Land of a Hundred Wonders

gettin’ married, and baby Rosie’s toes, and I bet Grampa’ll be back home soon.

So I’m thinking about picking some of his favorite bluebells for him when outta the woods up ahead somebody yells out in a last-chance voice, “Come on out or we’re comin’ in after ya.”

“Yeah,” somebody else calls out.

Thinkin’ it’s me they’re hollering at, I flatten down to the ground until another voice shouts, “I’ll be back with her mama,” and then I realize it can’t be me they’re talking about because, as you well know… Well, lookee here! I bet all this commotion is breakin’ news of some sort. Thank goodness. I sure could use another awfully good story right about now.

Skittering fast down the trail, trying to blend in like Billy taught me, I get a good look at what’s unfolding on the other side of the trees. The angry voices are coming from the old Hamilton place, which has been abandoned ever since Mr. Garr Hamilton got dragged back to jail for moonshinin’. Years ago, I was friends with his girl, Martha Jane, who went and lived with her auntie out west once they carted her daddy off. I haven’t been up here since. The clapboard house looks like it’s shrugging now. Ya can’t even tell that it used to be painted a dawning-sky blue. Focusing on the front-yard tree, the one that’s got the tire swing still hangin’ off it, I can see the sun glinting off a gun barrel poking through the minty leaves. And over to my right, there’s Deputy Boyd trying to conceal his chubby self behind a skinny outhouse.

What the heck is goin’ on here?

Ohhh… I get it.

Once Billy and Clever got away from ’em, and Keeper led Cooter safe down the trail to the hospital, the posse, all worked up like they were, musta went looking for somebody else to sink their yellow dog teeth into. That’s what’s gotta be happening here. They got somebody cornered.

Martha Jane and me used to play cowboys and injuns in these woods, and I remember ’em well enough to be making my way closer to the house on my best buffalo-hunting feet. Arriving behind a wide-trunked maple, I get a view of the side yard of the old place. There’s bushes that haven’t been trimmed in years and a scraggly apple orchard and grass so long that it’s up to the knees of the horse that’s grazing like he died and went to heaven. If I didn’t know better… wait… is that… Dancer? How’d he end up here at the Hamilton place instead of at the hospital where he was supposed to deliver Cooter just in time to see Rosie Adelaide make her way into the word? Did Dancer spook and throw Cooter off? Or maybe Cooter’s leg got bothering him so bad that he couldn’t stay mounted and had to make the rest of his way to St. Mary’s on foot or… OH MY GOD IN ALL YOUR GLORY!

It’s gotta be Cooter the posse has run to ground! They got him trapped inside the house! What’s happened to Keeper?

I’m about to call out for my dog, the hell with the posse hearing me, when the sheriff’s car sweeps into the circle drive and comes to a halt on the lawn. Knocking down the old birdbath with the door of his squad car, LeRoy barges out, saying something spiteful sounding to somebody in the backseat. Then he squats and bellows, gun pulled from his holster, “This has gone far enough y’all. This is your last warnin’.”

Y’all?

I’m weaving amongst the trees, attempting to get a better look, when I see tethered to a tree that’s growing new in this old place, Sonny, lapping cloudy water from a puddle.

Oh no…

Clever and Billy never made it to the hospital! That means Billy didn’t get to show the pictures of dead Mr. Buster on the beach to Judge Larson and so… “Oh, sweet, sweet Jesus,” I say, falling to my knees and begging for His help. My eyes looking heavenward, that’s when I see my Billy and he sees me. Up on the roof of the house, there’s what you call a cupola, that’s what he’s hiding behind. Sniping. He’s holding up a warning finger. Wait, he’s signaling.

“I said, come out NOW,” the sheriff yells through his bullhorn. “This is your last chance.”

Billy better have a real good plan to end this standoff ’cause furious fumes are coming off LeRoy Johnson when he reaches back into the squad car door and yanks out Janice Lever by her wrist.

I’ve gotten even closer by belly-crawling. Billy told me to wait, and him knowing so much about warfare, that’s what I’ll do for now, but I got my.22 already drawn.

Within earshot, LeRoy Johnson threatens Janice, “Ya tell your girl to bring that boy outta the house with her, and I’ll let her go. If not, I’ll have her and that baby she’s about to birth incarcerated.”

The sheriff’s talking blustery, but he gets an ascared look on his face when a voice wet with excitement comes out of the top of the tire swing tree, saying, “Time’s up.” It’s one of the Brandish Boys up there in the hunting blind. The one who sounds swampish.

The sheriff shoves Janice closer to the house. “Do it,” he commands her.

“Carol? Carol, honey? It’s Mama,” she tries to shout, but her voice, weak from her yesterday drinking, won’t barely rise. Her hair is tumbling to the side and she’s wearing the same clothes she had on in the jail cell when I broke Cooter free. “You gotta come out, baby. They’s gonna burn ya out, ya don’t.”

To my left, I hear a sneer, actually hear it, I tell ya. Carefully, so carefully, I peek. The long- eared Brandish Boy, he’s secreting himself a few yards away from me, behind a gnarled oak, so I can smell the gasoline just fine. And hear him flicking a lighter off and on, off and on like he’s so hungry to see that house gorging itself on flames.

For a piece, all is quiet, ’cept for the cicadas, but then a voice comes muffled from inside the house, “Don’t shoot. I’m comin’ out.” When the front door swings open, it’s Cooter, hands waving in surrender.

Keeper’s not by his side.

That’s when I hear the Brandish Boy cock that rifle from up in the tree. Seein’ what’s about to unfold, I shout, “No! Cooter! It’s a trap!” And hearing me, he starts to turn back, but then, something I never woulda imagined… like in some awful, awful final scene from one of them shoot-’em-up movies, Clever’s mama takes off runnin’ toward the front door the exact same moment the Brandish Boy pulls back on his trigger.

I scream, louder than the sheriff, who’s aiming his rifle up to the tree the shot came from, booming at the Brandish Boy, “Drop your gun and get down outta there. You’re under arrest.” And then, not taking his eyes off the branches, LeRoy orders over to the outhouse, “Jimmy Lee, the other one’s makin’ a run for it. Get after him.”

From atop the roof, Billy, slipping and sliding down the shingles, shouts, “Gibby, run!” and I almost do, but the blood from Janice’s head is gushing down her neck and onto her chest.

“Stay still, stay still,” I cry, hurrying to where she’s collapsed on the grass. Picking up her pointy-nailed hands and cradling her head gently in my lap, all I can think to say is, “Why? Why the hell did ya do that, Janice?” Amidst all the yelling and the distracting smell of fresh gun smoke, I can barely focus enough to hear her struggling to say, “The Boys.” She’s striving for, but not attaining, one of her snotty smiles. “I know ’em real well. They… they was gonna shoot Cooter for the reward no matter what.” A bubble of pink comes floating to the corner of her pale lips. “I had to stop them… I… every girl should have a daddy. My grandbaby is gonna have hers.”

Pressing my hands to the side of her head, I’m trying to push the blood back where it belongs. “For crissakes, don’t die, Janice,” I say, at the same time the awfulest keening comes from outta the house.

When I look up, there’s Clever standing in a broken-out top-floor window, Cooter by her side. Our desperate eyes meeting as she screams out, “Mama. I’m comin’. Don’t let her go, Gib.”

But after Janice in a barely-there voice says to me, “I told ya… I told ya I’d make it up to her someday, didn’t I?” I know it’s too late. With a flutter, like a petal falling from a flower, nothing more, Clever’s selfish, selfish mama is already gone.

In Conclusion, I’d Like to Say

With all her funeral-attending experience, Clever was able to pull together a real attractive one for her mama. She came to me a few days after Janice’s passing and asked, “Ya mind puttin’ some words together for her stone? Something nice,” she tacked on, because she knew that even though I admired Janice sacrificing herself for Cooter, and her wonderful waitressing skills, I still got some leftover feelings