Sneaky
Half the time my guts are up around my jaw and my bottom around my ankles when Grampa speeds around in this battered truck of his. Chrome hair smoothed back by the breeze. One hand jaunty on the wheel. “Ya got the egg order?” he asks, coming to a stop at the bottom of Miz Jessie Tanner’s drive-up.
I slide the napkin out of my pedal-pusher pocket and read out loud, “Six doz.” If he’d let me, I’d do nothing all day long but investigate and write my stories or ride through the woods stuffing my mouth with wild berries as I go, but Grampa says chores build character.
“Try to get Jessie to give you a coupla of those brown ones that ole Henrietta squeezes out, all right?” he says, hooking my bangs behind my ear.
“Knock on wood,” I say, giving his fake leg that got stabbed in the war with a dirty bayonet a good whack. The army had to saw it off way back when so now he’s gotta strap this one on every morning. Don’t feel bad for him. The leg’s got an attached black tie shoe and a sock with gray diamonds that he never has to wash, which I’d call a pretty good deal.
“Time’s a wastin’, Gib,” Grampa says, anxious to get out on the water.
Snappin’ shut my leather-like, I get out and wait for Keeper to join me. I don’t go hardly anywhere without my dog.
Grampa shouts out the truck window as he takes off toward the cottage, “See ya at supper.”
“Not if I see you later, you big baboon,” I shout back.
As you can probably tell, I’m already busy working on improving my joking ability. (All part of the getting Quite Right plan, Mama.)
Tanner Farm is one of the spots in life that make it hard for me to see and breathe at the same time, it’s that gorgeous. Once you get past the plumpy woods that run along the drive, the sky opens up to reveal paddock after paddock full of Thoroughbred horses chewing on the finest of bluegrass. That’s what we call it in Kentucky for some unknown reason. But make no mistake, this grass is dollar green.
Halfway up the drive, I shout out, “Keeper?” ’cause he’s taken off into the woods, probably sniffing for a spot to answer his call to duty, which he takes awfully to heart. “Finish up now, please. Miss Jessie is waitin’ on us and we have bunches to do today.”
“Hey,” Billy calls, his voice wafting out of the treetops.
“Hey, you,” I holler back.
You ever paged through one of those puzzles they put in the Highlights for Children magazine? They have them in all the doctors’ offices. The artists of that magazine conceal foreign objects in a picture, like a candle in a curtain or a key snuggled up in a sofa cushion, and you’re supposed to find it. You know it’s there, but where oh where? Well, ditto with William “Billy” Brown, Junior, previously well known as “Little Billy.” (After he got back home from the war, Billy wouldn’t answer to that name anymore, but that’s what he used to be called on account of his daddy being called Big Bill Brown.)
I don’t remember a lot of details about Billy from before the crash ’cept that we used to run with the same crowd and when the stars came out we’d tell stories around a crackling fire. But one of the things Grampa has told me about Billy is that he used to possess his father’s Arrogance: Overbearing pride. “The war has taught that boy, like it’s taught many before him, that life is a delicate web, Gib. A thread is what we all hang by. That can be humblin’. And scary as hell.”
I set my briefcase down so I got my hands free to retrieve the present Billy’s left for me today. When he doesn’t take his tranquilizing medicine like he should, he can’t go into town. Billy says the pills make him feel numb and tired. Dry his lips out, too. But on the days he’s able to swallow those pills down, he runs, and I mean legpumpin’ runs, into Cray Ridge to buy me a little something and remains nearly calm. Sometimes I’ll find a sack of chocolate-covered cherries lying in the scooped-out bottom of our secret stump. (My absolute favorites!) Other times, he’ll leave me a story that has a snoopy reporter for the main character. Or a shiny ring, he’s real fond of those. Once Billy left me a jar full of rice.
“Ya find it?” he asks, somewhere closer now.
“Got it.” I bend down and draw a heart-shaped locket out of the stump, the sun making it glitter so. “Goodness! It’s absolutely the prettiest…,” I start to say, but the sound of rustling and someone relieving himself in the trees shuts me up quick. It’s not Billy I’m talking about here. Keeper neither. No. The both of them are much too mannerly to tinkle in the vicinity of a lady. I’ll tell you who it is that’s unzipped himself not ten feet away from me. It’s the devil’s right-hand man and the absolute scourge of me-Sneaky Tim Ray Holloway. (He tinkles a lot ’cause he drinks a lot. And is just about always waitin’ on me.)
Hope he didn’t hear me.
“Talkin’ to yerself again, darlin’?” Holloway asks, clawing outta the thicket.
Shoot.
Just by the look of him you’d never guess that Sneaky Tim Ray’s strong as hell. He’s some years older than me with those kinda eyelids that can fool you into thinking he’s taking a catnap when he’s doing nothing of the sort. And then there’s that glass eyeball that he’ll tell ya he picked up in a bar fight, which if you ask me is not sanitary at all. But when he grins at me, like he’s doing right this minute, it’s with teeth that are curiously even and gloriously white. All in all, Miss Jessie herself has confessed to me that even though he is her cousin by marriage and has those real nice choppers, “The boy looks like he was rode hard and put away wet.”
“Whatcha got there?” Holloway gives growling Keep the boot and grabs for my new locket, first one way, then the other. “You is standin’ on my property so tha’s mine, what ya found is mine. Give it to me.”
“I will not,” I say quite firmly, despite feeling quite shaky. The hooch smell coming off him is making my stomach flip. “And it isn’t your property neither. It’s Miz Tanner’s. If you don’t quit this sort of fibbin’, ya do realize you’ll be headin’ to hell in a hand casket, correct?”
Holloway doesn’t answer right off, too busy cleaning out his ear with his vibrating pinky finger. “Ya know, maybe you’s right, darlin’,” he finally says, swiping what he’s mined through his slicked-back hair. “Maybe I could use some repentin’.”
“Hallelujah,” I say, because, boy oh boy, he really could. Not only is he a liar and a thief, he rubs on my chest when I’m up at the barn helping muck out the stalls in exchange for riding Peaches. He’s warned me time and time again not to tell a soul. And I haven’t. Not my best friend, Clever. Or even Miss Jessie. And especially not Grampa, who keeps me on a short enough lead line as it is. If he ever found out about Sneaky Tim Ray, well, he’s still got one of his old Circle Bar B branding irons that he wouldn’t at all mind putting to use on somebody’s hide. And I can’t let that happen. Sneaky Tim Ray has made it clear that if I tell on him, my Keeper might get run over by a tractor “accidentally on purpose.” Or trampled by a horse. Maybe rat poisoned. “Let me put it to ya in a way that any idiot could understand,” he’s threatened over and over. “Lessin’ ya wanna find that mutt on your back porch one mornin’ stiffer than my pecker, ya better keep them luscious lips shut.”