These birthing pains must hurt something fierce because what Clever’s doing would only be considered grinning if you look at her upside down.
“That true?” Cooter asks, buzzing around us… not sure where to land. “Ya shot that boy’s pecker? Off?”
“I believe so.”
After the pains have ebbed, Clever shoves me on the shoulder and starts laughing her lungs out. “Ya always did have skills with a gun, Butch. Ya’d have to be good to get a bead on something that small.”
“Clever!”
“What? I seen it a few weeks ago over at the Tap. Holloway was airin’ it out, tryin’ to interest Janice.”
(Please forgive her. Being lawless and godless like she is, Clever can be not appropriate at all. Even when she’s trying. Which she isn’t.)
But now that she’s brought up her mama, this is when I probably should tell Clever about how I found Janice in the drunk tank down at the sheriff’s station. But I’m not gonna. Cooter knows what I’m thinking and I can tell he agrees. That’s just plain good manners, not reminding your sidekick that her mama has a better relationship with Mr. Jim Beam than she does her own girl.
“Speakin’ of airin’ out, guess what? I got the treasure map!” I say, trying to keep her good spirits on the rise. “So y’all are gonna be okay now.”
Clever says, “Dang, you are, too. In all this upset, I forgot to tell ya. While you were gone breakin’ out Cooter, Miss Jessie called up to the cottage all the way from Texas. She told me to tell ya that Grampa is doin’ just fine.”
“What do ya mean?”
“The heart attack?”
“I recall that, but I don’t know where and why Miss Jessie is with him and I’m not.”
“ ’Member? They took Grampa to Texas in Big Bill Brown’s airplane and they’re gonna give his heart an operation.”
“No, that’s not right,” I say, befuddled.
“Is, too,” Clever says, gettin’ short. She despises her word to be questioned. “When I called down to the hospital lookin’ for you when you didn’t come right back, I made that varmint Darlene Abernathy tell me. She said the operation’s supposed to make his heart steady and that-”
“Shhh… ya hear that?” Cooter whispers, haunches hackling.
Hard to hear much of anything with the thunder giving off its best licks, so I check to see if Keeper’s gone into point, which he would if something wicked was coming our way. He’s not paying a bit of mind, too busy giving himself a lick bath. Straining to hear what Cooter heard comin’ up the trail, I finally catch it on my love radar. “Oh, that’s only Billy.”
Not a minute later he rides back into the cave, slides outta the saddle and says, “I covered our tracks best I could and didn’t see… them.” Can’t blame him for not wanting to say their names out loud. That’d be akin to evoking the devil. But ya know, I don’t think that’s fair. We need to tell Cooter and Clever, let ’em know that what we’re up against is more’n just the sheriff and his dumb deputy. Like Grampa says, “You can’t win a fight ’lessin’ ya know who your enemy is.”
So I clear my throat and announce, “When Billy says he didn’t see them, what he really means is, he didn’t see… the Brandish Boys.”
“The Boys?” Clever says, giving a willies tremble. “Who they huntin’?”
I jut my chin toward Cooter. “Sorry to be the bear of bad news… but there’s a reward on him, Kid.”
(Ya know how I mentioned earlier that she ain’t afraid of anything? I forgot about the Brandish Boys.) Clever is letting loose with one of her ear-piercing wails and Cooter looks a whole lot less colored, that’s how bad he’s waning when he finds out the bounty the Boys are comin’ for is none other than himself.
“No sense gettin’ all worked up. We’re safe for the time bein’,” Billy says, jabbing Cooter in the ribs, none too gently, maybe still mad about him holding that gun on him in the woods the other night. “Why don’t ya tell us why everybody wants this treasure map so bad?”
Cooter, trying to recover from the shock that it’s you know who that’s coming after him, says, “Ya ain’t gonna believe me if I do.”
“Try us,” Billy insists. He sure does smell good. Safe, and a little muddy.
Cooter stabs at the map that Billy lays out on the ground in front of us. “Ya see those red lines? That’s the treasure up at the Malloy place.”
“We already figured out where it is,” I say. “What Billy’s askin’ you is… what the hell IS the treasure?” I am picturing us draped in pearls and ivory and sequins and silver. “It’s gold, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s gold,” Cooter admits.
“Bless Patsy! That just about solves all our problems, right?” I shout, reaching for Clever, who looks so relieved.
Cooter adds, “Wish it was, but it ain’t the kind of gold y’all are thinkin’ it is.”
What I’m thinking is, to the best of my knowledge, there IS only one kind of Gold: A valuable yellow metal.
Clever asks, “What kind of gold is it then?”
“Hemp,” Cooter says.
Me and Clever and Billy-the three of us look a lot like we just heard the world is flat after all.
“I’m sorry, I believe I misunderstood you. Did you say hemp… h-e-m-p?” I ask him.
Cooter nods. “It’s a special kind of gold-colored weed that comes from Colombia.”
“That’s in South Carolina,” I tell Clever, since she’s not so good in geography.
“Not that Columbia. There’s another one,” Cooter says. “In South America.”
Right where we’re headed?
“This kinda hemp is real strong,” Cooter continues. “Willard says he can sell it Up North for a lot of money to folks who wanna get high.”
“That’s nuthin’ but dumb Yankee talk,” I tell him, already beyond losing my patience. “Everyone knows ya can buy a hemp rope at Ready’s Hardware if you need to climb high.”
Cooter says, “I’m not meanin’ the climbin’ kind of high. I’m meanin’ the kind of high ya get from smokin’ weed.”
Billy says knowingly to me, “Smokin’ hemp can make ya feel real relaxed. High is just another word folks use to describe that feelin’.”
I already knew that relaxing part from observing my next-door neighbor. Willard’s the poster child for relaxation. “So you’re tellin’ us there’s no emeralds or diamonds or candelabras buried up at the Malloy place? That the treasure we’ve been COUNTIN’ on for Rosie is just some… some dumb old weed that gets ya high?”