Lesley Kagen - Land of a Hundred Wonders

“Gibby?”

A heavenly smell is wiggling our way out of Loretta’s Candy World-Home of the Best Chocolate-Covered Cherries in the Universe and Beyond. Miss Loretta gets out of bed before the rooster crows to melt these hunks of chocolate in silver bins that are warm and shiny and-

“Do you understand why your grampa is upset with you?” Reverend Jack asks.

“I have friends in Browntown.”

He twiddles his thumbs. Round and round and round. “Do you know what the word racism means?”

If I had my leather-like with me, I could look it up in my Webster’s .

“Gib?” He taps my shoulder. “Racism?”

“Spell it, please.”

“R-a-c-i-s-m.”

“Does it… does it have something to do with running?”

“No,” he says, rubbing his palm cross the top of his bristly head, which I perceive he does when he’s searching for the right words. “Racism means that some people do not care for people who are of a different color than they are.”

“The sheriff hates the coloreds,” I say.

“That’s racism,” he says with a nod. “The sheriff would be considered a racist. And that’s a very wrong thing to be.”

The reverend smells of caramel with just a little bit of ah… peanuts? Wonder what he’s gotten himself into that would cause him to smell so sweet and crunchy?

“But only white people hate brown people. There are no brown people hatin’ white people. That is not what happens,” I say, no matter what Vern said and Teddy Smith nodded in agreement with. The both of them are awfully nice men, but they drink quite a bit of rotgut, and now that I’ve had some time to mull it over, maybe they’re not complete strangers to hemp smoking.

Reverend Jack lets out a green apple breath. “People change.”

I want to tell him how bad I wish that was true, but I’m a mite irritated with him today, so instead I stare across the street at Grampa’s truck. I’m in no hurry to head home, his mad just about suffocating me when he’s in one of his wet-blanket moods. He already kept me up most of the night giving me a tongue-lashing. I finally broke down and began to tell him about my plan to solve the murder of Mr. Buster and write an awfully good story so his beloved daughter could stop worrying about my NQRness, that’s how desperate I got. But Grampa was on one of his rips. Wouldn’t listen. Which is fine by me. All he woulda told me was, “Forget about investigatin’. Forget about writin’ that story. Forget about gettin’ QR.” I can’t do that. Last night in my dreams, Mama was crying into her hands, and when I woke up drenched and shaky, me and Keeper dragged our pillow out to the pier, hoping it would rock us back to sleep, but it didn’t.

“Your grampa’s just tryin’ to keep you safe,” Reverend Jack says.

“He’s bein’ overprotective, as usual. No one would hurt me in Browntown. They’re my friends. Like Miss Florida and Vern and Teddy and-”

“Not everybody in Browntown, or the rest of Cray Ridge, for that matter, is your friend.”

“I already know that, for godssake.” We’ve gone over this maybe nine hundred times. I have a tendency to think that all people have hearts of gold. Reverend Jack has suggested that maybe some of them hearts might be a little on the tin side. “Sneaky Tim Ray is not my friend.”

“Has Holloway been botherin’ you?” he asks, tensing.

The reverend promises he’ll not tell anybody else what I confess to him during our talks. Like in The Importance of Perception in Meticulous Investigation: Confidentiality: Reporters NEVER reveal their sources . Still. He might “accidentally” tell Grampa about my dealings with Sneaky Tim Ray, and then that wretch would “accidentally” kill Keeper. I can’t take that chance.

“I got a new necklace. Ya wanna see it?” I ask, looking down my blouse. “It’s from Billy. He left it in our secret stump and it’s got some nice pictures inside and it’s…” Where did my locket go?

“You’re wanderin’,” the reverend says. “Again.”

“Just tryin’ to keep things rollin’. I can’t stay too much longer.

I left my briefcase up at Miz Tanner’s and I have to go get it. It has an important piece of evidence in it.”

“Has Holloway been botherin’ you?” he asks, not letting me off the hook. More than once he’s told me that I should quit thinking of Sneaky Tim Ray as a regular type of person. How the reverend actually expressed it was, “Ya know how in those western movies you like so much there’s almost always a drunkard sprayin’ bullets at an Indian’s feet, brayin’ out, ‘Dance, you dirty Injun, dance’?” And I answered, “Yes. That’s right. That happens a lot in those shoot-’em-ups.” And then he said, “You’d want to steer clear of somebody like that, wouldn’t you?”

Not like I don’t try.

“Have you seen this one?” I fold my fingers in, making my indexes into a point, and bringing my thumbs forward. “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple.” I spread my thumbs, and wiggle my fingers. “Open the doors and see all the people.”

“Gibby.”

“Yeah?” I say, glancing over at Billy, who’s pacing in front of Candy World like he’s on sentry duty. (Sometimes he joins me at the counter for a brown cow when I’m done with my reverend visits.) I wonder why Billy never tries to rub my double D ninnies like Sneaky Tim Ray does. Maybe I don’t make Billy pant fast and hard because I’m NQR.

“Your grampa does not want you goin’ to Browntown anymore, ” the reverend repeats.

“Would ya mind if we talk about somethin’ else for a few minutes? This subject is givin’ me a chewed up and spit out feelin’. Are you and Loretta Boyd havin’ hot sex?”

His mouth falls open and he fuschias clean up to his roots. “Why… why would ya think that ?”

“You smell like her specialty,” I say, showing off my perceptive investigative skills. “Green apple, caramel, and salty peanuts.”

He thinks I won’t notice that he’s begun sniffing himself a little.

“I’m not being a nosy Parker,” I explain. “I’m just trying to figure out why it’s so damn important to everybody that they get some of this hot sex. A course I’ve seen animals… but is it the same with humans or does it have something to do with love?”

I don’t think it does. But it could. I’ve heard hot sex referred to as “making love.” On the other hand, I’ve also heard it referred to as “pounding the snow possum.”

The reverend, even more fuschiated, asks, “Who exactly would ya be thinkin’ about in regards to this topic?”

Well, I could go on and on, couldn’t I, but settle on, “Well, Willard, for one.”

“Who’s Willard?”

“Our next-door neighbor this summer. He thinks about hot sex quite a bit and tells Clever he loves her, but he’s makin’ her give her baby away to a social.”

Reverend Jack’s mouth does not circle into a surprised O when he hears that Clever’s having a baby. Not much of what she does surprises anybody anymore. “Hot sex, I mean, sex, I mean sexual relations, that’s an awfully complicated subject.” He checks his Timex. “How about we continue this discussion next time?”

I don’t say it out loud, ’cause I don’t want the pastor to feel like he’s falling down on the job, but I think to myself, if Sneaky Tim Ray keeps on pace-well, next time might be too late.

The next morning, same as every morning, I’m working at my bussing job out at Top O’ the Mornin’. It’s slow right now, so I’m using the time to get caught up on my reporting duties. My legs are sticking to the plastic on the booth that sits directly across from the COWGIRLS bathroom, where I recently checked those bruises on my legs. They’re turning a sunflower color. Even though Billy thinks I do, I don’t believe I fell down at the 57 Outdoor. No. Something else happened. I don’t have time right now to figure that mystery out, but make no mistake about it, like a Ridgeback-Russell mix, I will stay on that scent.