Land of a Hundred Wonders

by Lesley Kagen

  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.

  “Well, this is gettin’ more interestin’ by the second,” Miss Jessie says, bustling back down the aisle with a saddle and bridle that she sets down on the rack outside Peaches’s stall. “Seems it’s not a rumor anymore. Nobody’s seen Buster for a coupla days. What’s wrong?”

  “Hay in my eye, is all,” I say, sliding the birthing stall door closed behind me. I don’t want her to tell Grampa I was crying. He wouldn’t approve. “How’d ya find that out? About Mr. Buster bein’ gone for sure?”

  “That was Sheriff Joh
nson on the phone. Pull her out of the stall, Gib.”

  After getting Peaches hooked up in the aisle, Miss Jessie eases the saddle down on her scruffy gray back. I am hoping to ride horses again, but since the crash, I’ve had some balancing problems. This donkey is closer to the ground, if you get my drift.

  “The sheriff’s been up to the Malloy place and talked to his help,” Miss Jessie says, fastening the girth tight.

  “If Mr. Malloy has been missing for a coupla days, I think the help shoulda called down to the sheriff’s station earlier. Would that be appropriate thinkin’?” (Reverend Jack, down at the Methodist church? He’s always trying to get me to think “appropriately.”)

  “That certainly would be appropriate thinkin’,” Miss Jessie replies in a complimentary way. “The field boss told the sheriff that Buster mentioned somethin’ about going to a government get-together and he assumed that’s where Buster’s been. But whoever it was that he was supposed to be meetin’ up with called the sheriff station this morning reportin’ that he never showed up.”

  “Oh, my, my. The field boss assuming like that? That is such a big mistake to make.” The Importance of Perception in Meticulous Investigation says that assuming anything is just about the worse thing anybody can do. You should never assume anything until you have the facts. “Are you by any chance having hot sex with Sheriff Johnson?”

  “Lord.”

  I asked her that because when Miss Jessie and Grampa go out to dinner at Gil’s Supper Club, and she’s gussied up in that vanilla dress of hers that is cut on the low side up top, and the high side down below, well, I strongly suspect Grampa wouldn’t mind spooning her up for dessert. But if my understanding is correct, hot sex is a one-per-customer deal, and if she’s already having it with the sheriff, that would leave Grampa SOL. (Shit outta love.)

  “No, I am not having hot sex or any other kind of sex with the sheriff,” Miss Jessie snips as she fastens the last strap on the bridle. “And I better not see that tidbit in next week’s Gazette.”

  “Fine, but ya best be careful,” I warn. “He looks at you with a lot of lust, ya know.”

  “Oh he does, does he?” she says, still snotty sounding.

  “Yes, he does. In fact, I bet LeRoy wouldn’t mind one bit gob-blin’ you up whole,” I say, swinging myself into the saddle. “Just like he does one a Miss Florida’s pies.”

  Miss Jessie rests her hand on my knee, a mushy look coming into her eyes. “You and I both know that I already have feelin’s for somebody, and that somebody is not Sheriff Johnson.”

  “I perceive that you are hot for Grampa,” I say, gathering up my reins.

  She gives Peaches a sharper than normal slap on the rump and says, “Well, I perceive this conversation has just drawn to a close. Git.”

  “Sometimes he calls out your name in his sleep,” I say, steering out of the coolness of the barn into the muggy heat.

  Miss Jessie chases me down. “What’d ya just say?”

  “I said you are hot for Grampa.”

  “No, after that. Something about your grandfather callin’ out my name in his sleep?”

  I don’t recall saying anything of the sort. “Are ya feelin’ all right, Miss Jessie? As you well know, I have been trained in basic Red Cross. Maybe you’re havin’ a heatstroke. Are ya seein’ stars? Do ya . . . well, speak of the devil.” I point over her shoulder at the Grant County Sheriff car that’s speeding up her drive. (Considering our previous conversation, him showing up like this doesn’t look too good for her. Makes her look Culpable: Blameworthy, don’tcha think?)

  “What in tarnation does he want?” Miss Jessie says, flushing flamingo.

  “He wants to gobble you up—”

  “Hush,” she says out of the corner of her mouth as the car comes sliding to a stop next to the barn.

  Watching the sheriff walk our way, I think about how he’s always reminded me of a past-prime peach. With fuzzy orange hair on top and all over his arms, and while not exactly fat, he is real mushy around the middle. “Afternoon, Miss Jessie,” he says to her with so much lust in his eyes it’s practically squirting out. “Miss Gibby.”

  I say, “Good afternoon,” but what I want to say is—it was until you showed up anyway, you rancid bully—and am real proud of my restraint.

  “Like they say, two heads are better’n one. Got time to sort out Buster’s disappearance with me, Jess?” he asks, offerin’ his arm.

  “Pardon me, Sheriff,” I butt in, because Almighty God, the memory of finding that dead body this morning has just floated back into my mind! “Would ya know if Mr. Buster Malloy was well known for his swimmin’ ability?” I will need this information for my awfully good story, because even though Mr. Buster wasn’t drowned, but punctured in the chest and messed up in the neck, it would be an interesting background fact. I wish I had my blue spiral with me. I should be getting this down.

  The sheriff, putting up a nice front for Miss Jessie, says to me in the dearest of voices, “And for what purpose would you be wantin’ to know that information?”

  “For the article I will be writin’ about him once he turns up dead, ya big asshole.”

  “Gib!” Miss Jessie shouts, givin’ me the cut-throat sign. (That’s her secret code to warn me I’m cursing.)

  The sheriff is waitin’ on me to, but I won’t give him my deepest of apologies, I won’t.

  “Well, now,” he says, removing his mirrored sunglasses. “Guess ya got ahold of some bad information, Miss Gibby. Mr. Malloy is not dead. He’s missin’, is all.”

  I coulda corrected him, even mentioned that I got pictures of that dead man sitting in the camera that’s inside my briefcase that’s under those bushes in front of the barn, but I don’t. Because at last summer’s Cray Ridge Days, where there were running contestsand buffet food, I overheard the sheriff remark to his deputy, “That McGraw girl’s gotta be dumber than anthracite coal.”

  “Stay on the path,” Miss Jessie calls to me as she and the sheriff head toward a shaded picnic table and a pitcher of sweet tea. I guess to put their two heads together and I hope that’s all. “Like always, Gib, turn back when I ring the come-and-get-it bell.”

  “Turn back when I hear the bell. Got it,” I say, heeling Peaches in the ribs.

  Now, even though I am 100% lovable with mostly Christian thoughts, as I enter the backwoods, I’m gonna have to confess to thinking: Mr. Buster Malloy is too dead. And when I solve that murder and publish that story, by next week Friday, everybody in town will be reading the front page of Gibby’s Gazette, their admiration piercing through the clouds and landing square in my mama’s heart. We’ll see then who is dumber than anthracite coal, Sheriff LeRoy Johnson. We’ll just see about that. Ya big asshole.

  Mr. Charles Michael Murphy

  It’s not until after I come in the cottage back door and set the egg basket down on our kitchen table that I realize that me and Keeper have come home without my black leather-like briefcase. I left it in the bushes back at Tanner Farm. “Doggone it,” I shout, indecent mad at myself for forgetting.

  “Where you been?” Grampa calls in a persnickety voice from the screened-in porch. He can get like that when he wakes up from a nap. “I just got off the phone with Jessie. She said you left more’n an hour ago.”

  “I . . . I . . .” I remember the lousy look Sheriff Johnson gave me when Miss Jessie went to retrieve my egg basket for me. I also recall Keeper yapping at snoring Sneaky Tim Ray when we snuck around him in the woods. But then . . . oh my goodness.

  I will not tell Grampa. He’ll only get red in the tips of his ears.

  Like I mentioned earlier, I usually don’t keep secrets from him, but in one of the chapters of The Importance of Perception in Meticulous Investigation, Howard Redmond states quite firmly that oftentimes, in the midst of an ongoing investigation, one must endeavor to conceal certain facts, so one might have to Prevaricate: Stray from the truth. Even from our loved ones if necessary. (For their own protection, you unders
tand.)

  “I went over to Miss Lydia’s,” I lie, stepping out to the porch. Grampa’s perched on the edge of the flowered wicker sofa. Rumpled up. “Please don’t get mad.”

  Well, for godssakes, this is so UTTERLY discouraging. Why didn’t I tell him I stopped by to see Reverend Jack at the Methodist church? Or bed-ridden-with-lumbago Nellie Wilson? Ya know, someone who’d make me look all saintly. Not someone like Miss Lydia, who’s got squirrel skulls hanging off her trees that clang together when a storm’s coming and make a much better sound than you can ever imagine. Not someone who Grampa despises.

  Straightening up, Grampa shoves out through the screened door, letting it slam hard behind him. “I told ya time and time again to stay away from Lydia,” he shouts back at me. “And Hundred Wonders.”

  Wish I could admit what I really did was go back to check on Mr. Buster Malloy’s dead body on Browntown Beach. (The flies have gotten to him some.)

  Not wanting to, because when he gets tempered like this, being around him’s ’bout as much fun as batting a hornets’ nest, I follow him out to our matching wood chairs on the lawn. I keep a stack of flat rocks under mine to use on perfecting my skimming skills. The lake’s green and smooth as a chalkboard. Baby waves making their way through the cattails, always a fine place to catch pollywogs. And the cicadas are calling to one another from the woods, sounding as desperate as I’m feeling. “Those goddamn fish bitin’ today?” I ask him.

  “You’re wanderin’ off the subject and you’re cursin’,” he says, yanking his knife out from the leather sheaf that hangs from the tulip tree. Being a well-known whittler, Grampa was once asked by a museum in New York City to bring his figures up there for a show of folks art. I was about crushed flat when he told them, “I’d rather be skinned alive and pulled behind a buck-board of runaway horses.” I’d been hoping to have lunch with Mr. Howard Redmond. I had a few questions for him about: Surveillance.

  “Why don’tcha want me to spend time with Miss Lydia?” I ask, cocking my wrist and letting loose with a skimmer. “She was Mama’s best friend.”