Lesley Kagen - Land of a Hundred Wonders

I’ll show Grampa. Keeper and me are on our way to the beach. Mr. Buster Malloy will be lying there in the sand, more’n likely a little riper. Being at the scene of the crime should help me set the tone for my story once I solve who done him in.

The Importance of Perception in Meticulous Investigationsays: Journalists must make sure their readers feel as if they are witnessing a reported event firsthand. Your article must have the right tone. What that means is you wouldn’t want to sound too cheerful when you write Sugar Jenkins’s obituary. Telling your faithful readers how unusually clean he looked in his white Sunday suit and wasn’t that creamy coffin the most interesting of choices? No. You’d want that obituary to be sorrowful as can be, and not have the same tone as the story you wrote on the 4-H fashion show.

Squiggly heat is coming up off the road and the cicada noise is pecking alongside my mad. When I gear down to get my breath, I can hear him. No, not hear him. Feel him. I don’t recall if I had Billy radar in the old days like I do now. He was there waiting for us at the cottage the day Grampa brought me back from the hospital. That memory comes to mind ’specially easy ’cause when I spotted Billy sitting on our picnic table, a bouquet of wildflowersin one hand, a WELCOME HOME sign in the other, I remarked, “Well, isn’t that as thoughtful as can be. Who is that boy?” and Grampa’s eyes brimmed up, and that hardly never happens.

Keeper looks up at me for permission to go track Billy down in the woods, and when I nod, he takes off. Ya know, I think that might be one of that dog’s best qualities. No matter how many times he searches for Billy, never mind that he has not once found him-Keeper has hope, and like me, a short memory, which I have come to believe might be the most important aspect of hopeful-ness. Ya start remembering all the times hope has left you holding the bag, and ya still keep up with it, hell, that’s just plain ignorant.

“Hey,” Billy hollers out from the trees.

“Where you been?” I answer belligerently, because I’m not only ticked at Grampa, I’m ticked at Billy, come to think about it. I depend on him, and he woulda been a real help when Sneaky Tim Ray jumped out of those Browntown bushes the other night, showing me how the south has risen again.

“I hadda go see Doc Sam yesterday for more tranquilizin’ medicine,” Billy says, still flitting around in the woods. “Ya been okay?”

“Fine,” I answer in a clipped-off way. Don’t feel like reporting everything that has happened since I saw him last. He doesn’t deserve to know. Besides, it’s too hot to talk.

“Where you headed?” he asks.

“Browntown Beach.”

“Why?” he asks, sounding alarmed.

I say, so ornery, “I got my reasons.” But what are they? I can’t remember what the heck I’m doing out on Lake Mary Road.

“If ya got the time, I was hopin’ you’d come up to the cave with me.”

He’s always bothering me to go up to Blackstone with him. Back before everything happened that’s happened-before the crash, before Billy went off to war, before Clever knew about hot sex, before Cooter knew how to play craps, even before Georgie died-Blackstone Cave was our hideout. Clever and Billy reminisce about those days all the time, leaving me to feel like I’m the only one not invited to a family reunion.

“Why ya always buggin’ me about goin’ up to Blackstone anyways?” I call.

“There’s something I need ya to see up there.” Billy steps out of the brush with Keeper in his arms. “Something that might jar your memory.”

Goodness gracious. With his stomach muscles below his cutoff shirt rippling in the heat, this boy looks ripe and good enough to eat. I take a step toward him. He steps back. He smells like a slice of just-cut watermelon. I take another step toward him. He takes another step back.

“William Brown Junior… S-T-A-Y, goddamn it,” I command, breathy. I swear, I don’t know what’s come over me, but it’s something real powerful. “I… I believe I am havin’ the desire to run my tongue down your juicy neck.”

I check to see if his pants are pooching out the way Sneaky Tim Ray’s do at moments like these, but that camouflage material is doing its job.

“No,” Billy takes his time saying, staring up at the sky, the bushes, anywhere but at me.

“Why the hell not?”

He cannot speak. Or won’t. Just like Grampa, he’s giving me the silent treatment.

“Don’t you like my fine young body with titties that taste like milk and honey? Yum-yum?” I ask, repeating what Holloway says when he catches up to me.

Billy’s breathing is gettin’ sorta raggedy, too. Just like me, he’s feeling something . Why won’t he touch me and let me touch him? What’s wrong with him?

Uh-oh.

“You’re not like the Carmodys’ coon hound, are ya? Ya don’t like boy dogs more than girl dogs, do ya?” I ask.

Nothing comes back but the cicadas.

“Answer me right this minute,” I demand, inching closer.

“I love you,” Billy says, inching farther.

“Well, I love you, too. Now we got that settled, c’mere to me.” I reach out for him, but just like that, Billy retreats into the trees and I’m left standing sweaty by the side of the road with not the slightest idea what to do about this starving feeling that’s come over me.

By the time Keeper and me get to Browntown Beach, I recall why I’ve come here in the first place. Yes, to set the tone for my story. So I head straight over to where Mr. Buster Malloy should be lying out with quite the tan. Keep’s got other interests. At a gallop, he sails through the air, landing in the lake with a raucous splash.

I musta mixed up the spots. There’s the Geronimo rope. The lake. The sand. Dang it! First Grampa. Then Billy. Now dead Mr. Buster has up and went! Men. Bah. The lot of ’em got better disappearing acts than Mr. Harry Houdini.

I picked some flowers on my way home through Wally’s Woods. Grampa’s favorite bluebells. I have plans to apologize for my earlier outburst at the diner, eat a crispy-skinned perch, soap up the dishes, and let him beat the pants off me in Scrabble. Then spend the rest of the night trying to figure out the mystery. Never mind my corpse has up and left. The film I dropped off at Bob’s Drug Emporium should be ready any minute and I’ll have proof that I found Buster on Browntown Beach deader than dead.

When me and Keeper come through the cottage’s picket gate, we raise our noses, expecting to inhale the odor of the catch of the day crackling over the coals, but nothing yummy is wafting our way. Matter of fact, the air has a peculiar odor to it. Unstirred.

“Charlie?” I shout out, coming round to the front. “Charles Michael Murphy?”

For some reason I cannot fathom, Sheriff Johnson is sitting on the lawn in Grampa’s chair. Miss Jessie is there, too, hunched over the picnic table. What are they doing here? Oh, of course! Grampa musta invited them for supper, which is extremely good-hearted of him considering how much LeRoy turns his stomach.

“Hey, Miss Jessie, Sheriff,” I say, setting down the bluebells on top of my briefcase. “Sorry, but it looks like chow is gonna be a little late tonight. Grampa probably lost track of the time. The fish were bitin’ off Witch Point.” His boat’s gone. And his other knife, the one he uses to scrape scale, is missing from where he keeps it next to his whittlin’ knife. “He should be back any minute. Can I get y’all a glass of lemonade and crackers to start things off?”

The sheriff isn’t paying me any mind, arms twined behind his head, sweat stains running like stalactites down the sides of his sandy shirt. But Miss Jessie raises her head and rimmed rose eyes. “No, thank you, Gib.”