Iva Honeysuckle Meets Her Match

by Candice Ransom

  “Well? What’s it going to be?” Mrs. Honeycutt glared at Arden in so steely a manner that Iva wondered why the rearview mirror didn’t shatter.

  “I won’t bother Iva anymore.” But Arden flicked Iva a secret searing glance.

  Their mother steered the car back onto the highway. “All right, then.”

  Iva picked up the thread of her story as if nothing had happened. “So, Captain John Smith sailed up this river that has two p’s and two n’s in its name. He took his sword and stabbed a stingray. The stingray stabbed his arm with its poisonous tail!”

  With a sigh, Iva’s mother followed Aunt Sissy Two into a gas station. “Lily Pearl must have to go again.”

  Iva didn’t stop talking when they got out of the car. As the middle kid in a family like hers, she had to make the best of every opportunity. “Captain John Smith got very, very sick. He almost died. He told his men to dig his grave. But then the doctor that was with them put some medicine on Captain John Smith’s arm and he was cured. So from then on, the place was called Stingray Point. And that’s where we’re going!” Iva finished with a flourish.

  “What happened to the grave?” Hunter asked, popping a bubble.

  “Oh, my gosh! What’s that smell?” Arden rolled her window down and stuck her head out like a golden retriever.

  “Mmmm!” Hunter pushed Arden aside so she could hang out the window, too.

  Iva sniffed. The aroma pouring through their windows suggested sugar and onions and tomatoes and really, really good meat. “Mama, what is it?” she asked.

  “Just the finest open-pit barbecue chicken this side of Jericho.” Iva’s mother slowed the car and followed Aunt Sissy Two’s car onto a graveled lot. “Aunt Sissy Two and I used to go to Stingray Point with Mama and Pap when we were kids. Right about lunchtime we’d come to Critch Jackson’s barbecue stand. That smell would draw us off the highway like a magnet.”

  Iva expected a restaurant, but she saw only two big, smoking barbecue pits and one African American man slapping a paintbrush over grilled chickens.

  Before Mrs. Honeycutt had switched off the ignition, everyone piled out of the car and ran over to the grills. Lily Pearl and Howard and Heaven were close behind.

  Iva was practically drooling. “Mama, can we get some?”

  “You bet.” Her mother ordered three quarter chickens and two drumsticks for Iva.

  “Here you go, missy,” the man said. He handed Iva a paper plate bending under the weight of the two huge charcoal-blackened drumsticks.

  “How come the chickens aren’t red?” Iva asked. “You know, like catsup?”

  “I use a special white barbecue sauce,” Mr. Jackson said. “Oil and vinegar and secret spices. My recipe goes all the way back to the first settlers.”

  “From Captain John Smith?” Iva said, thrilled to be eating real discoverer food.

  “Maybe.”

  Iva noticed his gold front tooth winking in the sun. Back home, a friend had a chipped front tooth that Iva had always admired. Mr. Jackson’s gold tooth was beautiful. She wondered how she could get one.

  They sat down at a picnic table. Arden and Hunter ripped into their chickens like jungle cats. Howard stripped his drumstick to the bone in a jiffy. Even picky-picky Lily Pearl ate without talking.

  Iva bit into the tangy meat. Sauce dripped down her chin. She had never tasted anything so wonderful in her entire life. Not even Walser Compton’s angel food cake with peppermint icing could compare.

  She looked around. Heaven, always the last to leave the table, was missing.

  Heaven was talking to Critch Jackson as he slathered sauce on chickens. Lily Pearl and Howard slipped off the bench and raced over. Iva wasn’t about to be left out.

  Heaven showed Iva something in her hand. A flat copper disk lay on her palm.

  “See this penny?” she said. “When Mr. Jackson was a little boy, he put the penny on the trolley-car tracks—did you know there used to be a trolley car in Stingray Point? Anyhow, the trolley car ran over it and squashed it flat.” Sure enough, Abraham Lincoln’s head was all stretched.

  “Did you live in Stingray Point?” Iva asked Mr. Jackson.

  “Grew up there.”

  “I read in my National Geographic magazine about pirates’ lairs in the Chesapeake Bay. Did you ever find one?” Iva wasn’t sure what a lair looked like.

  Critch Jackson turned over a row of sizzling chickens. “Never found a pirate’s lair. But one day out in my boat, I saw some puffin’ pigs.”

  “What are they?” Howard asked.

  “You’d call them porpoises,” Mr. Jackson replied. “Very scarce animals. But that day, I had my lucky penny with me, and that’s how I got to see them. A while back, people saw something else in the bay—they said it was a sea serpent.”

  Iva nearly fell over. “A sea serpent? Really?”

  “That’s what I heard. They said it was a great big thing. Named her Chessie.”

  Heaven, who had the imagination of a paper clip, ignored this fascinating story and asked, “What other lucky things did your penny do?”

  “Almost spent that penny one time, buying a bucket of oysters. But I broke a five-dollar bill instead. When I opened one of them oysters, I found a pearl!”

  “My name is Lily Pearl!” piped up Lily Pearl.

  “You could have swallowed it,” Iva said to Mr. Jackson. “The pearl, I mean.”

  “Lucky penny kept me from doing that, too,” he said. “I had the pearl made into a necklace for my wife to wear on our wedding day.”

  Lily Pearl tugged on Mr. Jackson’s shirtsleeve. “You had a wedding? Did your bride have a white dress and a long veil?”

  Mr. Jackson nodded. “And the pearl necklace, which she never took off.”

  “From this day forward,” Lily Pearl said solemnly.

  “Kids!” called Aunt Sissy Two. “Come clean up your trash.”

  Iva wrinkled her nose with annoyance. She’d wanted to ask Mr. Jackson about pirates’ lairs and a lot more about that sea serpent, but Lily Pearl had sidetracked him with her ridiculous bride talk.

  At the garbage can, Heaven showed Iva the penny still in her hand. “Look what Mr. Jackson gave me.” She smiled as if he’d presented her with the Hope Diamond.

  Iva was suspicious. “How come he gave it to you?”

  “Because I let him choose a card from my special Daily Life at the Beach deck. He was so excited he gave me his penny.” Heaven polished the penny on the hem of her T-shirt. “I’m going to carry it with me always and have good luck.”

  “It’s just a penny,” Iva said. No wonder Heaven kept asking for lucky stories.

  “You wish.”

  “He can’t give stuff to you and not anybody else!” Iva said, raising her voice.

  Mr. Jackson walked over to Aunt Sissy Two. “Your daughter asked for an old penny. I didn’t mean to cause any hard feelings among the children.”

  “Heaven,” said Aunt Sissy Two, “let Mr. Jackson have his penny back.”

  “No!” Heaven gripped the coin in her fist. “It’s mine!”

  Mr. Jackson looked as if he had a sudden headache. “How about I give all of you something?”

  Iva’s spirits lifted. Maybe he’d offer her something better than a flat penny—like a pocketknife.

  But he said, “I’d like to pack you-all a nice picnic supper.”

  Iva’s mother and Aunt Sissy Two tucked an envelope into Critch Jackson’s money box. Iva figured they were leaving a tip, so he could buy himself a supersize headache remedy.

  They all got back on the highway. In Iva’s car, no one spoke. After a while, Iva smelled something else in the air. Not barbecued chicken, but the delicious odor of dead fish. Then a wide band of sparkling dark blue water filled the view.

  The Chesapeake Bay.

  “We’re here!” she cried.

  “Finally,” her mother said with relief.

  As they passed the metal sign that said, WELCOME TO STINGRAY POINT, Iva turned
to her mother and asked, “If somebody hits me in the face with a humongous seashell and my front tooth falls out, can I get a gold one?”

  Chapter Three

  The Man Upstairs

  The yellow two-story rental house looked crooked and rickety, like one of Lily Pearl’s drawings. A rusty glider and some dingy wicker chairs crouched in the shade of the wide front porch. High up on the peaked roof, a heron-shaped weather vane creaked in the breeze.

  Iva was enchanted.

  “Our house has a name! Heron’s Rest!” she exclaimed, pointing to the driftwood sign over the door. Then she dropped to her hands and knees as if she’d been struck by lightning. “The driveway is made out of oyster shells. They’re probably millions of years old—”

  “Iva, get up. You’re embarrassing me.” Arden sashayed past wearing pink sunglasses and a straw hat. Talk about embarrassing, Iva thought, imitating her sister’s prissy walk up the porch steps and into the house.

  In the kitchen, Iva’s mother warily checked out the old-fashioned stove while Aunt Sissy Two announced room assignments.

  “The bedroom at the end of the hall is Arden’s and Hunter’s. Lily Pearl will sleep on a cot with Aunt Sissy and me, because our room is closest to the bathroom.”

  Howard pushed back his sweaty bangs. “What about me?”

  “You”—Aunt Sissy Two used her aren’t-you-special voice—“get to sleep in the living room on the sofa!”

  “Oh, boy! Can I watch TV all night?”

  “There is no TV,” Hunter said in disgust.

  Heaven said, “Where’s this sleeping porch I have to share with Iva?”

  “Other side of the kitchen—”

  Iva raced through the door onto a screened-in porch. The addition seemed to have been built by a chimpanzee. Nails stuck out all over the place, and the floor sloped down.

  The half walls were painted battleship gray. A beat-up wooden chest squatted between two metal cots with skimpy rolled-up mattresses. At the other end of the porch, a modern leather rocking chair looked apologetic.

  “This is it?” Heaven said, with fists on hips. “No curtains, no rug, no lamps—”

  “It’s not supposed to be the Ritz Hilton,” Iva said. “I think it’s neat. We can pretend we’re camping out.”

  “What if it rains? Our beds are right by the screens. We’ll get soaking wet!”

  “See those plastic things above the windows? Blinds. Now, quit griping, and get your stuff so we can hit the beach.”

  Iva skipped out to the car and returned with her suitcase. Next, she carried in the box containing her earthly possessions—her pup tent, her old National Geographic magazines, her discoverer’s journal that was really an old tire-pressure record book, and her corduroy discoverer’s shorts.

  She was happily stowing these items in the wooden chest when Heaven let out a shriek.

  “What?” Iva jumped up, thinking there was a scorpion in the corner.

  “We don’t have a closet!”

  Her cousin stood tragically in the doorway, surrounded by five small suitcases. Heaven had bought them cheap at Cazy Sparkle’s yard sale.

  “We’re only here for five days,” said Iva. “You only need one ball gown.”

  “Very funny,” Heaven replied. “I brought one suitcase for each card in my Daily Life at the Beach deck.”

  “What are you babbling about?”

  Heaven flopped down in the chair. “I made five Daily Life at the Beach cards, right? One for each day we’re here. Each card has a different beach activity. I packed a different suitcase for each card. When I pull the card with that activity on it, I wear the stuff from that suitcase.”

  Iva stared at her. They were not related. They couldn’t be. A Martian must have shoved Heaven Honeycutt out of a spaceship.

  Unlike her cousin, Iva planned to wear the same outfit every single day. What’s more, she wasn’t going to take a bath or wash her hair or brush her teeth. Captain John Smith didn’t take a bath for months.

  “What if your Daily Life card says to look for shells that day, only we’re in the middle of a hurricane?” Iva said. “What suitcase do you use then?”

  Heaven kicked her ladies’-size flip-flops across the room and sniffed with her left nostril. “You think you know everything.”

  “I know those beach life cards are lame.”

  Heaven got up and jerked two of her suitcases over to the wooden chest. “You’ve filled it up already! What am I supposed to do with my things?”

  “You snooze, you lose.”

  “We’ll see about that!” Heaven reached in and began tossing out Iva’s National Geographics.

  “Hey,” Iva yelled. “Those are rare antiques!”

  To get even, she unlatched one of the suitcases and flung a red-striped shirt, some white shorts, and a navy windbreaker over her shoulder. “What’s this, your beach-party outfit?”

  At the bottom of the suitcase was a bottle of Pretty Peach cologne. Iva sprayed the mist all over Heaven.

  “Stop it!” Heaven screeched, flailing her arms. “I’m telling!”

  “What’s going on?” Iva’s mother stepped out onto the porch, followed by Aunt Sissy Two. Both carried sheets, blankets, and pillows.

  “Iva’s being mean, Aunt Sissy!” Heaven said. “Look what she did to my clothes!”

  “Look what she did to my stuff,” Iva said quickly. With a champion tattletale like Heaven around, you had to get your licks in fast.

  Mrs. Honeycutt glanced at the meager furniture. “Sissy, the kids don’t have any storage. No closet. Not even a dresser. Just that chest.”

  “Which Iva has piled her stupid stuff in—”

  “Heaven,” said Aunt Sissy Two, “I told you not to bring all these suitcases. You snuck them in the trunk anyway, didn’t you?”

  “Mama, Iva sprayed my cologne in the air, wasting it,” Heaven said in that Sunday-school tone she used when she didn’t want to answer a question.

  Mrs. Honeycutt dumped the sheets onto the chair and faced Iva and Heaven.

  “Here’s the deal, girls. If you can’t get along, then one of you will switch with Lily Pearl and sleep in our room on the cot. The person who stays here gets to take Lily Pearl to the bathroom six times a night.”

  Iva looked at Heaven. Heaven looked at Iva.

  “We’ll stay,” Iva said. She’d rather sleep on the porch, even if it meant being kept awake by Heaven’s snoring all night.

  “No more arguing?” Aunt Sissy Two said.

  Heaven shook her head.

  Iva spied her cousin’s fingers crossed behind her back.

  Then Heaven knelt by the chest and began stacking Iva’s magazines just so.

  The instant their mothers left, Heaven shoveled in the rest of Iva’s belongings.

  “Don’t think you’ve won,” she muttered.

  But Iva was listening to her mother and Aunt Sissy Two talking in the kitchen.

  “It’ll never work, those two,” her mother said. “Remember that time they were playing in the basement? We were painting the nursery before Lily Pearl was born.”

  “Yeah,” said Aunt Sissy Two. “They must have been about four.”

  “They were playing good; then, all of a sudden, it got real quiet. I cracked the door, and there sat Heaven on the top step, with Iva on the bottom step. Both of them grumped up in a big bullfrog pout.” Iva’s mother sighed. “All they ever do is fall out.”

  Iva remembered that time. Heaven had quit a perfectly fun game of orphans-lost-in-the-graveyard because she wanted to play ice princesses instead.

  “Which bed do you want, Iva?” Heaven asked sweetly, directing her voice toward the kitchen.

  “Which one do you want?” Iva asked, suspecting a trap.

  “Doesn’t matter to me.” Heaven shook out her daisy-embroidered sheets with an expert snap.

  Iva often thought her cousin should have had her own TV show. “Then I’ll take this one.” She unrolled the mattress of the bed closest to
the screen. She’d be able to smell the sea air a second sooner than Heaven would.

  When Heaven unrolled her mattress, she yelled like she’d struck oil. “Look what I found!” She held up a pretty shell with orangey-pink insides.

  “That was in your bed?” Iva said enviously.

  “Yep. Lucky for me I picked this bed.” Heaven set the shell on the chest.

  “Luck has nothing to do with it.” But Iva was wondering what she’d find in her bed. “You got the bed I didn’t want.”

  “Exactly,” said Heaven.

  Arden and Hunter skidded out onto the porch. “Hurry up!” Arden said. “We’re going to the beach!”

  “The beach! The beach! The beach!” Lily Pearl and Howard cried, hopping like sand fleas. Lily Pearl strutted in her brand-new blue satin two-piece bathing suit.

  “Wait till I make my bed first—”

  “Heaven!” Iva wasn’t even taking her discovery notebook.

  They stampeded through the kitchen and into the living room like water buffalo. Iva’s mother and Aunt Sissy Two stood on either side of the front door.

  “Not so fast,” said Aunt Sissy Two. “Rule time.”

  “Can we hear them later?” Arden said. “Me and Hunter are in kind of a hurry.”

  “Number one,” Iva’s mother said crisply. “The most important rule of all. Lily Pearl and Howard must be watched at all times. This means in the yard, on the beach, on the boardwalk.”

  Arden slumped so that one hip jutted out. “And who gets stuck with the little kids? Me and Hunter, that’s who. Some vacation this is going to be.”

  “Arden…”

  “It’s true, Mama! Iva never does a stroke of work. It’s always me watching Lily Pearl!”

  Lily Pearl danced in her blue bathing suit, delighted to be the subject of so much drama.

  Aunt Sissy Two said, “Iva and Heaven will watch them, too. Heaven is very responsible.”

  Iva’s mother looked doubtfully at Aunt Sissy Two. “I don’t know. Iva is kind of reckless. Somebody may need to watch after her.”

  “Hey!” Iva said, insulted.