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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 spiralnotebook—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 Coloneland 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