Three Times Lucky (4 page)

“I’m sure I haven’t got the clearance,” he said. “But as a dedicated member of your mess crew, I’m contemplating popcorn. Thoughts?”

“Excellent strategy, sir.” I hesitated. “Colonel, has Miss Lana checked in?”

“Not yet,” he said. “But she only left this morning. We’re nowhere near the Three Day Rule.”

Miss Lana and I made the Three Day Rule last year, after the Colonel got turned around in the Appalachians
and didn’t check in for a week. Miss Lana went frantic, dragging half the town along with her. Now whenever he or Miss Lana leaves, which is often, the Three Day Rule automatically kicks in.

It’s a no-brainer for Miss Lana, who naturally checks in almost every day. When she leaves, she visits her cousin Gideon, in Charleston. Usually, they shop. Twice last year, she took me with her. I have the plaid sneakers to prove it.

The Three Day Rule’s harder on the Colonel. When he leaves, he leaves to sleep under the stars—usually on a mountainside or at the seashore. Cell service along North Carolina’s wild fringes remains as patchy as it is here in Tupelo Landing—where, except for scratchy blips, we ain’t got none. For him, calling every third day is a tribulation.

The Colonel glanced at my phone. “Lana loves talking to you, Soldier,” he said. “I believe you have Cousin Gideon’s number.”

“Yes sir, I’ve seared it into my brain,” I said. “But I don’t want to over-dial.”

He nodded and slipped back into the living room.

I opened Volume 6, skipping the intro in favor of a quick note to Upstream Mother. I’ve been writing to her ever since I learned to print (Volume 2). I used to think she could somehow read my unsent letters. Now, of
course, I know she can’t. I still write, partly out of habit and partly to settle my thoughts. Besides, my teacher, Miss Retzyl, says personal letters make rich research material for autobiographies—in my case, an obvious plus. I picked up my pen.

Eleven years is no lie.

Miss Lana mounted the first search when I was a week old. She dialed her way upstream, targeting churches and town halls as far west as Raleigh. No one had lost a baby. When our neighbors went out of town they asked too: “Anybody missing a lucky newborn?” My map’s 167 yellow pushpins mark the places people said no.

The green pushpins are Bottle Pins, which I started adding the summer I turned eight. Me and Dale had plundered our way down to the creek, to escape the heat. As we lolled in the water, a leaf drifted by. “Look,” I gasped, pointing.

It was so obvious! Why hadn’t I thought of it before?

“Dale, what do we know about my Upstream Mother?” I demanded.

“She ain’t here,” he said, standing and emptying the mud out of his pockets.

“We know she lives by the water,” I prompted.

He sat back down, the mud rising in the water like smoke. “So?”

“So, if water took me away from her, water can bring us back together,” I said, watching the leaf swirl away. “I’ll send her a message by water, so she can find me. This is brilliant. Let’s go tell Miss Lana.”

Moments later, I stood in the café, creek water puddling around my feet as I explained my plan: I’d put messages in bottles and release them far upstream, letting them float down to my true mother.

Miss Lana studied me like I was a star chart and she had crashed on Mars. “I don’t know, sugar,” she finally said. She rang up Tinks Williams’s bill and handed him his change. “It seems like a long shot to me. A very long shot.”

“But Miss Lana,” I said, “we have to. The water’s all I got.”

“I’m going to Goldsboro for a tractor part,” Tinks said. “I’ll sling a message off the bridge for you, if you want me to.”

Grandmother Miss Lacy Thornton dabbed her lips with her napkin. “I think it’s a fine idea,” she said. “I’m going to Raleigh tomorrow. I’d be glad to release one if you’d like, Lana.” She smiled. “You have to admit, some things
do
look better sailing away,” she’d said, and Miss Lana had nodded.

So far my bottles have failed. Every once in a blue moon someone finds one and calls, but most just disappear. Like Miss Lana, I now recognize them as long shots. Still, I keep them ready for folks heading west, with my standard note inside:
Dear Upstream Mother. You lost me during a hurricane 11 years ago. I’m ok. Write back or call. 252-555-4663. Mo.

Sometimes I still dream she floats an answer back to me. But I always wake up before I can make out the words.

The Colonel
rat-a-tat-tatted
against the door. “I’ve located Lana’s cooking oil and a popcorn pan,” he reported, looking frazzled. “Popcorn front and center in five.”

“Message received, sir,” I said.

The Colonel’s a wizard in the café kitchen, where he organizes things in neat lines and stacks. Miss Lana organizes our personal kitchen by “intuitive whim”—circus-worthy towers of plates and bowls, canned goods stacked by color, a refrigerator of health foods possibly
gone toxic. The Colonel says he can’t find a dad-blamed thing in there. He would say more, but Miss Lana doesn’t allow cursing.

The phone rang again. “I got it,” I shouted, scooping it off the hook. “Hello? Miss Lana? … Oh, hey Grandmother Miss Lacy Thornton. How are you?” I asked, trying not to sound disappointed. “Fine. … No ma’am, not yet, but she’ll call. …”

Miss Lana says the good thing about living in a small town is everybody knows your business, and they pitch in. The Colonel says the
bad
thing about living in a small town is everybody knows your business, and they pitch in. It cuts both ways.

“Yes ma’am,” I said, “Anna Celeste’s party
is
Saturday, but I don’t need a ride. … No ma’am. It’s because Anna Celeste is my Sworn Enemy for Life and I’d rather go face-down in a plate of raw chicken entrails than go to her party. Plus I’m not invited. … Yes ma’am, I’ll tell the Colonel you called. Good-bye.”

Anna Celeste Simpson—blond hair, brown eyes, perfect smile—became my Sworn Enemy for Life our first day of kindergarten.

Miss Lana had walked me to school and fled, crying. As I waited for the bell that would spell my doom, I spied a princess-like girl across the muddy playground. A new friend! I started toward her. Her pinch-faced mother
grabbed her arm. “No, honey,” she said in a pretend whisper. “It’s that
girl
from the café. She’s not one of us.”

Not one of us?

Until that instant, everybody in my world had been “one of us.” Still, I might have regained my Legendary Poise if little Anna Celeste hadn’t squinted at me and shown a faint, pink crescent of tongue.

For one sickening moment, I thought I would cry. Then I had a better idea.

I lowered my head and charged like a bull, the blood pounding in my ears as my white sandals pounded across the playground. My head slammed into Anna’s tender belly just as the bell rang. I trotted toward my first time-out, leaving Anna Celeste wheezing in the mud.

For me, it was a Gold Star day. I’d identified an enemy, and I’d made a life decision: I might come home tore up from fighting or late from being punished, but I’d never come home crying. So far, I ain’t.

The Colonel took my educational debut in stride. Miss Lana was a harder sell. “Hold on, sugar,” she said, pulling out her dog-eared copy of
Suddenly Mom
. “Let’s see what the experts say.” I leaned against her as she ran her finger across a page. “As I suspected, there are better ways to express baby rage,” she said, taking my hand. “We’re going to the Piggly Wiggly.”

At the grocery store, she bought my first spiral
notebook—a bright red one—and the
Piggly Wiggly Chronicles
were born. I filled Volume 1 with scribbled portraits of Anna Celeste in mud.

The phone rang again. “Mo’s place. Mo speaking.”

“Hi, sugar,” Miss Lana said. “How are you?”

I smiled. “Fine,” I said, closing Volume 6. “How’s Charleston?”

“Beautiful. And hot.” Miss Lana’s voice is the color of sunlight in maple syrup. “How did things go today?”

“Fine.” A long silence crackled through our line.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. Miss Lana reads my voice like a Gypsy reads tea leaves.

Should I mention Mr. Jesse’s boat? Detective Joe Starr? The murder in Winston-Salem? The Underbird? The Colonel’s lie?

“Nothing,” I said. “How’s Cousin Gideon?”

“Fine. Well, a little nervous. His play opens this evening. And the Colonel?” She doesn’t say so, but Miss Lana worries about the Colonel, maybe because of his background. Or the fact that he doesn’t have one.

The Colonel came to town the same stormy night I did, crashing headfirst into a pine at the edge of town. Some people say he lost his memory in the wreck. Others say he lost it
before
he got in the car, or he wouldn’t have been out in a hurricane. Either way, he climbed out of that car free of every memory he’d ever owned.

Rumors swirl around the Colonel like ink around an octopus: that he’s a retired warrior, or a paper-pusher. That he’s from Atlanta, or Nashville. That he came to town broke, or carrying a suitcase of cash.

I suspect he started most of the rumors himself.

“The Colonel’s just fine, Miss Lana,” I said. “He’s making popcorn.”

“Oh dear,” she said, and I could hear her smile.

“Popcorn, front and center,” the Colonel barked from the living room.

Miss Lana laughed. “It sounds like he survived,” she said. “Run along, sugar. Tell the Colonel hello for me. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

“Yes ma’am.” I grabbed Volume 6 and made a beeline for my favorite chair as the Colonel folded himself onto Miss Lana’s velvet settee. He looks as out of place as a coyote in a tuxedo among Miss Lana’s Victorian curlicues.

Our fancy house surprises people used to the café’s plain, cinderblock face. The Colonel built the café and our house together, in one building. The café faces the street. Our home faces the creek.

Anna Celeste calls our place the Taj Ma-Gall, because she says you got to have gall to talk about a five-room house the way we do. Miss Lana calls her room a suite, and the Colonel’s room his quarters. Last year, the Colonel
and Miss Lana gave me my own apartment. Anna Celeste says it’s just a closed-in side porch with a bathroom stuck on the side. I say I’m the only kid in Tupelo Landing with her own flat.

“Miss Lana called,” I told the Colonel, and he smiled. “She’s fine.”

“History Channel?” he offered, handing me a bowl of popcorn. The Colonel enjoys reliving battles he may or may not have been in. “Any progress on your intro?”

“Autobiographies are tough when you’re clueless,” I admitted, settling in. I picked up my pen.

“Excuse me, sir,” I said. “Do you feel more like a tapestry or a quilt?”

He tossed a handful of popcorn in his mouth. “Wool blanket,” he said. “Warm, scratchy, too ugly to steal.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said, closing Volume 6 and settling in.

I glanced out the window, at Mr. Jesse’s lights flickering a couple hundred yards down the creek, like they had every night of my life.

It’s funny, the things you think you’ll always see again.

Mr. Jesse lingered over lunch the next day. “This pudding ain’t right,” he said, a fleck of meringue clinging to his unshaven chin. “Take it off my bill.”

I eyed the half-eaten dessert du jour. “The Colonel’s banana pudding is county-renowned, Mr. Jesse,” I said. “You’re just suffering from sticker shock. It happens every time you order dessert.”

Dale rolled his eyes. The Colonel says if you handed Mr. Jesse a two-dollar sandwich wrapped in a twenty-dollar bill, he’d still complain about the price.

“I can’t take back half a pudding, Mr. Jesse,” I said. “You know I can’t.”

He slapped four George Washingtons on the counter. “Count whatever you charge for that pudding as your tip,” he growled, and stalked off glaring like the afternoon sun.

The Colonel strolled in from the kitchen and tossed his apron on the counter. “You two have performed above and beyond the call of duty,” he said, watching
Mr. Jesse disappear down the lane. “You’re at liberty for the rest of the afternoon.”

We sprinted for the door before he could change his mind.

“Want to go fishing?” I asked Dale as the door banged shut behind us.

He drained a soda and crumpled the can. “Not until Mr. Jesse settles down about that boat. It’s not that I’m scared of getting caught,” he added, giving me a quick look. “It’s just that I’m too pretty to do hard time. Lavender already told me.”

Lavender, as I may have mentioned, is Dale’s big brother.

“Hey,” Dale said, flipping his empty can to me. “Practice me.”

Dale dreams of being the first rising sixth grader to be drafted by a high school football team. This is because he sings in church, which his daddy says is sissified. Football ain’t. Dale may not know much from the classroom, but his recess skills are legendary. He’s small, but he’s a wildcat of a receiver and fearless when he goes up for a pass. I sighed. “Buttonhook on three,” I said.

He set up to my left.

“Set!” I said, looking right and left. “Down! Hut-hut-hut!”

Dale sprinted across the parking lot. I dropped back
three paces and he did a neat buttonhook. My pass sailed high, but he climbed into the air like a cat scrambling up a tree, and snagged it. Touchdown!

“I’m going home to check on Mama,” he called, veering across the parking lot to his bike. Dale’s protective of Miss Rose. “You want to meet up at Lavender’s?” he asked. “We can watch him work on his car.”

Visit Lavender? The day went golden.

“Sure,” I said, trying to sound casual. “See you there.”

We got two streets in Tupelo Landing: First Street, where the café sits, and Last, where Lavender lives. We like to say if you’re looking for somebody in Tupelo Landing, you’ll find them, First and Last.