by Lesley Kagen
Oh, my cool-handed Clever!
“But thanks ever so much for worryin’ about my whereabouts, ” she says so realistically, even I believe her.
Shifting his weight toward me, LeRoy asks, “How about you, Miss Gibby? Ya over to Browntown las’ night?” I can tell he’d love to add on, “You who are dumber than anthracite coal.”
“She was with me,” Billy says, trying to maintain a hold of Keeper, whose appetite must be returning ’cause he’s eyeing the sheriff like he’s a chicken-fried steak.
“And just exactly where was you?” he asks, politing his voice some since Billy’s daddy, Big Bill Brown of High Hopes Farm, is the richest man in Grant County. It’s not likely the sheriff is ready to belly flop into that kind of hot water. Not with an election coming.
Billy says, “I was with Gibby.”
“Sheriff, ya hear anything new about my grampa?” I ask, suddenly remembering. If anybody knows what’s happening over at the hospital, it’d be busybody him.
LeRoy gives us the once-over one more time, and then with a turn of his heel heads back up the lawn.
“Sheriff Johnson?” I call, chasing after him. “Grampa?”
“Gibby?” Billy calls after me, worried.
“I’m fine,” I yell back at him, and then to Clever, “Stay put,” ’cause I can tell she’s just itching to skedaddle.
Hustling, I catch up with LeRoy just as he’s pulling open his cruiser door out back near the road. I’m about to ask him again about Grampa’s condition when he warns, “Keep your trap shut about findin’ Buster on the beach or else.”
OH MY GOODNESS! HE KNOWS I KNOW!
Or is he just warning me about spreading gossip that can’t be proved? Slander: A malicious false statement.
“I’m givin’ you fair warnin’.” He grabs on to a handful of my hair hard enough to wrench my head to my shoulder. “Ya hear?”
“I’ll . . . I’ll write a story in my newspaper. Everybody in Cray Ridge will know that you’re trying to blame Cooter for something he didn’t do.”
“Be my guest,” LeRoy scoffs. “Who ya think they’re gonna believe? The man who’s been the law of this county for eight years or some . . . imbecile.”
Seconds after he backs out, siren blaring, Keeper whips past me. He musta been eavesdropping and no longer able to contain himself, ’cause he full-out chases that squad car down Lake Mary Road. “Careful,” I shout after him, even though I know he won’t heed me. That’s the thing with that dog. He’s brave, almost recklessly so, and doesn’t EVER give up. No. Keeper will take it on himself like a sworn duty not to let the sheriff outta his sight. I read the whole book out loud to him, placing special emphasis on chapter 16: Tracking. A good hunting dog can be indispensable. And tenacious. So I’m not worrying about the sheriff’s threats as I turn back to the cottage.
But ya know who should be worried, don’tcha? Cooter Smith, that’s who. Because no matter how rascally he’s been acting lately, we’d all feel real bad if he was found twisting on the end of a rope in Wally’s Woods, the sheriff not bothering to hide a revolting grin when he announces to the town, “He up and escaped. I have no idea who strung the boy up like that. What a goddamn shame.”
Yes, indeed. Cooter Smith should be worryin’ his fool head off.
Cheating
While Billy and Clever are in the kitchen stirring us up some lunch, I’m picking through Grampa’s dresser drawers. His worn-at-the-seat jeans. The bleached undershirts he wears no matter how hot. I run my finger across the pearl buttons of one of his Texas shirts. The kind you see on rodeo riders. I’ve never been in his room without him. Pressing my face into his pillow, there’s a faint smell of trout twisting out of the lake. My salty tears aren’t helping. They’re only reminding me how the two of us had planned on doing some ocean fishing someday. “The Atlantic spreads out like a Texas prairie,” Grampa told me, thrilled. “Fish the size of calves. Ya’d have to see it to believe it.”
Above his cherrywood bed there’s a portrait of him and Gramma Kitty. They don’t look much older than me and Billy. I’d give up my favorite No. 2 if I could climb into that picture and feel all that love blanketing me and . . . focus, Gib, focus. What does he always tell me when I get to yearning like this? “What sense does it make cravin’ something ya can never have? That’s like a whippoorwill wishin’ it were a sparrow.”
Oh, Grampa.
What else is he gonna need in the hospital? His deerskin slipper? Yes, he’s awfully fond of that slipper. I check under the bed for it, sending dust bunnies on high. There it is, next to what looks like a wooden hatbox. As I slide them both out and set them on top of his chenille spread, a voice in my head tells me to go ahead and open the box, and it isn’t Grampa’s. He’d raise holy hell if he knew I was going through his personals. I trace the smooth raised-up letters. A M. Addy Murphy. Bet he whittled this box for Mama when she was a little girl. Wonder why he never showed me this before. The top comes right off. There’s a jumble of stuff inside, but what catches my eye right off is the pink ribbon tied around a curl of dusty brown hair. And a letter.
June 2, 1970
Dear Daddy,
Might as well get straight to the point. I caught Joe cheating with the art dealer who owns the shop where I exhibit my paintings. (Calm down. Remember your heart.) After we drop Gib off at your place, the two of us are heading to a cabin in the Cumberlands to try and work things out. Don’t worry.
Love,
Addy girl
Well, goodness. Daddy was cheating an art dealer? So that’s why Miss Lydia can never see him up in heaven when she does one of her ACTUATIONS. This also answers my pestering question as to why he’s not buried with my mama. My grampa despises cheating of any kind.
“Soup’s almost on.” Clever sticks in her head, and seeing what I’m doing, gets herself comfy on his bed. “Whatcha got there?” Boy, she could stand a bath. She smells like giblet stuffing right after you scoop it out of the bird.
I hand over the letter from Mama I found in the box. Clever moves her lips when she reads, so it takes her some time. When she’s done, she shakes her head. “Another man shows his good-for-nuthin’ side,” she says, mimicking her mama to a T, but then adds with some wistfulness, “Do ya think they’re all like that?”
“My man doesn’t have a good-for-nuthin’ side,” I say. “He wouldn’t cheat an art dealer.” (Billy doesn’t even like art all that much. He’s more the rugged outdoor type.)
“You gonna be all right?” Clever asks, eyeing some coins Grampa left on his bedside table. “ ’Bout your daddy, I mean.”
“A course I am. If he wouldn’ta died in the crash, I’m sure he woulda paid that art dealer back.” I set Grampa’s red-striped pajamas into the packing box next to his whittling knife and records. “Bad timin’ is all.”
“But that’s not what . . . ,” Clever says, choked up some since daddy talk is generally considered Verboten: A taboo subject between us. (Her not knowing . . . you understand.)
“Yes, my daddy was another man who truly loved his woman.” I’m back to gazing adoringly at the picture above the bed. By the blissful smiles on their faces, anybody can see that Grampa and Gramma were enraptured in love just like me and Billy and Mama and Daddy. “True love must run deep in our family, wouldn’t ya say?”
“Deep as hell,” Clever replies, real huffy.
(Jealous, is all she is.)
“Well, I’m gonna give Miss Jessie a jingle down at the hospital, ” I say, replacing Mama’s letter in the hatbox and putting it back under the bed. “Put those coins back on the bedside table, hear?”
Out in the parlor, I dial up the numbers printed on the hospital card and say, “Charlie Murphy’s room, please.”
On the other end of the line, the phone’s ringing and ringing. Miss Jessie finally picks up and says in a running-out-of-breath voice, “Hello?”
“Hey, Miss Jessie. I’m just about set to head over to the hos—”
She interrupts with, “O
h, Gib, where ya been? Ya better get down here quick. Time’s runnin’ out,” and hangs up without even saying see ya later alligator.
Clever is plumb wore out. It musta been all that daddy talk drained her or maybe it’s coming up with THE PLAN that made her get-up-and-go get up and go. I got her set up real nice on the flowered sofa on the screened-in porch. Two pillows. A packet of crackers sitting alongside her bowl of chicken noodle. Billy, him being such a long drink of water, managed to tape her beloved movie poster up on the ceiling so Mr. Paul Newman and Mr. Robert Redford can watch over her while she rests. Billy and Keeper’ve gone off to check on the mooring of Grampa’s boat to the dock, so me and Clever are alone when she asks, “What’d Miss Jessie say?”
“She said time was runnin’ out, but I could tell that she was in a hurry. She musta read the clock wrong.”
I checked the hospital card AGAIN after speaking to her, just to be sure. Visiting hours are definitely ’til two o’clock. I got plenty of time to get done what I gotta get done and still get over there.
Clever asks, “We clear on the plan?”
“Maybe ya better go over it again.”
She sets her spoon in her bowl, and says, “First off, don’t you dare tell Billy what you’re up to. He’ll try to stop you, on account a him being so righteous.”
“Check.”
“Second off, go and break Cooter out of jail. Miss Florida will never forgive us if he’s found hung, and ’sides that, we owe him. From the old days.”
“Check.”
“Last off, you’re gonna take Grampa’s things to the hospital and have a real nice visit.” Fingering the rose she’s got in her hair, Clever adds with a smile, “Tell him for me not to worry. The flowers are doin’ mighty fine. ’Specially the Texas ones.”
I’m sure Grampa won’t mind being last off. In fact, he’d be disappointed as hell in me if I didn’t take care of this Cooter problem first ’fore I go see him. It’s the cowboy way to stand up for a body that cannot stand up for hisself. ’Specially one that is about to get his neck stretched in a permanent kind of way. ’Specially since that neck belongs to Cooter. Grampa’s as fond of him as he is of Billy. All those years calling birds and cooking together up at the diner have bound those two together like biscuits and gravy and birds of a feather.
After I get Clever replumped, she hands me the still half-full soup bowl, saying in a barely-there voice, “Gib?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re gonna stay focused and remember, ain’t ya?” Her lids are heavy and her breath noodley when she takes a good hard look, first at the ceiling poster, and then back at me. “Don’t think I could bear it if ya let me down, Butch.”
Not Copacetic
If it’s all the same to you, I’ll drive,” I tell Billy, lifting the truck keys off the hook near the back door. He’s been reteaching me behind Grampa’s back. First time we went out, I was beyond ascared. (Considering what happened to me and my mama and daddy, a vehicle of any sort can feel a lot like a murder weapon. You understand.) But I practiced and practiced on the back roads, and Billy has patience when it comes to me, so I’m not half-bad. The staying on my side of the road part could use a little more work, but my turns are nice and smooth.
Billy’s next to me on the bench seat, holding a box full of Grampa’s jammies, his whittling knife, his Johnny Cash albums, and the bird book with the glossy pictures. I also slapped together a couple of peanut butter and honeys for him.
“Tell me exactly what Miss Jessie said to you on the phone,” Billy says as I back out of the cottage drive, careful to check BOTH mirrors like he taught me.
As much as I hate lying to a Vietnam veteran, the Kid is right. This outlaw business is between her and me. Billy’d never go along with a jailbreak. He’s too law-abiding. I have to ditch him.
“Well,” I say. “Let’s see . . . oh, that’s right. Miss Jessie asked if you could go over to her place and see if Vern and Teddy need any help with the horses since she’s not sure when she’ll be able to get home.” We’re running down the road next to the lake. Charles Michael Murphy would adore being out on that sleek water today. Casting his rod and reel, spinning Texas tales. “So . . . ah . . . I’m gonna drop you at her farm and then I’m gonna run over to see Grampa at the hospital and when we’re done visitin’, I’ll come back to get ya, all right?”
“But—” He cuts off as we pass by Top O’ the Mornin’. A white bag is cartwheeling through the empty lot. The candy-cane window awnings are hanging lifeless. Even the lucky horseshoe looks more crooked. Am I remembering right? Didn’t Clever tell me that Janice and Miss Florida would tend to things while Grampa was in the hospital? Well, if they are, they’re doing a deplorable job.
Seeing the diner abandoned like that is spooking me, and maybe Billy feels that way, too, ’cause the both of us don’t say much ’til I slow down in front of Miss Jessie’s drive-up. Where normally I feel breathless at the sight of all this gorgeousness, the reason I can’t catch air right this minute is because who should be sitting on a stump near the road like a wart on a beauty queen’s face but evil’s own Emissary: Agent. Sneaky Tim Ray Holloway.
“This here’s private property,” he gnarls, when I pull up next to him. “Go away.”
Billy gets out of the truck and stands tall next to this runt. “Miss Jessie sent me to help with the horses.”
“Where’s Jessie at anyways?” Holloway winks up at me. “I’m hungry.”
It’s been bothering me and bothering me why Sneaky Tim Ray would go along with the sheriff’s frame-up of Cooter. True, Holloway is walking the path of the wicked and could be lying about seeing Cooter choke Buster dead over a game of craps just for the kick of it, but . . . I don’t know. Never known this belly crawler to do somethin’ for nuthin’. Something seems off here. Something isn’t Copacetic: Okay.
Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.
I just recalled how Sneaky Tim Ray and Cooter ambushed us in the woods last night, stole that treasure map off us. With Cooter behind bars now for murdering Buster . . . yes . . . Sneaky Tim Ray can keep that treasure ALL FOR HIMSELF! Next time he comes hunting for me, he’ll be dripping in sapphires and rubies. Because that’s what the treasure’s GOT to be, never mind the lack of an X on that map. Pirate booty. Not prime tobacco like I first thought.
Billy grinds down the smoking butt Sneaky Tim Ray tosses at his boot, and says syrup slow, the way he does right before he’s about to explode, “Miss Jessie’s keepin’ vigil up at the hospital with Charlie Murphy. He’s had a heart attack.”
“Well, ain’t that too bad,” Sneaky Tim Ray’s lips say, but his eyes say otherwise. “Ya gonna be on your own now, darlin’? Footloose and fancy free?” He laughs and laughs ’til he coughs and coughs.
When Billy bunches his fists, Sneaky Tim Ray, so used to getting pummeled, is alert and harefooted, and already ’bout half gone through the trees.
“Leave him be, Billy. I gotta get to the hospital and you gotta check those horses. Time’s runnin’ out,” I remind him. (As you know, I’m lying. Right after I leave here, I’m heading for the sheriff station to bust out Cooter.)
When he doesn’t respond, I shout, “Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?” Billy answers, finally dragging his feet back to me.
“Love,” I say, taking hold of his hand when he passes it through the window.
“Love who?”
“You, Billy Brown. Y-O-U. And not the same way I love Grampa. That is not a joke, by the way, just in case you thought it was.”
“I know the way you mean,” he says with a lot of confidence. Boy, does he ever seem different! Usually after an encounter such as the one he just had with Sneaky Tim Ray, Billy’s temper would be choking the reasonable outta him. But he seems hardly riled at all. Maybe it’s the scoop after scoop of sweet lovin’ I gave him last night. Maybe all that his Vietnam-bombed nerves needed was a little of that homegrown sugar. (We did NOT pound the snow possum, if that’s w
hat you’re wondering. The both of us agreed that we wouldn’t break out his wedding tackle ’til we’re on our honeymoon.)
“Ya better git,” Billy says, planting a kiss on my forehead with those extra-fine lips a his. “Give my love to Grampa. Drive slow and keep a good lookout. There’s things happenin’ around here that’re makin’ my stomach feel like it’s tangled up in barbwire. Ya know what I mean?”
My stomach is feeling jumbled as well. And yes, I do know what that means. The Importance of Perception in Meticulous Investigation: Gut Instincts: Follow that feeling in the pit of your stomach. Many mysteries are solved by a reporter who followed their gut hunches.
Free at Last
After sliding into a spot in the sheriff station lot, I get to feeling so jumpy that I forget to put the truck in P and it hops halfway to the Methodist church. Sure as May follows June, Reverend Jack will tell me during our visit next week that breaking Cooter Smith out of jail was not an appropriate way for me to behave. (Sorry, Reverend. There’s no two ways about it. I can’t let Grampa or Clever down.) If I don’t cut Cooter loose now, the sheriff is gonna settle this nastiness between them once and for all. Like all feuds, this one goes way back. “Niggas belong in their place, and that Smith boy is overreachin’ his,” is exactly what LeRoy says after he’s had a few too many down at Frank’s Tap. “Like Daddy Carl always said, ya get ’em educated and they’ll turn into rabble-rousers.”
What LeRoy’s referring to is when Cooter went off to that college in North Carolina, but he doesn’t have that right. Miss Florida told me that Cooter was a Blue Devil, not a Rabble-Rouser, which just goes to illustrate how messed up the sheriff’s thinking can get when Cooter Smith is the subject of the conversation. You’re probably thinking it’s his color that makes the sheriff hate Cooter so, but you’d only be a little right. Mostly, it’s love.
Cooter’s mama, Darnell, the one who went missing selling peanuts up roadside years ago? Clever told me that Janice told her that back when the bunch of them were young, the sheriff was badly smitten and having bushels of hot sex with the lovely Darnell. But Darnell, not equally smitten, she up and dropped the sheriff and took up with Cooter’s daddy, Willie. Who Cooter takes after EXACTLY. I mean, like an identical twin. I’ve seen pictures. So that’s why I’ve always thought the sheriff has it out for Cooter. LeRoy was scorned. And he’s still furious as hell.