Once we’re up close to Browntown Beach, I pull the oars into the boat and we glide the rest of the way. Clever splashes into the lake first, followed by me, with Keeper bringing up the rear. It’s so damn sultry tonight, even the frogs are complaining. And the cicadas, well, they don’t appear to know the meaning of the words “enough already.” I’m beginning to get that wormy feeling in my stomach. Maybe I shouldn’ta agreed to this. We pulled up the boat not too far from where Mr. Buster is rotting away.
Clever taunts, “Race ya,” and rushes off toward the trees that the colored music is dripping out of like sap.
Should I tell Clever, my dearest and oldest friend, about finding his dead body? She could have some ideas. Every once in a while she gets a bright one. Like how she figured out how to get us into the 57 Outdoor for free by outfitting me in a two-sizes-too-small angora sweater. Our thumbs and my double D’s stuck out quite nicely on the highway. (I wouldn’t recommend the trunk of a Fairlane as a mode of travel, but Paint Your Wagon was worth every bit of that greasy ride. That Mr. Clint Eastwood certainly’s got an awful lotta mumbling charm.)
Then again, if I tell Clever about finding Mr. Buster, I might as well go ahead and plaster the news on the billboard outside of town, because as much as I love her, and I do with every inch of myself, the girl is NOT well known for her secret-keeping ability. No. There’d go my investigation, and writing my awfully good story is still #1 on my VERY IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO list.
“Gib?” Clever’s hurrying ahead down the path that runs along the shore, still impressively swift despite her swollenness. “What’s takin’ ya so long?”
I can’t see her face, but I don’t have to. I know it’s radiating excitement, and if you could see her heart, it’d have a crazy ole grin plastered across it. Clever gets like this whenever she’s near Browntown. Wilder.
“Be right there,” I yell, true to my word, ’til a mewling sound coming out of the bushes next to the path stops me cold. Lifting up the low branches, I can see a tabby kitten huddled in the dirt, looking scared as can be. I recognize her as one of Miss Lydia’s from her cat Sheba. How’d she get out from underneath the porch? Shame on her mama.
"C’mon,” Clever shouts from farther down the path, her head bobbing through the bushes.
“Come back here,” I holler. “I found somethin’.” I’d like to think the reason she keeps going is that she can’t hear me, but more’n likely, it’s ’cause she’s so charged up. Well, I can’t just abandon the poor thing. There’s snakes and possums and all sorts of critters livin’ it up in these woods at night. Don’t know if they lick their lips for kittens or not, but don’t think I’ll take that chance. "C’mon, Keep. We gotta make us another stop first,” I say, veering down the path that leads to nearby Land of a Hundred Wonders. I must also confess to some selfishness right here on my part. Because if Miss Lydia is still up and about, which she will be since she hardly ever sleeps, I figure she’ll let me have a quick VISITATIONwith my mama, after which I will feel cherished. When we’re done, me and Keeper’ll take the trail behind her barn so we can reunite with Clever.
“Hurry up,” I tell Keeper, who’s dragging behind me. He is not at all fond of felines, so he’s low growling. I got the kitten up close, snuggling into her fur the way you do. “Shhh… shhh… shhh…” I’m croonin’ over and over, when outta the dark comes a voice I know only too well.
“Well, lookee here.”
“Sh… it!” I squeal, tripping, almost falling. “Ya ’bout scared the wits outta me!”
“Don’t you mean what wits you got left?” Sneaky Tim Ray says, the stink of him permeating the air. It’s not only the usual hooch smell, it’s something else real off-putting. Keeper’s full out snarling.
I say, the fright of it all giving me heart-pumping bravery, “I’m warnin’ you, Holloway, quit poppin’ out at me like that or I’ll… I’ll…”
Swaying back and forth like a strong wind’s gotten under his skin, he says in his snidest of tones, “You’ll what, darlin’?”
“I’ll… I’ll…” He’s right. What will I do? I cannot thwart him. He’d hurt Keeper “accidentally on purpose,” the way he’s sworn to do. “What do ya want?”
“Saw y’all boatin’ along the shore,” he says, swigging down a swallow from his jug. “Ya could say we’s your welcomin’ committee.”
We? What does he mean, “we”?
Who is that towering behind him in the shadows? “That you, Cooter Smith?” I ask, hoping it is ’cause me and him go way back. Not only as gadabout friends, but after his mama and daddy disappeared, Miss Florida asked Grampa to take Cooter under his wing. Growing up, I can’t tell you the number of nights I fell asleep listening to the two of them out on the lawn practicing birdcalls. For old times’ sake, I sing to him, “Oakalee… oakalee… oakalee.”
“Gib.” Cooter steps forward and nods, barely.
Lord, what is that citified thing he’s done with his hair? Looks as sleek as a fender on a funeral car.
“Whatcha got there?” Sneaky Tim Ray pries my arms apart with only-God-knows-where-they-been fingers. “Awww. Ain’t she precious.” He runs his hands down the kitten’s spine, wrenches her outta my arms. “Ya know, you and me have a lot more in common than ya might realize, darlin’. Bet you didn’t for instance know that I love pussies, too,” he says, laughing cruddy and flinging the kitten into the woods.
When I start after her, Holloway cinches me around the waist. “Not so fast. You ’n me got some unfinished bidness to take care of.”
Cooter, shifting from foot to foot, says, “We ain’t got time for this. Leave her be.”
“ ’Fraid I cain’t do that,” Sneaky Tim Ray says, wrenching my hand to the front of his stained bibs. “The south has risen again.”
Cooter brushes past me mad as hell, leaving behind the smell of chewed bones and coffee grounds and orange peelings from the Browntown dump. He’s gotta work there because Sheriff Johnson spreads awful tales about him so nobody else will hire him anywheres else. (There’s a feud between Cooter and the sheriff that is perpetual. You ask anyone, they’ll tell you how much LeRoy despises “that uppity Smith boy.”) “You comin’?” he calls back to Sneaky Tim Ray.
“That’s the plan,” Holloway says, breathing faster now. But it must be important wherever they’re going ’cause he’s glaring at me, then back at the woods that Cooter disappeared into, and then back at me, finally spitting out, “Fuck,” as his hand darts up to my neck. He thumbs the indent of my throat, tears off my new locket. “I’ll jus’ take this for a consolation prize. Ya know what tha’ means, don’tcha?”
I’m pretty sure it means I wish I was back at the cottage with my grampa.
“I’ll catch you on the flip-flop, darlin’. Don’t think I won’t.” He takes a swipe at my ninnies and yells, “Hold up, Smith,” and off he goes into the trees.
Goddamn that Holloway!
After I’m sure that he isn’t going to double back, which he’s pulled on me more than once, I head over to where the kitten landed, but Keeper’s stopped fussing, so she musta made her way back home. Ya know one of the things I pray for each and every night without fail? That Sneaky Tim Ray’ll fall into a pit of quick-sand right before my very eyes. And when he starts begging for me to hand him a branch, I’ll break one off the closest tree and wave it just outta his reach, saying, “Remember that time in the woods? In the barn? All those times ya took advantage?” (I’m lettin’ you know right now, I ever get a chance to avenge myself, I’ll eye-for-an-eye do it.)
Clever is calling again, “Giiibby.”
“Over here,” I try to yell back, but Sneaky Tim Ray’s stench has clenched tight in my throat.
“There ya are,” she says, skipping down the path toward me. “Look who I found.”
My, oh, my. If I had my camera with me, if it wasn’t lying under those bushes in my briefcase over at Miss Jessie’s, I’d click off a picture of Miss Florida Smith. That’d make a good human interest shot for the Gazette during L &N Railroad Days, that’s how much she resembles one of their locomotives.
Miss Florida yells, “What in tarnation ya doin’ here?”
“I don’t remember,” I yell back.
“Are you crazy comin’ over here in the dead of night? If your grampa finds out, ya know what kind of trouble y’all’d be in?”
Clever says to her, “Don’t be so mad. It’s my fault. I made her.”
“Why don’t that news surprise me none?” Miss Florida gives us both a real crummy look and commences chugging back toward her house.
“I saw Cooter,” I say, thinking that’ll slow her down some because she loves her grandbaby to bits.
“Ya saw Cooter?” Clever says, real lively.
Miss Florida asks me, “He alone?”
“No, he was not. He was with Sneaky Tim Ray, who told me the south-”
“Oh, Lord. Sure as the day is long, that no-account Holloway has gone and got my Cooter into something he shoun’t oughta be into,” Miss Florida laments.
I almost say: Well, of course he did, but I dare not get Miss Florida any more worked up. She’s already steaming.