Land of a Hundred Wonders Read online

  Just in case you’re not familiar with the goings-on of the dearly departed, what Mama’s supposed to be doing is gazing down at her baby girl from on high, fluttering her wings in pride, her halo shooting off sparks of joy. She’s not supposed to be pacing the stars, wringing her small but strong hands. Even though Miss Lydia tried to comfort me by telling me that it’s not my fault, I don’t believe her. That’s exactly what she would say, her being the heart of Land of a Hundred Wonders. No, I’m positive Mama’s restlessness is on account of me. Because I’m NQR.

  So that’s why #1 on my VERY IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO list is to prove that I can get Quite Right again. I figure I’m gonna have to set my hook into a heck of a plan in order to convince Mama. Ya know, something splashy. Like winning one of those public Scrabble tournaments they hold over in Appleville the first Sunday of every month. Or maybe reporting an awfully good story. It can’t be something normal-like. It’s gotta be something near miraculous in nature. Like me surviving the crash. Miss Lydia tells me all the time I’m a living, breathing miracle.

  At the current time, I’m leaning toward that reporting of an awfully good story plan ’cause you’re never gonna guess what I found on Browntown Beach this morning on my way to Land of a Hundred Wonders. Not the usual trout with what-the-hell-happened eyes. Not a soggy boot with gnaw marks neither. Or even a crushed-up can of Falls Beer. No. Could be I stumbled upon the kind of story that’ll get lips flapping far and wide. I can perceive it all now. “I swear, the McGraw gal’s better at reportin’ these days than a twelve gauge,” folks’ll say, trumpeting my Gazette headline loud enough to be heard all the way up to the Pearly Gates. “Can you believe how much righter she’s gotten?”

  Lord. I believe I’ll move that public Scrabble tournament plan to my back burner for the time being. Now that I’ve had a chance to think this through, this awfully good story plan appears to be the answer to my prayers! Yes, indeedy. Start scouting for a nicely cushioned cloud to set your restless self, Mama. ’Cause that dead body? It’s gonna be our ticket to Quite Right heaven.

  Black and White and Red All Over

  Every Friday afternoon you can pick up a copy of Gibby’s Gazette at Top O’ the Mornin’ and other important locations throughout Cray Ridge. Like Loretta’s Candy World— Home of the Best Chocolate-Covered Cherries in the Universe and Beyond. Washateria keeps a stack near the detergent dispenser. And there’s always a neat pile on the counter of Ye Olde Boo Store. (The k fell off a couple of years ago and Mr. Deacon, ye olde owner, isn’t in any hurry to replace it. He gets a kick out of lecturing visitors that they’d be better off “quenchin’ their thirst for knowledge” when they come sniffing around for bourbon and find nothing but good books instead.) In my humblest of opinions, the absolute finest of those knowledge quenchers is one called—The Importance of Perception in Meticulous Investigation. I used to be the editor of my high school newspaper, so I believe Grampa gifted me the book the day I got out of the hospital to keep my brain, like those doctors suggested, “stimulated.”

  Like always, we’re busy at the diner, feeding the regulars and even the not so regulars. The fans are whirring overhead and the smell of frying eggs is strong when Senor Bender, a teacher of Espanol up at the high school, eases down onto his usual counter stool along with last week’s copy of my Gazette. I can’t waitress ’cause our customers get all kinds of irritable if I disremember and bring ’em home fries when they order grits, but along with wiping tables, I am permitted to get folks situated.

  “How’s the best-lookin’ girl in Grant County this mornin’?” the Senor asks when I pass him the menu. (You can’t tell just by looking at me that I’m NQR. The scar on the left side of my head is blanketed by the chili bean hair I got from my daddy and my celery-colored eyes are from Mama, so all in all, I believe I’m considered somewhat appetizing.)

  “Why, I am just g-r-e-a-t,” I say, showing off my outstanding service smile and superior spelling skills. “Muchas gracias for askin’, you bastard.”

  “Gibson!” Grampa shouts outta the kitchen peek window.

  Uh-oh. (The only time he calls me by my Christian name is when I’ve done something just the opposite.) “What?”

  “Home . . . home on the range . . . where the deer and the antelope play . . . ,” Grampa begins singing so loud that I bet the folks in Mercer County are tapping the toes . . . “where seldom is heard . . . a discouraging word . . .”

  Him doing that? That does NOT mean Grampa’s a music lover. No. Sad to report, that singing is a secret code we got between us to let me know that I’m cursing and should quit ASAP. And it is too discouraging.

  I bend down to explain to the Senor like I’ve been taught, “I was in a car crash that banged up my brain so now it’s got a blue streak runs through it.” Goodness, this man has real nice hair. Good and greasy. “Please accept my deepest of apologies. I’m workin’ on it.”

  “Apology accepted, like always,” he says after a sip of the coffee one cream I set down so carefully so as not to spill on the lovely shirt he’s sporting. That paisley pattern’s all the rage now. “So what’s new in the world of investigative reportin’, Gibby?”

  “Lemme see,” I say, trying to corral my thoughts. “Well, first off . . . I got an awfully hot lead, and second off . . . one of Miz Tanner’s mares had a filly week before last. You’re never gonna guess what she named it.”

  “Que?”

  “Nooo.” But I add on real fast, because I wasn’t born in a barn, “But Kay is a solid guess and a real pretty name. Try again. Take your time.”

  The Senor short snorts, and says, “How about . . . ah . . . Gibby?”

  “What?”

  “No, I meant . . . did Miz Tanner name her new filly—Gibby?” he says. “After you?”

  “How’d ya know that?” I ask, completely floored.

  “Front-page news,” he says, running his polished finger under the headline I musta wrote last week:

  Filly Named Gibby! How Do You

  Like Them Apples?

  Ya know, this is one of those moments it feels like no matter how good the plan, I’m not ever gonna get Quite Right again. Round and round and round I go. I swear, it’s dizzying. If I could, if Grampa wasn’t hawk watching me like he does, I’d run out the back door right this minute and hide in the crook of the pin oak, that’s how weepy I’m feeling.

  “Wait a minute now . . . go ahead and correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t ya just mention something about havin’ an awfully hot lead?” the Senor asks.

  Did I? I think I musta since he wouldn’t make that up. The Senor’s not that well known for lying. But what was my awfully hot lead? Bubby Heckler winning darts night at the Tap? No, no, that’s old news. Focus, Gib, focus. It was . . . it was . . . that dead body. Yes! Lying on the beach near the jumping tree, the gnarled-up one kids yell “Geronimo” from before they tumble into the lake. But that body wasn’t drowned. I’ve seen a drowned body before. No, the body I found this morning was not greenish like that other one, but it was puffy as hell ’cause it belonged to Mr. Buster Malloy, who is legendary large. And s’posed to be the next governor of the fine state of Kentucky.

  Mr. Buster wasn’t perspiring buckets like he usually did. He was cool to the touch on that toasty sand. Punctured something bad four times in the chest. His head dangling off his neck like a cherry twisted off its stem. Butterscotch candies tumbling out of his pocket, which was not unusual. He was well known for those candies. In fact, if Mr. Butter (that’s what he was fond of calling himself) ever came upon you when you were just going about your business, he’d give a hearty laugh and say, “Lookee here, girl, look what Mr. Butter’s got for ya. Sweets for the sweet that’ll melt in your mouth.” Never mind refusing him. He wouldn’t leave you be until you stuck your hand in his deep pants pocket and rooted around. Another one of the things Mr. Buster was well known for—his thick ole eyeglasses—were smashed to smithereens next to his corpus delecti. According to Mr. Howard Redmond
of New York City, New York, the author of The Importance of Perception in Meticulous Investigation—evidence is EXTREMELY important. Thank goodness, I also remembered to take pictures of that dead man.

  So I got a body, and I got some photos, all’s I need now for my awfully good story plan to work is to stay in focus. Plant the memory of finding Mr. Buster deep inside my brain so there’s no chance of it gettin’ blowed off like a dandelion wisp to parts unknown. (I’m sorry if this should occur from time to time. When it comes to my rememberings, I’m ashamed to say, it is apt to.) Once I get the chance to investigate that murder and publish the resulting story, I know that Mama will . . .

  Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.

  Am I jumping to conclusions? Mr. Howard Redmond would be extremely disappointed in me if I was. In fact, in the chapter— The Dangers of Jumping to Conclusions—he warns specifically about doing just that. Maybe Mr. Buster wasn’t murdered at all. Maybe it was nothing but . . .

  “Gibby?” asks Senor Bender, tapping his cup for a topping off.

  “Yeah?” I ask, pouring.

  “That awfully hot lead you mentioned?”

  “What about it?”

  “Thought you might like to brag on it a bit,” he says with a wink.

  Well, for crissakes, everybody and their aunt Martha knows that you gotta keep a breaking story top secret. Poor, poor Senor. Looks like the only thing he’s got going for him in his brain department is his real nice hair.

  The Creek Don’t Really Rise

  Since we only serve breakfast at Top O’ the Mornin’, I flip over the GONE FISHIN’ sign on the front door after the bells down the road get done clanging one time. There are two churches in Cray Ridge—Cumberland United Methodist and the one all the coloreds go to, First Ebenezer Baptist. Grampa is no longer a God-fearing man, but I walk on eggshells around the Ten Commandments. I cannot go to hell under any circumstances since I’m ascared of fire in a deathly way. To keep my bases covered, I attend the Methodist at least once a month, but get my daily dose of holy out at Land of a Hundred Wonders.

  Our kitchen help, Miss Florida Smith, has already unknotted her apron and folded it square, because never mind that she’s big as the state she’s named after, she’s neat beyond belief, and cleanliness is next to godliness in her book, which would be the Bible. Besides doing the diner’s dishes, Miss Florida is also one terrific pie baker. If you think there can be something more soothing than the blueberry she does up this time of year, well, you’d be more’n dead wrong.

  “See ya in the mornin’, y’all. God willin’ and the creek don’t rise,” she bellows out as she squeezes through the screen door.

  (I know for a fact Miss Florida doesn’t live close to Blossom Creek, but I’m not ever going to ask her why she always says that since the other thing this woman is well known for, besides her crusts, is a lack of patient explaining.)

  “Stay dry,” I shout after her, and then to Grampa in the kitchen, “I’m waitin’ on you.”

  One of my other jobs is to pick up the eggs every afternoon over at Miss Jessie’s farm. So after making sure the grill and the fryers are turned off, Grampa joins me in the booth across from the register and I watch while he scratches out the order on the back of a napkin. This is the same way it goes every afternoon when we close up shop, because my grampa, he’s a big believer in routine. And keeping his nose to the grindstone. And a penny saved is a penny earned. (It’s taken some hard studying, but I get the meaning of a lot of those kinds of sayings now. But there’s other ones, like—don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater— well, hell.)

  “Check those eggs real carefully,” Grampa tells me, sliding the order across the table. “Every once in a while Jessie likes to take advantage of me.”

  “Now you know that’s not true.” (I have recently begun to suspect that his memory, like mine, has sprung a couple of leaks. Proof: Whenever I ask him questions about the night of the crash, he answers, “Don’t seem to recall.”) “You know that Miss Jessie thinks you’re a heartthrob with cowboy good looks.”

  “That right?” he says, lighting up a Lucky.

  “I believe it is.”

  Sliding sideways and heading back toward the kitchen, he says over his shoulder, “That old woman might want to get her peepers looked into.”

  She certainly would. By you, Grampa, by you. Ya musta noticed Miss Jessie’s gorgeous molasses eyes shuttered in shaggy lashes. She bats them enough at you. And she’s not that old. Then again, him suggesting that Miss Jessie’s nearing ancient might be an example of his keen sense of humor. He knows about a million and a half of those knock-knock jokes.

  “Knock knock,” he’ll say.

  And then I’m supposed to say back, “Who’s there?”

  “Little old lady.”

  And then I’m supposed to say back, “Little old lady who?”

  With his mouth puckering up like one of those apple dolls the holler folks peddle to the tourists, he’ll say, barely containing himself, “Why, I didn’t know you could yodel!”

  And then I’ll say, “Me neither.” That’s right. I fall for it EVERY darn time since I don’t usually get jokes anymore, which can be dismaying beyond belief since I’ve been told that once upon a time I was a girl with a lot of snap.

  “How’s next week’s top story comin’ along?” Grampa asks, pushing back through the kitchen swing doors with a bag brimming with what customers got too full to finish.

  Pulling my black leather-like out from the cubby under the cash register, I follow him out the diner’s back door. The Importance of Perception in Meticulous Investigation is small enough to carry along in my briefcase, which has everything I might need for a long day of reporting. After I break my awfully good story, when I’m QR again, and Mama’s resting in eternal slumber, I’m planning to become a famous reporter in a city with a population larger than 2,723. I am intending to relocate to Cairo. (The one with the pyramids. Not the one west of here that rhymes with hay row.) I will tread where no other investigative reporter dares to tread. Rooting out tales in that desert sand. My camera and flashlight are also in my briefcase along with the other tools of my trade. My No. 2 pencils. My very important blue spiral notebook. And my pocket dictionary—in case I remember a word, but not its meaning.

  Grampa heaves the garbage bag into the rickety Dumpster that sits out back. “I asked how you’re progressin’ on that story.”

  Miss Florida musta gotten picked up just a pinch ago ’cause the reclining chair under the pin oak is empty. I’m sitting down to stretch my sore legs straight when my dog scurries over, his tail ticktocking like mad. Miss Florida’s been petting on him. He smells of Palmolive and pie.

  “Gib?”

  A few weeks after I got home from the hospital, Grampa and me were doing exactly what we’re doing right this minute when we spotted this white wiry-haired pooch waiting on the back steps for us. He’s bigger than a bread box, but not by a lot. With a chocolate-milk-colored stain spilling down his sides. Ears like one of Santa’s helpers. Grampa said back then, “Well, what do we have here?” picked the pup up by the scruff, inspected for tags, and when he found none, said, “Ya need some responsibility, girl. This one’s a Keeper.”

  “Gibby!?” Grampa shouts.

  “Yeah?”

  “The new story?”

  I heard, I’m just stalling since I can’t remember which one that is at the moment. My mind’s too busy dwelling on dead Mr. Buster Malloy, the news of which I will keep locked behind my lips for the present time. I usually tell him what I’m up to, but this time, I don’t want Grampa to know just yet. Hovering over me like he does, he’ll try to warn me off in that no-nonsense voice of his. I know exactly what he’ll say. “It’s not safe gettin’ tangled up in a murder investigation. Best you stick to reportin’ about fishin’ contests or birthed babies.” He doesn’t understand how crucial it is that I get Quite Right again. If he did, he wouldn’t be telling me all the time that I shouldn’t set my
hopes too high. But believe you me, when I finally do break this murder story, not only will a certain someone’s angelic wings bodaciously beat, but my grampa’s brow will rise in pride as well. I don’t know why, but I do know for certain that Grampa wouldn’ta spit on Mr. Buster Malloy if he was on fire. And Miss Lydia? Mr. Buster’s sister? Grampa is not fond of her either. Fact is, he finds out I been spending most of my spare time with her up at Land of a Hundred Wonders—well, let’s just say he won’t be rushing off to buy me a sack of good times anytime soon.

  “Focus yourself, Gib. Ya know the story I’m talkin’ about. Miss Cheryl and Miss DeeDee? The two ladies that drive that red Corvair?”

  Miss Cheryl and Miss DeeDee. Miss Cheryl and Miss DeeDee. “Oh, yeaaah.” I took a swell picture of those gals sitting in front of the pumps. “I’m workin’ on it.”

  “All right then,” Grampa says, heading for the truck.

  After I cozy up next to him on the bench seat, we wait until Keeper scrambles into the bed of the pickup, because second to raw eggs, he appears to enjoy fast air in his mouth. He also knows a couple of good tricks. And for some mysterious reason has got a white bandage running across the top of his head today.

  “And awaaay we go,” Grampa sings, turning up the radio and tossing gravel. He’s always in a hurry like this when leaving the diner. Just like the sign on the door says, he’s GONE FISHIN’ every single day of his life, weather permitting. His daddy started him up when he was a boy in an Abilene river that ran clear and cold.

  First things first. I can’t bust my gut investigating the Mr. Buster story ’til I get this other one put to bed, else I’d have to listen to Grampa go on and on about the importance of finishing off what I started. I flip open my blue spiral notebook and get back to writing.

  Since Miss DeeDee is going blind with cadillacs, I believe Miss Cheryl only lets her drive on the back roads.