Lesley Kagen - Land of a Hundred Wonders

Nearing the cottage, I can hear the sound of Grampa’s boat rocking against the dock with a knock knock that makes me remember his apple-puckering lips. His grouchiness after getting up from a nap. His buttermilk pancakes and, well… just all the ingredients that get mixed up together to make a batch of Charles Michael Murphy. After he comes home, I’m gonna set him down in his lake chair with a glass of tart lemonade and tell him everything that’s been going on while he was gone, and when I’m done, he’ll push his cowboy fishing hat back on his head and say, “I’m proud as punch of ya, Gibby girl. Ya done good.” ’Specially after I tell him what I’m about to tell Billy. Grampa’ll give his knee-slapping laugh.

“I mighta shot off Sneaky Tim Ray’s pecker.”

Billy swipes the rain off his face and grunts. “Saves me the trouble.”

(I know, I know. I should be feeling ashamed. But it felt so damn good to pull that trigger, not wicked at all.)

Coming around the corner of the screened porch, I hold up for a minute to watch Clever and Cooter, their heads bowed together, but then Keeper gives off a welcome whine, and Clever turns my way, yelping out when she sees me, “Goddamn it! Goddamn it! I thought ya was dead,” throwing open the screened door and herself all over me.

“I’m fine… I’m fine,” I tell her with a pat. "C’mon. Let’s getcha outta this rain.”

Billy heads into the cottage, probably following up on his plan for dry clothes, and Cooter follows.

Once I get her back seated on the sofa, Clever says, “What the hell happened?”

“What do ya mean what the hell happened? I broke Rosie’s daddy outta jail, just like I told ya I would.”

Bringing her eyes up to mine, she locks and loads ’em. “ ’Zactly how long ya known?”

“Figured it out on the ride over.”

Maybe until she just admitted it, it was nothing but wishful thinking on my part. Willard is such a dope that I didn’t want Clever having his baby, who would then grow up and go off spreading that dopiness throughout the world by breeding. (Miss Jessie says it’s important who you pair up with when it comes to the spraying of seed, otherwise you could end up with a foal that’s got some low tendencies.) What the heck has happened to Willard anyways? I bend forward to eye his place. His “contemplating” hammock is hanging half off the yellowwood. He’s a loose end, that damn Yankee is.

Clever is working hard to get control of herself, but as we all know, even though the word is it does , I’m here to tell you, hard work doesn’t always pay off. “Miss Florida’s gonna beat me ’til I’m blue when she finds out Cooter’s the daddy,” she splutters. “Ya know how she lectures about mixin’ blood.”

I want to tell my sidekick she’s wrong. I really, really do. But she knows well as I do that I’d be lying. “Don’t fret. I got a plan.”

“Ya do?” she asks, skeptical.

“Remember from our movie how all the folks down in Bolivia are sorta coffee with two creams in color? Well, soon as this is all over, the five of us’ll move down there after all. Rosie’ll fit right in.” They can’t stay here. ’Cause not only would there be Reprisals: Avengementfrom both the white and the brown folks, there’d be nobody to help them out with raisin’ the baby. Maybe Miss Florida would pitch in after she calmed down, but only a fool’d count on Janice to do her job of grandmothering. If Grampa stays alive, I know he’d protect them, but what if he…

“Butch?”

“Yeah?”

“I know this may not be the best time to be bringin’ this up… and I feel real bad about ya not gettin’ to investigate for that important Mr. Buster is dead story because ya got so busy with the jailbreak…”

I completely forgot all about Buster Malloy Found Dead on Browntown Beach!

“But,” Clever says, “I believe… I’m beginnin’ to have the laborin’ pain. I think Rosie Adelaide’s comin’.”

Cooter could barely ride himself, so Billy held Clever steady in the saddle while steering us through the storm away from the cottage and toward Blackstone. Having hid in jungles for months upon months, my man knows better than any of us what we got to do to keep the Brandish Boys off our scent, so soon as he knew we were high and dry, he rode back down the trail to cover up any evidence of us being there.

Snug in the cave, when I’m done sortin’ out some of the clothes Billy and Cooter grabbed out of the drawers in the cottage, I pull Clever’s soaking-wet shirt off over her head and shimmy on a dry one. My goodness. Her cups do runneth over.

Experiencing what appears to be tremendous pain, Clever is not in what you would call a jovial mood right this minute, but I’m gonna try to rectify that. I’ve been saving this tidbit for a moment just like this. “Knock knock,” I say, rubbing her hair dry.

She cannot answer ’cause she’s biting on her hand, so I reply for her in a different voice, deeper, “Who’s there?”

I go back up the scale again. “Is Sneaky Tim Ray’s pecker home?”

“Sorry,” I bluster, “Sneaky Tim Ray’s pecker ain’t home. Ain’t ya heard? Gibby McGraw shot it off.”

These birthing pains must hurt something fierce because what Clever’s doing would only be considered grinning if you look at her upside down.

“That true?” Cooter asks, buzzing around us… not sure where to land. “Ya shot that boy’s pecker? Off?”

“I believe so.”

After the pains have ebbed, Clever shoves me on the shoulder and starts laughing her lungs out. “Ya always did have skills with a gun, Butch. Ya’d have to be good to get a bead on something that small.”

“Clever!”

“What? I seen it a few weeks ago over at the Tap. Holloway was airin’ it out, tryin’ to interest Janice.”

(Please forgive her. Being lawless and godless like she is, Clever can be not appropriate at all. Even when she’s trying. Which she isn’t.)

But now that she’s brought up her mama, this is when I probably should tell Clever about how I found Janice in the drunk tank down at the sheriff’s station. But I’m not gonna. Cooter knows what I’m thinking and I can tell he agrees. That’s just plain good manners, not reminding your sidekick that her mama has a better relationship with Mr. Jim Beam than she does her own girl.

“Speakin’ of airin’ out, guess what? I got the treasure map!” I say, trying to keep her good spirits on the rise. “So y’all are gonna be okay now.”

Clever says, “Dang, you are, too. In all this upset, I forgot to tell ya. While you were gone breakin’ out Cooter, Miss Jessie called up to the cottage all the way from Texas. She told me to tell ya that Grampa is doin’ just fine.”

“What do ya mean?”

“The heart attack?”

“I recall that, but I don’t know where and why Miss Jessie is with him and I’m not.”

“ ’Member? They took Grampa to Texas in Big Bill Brown’s airplane and they’re gonna give his heart an operation.”

“No, that’s not right,” I say, befuddled.

“Is, too,” Clever says, gettin’ short. She despises her word to be questioned. “When I called down to the hospital lookin’ for you when you didn’t come right back, I made that varmint Darlene Abernathy tell me. She said the operation’s supposed to make his heart steady and that-”

“Shhh… ya hear that?” Cooter whispers, haunches hackling.

Hard to hear much of anything with the thunder giving off its best licks, so I check to see if Keeper’s gone into point, which he would if something wicked was coming our way. He’s not paying a bit of mind, too busy giving himself a lick bath. Straining to hear what Cooter heard comin’ up the trail, I finally catch it on my love radar. “Oh, that’s only Billy.”