Land of a Hundred Wonders (11 page)

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 of 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.

“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
NQR
ness, 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?”

His mouth falls open and he fuschias clean up to his roots. “Why . . . why would ya think
that
?”

“You smell like her specialty,” I say, showing off my perceptive investigative skills. “Green apple, caramel, and salty peanuts.”

He thinks I won't notice that he's begun sniffing himself a little.

“I'm not being a nosy Parker,” I explain. “I'm just trying to figure out why it's so damn important to everybody that they get some of this hot sex. A course I've seen animals . . . but is it the same with humans or does it have something to do with love?”