Cooter mumbles out to Billy, “ ’Bout the other night. Stealin’ the map. Weren’t nuthin’ personal.”
"Y’all?” I got my two fingers against the side of the sheriff’s blubbery neck, trying to find a pulse like I learned in the Red Cross First Aid Class. Don’t know if I’m sad or glad when I find it beating like a tom-tom. “We should get him off the road, don’tcha think?”
Billy gives the sheriff a good long look and then commands Cooter, “Grab his other foot.”
Me and Keeper following behind, the two of them drag his body into the woods and down into a shallow ravine, Billy helping himself to the sheriff’s sidearm before he buries him with fallen branches and damp leaves but good. Standing right there next to him, I swear, even I wouldn’t know that beneath this pile of greenery lies LeRoy Johnson.
I give Billy a glowing look. How talented is my knight in shining ardor!
He gets my meaning and says shyly, “Special Forces.”
Indeed. Miss Lydia of Hundred Wonders will tell you there are ALWAYS special forces at work in the world. Never mind that we can’t see them. They’re there, guiding us, arranging for us to be in the right place at the right time. Gifting us when we really need a little help to get us through.
Look at Cooter, for instance. He didn’t get drafted into the army the way Billy did. Miss Florida says it’s on accounta his feet. “Flatter than an ironin’ board.” See that? The special forces knew Cooter had to stay home and work night and day so he could help his gramma out.
From back down at the road, Deputy Boyd’s voice rings out of the county car’s radio. “Ya there? It’s me, Jimmy Lee. Sheriff Johnson?”
“That there is the sound of reveille,” Billy says to Cooter. “Can you make it?”
Grimacing, Cooter tests his weight on his hurting leg.
Billy doesn’t ask him again, just throws him over his shoulder like he’s saving him from a horrible fate, which I s’pose he is.
All my nose is picking up on is the smell of green alfalfa hay and baling twine. I check with Keeper to see if he’s sniffing up either hide or hair of Sneaky Tim Ray since my dog can whiff dubious intentions from an acre away. People can hide their badness from one another, but the scent of wrongdoing is pungent and unmistakable to our four-legged friends.
After Billy sets Cooter down gently on a pile of loose hay in Miss Jessie’s loft, he takes out his army knife from his belt and rips through the muddy pants. Goodness. Cooter’s leg is a rainbow of bruises. I touch my still tender ones.
“Could ya fetch that doctorin’ kit from the tack room? And some alcohol,” Billy calls over to me.
“Sneaky Tim Ray’s usually got some stashed up here,” I say, heading off toward where he beds down.
“Not that kind of alcohol, Gib, the rubbin’ kind,” Billy says, further inspecting Cooter’s leg, pressing here and there. “But now you brought it up, the other kind might do some good. I gotta adjust this knee. I think it’s dislocated.” Sweat’s waterfalling off every inch of Cooter Smith and his breathing doesn’t sound regular.
Doin’ like Billy asked me, I jump down the loft stairs two at a time, shouting over my shoulder, “Keeper, keep keepin’ a snout-out.”
The barn is still and cool. Smells like it oughta. The stalls are picked clean and the water buckets brimming. Some twangy country tune I never heard before is coming from the radio that Miss Jessie always leaves on, “to soothe the savage beasts.” But there’s something else . . . something like hushed-up talking is coming from around the corner near the wash tank. Must be Vern and Teddy, thank the Lord! Cooter will be happy to see his uncles, and I will, too. So in knowing those strong men will come to our rescue, Surprise! is on the tip of my tongue as I step into the open, and it sure as hell IS, because it is NOT my good friends the Smith brothers I hear yakking away over their aisle sweeping. It’s Sneaky Tim Ray, hissing into the ham radio Miss Jessie keeps for when the phone lines come down after a storm, “I’m tellin’ ya, Jimmy Lee. They’s here! Turn your car around and get your dumb ass over here. And bring that reward money with ya.”
Frozen solid in fear, I can’t even speak, until something cracks deep inside me, and “Biiilly!” comes spurting out.
Hearing me, Sneaky Tim Ray lets out with a hoot and charges my way. But not for long. Billy leaps down the hayloft stairs, wrassles him to the ground, and with one good punch to the jaw, Holloway’s out cold.
“Ya there? Ya there?” Deputy Boyd is calling tinny out of the CB speaker. “Tim Ray, answer me.”
“He told Jimmy Lee where we’re at,” I cry. “What’re we gonna do now?”
Billy gives a thoughtful look, then throws open a trunk in the aisle and begins unwinding one of the flannel bandages they use to keep the horses’ legs from getting nicked up when they go for a trailer ride. “I’m gonna wrap Cooter’s knee best I can,” he says, sprinting to the loft stairs. “Pull out three of the horses. Get ’em ready.”
Not daring to question, I dash into the tack room, check the nameplates on the bridles and yank them free. No time for saddles.
By the time the two of them make it down the loft stairs, the siren sound is coming down Tanner Farm Road. I’m already on top of Peaches. Cooter yelps bad as he swings his knee over the back of Dancer. Billy grabs the mane of Sonny and is up clean.
“Goddamn it all! I just remembered something,” I say, sliding off the donkey’s back.
“Whatever it is, we don’t have time,” Billy says in an SOS voice. He’s pressing his leg against the chestnut’s side, heading toward the barn’s back door. Cooter’s on his tail with his temple vein running blue.
Halfway down the aisle, I shout back, “It’s Cooter they’re after. They’ll string him up they catch him, ya know they will!”
Billy presses the reins against Sonny’s neck, spins around and commands Cooter, “Go on without me.”
“No!” I holler. “Ya gotta help him, Billy. He’s in no shape and doesn’t know the trail. Go on. I’ll be right behind ya. Sneaky Tim Ray must have the treasure map on him. I gotta get it for Clever.” I can see in his face that he’s torn between abandoning me and keeping Cooter from getting strung up dead. “Ride, Billy, ride.”
“I’ll get him pppointed in the right direction, then I’m comin’ bbback for ya,” he calls, and the two of them charge out the barn, sucked up fast by the storm, Keeper out front.
Garnering my breath, I kneel down to where Sneaky Tim Ray’s still passed out in the aisle and dig my hand into his breast pocket, just like he’s done to me so many times. No treasure map there, but I steal back my locket. Maybe he put the map in his . . .
“Gotcha,” he rails, latching his fingers around my arm and struggling to sit up, so pickled he doesn’t even realize he’s been beat up. “This what you lookin’ for?” His hand slides down the front of his pants.
“No, it is not,” I say, battling to break free.
“Ya sure ’bout that?” He pulls the map out from somewhere down there. Waves it in my face. “I got me a real good idea. What say me and you go fetch that treasure and take off for parts unknown, darlin’?”
This not being my first rodeo, thank Jesus, I know exactly how to handle this critter. I drop my tussling and put on an admiring tone. “Why, Sneaky Tim Ray, you really have repented. I’m so proud of ya for bein’ willin’ to share like that.”
“Thought I’d sweeten the pot, ya might come to your senses. Near impossible to resist ole Tim Ray and a treasure,” he says, giving me one of those shining smiles of his. “We could even get hitched, ya want.”
So sure of his charms, he eases his grip.
“Well, as temptin’ as that offer is, darlin’ . . .” I reach back and remove the .22 from the back of my pants.
Tires crunch to a sliding stop. Out the barn doors, Deputy Jimmy Lee is jumping outta the car, shouting and gesturing to a couple of men. Not the law. They’re bounty hunters come speedy for that reward on Cooter.
I take aim at the zipp
er on Sneaky Tim Ray’s caked jeans. “Unless you’re wantin’ your precious pecker to be in the same situation as your eye, I suggest you hand over that map nice and easy.”
Rain collecting in the brims of their black hats, the lanky bounty men are heading our way. I recognize the two of them, all right. They’re well known for their tracking skills.
“I’m not foolin’,” I say to Sneaky Tim Ray as I cock the gun. “Now.”
Instead of him begging for mercy like I thought he would, outta his mouth comes the same phlegmy laugh he lets loose whenever he’s got me cornered. “Ya ain’t got the nerve. You and me both know you’re nuthin’ but a scared little retard with real nice titties.” His hands shoot up to my double D’s. Squeeze hard. “I got ahold a her, boys,” he cackles.
I’m looking him straight in the eye, when I pull back on the trigger.
“Halt in the name of the law,” Deputy Jimmy Lee booms down the aisle.
Plucking the map outta Holloway’s fingers, I dash down the aisle and throw myself onto Peaches’s back. “Git,” I shout, heeling her hard into the downpour.
Behind me, Sneaky Tim Ray is squealing, “She shot me. She shot me in the pecker!” And the deputy is yelling, “Stop, Gib, stop.” At the beginning of the trail, I spin Peaches around so I can see if they’re coming after me. Jimmy Lee is kneeling down in the aisle, ministering to Holloway. But silhouetted in the barn door, those two bounty hunters are long and lean. And smiling at me like it’s Christmas morning.
Hightailin’It
Farther down the trail, where the woods thin from oak to scrub, I can barely make out Billy coming toward me, that’s how bad the rain is sheetin’ down. I don’t dare call out to him. Those black-hatted bounty hunters back at the barn? They’re the Brandish Boys. And they got ears bigger than Peaches’s. Well, one of them does anyways. Even as far away as Tennessee, they are legends. I heard a story about when the Boys were hunting a bail-jumping feller from two counties over. By the time those two dragged him into town, that poor man was missing an arm. Word was the Brandish Boys ripped it clean out and near beat him to death with it. Even Grampa, the least jumpy man I know, swallowed hard when he told me, “Wouldn’t wanna be the object of one of those Boys’ searches. They hunt for the fun of it. Reward money’s just the pork in the beans.”
I reach down to swipe off the rain that’s caught up in Peaches’s mane, give her a pat for a job well done. The trail’s so muddy, I don’t know how she’s managing.
“You okay?” Billy asks, drawing up close, trying to shield me from the punishing storm.
“Where’s Cooter at?” I ask, peering around him.
“Keep’s leadin’ him. It’s a straight shot from here to the cottage. He’ll be fine.”
He better be. Rosie needs a daddy. That’s right, it’s just come to me outta nowhere that it CAN’T be Willard that’s Rosie’s daddy. Even though Clever’s sort of a birdbrain, she’s smart enough to pretend that Willard’s the baby’s daddy so he’ll take her back to New York City with him ’til tongues stop wagging. That rascal. She knows damn well if she births a baby of the opposite color around here, folks are gonna give her a flock of grief.
“We can’t hide at the cottage long,” I say. The trail widens enough here that we can ride the rest of the way together. “They’ll figure that out, won’t they, Billy?”
“We got a little time, I think. Jimmy Lee . . . ya know . . . that vat accident . . . he’s kinda dumb.”
“That’s true,” I say, looking up at him. “But the Brandish Boys aren’t.”
Billy whoas up in a flurry. “The Brandish Boys?”
“They were with Jimmy Lee up at the barn.”
“Ya sure it was them?” he asks, surely hoping I’m not.
They’re starving coyotes, those Boys, bunking down somewhere up in the woods between Cray Ridge and Appleville. I’ve seen ’em up close only one time. At the bait shop. One of ’em has a skin condition so his face is covered in angry pink craters and oozes. The other, like I said, he’s got long ears and something not right with his nose. Lacks oomph. (Ya know how mamas and daddies warn their babies about the booger man to keep them in check? Around these parts, it’s those misshapen brothers make children check under their beds.)
Billy says one more time, like he can’t take it in, “The Brandish Boys.” Might be his drenched shirt causing him to shiver. Think not.
“We got to get the four of us someplace safe,” I tell him.
“Blackstone,” he says right off.
“That’s my thinkin’, too.” For now anyways. In Bolivia, they wear these types of jackets called ponchos. My man will look dashing in one of a deep wine color. Since I can perceive no way at all that we’re gonna get out of our current predicament, I believe we’re gonna have to pack our bags and move souther. Pronto.
Reaching the end of the trail, we trot across the road and go down a piece ’til we end up in the cottage’s backyard. The rain’ll make it harder to track us down, but then again, it is the Brandish Boys. What they lack in beauty they make up for in skill.
“We could do with some dry clothes,” Billy says, dismounting and lifting the reins over Sonny’s head, doing the same to Peaches as I slide off. Cooter’s horse, Dancer, is already tied up under the wide tree. “We’ll gather up what we can as fast as we can and head out.”
Nearing the cottage, I can hear the sound of Grampa’s boat rocking against the dock with a knock knock that makes me remember his apple-puckering lips. His grouchiness after getting up from a nap. His buttermilk pancakes and, well . . . just all the ingredients that get mixed up together to make a batch of Charles Michael Murphy. After he comes home, I’m gonna set him down in his lake chair with a glass of tart lemonade and tell him everything that’s been going on while he was gone, and when I’m done, he’ll push his cowboy fishing hat back on his head and say, “I’m proud as punch of ya, Gibby girl. Ya done good.” ’Specially after I tell him what I’m about to tell Billy. Grampa’ll give his knee-slapping laugh.
“I mighta shot off Sneaky Tim Ray’s pecker.”
Billy swipes the rain off his face and grunts. “Saves me the trouble.”
(I know, I know. I should be feeling ashamed. But it felt so damn good to pull that trigger, not wicked at all. )
Coming around the corner of the screened porch, I hold up for a minute to watch Clever and Cooter, their heads bowed together, but then Keeper gives off a welcome whine, and Clever turns my way, yelping out when she sees me, “Goddamn it! Goddamn it! I thought ya was dead,” throwing open the screened door and herself all over me.
“I’m fine . . . I’m fine,” I tell her with a pat. "C’mon. Let’s getcha outta this rain.”
Billy heads into the cottage, probably following up on his plan for dry clothes, and Cooter follows.
Once I get her back seated on the sofa, Clever says, “What the hell happened?”
“What do ya mean what the hell happened? I broke Rosie’s daddy outta jail, just like I told ya I would.”
Bringing her eyes up to mine, she locks and loads ’em. “ ’Zactly how long ya known?”
“Figured it out on the ride over.”
Maybe until she just admitted it, it was nothing but wishful thinking on my part. Willard is such a dope that I didn’t want Clever having his baby, who would then grow up and go off spreading that dopiness throughout the world by breeding. (Miss Jessie says it’s important who you pair up with when it comes to the spraying of seed, otherwise you could end up with a foal that’s got some low tendencies.) What the heck has happened to Willard anyways? I bend forward to eye his place. His “contemplating” hammock is hanging half off the yellowwood. He’s a loose end, that damn Yankee is.
Clever is working hard to get control of herself, but as we all know, even though the word is it does, I’m here to tell you, hard work doesn’t always pay off. “Miss Florida’s gonna beat me ’til I’m blue when she finds out Cooter’s the daddy,” she splutters. “Ya know how sh
e lectures about mixin’ blood.”
I want to tell my sidekick she’s wrong. I really, really do. But she knows well as I do that I’d be lying. “Don’t fret. I got a plan.”
“Ya do?” she asks, skeptical.
“Remember from our movie how all the folks down in Bolivia are sorta coffee with two creams in color? Well, soon as this is all over, the five of us’ll move down there after all. Rosie’ll fit right in.” They can’t stay here. ’Cause not only would there be Reprisals: Avengement from both the white and the brown folks, there’d be nobody to help them out with raisin’ the baby. Maybe Miss Florida would pitch in after she calmed down, but only a fool’d count on Janice to do her job of grandmothering. If Grampa stays alive, I know he’d protect them, but what if he . . .
“Butch?”
“Yeah?”
“I know this may not be the best time to be bringin’ this up . . . and I feel real bad about ya not gettin’ to investigate for that important Mr. Buster is dead story because ya got so busy with the jailbreak . . .”
I completely forgot all aboutBuster Malloy Found Dead on Browntown Beach!
“But,” Clever says, “I believe . . . I’m beginnin’ to have the laborin’ pain. I think Rosie Adelaide’s comin’.”
Back to Blackstone
Cooter could barely ride himself, so Billy held Clever steady in the saddle while steering us through the storm away from the cottage and toward Blackstone. Having hid in jungles for months upon months, my man knows better than any of us what we got to do to keep the Brandish Boys off our scent, so soon as he knew we were high and dry, he rode back down the trail to cover up any evidence of us being there.
Snug in the cave, when I’m done sortin’ out some of the clothes Billy and Cooter grabbed out of the drawers in the cottage, I pull Clever’s soaking-wet shirt off over her head and shimmy on a dry one. My goodness. Her cups do runneth over.
Experiencing what appears to be tremendous pain, Clever is not in what you would call a jovial mood right this minute, but I’m gonna try to rectify that. I’ve been saving this tidbit for a moment just like this. “Knock knock,” I say, rubbing her hair dry.