Land of a Hundred Wonders

growling. I got the kitten up close, snuggling into her fur the way you do. “Shhh… shhh… shhh…” I’m croonin’ over and over, when outta the dark comes a voice I know only too well.

“Well, lookee here.”

“Sh… it!” I squeal, tripping, almost falling. “Ya ’bout scared the wits outta me!”

“Don’t you mean what wits you got left?” Sneaky Tim Ray says, the stink of him permeating the air. It’s not only the usual hooch smell, it’s something else real off-putting. Keeper’s full out snarling.

I say, the fright of it all giving me heart-pumping bravery, “I’m warnin’ you, Holloway, quit poppin’ out at me like that or I’ll… I’ll…”

Swaying back and forth like a strong wind’s gotten under his skin, he says in his snidest of tones, “You’ll what, darlin’?”

“I’ll… I’ll…” He’s right. What will I do? I cannot thwart him. He’d hurt Keeper “accidentally on purpose,” the way he’s sworn to do. “What do ya want?”

“Saw y’all boatin’ along the shore,” he says, swigging down a swallow from his jug. “Ya could say we’s your welcomin’ committee.”

We? What does he mean, “we”?

Who is that towering behind him in the shadows? “That you, Cooter Smith?” I ask, hoping it is ’cause me and him go way back. Not only as gadabout friends, but after his mama and daddy disappeared, Miss Florida asked Grampa to take Cooter under his wing. Growing up, I can’t tell you the number of nights I fell asleep listening to the two of them out on the lawn practicing birdcalls. For old times’ sake, I sing to him, “Oakalee… oakalee… oakalee.”

“Gib.” Cooter steps forward and nods, barely.

Lord, what is that citified thing he’s done with his hair? Looks as sleek as a fender on a funeral car.

“Whatcha got there?” Sneaky Tim Ray pries my arms apart with only-God-knows-where-they- been fingers. “Awww. Ain’t she precious.” He runs his hands down the kitten’s spine, wrenches her outta my arms. “Ya know, you and me have a lot more in common than ya might realize, darlin’. Bet you didn’t for instance know that I love pussies, too,” he says, laughing cruddy and flinging the kitten into the woods.

When I start after her, Holloway cinches me around the waist. “Not so fast. You ’n me got some unfinished bidness to take care of.”

Cooter, shifting from foot to foot, says, “We ain’t got time for this. Leave her be.”

“ ’Fraid I cain’t do that,” Sneaky Tim Ray says, wrenching my hand to the front of his stained bibs. “The south has risen again.”

Cooter brushes past me mad as hell, leaving behind the smell of chewed bones and coffee grounds and orange peelings from the Browntown dump. He’s gotta work there because Sheriff Johnson spreads awful tales about him so nobody else will hire him anywheres else. (There’s a feud between Cooter and the sheriff that is perpetual. You ask anyone, they’ll tell you how much LeRoy despises “that uppity Smith boy.”) “You comin’?” he calls back to Sneaky Tim Ray.

“That’s the plan,” Holloway says, breathing faster now. But it must be important wherever they’re going ’cause he’s glaring at me, then back at the woods that Cooter disappeared into, and then back at me, finally spitting out, “Fuck,” as his hand darts up to my neck. He thumbs the indent of my throat, tears off my new locket. “I’ll jus’ take this for a consolation prize. Ya know what tha’ means, don’tcha?”

I’m pretty sure it means I wish I was back at the cottage with my grampa.

“I’ll catch you on the flip-flop, darlin’. Don’t think I won’t.” He takes a swipe at my ninnies and yells, “Hold up, Smith,” and off he goes into the trees.

Goddamn that Holloway!

After I’m sure that he isn’t going to double back, which he’s pulled on me more than once, I head over to where the kitten landed, but Keeper’s stopped fussing, so she musta made her way back home. Ya know one of the things I pray for each and every night without fail? That Sneaky Tim Ray’ll fall into a pit of quick- sand right before my very eyes. And when he starts begging for me to hand him a branch, I’ll break one off the closest tree and wave it just outta his reach, saying, “Remember that time in the woods? In the barn? All those times ya took advantage?” (I’m lettin’ you know right now, I ever get a chance to avenge myself, I’ll eye-for-an-eye do it.)

Clever is calling again, “Giiibby.”

“Over here,” I try to yell back, but Sneaky Tim Ray’s stench has clenched tight in my throat.

“There ya are,” she says, skipping down the path toward me. “Look who I found.”

My, oh, my. If I had my camera with me, if it wasn’t lying under those bushes in my briefcase over at Miss Jessie’s, I’d click off a picture of Miss Florida Smith. That’d make a good human interest shot for the Gazette during L &N Railroad Days, that’s how much she resembles one of their locomotives.

Miss Florida yells, “What in tarnation ya doin’ here?”

“I don’t remember,” I yell back.

“Are you crazy comin’ over here in the dead of night? If your grampa finds out, ya know what kind of trouble y’all’d be in?”

Clever says to her, “Don’t be so mad. It’s my fault. I made her.”

“Why don’t that news surprise me none?” Miss Florida gives us both a real crummy look and commences chugging back toward her house.

“I saw Cooter,” I say, thinking that’ll slow her down some because she loves her grandbaby to bits.

“Ya saw Cooter?” Clever says, real lively.

Miss Florida asks me, “He alone?”

“No, he was not. He was with Sneaky Tim Ray, who told me the south-”

“Oh, Lord. Sure as the day is long, that no-account Holloway has gone and got my Cooter into something he shoun’t oughta be into,” Miss Florida laments.

I almost say: Well, of course he did, but I dare not get Miss Florida any more worked up. She’s already steaming.

The Queen of Browntown

No denying the paint could use some refreshing, and a couple of the windows are black-rotted, but Miss Florida has washed many a dish and baked hundreds of pies to save up for this little white house that stands at the edge of Browntown.

“I swear, you two gals have less sense than a penny,” she says, hiking herself up the porch steps. Her younger brothers, Vern and Teddy, are off to the side in ladder-back chairs and well into a game of dominos on a TV tray ’neath the bug light. Keeper’s already curled himself up at their feet, thumping his stump to the top-hat sound that’s riding down the road above one of those blues tunes that get me all choked up whenever I hear their moody sweetness.

Miss Florida does not miss a beat. “Boys, wind that game up now. I need for y’all to take these girls home,” she says, just about pulling her screen door out of its frame. “I’m fixin’ to call Grampa to tell him you’re on your way.”

I say, “For chrissakes, don’t do that,” but she’s already speeding through her sharply decorated parlor. Besides a green brocade sofa, she’s got a rag rug she made herself, and golden lamps she got from a catalog that sit on two matching spool tables. And she must have a pie in the oven because something smells divine. “Please, please, don’t call Grampa,” I say, when we catch up with her. “Clever is knocked up.”

“What?” Miss Florida says, bringing her face close to mine and then jerking it toward Clever’s stomach. For a bit, it’s like an ice storm swept through and froze us all up. Except for Vern and Teddy, who are