buster for a coupla days. What's wrong?”

“Hay in my eye, is all,” I say, sliding the birthing stall door closed behind me. I don't want her to tell Grampa I was crying. He wouldn't approve. “How'd ya find that out? About Mr. Buster bein' gone for sure?”

“That was Sheriff Johnson on the phone. Pull her out of the stall, Gib.”

After getting Peaches hooked up in the aisle, Miss Jessie eases the saddle down on her scruffy gray back. I am hoping to ride horses again, but since the crash, I've had some balancing problems. This donkey is closer to the ground, if you get my drift.

“The sheriff's been up to the Malloy place and talked to his help,” Miss Jessie says, fastening the girth tight.

“If Mr. Malloy has been missing for a coupla days, I think the help shoulda called down to the sheriff's station earlier. Would that be appropriate thinkin'?” (Reverend Jack, down at the Methodist church? He's
always
trying to get me to think “appropriately.”)

“That certainly would be appropriate thinkin',” Miss Jessie replies in a complimentary way. “The field boss told the sheriff that Buster mentioned somethin' about going to a government get-together and he assumed that's where Buster's been. But whoever it was that he was supposed to be meetin' up with called the sheriff station this morning reportin' that he never showed up.”

“Oh, my, my. The field boss assuming like that? That is such a big mistake to make.”
The Importance of Perception in Meticulous Investigation
says that assuming anything is just about the worse thing anybody can do. You should never assume anything until you have the facts. “Are you by any chance having hot sex with Sheriff Johnson?”

“Lord.”

I asked her that because when Miss Jessie and Grampa go out to dinner at Gil's Supper Club, and she's gussied up in that vanilla dress of hers that is cut on the low side up top, and the high side down below, well, I strongly suspect Grampa wouldn't mind spooning her up for dessert. But if my understanding is correct, hot sex is a one-per-customer deal, and if she's already having it with the sheriff, that would leave Grampa SOL. (Shit outta love.)

“No, I am not having hot sex or any
other
kind of sex with the sheriff,” Miss Jessie snips as she fastens the last strap on the bridle. “And I better not see
that
tidbit in next week's
Gazette
.”