"He was nice enough at first," said Mack.
"No he wasn't," said Ceese. "He just acted nice."
"But that's what being nice is," said Mack. "Acting nice. I mean, if you're really nice, but you act mean, then you aren't really nice, you're really mean, because nice and mean are about how you act."
"Is he going to law school nights?" asked Word.
"No, he's so young he thinks the world ought to make sense," said Ceese. "So you want me to drive home whatever car you drove here?"
"I had a friend drop me off," said Word. "I mean, I can't drive two cars home."
"How we going to get home?" asked Mack.
"Your mom, I guess," said Ceese.
"She doesn't get off till late in the afternoon," said Mack.
"I'll find your mom, get her keys, drive her car, and then come back and pick her up after work," said Ceese.
"No, no," said Word. "Let me take you. We're practically neighbors."
Mack didn't know why that felt wrong to him, but it did. Something about Word made him uncomfortable. Which was crazy because nobody ever spoke ill of Word.
Ceese had his own reasons for declining. "We kind of want to stay long enough to find out what's happening to Mr.... the guy we brought here."
"Mr. what?" asked Word, smiling. "I thought he was a homeless guy. You know his name?"
"No," said Ceese.
"We had to call him something," said Mack. "So I started calling him Mr. Christmas."
"He look like Santa Claus?"
"More than Tim Allen does, yes sir," said Mack.
Word laughed and slapped Mack lightly on the shoulder. "Mack Street. I've seen you walking through the neighborhood your whole life, but I don't think I ever heard you say a word."
"I say lots of them," said Mack. "But mostly when people ask me questions."
"I guess I never thought you knew something I needed to find out," said Word. "Maybe I was wrong."
What Mack was thinking was: You never heard a word from me, and I never felt a dream from you.
That wasn't so unusual—there were plenty of people in Baldwin Hills who never had a wish so strong it popped up in a cold dream. But there was something about Word that said he had a lot of strong wishes, a kind of intensity about him, especially when he looked at Mack. Like he was just the tiniest bit angry at Mack but he was holding it inside. Or maybe he was really angry, and he was barely holding it in check. Something like that. Something that made Mack wonder why a guy with so much fire inside never showed up in a dream.
"No," said Mack. "You weren't wrong. When people ask me stuff, all they find out is I don't know anything much."
"I think," said Ceese, "a lot of them hope that Mack knows good gossip, wandering around the neighborhood like he does. But see, he doesn't tell stories about people."
"What?" said Word.
Mack leaned around Word to see what Ceese was looking at. But Ceese grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back, so all Mack caught was a glimpse. It looked like an alien out of a sci-fi book they made him read at school. Like a big ant. Only when he thought about it, he realized it must have been somebody dressed in black, with a black helmet. Like a motorcycle rider.
Word turned around, but too late. When Mack looked, the alien or motorcycle rider was just turning away, so when Word turned, the corridor was empty.
Mack didn't like it when Ceese acted weird, and he was sure acting weird now, gripping Mack's neck so hard it was like he was trying to break a pencil with one hand. So Mack tore away and took off up the corridor the other way, to ask the nurse at the counter what was happening with the man they brought in.
"I don't know if I should tell you," the nurse said. "You're not his next of kin or legal guardian."
"Well, I was sure his guardian when he needed somebody to find him in the bushes and carry him to safety," said Mack.
"You carried him?"
Mack shrugged. Didn't matter whether she believed him or not. "He wouldn't be here if I didn't hear him in the bushes."
"You're Ura Lee Smitcher's boy, aren't you?"
Mack nodded.
She nodded, too, and picked up the phone.
A few minutes later, Miz Smitcher was down there with them and hearing their story. "I guess we just want to know what's happening with the old guy," said Ceese, when they were through telling just enough of the truth to avoid having to spend time with a psychiatrist.
So Miz Smitcher went off and got permission from a doctor, on the basis that these were the boys who found the man, and she'd be with them. Pretty soon they were in a draped-off space gathered around the man's bed. His leg was in a cast and his chest was wrapped up and he had a needle stabbing the back of his hand, connected up by a tube to a bag hanging from a hook.
But the cast and the wrappings and the sheet were all so clean that it was actually an improvement. And seeing him asleep like that made Mack feel safer somehow. Not that he'd felt all that threatened when Puck was awake. But then, maybe he had felt a little bit afraid, but just didn't admit it to himself.
Talk about fire. Talk about intensity. It's like he thought he was Superman and he was going to use his X-ray vision to bore a hole right through the man's head.
"Did you know him?" asked Mack.
It took a moment before it registered on Word that Mack was talking to him.
"Me? No."
"But you saw him before."
Word shrugged.
"Then why do you hate him so bad?"
Word looked at him, startled, and then laughed. "I never heard you were crazy."
"Then you haven't been paying much attention," said Ceese.
Miz Smitcher looked at them like they were all crazy. "Let's leave this poor man alone," she said, and ushered them all out.
Word drove them home, with Ceese sitting in the front seat beside him and Mack in the back, looking for bloodstains, but there wasn't anything at all.
"You cleaned this up pretty good," said Mack.
"There wasn't much to clean," said Ceese. "He didn't bleed much."
"Dad's still going to make me get the car detailed," said Word. "He hates that guy. Wants every trace cleaned off."
"So your dad knows him?" asked Ceese.
Word shook his head. "Nobody knows him. But he came to our door once. I let him in. And then he left again."
"You let him in?" Ceese asked. "A guy like that, in your house?"
Word nodded. "My dad thinks I don't remember. Nobody else in the family even remembers.
And for a while I didn't—for an hour or so. Then it all came back to me. Mom was sick in the bedroom, and Dad got home and went in there and then that guy came to the door and... I let him in."
"What did he do?" asked Mack.
"I don't get it," said Mack. "If you wanted to stop him, how could you also not want to stop him?"
"You can't imagine it till it happens to you. All of a sudden it's like you don't even have a vote on what your body does and thinks and feels. You can think about how you don't want to do it, but at the same time, all you want in the world is to please that son of a bitch."
Mack could see Ceese stiffen a little.
"Come on, Ceese," Mack said. "You said 'son of a bitch' in front of me often enough."
Word gave a sharp little bark of a laugh. "Sorry."
"I just didn't realize this man's been around so long," said Mack. "How long ago was it?"
Word laughed again. "How old are you?" he asked.
"Thirteen and two months," said Mack. "Since the day I was found, anyway, and Miz Smitcher says I couldn't have been born very long before that."
"Then that man came to our house thirteen years and two months ago," said Word.
Mack thought about that for a minute. And added into his calculations the way Ceese was glaring at Word.
"So he had something to do with me, too, is that what you're saying?" asked Mack.
"Let's just say that when he came to our house, he had all kinds
of empty grocery bags on his belt and in his pockets. But when he left, there was a baby in one of them."
Mack felt a rush of feeling, like his blood was trying to move to different parts of his body all at once. He was a little faint, even.
"And you didn't say anything?" said Ceese softly.
"Nobody would have believed me," said Word.
"Why not?" said Ceese.
"Because my mother wasn't pregnant an hour before," said Word. "But I caught a glimpse of her through the door and her belly was swollen up and... who's going to believe that? Especially when she didn't remember it even happened, half an hour later? She swelled up, had the baby, and forgot all about it in about two hours. You don't believe it even now."
"Yeah," said Ceese. "We do."
"Because of him," said Word. "Because of Bag Man."
"Mr. Christmas," said Ceese.
Puck, thought Mack. "So am I your..."
"I don't know," said Word. "You might be my brother. Or my half brother. But considering that things like that are impossible in the real world, I'm not altogether sure that you exist." He laughed again, that harsh laugh that said he really didn't think it was funny. "And if you do, what put you in my mother's uterus? Who could I tell? Who could I ask? All I could do was watch. I saw Ceese find you. And soon I heard that Miz Smitcher had taken you in. So you were okay."
"And what if I hadn't found him?" said Ceese. "Or what if Raymo..."
"I knew Raymo," said Word. "I wouldn't have let anything happen."
"So you just watched," said Mack. "Like Miriam watching Moses in the bulrushes."
"So you're a Bible reader," said Word.
"I listened in Sunday school," said Mack.
"Exodus. Moses was in danger of being murdered by Pharaoh's men, so they put him a basket and floated him down the river. I suppose today it would be a grocery bag, and he'd be set down in a field by a drainpipe."
"I'm not Moses," said Mack. "And nobody was trying to kill me."
Both Ceese and Word laughed grimly at that, then glanced at each other. Both of them probably wondering what danger the other one had known about.
"Do you read Shakespeare?" asked Mack.
Word shrugged. "My father almost named me William Shakespeare Williams. Instead of William Wordsworth Williams. So I might have been called Shake instead of Word."
"Or Speare," said Ceese helpfully.
"That would have guaranteed I never got a date in high school," said Word, and this time his laugh was a little more real.
"What can you tell me about Puck and the queen of the fairies?" asked Mack.
"Puck? Why?"
"Why? You think that Bag Man's an overgrown fairy or something?"
"Just asking," said Mack. "But if you don't know, I guess I'll have to read about it."
"Good luck on Shakespeare," said Word. "It's written in a foreign language. I heard a black linguist from Berkeley once say that English-speaking people are the only ones who never get to read Shakespeare in their native language. Instead we have to suffer through reading his stuff in the kind of English they were speaking back in 1600."
"I got through Shakespeare okay," said Ceese. "Romeo and Juliet. King Lear."
"High school's one thing. They spoonfeed it to you."
"In college I mean," said Ceese.
"Okay, well, fine," said Word.
"All I want to know is about the Queen of the Fairies," said Mack.
"Titania," said Word. "And her husband is Oberon. They fight all the time. Puck is Oberon's servant, and he plays terrible tricks on people. He takes this guy who's lost in the woods and magically makes him have the head of a donkey, and then Puck gives Titania a love potion and she falls in love with this half-assed guy."
"So Puck is a bad guy," said Mack.
"No, he's a trickster. Like Loki in Norse mythology. He just... plays pranks on people. But they're mean tricks. He has no conscience."
They rode in silence for a while.
Then Word glanced back and asked Mack, "So you think this guy is Puck?"
Ceese said, "He's just talking."
"I have a word of advice for you," said Word.
Ceese snorted. "You have a word."
"I know it's a pun on my own name. Don't you think I hear enough of that crap?"
"Your advice?" said Ceese.
"Leave it. Forget about it. My father broods about it. It still poisons him. He watches you from the window. He watches you whenever he passes you in his car. Because he knows. Baby found in a grocery bag, not an hour after Bag Man carried you out of the house. Dad hates that guy. But what good does it do?"
Then Word spoke again. "In the play—in Midsummer Night's Dream, that's the play that has Puck in it—what they're fighting about—the queen and the king of the fairies, Titania and Oberon—is a changeling."
"What's a changeling?" asked Mack.
"A little boy. That's all they say. I think there's an old legend that fairies sometimes come and steal away human children and leave fake children in their place. I suppose it's the kind of legend that was invented to explain autistic children. The changeling looks like a perfectly normal child, but he just doesn't respond right."
"Is that what I am?" asked Mack.
"You're not autistic," said Ceese. "Weird, but not autistic."
"How could you be a changeling?" said Word. "There wasn't a baby to swap you for. I don't know what you are. Maybe you're just... my magical brother."
"I don't see how you're any kind of brother to him," Ceese said irritably.
"Cecil," said Word, "you're his brother. His real one. Or his father or some combination.
Everybody knows that. Everybody in Baldwin Hills knows you gave up half your own childhood to look after Mack. They love you for it. I'm not making any claim that I mean anything in Mack's life."
"Less than nothing," said Ceese quietly.
"If I had told this story back then, would it have changed anything?"
Silence again, until Ceese finally answered, "They would have locked you up in the loony house."
"He had you in his life. And that was good. What if I had 'found' Mack in that grocery bag? I thought of it. But I couldn't have brought him home. If I had come in that door with that particular baby, I think my dad would have lost it. Might have killed the baby or run out of the house and never come back or... I don't know. Dad was crazy. You finding him, that was a good thing, Ceese."
That was the last thing Mack heard for a little while, because right at that moment, he slipped into a cold dream. Didn't even fall asleep first. Just felt himself walking into a hospital room that he had never seen before and firing eight rounds from a handgun right into Bag Man's bandaged-up head.
Only the bandages were nothing like the real ones, and the room was nothing like the draped-off area where Mack actually saw Bag Man, and suddenly Mack understood what he was seeing. It wasn't coming out of Mack's memory of the hospital, it was coming out of someone else's imagination. What Professor Williams wanted more than anything else in the world right now, far more than he wanted to be a great poet, was to murder Bag Man.
Mack had never thought of Puck as "Bag Man," but in the cold dream that's absolutely who the man was, what his name was.
Until he awoke shivering, with Ceese pinching the skin on his arm.
"Ow," said Mack.
"You fainted," said Ceese. "You were shivering like you were having some kind of fit."
"I was cold," said Mack angrily. "You don't have to punish me for it by pinching like a girl!"
"Just trying to bring you back."
And that's what Mack wanted him to do.
"We okay back there now?" asked Word. "We're almost to your house."
"I had a dream," said Mack.
"In three minutes?" asked Ceese. "That's quick dreaming."
"He's an efficient dreamer," said Word from the front seat. He pulled back into traffic and a moment later turned right on Coliseum and then left on Cloverdale. Bo
th Mack and Ceese looked at where Skinny House was hidden but from the street, of course, they saw nothing.
When they got to the Smitcher house—Mack's house—Word got out of the car to help Ceese get Mack out.
"I'm okay," Mack insisted.
"You just fainted. That suggests you're not exactly okay," said Word.
"I had one of my dreams," said Mack. "Not a sleeping-type dream. A different kind. And somebody was trying to kill Bag Man."
"Who," said Word, laughing. "My dad? I'd believe it!"
Mack just looked at him.
Word stopped laughing. "Oh, come on. I don't really believe it."
"Your dad knows which hospital he's in," said Mack.
"My dad's not a murderer."
"I don't want him to be," said Mack. "But the things I see in dreams like this—sometimes they come true."
"Like Tamika Brown dreaming she was a fish and waking up inside the waterbed."
That knocked them both for a loop. They stared at Mack for a long moment. "You mean Tamika's dad wasn't crazy?" asked Ceese.
"Or lying?" asked Word.
"Like you, Word," said Mack. "Who could I tell?"
"Weird shit's been going on for years, and I never had a clue," said Ceese.
"So you think my dad might just magically appear in Bag Man's hospital room?" asked Word.
"I don't know what might happen," said Mack. "But when these dreams come true, it's always the thing the person wants most in all the world—only it happens in the ugliest way. If your dad gets his wish to have Bag Man dead, then I bet your dad gets caught. Or maybe shot down by the police.
And all of us arrested as accomplices, probably. All part of a big setup."
Ceese and Word looked at each other.
"I'm going back," said Word. "It's crazy, but so is everything else. I've got to stay there until... or I could call my father."
"No, let's go back," said Ceese. "But not you, Mack. It's too dangerous."
Mack just looked at Ceese with heavy-lidded eyes.
"Oh, don't give me that vulture look," said Ceese. He turned to Word. "But he's right. We got to take him, because he's more in tune with this weird stuff than either of us."
So they piled into the car and headed back for the hospital.
"I'm blowing off an exam to do this," said Word as they pulled into the hospital parking garage.
Magic Street Page 13
