by Green, Jeri
“It does look like it woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” said Hadley. “I never figured out why Vance Odis wanted folks entering his park through a giant face. And it’s not even a friendly or funny or inviting face. And who wants to be eaten by a clown? Never made sense to me.”
“Me, neither. I think it would hurt. I’d run out before it could chew me up. Then, they’d say Beanie was spit out by a clown. But I don’t care none what they say.”
Beanie studied the huge clown head.
“Anything that ugly’s probably got bad breath too,” Beanie said. “That clown scares me.”
“Good thing we don’t have to stand here all day and look at it. Come on. Let’s get to work.”
They turned to the house, climbing up the steps to the front door. Hadley unlocked the door and peered inside.
“Looks like the string is still intact, Beanie. Guess we will start here and just clear out the junk as we come to it.”
Hadley set aside several empty cardboard boxes. The entrance to the house was crammed from floor to ceiling. The first piles she encountered looked like remnants of court cases Eustian had filed against one Hope Rock County citizen or another down through the years. No one was safe from being sued by him. She separated the reams of legal documents she and Beanie found from the books, clothes, shoes, lamps, and other debris cluttering the room into the boxes.
“I think we should keep these papers separate in case the estate administrator needs them,” Hadley said.
“Okay,” Beanie said, bending over to pick up a broken doll that was missing an eye and a leg.
Its nasty hair was matted. A dark brown stain clung to its body.
“Look, Hadley,” Beanie said, “this doll’s winkin’ at me.”
“I don’t see why anyone would have saved that,” Hadley said. “It looks like it has some kind of contagious disease. Toss it in the dumpster heap, Bean.”
“Wonder who poked out her eye?” Beanie said, throwing the doll on the pile of debris that would go to the dumpster outside. “Hadley?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe Eustian Singlepenny was so crabby because he was so crunched in here.”
“Could be,” said Hadley. “But I got a feeling he was just born that way. Crabby, crotchety, and just plain mean.”
“Mean Beanie Bean. Hadley Badly Madly.”
“What?”
“I can’t make nuthin’ rhyme with Eustian, Hadley.”
“Don’t even try, Bean,” Hadley said. “You’ll only end up giving yourself a hemorrhoid. Too much strain on the brain is a crime on the behime.”
“You crack me up,” Beanie said.
“Well, like I said, a crime on the behime.”
They worked for about an hour carting junk from the room to the bottom of the porch. Each load in the wheelbarrow was delivered to the dumpster, and the cycle started all over again. Together, they made about a dozen trips back and forth. Finally, the entire floor was cleared of debris.
“You know, Beanie,” Hadley said, “if you could cover all your floor up with piles of junk, you never have to worry mopping or vacuuming. How do you ever know if they are dirty if you can’t see them?”
“Hadley,” Beanie said, “that’s a hard question. It’s like if the moon is made of cheese, how come it’s not orange?”
“You’re right, my friend,” Hadley said. “Life’s full of mysteries.”
“Ain’t it, though,” said Beanie. “But I ain’t gonna strain over it. Them piles ain’t nuthin’ to laugh at, Hadley. Ardell Devereaux had hisself a bad case ‘a piles. Him and Lum was talkin’ outside the Spoon. Ardell said the itchees was so bad he’d back up to buildings and act like he was scratchin’ his back. Lum laughed so hard he started cryin’. Lum said he was the same way when he sat in a patch of poison oak. Them tourists must think we got awful itchy shoulder blades. Ardell told Lum to tell ’em your beer belly gives you an overhaul wedgie.”
Hadley smiled.
“Hadley! Look!” Beanie said, dropping a box of junk.
The dust cloud caused by this threatened to engulf Beanie.
“It’s a dead possum!” Beanie exclaimed.
“It’s not dead, Bean,” Hadley said. “We startled it.”
Hadley knew from her work with Ruth at the wildlife rescue center that opossums were North America’s only marsupial. Like kangaroos, opossums carry their young in pouches. If startled, the animal would “play dead” by curling up on its side and letting its tongue fall out of its open mouth.
“He’s hoping we’ll leave him alone,” Hadley said.
“Let’s wander over here to the other side of the room and take a break. We can keep an eye on him from a distance and make sure he’s not injured.”
“Do you think he’s got rabies?” Beanie asked.
“Ruth says that possums are seldom rabid. She told me once that they think their body temperatures are too low to let the rabies virus live.”
“Oh. That’s good. Ha! Look, Hadley. That ole possum is raisin’ from the dead.”
“He was never dead, Bean. Just playing like he was,” Hadley said.
Beanie stood looking solemnly at the gray fur slowly rise. The possum looked back at Beanie and gave him a big grin. Beanie grinned widely.
The possum ambled off out the open door and into the woods near Eustian’s house. Beanie still stood there smiling.
“Beanie,” Hadley said.
“Uh-huh,” Beanie managed to say through clenched teeth while maintaining his impossibly wide grin.
“What are you doing?” Hadley asked.
“Well,” Beanie said, rubbing his jaw muscles as if they were sore and cramped, “I was tryin’ to be neighborly.”
“Neighborly,” Hadley said.
“Yeah. If you was wrong and what I just seen was a possum ghost raise from the dead, I wanted to be sure I was on his good side. I think it worked, Hadley. Did you see him grin at me?”
“He wasn’t grinning, Bean,” Hadley said. “He was bearing his teeth. Possums have 50 teeth. Did you know that?”
“Fifty! And I thought I was doin’ good ’cause I got six.”
Hadley stifled a laugh.
“If a possum’s angry or scared, he’ll bare all those teeth. It’s his way of saying ‘go away.’”
“Well, anyway,” Beanie said, “if he did raise from the dead that means he’s a ghost. Fifty teeth or not. I ain’t about to tangle with no ghost. That’s why when he showed me his 50 teeth, I showed him my beautiful six. Just so he’d know I was the friendly type who don’t want no trouble.”
“He won’t give you any trouble, Beanie. Let’s you and me and your beautiful teeth get back to work.”
“Sure, Hadley,” Beanie said.
From the front room, they worked their way into the parlor. They moved mountain after mountain of trash.
“Legal papers in the boxes,” Hadley reminded Beanie. “Everything else into the wheelbarrow for the dumpster.”
Beanie and Hadley worked on.
“You know what, Bean,” Hadley said, “I think going through all this stuff is a lot like moving backward in time. Just think how many years it took Eustian to collect all this mess. No wonder he never let anybody in his house.”
“Probably was afraid he would lose them,” Beanie said. “If you got twisted up and went down the wrong path, you would never find your way out. I hope we don’t run up on any dried-up skeletons. This house is scary even when the rooms are cleaned out. It just feels mad, Hadley. Like it doesn’t want us to see it naked.”
“Don’t worry, Bean, if we run up on something like that, it will be dead. Besides, I think Bill and the crime tech gang cleared out all the skeletons when they processed the house after Eustian’s murder.”
“I hope so, Hadley,” Beanie said. “There are just so many places for them to hide.”
Moving, hauling, and dumping continued until lunch, when Beanie and Hadley stopped to eat and rest. Chewing on her baloney sandwich,
Hadley sat in the shade of the porch with her back against the wall. She glanced over into one of the boxes of papers. The name “Kyle Winthrop’ jumped out at her.
Hadley began to thumb through the papers. They seemed to be pretty much in order despite being piled up and placed on top of chairs and couches. As Hadley looked closer, it appeared Eustian Singlepenny had filed charges against Kyle Winthrop for illegally poaching wild ginseng from his land without permission.
* * *
Eustian had been mending a broken fence line on the far edge of his acreage when he noticed a man on his side of the fence on the north face of the mountain. The man was wearing loose clothes and was covered in mud. On his back was a bulging backpack. The stranger was walking with his head down and had not noticed Eustian at all. Eustian grabbed his 12-gauge shotgun he carried to ward off bears and quietly began to follow the trespasser. The man bent down, and producing a small mattock, started to dig in the dirt.
“Dang ’sang poacher,” Eustian muttered.
At prices of upwards of $1,000 a pound, ginseng was a hot commodity. Eustian did not know the going rate for ’sang, but he knew it was illegal to be stealing it from his property without permission. And Eustian never gave anyone permission to stand on his property, much less remove valuable herbs from it.
Eustian crept up the slope behind the interloper as quiet as a mouse. He inched closer and closer. The man was too busy digging around in the dirt to notice the old man. The trespasser stopped his digging and unearthed a twisted dark tan root.
“Dad-blasted thief! Didn’t knowed I was nowhere ’round, did ya?”
Eustian raised his shotgun and let out a whoop, just to put the “fyear ‘a Gawd” in the poacher.
“What’s your name, young feller. They need to get it on your tombstone.”
Stop yer digging,’” Eustian said. “Stand up straight. I got ya dead in my sight. If ya run, I’m fillin’ ya full ‘a lead.”
* * *
The court reporter dutifully recorded the incident. The recorded testimony read like a novel. It described how the man slowly raised up. His hands were black with dirt.
“His eyes popped when he seed me ’n’ my shot gun,” Eustian testified. “I told that feller,” (here Eustian pointed to Kyle Winthrop), “to ease on down the slope. We wuz gonna go ta’gather, nice ’n’ polite-like. As luck would have it, who should pull up a few minutes later, but the sheriff.
“Sheriff told me he wuz out ridin’ the county ’n’ jes stopped by to check on me. Never so glad to see nobody in all my borned days. Sheriff askes me whut was wrong. I told ’em I had a thief ’n’ a trespasser ’n’ I wanted to press charges.”
Sheriff Whittaker arrested Kyle Winthrop. He read him his rights. The backpack was half full of ginseng roots.
Hadley finished reading the court document. She slumped back onto the porch, looking up at the ceiling. She wondered if poaching played a role in Kyle’s death. She remembered reading about this incident in the paper. Did someone knock off Kyle after he’d shown them where the ginseng patch on Eustian’s land was?
Ginseng root was worth a fortune.
And people had been killed for a lot less.
She looked over at Beanie, who had dozed off for a short cat nap. She got the legal papers together pertaining to Kyle and placed them in her trunk. Maybe Bill might want to look at them in connection with Kyle’s murder.
After waking up, Beanie yawned and smiled.
Hadley and her friend got back to work hauling and dumping until evening. They were making good progress, and Hadley wondered if two dumpsters would be enough.
Tired and sweaty, Hadley looked at Beanie, “You ready to call it a day?”
“I’m with you,” said Beanie.
“We’ve made good progress,” Hadley said. “The parlor, the dining room, and the first-floor bedroom are all done. All that’s left is the upstairs, the kitchen, and old Mrs. Singlepenny’s first-floor bedroom. At the rate we are going, we may be able to see the light of day by first of next week,” Hadley said.
“Do you think Mrs. Singlepenny’s ghost still lives in that bedroom?” Beanie asked. “It sure looks like somebody still does. It’s the only room in the house not packed with junk.”
“I think Eustian wanted it that way, Bean,” Hadley said. “That was his mama’s room. He kept clean for her memory. In fact, I’d bet he left it just like it was on the day she died.”
“Ouuuu, Hadley,” Beanie said.
“Not to worry,” said Hadley. “He cleaned and dusted that room because he loved his mama. That’s all.
“That’s why it looks like somebody still lived there. I don’t think ghosts care about dust and cobwebs. Remember, Bean. There’s no such things as ghosts. But if there were, I think a ghost would want a dark, dilapidated room, dusty with cobwebs. If I was a ghost, that’s the kind of room I’d feel most comfy haunting.”
“Uh-huh,” Beanie said.
“Tell you what,” Hadley said. “Let’s stop by The Creamery on our way home. We’ve been working like mules. I think a couple of mules like us deserve a milkshake. Don’t you?”
“Hee-haw,” Beanie said. “I sure do! The front side ‘a my feed sack’s pushin’ clean through the back!”
“I’m starving, too,” said Hadley.
After milkshakes, Hadley dropped off Beanie at his house. She arrived home to find Onus perched on her front windowsill staring out at her.
“I hope you haven’t been playing king of the jungle, today. My drapes were not made for that much jungle roughhousing.”
Onus just stared at her with his wise eyes.
She entered her house and found it as she had left it.
“Good boy,” Hadley said. “Window shopping all day? Well, it is easy on the old pocketbook.”
Onus did that sometimes. For no reason, he would sit perched in front of the window watching the comings and goings of the townsfolk below on Main Street. Hadley stood beside the cat. He let her rub the top of his silky head. His motor started purring.
It was a nice view. Harry had picked the land out and had the house built a couple of months after they were married. She had a grand view of the town below. From stoplight to stoplight, she could watch the little figures and cars moving up and down Main Street like miniatures in a child’s toy village.
Onus bumped his head against her leg rousing her from her reverie.
“Guess you’re ready for supper, huh. I think I have something that might hit your spot.”
She went into the kitchen and filled his bowl with cat food.
“Let’s get you some fresh water. I wish my dinner was as easy to put together.”
“Meow.”
Umm, she thought. He actually answered. Must have missed me a little.
“Maybe a hot bath and a soak will rejuvenate these tired, sore bones and muscles,” she told the cat as she wandered to the bathroom shedding the dusty, dirty clothes.
After her bath, Hadley went to the kitchen and looked in the refrigerator. She spied some of the leftovers from her meal with Maury and Bill.
A few seconds of nuking in the microwave and voilà.
As the carousel was turning on the microwave, she remembered the papers from Eustian’s house and decided to give them a closer look. Retrieving them from her trunk, she went back inside and left them on the sofa. She ate her dinner and after a quick clean up, settled down on the couch.
“Ginseng,” she muttered. “Maybe something I need to look up at the library.”
All her life, Hadley had heard stories about how people, including Daniel Boone, had hunted and sold the illusive plant. Ginseng was an herb that had played a role in sustaining mountain people for centuries.
The Cherokee used it to treat headaches. John Jacob Astor had sold it by the boatload to the Chinese who valued it as an aphrodisiac. And ginseng was prized by the mountain people today, as well.
Finding and digging ’sang’ in the fall and drying it and selling it in th
e winter had long been a way for mountain people to supplement their meager incomes. Often, this herb provided money to buy Christmas presents for their children.
But harvesting the roots of the herb meant destroying the whole plant.
Hadley got on the phone.
“Anna,” she said, “you busy?”
Anna was the local librarian in Hope Rock County, and Hadley’s main go-to techno guru. She’d hooked up Harry’s video cam to a television, which had helped Hadley figure out that Rayna Croft had poisoned Eustian Singlepenny.
“Anna, can you do me a favor?”
“Sure, what’s up?” Anna asked.
“Harry’s computer is still hooked up in his office. Could you run by some time and show me how to get it up and running? Harry had Internet bundled with our other services. I’ve just kept paying the bill. Might as well get some bang for my buck and learn to use it.”
“No problem,” Anna said. “I’ll be right over.”
“Well, I didn’t mean now. I don’t want to bother you,” Hadley said.
“No bother, Hadley. Stanley’s out of town. I’m here in this house, and it’s as quiet as a tomb. I’ll welcome the chance to get out for some fresh air. We’ll have you on the Internet in no time flat. See you in a few minutes.”
“Anna, you’re a pro when it comes to this stuff. Thanks so much,” Hadley said.
“Think nothing of it,” Anna said.
“How much do I owe you?”
“Oh, a couple of pieces of pound cake, now and then, ought to do it.”
“Done,” said Hadley.
True to her word, Anna arrived at Hadley’s house in a little while. She showed Hadley the basics of surfing the Internet and scribbled some reference notes as they went along.
“Remember,” said Anna, “if you hit a snag, just look at those notes I made you. Don’t get frustrated if you end up somewhere other than where you wanted. Typos happen all the time. Remember, click here, and you’re ready to retype your search.”
“Gotcha,” said Hadley.
She gave Anna the first installment of payment.
“Here are six slices of pound cake for you to take home. I really appreciate all your help,” Hadley said.