Black Magic

by Russell James

  Chapter Thirteen

  Setup: How many DPW employees does it take to change a light bulb?

  Punch line: One, because there’s only one to do it.

  The “Department” in Citrus Glade’s Department of Public Works was a bit of a stretch. Monday through Friday, Andy was it. Andy reported to the mayor. Back when the mill was humming and the streets were alive, Andy, and the rest of the crew, would have reported to the Chief of DPW. But the city payroll had dwindled with the tax base. The town council found they could ax the position of chief, but if they axed Andy, no one cut the grass. And someone had to cut the grass. And scrape up the road kill. And man the dump twice a week.

  Andy balanced on the top rung of a stepladder Monday morning at the corner of Tangelo and Main. He removed the dead bulb from the quaint iron post streetlight. After nightfall, downtown was as popular as a haunted house, so there was an element of absurdity to Andy’s morning task. But it was on the list anyway.

  The clomp of high heels on concrete sounded below him. Mayor Flora Diaz had put the bulb replacement on Andy’s list and he knew she’d want to check on progress. She approached the corner wearing a sharp white linen suit, skirt professionally to the knee, and a pair of beige pumps. With shorter black hair and tasteful makeup, she looked the part of a small-town mayor. Andy always thought that looking the role of Citrus Glade’s mayor was more than half the battle. The job had shrunk to near figurehead status.

  “Madame Mayor,” Andy said with teasing reverence.

  “Super, super, super!” she said with the enthusiasm of a child at Christmas. “I saw the light out last night and it just isn’t right for the town to have dead lights on Main Street.”

  Her positive attitude hadn’t changed since they’d both been at Citrus Glade High a lifetime ago. Andy admired her sunny disposition about the town and its future. There were days it made the difference in his outlook on his work. Add in that he felt he worked with the mayor, rather than for her, and the DPW looked pretty good.

  “It will be shining brightly this evening,” Andy said. “Ready to light our new business across the street.”

  He pointed his thumb at the renovated Magic Shop. Flora rolled her big brown eyes.

  “Now don’t you start,” she said. “I’ve already had Reverend Wright call me twice about how Satan himself had moved onto Main Street. We’re going over together tomorrow morning to chat with the owner and put the Reverend’s fears to rest. I hope.”

  “The store isn’t open much,” Andy said. “Or maybe at all. I’ve never seen the CLOSED sign flipped over, now that I think of it.”

  “I’m sure he’s planning a big grand opening,” Flora said. “I’m just happy to have some new business downtown.”

  Andy had to stifle a laugh every time she used the word downtown as if there was an “uptown” to Citrus Glade.

  “Be safe up there,” she said and departed to City Hall.

  Andy gave the Magic Shop a bit more thought. There was something creepy about it. The bland name, the black paint, the empty storefront window. Since the flurry of activity to re-invigorate the exterior, the place seemed dead. Andy made plenty of passes through the town square all day and was now positive it had never been open, nor had he seen the owner.

  As if on cue, Lyle Miller stepped out of the front door with a jingle of the little bell on top. He had on a black long-sleeve shirt reminiscent of pirate garb, the kind of shirt a magician would wear on stage. He looked over at Andy and their eyes locked. Lyle smiled and waved, but both gestures were cold, calculated. Even from across the street, Andy could make out a ring with a large blue stone on one of Lyle’s fingers.

  Lyle disappeared around the shop corner and into the alley. He emerged a minute later at the wheel of a jet black Cadillac Eldorado, convertible top retracted. He drove off down Main.

  A chill shivered up Andy’s spine. He twitched at the top of the ladder and grabbed the lamppost for support. That guy gave him a serious case of the creeps.

  He shook it off. A mysterious shop and black clothes. All the type of hype a magician would spin to create an aura. The guy will be making balloon animals at birthday parties next week and selling Magic 8 Balls in his shop.

  He climbed down and tossed the ladder in the back of the town pickup truck. Bigger fish to fry today, as they say. Today was Dump Day, after all.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Elysian Retirement Home day room stank Monday morning.

  At least it did to Dolly. It wasn’t rotten like a bad banana or an open can of rancid tuna. It smelled clean. Too clean. A fake floral smell with an antiseptic aftertaste. As if it had worked hard to cover a host of scents no one wanted to acknowledge; the reek of soiled bed linens, the shuddering stink of vomit, and above all the musty smell of death. Before she had to live here, Dolly tended her own fragrant flower gardens where blooms sent out the bouquet of new life each morning. The day room’s smell was just the opposite, a cover for life slowly winding down.

  Nurse Coldwell bustled around the room from corner to corner like one of those robot vacuum cleaners. She gave each resident a cursory inspection and flagged attendants to assist those in need.

  Dolly felt good this morning, which made her feel awful about her son’s last visit to see her. She wished amnesia rode tandem with the bouts of dementia when they galloped up and trampled her brain, but it did not. She remembered every confused, embarrassing moment from her son’s visit. Andy was a saint for never bringing those times up, pretending he was the one stricken with amnesia.

  Her friend Walking Bear was up early this morning. His dry, gray hair was swept back in a ponytail. The sun backlit his profile and his prominent nose. Pronounced bags under his eyes gave him a very somber air, not that his brown, weathered face ever broke into a smile.

  He had his usual chair. He positioned it to face the big picture window overlooking the center’s patchy grass backyard and the small pond beyond. Hummingbird feeders hung from the roof’s overhang and the brightly colored birds hovered around them for quick sips of sugar water. His gaze never wavered from the birds.

  Walking Bear claimed he was an Anamassee, an obscure tribe without casinos whose dwindling membership still lived in south Florida. The name on his room chart was Walter Connell, but he only answered to Walking Bear. Dolly didn’t know his history before he came to the home years ago, and he didn’t volunteer it

  Dolly took a seat beside him. “Good morning!” she sang.

  Walking Bear gave a curt nod and kept his eyes on the birds. Dolly had learned not to take offense.

  “What do the birds tell you this morning?” she asked. Walking Bear claimed that even through the glass the animals, few that there were, relayed news of the natural world to him.

  “It is all in balance this morning,” he said. “Light and dark, sun and moon.”

  “Sounds perfect,” she said. Walking Bear gave the most poetic weather reports. They didn’t make sense, but Dolly loved them, the way one loves a song with nonsense lyrics for its melody. She patted his hand and headed across the room.

  Shane Hudson held morning court at one of the card tables. Chester Tobias and Denny Dean sat opposite him. Chester had the bulky, sagging physique of a formerly burly man. What remained of his hair was a crown of short silver fringe, though he tried to compensate with a bushy moustache. Denny was a scarecrow of a man with rheumy blue eyes and a non-existent chin. When Shane had been head honcho at Apex Sugar, Chester and Denny had been his right and left hands, hands that weren’t afraid to get dirty, to slap down a worker who had forgotten his place in the pecking order.

  Shane cut off his lecture to the two as Dolly passed. His black cane lay across the arms of his wheelchair. He gave it a few taps. She ignored his summons and took a seat in the far corner. The day was too lovely to spend a moment of it with the likes of him.

  Shane screwed his face up in frustration as she walked away.

  “Noticed how stuck up that Patterson bitch has
become?” Shane said.

  “You said it, boss,” Chester said. “She could use a moment of education.”

  Dolly knew she had been on Shane’s hit list since her environmental crusade to save the Everglades began. As far as Shane was concerned, her quest to save the environment had cost him the Apex plant, no matter what the Apex annual reports said about profits and losses and global competition. Not being Shane’s pal wasn’t much of a loss.

  Nurse Coldwell led a slight woman into the day room. The twenty-something blonde had frizzy hair that went down to her shoulder blades. She wore a long denim skirt and a white blouse that was either homespun or trying hard to look it. She opened a brown leather rollup on the table top at the front of the room.

  “All right, everyone,” Nurse Coldwell said. “This is Janine, the woman I told you would be visiting us today. Let’s give her our attention.”

  The nurse had a look of relief as she left the room in Janine’s hands. The few residents who were coherent turned their bored expressions Janine’s way. Walking Bear continued his study of the local fauna.

  “Well, I’m Janine,” she said in a sing-song voice better targeted to preschoolers. Her eyes bulged just a bit in their sockets, which made her look surprised at everything she said. “I’m from the Eastern Institute in Marathon. We’ve volunteered to come in and help you all focus your personal energy.”

  Janine pulled out a large, clear crystal from a pouch in her roll. The oblong stone was a few inches long, uncut and unpolished. She held it up and as she rotated it, the surface sparked on and off like Christmas lights.

  “Crystals are nature’s wonder,” she said. “They channel and direct any energy they come into contact with.”

  Of all the stupid ideas… Dolly thought. She rested her chin in her hand and contemplated an upright nap.

  “Now we all have energy that emanates from us,” Janine said. She made a big sunburst gesture with her hands. “But it all escapes in every direction. Crystals can reflect the energy back so we can recycle it.”

  Dolly wondered if today was Caesar salad day. Management had changed the menu twice this month.

  Janine grabbed a handful of crystals from her roll and began to flit around the room like some New Age pixie as she spoke. “So what we will be doing is placing crystals in strategic locations around the day room, where the most people are throughout the day.” She slipped crystals on the edges of bookshelves and in windowsill corners. “These will collect and return all our radiant energies. Those with excess will share, and in return will get the energies of others from a different wavelength.”

  Janine passed before Walking Bear. He gave her a quick, sympathetic look and then refocused on the rabbit at the edge of the woods. She deposited the last of the crystals and returned to the front of the room.

  “So we want to leave the crystals undisturbed,” she said. “And all of you should feel the effects of these amazing stones in no time. You’ll feel peppier, sleep better and be at peace with all.”

  She paused as if applause was supposed to follow. She looked crestfallen in the silence and folded up her leather roll. Nurse Coldwell stepped over to salvage her pride.

  “Thank you, Janine,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll all see wonderful results.”

  She took the bewildered girl by the elbow and walked her back to the main entrance.

  Dolly wished it were that easy. She wished there was a simple cure, an easy way for her to be the person she used to be all the time, not just during the good times like right now. She missed her house, though Andy took her home to it every week for a meal or a DVD movie. She missed her freedom, though she was free to come and go at the home as she wished when she wasn’t in some fugue state. She missed her friends, though they all came by regularly enough. Life just wasn’t the same, because even her best moments were spoiled worrying about the dark moments that might ambush her any second. If a few hunks of rock could cure that…

  Well, if Janine’s visit was supposed to bring hope and enlightenment, it had instead become quite depressing. Dolly knew just the way to shake that off. She headed back to her room to finish the still life of daisies on the easel. She passed by Walking Bear on the way. She pointed to a crystal in the corner of the window.

  “What do you say about these?” she asked him.

  Walking Bear did not look at her. “Another crazy white woman.”

  Walking Bear didn’t look even remotely Native American himself, and Dolly smiled at the irony.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was a big day for visitors at Elysian Fields. Crystal Janine in the morning and an afternoon of entertainment.

  Lyle Miller entered fronting a smile worthy of a TV pitchman. The owners had snapped up his offer of a free magic show for the residents, something they could boast about on next year’s brochure. “Acclaimed entertainers do personal shows” or some such crap. They thought they were using him to their own ends. Lyle allowed them their delusion.

  Nurse Coldwell showed him to the day room where the staff had set up a long folding table draped with a white table cloth. He’d been specific about black and gritted his teeth as he ran his finger along the edge.

  “You are scheduled for one-thirty,” she said without looking at him. “It will be after lunch so a few residents may get sleepy.”

  “I will endeavor to keep them awake and entertained,” Lyle said.

  “The owners should take care of this,” she fumed. “I’m a certified RN and I’ve spent half my day like some cruise ship activities director.”

  Lyle put his hand on hers. She shot him a warning glare for violating her personal space. But as she looked into his sparkling eyes, the scowl on her face turned softer.

  “I’m sure that my little diversion will cheer up both the residents and the staff,” Lyle said, “and make your job easier today.”

  Nurse Coldwell blushed just a bit and turned away in unaccustomed embarrassment. Lyle knew that little flirtatious foray would keep her at arm’s length for the day. The little bulldog probably hadn’t been hit on since high school, even by women.

  Lyle had fifteen minutes until show time. Several residents already sat in the day room, but the drool-to-patient ratio said they weren’t paying attention and wouldn’t start when the show commenced. They weren’t the ones he sensed here, the ones with the mighty whapnas.

  He laid out a deck of cards, a red rubber ball and black plastic wand with as much magical power as a block of concrete. Table magic. The cheapest, oldest, stupidest stagecraft in the world. The whole idea of doing it made him ill. But today the ends justified the foul-tasting means.

  Residents doddered in alone and in pairs. The staff wheeled in a half dozen like valets parking cars, dropping one off and returning with another. At the stroke of one-thirty, the room was full. Apparently, with little else to occupy the day, the group could be timely.

  He studied each resident, assessed them through his body language translator, honed by thousands of years of existence. He listened to their interactions. Somewhere in here there was a threat to his plan, a whapna with all the wrong attributes. He would need a counterweight to check it and one of those was here as well.

  So far, the residents were old, worn out. Physically, that was immaterial, but mentally his chosen one would need to be up to the task ahead and have the right disposition. But each resident he eyed showed little promise. They fidgeted in their sweaters and slippers, grandparents and great-grandparents, devoid of the fire he needed to feel. Had he misread the whapnas in this building?

  One man caught his attention, a hulking specimen by the window, the only one looking outside instead of inside, silver hair pulled back in a ponytail. The outsider, perhaps. A good start. Lyle felt for the man’s whapna. It was strong, integrated in a way he had rarely seen in a millennium. But the man had no fire, no flames waited to be kindled and released.

  A woman walked in; she had short blonde hair and wore blue pastel pants. Lyle touched her whapna a
nd almost spit in response. She had a fire that burned brighter than the others in the room, but it was all the wrong color. Fascinating how her age was no factor in the power of her whapna. This was the threat he’d felt from across town. Just one like this could ruin his plan. He’d been down that road before.

  Two minutes to show time and Lyle began to contemplate having to use the staff for his ends, a far less effective option. He straightened out his pitiful tricks on the table.

  A thump and a muffled curse came from the back of the room. A woman in a pink fuzzy robe hobbled backward. A wheelchair made its way through the crowd, plowing residents aside like they were tilled earth. A haughty smile crossed the withered face of Shane Hudson as he rolled into a front row location. His black eyes burned bright. The woman sitting next to him cast him a look of scorn.

  “I thought you said this magic show was stupid,” the woman said.

  “Shut your pie hole, sister,” Shane said. He gave his cane a threatening twist. “Even for stupid I get front row seating.”

  Lyle touched Shane’s whapna. He might be physically damaged, but mentally he was clear as pure alcohol, with the same volatility. And his whapna was perfect, fierce and dark, receptive to the energy that would soon pass beneath the building. The good could leak out anywhere, but the bad needed a bit of focal direction. This would be his counterweight.

  Nurse Coldwell approached Lyle to introduce him to the room. But with his target acquired, he had no time to waste on such pleasantries.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” His voice thundered and the room went silent. “My name is Lyle Miller, recently arrived in your lovely town. I will astound you today with some feats of magic.”

  Lyle began his show. He did simple tricks where he did not even use true magic. Sleight of hand to make some coins disappear and return, then the old ball and cup routine, a few card tricks. He then tapped into some true power. He handed out some paper and had a few residents write down a three-digit number. He mystically “read” each one without seeing them, to the oohs of the coherent in the crowd. Even Nurse Coldwell at the back of the room looked impressed. Only Shane looked on with derision.