The Accidental Magician

by David Grace

  My father, a light-skinned Redbone named Remy LaFontaine, claimed to be the seventh son of a seventh son. My mother, Malina Elise, a coal-black beauty with a Caribbean accent and murky past, told various stories of her history. In some she was a hoodoo priestess from Jamaica; in others her home had been someplace between Bimini and St. Barts, Trinidad and the Caicos.

  I often had visions, the extreme ones I called 'spells.' Perhaps a psychiatrist would label them 'visual hallucinations' but I didn't think that was correct. I am not psychotic or schizophrenic. Sometimes, more and more often of late, I just see on the outside more of what people are on the inside, their cruelty or passion warping their faces, their emotions haloing their heads like a colored fog. It's disturbing but often useful in my business. As I said, both a gift and a curse. Is all that from the hoodoo herbs, potions and infusions? Perhaps as the first born son of parents like Remy and Malina it was inevitable that I would be irretrievably different from what I came to think of as "normal" people.

  Or maybe the real explanation for my peculiarities is a little of both. Despite the persona I struggled to present to the world, I knew that I wasn't really human, but something different, a fake human, a changeling, someone who always needed to be in disguise lest the normals discover my true nature and cage me like some animal in a zoo. As I slept under the combined effects of high voltage electricity and an ether-soaked rag, I dreamed.

  * * *

  I was back in the cabin near the banks of Pig Run Creek, a tiny stream that meandered west until it joined the Sabine River near the Texas border. A boy again, I awoke in my narrow bed to the calls of the jays and woodpeckers and the croaking of the big frogs. Crisp dawn light peeked through the cracks in the plank walls and by its color and the smell of pine trees and slow-flowing water I knew that I was dreaming, but it was a dream that I could no more ignore than I could disregard a tiger leaping for my throat.

  I threw off the covers and pulled on clean underwear, jeans and a black t-shirt. I felt the laces tighten my sneakers across my feet. I knew this dream by heart. I knew that this was the day that had shattered my life and that I was powerless to change a single instant of it.

  I tiptoed to my parents' bedroom and found my mother awake, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. My father was gone. He had left after dinner, off to spend the night with the fat women.

  "It's time," I said and crawled beneath the bed. The floorboard squeaked as it pulled away. I removed the worn Romeo & Julieta cigar box from its hiding place and slithered out from beneath the bed frame. My mother stood there, her eyes blank, her face more like black plastic than human skin. She was wearing her blue dress and black shoes. Her hair was contained beneath a burgundy turban, making her look more like an African tribes' woman than a resident of Beauregard Parish, Louisiana. I remembered what my mother had really looked like that day, the excitement and fear that had laced her face, but in this dream she displayed only abject acceptance of her fate, as if the dream-woman knew what would happen next as well as I did and how it all would end.

  I shoved two bundles of greasy bills into my pockets and grabbed my mother's flaccid hand. In this terrible dream it was the doughy hand of the walking dead. Silently we slipped past Zion's room and out onto the porch, what the locals called a gallery. The planks creaked beneath our feet as I led her down the steps and onto the path to the highway. I checked my watch. In ten minutes the bus would be passing the trail-head on its way down Highway 190 to Baton Rouge.

  Beams slipped between the branches of the gum trees and the loblolly pines and dappled the ground. Where the grass was worn away patches of red earth glowed in the morning light. We were barely a hundred yards from the highway when, as if by magic, my father, Remy, appeared on the trail ahead of us. Tall and thin, his skin the color of pale rust, he stood with legs wide apart, blocking our way.

  "Where you goin', Boy?"

  I tried to push my mother behind me, as I always did in this dream, but somehow she got past me.

  "I be leavin' you, Remy. I be takin' my son wit me."

  "The boy can go, if he wants. You, wife, you stay here with me."

  "I got a broomstick. I be jumping over it. Wife no more."

  "You not my wife no more?" Remy asked, grinning.

  "You on your own."

  "What about Zion?"

  "He be your son. You do wit him like you want."

  "You're right. Zion is my son. How do you think I knew what you were up to? Zion hear you planning this with Rafe."

  "He don't hear nuthin'."

  Remy smiled. "Not with his ears. He hear it in his head, in his dreams. I know what Rafe there's got in his pockets." Remy pulled out a knife. "So, woman, you my wife or you just some thief stealin' my money?"

  "My money too."

  Remy raised the blade. "Wife or not?"

  "Wife to you no more."

  Fast as a snake Remy leaped forward and plunged the blade into her stomach. Her mouth opened in an "O" and blood tricked through her grasping hands.

  "Like you say, wife no more." Remy's lips split into an evil smile and he raised the blade for a stroke into her heart. I watched my own hand as it pulled a cue-ball sized rock from the mud, watched as I leapt forward and threw it straight at Remy's face, but at the last instant he turned and the stone caught him in the side of his head. It made a crunching sound, like the snap when a hammer splits a pecan shell. Remy gave me a surprised, disbelieving glance then fell forward almost at my feet.

  I watched in remembered horror as my mother's knees buckled.

  "Mama," I cried, reaching for her but she feebly pulled away.

  "Run," she whispered.

  "I'll get the doctor."

  "Run, he's coming."

  Though the trail to the cabin was screened by foliage, I knew that my brother, Zion, gun in hand, was racing toward us. I looked back at my mother who gave me one brief smile, then tumbled forward, face down. From the direction of the cabin I heard a branch being slapped out of the way. Without conscious thought I grabbed the bloody rock and dropped it next to my mother's outstretched hand, then fled. I reached the highway just as the bus wheezed around the turn at the top of the grade. I pulled two wrinkled bills from my father's bundle and waved them at the driver. For a moment I wondered if the old man would stop for a Redbone kid like me but the only color he cared about was green.

  I jumped aboard, gave the pale old man the bills and crouched in a seat at the back of the bus. I peeked out the window until the we rounded the next bend but Zion did not appear. Off and on, all the way to Baton Rouge, I checked the highway for the red lights of the Sheriff's cruiser but, unmolested, the bus pulled into town on time. I tore my gaze from the windows. As I looked down the aisle toward the front door, the light dimmed, then disappeared and then, cold and damp and lying in patch of weeds, I woke up just as the last sliver of moon slid from the sky.

  * * *

  My head throbbed and the stink of ether and manure hung in the air. I struggled to sit up and found myself sprawled in the grass. I ran my palms across my chest and thighs but I didn't feel the sticky wetness of leaking blood. My back throbbed and the rest of my body joined in with a chorus of aches but as far as I could tell, nothing was broken. After a couple of deep breaths I struggled to my feet and slowly made a three-sixty turn. To my right was a hint of a line of trees. To my left I caught a glimpse of a slightly lighter charcoal streak. I slapped my pockets but my wallet, keys, pen-knife and cell phone were all gone. I shoved my fingers inside my right sock and felt the edge of my emergency hundred dollar bill. Shakily, I tramped across the pasture toward the deserted two-lane.

  A mile down the highway I spotted a farm house with a light burning above the door. I pounded on the framing off and on for half a minute before a sleepy voice called, "Who's there?"

  "My car broke down. I need to call a friend to pick me up."

  "You know what time it is?" the man called back without opening the door.

  "My frien
d won't mind. I'll give you the number. You call him and he'll pay you twenty dollars when he gets here."

  "What if he don't come or he comes and he don't pay?"

  The door opened a crack and a slice of a weathered face topped by one blue eye peered out. I held up the hundred dollar bill.

  "I'll leave this with you as security. If my friend doesn't pay, you can keep it."

  The eye warily regarded the c-note.

  "Where do you want to go?"

  "Back into town, Baltimore."

  The door opened a bid wider. The man's head was topped by a wild thatch of white hair, his face seamed, his cheeks covered with patches of gray stubble.

  "That all you got?"

  "I've got another hundred in my apartment."

  "Two hundred?"

  "Two hundred."

  "I'll get my coat."

  The old man led me to a battered Ford F150 whose doors groaned like men in pain.

  "I'll take that hundred now," the farmer said, leaving the keys in his pocket.

  "When we clear your driveway."

  The old man cackled, and pulled out his keys.

  "Good for you. I like a man with a head on his shoulders."

  When we reached the highway, I wordlessly handed over the bill. The old man laughed and shoved it into his pocket.

  I kept an emergency key hidden under a rock at the edge of the parking lot and led the old man, Roger something, inside where I gave him the promised second payment.

  "Whoohoo," Roger said happily. "Two hundred bucks! Not bad for an old man who can't sleep nights anyway."

  "Thanks for your help."

  "Hell, son, for this kind of money, you can call me any time you need a damn taxi driver."

  Cackling happily Roger limped down the stairs. I didn't pay any attention. I figured I didn't have any time to spare. Racing through the apartment I grabbed a couple more bills, Carolyn Simpson's address, a six inch kitchen knife and my spare set of keys.

  "Pretty girl." a voice screeched from the corner of the darkened room.

  "Go back to sleep, Shantrell."

  "Pretty girl!" she squawked, louder this time.

  I grabbed a handful of sunflower seeds from a jar next to the TV and dropped them in Shantrell's dish. The African Blue parrot appraised me with a quizzical eye, then dipped her beak into the bowl. Idly, I brushed her wing with the backs of my fingers, then hurried for the door. My attackers had been waiting for me in the parking lot which meant somebody knew I was going out tonight. Somebody wanted me out of the way. It was a good bet that somebody didn't want me meeting Carolyn Simpson. Her stalker was a cop. He'd have access to a Taser.

  Had the lawyer tipped him off? Had Simpson herself let something slip? Cell calls were pretty easy to capture and decoding them was a joke if you knew what you were doing, like maybe a cop would. Had Manchuko set up an intercept on her phone? If he was serious enough to do that and have a couple of his friends kidnap me, what the hell did he have planned for Carolyn Simpson?

  I raced down the stairs.

  Here is an excerpt from David Grace's novel:

  The Forbidden List

  Chapter One

  April 18, 1945 - Southwestern Poland

  When the elevator doors opened Colonel Claus Webber was confronted by a scene of frantic activity disintegrating into chaos. One of the pushcarts had overturned, spilling hundreds of documents across the tunnel's floor. Two of the Jews were struggling to right the cart while a third was on his knees stacking the pages into ragged piles. Two guards watched lazily from the side of the corridor.

  "Don't just stand there!" Webber shouted. For a moment the guards hesitated. Manual labor was a job for the Jews but after a quick glance at Webber's face both SS men hurriedly grabbed the edge of the overturned cart. Four days before General Kammler's Chief of Staff, Obersturmbahnfurher Stark, had left the facility to report to the General in Munich, leaving Colonel Webber in charge. Shortly thereafter Kammler had ordered all the project files crated for transport.

  Under Webber's watchful eye the guards and the three prisoners hurriedly reloaded the cart.

  "Who was pushing the cart?" Webber asked the senior guard.

  "They were," the Corporal said, pointing at two of the Jews.

  Webber took out his sidearm, waved it back and forth three times between the two pale, gray men, then pulled the trigger, shattering the skull of the older slave.

  "Get him out of here," Webber ordered then turned and walked back down the tunnel. Behind him he heard the cart's wheels squeaking as the remaining prisoners pushed it to the packaging room where the lab books and blueprints would be inventoried, crated and sealed for shipment.

  Three days later a JU-290 swept low over the valley. The mid-April ground was soft and spotted with puddles. For the preceding two days the prisoners and the remaining lab technicians had been laying five centimeter thick planks over the bulldozed earth in a swath barely wide enough to accommodate the plane's landing gear. Webber bit his lip nervously as the pilot dropped the big ship the last few meters.

  Called 'trucks', the four-engined JU 290, and its big brother the six-engined 390, were in desperately short supply. Rumor had it that Himmler himself had demanded one and that General Kammler had turned him down, instead sending the plane here to recover its precious cargo before the Russians reached the base. If the plane foundered, if the makeshift runway failed, Webber had no illusions about what would happen to him.

  The wheels hit with a thump and the 290 bounded five meters into the air, planks scattering behind it like matchsticks. The wheels came back down and this time it bounced only a meter. On the third hop it stayed down leaving snapped boards in its wake. The big plane rolled on, finally stopping a bare two hundred meters from the end of the cleared earth.

  Webber issued a piercing whistle and waved his arm in a circle. A line of crate-laden carts emerged from the cargo elevator. From the other end of the runway the remaining prisoners and lab technicians advanced into the field, hurriedly replacing the broken planks with the last of the fresh ones.

  Kammler's orders were explicit. Webber was to load the plane and have it ready for takeoff by twenty hundred hours. The General would radio coded orders directly to the pilot. Once the plane departed the prisoners were to be killed and the facility flooded. That part would be easy. Originally a coal mine, it required constant pumping to keep it dry. From that point on, it was every man for himself. The Sudeten Mountains in Southwest Poland were hardly on the Russian's direct invasion route but sooner or later they would show up and Webber had no intention of being there when they did. He looked at his watch. It was 16:00. He had four hours to get the plane loaded and ready to fly.

  * * *

  April 21, 1945 - Bavaria

  SS General Hans Kammler checked his watch and stepped into the small inn ten kilometers west of Oberammergau in southern Bavaria. It felt strange to be out of uniform. The coarse wool pants chafed his legs. Two men sat in the deserted lobby, one black haired, one brown. Kammler immediately noted their sun browned skin and ill fitting civilian clothes. Like himself these were soldiers who had recently left their uniforms behind.

  "Mr. Adams and Mr. Jones, I believe?" Kammler said in University English.

  "Herr Schmitt?" the taller man replied.

  Kammler gave his head a quick nod and extended his hand. After a slight pause the man called Jones took it then waved Kammler to the empty seat at a small, scarred table.

  "Do you have the material?" Adams demanded immediately.

  "It's been a long day. Perhaps we can conclude our transaction in a civilized manner."

  "What would you know about civilized behavior?" the dark haired man, Adams, demanded.

  "Gentlemen, insults are a poor way to begin our association. Unless, of course, you don't want my materials."

  "We're not your associates. We're just here to make a trade."

  "My services are of at least as much value as the documents. Only I can expl
ain what they mean. Only I can tell you what scientists will be of help to you in exploiting the material. Only I can tell you the sites where other materials can be found."

  "We don't need you for that."

  "You do if you want to beat your Russian friends to them." Kammler paused and looked up at a skeletal balding man, apparently the owner, who was carrying an opened bottle of Riesling and three glasses. Kammler nodded and the proprietor left the General to pour the wine. "Gentlemen, let us not 'get off on the wrong foot' as you Americans say. If I may, I would like to go over the details of our arrangement." Kammler paused for a moment and, receiving no objection, continued.

  "I have all of the documents from Site A loaded on a plane and ready to be delivered to any designated location within twenty four hours. It will fly wherever I tell it. It's destination is up to you. In return," Kammler raised his hand and extended his index finger, "I will be given a new identity and American citizenship." A second finger went up. "For one year I will work for your government translating and explaining the materials for which I will be paid one thousand dollars per month." A third finger went up. "I will immediately tell you all of the other locations and the names of the scientists who worked on advanced programs under my direction. I will be guaranteed employment for at least five years at the agreed salary if I am unable to find private employment on my own. You will facilitate the transfer of assets of mine in various accounts to the United States, tax free. And lastly, of course, you will provide me with excellent references and documentation for any new employment I may wish to seek. Have I correctly stated our agreement?"

  "Yes," Jones agreed. Adams leaned back and scowled.