Land of a Hundred Wonders

by Lesley Kagen

  All’s quiet ’cept for the tick tick of her Bulova clock and the soul music seeping through the open window.

  “Maybe she went out for a breath of fresh air,” I say, heading out to the porch and praying Clever hasn’t deserted me. When she gets mad or caught doing something she shouldn’t (exactly as often as you’d think), she’s bound to cut and run. Everybody knows you can’t catch that Lever girl once she makes up her mind to scoot. The bug light isn’t doing its job, but it’s strong enough that I can see my best friend snoozing on the swing. Vern and Teddy are lippin’ their cigarettes, lettin’ the smoke hang.

  Upon seeing Clever, Miss Florida throws her arms up with a wouldn’tcha-know-it look and eases herself down into her rocking chair with a, “My, oh, my. Life sure is unrelentin’, ain’t it? Ya get one problem taken care of and ’fore ya can get an ounce of satisfaction, another one rears its head.” She crooks her finger over to the swing. “I do believe this time that wild child got herself into somethin’ she cain’t outrun.”

  I’m afraid she’s right. Picking up my best friend’s tootsies, I set myself down beside her, letting her feet fall back into my lap. How funny that the creak of the rope swing is matching her snores. Vern and Teddy aren’t paying us a bit of mind, too busy slapping down their tiles.

  “Now what’s that you were sayin’ before ’bout Buster bein’ missin’?” Miss Florida half wonders.

  Buster Malloy. Buster Malloy. The next governor. Oh, my, yes. “I was sayin’ that Mr. Buster is not actually missin’.” (I figure I owe Miss Florida an explanation of sorts based on no other reason than me and Clever agitating the hell out of her on this loveliest of evenings.) “I saw him.”

  “Oh, yeah? Where?” she says, happy to pass the time like we do in the kitchen every morning when we form sausage patties.

  “He was over at Browntown Beach.”

  “Mmm. . . .” Miss Florida’s begun drifting off after her hard day at the diner. Her ankles are swollen almost out of her shoes. “And when was that at?”

  I can picture Mr. Buster splayed on the sand. Four holes in his chest. Neck all catawampus. But the details aren’t filled in. “Can’t say as I remember the day exactly.”

  “Buster be the first to tell ya he don’t know how to swim,” Miss Florida mutters with a lot of contempt. “So what’d he be doin’ down at the beach?”

  “Bein’ dead.”

  Hoochie-coochie laughing is coming down the road from Mamie’s Leisure Lounge. Clever and I spy in the window over there whenever we get a chance. There’s a fantastic silver ball hangs from the ceiling that shoots sparkly squares on bodies swaying so close. I would very much like to work up at Mamie’s when I get QR again. You know, temporary-like, until I find my apartment in Cairo.

  “Gettin’ late,” Miss Florida says, not bothering to hide her yawn. She’s acting like she didn’t even hear me tell her that Mr. Buster Malloy is not missing but deceased. Maybe she didn’t, and that’s probably for the best, considering she can keep a secret just about as well as Clever can. “Vern, Teddy, finish up now. Ya gotta take Gib home.”

  “But what about Clever?” I ask, tugging Miss Florida out of the rocker with both of my hands.

  “She’ll be fine here for tonight. Ain’t like she’ll be missed,” she says. “Ya know that.”

  I do, and so does everybody else in Cray Ridge, but I’m shocked straight down my spine that Miss Florida says this. Usually colored people do not say mean things about white people to another white person. It is considered untraditional.

  Vern pulls up on his trouser knees and says to me, “Don’t get her goin’ on ’bout Janice Lever’s poor motherin’. We be here ’til sunup.”

  Then no way in hell am I going to tell Miss Florida that Clever no longer has a home to go to. That her selfish, selfish mama kicked her out. Again. I CANNOT stay here ’til sunup. I got a murder to solve.

  “All right then,” I say, glancing back one more time at Clever, thumb in her mouth, looking not much older than the day she came scratching at Top O’ the Mornin’s back door asking for a handout when she was seven. Miss Florida took to Clever right off. Set her up next to the kitchen sink, dabbed at the dirt on her cheeks, and cut her a slice of chiffon pie, which is still Clever’s all-time favorite.

  Looking back down at her on that swing, I must have a hesitating look on my face ’cause Miss Florida says kinder, “G’wan, baby. She’ll be fine with me.”

  “I know.” I bend to deliver a kiss to Clever’s forehead, and then straighten to give a wrap-around hug to Miss Florida. Vern and Teddy are already waiting on me roadside with Keeper in the bed of the truck. Backing that way, I say to her, “Thank you awfully much for not callin’ Grampa.”

  “You ain’t safe here no more, Gib. It ain’t like it used to be,” she says, and I can’t perceive if Miss Florida’s happy about that or not. “I’ll have the boys sneak his boat back ’fore dawn.”

  “I got proof, ya know, ’bout Mr. Malloy bein’ dead and if you want . . . ,” I try, thinking that might give her sweet dreams, but that screen door is already closing on her big behind.

  Vern and Teddy Smith. I’ve adored them since the day I met them. Besides taking such good care of Miz Tanner’s farm, Teddy, who is the brawn of the outfit, is a help to Miss Lydia out at Land of a Hundred Wonders. She calls him the Caretaker. Teddy is slow on the uptake. Vern is a lot smarter, and does most of the talking for the two of them because his younger brother also has a high C voice that really doesn’t suit him. I’d say I adore Teddy a little more than I adore Vern. There’s just something about him I find so sympathetic.

  A singing group calling itself The Temptations is on the truck radio harmonizing about how they wish it would rain and it looks like they might get what they want. Vern is behind the wheel, his arm out the window catching a breeze. I’m smushed between the two of ’em like an ice-cream sandwich.

  “Why am I not safe anymore in Browntown, Vern?” I ask.

  He looks over at Teddy, who looks back at him. Rakes his fingers down his stalky neck. Vern’s stalling for time, trying to decide what to tell me because I’m NQR. Everybody does that.

  “There’s folks in Browntown who is mad at white folk,” Vern says, not removing his eyes off the road.

  “Why?”

  Teddy is rolling a cigarette by the light of the glove box.

  Vern says, “Times a changin’.”

  “Hey, that’s a Bob Dylan song,” I say. “Willard loves Bob Dylan.”

  “Who’s Bob Dylan? Who’s Willard?” Vern asks.

  “Bob Dylan is a popular singer and Willard lives next door to us. He smokes hemp.”

  “That a fact?”

  “Yes, it is. Did ya know if ya smoke hemp it relaxes ya?” I ask, picturing Willard’s deboned-looking body when he’s done inhaling the stuff. Hemp grows like weeds around here, in the ditches.

  “Hemp smokin’ is relaxin’, huh? Maybe we should look into that, Teddy.”

  The golden light from the radio bounces off his brother’s teeth as he runs his startling pink tongue across his white rolling paper.

  I say, “Miss Florida says people do not like me anymore in Browntown. Why?”

  “You’s the wrong color,” Vern says.

  “Colored folks are mad at white folks?” Even though I may sound surprised, I’m really not. I can understand them being mad at people who treat them rude. “But I’m a nice white folk.”

  When Teddy lights up his cigarette, the glow of the tip warms up his face. He’s got a scar on his chin that matches the lightning bolt that just flashed above the lake.

  “Yeah, you’s a nice white folk,” Vern answers. “But some of the coloreds, they’s not lookin’ on the inside of a body no more, they’s only interested in the outside.”

  “But then, aren’t those colored folks actin’ just as ignorant as those white folks? Decidin’ if somebody is good or bad because of what shade they are?”

  Vern gives me a strong nod o
f approval. “Ya know, for a girl wit a messed-up brain, ya say some very reasonable things.”

  “Appreciate you sayin’ that, Vern. I’ve been working real hard at gettin’ more reasonable.”

  “Well, ya can work your brain ’til it’s blistered, but ya ain’t never gonna be able to reason out hate.”

  Him saying that breaks my heart, for I’ve found hating doesn’t make you feel too good. Well, maybe it makes you feel good for a little while. Sort of powerful and all, thinking up ways to have at a certain somebody. (Sneaky Tim Ray.) To get back at him for making you feel less right than you already do.

  Just as we come upon Buster Malloy’s farm, the rain lets loose. I can’t see his place through the trees, but I know his mansion is made of bricks and has a four-car garage.

  Over my head, Vern says to Teddy, “Haskell says nobody’s been paid this week for pickin’. Buster better get hisself back soon or—”

  “He won’t be back,” I blurt. “Mr. Buster is dead.”

  Next to me on the seat, Teddy Smith stiffens like a Sunday shirt.

  For godssakes, Gibby. Why don’t ya just head over to WJOY and have Sweet Talkin’ Stan announce Mr. Buster’s demise to the whole county?

  “Buster dead?” Vern says. “No, he ain’t.”

  “Would you like to see his body?” pops out before I realize I can’t really do that. That’d blow my plan to kingdom come.

  “Where it at?” Vern asks with a lot of suspicion.

  “I . . . I . . . can’t remember right at this moment but when I do, I will call you on the telephone.”

  Vern says, “Ya do that,” crooking his eyebrow up at Teddy, who is still awfully starched.

  We’re quiet, listening to the radio and the rain ’til we make the last turn toward home. Pulling up to the cottage, the truck’s headlights spotlight Grampa. Like he’s the star of a magic show, the windshield wipers are making him appear and disappear. He’s perched on a pail, his legs planked out, not even trying to keep his shotgun dry.

  Vern says soft, “Ya in for it now, Gibber.”

  Reverend Jack

  Cray Ridge is perched on the shores of Lake Mary, which is a good-size body of water. Not so large that you can’t see across it, but when the sun is out, you do need to squint. I can see how the smallness of the town might get on some folks’ nerves, but I find it quite enchanting. It’s only six blocks long with trees running along Main Street. And the brick buildings have ivy twisting up their sides. Since you gotta pass through it on your way to the big cave down south, most of the shops and attractions do okay during the hot months selling trinkets and such.

  Reverend Jack and me are sitting on the steps of his front porch that’s right next door to the Cumberland United Methodist. He’s a handsome fellow with brown hair trimmed into a crew cut so short that you can see summer beading all over his skull. Besides being a pastor, he’s got a doctoring degree from the University of Mississippi in psychology, which he has explained to me is the study of a person’s Psyche: A human’s soul, spirit or mind. What this means is that he tries to unravel the reasons for why folks do and feel things.

  “Do I understand the situation correctly?” the reverend asks.

  "S’pose so,” I say, watching Keeper give his paws a going-over.

  “An elaboration would be most helpful.”

  “Grampa’s upset ’cause I went to Browntown last night. He told me that if he was a hide-tannin’ man, both Clever’s and my bottoms’d look like his cowboy saddle right about now.”

  When I first started coming to see the reverend, we spoke mostly about how wretched it feels to be an orphan. And how it’s all right to feel sad about that and it isn’t at all like feeling sorry for yourself, even though Grampa says it is. But now that some time has passed, whenever anything comes up in my life that Grampa doesn’t feel “equipped” to cover, he brings me to Reverend Jack, who along with supplying Christian guidance has been teaching me exactly what’s—and what is not—an “appropriate” way for an NQR girl to conduct herself. Like kissing tourists on the hand when they ask directions? Turns out, that isn’t appropriate. Neither is offering to wash the windshields of the truck drivers who pull over when they see me strolling down the highway. (I tried to explain to the reverend that there is a perfectly appropriate reason for this behavior. After all, if Dixie Oil trucker Mr. Hank Simmons hadn’t seen me balled up next to that creek after the crash—well, you get the picture.)

  “Gibby?”

  A heavenly smell is wiggling our way out of Loretta’s Candy World—Home of the Best Chocolate-Covered Cherries in the Universe and Beyond. Miss Loretta gets out of bed before the rooster crows to melt these hunks of chocolate in silver bins that are warm and shiny and—

  “Do you understand why your grampa is upset with you?” Reverend Jack asks.

  “I have friends in Browntown.”

  He twiddles his thumbs. Round and round and round. “Do you know what the word racism means?”

  If I had my leather-like with me, I could look it up in my Webster’s.

  “Gib?” He taps my shoulder. “Racism?”

  “Spell it, please.”

  “R-a-c-i-s-m.”

  “Does it . . . does it have something to do with running?”

  “No,” he says, rubbing his palm cross the top of his bristly head, which I perceive he does when he’s searching for the right words. “Racism means that some people do not care for people who are of a different color than they are.”

  “The sheriff hates the coloreds,” I say.

  “That’s racism,” he says with a nod. “The sheriff would be considered a racist. And that’s a very wrong thing to be.”

  The reverend smells of caramel with just a little bit of ah . . . peanuts? Wonder what he’s gotten himself into that would cause him to smell so sweet and crunchy?

  “But only white people hate brown people. There are no brown people hatin’ white people. That is not what happens,” I say, no matter what Vern said and Teddy Smith nodded in agreement with. The both of them are awfully nice men, but they drink quite a bit of rotgut, and now that I’ve had some time to mull it over, maybe they’re not complete strangers to hemp smoking.

  Reverend Jack lets out a green apple breath. “People change.”

  I want to tell him how bad I wish that was true, but I’m a mite irritated with him today, so instead I stare across the street at Grampa’s truck. I’m in no hurry to head home, his mad just about suffocating me when he’s in one of his wet-blanket moods. He already kept me up most of the night giving me a tongue-lashing. I finally broke down and began to tell him about my plan to solve the murder of Mr. Buster and write an awfully good story so his beloved daughter could stop worrying about my NQRness, that’s how desperate I got. But Grampa was on one of his rips. Wouldn’t listen. Which is fine by me. All he woulda told me was, “Forget about investigatin’. Forget about writin’ that story. Forget about gettin’ QR.” I can’t do that. Last night in my dreams, Mama was crying into her hands, and when I woke up drenched and shaky, me and Keeper dragged our pillow out to the pier, hoping it would rock us back to sleep, but it didn’t.

  “Your grampa’s just tryin’ to keep you safe,” Reverend Jack says.

  “He’s bein’ overprotective, as usual. No one would hurt me in Browntown. They’re my friends. Like Miss Florida and Vern and Teddy and—”

  “Not everybody in Browntown, or the rest of Cray Ridge, for that matter, is your friend.”

  “I already know that, for godssake.” We’ve gone over this maybe nine hundred times. I have a tendency to think that all people have hearts of gold. Reverend Jack has suggested that maybe some of them hearts might be a little on the tin side. “Sneaky Tim Ray is not my friend.”

  “Has Holloway been botherin’ you?” he asks, tensing.

  The reverend promises he’ll not tell anybody else what I confess to him during our talks. Like in The Importance of Perception in Meticulous Investigation: Confidentiality:
Reporters NEVER reveal their sources. Still. He might “accidentally” tell Grampa about my dealings with Sneaky Tim Ray, and then that wretch would “accidentally” kill Keeper. I can’t take that chance.

  “I got a new necklace. Ya wanna see it?” I ask, looking down my blouse. “It’s from Billy. He left it in our secret stump and it’s got some nice pictures inside and it’s . . .” Where did my locket go?

  “You’re wanderin’,” the reverend says. “Again.”

  “Just tryin’ to keep things rollin’. I can’t stay too much longer.

  I left my briefcase up at Miz Tanner’s and I have to go get it. It has an important piece of evidence in it.”

  “Has Holloway been botherin’ you?” he asks, not letting me off the hook. More than once he’s told me that I should quit thinking of Sneaky Tim Ray as a regular type of person. How the reverend actually expressed it was, “Ya know how in those western movies you like so much there’s almost always a drunkard sprayin’ bullets at an Indian’s feet, brayin’ out, ‘Dance, you dirty Injun, dance’?” And I answered, “Yes. That’s right. That happens a lot in those shoot-’em-ups.” And then he said, “You’d want to steer clear of somebody like that, wouldn’t you?”

  Not like I don’t try.

  “Have you seen this one?” I fold my fingers in, making my indexes into a point, and bringing my thumbs forward. “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple.” I spread my thumbs, and wiggle my fingers. “Open the doors and see all the people.”

  “Gibby.”

  “Yeah?” I say, glancing over at Billy, who’s pacing in front of Candy World like he’s on sentry duty. (Sometimes he joins me at the counter for a brown cow when I’m done with my reverend visits.) I wonder why Billy never tries to rub my double D ninnies like Sneaky Tim Ray does. Maybe I don’t make Billy pant fast and hard because I’m NQR.

  “Your grampa does not want you goin’ to Browntown anymore, ” the reverend repeats.

  “Would ya mind if we talk about somethin’ else for a few minutes? This subject is givin’ me a chewed up and spit out feelin’. Are you and Loretta Boyd havin’ hot sex?”