Up in the room, Preston stared at the name he’d printed out. He wanted to Google it right then so badly, but James Brown and the other Flames were waiting. He went across the street, and Trent let him in. “They’re in the basement. Just follow the sound of your boy fussing.”
Preston hadn’t any idea what that meant, but while going down the basement steps he heard, “Mom, I’m not wearing a wig!”
Entering the finished basement with its big-screen TV and comfortable seating, Preston saw the mutiny on Amari’s face, the determination on Devon’s, and the humor on Eli’s. Ms. Lily was saying, “One day you’re going to need Devon’s help with something, Amari.”
“I’ll bet it won’t involve wearing a wig. Come on, Mom. Why are you encouraging this crap?”
“It isn’t crap. Once you get into it, it’s going to be fun. Promise.”
“Bull—I mean, no, it’s not!”
Ms. Lily shook her head and smiled.
Eli said, “Oh, stop whining and just put the thing on.”
They finally noticed Preston standing there, and Amari asked, “Do you want to wear a wig?”
Wig! Nobody said anything about wearing wigs!
But Eli was in front of the mirror on the wall, putting his on and cracking up. “I look like Elvis.”
Ms. Lily held out a black hairy thing for Preston to take that resembled something he’d seen on the heads of the old ladies riding the bus back in Milwaukee. He took it only because she was an adult and he had to, but he had no intentions of putting it on his own head.
Devon tugged his on, and Ms. Lily began styling it with a comb.
Eli, still enjoying his reflection in the mirror, looked puzzled for a moment. “How’s that song go? Oh, yeah”—he sang out loudly—“Viva Las Vegas!”
Amari grumbled, “You don’t look like Elvis. You just look ridiculous.”
Preston thought he looked a lot like Fred Munster.
Trent came down, took one look at the boys, and immediately went back up the steps, laughing uproariously.
Amari yelled, “No fair laughing, Dad! This shit’s not funny.”
“Amari . . . ,” his mom warned.
“It’s not!”
Preston realized that if Amari surrendered, he’d have to as well, and suddenly his worries about being embarrassed by his parents doing the tango were superseded by the reality of his own public embarrassment. If he had known this was the cruise he’d signed on for, he would’ve cashed in his ticket and let the ship sail without him.
In the end, Amari donned his wig, and Preston did the same.
Eli laughed. “Now we all look like Eddie Murphy in Dreamgirls.”
“Shut up!” Amari snapped.
Preston hadn’t gone anywhere near the mirror and had no intentions of doing so. He already knew how wack he looked.
Devon was beaming under his wig, however. Pretending he had a microphone in his hand, he bent over and sang, “Please, please, don’t go.” He then did a few of James Brown’s swift-footed moves and grinned.
Amari looked like he wanted to make him eat the imaginary mic, and Preston wasn’t far behind.
Devon asked, “Is Ms. Genevieve through making my cape?”
“Almost,” his mom replied. “Okay, Eli. Your turn.”
While Preston looked on, Ms. Lily took the comb and scissors to Eli’s black wig. Preston had no idea where she’d gotten the fake hair, but he wished he knew, so he could return his. When she was done with all the cutting and the curling iron, Eli had a pompadour that the old guy Little Richard would have been proud of. Eli went back to the mirror and grinned from ear to ear. He picked up his phone and passed it to Preston.
“Here, take a picture. I want to send it to my dad.”
Preston couldn’t imagine why Eli was so into this madness, but he took the pic and gave the phone back.
It was Amari’s turn to get styled next, and he wore an angry face the entire time his mom worked on him. Once he had his pompadour, he got up and sat down heavily on the couch.
“You’re looking good, Amari,” Devon said.
“Get away from me,” Amari snarled.
Preston was last and endured the process without comment. The wig was hot, however. He felt like he was wearing a blanket on his head.
“All done, Brain. Go look.”
“I’d rather not. Can I take it off now?”
“Hold on a minute.”
She retrieved three wig stands from the table and passed them out. “Put them on here when you’re not wearing them.”
Preston immediately raised his hands to his and was told, “But don’t snatch them off. Be gentle.”
So he gently removed the stupid thing from his head and set it on the faceless wig stand. They were supposed to be rehearsing too, but he’d had enough trauma for one evening. “Okay. We have to get up early to see the asteroids, so I’m going home and going to bed.”
Devon protested, “But we’re supposed to practice.”
Amari removed his wig and started for the stairs. Preston was sure Amari was going to respond with a certain two-word phrase Preston thought highly appropriate considering the hell Devon was putting them through, but Amari didn’t respond, probably because he didn’t want to go back on lockdown.
“But Mom!” Devon whined like the brat he could sometimes be as Amari disappeared.
“Give it a rest, Dev,” Ms. Lily replied. “You have a whole month and a half before the contest. There’s plenty of time to rehearse. Leave your brother alone for now.”
He was pleased to hear her tell Devon to step back. Now if she could just be convinced to tell him to forget about the whole thing, he and Amari would be happy, but he knew that wasn’t happening.
He said his good-byes. Carrying his pompadour on the wig stand, he left the July house to return to the sanity of his own.
Back upstairs in his room, he Googled his birth mother’s title and name, and a lot of links popped up. For the next hour he read everything he could about the famous astrophysicist who’d given him up for adoption, and when he was done, he was quite impressed. She was a very well-known scientist. After all the searching, reading, and clicking on links, he hadn’t found a picture of her, so he still didn’t know what she looked like; he did find the phone number of her office, however. He wrote it down and went to bed.
The very sleepy Bernadine couldn’t believe she’d agreed to get up before the crack of dawn to go and sit in an open field and watch a meteor shower, but she had. Although she wanted to go back to bed, a part of her was excited. This would be her first time participating in such an event, and from what she’d been hearing from her friends and neighbors, they’d never done anything like this either. The gathering was another example of Jack James’s topical teaching; they were all so lucky to have him as the community’s teacher.
She tiptoed around getting dressed because Crystal was still asleep and she didn’t want to wake her. The town’s oldest princess refused to get up at such an ungodly hour, extra credit or not, and Bernadine didn’t force the issue. There were going to be a lot of more important things the two of them would butt heads over before she grew up and went out into life on her own, so Bernadine refused to sweat the small stuff.
Dressed, she went downstairs and got coffee and a bowl of cereal. As soon as she was done eating, and the caffeine kicked in, she called Mal to let him know she was ready to be picked up.
While waiting, she tried not to think about the work waiting for her at the office, but it took her over anyway. The fire trucks were on order. When Lily initially spoke with the Franklin fire chief, he’d agreed to help them out, but when Bernadine called him a few days later, he told her Mayor Wiggins had threatened to fire him if he did. The memory made her shake her head again, but instead of sending a hit man after Piggly Wiggly, she’d contacted the fire department over in Lawrence, and so far they’d been very forthcoming and generous in offering suggestions and answering the dozens of questions she and her p
eople had about putting together a department for Henry Adams. She’d be calling their chief later today with more questions about building a structure to house the two trucks she’d purchased.
The police were done with the rec’s parking lot, and replacement had already begun. New lights were also on order, scheduled to arrive by week’s end. That there was still a murdering arsonist on the loose was disturbing. Sheriff Dalton said the person might be holed up somewhere, content to gloat over the terror and never strike again, or planning a second act. She didn’t like either scenario, but liked the latter the least. Her reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible, widely publicized, had resulted in a few tips, but so far none were of any substance.
A short toot of a horn signaled Mal’s arrival, so she put all that away for now and left the house in anticipation of having a good time.
And a good time was had by all. The predawn air was quite chilly, so Rocky had coffee on hand for the adults and hot chocolate for the children.
“Can you believe all these people?” she asked Mal, keeping her voice low. All around them people were engaged in hushed conversations, as if not wanting to disturb the darkness.
“This is something,” he replied, glancing around.
Everywhere one looked, flashlights and small lanterns spotlighted people seated on blankets, air mattresses, and lawn chairs. There were couples both old and young, families with little kids, off to the side a whole section of the Dog’s college-age waitstaff with their friends.
Mal cracked, “I hope they know Tamar won’t be letting them use her bathroom.”
She chuckled and quieted along with everyone else as Jack stood in the glow of a flashlight and began an explanation of what they’d all be seeing.
When he was done, the lights were doused, and all eyes were trained on the sky.
The shower began rather slowly, but soon the gathering began seeing ten and fifteen streaks of light every few minutes, and as the spectacle gained speed and oohs and ahhs could be heard, she wondered how many wishes were being made on all the falling stars. She offered up a few wish-filled prayers of her own for those she loved, and for all the children around the world eking out lives under the boot of poverty, wars, and abuse.
As the day moved closer to dawn, there were fewer and fewer sightings, the signal for everyone to pack up and head home. They could now all say they’d witnessed a meteor shower, particularly the one known as Eta Aquarid.
While everyone out at Tamar’s drifted off to work, the Dog, and in some cases back to bed, Riley Curry was up making breakfast for himself and Cletus. He was so happy to have his hog back home where he belonged, he’d let Cletus sleep inside on the floor beside Riley’s bed. That privilege lasted only long enough for Riley to get out of bed one morning a few days later and step barefooted into one of Cletus’s surprises, so from that night forward the hog slept outside in the hog house Eustasia had commissioned for Cletus and Chocolate to occupy. It was equipped with a sleeping area, a large sunken tub filled with mud for wallowing, and a wall-size high-def television that showed the Animal Planet twenty-four hours a day, every day.
And that’s was what Cletus was watching when Riley entered, carrying a huge dog bowl filled with rice cereal and milk. While Cletus ate noisily, Riley reflected on all the good things that had come out of the trial. For one, the media requests had gone through the roof in the days following Cletus’s release. Major newspapers and weekly magazines of all kinds and from all over the world competed to be the first to show Cletus on their cover. Thanks to a tip from one of the people in Heather Quinn’s office, he knew what to charge for the privilege and had amassed a sizable amount of money as a result. Then there were the letters from the schoolchildren, both national and international, asking for autographed pictures of Cletus in his camouflage gear and Ray-Bans. With the aid of the money paid to him by the media outlets, he’d brought in a professional photographer to take pics of his hog in various outfits. He also found an ink stamp featuring a hog’s hoofprint on the Internet and used it to “sign” the pictures before sending them out.
Cletus was quite the sensation, and in Riley’s opinion well worthy of all the fuss and acclaim. The only place Cletus wasn’t a celebrity was in his hometown of Henry Adams. No one had come by to congratulate Riley on the court victory. He’d tried to call Eustasia down in Texas to let her know how proud Cletus looked, strutting out of the county pen when Riley came to take him home again, but the maid said Eustasia wasn’t taking any calls. A man of lesser confidence might have been upset by the lack of charity, but not Riley; the phone call he’d received yesterday was going to make him and his hog the envy of everyone around. Just as soon as Cletus was done eating, he was going to put him in the bed of the new red truck he’d purchased and drive to the Dog for some breakfast of his own. While there, he planned to make the announcement that would make them all wish they’d treated him better, especially old hateful Genevieve.
Upon entering the Dog, Riley heard the loud music and saw Mal July behind the counter at the cash register. July looked up suspiciously. “What can I do for you, Riley?”
“I came for breakfast.”
“Sure. Follow me.”
As Riley was taken to one of the empty center tables, the other diners gave him the eye. He saw Bernadine Brown sitting with Lily July, the laughing junior felons in a booth in the back, and Trent July seated with the teacher and the loser Gary Clark. He also noticed Genevieve seated with Marie Jefferson at a booth on the far side of the room. She glowered at him as always, but even though he ignored her, he was glad she was there to hear his grand announcement straight from the horse’s mouth.
As he looked over the menu, he hoped someone would come over and chitchat or ask how Cletus was enjoying being back home, but no one did, so he gave the waitress his order and waited for his food to come.
It arrived a short while later, and with Genevieve’s hostile eyes watching his every move, he ate his breakfast. When he was done, he stood up and tapped his knife on his water glass to get everyone’s attention. Because of the music, it took a second or two for them to look his way. Luckily, the song on the jukebox ended just at that moment, so he said, “I’d like to make an announcement.”
He saw Mal July watching him with narrowed eyes, so Riley asked, “Can you stop the music for just a moment, Mal?”
A few boos were heard, and it was obvious that July didn’t want to comply with the request, but he did and the diner was silent. Glad to see that everyone was now focused on him, especially Genevieve, he said, “This town won’t have me and Cletus to kick around for a while. We—”
Cheers and applause filled the room before he could complete what he planned to say. “Would you let me finish!” he yelled.
Laughter followed his outburst, and the room went quiet again until someone shouted, “Hurry up, Riley. We don’t have all day!”
He gathered himself again. “I got a call yesterday from a major Hollywood producer who wants to put Cletus in films.”
Mal asked, “Is that it?”
A voice yelled, “Turn the box back on, Mal!”
This was not going the way Riley envisioned. He’d been expecting awe and envy, not disinterest, and certainly not disdain. In an attempt to regain his momentum, he added, “And Cletus is going to make me the richest man in Kansas!”
Genevieve countered drily, “And when that happens, make sure you use some of that money to hire you a top-notch lawyer, because I’m suing you for embezzlement, mental anguish, destruction of property, and anything else I can think of.”
More cheers erupted. The music came back on, and an angry Riley snatched up his bill and went to the cash register to pay it. Storming back to where he’d parked his truck, he started it up and drove away. He got the last word, he figured; he hadn’t left a tip.
Chapter 22
After breakfast, Preston, Leah, and Amari left the Dog and walked down Main to spend the day at
the rec. Because they were on school break, they were going to shoot some hoops, play chess, and maybe watch a Mummy marathon on the big screen in the auditorium. On the way, they talked about the awesome meteor shower and then Mr. Curry’s announcement.
“Who would be stupid enough to put that dumb pig in a movie?” Amari asked.
Preston certainly didn’t know. “Especially since Mr. Curry acts like he’s a few fries short of a Happy Meal.”
“I sort of feel sorry for him, though,” Leah confessed.
“Why?” Preston asked, surprised.
“He doesn’t have anybody but Cletus.”
Amari asked, “Do you know what he let that pig do to Ms. Genevieve’s house? I don’t feel sorry for him one bit.”
“I don’t either,” Preston added. “The first summer we moved here, he kept calling us members of the FFA.”
“What’s the FFA?” Leah asked.
“Future Felons of America.”
“Oh.”
“Man’s a nut job, and so is his killer hog,” Amari said, summing things up.
When they reached the rec, they checked in with Tamar and Marie and then went down to the gym.
“Got something I need to talk to you two about,” Preston said once they were inside.
Amari asked, “The colonel acting dumb again?”
They took seats on the bleachers.
“No, it’s my birth mom.”
For the next few minutes, he told them the story of how he learned her name and what he found out about her on the Net.
“And she’s a NASA astrophysicist? Wow, that’s sweet,” Leah gushed.
“I really want to contact her.”
Amari shook his head. “You can’t, man. No contact means no contact.”
Preston had prepared himself to hear that, but it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “I have her office phone number, too,” he revealed for the first time.
“Brain, you’re just going to get your feelings hurt. Just leave it alone, okay?” Amari pleaded.