“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 she 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.
She cannot answer ’cause she’s biting on her hand, so I reply for her in a different voice, deeper, “Who’s there?”
I go back up the scale again. “Is Sneaky Tim Ray’s pecker home?”
“Sorry,” I bluster, “Sneaky Tim Ray’s pecker ain’t home. Ain’t ya heard? Gibby McGraw shot it off.”