Downhome Crazy Read Free

kids of crazy people have to go to foster care?” he asks, attempting a casual tone.
    I maintain the same “doesn’t matter” attitude as I answer. “Only if they’re otherwise without family,” I assure him. “You have your grandmother.”
    He gives me one of those withering stares that teenagers seem to gain with puberty. “You know she’s bat-shit crazy, too, right?”
    I wouldn’t describe Annalee Forrester, his late father’s mother, quite that way. She is unique. Some might say in a good way; others might disagree. Annalee is from the old school in which kids learned about life from their parents. Unfortunately, Annalee’s mother was a space cadet, or so I’ve been told, who loved her child deeply, but understood the practice of rearing a child only in the abstract. The care and nurturing of little Annalee fell to her father, who is still known for his various talents twenty years after his death.
    He was a lumberjack, a stonemason, a purveyor of moonshine, and an itinerant preacher, although not all at the same time. Tagging at his heels, Annalee learned to cut lumber, lay bricks, swear like a sailor, and pray like a nun. When she took a husband at the tender age of forty-one, no one expected her to reproduce. Yet, she popped out a son whom they named Ambrose after a dog Annalee once had and that son wound up married to Florine.
    Although Annalee’s husband is in the great beyond, she still lives in the small cottage she laid the foundation for the week before her wedding. The ceilings are low and the windows are few, but it’s a sturdy place she reigns over as if it were Buckingham Palace.
    “Your grandmother just likes things a certain way,” I say, defending the woman who once called the radio station to ask why we never played Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby in our top twenty countdown.
    “She’s nuts.” Eugene sounded morose again. “I know she’s not the only person to ask her visitors to take off their shoes at the door, but I’ve never heard of anyone else providing a bowl of water and homemade soap to scrub their feet before they come in.”
    Okay, maybe Annalee goes a little overboard on the cleanliness thing. And cementing her entire front yard to keep cats from digging is a little strange, too.
    “Your mother is going to be fine,” I say with all the conviction I can fake. “She’s stressed out from the festival and the choir program, that’s all.”
    Fortuna being not the largest of towns, we are at Miz Waddy’s shop before I finish those last words. I park down the street, hoping that if Dwaine happens to cruise by he won’t know where I am. I take a small LED flashlight from my glove compartment and turn to Eugene.
    “Stay in this car,” I warn him. “Or I’ll call the chief and you will end up in foster care as an incorrigible youth.”
    “I’m going in with you.” Eugene opens his door and steps out. The car goes up about three inches.
    “Because,” he continues as I also get out of the car, “if the dudes who stole Miss Peytona are still around, I’ll be here to defend you.”
    I have news for Eugene. If there’s any living creature in that place besides Miss Priss, I’ll set a new record for the fastest runner in Fortuna. Still, I can see how he believes he’s needed, and I do hate to crush his spirit, especially with his mother in her current condition.
    We stroll down the sidewalk as if out for an evening constitutional. When we near the dry goods store, I angle over, try the doorknob and walk right in when it gives. Flicking on my flashlight, I aim it toward the floor so it can’t be seen by anyone passing by.
    The Peytonas have had a store of some kind in the same location since Fortuna first came into being in the late nineteenth century, or so the official tour brochure for the town claims. The local woman’s club also serves as the welcoming committee, and the two most agile of its gray-haired members took me on a walking tour my first day on the