Lesley Kagen - Land of a Hundred Wonders

“Would you prefer water?”

A tiny peep escapes from her lips. “Honey… your grampa.” She takes my hand into hers, clamps it shut. “There’s been a… a kind of accident.”

“Really?” I say, excited. “What kind?” Accidents, like folks slipping in the bathtub or getting kicked by a horse, always make GREAT news. Grampa calls it there-but-for-the-grace-of-God thinking. That dear, dear man, he musta motored over to the accident site. I bet he’s taking notes for me ’til I can get there. That was so sweet of him to send the sheriff and Miss Jessie to come fetch me so I wouldn’t miss out on the story. I feel doubly bad about losing my temper with him this afternoon. “We gotta hurry. Don’t wanna get scooped.”

Guess they don’t get it. They aren’t budging.

“Sorry,” I say, picking up my leather-like, “y’all are gonna have to come back tomorrow. There’s no supper tonight. Grampa does all the cookin’ and he’s at that accident, waitin’ on me.”

Sheriff Johnson, fingering the whittled Peaches statue Grampa has been working on, says, “Fact is, Charlie is the accident.”

"LeRoy!” Miss Jessie reprimands.

“She’s old enough to know the truth,” he says to her, and then, turning to me, “Frank Bailey found your grampa out on the lake, lying on the bottom of his boat, barely breathin’.”

“What?” My brain is diving down to its bottom. When it comes back up to the surface, there he’ll be, flipping over a fish and humming a Johnny Cash tune and Keeper will be sneaking up next to him, vying for an eyeball.

I look over to Miss Jessie. The sheriff would lie. She wouldn’t.

She nods.

“Is he… is he gonna die?”

“Doc Sam says it was a heart attack,” Miss Jessie says. “Ya know what that is, hon?”

“His heart is real sick,” the sheriff throws in.

Lying again. My grampa’s heart is healthy and bursting with love.

“He was alone out on the lake and nobody knows for how long,” Miss Jessie murmurs.

“Coulda been most of the afternoon,” the sheriff says, offhand.

And that’s all it takes, the sound of his not caring about my grampa and his hurt heart, for me to fling myself at him. Start beating on him, screaming, “You goddamn liar, you bad bully, ya aren’t worth-”

“Gib!” Miss Jessie shouts, pulling me off him and enveloping me in her arms.

This is all my fault. I shoulda gone fishing with Grampa like I always did when he asked. He woulda been okay if I had. Because I attended that Red Cross class Miss Jessie taught at the library, I know what causes a person to have a heart attack. Their blood begins to boil. And one of the reasons their blood can get to boiling is if they get real mad at somebody. Somebody they sacrificed their life to take care of. Somebody who just this afternoon acted sharper than a serpent’s tooth ungrateful.

I used to close my eyes and hold my breath whenever Grampa drove past St. Mary’s. My mama and daddy died in a hospital and I spent months in one recovering from the crash. They shouldn’ta named it after our lake. A hospital is nothing like a lake.

Miss Jessie is by my side. “You gonna be all right?” she asks.

“I doubt that very much.” I am leaning my shoulder against the glaring wall outside room 123. I snuck Keeper in beneath my shirt and he’s making a whimpering noise I never heard him make before and never want to hear again.

“They’ve given him something to make him sleep,” Miss Jessie says, placing her hand on my back and pressing me through the doorway.

Up against the far wall, next to a shaded window, there’s a silver bed. Tubes on a pole are emptying something clear into his arm. It’s dim in here, so I edge closer. “Praise you, Mighty Lord,” I moan after gettin’ a good look at him. Someone has made a tragic mistake. This cannot be my grampa. This grampa’s face is slack, lips shiny with drool. And his hair is mussed up. There’s-a-place-for-everything-and-everything-has-its-place Charles Michael Murphy would never stand for that.

I whisper to Miss Jessie, “What we’re experiencing here is a classic case of mistaken identity.” Mr. Howard Redmond in The Importance of Perception in Meticulous Investigationin his chapter entitled Mistaken Identitywrites: Be sure you have the right subject. Many people bear a remarkable resemblance to each other.

“Gib,” Miss Jessie says, “don’t.”

I study the old gentleman again to make sure. How pale his skin. My grampa is as brown as a nutberry. (I knew the sheriff was lying like a no-legged dog. Just knew it.)

“I bet Grampa’s over at the Tap chatting with Mr. Bailey about the army days,” I say, backing away. "C’mon, let’s go find him. I need to tell him a couple of urgent-type things ’fore I forget. ” On the drive over, I decided to let him in on me finding that dead body on the beach. It’s the least I can do.

As Miss Jessie bends down to adjust the sheet, Keeper shoves off my chest, landing in the empty space right below his knee, and I cannot bear to look. Over in the corner shadows… there it is. The fake leg with the shiny black shoe and blue diamond sock that never needs washing. His cowboy fishing hat sitting on top.

Miss Jessie reaches for me, reels me to her side. “I know he doesn’t always come right out and say it ’cause that’s not his way, but you… you mean the world to him. I’ll give you two some time alone,” she says, kissing the top of my head.

The door to the room sighs shut behind her, slow enough that I can hear her suffering start up.

Patting his hair into place, I slip onto the bed next to him, stretch my body up close to his and pick up his hardworkin’ hand in mine, whispering into his ear, “Charlie? Ya in there?” He seems so delicate, like something that clumsy me has no business touching. Pressing my cheek against his, I breathe him in and he doesn’t smell sick. More like the sun, and the sky, and the lake at dawn. He wouldn’t like it if I cried, which I’m fighting so hard against, ’cause I just remembered with no problem at all what I yelled at him this afternoon, when we fought at the diner. Ah, the hell with you… you goddamn peg-legged-fishin’-cowboy-whittlin’-bird-watcher. I can do just fine all by myself.

I was lying.

After I held Grampa’s hand tight two days straight, Miz Tay Lewis, the nurse who was minding him in the hospital, told me he was in good hands and that I should get some rest. Miss Jessie suggested I stay at her farmhouse. I told her-“No, thank you.” Though being around the horses’d be comforting, I didn’t need to be keeping an eye out for Sneaky Ray. No. I needed to be back at the cottage with my mama’s paintings, Grampa’s Lucky Strike-smelling shirts. The lapping of the lake.

Don’t much feel like it, but I know what I really should do, what is of #1 importance, is to put all my concentration on solving this murder case and then writing my awfully good story. Not only for Mama, but for when Grampa comes home from the hospital. So he’ll see that I’m getting Quite Right enough that I can take care of him the way he’s been taking care of me all these years. “While you’re recuperating, take a nap out on the porch and I’ll catch us a bass,” is what I’ll tell him.

Not being able to stand the stillness of the cottage, I’ve come out to the pier. The water is slick with gas, but the minnows don’t care, they’re darting around my toes. All that’s left of the day is a lemon slice of sun. It’s bad enough to be without Grampa in the day hours, but in the night?

Just a bit ago, Mr. Frank Bailey came by. ’Cept for me, he’s Grampa’s best friend. “What’re you doin’ with his boat?” I asked him when he got done tying up at our pier. “When’s he comin’ home?”