CHAPTER 4
My grandmother Opa had moved to Nashville when Dad was about my age, hoping to make it big in country music. It didn’t work out the way she’d dreamed. She recorded an album, but none of her songs were ever played on the radio.
When her second husband died, she returned home, bought the old Antler movie theater off the square, and opened Opalina’s Opry House. It was a wreck, but my grandmother could put lipstick on a pig. Down came the raggedy blue curtains on the stage. Up went the red velvet ones. A huge chandelier hung in the center of the room, glittering the ceiling with light. Now on Saturday nights, Antler had a place to go for entertainment. Out-of-town Texas bands were the headliners, but Opa sang a song or two, and so did Mayzee.
Every Saturday morning since my little sister, Mayzee, was born, Opa and I had driven over to Amarillo to eat breakfast. She claimed it calmed her nerves for the big opry night.
The Saturday before Labor Day, Opa was due to arrive at our house. Since Mayzee was being her usual six-year-old bratty self, I waited outside on the porch. A few seconds later, Opa drove up in her pink convertible, named after an old country song. Delta Dawn had a bumper sticker that read I DON’T SELL MARY KAY COSMETICS.
Opa parked, waved, and hopped out of the car. As usual her short blond hair was teased high atop her head, resembling the pouf on a poodle’s tail. It looked soft to the touch, but it was sprayed stiff to resist the strongest Panhandle wind. Some people might have thought her hairdo was a little outdated, but it matched her wardrobe, which consisted mainly of broom skirts, western blouses, and cowboy boots. She was a walking billboard for her opry, always leaving behind a flyer wherever we ate in Amarillo. I don’t think anyone from there ever came, but who could blame Opa for trying?
That morning I started toward Delta Dawn, but Opa stopped me. “Hold on a minute, Rylee. I need to talk to your folks first. Follow me. You’re not going to want to miss this.”
The sign at our town’s border should have read:
Welcome to Antler
Population 856
If You Don’t Want Something Told, Don’t Tell Us!
Inside the house Mom and Dad were sitting at the kitchen table. Dad was like me, an early morning person. Dressed and shaved, he was reading the Amarillo paper. He also read the Dallas Morning News and the New York Times.
Mom was still wearing her short nightie. She had nothing to hide. She worked out every day at the ladies’ gym that was formerly Peggy Cartwright’s barn, and she was Bronze Baby Tanning Salon’s best customer. I wore pajamas to hide my buttermilk legs.
Mom didn’t look happy when Opa chose a mug, poured herself some coffee, and plopped her huge purse down on the table, settling between them.
“You won’t believe it!” Opa lifted the mug but didn’t take a sip. “Miss Myrtie Mae Pruitt left a whole lot more than her house.”
Mayzee abandoned her cartoons and jumped like a kangaroo into the kitchen. “I’m singing ‘Candy Kisses.’”
I turned off her spotlight and asked, “Is the woman in New York going to get everything?”
“Oh, no, honey,” Opa said. “Seems Miss Myrtie Mae has some packages that will be going to some of the citizens of Antler.”
“Well, I sure hope she left us her gazebo,” Mom teased.
Opa grabbed her purse and stood. “And that’s not all.”
She paused.
“Well?” Mom’s eyes bulged.
“Seems we’re going to have a brand-new library, thanks to our deceased benefactor.”
That was a surprise, but it shouldn’t have been. When Dad and Mom were kids, Miss Myrtie Mae was the town librarian. By the time I was born, she’d long since retired. Even then, she was willowy and stood erect as if someone had tied a board to her back. Her green eyes looked like prized marbles, and when she peered into anyone else’s, it was as if she knew every lie they ever told. Her hair swirled like white cotton candy on top of her head and was held in place with a single pearl-trimmed comb. She spent her last years in bed, but before that, she walked around the square five times each morning, calling it her daily exercise. When I was a little girl I thought she was searching for something that she never seemed to find.
By Thursday at school, I’d heard that Ferris and old Sheriff Levi both received packages. I figured Dad didn’t make the list. Then that afternoon, a UPS truck screeched to a stop in front of our house.
After the driver left, Dad stared at the package for a long moment. Then he pulled out his pocketknife and ran the blade along the tape. An envelope was attached to something covered with white tissue paper that looked like a large picture frame. Or maybe it was one of Miss Myrtie Mae’s cloudy mirrors.
In the envelope was a check for ten thousand dollars.
“Now we can go to Disney World!” Mayzee did her happy chicken jig around the kitchen, fists tucked under her pits, arms flapping, legs kicking. Her slippers flew through the air.
Dad tucked the check back into the envelope. “This is going into your college funds,” he told us, quickly adding, “By the way, I don’t want either one of you to brag about the money we received from Miss Myrtie Mae.”
He focused on Mayzee.
“I won’t,” she said. “I’ll just tell them.”
“That’s what he meant,” I snapped. She was exhausting.
Dad knelt in front of Mayzee and gently cupped her shoulders. “Mayzee, you have to promise me, you won’t tell anyone what Miss Myrtie Mae gave us.”
“I promise.” She batted her big baby blues. “Now open the other part.”
My parents would have never let me get away with that tone.
“Pleeeease,” she added, bouncing in place.
Dad tugged at the tissue paper. When it fell onto the floor, we stared at the framed photograph. There, in the middle of a cotton field, holding a sack, was the largest boy I’d ever seen.
CHAPTER 5
“Who is that fat boy?” Mayzee asked.
“Mayzee!” I said. “That’s not nice.”
“His name was Zachary.” Dad kept studying the photograph. “Zachary Beaver.”
“Do you know him?” I’d never heard Dad mention his name before.
“Years ago I did, but he didn’t stay long in Antler. He was a sideshow boy.”
“What’s that?” asked Mayzee.
“They were shows that traveled with circuses. Right, Dad?” I’d read a book about circus history last summer.
He nodded. “Yep, or sometimes fairs. They don’t have them anymore. Good thing, since it was nothing but a stare fest.”
“But it’s not nice to stare,” Mayzee said.
“That’s right, Mayzee,” Dad said. “It’s not nice to stare at people just because they’re different.”
“What do you mean?” Mayzee asked.
“Oh, maybe they could swallow swords,” Dad said.
“Or bend their body into strange positions.” I remembered the picture I saw of Pretzel Man.
“What did the fat boy do?” Mayzee asked.
“Mayzee!” I said.
“Nothing,” Mom said, already bored. She headed toward the refrigerator and pulled out her snack container of carrot and celery sticks. “He just sat there, and people paid money to look at him. I think he was billed as the fattest boy in the world.”
“Whoa!” Mayzee said. “In the whole wide world?”
Dad glanced up from the picture. “That’s not all he was about.”
“Like what?” Mom asked. She didn’t believe a person should have an extra ounce of weight on their body.
“He liked to read. He loved travel books.”
“Did you pay money to go see him, Dad?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m ashamed to say I did.”
Dad moved toward the living room with the picture.
Mom pointed a carrot stick at him. “Toby, don’t hang it over the fireplace. That’s where I plan to put my Les Misérables poster after I frame it.”
For some r
eason, that ticked me off. We’d never had anything over our mantel since I could remember. She’d had that poster forever.
As usual, Dad obeyed her, placing the picture on the floor, leaning it against the wall, the image facing away from us.
“Why was he in the cotton field?” I asked.
Dad sank into the recliner with a newspaper. “It was the McKnights’ farm. We used to release ladybugs at the end of summer so the bollworms didn’t destroy the crop.”
“You were there, too?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“Was Uncle Cal?” Mayzee asked.
Dad nodded. “Of course.”
Cal McKnight wasn’t our real uncle. He and Dad grew up next door to each other and had been best friends forever. The McKnights still lived next door, but Uncle Cal lived in a mobile home at the end of their driveway. Now that Mr. McKnight was older, Uncle Cal was in charge of the cotton farm. Married and divorced a few times, he didn’t have any kids, so I think he liked that we called him Uncle.
Mom had made her way to the kitchen and started chopping lettuce.
“Did you see him, Mommy?” Mayzee asked.
“Nah. I don’t think so.”
“Oh, yeah, you did,” Dad said. “Your mom peed her pants when she saw him.”
We laughed, and Mayzee fell back on the floor singing, “Mommy wet her pants, Mommy wet her pants!”
“I was only five or six.” Mom acted miffed, but then she smirked.
“I’m six, and I don’t wet my pants!” Mayzee said, and then went back to “Mommy wet her pants! Mommy wet her pants!”
“Why was he in Antler?” I asked Dad.
“His sideshow was passing through town.” He gazed across the room, his focus locked on the back of the picture. Then he picked up the Amarillo Globe-News and started to read like he wasn’t interested in talking anymore. But he kept glancing over at the picture.
“I don’t remember him being here that long,” Mom said, “but I was so young. That kind of weight puts a lot of stress on your heart. I doubt he’s still alive.”
Dad lowered the paper and frowned. “You don’t know that.”
It all seemed like a mystery to me. “Why do you think Miss Myrtie Mae left you that photograph?”
“I have no idea, Rylee,” Dad said. “Why did she leave her house to a man she hadn’t seen in decades?”
If Miss Myrtie Mae had been as sharp as Opa believed, there must have been a reason she wanted Dad to have the photograph. I wanted to know everything about Zachary, but Dad became quiet. Maybe I wouldn’t discover the reason that moment, but I was going to do my best to find out soon. Twig could help me when she returned. She’d probably notice a clue I’d missed. It wasn’t every day that someone like Zachary Beaver came to our town.
CHAPTER 6
By Monday, school was buzzing about Miss Myrtie Mae’s gifts. That would probably be trivial stuff in Amarillo or Dallas, but here, where everyone knows everyone, it was like having Christmas in September. The McKnights received a photograph of our street sign, Wayne McKnight Lane. Years ago, before I was born, our street was named Ivy Street, but it was later renamed in honor of Uncle Cal’s big brother, who died in the Vietnam War. Uncle Cal told us he received a picture of a grocery sack on Zachary Beaver’s trailer steps.
I kept my promise to Dad and didn’t tell a soul. Even though I thought he really only meant the check, I didn’t want to mention Zachary Beaver to anyone but Twig. Maybe she could unravel the mystery. Why had Miss Myrtie Mae given Dad and Uncle Cal photographs connected with Zachary?
That morning, Jerk 2, Boone Mavis, came over to my locker and leaned against Twig’s. Like Jerk 1, Vernon Clifton, Boone had on a used army jacket. Unlike Jerk 1, he wore his hair in a long mullet. Sometimes when I saw him do something mean like tapping fifth graders on the backs of their heads, I wanted to say, Billy Ray Cyrus called, and he wants his hair back. Of course, I never did.
“How do y’all plan to spend all that money?” he asked.
“What?”
“The money that Miss Myrtie Mae left your family.”
Mayzee Wilson had a big mouth. Friday night, when Uncle Cal was over for Lasagna Night, she dropped so many hints until she blurted out about the ten-thousand-dollar check.
But I acted dumb with Boone. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, come on, everyone knows your family got a hundred thousand dollars.”
Correction. Mayzee Wilson had a big lying mouth.
“My little sister has an imagination.”
He scrunched up his face. “Your little sister?”
“Mayzee didn’t tell you?”
Boone shook his mullet. “Nope. So I guess it’s true, then.”
“A hundred thousand dollars? Nope. It’s not true, but who told you that, anyway?”
“My dad.”
“Your dad?”
“Yeah, he was down at the café.”
“The Bowl-a-Rama?”
He nodded. “He heard it from someone, Mr. McKnight, I think.”
That made no sense. Mr. McKnight wasn’t the type of person to gossip, even if he knew something.
“Not old Mr. McKnight,” Boone added. “Cal McKnight.”
Here I was blaming Mayzee, and Uncle Cal was the guilty one.
I shut my locker. “All I can say is you can’t believe everything you hear. Plus you know he’s always kidding around.”
On the way to history class, two other kids asked me if the rumor was true. Each time I’d answer, “Geez, that’s crazy.”
I felt like a liar, even though I knew we hadn’t inherited a hundred thousand dollars.
In class, Dad sat behind his desk, reading the Sunday New York Times. High Plains Public Radio played low in the background. The bell rang, and he folded the paper, then turned off the radio.
He took roll. I don’t know why, but it kind of embarrassed me whenever he called out “Rylee Wilson.” Maybe because Vernon Clifton usually made a crack or cradled and rocked his thick arms in front of his chest, reminding everyone that the teacher was my dad.
The biggest kid in our class, Vernon had failed fifth grade and still struggled, which was probably why he tried to act so tough. I was an easy target.
This was the first year I was in Dad’s class, but I’d have him again next year since he taught eighth-grade history, too.
Dad started his talk. He believed history was about people, and he moved through important events in the twentieth century by introducing them. He told us, “You won’t care about World War I if the folks who made a difference don’t matter to you.”
Dad spoke with passion. I could get caught up in his lessons because he made you think you were there. Sometimes he asked Mom to role-play a historical figure in front of our class. We’d seen her play Eleanor Roosevelt and Susan B. Anthony. She was like watching a movie. She was so good, I’d forget she was my mom. And when I did remember, my throat got a funny tickle in it because I was so proud that she was.
As Dad made his opening remarks that day, Vernon’s arm shot straight up while he peered at me sideways.
My stomach ached, thinking of what he might ask that would humiliate me.
Dad nodded in his direction. “Yes, Mr. Clifton?”
“Mr. Wilson, why are you still teaching this class?” Vernon smirked and took in all the other students.
It would be worse than I’d ever imagined. Vernon was going to point out the obvious. That it wasn’t right for Dad to be my teacher. Dad actually went out of his way not to praise me in front of my classmates. But there were little things that he probably didn’t realize he was doing that set me apart, like the way he addressed everyone by their last name except for me.
Dad shifted his body on the stool so that he was facing Vernon. “What’s that, Mr. Clifton?”
“You know,” Vernon said, “it’s like you won the lottery.”
“Excuse me?” Dad was confused, but I’d figured out exactly where this was going.
“A million bucks is a lot of money,” said Vernon.
I nearly fell out of my chair. Some kids laughed nervously, but all of them leaned forward.
Ten thousand dollars turned into a hundred thousand by this morning, and now, less than an hour later, a hundred thousand had grown into a million bucks. Zeros must have been dropping from the sky over Antler.
“Yes, it is a lot of money,” Dad said. “But since I don’t have a million bucks, I guess I’ll show up here and teach history. Which reminds me, Mr. Clifton, report topics are due next week. We’re looking forward to hearing what you’ve chosen to write about.”
That shut Vernon right up. He always dreaded reading aloud.
I couldn’t understand why Dad put up with Vernon’s mouthing off, but Dad believed Vernon was a victim of circumstance. A couple of years ago, he set fire to trash dumpsters around town every twenty minutes until he was caught. We were a one-fire-engine town with volunteer firefighters. Whenever we heard a siren, Twig and I jumped on our bikes and rode until we reached the action. It didn’t happen very often.
Vernon’s dad, Mr. Clifton, volunteered and was one of the firefighters extinguishing the fires. When the sheriff’s car drove up with Vernon in the back seat, Mr. Clifton yelled for his son to get out. Vernon sank lower as if he wanted to disappear. So Mr. Clifton marched away from the smoking dumpster, opened the back door, reached in, and grabbed Vernon by the ear, pulling him out of the vehicle.
I couldn’t stand to watch any longer and turned away, but Twig looked on with tears in her eyes. I’d never seen her cry. Later she blamed it on the smoke, but I knew better because I’d wanted to do it myself.
In a big city, someone might have gone to juvenile hall for a stunt like that, but Vernon’s punishment was to pick up trash at the square every day for two months.
After what happened with Mr. Clifton, I told Dad that I thought Vernon’s dad was mean.
The Ambassador of Nowhere Texas Page 2