Small Magic: Collected Short Stories Part 12

At first it's just a pencil.

The lead breaks again, and Wade jams it into the electric sharpener. Under the sound of the whirring motor, a scream, discordant, sharp. Wade jumps back; the pencil falls to the ground.

Where the lead used to be, a tail stretches out, coils, and straightens. The thing is twice as long as the pencil shaft now. It swells, and little legs sprout at the sides. Wade scrambles to his desktop, knocking notebooks to the floor.

The black serpentine thing works up the side of the desk. Wade pushes his fists against his eyes, rubbing hard until they water.

It's still there, writhing over his shoe. It tickles his ankle, brus.h.i.+ng the hairs of his calf as it winds around his leg. He slaps at his pants, dancing frantically on the desk top, but the black thing works into his skin, finds a vein, and takes over.

Chapter 55: Melons.

Troy Varnell and his buddy Arthur Bolin had stopped at a crossroads for a bite to eat. They sat on the tailgate of a '34 Ford, both gnawing on a slice of watermelon. Behind them, filling the bed of the dusty pickup, the Varnell watermelon harvest waited to be delivered to the green grocers of Calumet County.

Troy and Arthur took no notice of the hobo walking down the road because they were engaged in a contest, squirting watermelon seeds from their mouths as far from the tailgate as possible. The hobo's name was Pete Archer; he carried a leather bag on one shoulder and dragged a rolled-up bindle in the other hand. Just as Arthur puffed up his chubby red cheeks to launch another seed, Pete gave a little cough. Arthur almost choked.

"Excuse me, gentleman, but I was wondering if perhaps there might be a spare melon for a fellow down on his luck?"

Both young men studied the vagrant. Neither had done much in school past the sixth grade, but it wasn't hard to pick out a hobo. Pete wore a pair of dusty denim trousers-patched at both knees-a brown jacket, and a lopsided derby hat squashed so much that a couple of elephants must have made love on.

Troy glanced at Arthur, Arthur back at Troy.

"Whatcha got in the bag, mister?" Troy asked, ignoring the hobo's question.

Pete smiled, showing two rows of whiter teeth than a hobo ought to have. "Books, gentleman. The finest examples of mankind's acc.u.mulated knowledge and wisdom." He patted the side of his leather pouch. "I ask again, do you suppose you have a watermelon in there for a fellow traveler on the dusty road of life?"

Troy tossed his rind in the ditch and hopped from the tailgate. He was a tall boy and lean as a split rail. "Sorry mister, we've got to deliver these to a couple stores up county."

"Looks like you just ate one; surely you can spare another."

"Probably get in trouble if my old man found out we ate that one," Troy said. He crossed his spindly arms. "We ain't got no extras."

"I see." Pete smiled again, but this time it looked like the grin a fox might shoot off to a jackrabbit just before it tears open the rabbit's throat. He dropped his bindle at the side of the road, reached inside the leather pouch, rummaged around, and pulled out a small book. The book wasn't much: a reddish-brown cover with a t.i.tle embossed in black ink.

"Trade a book for a melon? This is an exquisite, old volume."

Troy scoffed, "I don't have need for your books, mister."

"Last chance-best deal you'll have." Pete waved the book.

Troy shook his head.

Pete opened the book, flipped a few pages, turned it over so the writing faced the ground, and started shaking. Little black seeds dropped out in a light rain, and Pete sprinkled them all over the side of the road.

The air was plenty hot as it was the height of summer-but something icy weaseled its way into both boys' bones, and they shuddered like when the bathwater turned cold. Neither had seen much magic before, especially hobo magic.

Arthur dropped to the ground-his belly shook a bit when he landed-and he took one step toward Pete. "What're you doing?"

Pete glanced over his shoulder and winked. "Planting some melons." He turned a few more pages and poured water from the book.

After the water, Arthur didn't take another step toward Pete. His jaw dropped. So did Troy's-like it weighed a half-ton on an oily hinge. When the water hit the dirt, little green shoots popped out of the mud.

"Hey Troy, let's get. I'm spooked." Arthur stumbled to the side of the truck, keeping his eyes on the sprouts that wound out of the earth. "Something about that guy ain't right."

A gust of wind swept some dust past the crossroads, snapping Troy's jaw back in place. "Yeah." He climbed behind the wheel and poked his head out of the window. "Enjoy yourself, mister. We've got these melons to deliver." He half-waved at Pete; he wanted to smile, too, but his lips wouldn't cooperate. Never in his nineteen years had he seen shoots come up that quickly. Not to mention water pouring out of a book.

The truck chugged to life, and Troy pushed it into gear. They started rattling down the road, but Troy couldn't help but look back in the side mirror one last time.

The crossroads swarmed with green vines by then, and Pete Archer stood in the middle of his field. He held a fat melon, green as a spring bud, over his head. Troy was sure Pete was smiling, and his foot dropped a little harder on the accelerator. Something about that smile wasn't right.

They didn't speak as they bounced down the road until they pulled into Emery's General Store in Grover's Mill. They exchanged a quick look and laughed, both of them.

"Crazy old man," Troy said.

The road had been rather dry, and they couldn't see out of the rear window once the truck worked up a good dust cloud. They never saw the melons disappear, missing that bit of magic completely. All they witnessed was the empty bed-almost empty save for a good coat of dirt and a small, reddish-brown book.

Troy, his heart pumping like a steam engine, climbed up and lifted the book. On the cover, embossed in black, were two words: "On Gardening."

His jaw popped open again, but his mind was wrapped around Pete's vines back at the crossroads.

Arthur whistled a long, low note. "Your pa is gonna whip you good."

Chapter 56: Painkillers.

Billy looked up, blood leaking from the cut at the corner of his mouth, and smiled at the big man.

"What'er you smiling at now, ya freak?"

Chants of "Get 'em Tony" and "Kick his a.s.s" and "Kill 'em" rose from the grim-faced chorus.

A steel-toed riding boot caught Billy's chin and rattled his molars together. His hands slipped on sweat and blood and urine, and his bare chest collided with the roadhouse floor. It was more pain that he imagined, really, even after the bottle of Vicodin he swallowed fifteen minutes ago, before striping to his underwear, strolling into the bar, and spitting in Big Tony's beer.

Chapter 57: The Date.

Anne turned to Ryan and studied his face in the grim light from the car's dash.

"In the glove box?"

He nodded. "Yeah...do you mind?"

Anne pressed her thumb against the catch, and the glove box door fell open with a click. She expected clutter, the usually fare: owner's manual, maybe some gum, old ketchup packets, napkins, even a condom. What she really expected was the condom.

"Latex gloves?" she asked as she handed them across the console.

Ryan smiled and pulled on the gloves. "I don't leave fingerprints this way."

Chapter 58: Night School.

He starts his work with an ax, smas.h.i.+ng the safety gla.s.s until all that hangs from the black filaments are fragments that sparkle red beneath the lighted exit sign. He enters the room and pushes the desks together. With a little effort, the bookcase falls with a heavy thump and scattering of paperbacks, echoing in the hall. He pauses and listens, but surely no one else could be in the building.

He pries the name tag from the door, feels the rough, raised letters, and laughs silently at the sound of the name: Feldspar. He casts the plastic strip onto the pile of furniture.

Next, the gasoline from the hallway. It's an old can, a metal can, a hand-me-down from his father. He douses the desks, the fallen shelves, and the wounded books. He shakes the can to chase free the last drops.

The can drops to the tiled hallway floor with an empty thunk. He fishes through his pockets, sure he had a lighter, but it's gone missing.

A hand taps him on the shoulder, and the man turns in the darkness, surprised to see a fifteen-year-old face washed in the pale red of the exit sign. The other boys wear masks and carry plastic canisters.

The boy holds out a hand. "Need a light, Mr. Feldspar?"

Chapter 59: Why Susie McTavish Believes in Angels.

Susie McTavish is not afraid of death, but it's not because of her age, six, and the inability of many children to comprehend abstractions. Suise knows about death, and understands death isn't the frightening thing. Even many adults are not afraid of death because of its finality or lack of finality given particular religious beliefs. Either there's nothing, which isn't very frightening, or something, which is more curious than scary. When asked, most adults complain the possibility of a painful death scares them more than death itself.

"Just let me go in my sleep," they say.

Susie McTavish cannot sleep. She will not sleep.

She lives alone with her father, but she doesn't fear him even though he is a drunkard. She doesn't fear his ruddy face or the glazed distance in his eyes. When he comes home early and sober, he lifts Susie on his shoulders and calls her "light as a feather" or "my angel of the air" in his lyrical Scottish brogue. She's never feared he would hurt her, even though the way he talks to Beth, the sitter, makes her feel uncomfortable. The way he leers at Beth makes her feel uncomfortable. Beth is pretty with long black hair and even longer legs, but she's only sixteen and her father is thirty and even at six a little girl understands certain boundaries.

But fear? No. It's not her father she fears.

Susie lies awake with a patchwork quilt hugged to her tiny chin long after she hears her father banter with Beth and the door shut after Beth leaves and the house falls silent, her father surely asleep in the big recliner in the living room of their apartment.

It is then that the noises start. Susie begins to feel the fear which creeps like frostbite inside her skin.

She used to fear never seeing her mother again. She wondered if her mother would visit with big, sweeping wings of white feathers like the angels in her books about the Nativity. Susie would lie awake at night, as long as she could, and listen for her mother's voice or even the flutter of wings, even though she wasn't sure what big angel's wings would sound like, and flutter was just a word she'd read in a book.

It was while she was lying awake one night, waiting for her mother, that she first heard the sounds: tapping against the dense wallboard of her room, scratching just on the other side of the ceiling, the creaking strain of wood from her bedroom door like someone, something, pressed its hands against the plywood center and pushed. Susie hears the sounds every night now, like someone, something probes the boundaries of her little room, just on the other side of the Disney princess posters, just on the other side of her bookcase littered with secondhand children's books with peeling covers, just on the other side of her door. Something is trying to get in, to enter Susie's room in the dark, in the night when her father is asleep having swallowed enough alcohol to blur the pain of his wife's cancer and swift departure from life.

Night by night, Susie adds details to the thing inside her walls. She conjures crooked, near-human fingers to match the tapping sounds. Thick nails like bits of cloudy amber hang from the end of the fingers. Susie builds a face to match the hands, and her stomach becomes a wad of ice. She imagines things which can be done to a six year old girl far worse than death because in death, she believes she will sprout white feathered wings and glide in the light with her mother.

"Just let me die in my sleep," an adult might say.

But no, not Susie. She wants to become an angel, like her mother, and help hold the back the monsters from another little girl's room.