Land of a Hundred Wonders

There’s a shortcut to Tanner Farm through the woods behind the diner that empties out into Cubby’s Curios and Cool Drinks. Like I previously mentioned, Mr. Cubby St. James is well known as a taxidermist. That’s a person who plumps critters’ insides up once they are dead. He told me once he’d be happy to do that to Keeper after he moved on to that great kennel in the sky, no charge. “Ya know, like Roy Rogers done with Trigger.” I, of course, thanked him for his kind offer despite the fact that I was having a hard time not losing my peanut butter and honey all over him.

Scattered about Mr. Cubby’s backyard showroom, in no particular order, there’s all sorts of stuffed stuff, including a grizzly bear lying down on a webbed recliner and reading a newspaper. (Mine.) A wide assortment of writhing snakes. An otter with a trout in his paws. Interest in taxidermy must run in families because Mr. Cubby’s brother, Mr. Owen St. James? He’s the proprietor of Owen’s Oddities out near the highway. Mr. Cubby’s business runs a tad on the slow side, but his brother’s place is thriving. That’s ’cause along with his stuffed animals, Mr. Owen’s got a pettin’ zoo with a five-legged pig that is a real crowd pleaser.

Keeper, who normally goes pretty nuts for shortcuts, has not followed me through the trees into the showroom, but instead has chosen to take the long way around. (Don’t think he cares much for the way Mr. Cubby eyes him.)

Weaving fast through the attractions, I am already waiting for Keeper next to the stuffed squirrel Mr. Cubby’s got sitting on top of his mailbox. “We don’t have all day,” I shout out to the part of the road that I know my dog’ll be coming down. “Ya better get on it, son. Looks like the weather’s turnin’.”

That’ll get his attention. Keeper doesn’t care much for storms, and sure enough, here he comes, whipping down Tanner Road, neck and neck with a black VW bus.

“Why did you run off?” Willard asks, when he slows at my side. He’s slouched up against the van door, chocolate frosting dotting the corners of his mouth and a cloud of hemp smoke riding shotgun. “Can I give you a ride?”

“No, thank you.”

“You never answered me back at the diner,” he says. “Have you or have you not seen Carol lately?”

“Ready-set?” I say, acting like it takes all my concentration to throw Keeper’s fetching stick for him.

“She’s got something of mine that she needs to return immediately.”

Could he mean the baby? Has he changed his mind about giving it up to the social? “What’s she got that you need so bad?”

Leaves are juddering. Branches vibrating. There’s another storm coming and it ain’t dawdling. “You remember that map I showed the two of you a few nights ago?” he asks, so reasonable.

“N-o.”

“Well, I showed it to you.”

“What was it a map of?”

“It’s a… treasure map.”

I hadn’t realized how far we’d come on account of us conversating, but here we are already on the edge of Miz Tanner’s property. The Smith brothers are jogging horses back up to the barn from the paddocks. Teddy sees me, points up to the whirling dervish clouds. “Hurry on up here,” Vern hollers.

“Be right there,” I yell back, attempting to cross to the other side of the road.

Willard guns his engine, cuts me off. “How about if you and I make a deal? I’ll give you part of the treasure if you get that map from Carol and bring it to me.”

I think real fast, much faster than I thought I was able. If there really is a treasure, then Clever and me could find it and then she’d have some money to buy diapers for her baby and some food. Everything could go back to the way it was before. Even better maybe, because I’ve always liked babies’ toes a whole lot. “Okay, it’s a deal. If I see Clever, I’ll get her to give me that treasure map and bring it to you straightaway. Swear on a stack.”

(Boy, when I get my briefcase back, I’m giving myself two, no, three gold stars. I’m becoming a crackerjack liar!)

“You find that map and bring it to me or else I’ll have to report Carol to the authorities for stealing and she’d have to go to jail,” Willard says, not sounding so reasonable anymore.

The kind of thunder that turns tonsils into a tuning fork rumbles overhead and with a look of apology, Keeper takes off, butt scraping up Miz Tanner’s drive. (Lightning’s the only real thing that seizes him up.)

“Already swore I’d bring ya the map, didn’t I?” I say, scooting behind the bus so he can’t run over me. I wouldn’t put anything past him at this point. He’s got a look of desperateness about him.

“I’m warning you,” Willard yells. “Bring me the map tonight or there’ll be hell to pay.”

Standing there, watching him take off down the road under the threatening sky, I’m left to thinking that man’s got an even darker side to him than I’d previously perceived. In fact, it’s clear as can be that Mr. Willard DuPree of New York City has got a whole lot more sympathy for the devil than he does for my Clever.

By the time I stagger through Miz Tanner’s barn doors, the storm has shared half of itself with me. “Keeper?” I call out, swiping the wet off. Popping his head out of the tack room, he gives me a nod, but slinks back fast under a saddle rack. (I’d go and comfort him, but he doesn’t go in for that sort of thing.) “I’m gonna get the leather-like, be right back.” Because no way am I waitin’ until the sky has finished throwing its hissy fit. I need my briefcase back NOW. I’ve been feeling as unbalanced as a tightrope walker without a pole. Inching out beneath the barn overhang, when I get to the bushes where I left it, I steady myself against the soaked barn wood, reach in and grope for the worn handle, but it’s nowhere there.

“Gib? What… rain… doin’?” Miss Jessie yells. I didn’t notice her on my way up, but I shoulda known she’d be out on the porch in her bentwood rocker since she and I have more than once enjoyed watching a good gully washer together.

I wave, but go right back to searching. Where the heck is it? With slipping feet, I try further down the side of the barn, around the evergreen bushes. Oh my God of heaven and earth. Did I put it somewhere else and don’t remember?

Next I look up, here comes Miss Jessie jogging across the yard with a red umbrella. Adjusting it over both our heads, she says, “Well, this was sure unexpected.”

I’m not sure if she means me or the rain.

“What are you doin’?” she asks.

“I’m lookin’ for my briefcase. I set it in these bushes when I came for the egg order and went home without it. My blue spiral’s in it and some film that I need to get right over to Bob’s Drug Emporium for developin’.”

“I guess you and me are in the same boat. I can’t find Tim Ray and I need him to do some fence mendin’ once this storm passes. A couple of the herd broke through that back pasture this mornin’. Ya haven’t seen him, have ya?”

I slide toward the hedge closest to the barn door and hatchet my arm straight down, but my hand comes back with nothing but scratches. “Can’t recall exactly,” I say, worried sick.

“Be best if we come back and look for our lost items once this lets up.” It really is coming down almost biblical. “Let’s make a dash for the house,” Miss Jessie says, tugging on my arm.

I don’t want to go with her. I need to keep looking for my leather-like, but I also don’t want her telling Grampa that I don’t have enough sense to get out of the rain. So given no choice, I call, 'C’mon outta there, Keep,” and the three of us take off.

“Have you by any chance seen my briefcase? It’s black. Leather-like,” I huff out when Miss Jessie tosses me a tan towel from outta the mudroom off the porch. “I put it in those bushes outside the barn when I came to pick up the egg order and now I can’t find it.”

“Ya already asked me that, hon,” she says, easing into the back of her rocker in sort of a pooped-out way. “Ya sure it was those bushes you left it in? Tim Ray trimmed that side of the barn yesterday and didn’t say a thing about findin’ your briefcase.”