Thistle and Twigg (5 page)

I
just barely tapped real light on Jane’s front door. For a minute, I worried I’d got there too early, but when I saw she’d been crying and how happy she was to see me, I knew I’d done the right thing. I was just glad to be there when she needed somebody, all lonesome and depressed and by herself in that big old scary house out in the sticks.

I was so glad she called me the night before to see if I wanted to go walking with her the next morning. That day, I’d baked and run around visiting the hospital and nursing home all day until I was wore out. I was sitting there, stretched out on the couch with a bowl of popcorn watching
Missing in Action 2: The Beginning
for about the hundredth time, and didn’t have a thing planned for the following day, which was unusual for me. I could hardly wait for morning.

I followed Jane inside to her kitchen where I could smell something good cooking in the oven. She popped off the lid of my plastic cake holder I’d brought. It wouldn’t do to visit and not show up with a present. I brought a coffee cake, one of a half dozen I’d baked for the freezer and for times such as this. Jane took a knife out of a drawer.

“This looks delicious,” she said. “I’ve made biscuits, but I think I’ll wrap them up for Cal Prewitt, my neighbor, when we go over. He said we could take our walk across his property this morning.”

If my jaw hadn’t been hinged tight onto my face, it would’ve hit the floor and broke in a million pieces.

“What is it, dear?” she said. “Did I say something wrong?”

“Cal Prewitt? Crazy Cal Prewitt said that? You actually saw him? I can’t believe that ornery old coot would let us or anybody else go over there.”

“I assure you he said we could.” Jane hesitated, like she was about to say more. Instead, she kind of hem-hawed then started drinking her coffee.

“Well, it’s a wonder,” I said. “Cal has been known on more than one occasion to shoot at trespassers. He’s the ‘Shoot first, call the funeral home later’ type. People around here take his no trespassing signs seriously. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to walk on his property.”

“He was very kind to me,” she said. “He told me to make myself at home.”

“Are we talking about the same person here? Tall, scrawny, not too much going on upstairs? Cal is also known for being drunk near one hundred percent of the time, you do know that, don’t you? You don’t reckon he’d been drinking when you saw him?”

She hesitated again. “He seemed fine.”

When I looked at her like I thought it highly unlikely, she added, “But I believe I did smell a hint of liquor.”

“Hmmm. He might not have known what he was saying.”

“He said he had business to attend to very early and would be gone, that we should be most welcome.”

That sure didn’t sound like the Cal I’d heard about but I believed her. I decided I shouldn’t alarm Jane anymore. Besides, how could I pass up the chance to look around the Prewitt place? Hardly a soul in town has ever seen anything except from the road.

I threw my hands up. “If that’s what he said, then I’m all for it. I’m ready whenever you are.”

“First,” Jane said as she rinsed her plate in the sink, “you must pick out a gun.”

I slapped my coffee cup down on the table. My eyes must’ve been bugged out a mile. Jane was smiling at me. “What, are you teasing me?”

She laughed a little tinkling laugh. “No, dear. I’m quite serious. Cal has a practicing range. I thought you’d enjoy trying your hand at a little target practice since you expressed an interest in guns.”

“That is so thoughtful of you! Hey, we may very well need guns if we go on Cal’s place. They say there are bobcats and coyotes in there, you know. No telling what else.”

“Bobcats?” Jane said. Her voice rose and cracked a little. “Oh, dear. I had no idea. That is, I’d read a small number were in the area west of here, but hadn’t thought of them being so … close.”

“Well, sure. There’s some of everything in there, I imagine, since nobody human is ever allowed to go in. I can’t believe I’m getting to walk on Cal Prewitt’s own personal property. I’m like the only one in fifty years, I bet you. Maybe one or two exceptions, but that’s it. It’s a miracle. Plus I get to shoot a gunl What did you mean I need to pick one out? You have more than one?”

“A few,” she said. “Come with me.”

A few, she said. Ha. I couldn’t hardly believe my eyes. They nearly popped out of their sockets when she opened up what I thought was a nice, normal antique chifferobe she’d set in her den.

Instead of clothes hanging up inside, she had a row of rifles lined up and stuffed in there like she was expecting Armageddon. I’m talking about big guns and lots of them. She took the little ring of keys she’d used to open the cabinet out of its door, flipped around and found another key, and unlocked the two drawers inside. I remember my grandmother on my mother’s side had used her old chifferobe’s drawers to store gloves and handkerchiefs. Jane used hers for spare gun parts and cleaning kits. Grandma’s always had a faint scent of rose petals. Jane’s smelled like gun oil.

“Now, mind you,” Jane said, “I didn’t actually buy these myself. They were the Colonel’s. It was his hobby, really, scouting out bargains and trying all the different models. He was a bit of a packrat when it came to firearms, I must say.”

She studied the guns for a second, then took one of the little keys on her ring and unlocked a padlock. With the lock in one hand, she pulled a chain through the trigger holes of the rifles. She grabbed the rifle she wanted and leaned it against the wall. After rechaining and relocking everything, she said, “Right. Now, let’s see about a handgun for you.”

“There’s more?”

She walked around the hearth of her fireplace to the back wall of the house. One half of the wall had moving boxes she hadn’t unpacked yet stacked against it. Jane had already cleared out the other half, closer to the fireplace, and placed furniture along that part of the wall. An old-timey cedar chest sat next to an antique trunk covered with leather straps that you could tell was old by the funny-looking lock.

Jane unlocked the trunk and let the humpback top rest against the wall. I moved around to Jane’s right side so I could see better. Down in the trunk were stacks of square black boxes, or cases, I guess they were, some wooden, some made out of molded plastic. Also down in there, I could see pieces of velvet and felt, all different colors, that looked like they were wrapped around bundles. Of what, I couldn’t tell.

I let out a whistle as she carefully unwrapped dark blue velvet from around a pistol. “Jane, honey don’t tell me them’s all guns down in there.”

“I’m afraid they are, dear. More of the Colonel’s fancies. Now, Phoebe, I must ask you not to tell anyone these are here. I suppose, all together, they are quite valuable. I wouldn’t want anyone to be tempted to break in, you understand?”

“Consider me sworn to secrecy,” I said. I crossed my heart and held up my hand. “I promise.”

“Good. I do intend to sell them. I’ve been meaning to ever since the Colonel passed away.” She sighed and fell quiet for a moment.

I thought it was a good time to change the subject so she wouldn’t start crying again. “Now what’s this right here?” I said like I hadn’t noticed she was fixing to get sniffly. “Look at that, a trophy.” I pulled a gold cup from the side of the trunk. It had a purple ribbon curled up in it on top of a photograph. It was Jane with a bunch of old wrinkled, gray-haired white women holding onto steel walkers.

“I taught a few classes in Florida. Those were my students in a self-defense class for the elderly.”

“Good Granny Alive, Jane. As feeble as they look? What did you do to help them? Issue Smith and Wessons?”

That made her laugh. “No, nothing so drastic.” Jane took one handgun out of a plastic case and unrolled another one from a black velvet rectangle. “I think we’ll try a couple of these and be on our way. Look all right to you?” she asked, holding them both out to me.

“Sure enough,” I said and rubbed my palms together. “Yee-hah, let’s go.”

Before we left the house, Jane reached in a plastic bag and brought out several boxes of bullets. She dropped them in the pockets of her red over-sized shirt jacket. “I stopped by Mister Wriggle’s store again yesterday afternoon when I realized we would need a good many practice bullets, much more than I bought before. I’m sure I already have some somewhere in those unpacked boxes, but where I haven’t a clue.”

We gathered our hardware and Jane’s biscuit tin and set out through the grassy section of wildflowers at the very edge of Cal Pre-witt’s property. I put on a brave face as we walked by two warning signs that said “Keep Out” and ‘Trespassers Will Be Shot on Sight.” Both were hand-painted red in Cal’s writing, which was scary enough, him being so uncultured and all. My heart fluttered a little bit. I turned my nose up and kept walking, thinking about what perfect targets we made with Jane’s red shirt and my orange Auburn T-shirt and floral stretch leggings. We wouldn’t be mistaken for deer, that was for sure.

We came around a bend in the road and could see a dilapidated house. Instead of a car under the carport, Cal had little mounds of old rusty metal junk on the stained concrete. Against the back wall, a long workbench held smaller piles of what looked like tools and tinier pieces of glass and metal.

“Here we are,” Jane said. She was too polite to say, “Here we are at this awful-looking, rundown excuse of a house,” but that’s what it was. “I’ll leave this tin by the side door, then we can be on our way.”

I shook my head in wonder. “Doesn’t look like he’s spent a dime on this place in ages.”

Jane moved her head to one side. “He does seem quite thrifty,” she said, looking up at the rusted gutter as she came out from under the carport. It didn’t have a drop of paint on it and looked like it could cave in any minute.

“You’re funny. Thrifty’s not the word for it. Crazy in the head is what he is. All that dough and it not doing him a bit of good. They say he has gold and money hidden all over the woods. Pots of it.”

“That sounds like a story children might invent beside a camp-fire,” Jane said, as we walked past the house toward the road again.She brushed her hands off like they had dirt on them even though she hadn’t touched anything on that nasty porch.

Jane still didn’t look convinced. She seemed preoccupied with studying the trees. She kept taking deep breaths and smiling real big.

That’s when it hit me. How had I not seen it before? She was one of those nature freaks. I knew it because she had that look, like Gene Miller’s boy Hoil always had, but now Hoil was a hippie. Still is. It’s the kind of look that makes you think they are a little on the goofy side.

“And,” I said, “his granddaddy was the same way with money. Everybody says that’s why he told Cal never to sell, because he couldn’t remember where all he’d buried stuff and he wanted Cal to keep on looking for it. And not only that, but his grandaddy’s great-great on-and-on grandaddy was supposed to have found a secret cave full of Spanish gold somewhere out here.”

“Stories like that hardly ever have any truth to them at all. No, Phoebe, the treasure here is the beauty around us. Isn’t it wonderful?”

I nodded. She was a tree hugger, all right.

I said, “All I know is what I’ve heard. I’m just telling you so you won’t be surprised if we trip over a fruit jar full of hundred-dollar bills.”

With that ugly shack behind us, I enjoyed our walk, especially while we were in the woods. No, I wasn’t catching Jane’s nature-freakitis. I liked it because it was at least ten degrees cooler under the trees. The morning had started off cool, but it had heated up already and my clothes already stuck to me, even that early in the morning. When we could see the road up ahead going out into the open again, I sure wasn’t looking forward to it.

I changed my mind when we came upon something very interesting. Way off to our left we could see the thick pines that marked the beginning of Anisidi Wildlife Refuge. Way to the right, the land was flat and dusty looking. Big rocks lay even with the ground, almost like a rough pavement. Not much grass grew between the road where we stood and some big boulders lined up about forty feet away. Lots of beer bottles and cans, probably fifty or more, had been set in a row on top of them.

“This must be the place,” I said.

“It is indeed. Cal has set up more targets for us, I see. Are you ready?” Jane said, while she loaded up the pistols. “Why don’t you take a shot?”

I took the gun Jane handed me and walked to a well-worn spot on the ground where it looked like Cal must have stood a lot when he was fooling around and practicing. Jane showed me how to stand, how to hold my arms out, and how to use the sight at the end of the barrel to aim.

“Hey!” I yelled out. “If it’s anybody out here, we’re fixing to shoot.” A little breeze moved in the bushes but nothing else. “Not that anybody is fool enough around here to trespass on Prewitt land.”

I tell you what, we had a ball shooting those guns. When my gun was empty, Jane took out a pistol and fired three times at the cans. She hit two of them. I didn’t hit a lick.

“Boy, you’re good!” I said. “How’d you do that?”

“Luck, most likely. I’m quite a bit out of practice,” she said. She smacked the top slide-y thing back like an expert and popped a metal cartridge of new bullets into the bottom of the gun handle like they do in movies. “The Colonel was a good teacher. He made sure I knew how to use every weapon he brought in the house, and as you could see, he brought in quite a few. I think he secretly hoped the Russians would invade so he could make use of them all.”

“Kind of like reliving the good old days of the war, huh?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

That didn’t surprise me a bit. Didn’t I say he was a hard-nosed old so-and-so?

We moved back quite a bit and Jane helped me again with holding and standing right when we switched to the rifle. It knocked me backward and hurt my shoulder to boot. I did like the sight better on it, though. My first two tries pinged off the boulders, but the third one hit a can and knocked it over. I whooped and hollered and jumped up and down like a kid.