Land of a Hundred Wonders

After I follow Miss Florida back into the parlor, somewhat disappointed she has not offered me a slice of that cherry pie, but nicely revived from the lemonade, Clever is nowhere to be seen. I was afraid of that.

“Now we got another one missin’,” Miss Florida grumbles, sticking her head into her bedroom, where I have taken many a lie-down on her dried-in-the-sun sheets when Grampa got tied up with one thing or another.

“I like the new one a lot.” I have stopped to admire her paintings on velvet that hang off the parlor walls and am pointing to a curly-haired puppy wearing a coonskin hat. Like me, Miss Florida’s an art lover. She’s got two other framed ones of Jesus and the King-Dr. Martin Luther. And Darnelle, there are loads of pictures of the lovely Darnelle, who was Miss Florida’s girl, and the mama of Cooter until she went missing some years ago when she was selling peanuts up roadside. There’s also lots of photos of Cooter doing all sorts of things, like being sloppy in the mud when he was a kid, and swinging off the Geronimo rope down at the lake with his best friend, Georgie Malloy, but mostly he’s playing basketball. Miss Florida and Grampa were so proud when he got a scholarship to college a few years back, but after his knee got jammed up, he had to come home to Cray Ridge and work at the dump. (Even though Grampa has asked Cooter time and time again to come back to cook up at the diner like he used to when he was a boy, he won’t. I perceive Cooter can’t stand the heat in the kitchen. Because he’s gotten rowdy these days, mostly gambling. Grampa does not approve of that sort of thing.)

“What did ya mean when you said now we got another one missin’? Who else is missin’ besides Clever?” I ask.

Miss Florida takes a look-see in her bathroom, pulling her head back out with a shake. “We jus’ done went over this. Buster Malloy is missin’. ’Member?”

“ ’Course I ’member,” I fib.

“Miss Caroool Lever! Come out from wherever it is you is,” Miss Florida shouts with her hands on her hips. “You ain’t too big to feel my hand on your backside.”

All’s quiet ’cept for the tick tick of her Bulova clock and the soul music seeping through the open window.

“Maybe she went out for a breath of fresh air,” I say, heading out to the porch and praying Clever hasn’t deserted me. When she gets mad or caught doing something she shouldn’t (exactly as often as you’d think), she’s bound to cut and run. Everybody knows you can’t catch that Lever girl once she makes up her mind to scoot. The bug light isn’t doing its job, but it’s strong enough that I can see my best friend snoozing on the swing. Vern and Teddy are lippin’ their cigarettes, lettin’ the smoke hang.

Upon seeing Clever, Miss Florida throws her arms up with a wouldn’tcha-know-it look and eases herself down into her rocking chair with a, “My, oh, my. Life sure is unrelentin’, ain’t it? Ya get one problem taken care of and ’fore ya can get an ounce of satisfaction, another one rears its head.” She crooks her finger over to the swing. “I do believe this time that wild child got herself into somethin’ she cain’t outrun.”

I’m afraid she’s right. Picking up my best friend’s tootsies, I set myself down beside her, letting her feet fall back into my lap. How funny that the creak of the rope swing is matching her snores. Vern and Teddy aren’t paying us a bit of mind, too busy slapping down their tiles.

“Now what’s that you were sayin’ before ’bout Buster bein’ missin’?” Miss Florida half wonders.

Buster Malloy. Buster Malloy. The next governor. Oh, my, yes. “I was sayin’ that Mr. Buster is not actually missin’.” (I figure I owe Miss Florida an explanation of sorts based on no other reason than me and Clever agitating the hell out of her on this loveliest of evenings.) “I saw him.”

“Oh, yeah? Where?” she says, happy to pass the time like we do in the kitchen every morning when we form sausage patties.

“He was over at Browntown Beach.”

“Mmm…” Miss Florida’s begun drifting off after her hard day at the diner. Her ankles are swollen almost out of her shoes. “And when was that at?”

I can picture Mr. Buster splayed on the sand. Four holes in his chest. Neck all catawampus. But the details aren’t filled in. “Can’t say as I remember the day exactly.”

“Buster be the first to tell ya he don’t know how to swim,” Miss Florida mutters with a lot of contempt. “So what’d he be doin’ down at the beach?”

“Bein’ dead.”

Hoochie-coochie laughing is coming down the road from Mamie’s Leisure Lounge. Clever and I spy in the window over there whenever we get a chance. There’s a fantastic silver ball hangs from the ceiling that shoots sparkly squares on bodies swaying so close. I would very much like to work up at Mamie’s when I get QR again. You know, temporary-like, until I find my apartment in Cairo.

“Gettin’ late,” Miss Florida says, not bothering to hide her yawn. She’s acting like she didn’t even hear me tell her that Mr. Buster Malloy is not missing but deceased. Maybe she didn’t, and that’s probably for the best, considering she can keep a secret just about as well as Clever can. “Vern, Teddy, finish up now. Ya gotta take Gib home.”

“But what about Clever?” I ask, tugging Miss Florida out of the rocker with both of my hands.

“She’ll be fine here for tonight. Ain’t like she’ll be missed,” she says. “Ya know that.”

I do, and so does everybody else in Cray Ridge, but I’m shocked straight down my spine that Miss Florida says this. Usually colored people do not say mean things about white people to another white person. It is considered untraditional.

Vern pulls up on his trouser knees and says to me, “Don’t get her goin’ on ’bout Janice Lever’s poor motherin’. We be here ’til sunup.”

Then no way in hell am I going to tell Miss Florida that Clever no longer has a home to go to. That her selfish, selfish mama kicked her out. Again. I CANNOT stay here ’til sunup. I got a murder to solve.

“All right then,” I say, glancing back one more time at Clever, thumb in her mouth, looking not much older than the day she came scratching at Top O’ the Mornin’s back door asking for a handout when she was seven. Miss Florida took to Clever right off. Set her up next to the kitchen sink, dabbed at the dirt on her cheeks, and cut her a slice of chiffon pie, which is still Clever’s all-time favorite.

Looking back down at her on that swing, I must have a hesitating look on my face ’cause Miss Florida says kinder, “G’wan, baby. She’ll be fine with me.”

“I know.” I bend to deliver a kiss to Clever’s forehead, and then straighten to give a wrap- around hug to Miss Florida. Vern and Teddy are already waiting on me roadside with Keeper in the bed of the truck. Backing that way, I say to her, “Thank you awfully much for not callin’ Grampa.”

“You ain’t safe here no more, Gib. It ain’t like it used to be,” she says, and I can’t perceive if Miss Florida’s happy about that or not. “I’ll have the boys sneak his boat back ’fore dawn.”

“I got proof, ya know, ’bout Mr. Malloy bein’ dead and if you want…,” I try, thinking that might give her sweet dreams, but that screen door is already closing on her big behind.

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.