Lesley Kagen - Land of a Hundred Wonders

“Ya hear me, Gib?” Grampa calls out to me again in his hut-to voice.

“Hard not to, Charlie.”

Turns out his heart attack wasn’t as bad as the doctors first thought, so he didn’t have to get his chest opened up with a saw down in Houston. “But,” Miss Jessie explained on our way home from the airport a few weeks ago, “he’s had a complication.” (I’m embarrassed to tell ya that made me snort, and say, “Ya think HE’S had a complication. Lord. Ya have no idea.”)

Once we got him back home, the four of us, Billy and me and Clever and Cooter, took turns telling him the best we could about what’s been going on. Slow, so he’d understand. Because his complication is called a stroke. (Just in case you’re not familiar, this has nothing at all to do with swimming. It’s a medical condition that happens when some of your brain blood doesn’t get where it’s supposed to and your body can go sorta slack on one side and your understanding of words can get messed up.) He said to me yesterday morning when I was gettin’ him dressed, “Guess the thoe’s… on… the other foot now, huh, Gibby girl?” See how confused he gets? His shoe was right where it was supposed to be.

While Grampa’s been rehabilitating, he’s turned over the everyday running of Top O’ the Mornin’ to Miss Florida. Some folks got their dandruff up ’bout that, but I have a lot of faith in the persuasiveness of her black bottom pie. The customers are also having to get used to new waitress, Clever Lever, who is displaying the familiar snotty behavior of her mama. She’s already got down the two-plate arm handle, so it looks like waiting tables is in her blood. Cooter’s also back in the kitchen part-time helping out.

“Got thomthin elth I forgot to give ya,” Grampa says, still making his way over from the next-door cottage. The hospital doctors told Miss Jessie that it’s important to his recovery that he does things on his own, so I don’t rush over to help.

“Hey, Grampa,” Clever calls to him as he lowers himself into his chair to take the evening breeze on his face. “I can tell you’re fond of that baby, so ya can quit pretendin’ ya ain’t.”

“That baby… that baby looth like a frog.” He gifted Rosie a whittled red-wing blackbird at the party today. (Until he gets his strength back in his right hand, everything he’s been working on looks a lot like everything else, but he said it was a blackbird, so there ya go.) To get him stronger, Grampa and Clever work every morning in the rose garden as well. He’s named a real pretty miniature pink rose-Rosie A. That made Clever do her air-raid siren crying. And, of course, the other part of his rehabilitation means I take him out on the boat every day.

“Mr. Bailey came by and mentioned that the fish been bitin’ all week in Carver Cove. So if you wanna go over there tomorrow, we can. But we have to get an early start,” I tell him slow. “I’m doin’ something important in the afternoon. Whatcha got there?”

“Happy birfday,” Grampa says, taking a vanilla envelope out from behind his back.

“Sounds like somebody needs me,” Clever says, running her fingers down my hair as she walks past me toward the cottage. Like her, I can tell by the sound of that cry that Rosie’s hungry. There’s not a doubt in my mind that Miss Lydia didn’t lie about one thing. Yes, what we’re witnessing here is an honest-to-goodness Transmutation of the Highest Order. Rosie’s piercing, wailing demands remind me EXACTLY of Janice. She doesn’t like to sleep in her own bed, either.

“Open it,” Grampa says.

Inside the big envelope there’s a birthday card that says in his new scrawled-out-like-a-ransom-note writing:

Knock knock

Who’s there?

Little lady

Little lady who?

Little lady who’s about to get a

mysterious visitor from the east

When I look back up at Grampa, he’s apple-doll puckering. (Even more than usual, factoring in the sag he got from the stroke.)

“I don’t get it,” I tell him, studying both sides of the card.

“Look inthide the envelope. There ith thomething elth.” Blowing it open, I palm out a large glossy picture of my hero, smoking a wood pipe in a tweedy jacket with patches on the sleeves and looking nothing at all like I imagined he would. Not rugged and sly, more bookish with horn-rimmed glasses. Down on the bottom in professional handwriting:

Finest regards, Mr. Howard Redmond

“Gosh,” I gush. “I can’t believe he made the time to get a picture taken and then sign it so personal. Isn’t that something?”

Grampa half smiles, and so does Billy, who’s done doing the dishes and has joined us out on the lawn. He looks adorable in Grampa’s Chief Cook and Bottle Washer apron. (On the airplane trip home from Houston, Texas, Grampa had an old-man-to-old-man talk with Billy’s daddy. Told him to quit being such a horse’s ass. That he had a fine son. A soon-to-be Vietnam veterinarian. Big Bill Brown is still not buying that. But that doesn’t seem to upset Billy like it used to. We’re his family now.)

I open my leather-like briefcase and slide in the picture of Mr. Howard Redmond below his fine book, The Importance of Perception in Meticulous Investigation, which reminds me that I’m not done for the day just yet. “I got a little more work to do. Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” I say, bussing both my men on top of their sweet heads.

Keeper limps after me up the lawn and into the screened-in porch. (I’d pick him up, but he takes after Grampa in this respect.) After fluffing up my pillows, I take out my blue spiral and read aloud this week’s top story.

Brandish Boy and Sheriff LeRoy

Johnson Set to Go to Trial

As you probably already heard, Janice Lever was shot dead by one of the Brandish Boys, who’d been offered a dandy reward by Sheriff LeRoy Johnson to track down Mr. Cooter Smith, who it turns out did NOT murder Mr. Buster Malloy dead at the dump like the sheriff told everybody he did. Eyewitness, Deputy Jimmy Lee Boyd (Sheriff of Grant County elect), says that he was too ascared to mention it early on, but he witnessed LeRoy Johnson and Sneaky Tim Ray Holloway throwing dead Mr. Buster on the burning dump on the night in question. The sheriff had no choice but to admit his guilt. “I found Buster on the beach while I was makin’ my daily rounds. Figured I might be able to blame his death on the Smith boy somehow, but not havin’ a ready plan on how to do that, I hauled him into the woods for safekeepin’. When the coloreds started up that dump fire, it was like the Lord himself was tellin’ me, LeRoy, if’n you throw that body atop those flames, everyone will think Cooter Smith did Buster in on account a that’s where he works. It’s your Christian duty to put that rabble-rouser where he belongs once and for all. Behind bars.” (The sheriff smiled lunatically when he said that, so I suspect he might be spending some time up at the Pardyville Institute.)

So who was it murdered Mr. Buster Malloy? Will we ever know? This reporter thinks not. I believe that murder will always remain one of life’s little mysteries. (In case you haven’t noticed… life is chock-full of ’em.)

Next week Tuesday, the Brandish Boy, the one with the oozing pocks that shot Janice Lever dead, will stand trial at the Grant County courthouse. The other Brandish Boy, the one with the long ears? Nobody’s seen him since he ran off after the showdown at the old Hamilton place.

In other news… After a slew of encounters involving Sneaky Tim Ray Holloway’s hands and my double D ninnies were described to Judge Larson, charges were not pressed against this reporter for shooting his pecker. (Not off, but close.) Holloway is presently taking his meals at the jail. It appears “the old bat” that he stole the cookie jar money from earlier on this summer over in Leesburg is none other than the mayor’s dear grandmother.