Lesley Kagen - Land of a Hundred Wonders

Like Them Apples?

Ya know, this is one of those moments it feels like no matter how good the plan, I’m not ever gonna get Quite Right again. Round and round and round I go. I swear, it’s dizzying. If I could, if Grampa wasn’t hawk watching me like he does, I’d run out the back door right this minute and hide in the crook of the pin oak, that’s how weepy I’m feeling.

“Wait a minute now… go ahead and correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t ya just mention something about havin’ an awfully hot lead?” the Senor asks.

Did I? I think I musta since he wouldn’t make that up. The Senor ’s not that well known for lying. But what was my awfully hot lead? Bubby Heckler winning darts night at the Tap? No, no, that’s old news. Focus, Gib, focus. It was… it was… that dead body. Yes! Lying on the beach near the jumping tree, the gnarled-up one kids yell “Geronimo” from before they tumble into the lake. But that body wasn’t drowned. I’ve seen a drowned body before. No, the body I found this morning was not greenish like that other one, but it was puffy as hell ’cause it belonged to Mr. Buster Malloy, who is legendary large. And s’posed to be the next governor of the fine state of Kentucky.

Mr. Buster wasn’t perspiring buckets like he usually did. He was cool to the touch on that toasty sand. Punctured something bad four times in the chest. His head dangling off his neck like a cherry twisted off its stem. Butterscotch candies tumbling out of his pocket, which was not unusual. He was well known for those candies. In fact, if Mr. Butter (that’s what he was fond of calling himself) ever came upon you when you were just going about your business, he’d give a hearty laugh and say, “Lookee here, girl, look what Mr. Butter’s got for ya. Sweets for the sweet that’ll melt in your mouth.” Never mind refusing him. He wouldn’t leave you be until you stuck your hand in his deep pants pocket and rooted around. Another one of the things Mr. Buster was well known for-his thick ole eyeglasses-were smashed to smithereens next to his corpus delecti. According to Mr. Howard Redmond of New York City, New York, the author of The Importance of Perception in Meticulous Investigation-evidence is EXTREMELY important. Thank goodness, I also remembered to take pictures of that dead man.

So I got a body, and I got some photos, all’s I need now for my awfully good story plan to work is to stay in focus. Plant the memory of finding Mr. Buster deep inside my brain so there’s no chance of it gettin’ blowed off like a dandelion wisp to parts unknown. (I’m sorry if this should occur from time to time. When it comes to my rememberings, I’m ashamed to say, it is apt to.) Once I get the chance to investigate that murder and publish the resulting story, I know that Mama will…

Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.

Am I jumping to conclusions? Mr. Howard Redmond would be extremely disappointed in me if I was. In fact, in the chapter- The Dangers of Jumping to Conclusions-he warns specifically about doing just that. Maybe Mr. Buster wasn’t murdered at all. Maybe it was nothing but…

“Gibby?” asks Senor Bender, tapping his cup for a topping off.

“Yeah?” I ask, pouring.

“That awfully hot lead you mentioned?”

“What about it?”

“Thought you might like to brag on it a bit,” he says with a wink.

Well, for crissakes, everybody and their aunt Martha knows that you gotta keep a breaking story top secret. Poor, poor Senor. Looks like the only thing he’s got going for him in his brain department is his real nice hair.

Since we only serve breakfast at Top O’ the Mornin’, I flip over the GONE FISHIN’ sign on the front door after the bells down the road get done clanging one time. There are two churches in Cray Ridge-Cumberland United Methodist and the one all the coloreds go to, First Ebenezer Baptist. Grampa is no longer a God-fearing man, but I walk on eggshells around the Ten Commandments. I cannot go to hell under any circumstances since I’m ascared of fire in a deathly way. To keep my bases covered, I attend the Methodist at least once a month, but get my daily dose of holy out at Land of a Hundred Wonders.

Our kitchen help, Miss Florida Smith, has already unknotted her apron and folded it square, because never mind that she’s big as the state she’s named after, she’s neat beyond belief, and cleanliness is next to godliness in her book, which would be the Bible. Besides doing the diner’s dishes, Miss Florida is also one terrific pie baker. If you think there can be something more soothing than the blueberry she does up this time of year, well, you’d be more’n dead wrong.

“See ya in the mornin’, y’all. God willin’ and the creek don’t rise,” she bellows out as she squeezes through the screen door.

(I know for a fact Miss Florida doesn’t live close to Blossom Creek, but I’m not ever going to ask her why she always says that since the other thing this woman is well known for, besides her crusts, is a lack of patient explaining.)

“Stay dry,” I shout after her, and then to Grampa in the kitchen, “I’m waitin’ on you.”

One of my other jobs is to pick up the eggs every afternoon over at Miss Jessie’s farm. So after making sure the grill and the fryers are turned off, Grampa joins me in the booth across from the register and I watch while he scratches out the order on the back of a napkin. This is the same way it goes every afternoon when we close up shop, because my grampa, he’s a big believer in routine. And keeping his nose to the grindstone. And a penny saved is a penny earned. (It’s taken some hard studying, but I get the meaning of a lot of those kinds of sayings now. But there’s other ones, like-don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater- well, hell.)

“Check those eggs real carefully,” Grampa tells me, sliding the order across the table. “Every once in a while Jessie likes to take advantage of me.”

“Now you know that’s not true.” (I have recently begun to suspect that his memory, like mine, has sprung a couple of leaks. Proof: Whenever I ask him questions about the night of the crash, he answers, “Don’t seem to recall.”) “You know that Miss Jessie thinks you’re a heartthrob with cowboy good looks.”

“That right?” he says, lighting up a Lucky.

“I believe it is.”

Sliding sideways and heading back toward the kitchen, he says over his shoulder, “That old woman might want to get her peepers looked into.”

She certainly would. By you, Grampa, by you. Ya musta noticed Miss Jessie’s gorgeous molasses eyes shuttered in shaggy lashes. She bats them enough at you. And she’s not that old. Then again, him suggesting that Miss Jessie’s nearing ancient might be an example of his keen sense of humor. He knows about a million and a half of those knock-knock jokes.

“Knock knock,” he’ll say.

And then I’m supposed to say back, “Who’s there?”

“Little old lady.”

And then I’m supposed to say back, “Little old lady who?”

With his mouth puckering up like one of those apple dolls the holler folks peddle to the tourists, he’ll say, barely containing himself, “Why, I didn’t know you could yodel!”

And then I’ll say, “Me neither.” That’s right. I fall for it EVERY darn time since I don’t usually get jokes anymore, which can be dismaying beyond belief since I’ve been told that once upon a time I was a girl with a lot of snap.

“How’s next week’s top story comin’ along?” Grampa asks, pushing back through the kitchen swing doors with a bag brimming with what customers got too full to finish.