Lesley Kagen: Land of a Hundred Wonders

Miss Jessie sets the bandage back down on Keeper’s head. Tamps the edges with her short-cut nails. “The stitches look nice and clean. Should heal up fine.”

I remember now when Keeper got that cut. It was the night when I came home late from Hundred Wonders, mussed up with mud and my dog in my arms. When Grampa yelled, “What happened? ” all I could do was shrug, and say, “Miss Lydia doctored him,” because I couldn’t recall exactly how Keep’s head got split open. Still don’t.

Noticing my new locket that feels so cool and smooth between my fingers, Miss Jessie asks, “What do ya have there?” Her eyes widen when she sees what’s inside. “I remember the day those pictures were taken. He’s a good man, Billy Brown is.”

Gee, I never thought of him that way. As a man. But he is now, I guess. He smells that certain way men do. A little gamey, I’d call it. And even if he takes time down at the creek in the morning to shave with his straight edge, by the afternoon his beard can get all prickery looking. Since he spends so much time cutting wood and hunting, he’s also got muscles in his arms and back that look hard, but slick to the touch.

“Billy’d make some girl a fine husband, don’tcha think?” she says, giving me a mysterious smile. “Ya gonna ride today?”

I don’t answer right off because I’m still wondering what that smile is all about, but to be quite frank with you, I get so tired asking people what this thing means or that, it really does wear me to the bone some days.

“Peaches?” Miss Jessie asks.

“No, thank you, ma’am. I had a helluva breakfast.”

She strokes my hair and I do the same back to her curls, white as a wedding. “Hon, I meant… are you gonna ride Peaches today?”

“A course I’m ridin’ Peaches today. But would you mind if we look at the filly first?”

“I already collected your eggs for ya, includin’ a few from Henrietta, so I don’t see why not.” Miss Jessie points behind her to a brimming wire basket, which I am mighty grateful to see and tell her so. (Just in case you’re not familiar, chicken coops smell the exact opposite of how eggs taste.)

Leaving Keeper to his sun nap, I follow behind Miss Jessie’s lean-as-a-pole-bean self toward the barn. “How’s your grampa been?” she asks, all Nonchalant: Unexcited.

But she can’t fool this investigative reporter. She’s chalant as hell. Who wouldn’t be? Grampa’s got eyes the color of whiskey. Has all his own teeth, too. And he really does return Miss Jessie’s affections. Maybe not quite as much as she sends out, because he thinks he’s got to use up most of his love supply taking care of me, but I can tell he’s got genuine feelings for her.

“Grampa’s been fine,” I tell her, giving the outside of the barn an admiring once-over. “Heavens to Betsy… what a terrific job the boys did!”

Vern and Teddy Smith, who are Miss Jessie’s help, and younger brothers to dishwashing-pie baking Miss Florida from the diner, spent all last week painting the barn stop sign red, and I’m not sure, but I believe this is the first time I’ve seen it done.

“Where are the two of ’em anyway?” I pop open the clasp on my leather-like. “They deserve gold stars.”

“Gave ’em the afternoon off,” Miss Jessie says as we step inside the barn. “Florida needed some roof tarrin’ done.”

“Well, when ya see ’em next, could ya tell ’em-” I cut off, since there’s nothing in this world, next to the smell of sizzling pork sausage and lilies-of-the-valley, that enters your nose as sweetly as a clean horse barn. Alfalfa hay and curly shavings and soaped leather mixing in with the perfume Miss Jessie calls oh de horse manure. Her breeding operation is a small one, but she does all right since she’s got a nice stud named Handsome, who sired a Derby runner. She’s also got a few retired racehorses she keeps for trail riding. Mostly nobody around here would keep a horse that doesn’t earn its keep, but Miss Jessie, she’s the kind type. Like allowing that vermin Sneaky Tim Ray to live with her. (I’m certain she doesn’t realize that he’s only laying low here at the farm until the trouble he instigated in Leesburg blows over. Even though he brags on it to me every chance he gets, I’m not gonna tell Miss Jessie that her cousin by marriage hoodwinked “some old bat” out of her cookie jar savings. Or that he is absolutely NOT staying here at the farm so he can help out around the place like he told her he would. It is a sad, horrible thing to be Disillusioned: The condition of being disenchanted.)

The barn’s got twenty stalls lined up ten across ten. A tack room full of bridles and saddles and trunks full of medicine and traveling bandages. Washing sinks and hoses for watering. And a feed room with sacks of grain. Upstairs, there’s a hayloft full of mice. That’s where Sneaky Tim Ray sleeps and hides his hooch. Just to be safe, I close up my precious briefcase and slide it under the bushes outside the barn. In case Holloway comes to and wanders up here, don’t want my leather-like getting disappeared by a certain someone who’d steal the gold outta your teeth if you fell asleep with your mouth open.

“She’s down here,” Miss Jessie reminds, ’cause she thinks I’ll’ve forgotten the whereabouts of the filly, and she’s right.

Snug in their stalls and busy picking at their afternoon hay, the horses nicker nicker , begging for something sweet when we walk by. Down on the far side of the aisle, backed against the birthing stall, are the old mare, Whinny, and her new foal, Gibby, named after me, that I got to see getting born. You know who helped deliver this baby? Billy. He’s going to be a Vietnam veterinarian as soon as he gets over his nervousness sickness.

“Did you hear a rumor down at the diner this mornin’ about Buster Malloy goin’ missin’?” Miss Jessie asks, sliding open the stall door.

“Mr. Malloy has gone missin’? Really? How come nobody told me?” I ask, shocked. He’s an important man around here. His disappearance would make a whopper of a headline in next Friday’s paper. “Maybe I better not ride today. Maybe I should head over to the Malloy farm instead and have a look around for some clues. Mr. Howard Redmond of New York City says clues are real important to solvin’ any mystery and that would include a missin’ person, I believe.”

Stopping her fussing with the filly, Miss Jessie says, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Gib. Ya better leave that sort of serious detectin’ up to Sheriff Johnson. Pretty sure your grampa wouldn’t want ya to get mixed up in something like that.”

“All right,” I answer, but I think I must be lying, which I am trying to do on a daily basis, since it’s another good step in the right direction. Quite Right people lie. All over the place.

Done wrestling the halter on, Miss Jessie stands back and admires the baby, whose blaze is shaped like a question mark that makes her face seem curious. “She’s a looker if I do say so myself.”

“Will she race, ya think?”

“Sure hope so. Handsome is her sire and-” But then the barn phone starts ringing, and Miss Jessie says on her dash outta the stall, “Be right back. You keep pettin’ on her. She’s gotta get used to being handled.”

“Okey-dokey,” I say, going toward the filly on soft feet. I want to lay my cheek against her toasty neck ’cause these foals always smell delicious, but she shakes me off like a fly and darts under her mother for comfort, and her doing that, that makes the saddest feeling sweep over me. I work real hard at not allowing myself to miss my mama much, but sometimes the deep yearning for her seeps outta my heart and pools into a spot I’ve found is best not dove into.