Land of a Hundred Wonders

It wasn’t until after Mr. Bailey had gone that I thought of something I did need. Not me, really, but Top O’ the Mornin’. Who’s going to wrassle up the chow? Who’s going to turn on the pumps?

“Hey,” Clever calls. She’s right on time, coming toward me in a tan T-shirt and too-short skirt that used to fit her just fine.

Picking up a flat rock, I side-arm it. After I watered the roses and tossed the birdseed, I moved my collection of skimmers down here to the pier. I’m not going to sit in my matching chair on the lawn ’til Grampa gets back.

“Ya left the hose on,” Clever says, plopping down next to me.

I draw my knees up outta the water.

“It’s all right. I closed it up for ya.” She presses up against me, letting her bare feet dangle in the water next to mine. The sky looks like a baby present. Pale blue with ribbons of pink wrapping it up. “Miss Florida told me ya went and got my belongin’s offa Rudy’s porch.”

She’s acting a little cocky, like she doesn’t care that her mama kicked her out, and I don’t know, maybe she really doesn’t. That apartment they lived in above the Tap wasn’t so nice. Dirty clothes balled up in the corners. Empty beer cans sitting on the windowsills like feeding troughs for flies. And when you tried to drift off to sleep, the shouts coming up from the bar below always reminded me of those religious pictures of lost souls calling for help from hell.

“Mama promised that she and Miss Florida will keep takin’ care of the diner until Charlie…” This is hard on her, too. Clever loves Grampa and he her.

If Janice and Miss Florida have been tending to Top O’ the Mornin’, it’s probably the second coming of World War Two up there by now. And that’s a big IF. I know I can count on Miss Florida, but Janice Lever’s promises aren’t worth a plug nickel.

“I picked up the Gazette from the library and dropped it off at all the regular places for ya,” Clever says, picking up one of my flat rocks and letting it rip. “Ya ever gonna talk again?”

“Your belongin’s sack is next to his chair.”

I side-arm two nice ones. My dog should be divin’ for these rocks.

Clever returns with her bag of things and sets it down between us. “Where’s Keep at?”

“I… I was just wonderin’ the same thing.”

Sometime back, we discovered if somebody lays their hands on me, I can recall things better. Clever says it works ’cause another person’s energy sinks into my skin, flows up to my brain and gives it a jump- start. Pressing her sticky palms to my cheeks, she says, “Ready?”

I close my eyes the way she likes me to and wait for something to come into my scrambled-up mind, but all that appears is the realization that Grampa’s gone and he might not be back. “I can’t… nuthin’s happenin’,” I say, giving up. My memory feels matted. Worse than usual.

“Grampa had a heart attack,” Clever says. “He’s in the hospital.”

Miss Lydia is always telling me that having trouble with my memory might be more a blessing than a curse. Maybe she’s right, because unlike a breath ago, I can picture him now in the cold metal bed, breathing so slow.

“That’s where Keeper is, too.” Dr. Sam Cooper, knowing that dog like he does, he told me it’d be fine for me to leave him at the hospital. When Grampa wakes up and feels my dog curled up next to him, maybe his heart’ll get happier, the same way it does when he spots a red-wing blackbird, his most favorite feathered friend of all. Oak-a-lee… oak-a-lee… oak-a-lee.

“Mama says he’s bad.” Clever dabs at my tears with the bottoms of her T-shirt. “Ya gotta prepare yourself.”

“And just how am I supposed to prepare myself for… I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” I say, kicking up a spray.

She hunches her shoulders and looks over at Willard’s place. “Wait a minute… I might got somethin’ to cheer you up.” She takes a box of Top O’ the Mornin’ matches out of her skirt pocket. On her third try, the lantern that hangs off the dock flames up. Opening the top of her belongin’s sack, Clever spreads out what’s inside. Those stretched-out socks. That used-up sweatshirt. She gives a yelp when she sees her rolled- up Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid poster. “Well, I’ll be damned,” she says, hugging it close. “That was real thoughtful of Janice to send it along, don’tcha think?”

I guarantee you, her mama didn’t give it one thought ’bout how happy that poster’d make her girl.

“What’s that?” I ask, poking at the tip of a piece of paper that I hadn’t perceived earlier. It’s jutting out the back pocket of the raggedy jeans.

“That’s the somethin’ I thought might cheer ya up.” She knocks my hand away, slips out the folded piece of paper and irons it straight on the dock. “I stole it off Willard. It’s his precious map.”

A map? Willard? Where have I heard… “He was askin’ me about a map this afternoon. But he told me he was lookin’ for a treasure map.” And that I should get it off Clever and return it to him right away tonight or there will be hell to pay. “This doesn’t look at all like a treasure map,” I say. “Shouldn’t there be a big X that marks the spot and a coupla skulls?”

Clever asks eager-beaverly, “It’s a treasure map?”

“That’s what Willard said.” The wobbly dock lantern is sending darting shadows across the paper. “Wait a minute,” I say, pointing. “Isn’t that the Malloy place?” Me and Clever, Billy and Georgie and Cooter used to play hide-and-go-seek in those rows of tobacco when we were kids.

“That figures. Willard’s got something clandestine going on out there with Bishop Malloy. I heard ’em talkin’.”

I wheel toward her, shocked from my nose to my toes. “You know what clandestine means?”

“Got a book outta the library when I picked up the Gazette. Been workin’ all afternoon learnin’ some new words. Figured you and me… well, with Grampa… maybe we could start playin’ some Scrabble.” Clever clears her throat twice and announces, “Clandestine relates back to the Ku Klux boys.”

Really, I don’t have the heart to tell her.

But just like this investigative reporter suspected, Willard is up to no good. And not by his lonesome. Sounds like he’s joined up with rotten Bishop Malloy, who is deceased Mr. Buster’s only child with his wife, Suellen, who is also dead from something I don’t recall. Never have been able to tolerate Bishop, who is NOT religious even though his name makes him sound like he is. He does bad things to stray cats. And I’ve seen him pull the pants offa kids to humiliate ’em. What could those two troublemakers be up to out at the Malloy place?

Clever’s stomach grumbles.

“Sounds like ya need some chicken noodle soup,” I say, swinging my legs outta the lake. “Straight from the can, just the way you like it.”

“That sounds real good,” she says, stuffin’ the rest of her belongin’s back into the sack, but folding the map up neat and sliding it into the top of her swirly skirt. “And then what say you and me go firefly catchin’ like we used to. When we got a jar full, we’ll take ’em up to Miss Lydia and she can make a feel-better potion for Grampa. You’d like that, right?”

When I don’t answer, when the tears come again, she gathers me into the kind of fierce hug that Clever’s well known for. The kind where she’s not so much hugging as holding on to ya like you’re a life preserver. “He’d expect you to saddle up and ride hard, and here ya are feelin’ all sorrowful,” she says. “Ya gotta be strong for him, Butch. C’mon.” She takes her bag up in one hand, my hand in the other. “I’m starvin’.”

When we pass his Adirondack, I run my fingers down the wood. Give it a smooch right where his head falls against the grain. Clever’s right. I am feeling sorry for myself, and like Grampa always says, feeling sorry for yourself never gets nobody nowhere quick.