by KD McCrite
Temple and Forest waved and turned to walk back home, their three dogs, five cats, and two goats in tow.
“Oh dear!” Mama said as we drove out of their weedy driveway. “We forgot your apology.”
“That’s okay, Mama. I’m sure the St. Jameses don’t even remember anything about any of it.”
She gave me a look. “It’s not okay. You’ll just have to do it when they come for supper.”
Well, I was disgusted right down to the core. I could only harbor the hope that they might not show up to eat. That was a very small hope, indeed, so I shoved the whole mess out of my mind.
But I got to thinking again about something else: Temple and Forest and Isabel and Ian as next-door neighbors.
“Wouldn’t it be something,” I wondered out loud, “if Temple came by with her poison ivy cure while the St. Jameses are at our house?”
Well, just call me psychic.
SEVEN
Hot for Grandma
When Mama and I got back to the house early that same afternoon, Grandma was still in the kitchen. She had fixed tuna salad sandwiches and baked brownies while we were gone. A fresh pot of coffee was giving off its waves of coffee fragrance.
“You gonna run into town with me, April?” Grandma asked as she put a sandwich and a warm brownie on a small plate in front of me. Then she set down a tall, cold glass of milk. “It’s Tuesday.”
Well, other than to be stuck with Queenie and Myra Sue on a deserted island, or to have supper with the St. Jameses, I could think of nothing I wanted to do less than ride into town with Grandma at the wheel, and I’ll tell you why: Grandma drives about thirty miles an hour on the hills and curves of the highway and about five million cars get stuck behind her because they can’t pass safely. Then, when she gets to a straight stretch where folks can pass her, she mashes the gas pedal, and we go flying along at about seventy miles an hour. Boy, you should hear the horns honk when that happens. At intersections, Grandma stops and looks both ways like she’s supposed to, but then she doesn’t wait. She just pulls right out whether it’s her turn or not. She never uses a turn signal.
“I’ve been going to Ernie’s Grocerteria every Tuesday for forty years,” she says proudly. “Folks should know that by now.”
And if you’re a pedestrian in Cedar Ridge, get some life insurance. Grandma says the streets are for cars, not pedestrians. She claims she can’t watch out for everybody in town, so they should watch out for themselves. Last spring she like to have run down Mayor Pangborn when he was crossing the street from city hall to the Koffee Kup. I didn’t think mayors were allowed to shake their fists and yell at old ladies, but obviously I was wrong.
Your best hope, if you cross the street in Cedar Ridge when Grandma is driving, is to pray that the good Lord sends down about ten thousand angels to protect you.
Right after lunch, Grandma and I walked across the hayfield to her little house near the pine forest. Except when the field grass has grown high like it was that day, you can see her place from our kitchen window. Her house looks like a little storybook cottage with a dark red roof and matching shutters. I love it there because it usually smells like cinnamon and nutmeg and vanilla and other good things. She used to live with us, but I guess when I was born I took up too much room or something, ’cause right after that, Daddy and Mr. Brett, our hired man who lives up Rough Creek Road about a half mile, built the house for her, and she moved out.
Grandma says she likes having her own place, and there was no use in her and Lily sharing the same house. She said she wanted to move out while they still loved each other and got along. It worked out real well.
Other than sitting in the passenger seat of her car while she drives, I like spending time with her. It’s like we’re good friends, even though she’s my grandma. She always listens when I tell her about whatever book I’ve been reading. She’s smart and funny and makes me think of things I never thought of before. For instance, one time when we were walking around in the pine forest beyond her house, she started talking about turpentine.
She said, “You ever notice how good these pine trees smell?”
I breathed real deep. “Umm-hmmm.”
She breathed in deep too. “Yep. I love to smell a pine tree, don’t you? But, now, turpentine—why, it’s enough to turn your stomach.”
I reckon I must have looked as confused as I felt, because she said, “You know turpentine comes from pine trees, don’t you, April?”
Well, I hate to admit to being a complete ignoramus, but I told her, “I didn’t know that.”
She stopped and looked me up and down as if something peculiar were oozing out of my skin.
“Do you mean to tell me with all the reading you do, you don’t know about turpentine? What do you think comes from pine trees? Pine-Sol?”
“Don’t it? All the commercials say—”
Grandma flapped her skirt-tail as though chasing away flies. “Phooey on that! TV has done ruined your generation. The Cosby Show is about the only thing worth watching other than Murder, She Wrote.”
Now, don’t let that fool you. Grandma and Myra Sue watch way more TV than I do. They watch the soaps as faithfully as they go to church, and they talk about those soap opera people like they and their troubles are real. You ought to hear them sometime: “I hope Kayla will come home soon!” or “That Emma. She’s plotting against Kim.” Myra Sue even cried when someone died on that show Search for Tomorrow. She saved the Kleenex she wiped her eyes on. She has it in a baggie in her drawer with her underwear. How anyone can be that dumb and still be able to eat with a fork is beyond me.
Mama doesn’t watch the soaps. She listens to NPR on the radio in the kitchen in the afternoon. She and Daddy do not encourage TV watching, of course, but sometimes they like Masterpiece Theater and NOVA. I’d rather read. But then, I’m a bookworm, so what do you expect?
That day, when Grandma and I got to her house, she went to freshen up and change her shoes. I plopped down on her sofa. A little glass horse sat on a doily on the coffee table. I looked at it, but I wasn’t impressed with Mr. Rance’s gift.
Grandma’s cat, Queenie, sat on the dining room table and stared without blinking, like she was trying to cast a spell on me. I’ll tell you right now, if I’d sat on the table, Grandma would have shooed me off there like a nasty fly. I gave Queenie a grim look. Grandma came into the room with a mess of jangling keys in her hand.
“I thought you was going to put on your good shoes,” I said.
She bent from the waist a little and looked at her feet. “These are my good shoes.” She straightened up and glanced around. “Have you seen my pocketbook?”
You have to know that my grandma can’t keep up with her big black purse any more than I can sprout wings and fly to Kansas City. Three weeks ago I found it in the refrigerator crisper, on top of the lettuce.
“Why don’t we just walk to town?” I suggested hopefully. “It would be real healthy.”
Grandma stared at me like she thought I was nuts.
“It’s eight miles to town, you silly child, and ninety degrees in the shade.”
Hopes dashed, I slouched back against the sofa. Her purse was right on the small table next to the front door, but I wanted to put off getting in her car as long as possible, so I kept my mouth shut.
Just then, a big red pickup pulled off Rough Creek Road and into Grandma’s driveway. Grandma was so busy looking behind the china cabinet that she didn’t hear it arrive. I stood up to get a better look out the picture window.
“You got company, Grandma,” I said.
“Woo?”
“Company. In the driveway. A red pickup.” The truck door opened, and I grimaced. “It’s that old man from down the road.”
Grandma stared at me for a moment, then both hands flew up.
“Good gravy!” she yelped. “Jeffrey Rance is calling on me again.”
She went trotting off to the bedroom, taking out hairpins and smoothing her hair.
&
nbsp; “You gonna start kissin’?” I called after her. “’Cause there’s some things a kid ought not to see.”
She popped her head around the doorway between her bedroom and the living room and glared at me.
“Hush that, for heaven’s sake!” She popped out of sight again, and I heard bobby pins hitting the little glass tray on her dresser. “You oughta be paddled for eavesdropping, April Grace Reilly.” A second later her bedroom door snapped shut.
I looked outside again. He was standing out there by his truck, a huge, old man in his black Stetson hat, bright red shirt, black jeans, and cowboy boots. He eyeballed the house like he was fixing to buy it. Then he walked around a bit, gawking up and down, right and left, as if he were looking for something. Then he came toward the house, so I right quick settled back down on the sofa and pretended I was somewhere else. His boot-steps thundered on the porch floor as he approached the door.
“Miz Grace, darlin’, are ya home?”
The voice boomed into the house as what looked like a red-and-black grizzly bear passed the window and blocked out the daylight from the screen door like a solar eclipse. The odor of Old Spice came through the open windows and screen door and went right up my nose.
“Say, sugar plum,” he yelled. “You here?”
Queenie shot down off the table and streaked into the spare room. He yanked open the screen door and walked right in, just like he’d been invited.
“Miz Grace!” he bugled like a lovesick moose.
I made a real admirable attempt to keep my hands off my ears. He didn’t see me, and I sure as shootin’ didn’t let him know I was ten feet away. He stood for a minute, then walked kinda all quiet and sneaky-like over to the TV. He looked at it close, then bent over a little and examined the brand-new VCR sitting on top, which Daddy and Mama had given Grandma last Christmas.
Not many people had VCRs in 1986 because they were new and expensive gadgets. But they were real nice if you wanted to sit in the front room and watch a movie. Grandma was afraid of it, if you can believe that. She said she was afraid she’d push the wrong button and burn the house down or something, even though I’ve shown her a million times how to use it.
With his big ole pointy finger, Mr. Rance poked the little flap where the tapes go in, smiling as big as if he’d discovered gold in the backyard. He muttered something about that “nifty little item oughta be worth something.” He straightened and looked around, but I sat quiet as a mouse, praying he’d never see me. And he didn’t. Not right then, anyway.
What he did see was Grandma’s purse, laying right out there on the little table by the door, plain as day. Boy, oh boy, did his eyes light up. He turned toward it, his hand out.
And he saw me. He gave a jump of surprise. I didn’t know I looked so scary.
“Grandma is in the other room,” I told him.
He stared at me a few seconds, then said, real loud, “Well, who are you? Wait! Don’t tell me. Let me guess.” He snapped his fingers. “You’re Miz Grace’s grandson.”
I don’t look like a boy, even if he couldn’t see my long hair.
“I’m a girl!” I yanked my red braid over a shoulder and all but waved it at the old goofball.
“Why, blamed if that ain’t so!” He laughed like an asthmatic hyena. “Blamed if that ain’t so. What’s your name, young’un?” He sat down right next to me. The air around us practically turned blue from all that Old Spice aftershave lotion he musta bathed in.
“April Grace Reilly.”
“Ha!” he said so loud and quick that I was the one who jumped that time. “Named after your granny, are you?”
I nodded and wished that said granny would get back in here and take care of this thing.
“You like school?”
“I like summer vacation better.”
He leaned closer and yelled, “How’s that?”
I could see, plain as daylight, that he wore hearing aids, so why didn’t he turn ’em on?
“I said I like summer vacation better,” I repeated.
He snorted and laughed and slapped his thigh like that was the funniest joke since God created Myra Sue. Grandma finally came out of the bedroom, her hair all fresh combed and smooth. She wore her new, blue, just-for-church dress.
“You going to church, Grandma?”
Her cheeks got red, and I realized too late that she’d dressed up for Mr. Rance. He turned to face her and looked her up and down the way Daddy does to Mama when he thinks nobody is looking. Mr. Rance didn’t seem to care that I was sitting right there.
“Well, don’t you look a picture, Miz Grace?” He pushed both hands against his thighs and stood up, grunting a little.
“Thank you, Jeffrey,” she said real soft. I doubted the deaf old man heard her.
Then he did the unthinkable. He gave her a big, loud, wet smooch you could have heard clear up to the Missouri state line. I squinched myself back into the sofa as far as I could and pressed my face with a green cushion embroidered with the Lord’s Prayer.
Grandma mumbled something. “Whatsa matter?” Mr. Rance boomed. “Ain’t she never heard of kissin’ before?”
I kept the cushion over my face and pretended I was in the Outback of Australia, away from Rough Creek Road, Myra Sue, the St. Jameses, Queenie, Mr. Rance, and Grandma.
“April and I were fixing to go into Cedar Ridge,” Grandma said. “It’s Tuesday, you know. Double coupons at the Grocerteria, and one percent off regular prices for seniors.”
Then Grandma yanked the cushion away from my face and looked like she wanted to swat my behind.
“Well, what a coincidence.” Mr. Rance grinned so big, he like to have split his face. He had a mouthful of teeth, and he was showing every one of them. I hoped they were real, because I sure didn’t want to see dentures fall out of his head. He continued, “I was on my way to town myself, so I come over here to see if you wanted to go along, maybe have lunch at the Koffee Kup.”
“Oh.” Grandma looked about half-pleased and half-nervous.
“We’ve done had lunch,” I told him, hoping he’d go home. “Grandma made tuna sandwiches with little pickles in them.”
“Oh, April,” Grandma said, laughing all funny-peculiar. “That was just a little snack. And actually, Jeffrey, I was going to take April into town—”
“Bring ’er along! The more the merrier.” He turned to me. “Whatcha say, kid? I’ll buy you a hamburger at the Koffee Kup.”
Now, I was of two minds about this. While I was downright overjoyed that I might be safe from Grandma’s driving this week, I really, really did not want to sit in a café with those two senior citizen lovebirds. What if they started smooching right at the table in front of God and everybody?
I gulped. “Mama needs me to help her get ready for company,” I said. I looked at Grandma. “If you’re going to go with Mr. Rance, you won’t need me.”
“Well.” She seemed to think it over real hard. “Well, all right, then. But you and me will go next Tuesday. How ’bout that?”
Next Tuesday was a whole seven days away. Maybe she’d misplace her driver’s license by then.
“Okay.” I scooted off the couch. “See ya later.”
I ran outside and raced toward our house before either of them had a chance to change their minds and call me back.
Mr. Rance had moved from Texas to Rough Creek Road early this spring, and according to my daddy—who makes it a point to welcome all the newcomers and see if there’s anything he can do to help them settle in—the old man used to have a big ole ranch and lots of thoroughbred horses. He said Mose Fielding sold Mr. Rance that twenty-acre parcel of dirt that his hogs had ruined. You know how hogs root around, upturning rocks while they snuffle and snort, looking for something to eat. It takes forever for the grass to grow back where hogs have rooted. Well, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know thoroughbred horses couldn’t live in such a place.
When he first moved here, Mr. Rance had bought a little trailer to live
in, but I didn’t think he stayed there very often. Maybe he was bored or something, because I saw him in that red truck, driving up and down Rough Creek Road about ten times a day. Plus, every blessed time we went to Cedar Ridge, there was that same red pickup parked at the Koffee Kup.
Here’s the thing: that morning I was about halfway across the hayfield when a thought hit my brain and made me stop dead in my tracks, so I could give it serious and detailed consideration. Why would someone with a lot of horses leave a big horse-raising state like Texas and come to the rocky hills of Arkansas and live on a hog-rooted twenty acres where nothing would grow? Why would anyone do something that dumb?
And here’s another thing: with his own wife dead just a few months, why was he suddenly hot for Grandma? Maybe he wanted a brand-new wife, the thought of which made me swimmy-headed.
Boy, oh boy, thoughts flooded through my head so fast it was hard to keep up with them. A particular remembrance, though, seemed louder and bigger than the rest, and it was this: he’d been kinda sneaky in Grandma’s living room, looking at her stuff like he wanted to swipe it. And what about her purse? Would he have picked it up if he hadn’t seen me? It sure looked like it from where I sat.
“I bet he’s a crook,” I said aloud. “He’s probably wanted down in Texas and came to the Ozarks to hide from the law.” I’ve seen cop shows on the TV, and an awful theory rose up in my brain. “Maybe he’s a horse thief. Or worse, maybe he even killed his wife.”
Now, there’s a notion. I have to admit, though, there was no reasoning behind it. Of course, being just a plain, ordinary crook . . . well, that was possible. That’s why the Ozarks have so many criminals and weirdos, you know. They come here from everywhere else and think they can hide in the hills and hollers. Well, maybe they can, ’cause there sure seem to be a lot of them.
You better believe Rough Creek Road has its own oddballs. For example, there’s Uncle Melt and Auntie Freesia Mahoney, who like to say they’ve raised three kids, one of each. One of each what, I’d like to know? A girl and a boy and what else? They talk to and about their fixed poodle, Pancake, as if it’s a kid. Maybe that’s what they mean. And then there’s the Todds. They’ve lived at the end of the road, right on the edge of the Ozark National Forest, since the early 1960s. They don’t talk to anyone—especially not the locals—and they sure don’t want anyone talking to them. If you try, you might get your head blown off. Like I said, we got our share of weirdos around here.
