Land of a Hundred Wonders

“I meant, are you handling Grampa being in the hospital?”

I must have a confused look on my face ’cause Clever says, “He got that heart attack?”

It comes back to me in a sorrowful swoosh. What if he doesn’t get better? What if…

“Soon as I heard, I went up to check on him,” Billy says. He’s got a nice voice. Deep, but not scarily so. Sorta like Grampa’s. “Miz Tanner told me he’s doin’ as well as can be expected.”

Feeling awfully bad about my previous wretched tone, I reach into the special slot in the briefcase where I keep them and peel off four well-deserved gold stars. “You are a good Sumerian, ” I say, pressing them onto his shirt pocket. Up close like this, he smells of sweat and a certain dog. “How’s Keeper holdin’ up?”

“Don’t waste your time worrying about him,” Billy says with a foxy grin. “Got all the nurses eatin’ outta his hand.”

Oh, poor, poor Billy. I worry about him so. Besides his overall jumpiness, he’s afflicted with Flashbacks: An intensely vivid mental image of a past traumatic experience that make him think he’s someplace he’s not, and that these people called the gooks are coming for him with bayonets and jungle thread, and off he runs like a panicked animal. Or sometimes he sobs hard. Or gets awfully mixed up, like he is now. He should know by now that Keeper has paws, not hands.

“Guess what, Billy?” Clever trills. “I’m gonna have a baby.”

“I can see that.” Not being of a judgmental nature, Billy smiles and says, “That’s nice,” like she just told him she’s gonna have a haircut, which wouldn’t be a half-bad idea. She’s starting to look kinda witchy, if ya ask me.

“And we’re on the lam,” Clever adds.

Just as I start to explain it all to Billy, the horned owl, with the kind of well-timed interrogation technique that I can only dream of musterin’, jumps in with, “Whoo.”

“The sheriff is chasin’ us down. Willard, too,” I say, suddenly wanting Billy to pet me. A lot. All over the place. What the heck? Focus, Gibby, focus.

I tick off on my fingers:

“The What: The treasure map. The Where: In my briefcase. The When: Right this minute. The Why: Must be valuable as hell.”

Billy scrunches his face up, which is mighty adorable. “A treasure map? What kind of treasure?”

We’ve gotten comfortable in a powwow circle. When me and Clever were escaping out the bedroom window, I slipped one of the squat candles into my shorts pocket. I’ve lit it up and the shadows are two- stepping under our chins. This reminds me of something. I can’t recall what, but I can feel the edges of a memory forming. Billy sure looks appealing with those cheek-bones that remind me of a sheer cliff and popped cherry lips and…

“I don’t know what the treasure is. Willard never said. But I think Gibby is right,” Clever says, in a juiced-up way. “It’s buried someplace on the Malloy land, and you and me and her are going to go dig it up and use it to buy diapers and food for the baby so I don’t have to give it up to a social. Show ’em, Butch.”

Between the candle, the full moon, and the flashlight, we’re doing okay vision-wise. I remove the map from my briefcase and spread it out on the ground. Billy’s hair is lovely in the firelight. I would adore caressing it, I know I would. Just wrap those ringlets right around my fingers.

“Oh, man,” Billy says.

“What?” Clever nudges closer, like she owns him or something.

“See that? These rows are a different color ink. They’re red and all the other rows”-Billy runs his hand over the map- “they’re black.”

What the heck is wrong with me? I’m about to write the story that’ll go down in the anus of Cray Ridge history and all I can seem to think about is touching Billy’s tummy to see if it’s as hard as it looks. “What do you think those red rows are?” I ask, struggling to get involved the way a trained reporter should. “Prime burley tobacco? Do you think that’s what the treasure could be?”

Maybe this all has something to do with Mr. Frank Reynolds from New York City since that’s where Willard is from. Even though he finally ended up telling me, it woulda been just a matter of time before I perceived where he hailed from on account of his accent, which resembles that Streisand gal’s in the movie Funny Girl, which was not at all funny, by the way.

Holy smokes. I bet Bishop Malloy, Mr. Buster’s son, who Willard is being clandestine with, is going to steal that tobacco off the farm and take it to Mr. Frank Reynolds in New York City for a reward, on account of Mr. Reynolds’s concern about cigarettes causing cancer. Just like one of those rattler roundups that Grampa told me they have down in Texas. Bring in a sack of sidewinders-ya get ten bucks reward. That has to be Willard’s plan. Rustle up the tobacco and haul it north for cash money. Yes, I’m absolutely certain that’s what he’s up to.

Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.

Am I jumping to conclusions AGAIN?

What if Willard doesn’t work for Mr. Frank Reynolds at all? What if… what if… he works as an operative for Mr. Howard Redmond, also from New York City, who has sent him to Cray Ridge to check up on my investigative techniques?

I grab my camera out of my briefcase, ready to snap a picture of the treasure map. Just to make sure. In case Willard is reporting back to Mr. Howard Redmond, I want to be extra thorough.

But when the flash cube pops, I see more than I bargained for. Peering through the trees at us is Sneaky Tim Ray Holloway. An up-to-no-good grin on his greasy lips.

The No Good, the Bad and the Ugly

'Well, my oh my. Who do we have here?” Sneaky Tim Ray says, coming out in the open and dropping to his feet a burlap sack he’s got slung over his shoulder. He’s been doing some hunting and has come up with a coon. Maybe a possum. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since Teddy Smith gave him that hayloft whuppin’. An oily rag is barely concealing the black socket that should be filled up by his glass eye. His nose looks farther east than it used to. And some confused soul’s been kissin’ on his neck, leaving strawberry-colored lip prints behind. Dang. If Grampa was here, he’d exclaim right about now, “Boy looks like somethin’ the dog’s been keeping’ under the porch.”

“What ya got in the sack, Holloway? Your brain?” Clever taunts. (She is not at all afraid of him, or anything else for that matter, because, really, what does she have to lose?) “What the hell ya want?”

“Ain’t ’bout what I want.” Sneaky Tim Ray tugs on the rope that’s holding the bag closed. After rootin’ around some, he yanks my Keeper out by his front legs. “ ’Bout what y’all want.”

“Jesus,” I yell. Billy’s gotta hold me back when Sneaky Tim Ray circles his hands around Keep’s throat.

Clever shouts, “Hand over the dog, ya one-eyed fool.”

Keeper doesn’t seem right. He’s logy looking. Isn’t he s’posed to be at St. Mary’s guarding over Grampa? “How’d you get ahold a him?” I ask, completely confused.

“Well, the Lord do work in mysterious ways, don’t He, darlin’? There I was over to the hospital payin’ a visit to a lady friend of mine,” he says, puffin’ up. “And who should I find sittin’ outside one of them rooms but this here mutt.”

When Billy pounces off the ground toward him, Sneaky Tim Ray pliers his hand around Keeper’s neck tight enough to make his legs go rigid. “One step closer, soldier boy, and this dog’ll be headin’ off to the happy huntin’ ground.”

“Wwwhat do you wwwant?” Billy says, gripping and ungripping his fists. He wants to get at this louse so bad, but he can’t, and it’s causing his stutter to flare up.

“Wwwhat I wwwant is that mmmap,” Holloway mocks.