Land of a Hundred Wonders (26 page)

I reach down to swipe off the rain that's caught up in Peaches's mane, give her a pat for a job well done. The trail's so muddy, I don't know how she's managing.

“You okay?” Billy asks, drawing up close, trying to shield me from the punishing storm.

“Where's Cooter at?” I ask, peering around him.

“Keep's leadin' him. It's a straight shot from here to the cottage. He'll be fine.”

He better be. Rosie needs a daddy. That's right, it's just come to me outta nowhere that it CAN'T be Willard that's Rosie's daddy. Even though Clever's sort of a birdbrain, she's smart enough to pretend that Willard's the baby's daddy so he'll take her back to New York City with him 'til tongues stop wagging. That rascal. She knows damn well if she births a baby of the opposite color around here, folks are gonna give her a flock of grief.

“We can't hide at the cottage long,” I say. The trail widens enough here that we can ride the rest of the way together. “They'll figure that out, won't they, Billy?”

“We got a little time, I think. Jimmy Lee . . . ya know . . . that vat accident . . . he's kinda dumb.”

“That's true,” I say, looking up at him. “But the Brandish Boys aren't.”

Billy whoas up in a flurry. “The Brandish Boys?”

“They were with Jimmy Lee up at the barn.”

“Ya sure it was them?” he asks, surely hoping I'm not.

They're starving coyotes, those Boys, bunking down somewhere up in the woods between Cray Ridge and Appleville. I've seen 'em up close only one time. At the bait shop. One of 'em has a skin condition so his face is covered in angry pink craters and oozes. The other, like I said, he's got long ears and something not right with his nose. Lacks oomph. (Ya know how mamas and daddies warn their babies about the booger man to keep them in check? Around these parts, it's those misshapen brothers make children check under their beds.)

Billy says one more time, like he can't take it in, “The Brandish Boys.” Might be his drenched shirt causing him to shiver. Think not.

“We got to get the four of us someplace safe,” I tell him.

“Blackstone,” he says right off.

“That's my thinkin', too.” For now anyways. In Bolivia, they wear these types of jackets called
ponchos
. My man will look dashing in one of a deep wine color. Since I can perceive no way at all that we're gonna get out of our current predicament, I believe we're gonna have to pack our bags and move souther.
Pronto
.

Reaching the end of the trail, we trot across the road and go down a piece 'til we end up in the cottage's backyard. The rain'll make it harder to track us down, but then again, it
is
the Brandish Boys. What they lack in beauty they make up for in skill.

“We could do with some dry clothes,” Billy says, dismounting and lifting the reins over Sonny's head, doing the same to Peaches as I slide off. Cooter's horse, Dancer, is already tied up under the wide tree. “We'll gather up what we can as fast as we can and head out.”

Nearing the cottage, I can hear the sound of Grampa's boat rocking against the dock with a
knock knock
that makes me remember his apple-puckering lips. His grouchiness after getting up from a nap. His buttermilk pancakes and, well . . . just
all
the ingredients that get mixed up together to make a batch of Charles Michael Murphy. After he comes home, I'm gonna set him down in his lake chair with a glass of tart lemonade and tell him everything that's been going on while he was gone, and when I'm done, he'll push his cowboy fishing hat back on his head and say, “I'm proud as punch of ya, Gibby girl. Ya done good.” 'Specially after I tell him what I'm about to tell Billy. Grampa'll give his knee-slapping laugh.

“I mighta shot off Sneaky Tim Ray's pecker.”

Billy swipes the rain off his face and grunts. “Saves me the trouble.”

(I know, I know. I should be feeling ashamed. But it felt so damn good to pull that trigger, not wicked at all. )

Coming around the corner of the screened porch, I hold up for a minute to watch Clever and Cooter, their heads bowed together, but then Keeper gives off a welcome whine, and Clever turns my way, yelping out when she sees me, “Goddamn it! Goddamn it! I thought ya was dead,” throwing open the screened door and herself all over me.

“I'm fine . . . I'm fine,” I tell her with a pat. "C'mon. Let's getcha outta this rain.”

Billy heads into the cottage, probably following up on his plan for dry clothes, and Cooter follows.

Once I get her back seated on the sofa, Clever says, “What the hell happened?”

“What do ya mean what the hell happened? I broke Rosie's daddy outta jail, just like I told ya I would.”

Bringing her eyes up to mine, she locks and loads 'em. “ 'Zactly how long ya known?”

“Figured it out on the ride over.”

Maybe until she just admitted it, it was nothing but wishful thinking on my part. Willard is such a dope that I didn't want Clever having his baby, who would then grow up and go off spreading that dopiness throughout the world by breeding. (Miss Jessie says it's important who you pair up with when it comes to the spraying of seed, otherwise you could end up with a foal that's got some low tendencies.) What the heck has happened to Willard anyways? I bend forward to eye his place. His “contemplating” hammock is hanging half off the yellowwood. He's a loose end, that damn Yankee is.

Clever is working hard to get control of herself, but as we all know, even though the word is it
does
, I'm here to tell you, hard work
doesn't
always pay off. “Miss Florida's gonna beat me 'til I'm blue when she finds out Cooter's the daddy,” she splutters. “Ya know how she lectures about mixin' blood.”

I want to tell my sidekick she's wrong. I really, really do. But she knows well as I do that I'd be lying. “Don't fret. I got a plan.”

“Ya do?” she asks, skeptical.

“Remember from our movie how all the folks down in Bolivia are sorta coffee with two creams in color? Well, soon as this is all over, the five of us'll move down there after all. Rosie'll fit right in.” They can't stay here. 'Cause not only would there be
Reprisals: Avengement
from both the white
and
the brown folks, there'd be nobody to help them out with raisin' the baby. Maybe Miss Florida would pitch in after she calmed down, but only a fool'd count on Janice to do her job of grandmothering. If Grampa stays alive, I know he'd protect them, but what if he . . .

“Butch?”

“Yeah?”

“I know this may not be the best time to be bringin' this up . . . and I feel real bad about ya not gettin' to investigate for that important Mr. Buster is dead story because ya got so busy with the jailbreak . . .”

I completely forgot all about
Buster Malloy Found Dead on Browntown Beach!

“But,” Clever says, “I believe . . . I'm beginnin' to have the laborin' pain. I think Rosie Adelaide's comin'.”

Back to Blackstone

Cooter could barely ride himself, so Billy held Clever steady in the saddle while steering us through the storm away from the cottage and toward Blackstone. Having hid in jungles for months upon months, my man knows better than any of us what we got to do to keep the Brandish Boys off our scent, so soon as he knew we were high and dry, he rode back down the trail to cover up any evidence of us being there.

Snug in the cave, when I'm done sortin' out some of the clothes Billy and Cooter grabbed out of the drawers in the cottage, I pull Clever's soaking-wet shirt off over her head and shimmy on a dry one. My goodness. Her cups do runneth over.

Experiencing what appears to be tremendous pain, Clever is not in what you would call a jovial mood right this minute, but I'm gonna try to rectify that. I've been saving this tidbit for a moment just like this. “Knock knock,” I say, rubbing her hair dry.

She cannot answer 'cause she's biting on her hand, so I reply for her in a different voice, deeper, “Who's there?”

I go back up the scale again. “Is Sneaky Tim Ray's pecker home?”

“Sorry,” I bluster, “Sneaky Tim Ray's pecker ain't home. Ain't ya heard? Gibby McGraw shot it off.”

These birthing pains must hurt something fierce because what Clever's doing would only be considered grinning if you look at her upside down.

“That true?” Cooter asks, buzzing around us . . . not sure where to land. “Ya shot that boy's pecker? Off?”

“I believe so.”

After the pains have ebbed, Clever shoves me on the shoulder and starts laughing her lungs out. “Ya always did have skills with a gun, Butch. Ya'd
have
to be good to get a bead on something that small.”

“Clever!”

“What? I seen it a few weeks ago over at the Tap. Holloway was airin' it out, tryin' to interest Janice.”

(Please forgive her. Being lawless and godless like she is, Clever can be not appropriate at all. Even when she's trying. Which she isn't.)

But now that she's brought up her mama, this is when I probably should tell Clever about how I found Janice in the drunk tank down at the sheriff's station. But I'm not gonna. Cooter knows what I'm thinking and I can tell he agrees. That's just plain good manners, not reminding your sidekick that her mama has a better relationship with Mr. Jim Beam than she does her own girl.

“Speakin' of airin' out, guess what? I got the treasure map!” I say, trying to keep her good spirits on the rise. “So y'all are gonna be okay now.”

Clever says, “Dang,
you
are, too. In all this upset, I forgot to tell ya. While you were gone breakin' out Cooter, Miss Jessie called up to the cottage all the way from Texas. She told me to tell ya that Grampa is doin' just fine.”

“What do ya mean?”

“The heart attack?”

“I recall that, but I don't know
where
and
why
Miss Jessie is with him and I'm not.”

“ 'Member? They took Grampa to Texas in Big Bill Brown's airplane and they're gonna give his heart an operation.”

“No, that's not right,” I say, befuddled.

“Is, too,” Clever says, gettin' short. She despises her word to be questioned. “When I called down to the hospital lookin' for you when you didn't come right back, I made that varmint Darlene Abernathy tell me. She said the operation's supposed to make his heart steady and that—”

“Shhh . . . ya hear that?” Cooter whispers, haunches hackling.

Hard to hear much of anything with the thunder giving off its best licks, so I check to see if Keeper's gone into point, which he would if something wicked was coming our way. He's not paying a bit of mind, too busy giving himself a lick bath. Straining to hear what Cooter heard comin' up the trail, I finally catch it on my love radar. “Oh, that's only Billy.”

Not a minute later he rides back into the cave, slides outta the saddle and says, “I covered our tracks best I could and didn't see . . .
them
.” Can't blame him for not wanting to say their names out loud. That'd be akin to evoking the devil. But ya know, I don't think that's fair. We need to tell Cooter and Clever, let 'em know that what we're up against is more'n just the sheriff and his dumb deputy. Like Grampa says, “You can't win a fight 'lessin' ya know who your enemy is.”

So I clear my throat and announce, “When Billy says he didn't see
them
, what he really means is, he didn't see . . . the Brandish Boys.”

“The Boys?” Clever says, giving a willies tremble. “Who they huntin'?”

I jut my chin toward Cooter. “Sorry to be the bear of bad news . . . but there's a reward on him, Kid.”

(Ya know how I mentioned earlier that she ain't afraid of anything? I forgot about the Brandish Boys.) Clever is letting loose with one of her ear-piercing wails and Cooter looks a whole lot less colored, that's how bad he's waning when he finds out the bounty the Boys are comin' for is none other than himself.

“No sense gettin' all worked up. We're safe for the time bein',” Billy says, jabbing Cooter in the ribs, none too gently, maybe still mad about him holding that gun on him in the woods the other night. “Why don't ya tell us why everybody wants this treasure map so bad?”

Cooter, trying to recover from the shock that it's
you know who
that's coming after him, says, “Ya ain't gonna believe me if I do.”

“Try us,” Billy insists. He sure does smell good. Safe, and a little muddy.

Cooter stabs at the map that Billy lays out on the ground in front of us. “Ya see those red lines?
That's
the treasure up at the Malloy place.”

“We already figured out
where
it is,” I say. “What Billy's askin' you is . . . what the hell IS the treasure?” I am picturing us draped in pearls and ivory and sequins and silver. “It's gold, isn't it?”

“Yeah, it's gold,” Cooter admits.

“Bless Patsy! That just about solves all our problems, right?” I shout, reaching for Clever, who looks so relieved.

Cooter adds, “Wish it was, but it ain't the kind of gold y'all are thinkin' it is.”

What I'm thinking is, to the best of my knowledge, there IS only one kind of
Gold: A valuable yellow metal.

Clever asks, “What kind of gold
is
it then?”

“Hemp,” Cooter says.

Me and Clever and Billy—the three of us look a lot like we just heard the world is flat after all.