Well, those and, of course, Dinosaur World.
I waved at the strangely orange Tyrannosaurus Rex peeking out over the pine trees on the left of the interstate. A few miles later, I steered Maggie off I-4 toward Plant City. Known at the Winter Strawberry Capital of the World, it wasn’t surprising that the town held an annual strawberry festival around the beginning of March. Strawberry season was long gone for the year, but that was okay by me. That meant fewer tourists.
Besides, I knew a place where I could still get a strawberry shake. Parksdale Farmer’s Market.
I took a small detour down Route 92 and blew my lunch calories on one of the most delectable treats imaginable – besides Minneola tangelos. When it was my turn up to bat at the counter, I thought about ordering a strawberry shortcake, too, but changed my mind. As I glanced around at the market stalls crammed with strawberry jams and jellies, I realized nearly everybody milling about the place was as thick and round and reddish-pink as the contents of the plastic cup I was rapidly sucking empty through a straw. I needed to leave before I succumbed to the dark side....
THE COOLNESS OF THE strawberry shake felt good sandwiched between my thighs. I picked it up, sucked on the straw, and took a right on SR 39. The view immediately switched to a pastoral palette. Acre upon acre of dry, dun-colored grass was punctuated only by thirsty-looking cows kneeling in the shade of huge, centuries-old oaks with bark as rough as an alligator’s hide.
At the junction to SR 60, I hooked a left and headed toward Bartow.
The seat of Polk County, Bartow was home to a handful of car dealerships and a whole mess of ugly – compliments of wanton phosphate strip-mining. As I passed yet another rusty silo, I wondered if maybe the city founders should change the phrase county “seat” to “butt-crack.”
I blew through Bartow with the top still down on Maggie, and stayed on SR 60 all the way to my journey’s end – Lake Wales.
The small town of Lake Wales was home to around fifteen-thousand average souls and two unique roadside attractions. One was Spook Hill, a gravity hill that created the optical illusion that your car was rolling uphill. The other was Bok Tower Gardens. Built in the 1920s, the two-hundred-and-five-foot “singing” tower was an impressive landmark that stuck out above the trees like an old lion’s tooth.
Bok Tower “sang” thanks to something called carillon bells. I’d never seen them, but I’d heard them on many occasion. They produced a throaty, flute-like sound that formed hauntingly beautiful melodies for the folks strolling around the garden’s two-hundred and fifty acres. Personally, my favorite time to visit was in March, when the azaleas were in bloom.
I passed by the sign for Bok Tower Gardens and stopped for gas. A skinny man in a light-blue shirt walked up and nodded. An embroidered patch on his pocket spelled out Billy Bob.
Of course it did.
“Fill her up,” I said.
“Ungh.” Billy Bob grunted in a way that seemed to require the involvement of his entire torso. He looked me up and down as I climbed out of Maggie, and grunted again.
Uncertain if Billy Bob had recently escaped from a zoo or insane asylum, I scurried in to use the restroom and pay my tab. The guy at the register looked just like Billy Bob. But my eagle-sharp detective eye noticed the patch on his pocket read, “Jim Bob.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Billy Bob’s your brother.”
“Ungh,” Jim Bob grunted and eyed me with appreciation. “Good lookin’ and smart.”
I paid with cash and decided to skip the washroom.
As I drove away, I clicked my cellphone for a map of the vicinity. According to TripAdvisor, there were thirty-four things to “do” in Lake Wales. But from what I’d seen so far, I wasn’t convinced there were thirty-four “do”-able men in all of Polk County combined.
I CHECKED THE ADDRESS on my cellphone again and shook my head. This couldn’t be right.
I’d driven through Lake Wales and past miles of cow pastures and palmetto scrubland. The only signs of civilization I’d seen since the Walmart plaza had been a pair of abandoned phosphate silos and a couple of old wooden shacks with caved-in tin roofs that looked as if they’d been hit by meteors at least a decade ago. The sun was fading to the west, spewing beams of orange and red into the thin, blue horizon.
Not good.
A shiver ran down my spine, despite the heat. Had I somehow accidently driven onto the set of Road Warriors? I was about to turn around when I spied the only sign of human habitation I’d seen for miles. It was an old man selling boiled peanuts by the side of the road.
I pulled over and approached the leather-skinned old man. He was sitting in a cheap, plastic chair and appeared to be harboring a fugitive watermelon inside the waistband of his dirty overalls.
“Excuse me, sir, would you happen to know where Shell Hammock is?”
“Yep,” he said, and swirled a huge, slotted spoon around in a cauldron of tea-colored water.
“Great,” I said. “Could you tell me where it is?”
The man adjusted his ball cap and lifted the spoon out of the water. He plucked a couple of boiled peanuts from the heap mounded up in the spoon.
“You done found it, young lady,” he said, and handed me the peanuts. My Southern upbringing forced me to take them out of politeness. They felt warm and moist and round in my hand, like a pair of fresh cat turds.
“I don’t understand,” I said, and cursed myself for spending an hour sorting through the Red Box videos when I’d stopped to get groceries in Lake Wales. I’d wasted precious time. Now the sky was pinkish purple and beginning to close in around me. Nightfall was coming. If I didn’t find this place soon, I’d be out of fingernails to chew off.
The old man dumped the rest of the peanuts back in the cauldron and pointed the empty spoon toward the entrance to a dirt road about thirty feet away. It looked more like a cave than a road, thanks to the canopy of scrub oaks overhanging it as if their aim in life was to swallow it whole.
“Sign’s right there.”
I squinted at the dark opening in the scrub. About fifteen feet above the dirt, tucked amongst the tree limbs, was an old wooden sign that spanned the width of the road like a beat-up banner. The sign read, “hell ammo.”
“That says hell ammo,” I said.
The old man laughed, revealing his lack of a proper dental plan. “I forget sometimes,” he said. “Yeah, lost a few letters awhile back. Now, I guess, we’re the Hell’ammo.”
He grinned, but I guess my expression made him realize I needed a little more convincing.
“You know,” he said, and aimed his spoon at me like a rifle. “Like ‘The Alamo.’ Minus the guns.”
As if on cue, a gunshot blast rang out. I flinched and bit my lip to keep from screaming as the sound echoed across the road and disappeared into the thicket of palmettoes and scrub oaks.
The old man shrugged. “Okay, with the guns.”
My spine arched involuntarily. The whole scenario felt so wrong on so many levels I didn’t know where to begin. But Valiant Stranger whispered in my ear. If you’re going to be a professional writer, you can’t go running home like a crybaby at every little potentially lethal discharge of a deadly firearm.
I took a deep breath, set my jaw and stepped forward. I reached out my hand. “Hi. I’m Val. What’s your name?”
I got another glimpse of the guy’s woefully inadequate dental care. “Stumpy,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”
Stumpy? Great. Nothing good ever came from a nickname that implied missing body parts.
He stuck out a handful of short, blunt fingers.
“Oh! On account of your fingers?” I blurted, relieved that all his digits were intact, even though rather...abbreviated.
“Huh?” Stumpy looked at his calloused hand as if he’d never seen it before. “Naw. Used to make statues out a cypress stumps. Sold ‘em by the side of the road ‘til I got too old for it. That’s when I switched to peanuts.”
“I see,” I said
, not really wanting to. “Well, do you know a fellow named Junior Whitehead? I’m supposed to let him know when I’ve arrived.”
“Yeah. I know him purty good.”
I waited a beat. “So, can you tell me where I might find him?”
“You’re lookin’ at him, darlin’.”
My gut fell four inches. “Oh. Well, uh...you see, my friend Winky owns number thirteen –”
“I know all about it, hon,” Stumpy said. “Just go straight on in. Take your first left, then a right at the clubhouse, then right on Possum Place. Then another right on Lonesome Pine. You’ll see it. Last trailer on the left.”
“Uh...thanks, mister....uh, Stumpy.” I walked back to Maggie, turned the ignition, and drove slowly past Stumpy and his cauldron of drowned legumes.
Stumpy leered with bloodshot eyes as I passed by. “Nice car you got there.”
I thought I heard a banjo playing. I gambled a glance in the rearview mirror. Nope. Stumpy was merely waving slowly with his stunted hand.
No. That wasn’t creepy at all....
The dirt road was so dark I had to switch on my headlights. I followed Stumpy’s directions to the letter. They led me through the entire trailer park on a windy loop that ended back where I’d begun. I looked around. Number thirteen was the first trailer on the left as you came in off the main road. Stumpy’d just been sent me on my first Polk County wild goose chase.
I scowled and pulled Maggie up beside the little trailer. As I reached to open the car door, a familiar face loomed at me in the twilight.
“Have a nice trip?” Stumpy asked.
“Nice one,” I managed to squeak as my heart thumped in my throat.
Stumpy grinned. “Aw. Don’t take it personal. ‘Round here, a feller’s got to provide his own entertainment. I was just funnin’ ya.” Stumpy reached toward me. I flinched. In his hand was a paper bag. “Here, have a sack of peanuts on me.”
“Thanks.” As I took the paper bag, I felt my face flush with heat.
“Listen here,” Stumpy said, leaning in a tad too close for comfort. “We’re havin’ us a big fish fry tomorrow tonight. Come ‘round and meet the other folks.”
“Okay, thanks. But right now, I better get these groceries inside before it gets too dark.”
“Yep. Don’t want to be out after dark around here,” he said, and ambled off down the road.
I took a look at my new home for the week. Number thirteen wasn’t a bona fide trailer. It was a pull-behind RV propped up on flat tires and cinder blocks. What had I done?
You can do this, Valliant Stranger.
I steeled myself, climbed out of the car and unlocked Maggie’s trunk. I threaded the grocery sack handles up my forearms and set my suitcase on the ground. Something rustled in the dark bushes nearby.
The hair on the top of my head stood up like a sinner at a church revival. As adrenaline shot through my veins, the rush sent me scurrying like a wild-woman for the RV. I fumbled the door open with the key Winky had given me and threw the groceries inside. Against my own will, I made a mad dash back for my suitcase and duffle bag. I nearly tripped and fell over my suitcase as I slammed Maggie’s trunk. I grabbed it and my duffle and skedaddled into the RV like a hobo catching a freight train.
As I jerked the deadbolt in place with trembling hands, I wondered aloud.
“Geeze, Louise, Val. What have you gotten yourself into this time?”
Chapter Eleven
I was swimming at Sunset Beach with a school of shiny, silver fishes. We were giggling as we waggled our tails on the way to a party. I was wearing a tiara, because, of course, I was a mermaid princess....
All of a sudden, a strange network of strings surrounded us. My scaly friends and I huddled into a ball of confusion. I felt a tug. Then another. Upward we went, inch by inch, as the net drug us to the surface. I could see the sun – and I realized I couldn’t breathe!
We tumbled together into a vat...and spiraled down a dark, grey tube like water down a drain. At the end of the tube, I saw my new home. It was a sardine can. I squeezed myself inside it and lay there like cordwood alongside my companions. A squirting sound made me look up. A big glob of yellow grease splattered over us like a transparent, oily blanket.
Wait a minute. There was definitely something fishy going on....
I WOKE UP WITH A START, swimming in sweat. It was pitch black. Angry growls emanated from under the bedcovers. Either I was about to get eaten alive, or I was about to starve to death.
I shot out of bed. My shoulder whacked against a hard surface. Like a ricocheting bullet, I bounced off the wall, stubbed my toe on some unknown object, and knocked my head on the corner of something with a big corner.
What the heck was going on here?
I fumbled for the light switch. As the dim, yellow bulb blinked on, I was reminded that I wasn’t in St. Pete anymore. I was in a tin-can condo the size of an ice-cream truck. But it didn’t smell like Ben & Jerry’s – unless they’d released a new flavor called Malted Moth Balls.
“Ugh!” I forced opened a tiny window in the bedroom, then hobbled along the three-foot-long hallway to the kitchen galley. I yanked opened the tiny fridge and cursed myself. Last night, I’d filled it with the salad greens, carrot sticks and diet salad dressing I’d bought in Lake Wales. I tried the cupboard, hoping against hope for some kind of junk-food miracle. Nope. Just the kale crisps and seaweed rollups I’d put in there.
What the hell had I been thinking?
After last night’s “Something’s in the bushes!” scare, I’d been too nervous to eat dinner. I’d cranked on the window air conditioner, fixed myself a gin and tonic and passed out on the short-sheeted bed. Sometime during the night, the A/C must have frozen up and crapped out. It was 3:09 a.m. and I was trapped in a metal box, as sweaty as a pig and as hungry as a bear.
I was a pigbear!
And all I had to cool and feed myself was a cardboard church fan and some roots and leaves.
Pigbear was not happy.
I made myself a Tanqueray and tonic. As I put the bottle back in the fridge, I noticed a soggy paper bag slumped over on the tiny dinette table like a lump of beige clay. I reached inside the bag and pulled out a boiled peanut. I popped the salty shell into my mouth, worked it open with my tongue, and bit down on the three soft, perfectly cooked pearls inside.
They were the best boiled peanuts I’d ever eaten.
I WAS SITTING IN THE dinette booth finishing off the last peanut in the sack when I heard another growl. But this time, my stomach had nothing to do with it. The grumbling had come from outside. And it sounded very nearby.
I switched off the kitchen light and scooted a few inches along the booth until I could press my face to the window pane. I couldn’t see a dad-blame thing.
Another high-pitched, cat-like snarl pierced the night. The noise was coming from somewhere near the front end of the RV. A second later, it was followed by a tinny clunking sound. The growl sounded again, accompanied by another, deeper growl. A third whiny screech joined in.
It sounded as if a crowd of drunken chipmunks were having a rave, and then things turned ugly. I’d never heard anything like it. Unless I counted that time Winky and Jorge trapped a stray cat in a Croker sack full of empty tin cans.
I peered through the mini blinds and squinted hard. My skin turned to gooseflesh. Something as big as a human ran by in the darkness. I let go of the blinds as if they’d just stung me.
Mother of Pearl! Was there really such thing as Bigfoot?
Stumpy had warned me not to go out after dark.
And here I am...all alone! I need protection!
I scrambled around the tiny RV searching for a club. There wasn’t even so much as a flyswatter. I grabbed the only thing I could find and hot-footed it back to the bedroom. I locked the door and leapt into the bed, but not before managing to stub my toe yet again on the dad-burn bedframe.
“Yow!”
I screeched in pain, then clapped a hand over my
big mouth – in case Sasquatch was listening. I sat up in bed and pulled my in knees in toward my chest. For the next hour, I remained there, balled up and still as a statue, breathing into the blackness, my itchy finger poised on the trigger of a spray-bottle of Ty-D-Bol.
WHEN I WOKE UP AGAIN, the sun was shining through the slits in the bedroom blinds. I sat up and looked around, pleasantly surprised to discover that I was still alive.
A tap on the door made me blink. Geeze! I hadn’t even had a cup of coffee yet! I padded to the door and opened it a tiny crack. The world didn’t need to know that I was wearing Tom’s t-shirt as pajamas.
“Boy howdy,” Stumpy said through the crack. He was in his same dirty overalls, and still smuggling that prize-winning watermelon. But his t-shirt looked clean. “Stinks in there,” he said, and crinkled is bulbous red nose.
“It wasn’t me,” I lied. As tasty as they’d been, Stumpy’s boiled peanuts had, nevertheless, taken their toll on my colon.
“Shut up.” Stumpy replied.
How rude! “What?” I scowled.
“Been shut up a while. Nothin’ a little airin’ out won’t solve.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right.”
“Came by to see how you was getting’ on. And remind you ‘bout the fish fry tonight.”
I opened the door a hair wider. “Okay. Thanks. What can I bring?”
“Oh, no. You’re our guest tonight, young lady. You don’t got to bring nothin’.”
“That’s really nice of you, Stumpy. Thanks. And, by the way, your boiled peanuts are really good. The best I’ve had, actually.”
Seven Daze: Redneck Rendezvous (A Val Fremden Mystery Book 7) Page 7