Sunshine Walkingstick Omnibus

by Celia Roman

  ‘Bout the time I rounded the bend and spotted the shabby single-wide Fame called home, the scent of baked ham tickled my nose. I lengthened my steps up the slight slope toward the trailer, eager for a taste of Missy’s good home cooking. Weren’t like I weren’t always welcome. I was, but a body could only handle so much family time with this bunch. Trey drove me half mad with his mischief and Gentry, well. He was a sweet’un, but he weren’t exactly the brightest bulb. Was a time I wished for a normal family like Riley’s, one what spent their time at barbecues and card playing, not growing dope and running from the law.

  ‘Course, that was before I learnt what kinda man Sheriff Treadwell was. Not a bad’un, just not much of a good’un either. It was also a long time before I learnt that sometimes what’s on the outside ain’t near as important as what’s tucked into heart and bone.

  The front door popped open and Gentry stuck his head out, his normally affable expression twisted into a frown. “Hurry up, Sunny. Missy’s in a tizzy.”

  I jogged up the steps onto the wooden porch set like an afterthought in front of the door and pushed my way past Gentry’s solid girth. Missy sat at the tiny table in the dining area with Fame stooped over her running a soothing hand along her back. Her hands trembled and tears leaked outta her violet eyes onto her cheeks, and it was about all I could do to stand there and watch.

  What in tarnation was so bad it made Missy cry?

  She caught sight of me and held out a graceful hand. “Oh, Sunny. You won’t believe what happened. My ring’s gone.”

  I glanced at the spot on her chest where it normally rested. The space was empty, chain and all. I crossed the room, took her hand, and knelt down in front of her. “When did it go a-missing?”

  Her hand squeezed around mine, so tight I bit back a gasp. She touched her other hand to her chest where the ring shoulda been. “In Ingles, I think. I was standing in line waiting for the Rhone boy to finish ringing up the customer in front of me. Such a polite young man. You know him, Sunny. His daddy manages the quarry and his mama is president of the Garden Club.”

  “Missy,” I said, gentle as I could. Lordy, if I didn’t interrupt her, she’d go on all day about who was who and what was what. “What happened to the ring?”

  “I don’t know.” Her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “I felt a little tug at my neck. I thought maybe the chain had come undone and the ring had dropped into my shirt, but there was nothing there. It was just gone.”

  “Was anybody around you?”

  She shook her head, sending sable curls tumbling around her ears. “Not a soul, as far as I could tell. Oh, Sunny. What am I going to do? That ring was an heirloom, an antique. It was special and now I’ve lost it.”

  I stood abruptly and glanced toward Trey and Gentry. For once, they stood quiet like outta the way, their expressions twin seats of misery. I knowed exactly how they felt. Nobody liked to see Missy cry.

  “What you done to find it?” I asked.

  Trey scrubbed a broad palm over his unruly, dishwater blond hair. “Searched the car and the parking area. Gentry hiked up and down the trails where Missy normally walks. Dad called Ingles.”

  “Said they’d keep a sharp eye out,” Fame said, his voice quiet and calm. “Only a fool’d turn that ring in, though.”

  That was for sure. Missy’s ring was solid gold. I was pretty sure the ruby was real, too, and it was big enough to tempt the sweetest saint.

  I patted Missy’s hand, attempting comfort. “I was gonna run into town tomorrow. Reckon I could canvass the pawn shops, get word out about the ring.”

  Fame’s lips curled into a smile, half sneer, half amusement. “Nobody fucks the Carsons over.”

  “If somebody took it, chances is good they don’t know who she is. Don’t you worry none, Missy. It’ll turn up, soon as word gets ‘round.” I crossed my arms over my chest and looked over the half-prepared meal with a resigned sigh. “All righty, then. Looks like me and the boys’ll be finishing up supper tonight.”

  I dropped a kiss to Missy’s forehead, slipped off my jacket, and rolled up my sleeves. It weren’t that I hated cooking. That weren’t it a’tall. It’s just that cooking for one is about as appealing as walking knee deep in rotten fish guts, so I didn’t spend much time in the kitchen, though I knowed my way around it well enough. Mama mighta been stone cold crazy, but she done right by me where the womanly arts was concerned. I could whip up a decent meal, sew a straight seam by hand and machine, and nobody but nobody ever had a bad word to say about the state of my house.

  Being dirt poor weren’t no excuse for keeping an untidy roost. That’s what Mama said anyhow.

  My reason for being there didn’t hit me ‘til after we squeezed in around the tiny kitchen table and tucked into supper. “You got them water samples for me, Fame?”

  “In the shed.” He ducked his head towards Missy and said, “Eat, baby.”

  “I’m trying, Fame.” She touched her head to his and closed her eyes. “What would I do without you?”

  He murmured something too low to hear what brought a wavering smile to her face. I dropped my own eyes to my plate and hid a smile behind a fork full of taters. That’s what I loved about Fame and Missy. They was good together. I ignored the small shaft of envy worming its way up my innards. Some folks was blessed with the love they found. Someday, I might be, too.

  Soon as the meal was finished, I left cleanup to the boys and followed Fame out back to the storage shed he converted into a workspace slash laboratory when we was kids. Not many folks knowed it, but Fame was right smart when he put his mind to something. He went to Georgia Tech on a full scholarship and studied chemistry before his daddy up and died, leaving Fame’s mama, my granny, with a house full of young’uns to raise and no way to pay the bills. Fame’d put his chemistry degree to good use by going into the family business making illicit ‘shine. Unlike Grampy Carson, he run a clean still using only the best ingredients, including the water.

  Soon as we went inside the shed, Fame pulled out a sheaf of papers and handed ‘em to me. I handed ‘em right back. “Give it to me in plain English, Fame, not geek speak.”

  “Pollution what ain’t supposed to be there.”

  It was simple enough, but the only question I could land on was, what kind of pollution was supposed to be in the water? I turned it over in my noggin a bit and finally settled on something a sight more innocuous. “Where’d you find this again?”

  “Half a mile up the creek. Sheen on the water is what got me to testing it.” He gathered the tests and water vials together, handed those to me like I knowed what I was looking at. “I searched another half mile upstream and didn’t find nothing. I was hoping you’d take some time to look into it, maybe see if you can find the source.”

  I stared at the vials holding the tainted water and the papers holding the results of his tests, and my mind wiggled and hummed. “Reckon I could walk up a ways more, see what’s what. Not tomorrow, though. Got business in town.”

  “That business include Riley Treadwell?”

  “You ever gonna let that bone go?”

  “Not as long as it puts pink in your cheeks.”

  “Hunh. Serve you right if I took him up on his offer.”

  Fame’s gaze sharpened on mine. “What offer?”

  “Steaks on the grill and baked sweet potatoes.” I left out the part where I thought Riley mighta wanted something else. No need to give Fame another reason to hate the Treadwells when the Sheriff seeded that ground all by his lonesome. “Could be I orta butter him up anyhow, what with the water going sour.”

  “We can take care of our own, Sunny girl,” he said, and that was the end of that.

  Still, I mulled it over during the walk back home. Like it or not, Riley was in the perfect position to help me figure out what was in the water. Me, I’d have to cajole and threaten to get answers. Riley had the power of the law behind him and was charming to boot, when he put his mind to it.

  I flicked
the flashlight over the ground and pushed down the anticipation building low in my gut. Sure as tootin’, he’d be ‘round soon to spread a little more charm my way for one reason or another. Sooner I prepared myself for it, the better off I’d be.

  Chapter Three

  The next day, I dressed in a black, short sleeved t-shirt, jeans, and boots, fired up Daddy’s IROC, and headed into town. Clayton weren’t much of nothing to look on. Folks sure did whiz through it fast enough on the highway. The real draw was the mountains surrounding the town, softened under time’s unceasing touch, and the hiking trails, camping areas, and waterways running ever which way through the sloping hills. The upcoming Labor Day holiday just three days away represented summer’s last big hoorah for most of the city bred tourists clamoring for space in the crowded woods. After that’d come the leaf lookers, folks what thought the changing leaves put on too spectacular a show to miss.

  Sometimes I wanted to roll down my window as I was driving by picture takers and shout, Ain’t you got no leaves back home? But Missy told me that weren’t politic, so I clamped my mouth shut and let them poor suckers be.

  I stopped in at the public library first since it was on my way. I requested recent back issues of the Tribune at the circulation desk and slumped into a chair at a nearby table to thumb through ‘em. Clayton’s so small, the paper weren’t hardly ever more’n three sections deep, sometimes not even that, and it usually weren’t more’n twenty pages total. It only come out once a week, which orta tell anybody how much goes on in the county. It didn’t take long to skim through the good news (the oldest daughter of Cousin Ricky Dean on Mama’s side won an essay contest at school) and the bad (Cousin Ricky Dean got picked up by a Sheriff’s Deputy for dealing meth) for a whole month’s worth of news.

  I shook my head at Ricky Dean’s antics and kept digging, and finally found an interesting tidbit in July’s final paper. Buried on page A-10 was a two-paragraph update about a twenty-year old woman what’d gone missing in mid-June while night swimming off her family’s dock at Lake Burton. Some summer folks found her wandering the woods two days before the paper went to press, babbling nonsense about offerings and wearing a brand-spanking-new swirling tattoo on her neck. I scrounged up some scrap paper and a pencil from the circulation desk and jotted down all the details, then requested June’s papers and tracked down the original article reporting her going missing.

  It was on the front page. Apparently, being found didn’t rate near as high in the news world as getting lost.

  I went back clear through March and didn’t find another drop of news about the lake outside charity functions and society news. Once I turned all the papers back in, I dug through the map cabinet and located an old Forest Service map showing the water courses around Fame’s land, just to refresh my memory on which ones was connected to what and how best to access ‘em.

  While I was at it, I dug another topo out and pinpointed Greenwood Cove’s location along the lake. If I was gonna snoop into Belinda’s business, I might as well snoop right. The cove was located in a secluded section of the lake a quarter of the way down its length from the dam, off Charlie Mountain Road on what looked like a tiny, unmarked lane. Leastwise, no name was attached to it on the map. I sketched the road’s lay on a scrap piece of paper fetched from the desk, then studied the map ‘til it was stuck in my memory.

  When I was done, I spent a precious few minutes browsing the new releases. John Ringo had a new book out. I picked it up, thumbed through it, and scowled. Dagnabbit. I missed the last one. Now I’d have to request it before I could read the newest. I propped the book back on its shelf and headed into the stacks toward fiction, hoping against hope that the library had the book on site.

  Halfway back, I near about run over Jenny Brookshire. My breath whooshed out in a rush. Last time I seen her was about two days before the deep wood took Henry.

  She stopped in front of me, her gray eyes wide, her hands clenched tight around a stack of half a dozen books. Likely, she was remembering the last time she saw me, too, and regretting running into me.

  Death has that effect on most folks, ‘specially a tragic death like Henry’s. So young, people said. So full of promise. Least that’s what the kinder folk murmured when they seen me. I didn’t like to dwell on what ever body else had to say.

  “Sunny.” Jenny bobbled her books and righted them with a breathy laugh. “It’s so good to see you. How have you been?”

  “I been right good, Miss Jenny. How’s school a-going?”

  “Oh, well, you know. It’s going.” She laughed again, this’un more genuine. “The kids are still excited. In another month, they’ll have settled into a routine and school won’t be nearly as fun.”

  I remembered that feeling, the newness of fall’s start wearing off under the daily grind of sitting still and doing homework. A small silence drifted over us and I scrambled for another topic. My eyes fell on her books. “Homer?”

  “I was in the mood for a little Greek history. One of my minors was in the Classics and I have so much time on my hands since my fiancé left.” She cleared her throat and glanced away, and her cheeks took on the pink Fame accused me of wearing when I thought on Riley. “Well, I have a lot of time right now.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Jenny.”

  Her eyes jerked back to mine and went round as saucers. “Oh, no. Don’t be. It was for the best all the way around. I didn’t mean to mention it.”

  I grinned. “Lotta stuff pops outta my mouth I don’t mean to mention, neither.”

  “That makes two of us then.” She smiled and shifted the books in her hands. “I should get these checked out before my arm muscles give out. It was nice seeing you again, Sunny.”

  “You, too, Miss Jenny. You take care now.”

  “I shall.”

  I turned and followed her progress to the circulation desk, made sure she didn’t trip over her own two feet and sprawl head first into the thin carpet. She sure was a nice woman. Too bad about her fiancé. In my experience, most men didn’t know a good thing when they had it, and I reckoned that was the case with Miss Jenny. Then again, maybe it was as she said and for the best.

  I spared a few more minutes picking out a book (military SciFi; the John Ringo book put me in the mood), checked it out at the circulation desk, then headed out to Injun Bob’s Pawn Shoppe and Fine Antiques, better known as Clayton’s biggest junk store.

  Injun Bob weren’t really no injun and he sure as tootin’ weren’t named Bob. The name he usually answered to was Oakleaf Bunnyhopper, but I was pretty near certain that weren’t his legal name neither. Injun Bob was a product of the ‘60s, and that explained a lot about him. Anyhow, he was long gone, travelling the world in a beat up Vanagon while his granddaughter BobbiJean tended the store. I went to school with her boyfriend Jazz, him what run a scrap metal business out back of Injun Bob’s where he created some mighty fine folk art in between recycling worn out washers and dryers.

  A bell rattled merrily as I stepped into the store. The place was crowded from one end to the other with an odd assortment of junk. Musical instruments of all shapes, sizes, and conditions occupied the entire wall to the right, tools and small appliances the entire wall on the left. In between was stereo systems, boxes of LPs, CDs, cassettes, and eight-tracks, fur coats I figured was genuine, and a playpen full of stuffed animals. Kewpie dolls stood shoulder to shoulder with action figures, a complete set of heavy duty tires was laid down in the middle aisle like an obstacle course, and old quilts was draped willy-nilly in and around everything. I picked my way through the tires, rifled through a box of comic books tucked behind a hula girl lamp, and rubbed a sneeze outta my nose what was stirred up by the fine layer of dust coating the shelves.

  BobbiJean popped outta the door set into the back wall behind the glass counter running the width of the far end of the store. “Hey, Sunny. Long time no see!”

  “I was just in here last month.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t get to see y
ou.”

  She dusted her hands off on her jeans and settled onto a wooden stool behind the cash register. I sidled closer, took a good gander at her jeans, and snickered. “Jazz moved on to roosters, huh.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Honest to goodness, I don’t have a single pair of pants left that he hasn’t painted. I guess I was lucky he stuck with something tame like barnyard animals.”

  That was true enough. Jazz had gone through a nigh on unforgettable phase in high school where he painted penises on everything. Animal penises, human penises, big, small, straight, and crooked. If it was a penis, he painted it, and he didn’t spare a thought for the surface he used, neither. He got suspended for painting erections on the back of the vice principal’s new sedan, complete with testicles and anatomically correct veins, but that was after I dropped outta school to have Henry. Too bad, too. It woulda been a sight to see.

  “You here for a reason or did you just come to chat?” BobbiJean asked.

  “A little of both.” I dug the drawing I sketched of Missy’s ring outta the front pocket of my very plain jeans and handed it to her. “Fame’s girlfriend Missy lost this ring yesterday, maybe in Ingles. We was hoping it’d turn up in the pawn shops.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out for it.”

  “Call Fame if somebody brings it in, wouldja?”

  “Will do. Speaking of rings.” She tucked the drawing away under a corner of the cash register and leaned her elbows on the counter. Her doe brown eyes took on a happy twinkle as she wiggled the fingers of her left hand at me. “Jazz asked me to marry him.”

  “Well, there’s something I never thought to hear.” I touched a finger to the simple metal band twining ‘round her ring finger and ignored the envy sinking into my gut. “He made it?”

  “Hammered it out of a nickel. It was the sweetest thing.” She heaved a contented sigh and grabbed my hand, holding it tight in hers. “We’re doing the deed next month. You’ll come, won’t you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, BobbiJean. Me and crowds don’t get on too well together.”