Tru and Nelle

by G. Neri

  Truman nodded; he knew a good clue when he heard one. But they’d need an excuse if they were to get to the fields. Luckily for Truman, excuses were second nature to him.

  He turned to Little Bit. “I did promise Nelle here that we’d collect glow bugs,” he said. “You can go home if you like; we’ll catch up in a little while.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I know spoilt milk when I smell it. No, Miss Jenny knows you kids is with me, so if you want to collect glow bugs, I’m coming with you.”

  25

  Glow Bugs and Pointy Hats

  They made their way slowly through the fields behind their school. It was pitch-black and empty of people, the tall pines creaking from the wind that gusted across the tops of the surrounding forest. Little Bit stayed back, afraid that the spirits were roaming.

  “Hear that?” asked Truman.

  “What? I don’t hear nothing,” said Nelle.

  “Exactly,” he whispered. “Where’s your secret meeting?”

  They stood on the edge of the fields, letting their eyes adjust to the dark. “You sure about this?” Truman asked her. “They said they were coming here?”

  She hemmed and hawed. “Well . . . maybe they had to go home to get ready. I mean, I heard what I heard, but maybe . . . I guess I coulda heard wrong.”

  The wind kicked up, blowing through the tall grasses, emitting the whispers that Sook called the grass harp. But it wasn’t soothing to Truman this time.

  “Spirits are definitely here tonight,” said Little Bit, catching up to them. “Cain’t tell if they’re good or evil.”

  “Look!” said Nelle. “Glow bugs! They must be good spirits, Little Bit.”

  It started off with one twinkle, then two or three little streaks of light blinking on and off.

  “Might as well collect some while we’re here,” said Nelle. “Then we won’ta been fibbin’.”

  Nelle handed a jar to Truman and made her way slowly through the waist-deep grass. The further she got, the more the grass lit up, and soon she was walking through a galaxy of wispy shooting stars.

  “Come on, Truman!” she yelled. “You need to forgit the case and come have fun instead.”

  She was right. Truman wasn’t sure where the case was going anyway. Maybe chasing fireflies would help him see the whole picture, the way Sherlock played violin to relax his brain. “You coming, Little Bit?”

  “Nah, you two go ahead. I’ll just sit a spell by this here tree.” Little Bit felt her way through the darkness to the trunk of a tree, where she plopped herself down. She was not used to all this walking.

  “Okay, Little Bit. Start counting,” said Truman. “Whoever gets the most, wins!”

  They spent the next fifteen minutes running about, grabbing as many critters as they could. It was like trying to catch clouds—as soon as you were upon them, they vanished into darkness. But when one of them did catch one and got it into the jar, it was a victorious moment. After a few of those moments, Truman forgot about the case and was actually having fun.

  By the time Little Bit called “Time’s up!” both their jars were glowing bright as lanterns.

  “Looks like a tie,” Truman said.

  “Nuh-uh. I got at least two more than you!” countered Nelle.

  “Let’s ask Little Bit to settle it.” They ran over to where she was resting.

  “Miss Bit, tell this shrimp who won!” said Nelle. They held up both jars to her face, and she studied them closely.

  “Don’t count ’em. Just guess,” said Truman. “Mine’s brighter.”

  “Nuh-uh, mine is—”

  “Hush, children. Little Bit don’t guess, she knows.”

  They stood there as she counted, and the light from the jars made the tree behind her look different. The tree had lost its bark, for some odd reason.

  Truman’s eyes drifted upward, and he noticed all the branches had been cut off except for two big ones, which stretched out into the dark like arms. To Truman, it looked kind of like a cross. However, something else was even stranger. He squinted into the gloom of the night and when his eyes adjusted, he saw that the two branches were wrapped in white sheets.

  He held his jar up high so he could see better. “Little Bit, why is that tree wrapped in sheets? And does anyone else here smell gasoline?”

  Little Bit glanced up behind her and gazed into the blackness. A strange expression slowly came over her face. Suddenly, her eyes shot wide open.

  “Children, it’s time to go home.” She threw the jars into the grass.

  “Hey!” said Truman.

  “But who won?” asked Nelle.

  “Never mind that. It’s late, too late for childish things.” She grabbed their hands and started heading briskly back toward the light of town.

  26

  Blazing Glory

  Truman listened to their footsteps tramping through the grass. He knew better than to question Little Bit. If she said move, you moved.

  Little Bit suddenly stopped in her tracks. But the sound of footsteps through the grass continued.

  Voices.

  “What’s going on?” whispered Nelle.

  Little Bit leaned down into their faces. “Hush, children, come with me.” Even though Nelle could barely make out her face, she knew Little Bit was scared. But of what? she wondered.

  Little Bit led them toward the darkness of the nearby forest. The kids had played there many times after school but now it just seemed black and ominous, the trees towering over them like phantoms in the night.

  They didn’t quite make it into the woods before the voices came upon them. “It’s ’round here somewhere,” said a man, out of breath.

  Little Bit pulled the kids down into the tall grass; she put her hands over their mouths and held on tight.

  “Found it,” another man said. “Someone get me a torch.”

  They were surrounded by male voices; men tromped through the grass on either side of them. They ducked even lower and kept quiet. A man walked right by them, stepping on Truman’s hand. It took all his focus not to scream.

  Someone struck a match and lit a torch of some kind. “Now, don’t go setting this field on fire, Frank. Just set this sucker ablaze and get us some light in here. Then the others will be able to find us.”

  Truman’s view was blocked by Little Bit, but he could see silhouettes of pointy heads. He couldn’t figure it. Someone held the torch high, and he saw the flames lick at the bottom of the sheets wrapped around the tree. The fire swiftly shot up the sheets and set the whole tree ablaze.

  Only it wasn’t a tree, it was a cross. And the men didn’t have pointy heads, they were dressed in white robes and hoods with holes cut out for their eyes.

  The Ku Klux Klan.

  Nelle didn’t know much about the Klan except that A.C. did not like them one bit. He said they were “the blind leading the blind.” She had seen them march once when a black family tried to move into town. The Klan showed up in their robes at night and burned their home down to the ground before the family could move into it. Nobody tried to stop them.

  The whole field grew bright from the fire; Nelle and Truman could see everything. There were about thirty of them, all dressed in white—except one; he was wearing a shimmering green hood and robes.

  “The Grand Dragon,” whispered Little Bit to herself, her eyes wide with fear.

  Truman was staring at the man when he lifted his hood for a second to spit out some chaw—it was Catfish Henderson.

  “Boss’s daddy,” he said. Truman glanced at Nelle and quickly realized he could see her. Which meant they could be seen by the Klan!

  Little Bit slowly started to rise up, as if she were hypnotized by the flames. “Little Bit, get down, they’ll see you!” Truman hissed. It was like she couldn’t hear him.

  He tugged on her sleeve; Nelle did the same. “Please, Miss Bit, get down—”

  “What the—” said a man’s voice. Nelle looked up in front of them and saw the silhouette of a man in a h
ood, holding a shotgun.

  “Run for your lives!” Truman yelled.

  Little Bit snapped to and realized what was going on. She grabbed the kids by the arms and ran as fast as she ever did. Little Bit normally moved in slow motion, but right then, with the voices and footsteps on their heels, she could’ve run across water.

  Little Bit glanced over her shoulder at the spots of light floating through the fields. Men with torches, not fireflies. Truman could see the lights of some buildings ahead. Once they hit town, they’d be safe, he thought.

  Except they ran smack into a barbed-wire fence blocking their escape. Actually, Nelle tackled Truman right before he ran into it.

  They poked their heads up and saw a man making a straight run for them. He stumbled in the darkness, and the dry field around him erupted in a blaze of fire.

  “Come on, children, we got to get outta here!” Little Bit grabbed Nelle and tossed her over the fence like she was a chicken who’d wandered out of the coop. “Now you, Truman!”

  The wind kicked up and the fire spread quickly—toward them. “No, you have a dress,” said Truman. “I’ll hold the fence open for you then crawl through after.”

  “Hurry, Truman!” Nelle said anxiously.

  He stepped on the lower strand and raised the upper one like boxers do with ropes when they get in the ring. “Go on, Little Bit! Quick!” She saw the fire coming, gathered up her dress, and crawled through with Nelle’s help. They collapsed into a heap on the other side.

  Truman could feel the heat on his back; the men were trying to put out the blaze. Truman scrambled through the fence as quick as he could. “Run!” he said to Nelle.

  Nelle pulled Little Bit to her feet and ran for safety. Truman scrambled to his feet on the other side, but one of the barbed wires snagged on his clothes and wouldn’t let go!

  “I’m caught! Help me!” He could see the ashes and glowing embers from the flames settle around him. He had to move fast or get cooked.

  Suddenly, Little Bit was standing over him. She grabbed him by his pants and tugged, but the wire wouldn’t give. “Take them pants off!” she cried.

  “But these are my good pants,” he said.

  “They about to be your good pants on fire, now git ’em off!”

  Truman could hear the flames crackling behind him—he practically jumped out of his trousers! As soon as he was free, he and Nelle and Little Bit took off faster than racehorses out of the gate, leaving the fire behind them.

  When they finally reached the school, Truman glanced back. No one was following them. It looked like the men were all struggling to put the fire out.

  They collapsed behind a small shed to catch their breath. It took a whole minute for Truman to catch his.

  “Think they . . . saw who . . . we were?” he said between gulps of air.

  Nelle burst into laughter.

  “What’s so . . . funny, Nelle? I coulda been . . . killed back there!” said Truman.

  “You shoulda seen the look on your face! You were as white as them sheets they was wearing!”

  “Very funny . . . I seem to recall you screaming like a little girl,” said Truman.

  “I am a little girl, you loony bird. You were the one screaming—”

  “My cap!” Truman shouted suddenly. He felt his hatless head and looked back at the field. “It must have fallen off when we were running. We have to go get it!”

  “Hush, now, the both a you!” Little Bit yanked the redroot and peppermint from their pockets and threw them away. “I musta used the wrong mixture. We gonna go home now and never tell nobody of this night, you hear?”

  Truman tried to argue. “But, Little Bit—”

  She wouldn’t have any of it. As she pulled him by the ear back home, all she could say was “Sweet Jesus, please never let me listen to this child again. I’m too old for this!”

  27

  An Omen and a Break

  That night, Truman couldn’t sleep. He kept Sook awake all hours, telling her of his adventures earlier that evening. The story grew into an epic tale of wrestling snakes and fighting off a mob of Klansmen, which Sook happily listened to. Naturally, he had saved Nelle and Little Bit from certain doom. But there was one detail he couldn’t quite explain to her: why he had no pants on when he came home.

  When he finally got to sleep, he had frightful dreams and tossed and turned until somebody shook him awake.

  He was standing in the backyard in his pajamas.

  “Buddy, you been sleepwalking again. Where were you going?” It was Arch.

  “Daddy?” It took a minute for his brain to grasp that he wasn’t in bed. “Where am I?”

  “You’re outside, son. You seemed awfully determined to get somewhere. Something about a rubber-band gun?”

  “What are you doing here, Daddy?”

  Arch smiled. “I came to see my favorite son, of course. I got this great idea that’s gonna make us a fortune. I bought one of those steamboats we used to work on, but this one is gonna be like a floating theater. We’ll have all the top entertainers, like that Louis Armstrong fella, and of course you’ll tap-dance to his music, and we’ll get Nelle’s mother to play her piano—she’s a fine player. But best of all, your mother has agreed to be our headliner—she’ll sing!”

  “We’ll be together again?” asked Truman.

  “It’ll be just like old times. Won’t that be swell?” said Arch, beaming.

  Truman couldn’t believe it. “What made you change your mind?”

  Arch took off his hat and scratched his head. “Sometimes the answer is sitting right in front of you.”

  “What?” said Truman, puzzled.

  Arch knelt in front of him and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Don’t worry about it, son, everything will work itself out. You’ll see.” Suddenly, he started shaking him and, even stranger, barking like a dog—

  “Wake up!”

  Truman’s eyes shot open and there was Nelle staring his straight in the face with Queenie barking and jumping all over his bed.

  “Where am I?” he asked, confused.

  “You’re in bed, you loony bird, where else?”

  He sat up. It was late morning. “Where’s Daddy?”

  “Daddy?” said Nelle. “He ain’t here, I’ll tell you that much.”

  “But he was just . . .” He realized he’d been dreaming.

  “Last night musta shook a nut loose in your head. Look at this.”

  She shoved the slingshot into his face. “It’s not a snake, it’s an S,” she said.

  “What?” he said, still confused.

  “On the handle. The carving. It’s an S. What do you think it means?” she asked.

  Truman pushed Queenie off him and examined the slingshot more closely. The rough carving had seemed like a snake earlier when he saw it in the dark but he had to agree, it looked more like an S now.

  “Who do we know whose name starts with S?” she asked. “Sammy Zuckerman? Sally Randell? Um . . . Sidney Rae Mollet?”

  None of the people she named were remotely suspicious.

  Just then, someone knocked on his bedroom door. Big Boy popped his head in. “You still in bed? Sheez, some of us have been up since dawn. So what’s going on?”

  “Where have you been? You missed everything!” said Nelle.

  “I been working on the farm like real people do!” said Big Boy.

  “You catch him up,” Truman said to Nelle. “I’m getting dressed.”

  Nelle filled Big Boy in on everything that had transpired in the past two days—red-haired Ralph, the sheriff and his son, the slingshot, the snake pit, and being chased by the Klan. Big Boy sat transfixed like he was at the picture show. He even took out a snack from his pocket and started chewing away as the story kept getting better and better.

  When he spotted the slingshot on the bed, he got excited and shouted, “Smimphfrlop!”

  “What on earth are you eating, Big Boy?” said Nelle, annoyed. “I’m trying to tell you we be
en working on solving the case, and you’re chomping away like a squirrel.”

  Big Boy laughed and almost choked. He spat the contents of his mouth into his hands. “Nuts,” he finally said, pointing to the slingshot. “Oh, is that a clue?”

  “Gross,” said Nelle. “Yes, it’s a clue, maybe the clue. Didn’t your mama teach you any manners?”

  Big Boy grinned. “She did. But I kind of stole these, so I have to eat ’em quick!” he added, full of worry.

  Truman walked in from the bathroom, refreshed and back to normal. “Is he all caught up?”

  Nelle scowled at Big Boy. “We’re trying to solve a crime and you’re stealing?”

  Big Boy shrugged. “Is it a crime if you find ’em on the ground?”

  “No . . . so why’d you say you stole ’em?” asked Nelle.

  Big Boy looked around and came in close. “I snuck into ol’ man Boular’s yard and that’s where I ‘found’ ’em.”

  Nelle’s jaw dropped. “Are you crazy? That man would skin you alive if he ever caught you taking his nuts!”

  “But they were on the ground where I found ’em! What does he care?”

  They went back and forth until Truman stopped them. “Let me see something.” He unfolded Big Boy’s hands, examined the half-chewed nuts. “These are pecans,” he said.

  “Yeah, so?” said Big Boy.

  Truman stared at his hands. “Hello . . .”

  “What is it?” asked Nelle.

  Truman was lost in his head, something the real Sherlock did whenever he was about to break the case open. “Now it makes sense.”

  He grabbed the slingshot off the desk and studied the hand-carved S. “Now it all fits!” Truman continued. “The boogeyman . . . the pecans . . . and the slingshot—it was there all the time, right in front of us! We have our S.”

  “Truman! What in the heck are you going on about? What do pecans have to do with any—” Nelle froze in midsentence with the look of someone who’d just found a gold coin in the street. “Ooohhh.” She nodded at Truman.