Chocolate-Covered Baloney Read online

  Then I heard galloping footsteps pounding against the frozen brown dirt of our old road, and before I could say, “What’s going on here?” I was yanked around hard.

  Myra Sue stood there, panting like an army mule, glaring at me like she wanted to knock me upside my head. “What are you doing, you little brat?” she barked.

  “I could ask you the same thing, Miss Smarty-Sneaky Pants. First you skulk around my bedroom door, and then I see you hide something in the mailbox. What was it?” I peered down the road, looking for anything strange, but it looked like the same old dirt road to me.

  “I didn’t hide anything in the mailbox! And besides, it’s none of your business!”

  “Aha!” I hollered.

  “Aha, what?”

  “If you weren’t hiding anything, then how could it be none of my business?”

  I watched her try to figure out what I just said. Boy, watching that girl go through a thought process was like watching a snail run away with a turtle. I like to have grown a long, gray beard before she caught on.

  “Oh!” she finally snarled, and she stomped her foot, which had to have hurt pretty good, seeing as how the ground was frozen hard as a rock. “I was not hiding anything. I was looking to see if we got any mail.”

  I crimped my mouth. “That’s so dumb I shouldn’t even reply, but I will: The mail does not run on Sunday.”

  She blinked a few times, taking in this late-breaking news flash. Then she said, “So what?”

  “Myra Sue Reilly, I saw you sneak something into that mailbox, and when you saw me see you, you went and got it out and took off with it. So it must be something sneaky and rotten that you don’t want anyone to know about.”

  She waggled her mouth open and shut about 674 times and then said, with all the intelligence you can imagine, “Nuh-uh!”

  “Nuh-uh, what?”

  She stomped her foot again and grabbed my arm. She shook me hard and said, with her eyes all squinted, “You just keep your big, fat mouth shut and don’t go blabbing to anyone, or I will tell about that box of chocolates you aren’t supposed to have that you hid under your bed, and that math test you nearly failed right before the end of last semester, and how you tore your brand-new good church coat under the arm and stapled it back together so Mama wouldn’t know.”

  “Ho-hum,” I said, hoping to fool her into thinking I did not care if she told all my little secrets. But boy, oh boy. How’d she know about all that candy? I bought it with my very own allowance, even though I wasn’t supposed to buy a whole entire big box of candy, especially as I’d already eaten all those Mint Dreams that Rob Estes gave me for Christmas. Rob Estes, by the way, is another one of my grandma’s gentlemen friends, or at least he was. But I’m not sure if he is now or not because I think they had a little falling-out on account of Grandma having another boyfriend, Ernie Beason, who owns Ernie’s Grocerteria. He liked Grandma first. And now there’s Reverend Jordan to consider. But I’ll tell you the honest truth: I don’t want to think about that right now. I’m in the middle of telling you about Myra Sue and all the dumb things she was saying to me right then.

  “I will tell Mama and Daddy,” she said, all bossy and mean, “and you will be grounded forever just for not mentioning that math test, and you know it.”

  I did know it.

  “All right, then,” I said. “But you better tell me what all that sneaking was about.”

  “I was not sneaking,” she said, looking all prissy. “Maybe I was ordering a present for Grandma’s birthday, so you just better shut your trap, April Grace.”

  Well.

  If she’d said right from the very first that she was ordering a present for Grandma, we wouldn’t have had to go through all that mess. That girl is about as smart as a box of rocks.

  “What did you order for her?” I asked.

  “None of your business, that’s what.” And she flounced off, up the driveway and to the house.

  I stood where I was a little longer, even though the wind was bitterly cold and little stinging bits of ice started to pelt my cheeks.

  Myra Sue’s explanation sounded reasonable enough, but something told me she was lying like a rug. Number one: She would never think to order a present when she could pester Mama to take her to Wal-Mart in Blue Reed. Number two: She spent every cent of her allowance on dumb stuff, like cheap lipstick and hair clips. Number three: She was acting far too sneaky to be ordering a present.

  You better believe I was gonna keep my eyes and ears open.

  Grandma Comes Home in the Sleet and Lives to Tell About It, Thank the Good Lord

  The front door opened, and my mama stepped out onto the porch. She hunched up her shoulders and rubbed her arms against the cold.

  “April Grace, honey, come inside. It’s beginning to sleet.”

  “Yes’m,” I hollered, and trotted the rest of the way to the house.

  She held open the door for me.

  “You and your sister! Why in the world did you want to go outside on such a cold, dreary day?”

  I didn’t know what to say, so it was a good thing she didn’t wait for me to reply.

  “Go hang up your coat, then get yourself some hot cocoa in the kitchen. And don’t go outside again today, honey. The weather is turning really nasty. I hope Mama Grace gets home before the roads get slick.”

  I hoped my grandma got home soon, too. She was a scary enough driver in the middle of August on hot, dry roads, and here it was, January, with sleet coming down.

  And I hoped that as soon as she got home safe and sound, we’d get a snowstorm so gigantic, school would be canceled until the Fourth of July. You see, I do not like junior high, not even a little bit, which is sad, because I do like learning things. But Cedar Ridge Junior High is about as awful a school experience as you’ll ever hope not to have. It’s smelly and noisy, and cold in the cold weather and hot in the hot weather, and the teachers all have an Attitude Problem. So you can see why I dreaded going back tomorrow for my first day back after Christmas break.

  Upstairs, the door to Myra Sue’s room was closed. Not that I cared. She could lock herself in there until she was a great-great-grandmother and I’d be perfectly happy, but a minute later she came out of her room and went into the bathroom. A second later I heard water running. I tell you, the way that girl takes two or three showers a day, you’d think she’d have washed herself down the drain by now.

  As I hung up my coat, I thought of something. I figured maybe what Myra Sue had put in the mailbox and then taken out might still be in her coat pocket.

  I listened at the bathroom door and heard her splashing around in the shower, so as quick as possible, I went into her room.

  Boy, that girl lived in the biggest mess of a bedroom anyone ever lived in. I’m telling you, a person would need a gas mask, leather gloves, and a blowtorch to get around in that mess. How in the world my mama, who is the world’s neatest housekeeper, allowed my dumb sister to have a room that disastrous is something I do not understand. One time I heard Mama tell Grandma that everyone should have some private space, and if Myra Sue chose never to clean up her space, she’d just have to live in it as it was.

  Once I got past the idea of all that filth, I went in and opened her closet door, and there was her coat, on the floor instead of being hung up like it should’ve been. I picked it up and thrust my hands into the pockets.

  I found a piece of gum, still in the wrapper and unchewed, thank goodness, two Kleenexes, a candy-bar wrapper, a broken pencil, the blue cap off a Bic pen, a safety pin, and a folded piece of paper. I left all that trash and junk in her pocket but unfolded the paper. When I read that list, I figured I had a clue—but a clue to what? I had no idea.

  1. Midnight Cruise

  2. Treehouse Rendezvous

  3. Never on Sunday

  4. Cream Cheese in Florida

  I read that list at least twelve times and still did not know what it meant.

  I heard the water in the shower turn o
ff, so I stuffed that paper into my jeans pocket and got out of her room, but not before I threw her coat back on the closet floor. If I’d hung it up, she’d know I’d been in there.

  Back in my own room, I left that paper with the weird list in my pocket, grabbed my book off the shelf, and headed back downstairs for some hot chocolate. Then I settled down to read in the living room, where Eli was sleeping peacefully.

  The telephone rang, and Myra Sue, all wet and wrapped in her robe, came thundering down the stairs to answer it.

  “Hello?” she said in a voice that did not sound like her. She always did that. A la-di-da voice that sounded like she was thirty years old and living in New York City. Then she said, “Hello? Hello?” Then, “Hello, hello, hello! Hellllloooo!” which did not sound mature, sophisticated, or ladylike at all. In fact, she was yelling like a dipstick. I jumped up and went into the hallway where the phone was to see why Myra Sue was yelling like that.

  Daddy came right out of the bedroom. He had changed into a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, and he had been lying down for his usual Sunday afternoon rest. He did not have a happy look on his face, I’m here to tell you. His blue eyes practically glowed.

  “Myra Sue Reilly, what on earth are you yelling about?”

  “Nobody answered when I picked up the phone,” she told him.

  “Shouting doesn’t help, but it does wake up people in the house! You do that again, and you will be grounded from the phone for a week. Got it?”

  She gave him a sullen glare. “Yes, sir.”

  In the living room, Eli set up to howling, and I went to get him.

  Mama came into the living room. “Just when I thought I might take a little nap myself,” she said with a tired smile. “You want me to take him, honey?”

  “That’s okay, Mama. Why don’t you take a nap, and I’ll watch Eli? I can rock him back to sleep.”

  She put one arm around my shoulder, and with her free hand, she tickled his cheek.

  “Actually, April, I think he probably needs his diaper changed.”

  Oh.

  She took him right out of my arms and carried him into the hallway where Myra Sue stood, looking like a reject from a Pepto-Bismol commercial. At least her face was that pink, and she was still giving our daddy a sour look.

  Mama said, “You woke him, Myra Sue. You change his dirty diaper.”

  I like to have busted a gut laughing, especially as up to that point, ole Myra had avoided changing diapers of the poopy sort.

  Daddy and I exchanged a look.

  “You girls be quiet, you hear me? Your mama and I need a little rest.”

  As if I had been the one to galumph down the stairs to the telephone and stand there screaming at no one on the other end. But I said, “Yes, sir, Daddy. I’m sorry you got woken up.”

  Myra Sue went off to change Eli, but Daddy just stood there, eyeballing that telephone.

  “Mike?” Mama said, a slight frown on her face. “Something wrong?”

  He heaved out a big breath, frowning deeper than she did.

  “I just don’t like it when someone calls and hangs up. It’s like they’re calling to find out if someone’s home . . .”

  Mama was shooting looks at him, then at me, and back to him, and he broke off what he was saying.

  “What d’you mean, Daddy, about someone calling to find out if we’re home? If they do that, it’s dumb to hang up when we answer. Why don’t they just ask . . . ?” And then I understood. If some rotten ole person wanted to rob our house, they might call to see if we were gone. Well, that riled me good and proper, and I started to say so, but Daddy put his hand on my head.

  “Don’t worry about it, punkin. It was probably someone who just got a wrong number and was too rude to apologize.”

  I sure hoped it was a wrong number, ’cause I hated to think of sitting up all night, wide-awake, watching for rotten ole burglars.

  The weather did not look good outside. Sleet started pouring down, and I almost got a knot in my stomach worrying about my grandma. Thankfully, just a little while later, the front door opened and Grandma walked in, safe and sound, toting her three-tiered pie carrier. I was never so glad to see anyone in my life.

  “Grandma!” I said as soft as I could, given my relief to see her. At least I didn’t holler out like a wounded warthog.

  “April Grace!” she said in the same awed tone of voice I had used.

  “I’m glad you’re home!” I said.

  “Me, too. The roads are getting bad.” She glanced around. “Everybody asleep?”

  I nodded. “Except Myra. She’s upstairs, probably sulking like an old possum.”

  “Mercy me,” Grandma said, walking toward the kitchen, toting her pie carrier.

  I trailed along behind her, hoping she had a piece or two left over from the three she’d made for that Methodist church potluck.

  “What’s that girl pouting about this time?” she asked, so I told her all about Myra screaming into the phone like a doofus.

  “Goodness’ sake,” Grandma murmured, like she was about half-listening.

  “What do you think about people who call and hang up?” I asked her.

  “I reckon they got nothing to say.”

  “Do you think they might come to rob your house?”

  She looked at me like I had just asked to have worms for tomorrow’s breakfast.

  “Where’d you come up with that wild notion?”

  “Daddy said sometimes people do that.”

  She waved a hand like she was waving away a fly.

  “Maybe it happens in the city, but you don’t need to worry about things like that on Rough Creek Road. Put those thoughts out of your mind. I’m surprised your daddy said such a thing to you.”

  “He didn’t. He said it to Mama.”

  “Don’t give it another thought, April. And your daddy shouldn’t worry about such piffle, either.”

  Suddenly, a thought occurred to me. “Are you gonna leave our church and start going to that one?”

  She rested one hand on her hip and frowned at me. “What in the world makes you ask such a question?”

  “Change!” I hollered, then clapped my hands over my big hollering mouth. “I mean, change!” I whispered between my fingers. “In his sermon this morning, Pastor said things were gonna change. Grandma! I don’t want any more change.”

  “Well, I reckon you better just go move into a cave and stay there,” she said unreasonably, “because life is nothin’ but change.”

  Telephone Etiquette 101

  Grandma sliced me a piece of pie, made some fresh coffee, then looked out at the weather.

  “I should have had Trask—er, Reverend Jordan—drop me off at my house,” she said. “Walking across the field in this stuff won’t be fun.”

  “Grandma!” I said, scraping any speck of pie that might be left on my plate. My tongue ached to lick the last bit of taste, but I knew better than to even try such an uncouth trick. “You can’t go outside in that cold and ice.”

  “Mebbe it’ll stop soon.”

  Just then, Myra came dragging into the kitchen, looking like the bloom from a skunk weed. Grandma gave her a big smile.

  “There’s Myra-Susie-Q.” She held out her free arm and hugged that sulky girl. Myra endured the hug like she was being tortured.

  Daddy, Mama, and Eli weren’t far behind her, having just woken up from their naps.

  “Good afternoon, sleepyheads,” Grandma said. “How about some fresh coffee?”

  “That would be real nice, Mom,” Daddy said.

  “Thank you, Mama Grace,” Mama said, nuzzling Eli’s cheek. But it seemed like as soon as all the adults settled down with their fresh cups of coffee, someone knocked on our front door. Mama handed Eli to me and went to answer it. I wondered who in the world would come to visit on a day as raw and ugly as that one.

  “Hello, Lily,” Ian St. James said. Next to him stood his missus, Isabel. Behind the St. Jameses, grinning happily, were their n
ext-door neighbors, Forest and Temple Freebird. The Freebirds are old hippies from up north but have lived here in Arkansas for a gazillion years, and the St. Jameses are transplanted Californians who moved here last summer.

  “Well, hello, everyone,” Mama said, bright and friendly, just like she expected a quartet of neighbors to show up on her doorstep during a winter storm while she was in her sweat suit and house slippers, her hair all mussed up from her nap. “Come in this house where it’s warm!”

  They trooped inside, bringing in cold air and plenty of sleet on their coats and heads. Mama shut the door and said, “Go on into the kitchen and get yourselves some hot coffee.”

  I trailed along behind everyone and entered the kitchen just as Ian was saying to Daddy, “So I’m here to help with the milking until Brett gets to feeling better.”

  Mr. Brett has been our hired man since before I can remember. Usually he was healthy as a horse, but that day he had the creeping crud and was sicker than a dog.

  “I’ll pitch in, too, Mike, and Temple is going to take Brett some of her tea,” Forest said.

  My sister stood on the far side of the room, arms folded, a pouty expression on her face. This was unusual only because Isabel was in the same room, and Myra Sue had not flown to her side like a starving homing pigeon. Looking at Isabel, I’m not sure she had yet noticed her darling’s sourness.

  She came over to where I sat holding Eli. She touched his cheek with her fingertip, then held his tiny fist. She spread open his hands and looked at all his fingers.

  Finally Isabel noticed Myra Sue. “What’s wrong, darling?” she asked. “You aren’t getting that awful flu that’s going around, are you?”

  Mama laid a hand on Myra Sue’s forehead, then she shook her head and dropped her hand.

  “No fever. I think Miss Myra is still just a little put-out because she had to spend most of the afternoon in her room.”

  Myra’s mouth flew open and then clamped shut. Her face turned red, then she hollered, “Everyone in the entire world hates me, and no one would miss me if I just fell off the face of the earth and disappeared forever!” And off she stomped, out of the kitchen, thundering up the steps and into her bedroom again, where she slammed the door so loud the house vibrated.