The Warlock's Curse

by Hobson, M. K.

  But ... no! Will dropped his field binoculars and sat back in the grass. Ben hadn’t come, and that was that. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t give any of them the time of day, and he wouldn’t. Wasn’t like he was missing anything except a tedious evening with brothers he already knew ... his witchly Ma’am chanting her fussy little kitchen spells to make sure all the food stayed hot ... his Uncle Royce, who had the most disquieting way of appearing suddenly at one’s elbow when one least expected it ... and Father ...

  He stood up and righted his bicycle. He slung his heavy leather toolbag (he never went anywhere without it) across his back. Pask’s doors were always open to him, and the de la Guerras would surely be fixing up a good dinner too. In honor of the holiday they’d probably even crack open a bottle of old Spanish wine. They’d get up a game of pinochle and listen to their brand new Teslaphone—they were the first in the whole county to have bought one of the updated models.

  But then again ...

  Will stood astride his bicycle, looking back down the hill. The girl had gone inside. He wondered what her name was.

  It wouldn’t hurt to find out.

  Yes, that was it. He wanted to meet the girl. That was a fair reason for a red-blooded American boy. He wasn’t going home to fawn over Argus’ car, that much he promised himself. It wasn’t because he could smell the pies all the way up here. And it certainly wasn’t because there was still a small piece of his mind that he hadn’t yet given his father.

  No. It was to meet the girl.

  Kicking off, he coasted down the grassy hill toward home.

  Will left his toolbag on the screened back porch and crept in through the mud room just off the kitchen. He was hoping to avoid notice, and with the kitchen in such a state, that wasn’t hard. Pots bubbled and steamed, china and silverware clanked. Potatoes were being mashed, vegetables creamed, gravy stirred. It was like the engine room of a battleship about to engage a hostile fleet. A dozen itinerant girls—charity cases from all up and down the West Coast that his soft-hearted Ma’am took in and employed—worked under her watchful eye. There were so many of them, and in such constant rotation, that it was flat impossible to keep their names straight. Will had adopted the tactic of calling them all “Maisy” and accepting whatever good-natured or sharp-tongued correction might ensue.

  The final turkey had just come out of the oven (there were three birds in all, each twenty pounds if it was an ounce, each shot by Nate in the thick oak groves along the Sacramento River) and preparations were being made for the food’s distribution to various destinations. One turkey would go to the German family who ran the farm, one would go to the charity girls, and the last—the largest—would be served to the family. The birds that had been roasted earlier were covered with large chargers laid over with folded wool blankets that shimmered slightly; his Ma’am’s sorcerous handiwork would keep the birds at the perfect temperature indefinitely.

  Surreptitiously lifting one of the covers, Will picked off a piece of turkey meat. Then, licking his fingers, he snuck up behind his mother—who had not yet noticed his arrival—and laid an indifferent peck on her cheek.

  “Hi,” he grunted.

  “Will!” Ma’am whirled and seized him. She showered him with kisses as if she hadn’t seen him in months. “I’m so glad you came back. Were you over at Pask’s? I was worried about you!”

  “Aw, what are you worrying about me for?” He didn’t like to worry his Ma’am. And even though he was still a little mad at her for her implicit support of Father’s birthday presents, her rosy round cheeks and the good-humored glint in her violet eyes made it hard to stay so. Even though her skin was wrinkled and her hair was losing the battle to remain chestnut-colored, she always seemed younger than the girls who surrounded her.

  “You and your father had an awful bust-up,” Ma’am said. She laid a soft, warm hand on his cheek—the one she called her “reading” hand. It possessed some kind of special magical sensitivity that Will had never really understood the extent of. She held it there for a moment until he felt compelled to shy away like an impatient colt. “But I figured you’d both do with some cooling off. If I’d really wanted you I would have Sent for you.”

  Will shuddered inwardly but said nothing. All the Edwards boys hated being Sent for by their witchly mother. It wasn’t that it was painful (unless she was really mad)—it was just ... well, what fellow wanted his mother poking her nose into his head? Especially when you were eighteen?

  And on the subject of thoughts he probably would have preferred his mother not intrude on, Will tried not to look at one girl in particular—the brunette girl who had arrived in Argus’ car and was now helping out in the kitchen. She had been given a large white apron to put over her stylish costume and had been set to rolling biscuits.

  “Some motorcar the Congressman has got,” Will offered with casual malice. Ma’am smirked at the jibe, and then, just as abruptly, her face darkened.

  “And did you hear that they’ve left Kendall at home with his nurse, just so Argus could drive that silly contraption?” Ma’am tossed her silver-threaded curls with outrage. “Lillie didn’t want to bother carrying him on her lap the whole way. Can you imagine! That woman hasn’t a scrap of mother-feeling in her. I’ve only got one grandchild, and I never even get to see him!”

  Will suffered this tirade in silence. Ma’am dislike of her daughter-in-law was inversely proportional to her love of babies over an

  extremely wide range. But the absence of his infant nephew Kendall (who he remembered as red-faced and screaming at the indignity of being swaddled in an extravagant confection of linen and lace) was a matter of supreme indifference to Will. He was more interested in another absence.

  “So Ben isn’t going to make it?”

  Ma’am shook her head. “I guess something came up.” She quickly seized a nearby bowl as if its contents were in urgent need of stirring. Ma’am was never any good at hiding anything—especially hurt. When she was happy, her face looked young; but when she was sad, she looked very old. Desperate to cheer her, Will wrapped his arms around her and hugged her off balance, roaring like a bear. Ma’am whooped and tried not to spill the contents of the bowl.

  “But I have a letter from him!” she added brightly, as if that made up for everything. Which it didn’t, but Ben was great at writing letters: breezy, fascinating and suggestive. Ben wrote very interestingly about things that weren’t very interesting. His letters were like cotton-candy. They were thrilling and sweet, and you could eat a whole lot, but when you got right down to it there really wasn’t much there. And if you ate too much, you’d probably get sick.

  Of course, Will had been able to form his opinions only from the bits and pieces of Ben’s letters that other family members shared with him, because Ben had never written him. Not a single solitary word. Ever.

  Will, on the other hand, wrote to Ben quite often, in care of the famous Stanton Institute in New York City, where Ben had been employed for many years. He wrote him about his life, his disappointments, his hopes. He came to think of his letters to Ben almost like a kind of diary. You wrote in it, you shared secrets with it, but you never expected it to give anything in return. Still, Will had asked Ma’am about it once, asked why she reckoned Ben never wrote him back.

  “He’s probably just thinking of what to say,” she’d said. “Someday you’ll hear from him.”

  Will doubted it. And Ben’s failure to show up at Thanksgiving seemed only to confirm that suspicion. Even so, writing to Ben had become an ingrained habit, and Will was already thinking of what he would write about the girl who was rolling biscuits. Ma’am smiled slyly when she saw how scrupulously Will was avoiding looking at their guest.

  “Don’t you two remember each other?” she asked, adopting a very proper tone. “I guess it has been a long time. William Edwards, this is Miss Jenny Hansen. Miss Jenny Hansen, this is my youngest son, William.”

  Jenny Hansen smirked, dusting flour off her hands so sh
e could extend one in his direction. Suddenly, Will felt even more suckered than he had by Argus’ car. At least Argus’ car wouldn’t laugh at him.

  “Jenny Hansen?” he squeaked. Holy Moses. He should have lit out for Pask’s! He wondered if there was still time to escape.

  “Of course he doesn’t remember me, Mrs. Edwards,” Jenny said, withdrawing her hand when Will failed to take it. “It’s all those rocks I shied at his head when we were kids.”

  “I remember you, Scuff.” He used the nickname he’d given her years ago, a testament to her perpetually scraped knees. “It’s just I remember you all scrawny and homely and knock-kneed, and now, well ...” Will trailed off irritably. Damn it, he’d meant it as a dig and it hadn’t come out right at all.

  “Hasn’t she gotten pretty?” Ma’am put an arm around Jenny and pressed a little kiss to the side of her forehead. “She and her dad came down from San Francisco with Argus and Laddie.”

  Will’s mouth went dry. So that was who’d been crammed in the middle seat of Argus’ car—of course! Mr. Dagmar Hansen, one of Ma’am’s oldest friends. How could he have failed to recognize him? He was, after all, probably the largest man Will had ever seen in his life.

  It was one thing to see a cute girl and want to get her number; it was quite another to discover that the cute girl was Jenny Hansen, and that her enormous father was on the scene to keep a sharp eye on her interests. Or a sharp eye on anyone else who had his eye on her interests.

  “Will, take these out to the table,” Ma’am said, shoving a bowl of mixed nuts into his hands. “Then go say hello to Mr. Hansen. Jenny, finish up those biscuits and then you can run along too, we’ve got plenty of help ...”

  Ma’am’s last words were lost as Will made his escape from the kitchen. He sullenly deposited the bowl of nuts onto the groaning table, then braced himself to be sacrificed upon the altar of the Edwards’ family gaiety. His entrance into the family room would be heralded with baying cries of welcome; the joyous cries of predators having sighted a small animal they could harry. Will’s brothers took harrying Will very seriously. They had elevated it to an art form. A late baby, Will was much younger than all of them—Laddie was the closest to him in age, but even he was a whole decade older than Will—so they all felt justified in taking a very stern fatherly tone toward him at the drop of a hat. Having all suffered under their Father’s stern paternal tone, they found it great fun to use on their baby brother. It was like being trapped in a house with multiple Fathers, each of whom could whip him.

  The large family room was a ground floor suite just off the garden, originally designed for a resident mother-in-law. There were no mothers-in-law in the Edwards family, but it was said the suite of rooms had been inhabited once by a superannuated Grandpap—the one Nate had been named for. But that old man died long before Will was born, and of him Will knew only that he’d come from up the mountains, and had brought a lot of cats with him, the descendents of which still hunted mice under the grain bins in the barn. After his death, the suite’s sitting room had been set up with sofas and tables, lamps and a piano (usually plied by one of Ma’am’s charity cases, as none of the Edwards family were at all musical)—all the comforts required for a cozy family evening. Books were conspicuous in their absence, but that was because all the books were kept in the next room, Father’s study. The high walls of that sumptuous cave were lined with them, floor to ceiling.

  But the door to the study was closed, which meant that Father was presiding within. In the family room, Laddie and Lillian were making themselves comfortable. The only liquor in the Edwards’ house was Father’s old scotch kept under lock and key, so Laddie had withdrawn his own capacious silver flask and was mixing up impromptu cocktails for himself and Lillie. It was whispered among Ma’am’s girls that Lillie was “fast”—she drank and smoked and wore cosmetics (“And not just powder either!” Will remembered one girl’s shocked assertion.) And while Argus was her husband, rumor had it that Laddie was the only one who could keep her in line. Will wondered how a fast, unmanageable wife was supposed to fit into Argus’ expansive political plans; but on the other hand she was rich, and her family well-connected, so maybe that outweighed everything else.

  “Good afternoon, William!” Laddie drawled, tapping a cigarette against the gold case. “Turned yourself in, have you?”

  Laddie was unquestionably the handsomest of the Edward boys, dark and slim and elegant. As usual, he was dressed exquisitely—not in honor of the holiday, but because looking good seemed to be the sole moral imperative he upheld.

  “Hullo,” Will mumbled. “Where’s Argus?”

  “He’s in with the men,” Laddie said archly, nodding toward the library door. By “men,” of course, Laddie meant Father and Mr. Hansen and Uncle Royce. It was clear Laddie did not include himself in that description, nor Nate (whom Will had completely failed to notice brooding in the corner). And certainly not Will.

  Will wondered where Ben would stand in that equation. Ben would likely stand outside the equation entirely. Not a man, not a boy ... Ben was like a different species.

  “We waited for Ben at Union Station,” Laddie said. He had the most disquieting talent for knowing the drift of his brothers’ thoughts, and voicing them when they otherwise would not have. “But he wasn’t on the train. I suppose he decided against it at the last minute. I must say, I was really hoping for a reconciliation, at least a temporary one. Watching them fight it all out again would have been such fun.”

  Will said nothing. Ben’s fight with Father was legendary within the family for its rancorous protraction, and in comparison, Will’s own fight with Father was merely a candle held up to the sun. Ma’am had traveled to New York a few times, hoping to effect a reconciliation, but even she had ultimately given up. Ben now existed within the family only on paper, in the extended letters he wrote to everyone but Father and Will.

  “Of course, I hear you’re doing your best to step into Ben’s shoes and give us all a wonderful show,” Laddie said, as he handed a freshly-mixed cocktail to Lillie. “I hope you thought up some really good cutting remarks while you were hiding out at Pask de la Guerra’s house. I’m expecting nothing but the best.”

  Will didn’t say anything. He knew that the best defense against his brothers was surly silence.

  “Speaking of Ben, I had a letter from him just the other day,” Laddie said. “Full of the most scandalous gossip about people I’ve never heard of. He managed to make it more fascinating than scandalous gossip about people I know intimately. I call that quite a skill.”

  “Hi, Nate.” Will turned his attention to his brooding brother in the corner. Nate’s arms were crossed and he was staring at the floor, frowning deeply. Nate loved only one thing—horses. Everything else he hated. He hated being inside, he hated wearing clothes that weren’t soiled with manure, and he especially hated being taken away from his chores for something as unproductive as a family gathering.

  Nate did not answer, didn’t even look up. After a pause, Will said, “Sorrel mare again?”

  Nate nodded, keeping his dark steady gaze fixed on the carpet at his feet. “One of the hands left the bar off the stable again. I swear to God, if I find the man who did it, I’ll have his hide for a new pair of mucking boots. She got down into the south pasture and ate a bellyful of clover and now she’s got the slobbers.”

  “I thought clover was good for them,” Lillie said, but her tone indicated that she couldn’t be less interested if she tried.

  “Most horses tolerate it fine,” Nate allowed. “But one bite and that poor sorrel goes crazy. We have to put up hay for her special with no clover in it.”

  “My goodness, I wish Cook would take that kind of care with our dinners!” Lillie smirked sidelong at Laddie. “I believe she goes out of her way to miss the bones in the fish she serves us.”

  If he was Argus and Lillie’s cook, Will mused, he’d probably put extra bones in their fish in the hopes that they’d choke on one. But h
e refrained from giving voice to this sentiment.

  “And no matter how much care Nate takes with that sorrel mare, she still gets into the clover every time,” Laddie looked at Lillie over the rim of his highball glass. “One might come to the conclusion that she hasn’t the slightest idea what’s good for her.”

  “Stupid beast,” Lillie said, giving the words strange emphasis. Will had no idea what to make of it. Laddie, on the other hand, knew exactly, and he and Lillie punctuated whatever opaque joke they’d made by clinking their glasses together. Will had never really understood what kind of relationship existed between his two brothers and this woman. Honestly, he was kind of glad he didn’t.

  “She’s not stupid,” Nate flared, but not at anyone in particular. Once he’d said it, he turned his eyes back to the carpet and sank deeper into his own thoughts, from which, Will knew, it would be nearly impossible to pull him. Of all his brothers—the brothers he knew, the brothers who were more to him than mere abstraction—Will felt most akin to Nate. They both understood what it was to live with an overwhelming, obsessive interest—Nate for horses, Will for mechanical devices. How those obsessions were received, however, could not have been more different. Because while Nate’s passion was in neat alignment with the family’s interests (or, more to the point, Father’s interests, as his renown as a breeder of the finest Morgans on the West Coast was largely due to Nate’s zealous efforts) Father had been able to find no similar value in Will.

  “Have you seen Jenny?” Lillie pinned Will with her suggestive green eyes. They were indeed, Will noticed, faintly rimmed with kohl. She rattled the ice in her glass, which was Laddie’s cue to quickly take it from her hand and begin mixing her another.