Jonah waved me over to the corner table where he was sitting. Working beside Jonah was a rotund man with a shiny bald head. He wore sparkly diamond earrings and had muscles in his arms the size of cantaloupes. The man had tattoos from his wrist to his shoulder, bright pictures of dragons and angels with wings of fire.
“This is Big Bruce.” Jonah nodded toward his coworker. “He used to do detail work out in the shop, but he missed the personal interaction with the clients.”
“Gets lonesome dealing with motors all day long,” growled Big Bruce. He was gently holding Ponder Waller’s hand, painting little yellow flowers onto her nails.
“We sure get lonesome without you in here.” Ponder batted her eyelashes.
“Huh,” Big Bruce huffed. But his ear studs seemed to sparkle extra brightly at her compliment.
Jonah picked up a bobby pin and used the tip to add tiny blue polka dots to the freshly painted nails of the old lady in front of him.
“Pull up a chair, Felicity,” Jonah said. “I wanted you to meet my dear friend Rosie Walker. Miss Walker, this is my best friend, Felicity Pickle.”
Rosie Walker’s milky-blue eyes met mine. She smiled and said, “You doing okay, child?”
I said, “Yes, ma’am.” Even though that was a lie. I wasn’t okay at all. I was plumb awful because of what I had to tell Jonah. I didn’t want to tell him in front of Rosie Walker, though. I figured I could at least wait until he was finished doing nails to break his heart.
“Sit here beside me, Felicity,” said Rosie. Her voice was a pretty old-rasp, like the rush of pages in an old, dusty book. “I do love your name. Felicity. It sounds so lovely to say, doesn’t it? Like a secret.”
“I like your name, too,” I said. And I also liked her dress: because it was as bright red as a summer tomato. Rosie’s skin was pale, brittle-looking as a piece of crinkled paper. Her white hair was fuzzed out and fluffed high up on her head. She had a red flower pinned tightly in her nest of white hair. I liked that, too. And when she crossed one leg over the other, I saw her cowboy boots. They were scuffed-up brown and embroidered with red roses. I crazy-liked those cowboy boots.
Jonah must have noticed me checking out Rosie’s fancy boots, because he said, “Rosie Walker is a famous country music singer.”
“I was a singer,” Rosie corrected. “I lived in Nashville for a time. I wasn’t Rosie Walker out there, though — I was Ramblin’ Rose. I sang songs I wrote myself. And people came from a hundred miles away just to hear my voice.”
“My uncle is a musician,” I said. “His name is Boone Harness and he played in Nashville. He had a stage name, too — Boone Taylor. Do you know him?”
“Been years since I’ve been to Nashville, honey,” said Rosie Walker. Even though she smiled at me, I could hear the sadness crackling in her voice. I saw words shimmering against the fabric of her dress, inching up her sleeves as slowly as silkworms:
Saturday song
Lonesome sky
Rebel
Scandal
Summer rain
Jonah smiled proudly and said, “Miss Walker played at the Grand Ole Opry. She sang on stage with Minnie Pearl.”
“I’m a blessed woman. I saw every one of my dreams come true,” Rosie Walker stated. “I’m proof that it’s never too late to take hold of a dream. I thought I was too old to set out for Nashville and be a singer. I thought nobody’d listen to me since I wasn’t no young, flouncy little spring chicken. And I always thought my songs were just for me, to keep me busy, to keep my mind moving. But God bless the Beedle.”
Rosie didn’t look at Jonah. I glanced his way, but he stayed focused on his polka-dot project. She didn’t know the Beedle was sitting right across from her.
“What’d the Beedle do for you?” I asked.
“Twenty years ago, the Beedle left me a guitar and a hundred-dollar bill on the front porch of my house,” said Rosie. “There was a red ribbon tied around the guitar. And slid in underneath the ribbon was a note with very specific instructions. That’s a special guitar the Beedle left me, you see.”
Rosie leaned over and whispered to me, “The Beedle said my guitar originally belonged to one of the Brothers Threadbare.”
Of course, I’d figured that out already. But the shine in Rosie’s eyes was so pretty when she told me, that I pretended to be surprised all over again.
“The note told me that every time I played that guitar, I had to lead off with the same song. I could play anything I wanted after that, but I had to start with the same tune. It’s an old mountain song, the very same one the Brothers Threadbare started their shows with. I knew the tune, of course. Everybody in the mountains knows that tune.”
A sad smile stretched across her face. “Not a single note of music would come outta that guitar unless I started my set with that song. If I sang ‘Fair and Tender Ladies’ first, then everything else I played sounded lovely. Otherworldly, even. That’s magic if I ever heard it.”
Rosie inspected her polka-dot nails and thanked Jonah for his hard work. “I was fifty-seven years old when I set out for Nashville. I embroidered red roses on my favorite pair of cowboy boots. I put new strings on that magical guitar. And I lit out. I played on the sidewalks of Nashville for a time; that’s the only place I could play. I played for pennies and day-old coffee. I played through the storms and through the rain. Some people didn’t listen at all. Some people listened and told me I was no good. But I’ve always had a heap of determination caught up in me. So I kept on playing. And I played my way all the way to the stage at the Ryman.”
“What’s a Ryman?” I whispered.
Because the way she’d said the word made it sound like some dreamy, fog-covered castle.
“The Ryman is a place where people go to play music and to hear music. Before it was a music hall, it used to be a church. The pews are all still there. That building’s got stained-glass windows and beer-stained floors. There are thousands of prayers and songs caught in the bones of the walls. You can feel them — the prayers, the music — all around you whenever you sit down in that place.”
“Then why’d you stop going there?”
“Yeah, Rosie,” Big Bruce sniffed. His eyes were sparkling with tears. “Why’d you stop playing?”
“I know when it’s time to bow out,” Rosie said sadly. “But I’ll tell y’all this: The Ryman is sacred. And the Ryman is wild. And when you find a place like that in this world, a place that is wild and sacred, you should treasure it.”
“I wonder if Uncle Boone has played at the Ryman?” I asked.
Rosie nodded. “I’m sure he wants to. Anybody who sings a note or strums a string wants to play there.”
“Felicity is a storyteller, Miss Rosie,” Jonah said. “She sees words hovering in the air and shining over people’s heads and stuff. She collects the ones she loves the most. That’s how she’s going to win the Duel.”
My heart flopped down into my stomach again.
“Is that right, Felicity?” Rosie asked.
“I collect words,” I said. “But I’m not much at making them into anything.”
“Word collecting is a special gift,” said Rosie.
“And a curse,” I barely sighed.
Rosie chuckled. “Jonah, I like Felicity. She seems unique.”
“Felicity is enchanting,” Jonah said. And he said this as though the word had been on the tip of his tongue, ready to break loose and be said for weeks.
Enchanting
The word perched on Jonah’s shoulder like a tiny silver songbird.
I leaned over and wrote enchanting on my shoe in big bubble letters. I never wanted to forget my songbird word. I never wanted to forget it was mine.
Plumb pretty
Poet
Enchanting
Those were all words Jonah’d given to me because he believed they were true. He believed I was those things. And I was minutes away from telling him that he’d believed for nothing.
Rosie turned toward Jo
nah. “I’m not wearing my glasses. Is Felicity as cute as she sounds?”
“Felicity has gray eyes,” Jonah said. “They almost look silver sometimes, the same color the river turns when a big rain comes through and it’s about to overflow. She has sad eyes, but she’s not a sad girl, not always.”
Jonah finally looked up at me. “Maybe a little bit today, though.” His forehead wrinkled when he concentrated on my face. “Why are you sad today, Felicity?”
“Jonah.” I had to do it now. It was pure torture to put it off any longer. “I came to tell you —”
But I didn’t get to tell him a thing because suddenly the doorbell clanged and Oliver Weatherly shouted “Hey-yo!” from the doorway. He wore overalls, a white T-shirt, and a big smile. He held a large red cooler in his hands. Oliver hoisted the cooler above his head like it was full of treasures and said, “Free ice cream for everybody!”
“Woo!” Ponder Waller raised her hands in the air.
“Your nails are still wet!” Big Bruce hollered at her.
But she didn’t hear him because the folks getting their hair done and the people out in the shop all started hollering out their favorite flavors:
“Virgil’s Get-Outta-My-Face Fudge Ripple!”
“Bobby’s Buttered Avocado!”
“Suzie’s White Chocolate Cherry Walnut!”
“Aunt Ruth’s Pumpkin Sampler!”
“I could sure use a Blackberry Sunrise,” said Rosie Walker, so softly I didn’t know if anybody besides me had heard. “I’m in a remembering way.”
“I’ll get it for you!” Jonah said. He wheeled away and I stood to follow him, but Rosie Walker caught my wrist with her bony hand.
“Felicity darlin’,” she drawled, “you know what helped me figure out how to put my words together? Music. Music gets my words where they need to go. So you keep catching them words, you hear? Pluck them out of the wind. String them together like the finest set of pearls. Line them up on paper. And if it hurts too much to say them, then you sing them, or whisper them, or write them into a story. But don’t waste them. Your words matter more than you know. You hear?”
I nodded sadly. “I’ll try.”
“That’s all you have to do.” Rosie patted my arm. “The rest takes care of itself.”
Jewell Pickett walked to the front of the shop and stared down into the wondrous abyss of Oliver’s cooler. “What’s the occasion, Weatherly? And what are you doing here so early? Your appointment ain’t till four!”
I liked Jewell Pickett’s voice because it sounded like it had a laugh caught up inside it. I could tell that some of Jonah’s weirdly-wonderful had come straight from his mother. She smiled the same way Jonah smiled. And her hair was blond and prickly, like his.
“No occasion!” Oliver said. “I figured I’d scoot in early. Share some ice cream and shoot the breeze.”
“All he’s good for is shooting the breeze,” said an old man in a plaid shirt and dirt-stained blue jeans. He tried to sound tough, but a kind smile stretched across his face. “I never met a man that told more tall tales in all my life.”
“There’s more truth in my tall tales than your weather reports, Virgil,” Oliver said as he tossed the old man a carton of ice cream. They both laughed. If there’s one thing I dearly love, it’s a chorus of that kind of laughing. Happy laughing. It’s as fine as any symphony.
Survivor
Safe harbor
Sweetheart
Anchor
Those were Virgil’s words. They clung to his arms. And I could tell — by his strong shoulders and bold words, and by the twinkle in his eye — that he was a man who’d been dearly loved.
Virgil scratched the scruff on his jaw. “You might as well settle in, Weatherly. Spin a few of those tales, since you’re here.”
Oliver plopped down underneath one of the hair dryers and propped his boots up on the footrest. “Any requests?”
“Tell us about sweet Eldee Mae!” said Big Bruce.
“Tell us about the Duel!” hollered Harriet Bond, Jewell’s lead mechanic, through the window connecting the salon to the body shop. She waved to Oliver from underneath the hood of an old Ford truck. “That Duel Miss Lawson’s cooking up’s got everybody talking about the Brothers Threadbare again.”
The last thing I wanted to hear more about was the Duel.
There was another story I wanted to know about.
“Tell us about the witch of Midnight Gulch,” I said.
Even though I said it quick and quiet, you’d think I’d shouted. The room fell silent. Folks cranked around in their seats to stare at me.
Elvis Phillips tapped an anxious rhythm against the swivel chair. “What witch?” he asked. “I’ve never heard anything about any witch …”
“Everybody hush.” Jewell raised her voice over the chorus of mumbles and grumbles. “Let Oliver tell the story.”
The dark clouds that had been slinking in and out of the mountains ever since I got to town rumbled low across the sky, like a warning.
Oliver laced his fingers together over the paunch of his belly. He sighed, as if he’d been expecting me to ask that very thing. He leaned back in his seat and began, “All right, then.”
And I leaned in close and prepared my heart for a storm of a story.
Biscuit was thrilled when Jewell told me I could let her inside the Lube & Dye. She zoomed in and shook the raindrops out of her fur and then she walked around, getting to know people. Every hairstylist and mechanic and client in the whole shop reached out to pet her, which Biscuit didn’t mind a bit. When it comes to affection, she knows how to dish it out.
I helped Rosie Walker to a seat closer to the front of the shop, where she could hear Oliver’s story. Rosie had just sat down when Biscuit pounced up in her lap. At first Rosie let out a surprised “OOOOF!”
But then Biscuit turned toward Rosie and nuzzled her cheek.
Rosie smiled. “Well, hello there, darlin’!”
Once I’d seen that the two of them were settled, I pulled a seat for myself beside Jonah and told him, “Don’t forget … I need to talk to you about something later. It’s an important something.”
Jonah’s smile pinched into a frown. “Important how?”
“I’ll tell you later,” I said. Because I had more important things to focus on. Things like who the hayseed the witch woman was and how the heck I was going to undo her stupid curse.
The room got quiet as we all settled in for Oliver’s tale. The only sound I could hear was the snip-snip-snip of Jewell’s scissors.
Oliver tapped the dimple on his chin, collecting his thoughts. He started his story with the part I knew but never got sick of hearing:
“Many years ago, Midnight Gulch was a secret place. The mountain hid the town high-up-away from the rest of the world. And the river surrounded the mountain and kept it safe. And the forest stood up tall around the river, and caught all of the town’s secrets and songs in its branches. The town had to stay secret, you see, because the people who lived there had magic in their veins.
“Some families had more powerful magic than others, of course. Some families, like the Tripletts, had flashy magic. They say Owen Triplett could catch starlight in glass jars. He got in trouble for selling his starlight jars to tourists, though. People’d no more than pay for their jars when the starlight would bust loose and head back for the skies. Starlight doesn’t take good to domestication.”
“Note to self,” Jonah whispered to me. “Stars don’t make good pets.”
“Duly noted,” I agreed.
Oliver continued, “Some families had a purpose to their magic, though. The Terrys could conjure up the rain. The Smiths could bake secrets into their pies.”
“Tell about the Hancocks!” Charlie Sue yelled.
Oliver rolled his eyes. “The Hancocks could turn themselves invisible.” He closed his eyes and sighed contentedly. “I wouldn’t mind if they started doing that again, honestly.”
“Me, neither,�
� Charlie Sue chimed in. “I’d follow you around all day and bug the daylights out of you.”
“You already do that every day,” Oliver laughed. He cleared his throat and continued, “And when the Weatherly boys played music, the whole world danced and sang.
“But there was another powerful family back then — the Thistle family. Nobody talks about them much, but they had the strangest and most exciting magic of all.
“In fact, back then, the most notorious woman in all of Midnight Gulch was a young lady named Isabella Thistle.”
Thunder rumbled low and long over the rooftop. I didn’t know if it was the thunder or the name Isabella Thistle that sent the shiver down my spine. And it wasn’t just me: Everybody in the beauty shop shivered or rubbed their arms.
“Now, the men in the Thistle family weren’t much tootin’,” Oliver said. “The most magical thing those men ever did was drink their weight in moonshine. But the Thistle women were powerful creatures. And Isabella was the most powerful of them all.”
Even though my heart was already drumming yes, I asked Oliver, “So Isabella was the witch woman?”
“Eh.” Oliver shrugged his shoulder. “She was no more of a witch than any other woman in the Gulch. Lots of women had magic in their veins. The problem was that most women despised Isabella Thistle. They were jealous of her because the Weatherly boys liked her so much. They hated her because she spoke her mind even if it made folks angry. They hated her kind of beautiful. I always heard tell that, if you passed Isabella Thistle on the street, you’d think she looked very ordinary. But she had a way about her: an easy laugh and a strong will. She didn’t care what people thought of her. She was bossy, opinionated, and feisty. Isabella wore her hair in a long, black braid. She kept a yellow flower behind her ear. To be in her presence, they said, was enchanting. And that’s why some people called her a witch. They said she wasn’t pretty enough to get the Weatherly boys’ attention. They said she must have put a spell on them somehow.”
A Snicker of Magic Page 13
