“I’m not a poet.” I gulped. I reached down to touch the fluffy crown of a dandelion blooming through a crack in the sidewalk. “I make up silly little rhymes for my sister sometimes. But I’m not a poet.”
Jonah rolled his eyes. “She’s got stories worth telling, Florentine. She just doesn’t believe it yet.”
“You will.” Florentine starry-smiled at me. Then she chuckled. “Don’t matter, anyway, if you do or if you don’t. Stories aren’t peaceful things. Stories don’t care how shy you are. They don’t care how insecure you are, either. Stories find their own way out eventually. All you gotta do is turn ’em loose.”
I felt a chill twirl down my spine, all the way down to my toes, then back up to the tips of my ears. The same strange, cold feeling I had earlier pricked at my arms again. That stupid wind-chime wind followed soon after and I remembered Oliver’s words as clearly as when he first spoke them:
And then he told me the real story of the Brothers Threadbare and why they quarreled … or who they quarreled over, I guess I should say….
That’s got nothing to do with me, my head said to my heart.
But my heart disagreed.
I shivered at the creepy wind-chime sound. Florentine cocked her head ever so slightly to the side, looking at me. She’d noticed.
And then she glanced down at the slouchy bag beside her.
Florentine gently rested her hand on top of her traveling bag. As soon as she did, the wind chimes stopped.
The cold feeling faded away, but I couldn’t stop shivering. Thunder rolled, low and steady across the sky.
“Storm must be coming soon,” Jonah said.
Florentine kept her eyes fixed on her traveling bag. Then she slowly looked back up at me. “Storm’s coming indeed,” she said softly.
I didn’t say a word. I let my heart do all the talking. Yes. Yes. Yes.
“Better make yourself comfortable, Felicity Pickle,” said Florentine. “I’ve got a story worth telling.”
Silver-gray rain clouds crept slowly over the mountains and across the skies of Midnight Gulch. I had a feeling that, just like me and Jonah, the storm was scooting in close so it could hear Florentine’s story.
Florentine crushed her cigarette down onto the pavement. She laced her fingers together over her knees. The knees of her jeans were worn out, barely held together by thin white frays. She wrapped the threads around her finger as she spoke.
“I was born down in south Georgia,” she said. “I grew up at the end of a red-dirt road, in a farmhouse that some folks claimed was magic. And after the tornadoes blew through …” Florentine shook her head. “That’s when I knew those folks were exactly right. I’ll never forget the night the storms came. We had seven twisters total, all before the sun came up.
“Those storms pulled hundred-year-old trees out of the ground.” Florentine said. “Pulled houses right off their foundations. Even the courthouse was nothing but a pile of bricks and stones and broken glass. But the farmhouse where I lived with my granny Opal stood tall; not even a shingle was blown off our roof.
“I asked my granny Opal why we came out so fine. She looked over at the cupboard in our kitchen, the one she always kept locked up tight, and then looked back at me and said, ‘A little bit of magic goes a long way.’
“And I said to her, ‘So you do have something magic locked up in that cupboard?’
“She said, ‘I got nothing but burdens in that cupboard, child. That’s what keeps us safe. And that’s what keeps us heavyhearted. Strange magic is what it is. Dark magic. You never, ever open that door. Understand?’ ”
Florentine popped open the carton of Blackberry Sunrise. She savored a big spoonful. I could tell the ice cream was doing its job, helping her taste old memories and remember the details.
“My granny Opal was the only family I had,” Florentine continued. “My only friend, too. My speech was twisted when I was a girl; words got stuck in my mouth when I tried to speak ’em out. Granny Opal didn’t mind, but everybody else sure made fun of me for it.”
Florentine passed the Blackberry Sunrise back to Jonah. I could tell these memories didn’t taste good.
“The only place I wanted to be was up in my tree. I’d take my granny’s books and climb up to my favorite branch and read myself a good story. The story words were the only things that steadied my soul. Those words weren’t twisted. They didn’t break apart. They took me out of this world. Some books are magic that way. Your body stays right here, hiding in a tree, tucked away in a closet, sitting up against a crumbling old building.” Florentine grinned. “But good stories take your heart someplace else. My body’d never been out of south Georgia. But my heart lived everywhere. I’d lived a hundred lives without ever leaving my tree.”
“I know that feeling.” I smiled.
“Every word collector sure knows that feeling, whether you’ve been catching songs or poems or stories. You’ve been caught in that magic.” Florentine sighed. “I read other people’s stories. But I kept my own words hidden.”
“But you talk so pretty now,” I said.
“I wish Granny Opal could have heard me find my voice again,” Florentine said. “She told me that it was fine that I steadied my heart against the pages of a book. ‘But that ain’t no way to live,’ she told me, ‘getting so caught up in other people’s stories you never have one of your own.’ ”
Jonah passed the ice cream back to Florentine again. She savored another bite.
The way the two of them kept passing the ice cream back and forth reminded me of the money plate passed around at the church. I considered how that would be the neatest idea, if the deacons passed around bowls of ice cream instead of bowls of cash-money.
Offering
Sacred
Everlasting
… Words that belonged in a sanctuary filled up the spaces between the three of us. But those words looked as fine there as they’d ever looked in a church, and I wondered if there was something sacred, something everlasting, about melted ice cream and summer days and good stories. “Florentine,” Jonah said, “tell Felicity about the day you set out to find your own story.”
She nodded. “I still didn’t see any point in talking to people. But I liked the idea of having my own story somewhere out in the big wide world. And I knew my story wasn’t in that town. Or even in that old, magic house. So I took this old backpack and I filled it with books. And just as I was about to leave, I remembered the night the storms came, the night my granny pointed to the locked door and told me about the magic behind it. The magic that kept my family safe. That kept my family heavyhearted …
“So I found the key.” Florentine swallowed hard. “And I pulled those burdens out of that cupboard. And I put them in here, too.” Florentine patted her traveling bag.
“I hitched my bag around my shoulders — it was so heavy, heavier than I thought it would be. As I pushed the screen door open, I heard my granny say my name.
“‘Florentine,’ she called to me. She was standing in the kitchen. Her chin trembled and her eyes were so full of sorrow that I nearly fell backward at the sight of ’em. ‘I know what you got in that bag,’ she said. ‘Women in this family been carrying those burdens for years. They’ll surely keep you safe, that I know. But they’ll make you so heavyhearted that you won’t even want to open your eyes some mornings. That’s strange magic you’re taking with you. Sad magic.’
“But I took ’em anyhow,” Florentine said. Her voice was pressed flat with regret. “For ten years now, I’ve been packing these burdens along.”
“What are they?” I asked. I was hoping Florentine would open the bag up and show me. But she didn’t.
“Those aren’t stories worth troubling you with,” Florentine said. “They’re mine to carry. I figured since I had these burdens keeping me safe, I’d explore a little bit. So I set off to the ocean first. I lived on one of the little islands off the coast of Georgia. That’s when I worked at the fish market. Wasn’t worth it
for the pay.”
Florentine plucked one of the threads on her jeans and wrapped it around her ring finger. “But it was worth it for Waylon Cooper. He was a sailor most of the time, but he was a song catcher, too. I didn’t say a word to him, but he didn’t mind. He’d talk to me anyhow. He’d invite me out to hear him play his music. We didn’t need my words between us.
“One day, me and Waylon pooled our money together and bought old bicycles from a tourist shop on the island. We bought a mermaid map, too. This old couple that owned the shop said there were hundreds of mermaids hidden near that island, that we’d be sure to see them if we knew where to look. So Waylon and I rode up and down the shores, looking for mermaids. We never found mermaids,” Florentine laughed. “But I wrote poems in the sand and he sang songs about the setting sun.
“One day he told me I should stop writing poems in the sand. Told me I needed to be brave enough to put them down on paper. Brave enough to say what I felt. So I told him I loved him.” Florentine smiled. “I said it without even thinking. It was as if my heart spoke without getting permission from my mind. Those were the first words I’d said in years — I love you.”
Florentine rested her head back against the Gallery. “I always felt brave when he was with me. Waylon’s the reason I started writing my own poems.”
Jonah smiled proudly. “Florentine’s famous.”
“I ain’t famous!” Florentine blushed. “I have a little bit of a following, I guess. That’s all because of Waylon, too. On weekends we’d ride our bikes to new towns. He’d hang up flyers and I’d read my work. Those were good days.”
The thunder let out a long, sad sigh across the sky.
“What happened to Waylon?” I asked.
Florentine shrugged her shoulders. “He’s still fishing, I guess. Still making music, still singing about sunsets and starry nights. This kept getting in the way.” She patted the traveling bag again. “Waylon shouldn’t have to worry about this. So I left the beach and found my way here. I should have come here to start with. Somehow, I’m gonna leave these burdens here. Then I’ll go back to the ocean.”
“So … just leave the bag, then. Walk off and leave it.” I looked at Jonah. He shook his head no. I suppose it should have occurred to me that Jonah had already tried to help Florentine get rid of those stupid burdens.
Florentine chuckled. “There’s more to it than that. I have to find something first. And I don’t even know what I’m looking for.”
“Then let’s start with the easy,” Jonah said. “What exactly is in that bag?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Florentine said. “But I sure got an idea.” She shivered the same as I did whenever the wind-chime wind blew.
Tiny dots of rain plinked down, making polka dots all around us on the sidewalk. The thunder rumbled louder. But I didn’t want to leave Florentine. She told stories in such a way that I swear my heart heard them before my ears did. I wanted to wrap up in her stories, curl them around my shoulders like a quilt.
“We should head out soon, Felicity,” Jonah whispered. He knocked the metal rims of his wheels. “I’m sitting on metal. If lightning strikes, my chair’s gonna shoot off into space.” He laughed nervously. “I’ll be a Jonah Rocket instead of a Jonah Pickett.”
“Florentine,” I said as I stood up off the sidewalk. “If you don’t know what you’re looking for … how will you know when you’ve found it?”
“Maybe it’ll find me before I find it,” she said. “All I know to do is wait. I’ll watch. I’ll wait. Then I’ll drift on down to the coast.”
“I’m a drifter, too,” I said. “My family’s from here originally, but I’ve been all over the place.”
“Who’d you say your people were?” Florentine asked.
The thunder rumbled above the mountains again.
“I’m part Pickle,” I said. “The Pickles are from Kentucky. And I’m part Harness, too. And they’re from here in Midnight Gulch.”
“Harness …” Florentine stretched the word out long, ended it in a hiss.
She smiled and cocked her head at me. “Do you know any stories about your people, Felicity? Your people who lived years ago.”
“Not really.”
“You should,” Florentine said. “Won’t do you much good trying to find your own story if you don’t know theirs. I don’t know much, but I certainly know that.”
Florentine glanced down at her slouchy bag of burdens like she could feel its weight even when it wasn’t slung around her shoulders. “I know things about this town,” she said. “I know stories about the people in it. About the people who used to be in it.”
She looked me right in the eye when she said, “If your people are who I think they are … then you got a story worth telling, for sure. You got magic in your veins, Felicity Pickle.”
“Florentine said I had magic in my veins — word for word, that’s what she said!”
“Uh-huh.” Aunt Cleo pulled a red plate out of the sink. She passed it off to me and I swirled the dish towel around it once before setting it off to dry.
“She says she knows things about this town,” I said. “She knows things about people. She says our people might be magic.”
Cleo didn’t say anything. I looked to my uncle instead. “You hear me, Boone? We might have some family magic!”
Boone sat on the couch, fixing shiny new strings to his banjo.
I couldn’t wait to tell Jonah what I’d written. I maybe shouldn’t have drawn a tiny heart in place of the o in songs, but otherwise I think I did a fine job.
“We got magic in our veins,” Boone sang softly as he turned the banjo pegs extra tight, then plinked a string.
Plink.
Zing.
Thrum-de-ding, thrum-de-thrum. Bing.
“That banjo’s already making happier music.” I grinned.
“Spindiddly!” Boone winked at me. “Mighty sweet of the Beedle.” Thrum-de-ding. Thrum-de-ding. “This Florentine person’s talking nonsense, Liss. If we had magic in our veins, we’d be a little luckier than we are. I don’t know anybody with worse luck than a Harness.”
“Pickles have bad luck, too,” said Frannie Jo.
“Ugh,” Cleo groaned and rested her arms on the sink. “I ain’t having this conversation! I promised Holly that I wouldn’t mention those stupid stories.”
Boone and I said at the same time, “What stories?”
Cleo fumbled around in her apron pocket until she found her lighter. The flame on the tip trembled when she tried to touch it to the cigarette in her mouth. “Just silly old folktales,” she mumbled.
But the way Aunt Cleo glanced at me right then told me the exact opposite. I could tell by the sad in her eyes that she didn’t believe those stories were folktales at all.
“Tell me what you know,” I said. “I can handle it. I’m in sixth grade.”
Cleo sighed and set her dripping dish on the counter. Then she stomped out of the room.
When Cleo shuffled back into the kitchen, she was holding the framed picture that hung on the wall of her former craft room, my current bedroom: the picture of the man standing beside a hot air balloon.
“Started with him.” Cleo passed the frame to me. “That man …”
“Is Stone Weatherly.” I nodded. “He was one of the Brothers Threadbare.”
“The magician?” Boone rocketed off the couch. His boots clomped across the kitchen tiles. He was still cradling the banjo in his arms.
I saw our faces reflected in the glass as we leaned in close to study the picture.
“That magician,” Cleo said, “was also your no-good-lowdown-deadbeat-drifter great-great-grandfather.”
“We’re part Threadbare?” I nearly hollered out. “Then we do have magic in our veins. BIG magic!”
“I love magic!” Frannie Jo squealed.
Biscuit yipped and wiggled her tail.
“Y’all won’t love this magic.” Cleo shook her head. “We’re kin to Stone Weatherly. Stone. Y
ou know the story, Felicity. Stone is the brother who lost that dadblamed duel.”
Boone held the picture closer to his face. “So … what’s that got to do with us?”
“Means it ain’t magic we got in our veins now,” said Cleo. “All we’ve got is the stupid curse that witch woman gave.”
“Witch woman?” I mumbled. “I’ve never heard anything about a wi —”
Thunder cracked against the sky so loud that the dishes by the sink rattled and the lights flickered.
Frannie Jo ran for Cleo’s arms. Biscuit crawled under the couch.
“We better get the flashlights out,” Cleo said. “Just in case we lose power.”
Boone and I followed Cleo so closely down the hall that we all slammed into each other when she stopped.
The closet door fell off its hinges when Cleo opened it, but she simply sighed and slung the door against the wall. “Before the Brothers Threadbare had their stupid duel, they called on some old witch woman to set a curse on the loser.”
Cleo plopped a big orange shoe box labeled JUNK, ETC. into my arms. “And it was a humdinger of a curse: Cursed to wander through the night, till cords align, and all’s made right.”
I shivered as Cleo repeated the words Oliver had already told me.
Boone tapped nervously against his banjo. “But that was a long time ago. That’s got nothing to do with us, right?” His voice sounded shrill and crackly.
“Stone Weatherly lost the duel,” Cleo repeated loudly, half of her body hidden in the closet, rummaging through boxes and quilts. She emerged holding a small wooden container, which she settled on top of the junk box. “And because he lost, he had to leave town and live out that curse for the rest of his days. He couldn’t sit still. He’d sleep for a few hours, but then he’d wake up in the middle of the night, sleepwalking, sleep-running, sleep-dancing-a-jig. Stone became restless. He managed to marry, eventually. But he never had much of a life. Hardly ever saw his wife or his kids because he couldn’t settle down. He couldn’t set roots in any place. He was cursed with a restless soul.”
A Snicker of Magic Page 11
