Muletrain to Maggody Page 3

  “Perhaps you lack imagination,” said Mrs. Jim Bob. “Miss Hathaway, I know you must be tuckered out. I’ll take you back to my house so you can freshen up before you drive home. As for the rest of you, I will be delivering your committee assignments as soon as I’ve decided how best to delegate responsibility.”

  “Just who told her she hung the moon?” sputtered Ruby Bee as Mrs. Jim Bob and Miss Hathaway went out the front door. “She may be able to boss around the likes of Joyce Lambertino and Elsie McMay, but she’d better be real careful before she tries that with me. If we hadn’t had company, I would have said it right to her face!”

  “Fat lot of good it would have done,” said Estelle. “She’d come back in your face with a Bible verse that gives her a divine right to stick her nose in everybody’s business. Speaking of divine, I wonder where Brother Verber was tonight. It ain’t in his nature not to jump to it when Mrs. Jim Bob snaps her fingers.” She looked at me. “You seen him lately?”

  I finished the last bite of my sandwich. “Why, just this afternoon, come to think of it. He was headed toward Cotter’s Ridge, wearing a miner’s hat with a lamp and carrying a metal detector and a gunny sack. I thought it was peculiar, but now I have a pretty good idea what he was up to. Maybe the Assembly Hall will have a new roof by the end of the summer.”

  On that note, I ambled out of the bar, managing to ignore their spate of questions. I walked down the side of the road to the PD and went inside to grab a couple of the catalogs that had come that day. My social life in Maggody was on the dreary side, since everybody remotely my age had been married for more than fifteen years and had grubby children, leaky washing machines, unpaid bills, and lifetime subscriptions to TV Guide and the National Enquirer. I got along fairly well with the teenagers, but I wouldn’t be welcomed if I dropped by their hangout (the picnic tables in front of the Dairee Dee-Lishus).

  The telephone rang, but I ignored it since I was really, most sincerely off-duty. After a few minutes of thought, I left the catalogs on my desk and drove to Farberville to catch a movie. Gettysburg and Glory were not on my list.

  2

  “They’re gonna make a movie in Maggody?” Dahlia said as she sat at the kitchen table, surreptitiously eyeing what was left of her mother-in-law’s double-fudge chocolate cake. “Doesn’t anybody remember what happened last time? There I was thinkin’ I was gonna be a famous Hollywood actress, and then things got uglier than Veranda Buchanon’s front teeth. I liked to died from the embarrassment.”

  Eileen dried the last plate and put it in a cabinet. “I don’t think any of us are destined for stardom, Dahlia. What’s more, you’re destined for the emergency room if you don’t mind your diet. The doctor warned you that you’re at risk for gestational diabetes, especially since you had it during your first pregnancy. If you’re still hungry, you can have an apple.”

  “I ain’t hungry.” Dahlia wheezed sadly as the cake plate was whisked off the table and tucked out of sight on the top of the refrigerator. “So what’s this movie s’posed to be about?”

  “It’s a documentary.” Eileen related what she could recall of the story of the Skirmish at Cotter’s Ridge, then concluded, “So a bunch of men dressed up like soldiers are going to set up their camps and then after a couple of days, start shooting at each other. In the end, the rebels skedaddle on their mules and the Yankees take everything that’s left behind and head back toward the Missouri line.”

  “That don’t seem fair.”

  “It was wartime, Dahlia, and that’s what soldiers did. They’d even go out on the battlefield after the shooting stopped and take shoes, clothes, and weapons from the ones that had been killed. Neither army had enough fancy uniforms to go around. The rebels in particular were a real ragtag bunch, wearing whatever they brought with them when they volunteered.”

  “They look real fine in the movies.”

  Eileen considered trying to explain the difference between fact and fiction, but instead hung the dishtowel on a hook and made sure everything had been put away. Of course Earl would finish off the cake before he went to bed, so later she’d find the plate on the counter, surrounded by crumbs and a dedicated army of ants. In the morning, she’d be wiping up dollops of jelly, smears of butter, and splatters of bacon grease. She caught herself wondering what she’d do if she had a musket the next time Earl gulped down supper so he could race back to whatever foolishness was on TV.

  Dahlia remained at the table, her hands clasped and her lips puckered with concentration. “You said the rebels left all this gold somewhere up on Cotter’s Ridge. Why ain’t anybody found it?”

  “Who knows?” said Eileen. “Maybe somebody did, but was afraid to say anything because the government might want it back. I don’t know what the law is.”

  “Well, if I was to find it, you can be darn sure I’d keep it.”

  “And just how do you aim to find it? The caves around here tend to be no more than muddy pits with spiders and snakes, along with bats hanging upside down on the ceilings. Bats and rats are practically kissing cousins, Dahlia, and I recollect how you carried on something awful over a little mouse in your kitchen. Eula Lemoy swore she could hear you all the way over at the Pot O’ Gold trailer park—and that’s a far piece.”

  Dahlia’s pendulous chins quivered with indignation. “I was jest worried that it might run into Kevvie Junior and Rose Marie’s room and start gnawing on ’em. Besides, I ain’t gonna crawl inside the cave. Kevvie can do that part. He ain’t afraid of anything”—she paused to reconsider—“excepting maybe Jim Bob.”

  “You don’t know where this cave is,” Eileen pointed out. “Cotter’s Ridge is a big place, and not that easy to get around since the logging trails were abandoned more than fifty years ago. Raz is probably the only person that knows which ones are accessible—and you’d better not go asking him.”

  “I don’t need the likes of Raz Buchanon to find the cave. My granny went up on the ridge ever’ summer for more than eighty years to pick berries and collect roots for her homemade medicines. She ought to know where the caves are.”

  “Wasn’t she madder than a nest of hornets when you moved her into the old folks’ home after you and Kevin got married? From what you’ve told me, she won’t even look at you when you visit.”

  Dahlia chewed on this for a minute, then said, “Well, she don’t spit at me anymore, but that may be on account of her losing her dentures. I reckon I’ll make her a real fine peach pie and pretend I want to listen to her stories so I can tell ’em to her great-grandchildren after she’s dead. That might tickle her.” She heaved herself to her feet and headed for the living room, where Kevin, his pa, and the twins were watching wrestling. “At least I got a plan.”

  “What we need is a plan,” said Darla Jean McIlhaney as she sucked on a straw. “The gold’s likely to be worth millions of dollars, so we could—” She stopped, wondering what it’d be like to have more money than she’d know what to do with. She was pretty sure she’d be transformed into Britney Spears and fly all over the world in a private jet, ordering her staff to make sure there were fresh flowers in her dressing room, letting them pick up her underwear off the bathroom floor, telling them to set out the garbage and feed the damn dog. If she even had a dog, for that matter. If she did, it would be one of those fluffy little things that slept on a satin pillow and never, ever slobbered on her foot.

  Heather Riley and Billy Dick McNamara were sitting on the picnic table across from her, sharing an order of nachos slathered with sliced jalapeños. Neither had been dragged to the town meeting, and they’d listened without much interest when Darla Jean told them about the Skirmish at Cotter’s Ridge.

  “Get real, Darla Jean. Why would the gold still be there after all these years?” said Heather, who would have been a pragmatist if she could spell it, which she most certainly couldn’t. “A hundred and forty years? The only thing that old around here is the dill pickles in Zanadew Buchanon’s basement.”

  “Yeah,�
�� added Billy Dick, slapping at the bugs swirling around the outdoor lights in front of the Dairee Dee-Lishus. “You’d think somebody would have found it by now.”

  If Darla Jean hadn’t needed their help, she would have flounced back to her car and left them choking on her dust. “This woman said that nobody knew about the gold until her society got the old journal a few weeks ago. Sure, somebody might have crawled way back into some cave and found it, but on the other hand, the caves around here aren’t nothing more than holes. What’s more, the soldier was looking for one that would be hard for the Yankees to find. The entrance was probably all hidden by brush and briars.”

  “And probably still is,” Heather said as she licked cheese off her fingertips. “Billy Dick, is that cousin of yours from Rosebud coming again this summer?”

  “Depends on his probation officer.”

  Darla Jean resisted the urge to fling the remains of her cherry limeade at Heather. “Will you stop mooning over that pimply jerk and think about what I just told you? Do you want to get rich this summer—or pregnant?”

  She frowned. “All I know for sure is that I don’t want to be writing a paper next fall about how I spent my summer vacation wiggling around in filthy caves. There must be at least a hundred of them up on Cotter’s Ridge, ferchrissake. What’s more, there may not have ever been any gold. Maybe what’s in the journal is nothing but bullshit.”

  “Yeah,” said Billy Dick. “The fellow that wrote it just wanted to make hisself sound important.”

  “Or maybe it’s still there,” Darla Jean countered. “Are you gonna spend the whole damn summer sitting here, drinking cherry limeades, slapping mosquitoes, and wondering what you’re gonna do after you graduate? Going to college ain’t cheap, you know. Sure, you can get a minimum-wage job ripping gizzards out of chickens at the poultry plant in Starley City. After a few years, you can make a down payment on a trailer and hang your laundry on a clothesline so everybody can snicker at it.” Appalled by her vision, she paused to take a breath. “That ain’t gonna be me. I’m out of here.”

  “You might as well call Peter Pan and ask him to fetch you,” said Heather. “Him and Tinkerbell, that is.”

  Darla Jean did not smile. “Maybe I’ll do just that. In the meantime, I’m gonna try to find that gold.” She climbed off the picnic table and tossed her cup into the metal trash can. “The next time you see me,” she said as she headed for the car, “I’ll be driving a silver Viper toward the county line. Maybe I’ll wave, and maybe I won’t.”

  Billy Dick, who was less than attractive even at his best, sniggered. “Just how are you gonna buy a fancy car like that?”

  “I’ve got a plan.”

  By midmorning the following day, Lottie Estes had baked a lovely pound cake and artfully decorated the slices with her homemade plum preserves and tiny sprigs of fresh mint. Elsie McMay and Eula Lemoy expressed their admiration as they accepted second servings and refills of coffee.

  Lottie waited until her guests were settled back, then said, “I think we need to talk about this gold on Cotter’s Ridge.”

  “It’s all anybody was talking about at the vegetable stand this morning,” Elsie mumbled through a mouthful of cake. “Amazin’ to think there might have been a fortune just waiting up there all these years. Why, we could have picked blackberries not ten feet from millions of dollars worth of gold.”

  “I wish I could have stayed ten feet away from the chiggers,” said Eula. “One time I got bit so bad around the ankles that my ma had me to soak my feet in sump water for a week.”

  Lottie had put down many an attempted diversion in her home ec classes over the last forty years. “Let’s stay focused on the gold. Once this documentary is finished and the journal is made public, folks from as far away as California and Maine are going to start swarming over Cotter’s Ridge. Professional treasure hunters will have all manner of sophisticated equipment.”

  “And we most likely don’t have a shovel among the three of us,” Eula said. “I used to have a trowel, but I left it outside one evening and those nasty little trailer park trash brats stole it. One of these days they’ll come too close and I’ll tan their behinds till they carry on like screech owls. They should all be sent to reform school, if you ask me.”

  “Along with their older brothers and sisters,” Elsie added vehemently. “They throw trash in my yard every day after school. You’d think they was raised in a barn.”

  Lottie let them chatter while she took the coffeepot into the kitchen and rinsed it out. “Now then,” she began as she came back into the living room, “we need to think about what to do. The gold has been in Maggody for a hundred and forty years, and I see no reason why some outsider ought to steal it from under our noses.”

  Elsie shrugged. “I agree with you, but I don’t see what we can do. We ain’t exactly of the age to go crawling into caves.”

  “And I’m allergic to mold and mildew,” said Eula with a sniffle. “My eyes turn itchy and I can barely breathe. My doctor thought it was asthma, but then he did some tests and discovered I was allergic to not only the mold and mildew, but also dust, oak tree pollen, and a goodly number of other things too numerous to mention. Some days I’m afraid to set foot out of my trailer for fear of ending up in the hospital on a respirator.”

  “My second cousin Florellen is allergic to cat dander.” Elsie put down her teacup and leaned forward as if to report some late-breaking and therefore astounding medical news.

  “She swears that when she goes into somebody’s house for the first time, she can tell right away if a cat has ever lived there, no matter how long ago. Even if it was ten years ago, she starts sneezing!”

  Lottie wondered if she was fighting a losing cause, just like the Confederates had once done. “It’s a shame your cousin isn’t allergic to gold as well. We could tie a rope around her waist and drop her into the caves.”

  “Oh, I don’t think Florellen would care for that. She’s always been afraid of the dark. Once, when we were children and she was visiting, the electricity went off and she liked to wet her pants before—”

  “The gold,” Lottie said through clenched teeth. “We need to figure out how to find the gold.”

  “Before the gold diggers start showing up,” said Eula, giggling. “I hope for their sake they don’t wander too close to Raz’s operation. They’ll end up picking buckshot out of their backsides for a month of Sundays.”

  “I thought about Raz,” Lottie admitted, “but I can’t see him helping us—or anybody else, for that matter. But we have to come up with a plan.” She picked up a notebook and a pencil. “Let’s start by listing the different parts of the problem. One would be that we don’t have any idea where the cave is.” She wrote that down, then licked the tip of the pencil and said, “What else, Eula?”

  “Well, even if we did, we don’t have any way to go more than a few feet inside it.”

  “True. Elsie?”

  “We don’t have any idea how heavy these saddlebags might prove to be, so even if we did manage to find them, we might not be able to get them out of the cave and down the ridge.”

  At least they were making progress, Lottie told herself. Making a list always helped. Earlier in the year she’d assigned her sophomore girls to make a list of all the appliances in their houses. They’d been downright flabbergasted when they had finished. “These are good points. Now let’s think of ways we might be able to locate the cave. We’ve already ruled out Raz. Diesel might have information, but I for one am not about to go knock on the door of his cave. Anybody that bites the heads off live squirrels and rabbits is not likely to be neighborly. What else?”

  “What all did this young private say about the gold?” asked Elsie. “That woman from the historical society only read a few tidbits from the journal. Maybe she skipped over something because everybody was getting restless.”

  “Or,” said Eula, beginning to bounce on the sofa, “maybe the private remembered something later and wrote himself
a note in the margin. If he was delirious on account of the gangrene or blood poisoning settin’ in, nobody would have paid it much mind. He might have tried to draw a little map that turned out to look like he’d squashed a spider.”

  “Very good.” Lottie made a few notes. “I do believe you’re on to something most promising. All we need to do is get hold of the journal and study it for clues. Then once we’ve pinpointed the cave, we’ll have to find someone trustworthy to fetch the saddlebags.”

  “Like ol’ Whatsit Buchanon,” said Elsie. “He’s so thick-headed it would never occur to him to claim the gold for himself. We’ll have to pay him, though, and make him swear ahead of time not to breathe a word until the gold is safely locked up in a bank vault.”

  Eula was still a mite bouncy. “Do you think we’ll be on the news, or even one of those daytime talk shows like Oprah?”

  “What I think,” Lottie said as she closed the notebook and tucked the pencil behind her ear, “is that we ought to start by getting hold of the journal. Why don’t we plan to go to Farberville tomorrow after church and drop by the Headquarters House for a friendly chat with Miss Hathaway?”

  The matter having been settled, they moved on to the rumor that Mrs. Jim Bob had been seen staggering out of Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill the previous night.

  “Folks sure were acting funny down at the supermarket this morning,” Jim Bob said as he cut a thick slab of meatloaf to make a sandwich. “The checkout girls were buzzing like flies every time I came up to the front, and Joyce and Millicent were snickering when I chanced on them in the produce section. Where’s the bread?”

  Mrs. Jim Bob sat at the dinette table, papers fanned around her like she’d just claimed the pot in a poker game. “The bread is in the breadbox, and before you bother to ask, the mayonnaise is in the refrigerator, the plates are in the cabinet, and the napkins are in the drawer behind you. Do you think I sneak down here at night and move it all around just to befuddle you?”