Sunshine Walkingstick Omnibus

by Celia Roman

  “His wife disowned your daddy.”

  “Blood is blood.”

  “Yeah, it is, Sunny. You really wanna know what’s in yourn?”

  That startled me good. I knowed what was in my blood, knowed it inside and out. Lived with it ever day I hunted another monster and relived the kill in my dreams. Fame knowed it, too, so why was he asking me like that?

  Riley stepped up beside me, his hands loose at his sides. “Be careful what you say to her, Fame.”

  Fame’s lean body tensed like a wire strung taut. “I done told you to mind your own, Treadwell. Ain’t a-tellin’ you again.”

  “She’s a good woman,” Riley continued, like Fame never spoke word one. “I won’t have you running her down.”

  Fame huffed out a scoffing laugh, though his eyes was near feral behind the blue. “I take care of my own.”

  “Yeah? Me, too.” Riley placed a warm hand along my back, down low near the waistband of my jeans. “You hear what you need, baby?”

  I near about laughed. Sure, I heard enough. Interpreting it was the problem. Danged if I could make heads nor tails of what was going on in this room. “I heard enough. For now.”

  Missy stood so sudden, her chair near about tipped over. “Tell her, Fame.”

  “I ain’t—” Fame started out, and calm, sweet-tempered Missy slapped a palm to the kitchen table and scowled at him. “You tell her or I will, and you may not like the way I tell it.”

  I glanced between the two of ‘em, sure I landed in the Twilight Zone. Missy never stood up to Fame, never, ‘specially not in front of us kids. Reckon she found my gumption or maybe she just hid hers well.

  “Tell me what?” I asked.

  Fame’s lips tightened the barest bit. “Your daddy’s family, his parents. They’re involved in a feud.”

  “Well, I don’t know what that’s like a’tall,” I said, and the words was scorching hot and bitter. “Having been on the wrong side of one my whole life long.”

  “Not détente, Sunny. A feud.” Fame’s gaze slipped off of me and landed on Riley. “Best stay out of it ‘til it’s settled.”

  “How long?” Riley asked.

  “No idea.”

  “Hey, now,” I said, but Riley squeezed my elbow and said, “C’mon, baby. You can fuss at me later.”

  That was a promise I intended to hold him to. I twisted my elbow out of his grip and crossed the room. Fame was still my best family. I weren’t leaving without reminding him of that, nor myself of how much I owed him. I threw my arms around his shoulders, stood on tiptoe, and whispered, “I love you, you ol’ coot.”

  His arms come around me, hugging hard, and he whispered back, “I love you, too, Sunny girl.”

  And I remembered something right then what shoulda occurred to me a mite sooner. Fame hardly ever forbid me from something. Riley’d never been off limits in spite of his lawman heritage, but painters and my daddy’s family was, and both of ‘em here of late. What was it about them two things what scared Fame enough to warn me off? And if it worried Fame, should it do more’n worry me?

  We ended on a somewhat awkward note. I promised to call later with an invite for supper, and me and Riley left, not much the wiser as to what was going on.

  I shooed Riley off to church soon as we got back to my trailer. Lordy, I was fond of him, but I needed a breather from ever thing and ever body. I watched him drive away, waving the whole time, then changed into old clothes and throwed myself into cleaning the trailer good.

  Folks could accuse me of a lot of things, but keeping an untidy roost weren’t one of ‘em.

  The expulsion of restless energy done me good. By the time noon rolled around, I was wore out, but my noggin was clearer than it been in days. I weren’t ready to challenge it with anything emotional, though, so I plopped down in the chair behind my makeshift desk and sorted through recent cases.

  Still hadn’t figured out what was getting into old Aunt Sadie’s garden. Seeing as how the fall crops was all about in, that weren’t too urgent a matter. Didn’t excuse neglecting it. I writ down a reminder in block letters in tomorrow’s section of my organizer.

  I went down the list of clients, crossing off what’d been dealt with, and tapped a finger next to the entry for the Kildares. Ol’ Blue was still missing along with his lady friend, ‘less Billy’s mom forgot to call me with an update. I sighed and sat back in my chair. Weren’t like the coon dog to stay gone this long, but what could I do to find him what ain’t already been done?

  I pulled out my cellphone, about to dial the Kildares’ number, and happened to catch the time. Lunchtime on a Sunday. They was likely still eating, and I weren’t about to disturb family time. Ol’ Blue could wait another hour ‘til the Kildares was good and settled into their afternoon.

  Nothing else needed doing, so I propped my bare heels on the wooden plank topping my desk and picked up where I left off in a brand new book about Internet marketing. Hey, word of mouth weren’t the only way to grow a business. A website might come in handy. If nothing else, it’d have my number on it or another way to contact me. Might bring in new business and might not, but it wouldn’t hurt to try, would it?

  My cellphone jiggled, interrupting my musings. I thumbed it on. The Kildares’ number ran across the screen. That’d be young Billy’s mother, probably wanting an update. I answered with a cheery, “Howdy, Dori.”

  A muffled sob drifted across the line. “Sunny, thank God you’re there. You won’t believe what’s happened.”

  I swung my legs down and leaned forward in the chair. “What’s wrong, hon?”

  “It’s Ol’ Blue. They found him.” She cleared her throat, sniffled. “A forest ranger found him out on Patterson Gap Road.”

  That deep uneasiness seized me, stealing my breath, and my heart flipped over behind my sternum. “What happened?”

  “They don’t know. Oh, Sunny.” Another sob escaped, and when Dori spoke again, her voice was muffled. “There’s not a scratch on him.”

  And Ol’ Blue weren’t old enough for old age to get him. It was just a name Billy give him after watching Old Yellow. He raised Ol’ Blue from a pup, got him not more’n three years back.

  I dropped my head into my free hand, scrubbed it over my stick straight hair, fighting déjà vu with ever motion. A painter dead without a scratch and now Ol’ Blue, and both of ‘em found on Patterson Gap Road. It was a long stretch of dirt and gravel, but were it really a coincidence?

  “You know the name of the ranger?” I asked.

  She told me and I writ it down. Name didn’t ring a bell, but that didn’t mean nothing. I could hardly remember my own name at times. “You pick up the body yet?”

  “They’re holding it for a few days. Running tests or something. I don’t know.”

  “It’s probably nothing,” I said, gentle as I could. “What can I do?”

  A low wail erupted from her and was cut off just as quick. “Billy don’t know yet. I’m telling him when he gets home from the church’s youth group.”

  The same one Henry woulda been in if he lived.

  Memory flashed on Libby Squirrel’s concerned parting words and fatigue swept over me, nibbling away at my energy. I had to sort that out soon. Just not right now.

  I offered to drop by and be there when Dori told Billy about Ol’ Blue, and she thanked me and said as how that weren’t necessary. I hung up feeling like the lowest form of pond scum. Ol’ Blue was dead. I let him down same as Henry, same as I let down so many other folks, but old regrets didn’t bring back the dead no matter how hard I beat myself up with ‘em.

  Chapter Eleven

  That night, sleep visited in fits and starts between haunting dreams. I remembered not a one when I woke, but an uneasy ache seeped into me, lingering long after the day begun.

  Soon as I got some coffee into me, I called the forest ranger Dori told me about and scheduled an appointment for that afternoon. After, I could run out to Patterson Gap Road and pinpoint where Ol’ Blue wa
s found against where me and David found that painter. And in between, I could do what I shoulda done in the first place and scout out local legends about painters. Riley distracted me from it Saturday when we was in the library, but he was back at work now, giving me nary an excuse to shun duty.

  I made a bologna sandwich, wrapped it up tight, and stuck it, an apple, and a pint of water in a sack along with a spare change of clothes and an old towel. I double checked my knife and on impulse pulled out my 1911 and its holster. Never hurt to be prepared.

  My to do list for the day was pretty long. First stop was at the Kildares’ neighbor. The missus greeted me at the door and confirmed that Lady was still missing. We chatted for a bit about her and Ol’ Blue, reminiscing about both dogs, then I volunteered to print up and post some missing dog posters, no charge.

  A website sure would come in handy for such as that.

  The missus dug up a recent picture of Lady, and I promised to return it soon as I was done making posters.

  I dropped by the Kildares’ next in the hopes of checking on Billy’s state of mind via Dori. The driveway and garage was empty. Like as not, Dori was out running errands and whatnot. I made a mental note to stop by Ingles and get a card for Billy, what good it’d do to cheer him up. Hallmark weren’t no substitute for a boy’s favorite companion.

  Time was on my side, so I went a bit outta my way and run out to Warwoman to visit with ol’ Aunt Sadie. She was in her front yard raking leaves with a wood-tined rake. Soon as the IROC’s engine caught her attention (she was nigh on deaf as a doorknob, was Aunt Sadie), she looked up and grinned a toothless grin at me and waved me in. Before I hardly parked the car and got out, she’d tottered toward me, mischief cackling out of her plain as day.

  “Sunny, Sunny,” she said. “Lookee what I got.”

  I slammed the driver’s side door shut. “What you been up to, Aunt Sadie?”

  “Set out some bait and caught me a critter.”

  Uh-oh. If she was happy to see me, no telling what kinda critter she nabbed. Nothing natural, was my guess, but with Aunt Sadie, who could tell?

  She led me inside her tiny log home, built, rumor had it, by her grandpappy after he was freed. He come up this way from down along the coast searching for his wife, she what was sold away from him before the war brought slavery to an end in the States.

  Too bad it weren’t brought to the same deserved end elsewhere.

  Whether he found his wife or not, nobody knowed, or nobody was telling, which amounted to the same thing. Aunt Sadie’s grandpappy settled here with one of his young’uns and built this farm with his own two hands. That young’un growed up to be Aunt Sadie’s daddy, and when his wife passed on and he got too old to take care of himself, Aunt Sadie moved back home with him and took right good care of him ‘til he died some two decades back.

  Mama used to bring me out ever once in a while when I was knee high to a grasshopper. Never figured out how she knowed Aunt Sadie, ‘cept the county was too small and the locals too few in number for ever soul not to know ever other soul.

  I followed Aunt Sadie into her home and shut the door behind myself while she shuffled to one corner of the room what served as both kitchen, dining room, and living area. She stooped down some few feet away from the cast iron barrel stove opposite the wood cook stove and yanked an old sheet off a dented wire birdcage.

  I crossed the room and knelt down beside it, and examined the critter contained inside. It was small, not much bigger’n a kitten, and wrinkled as a raisin under too much sun. A large, bulbous nose dominated its face and strips of random cloth was wrapped around its spindly limbs under a neatly sewn jacket and pants, both mud brown. Its huge eyes was wide and, ‘less I was sore mistaken, scared.

  Aunt Sadie tapped the end of her wooden rake against the worn, plank flooring. “This be the critter what et my pumpkins.”

  I sat back on my haunches and give the runt another once over. No weapons, no sharp nails. Couldn’t tell what kinda teeth it owned. I was nigh on certain this weren’t the culprit, but what this was escaped me.

  “Where’d you find it?” I asked.

  “Put out some bait. Found this the next morning.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Two days back.”

  I swiveled around and fixed a stern look on her. “You shoulda called me, Aunt Sadie, soon as you spotted it.”

  She waved an arthritic hand at me. “I was getting to it, little missy.”

  “Next time, get to it a little faster.” I rebalanced, picked up the cage, and stood. “This goes home with me ‘til I figure out what it is.”

  Some of the glee melted out of Aunt Sadie’s expression. “You don’t know?”

  I shook my head. “Never seen one before.”

  “Well, lawsy be.” She heaved a great sigh, lifting her shoulders high under the flannel shirt draped over her workday dress. “You holler soon as you find out, ya hear?”

  “Will do.” I leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her wrinkled cheek, careful to keep the critter well away from her. “Make me a fresh apple cake and we’ll call it even.”

  “An apple cake don’t pay the bills, Sunny.”

  I grinned. “Yeah, but it keeps my feller happy.”

  I wandered outside, Aunt Sadie hot on my trail, and tucked the caged critter into the car in the passenger’s side floorboard, wedging it in good so it wouldn’t roll around through the curves. Me and her chatted a while longer and I endured some good-natured teasing about Riley, then we said our goodbyes and I headed off to run the rest of my errands.

  Ingles was next. I throwed that old towel over the critter’s cage, left the car windows rolled down a coupla inches each, and scurried through finding Billy a card, a chore what best needed more time’n I owned to give it. Ten minutes later, I slid back into the IROC, card in hand, and lifted the towel.

  The critter was curled up on the cage’s bare metal floor. Dagnabbit. Had the bitty thing croaked on me while I was in Ingles?

  I tapped the backs of my fingers against the top of the cage. It lifted its head and slit its huge eyes open at me.

  “You ok?” I asked, then about kicked myself for the sheer stupidity of the question. ‘Course, it weren’t all right. What critter liked being shoved into a cage?

  It closed its eyes and laid back down, not much of an answer a’tall. Looked like it was the only one I was gonna get. I left the towel off and drove to the library, and repeated my haste there as with Ingles.

  Or hurried fast as I could. Somebody’d compiled an index to the Foxfire Magazine a while back and give a copy to the library. That didn’t mean a body could find the reference they needed quick like. I scanned through the index, searching for painter legends, backtracked and searched for just legends, and finally found the entries I needed. The library didn’t have all of the cited issues, but I took what they had, grabbed the Foxfire book containing tall tales, and started back toward the circulation desk.

  A display in the middle of the library caught my eye, in particular a book I was somewhat familiar with. James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees was stuck on the top tier of a multi-level table along with other compilations of mythology, folklore, and ghost tales. Daddy’s dog-eared copy of Mooney’s was resting in a special spot on my bookshelves. The spine was broke and some pages was missing, but I spent many an hour as a young’un poring over the text, searching for some clue as to who I was.

  That curiosity dimmed somewhat over time, ‘specially when I growed up enough to learn the truth about Daddy’s kin, but only a little. Meeting two of my kinfolk on that side reignited my curiosity, or maybe nostalgia had a hand in my sudden, impulsive need to revisit the past. I balanced the pile of magazines and books already accumulated, snagged Mooney’s off the table, and double timed it to the front.

  I fidgeted while the woman at the desk hand writ the magazine titles onto a plain white card, stamped ever issue, and checked my two books out. She was a new one
on me, not that I cared one way or t’other. I was in here for one thing, learning. Didn’t need a friendly rapport with the staff to get that.

  After what felt like a coon’s age, the woman finally finished up and handed me my books, and I hurried out to the IROC, fumbling keys and books and my wallet in my hurry.

  The critter was right where I left it, huddled on the birdcage’s floor. I slumped into the driver’s seat, hands on the steering wheel. No way could I meet that forest ranger with this critter in the car. Sure, it might be a monster, but ‘til I knowed if or what, I had to take care of it, didn’t I? And no critter deserved sitting in a car for who knowed how long while I conducted business.

  Only one thing for it.

  I cranked the IROC’s engine and drove to Injun Bob’s, and about melted into a relieved puddle right then and there when I seen BobbiJean’s car parked around front. I picked up the cage, held the towel over it with the other hand, and went inside.

  BobbiJean was sitting behind the long counter stretched from wall to wall at the far end of the store. She looked up when my entry jingled the bell hung over the door and grinned. “Howdy, stranger. Long time no see.”

  I navigated the obstacle course of tires laid out in the middle aisle and tried not to knock any of the junk off the crowded shelves as I passed. “The wedding weren’t four days past, BobbiJean. Your memory ain’t that bad.”

  “It is after a night of Fame’s liquor.” She half stood on the stool she was perched on and peered over the counter at the birdcage in my hand. “Whatcha got there?”

  “Ain’t had time to figure out yet.” I hefted the cage onto the counter and pulled off the towel. “You wanna babysit?”

  BobbiJean sat back down real slow, her doe eyes glued to the critter staring back at her. “You want me to watch something you haven’t identified?”

  “It’s in a cage, BobbiJean,” I said real patient like, and earned a glare from her.

  “Oh, sure. That’s what they all say.”

  “C’mon, now. I’ll owe you big.”