by Billy Coffey
“No, Dumb Willie. I am not the devil.”
He didn’t think that was the case, not really. The devil wouldn’t be so pretty.
“You a. Angel.”
Now she smiles. “Death is no angel, but I appreciate you saying so.” She sets the branch with the rabbit growing from it onto the spit, letting the flames lick the flesh. It smells good. Dumb Willie slobbers more, he can’t help it. Dumb Willie’s always hungry.
“I am what comes, Dumb Willie. The thing that comes for all at the end of their days. I am there at the last breath anybody ever takes. I lead them onward, you see? From the world they’ve always known to another that waits. Do you understand?”
He thinks he does, but Dumb Willie don’t know.
“Like this rabbit here,” she says, turning the branch a little. “I set out in those woods there, I wasn’t looking for this rabbit. But I got called to it. That’s the only way I know to say. It’s like a charge comes into me. I feel it in my head and my chest, like lightning. That’s when I know. When I saw the rabbit, all I had to do was wait and skin it. It was a peaceful end, Dumb Willie. And now you get to eat.”
She turns the spit. That rabbit’s looking at Dumb Willie.
“There’s never a time I don’t get called,” Do-tee say. She’s looking at that rabbit like that rabbit’s looking at Dumb Willie, but Do-tee’s far off, thinking. “I’m everywhere, I guess. Or most places. Wherever there’s people, I am. And it’s always been that way. I’m called, and I take them on. I come for them in whatever way will bring them comfort, or bring them fear.” She glances his way and tries to smile again, but this time that smile isn’t in her eyes and isn’t on her lips either. It isn’t anywhere. “Depends, I guess, on where you’re goin’. You didn’t tell Abel our secret, did you?”
“Nuh.”
“Good. Was a bad thing I did, Dumb Willie. Not telling Abel what’s happened to him. I have to take them on when I’m called. That’s all I do. But I couldn’t with him. I saw him and you and the boy—Chris?—and I snatched Abel up, then you. And I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t show the path. I couldn’t tell him. He looked so pitiful. Do you understand?”
“Yez,” Dumb Willie say, because he does understand this. A Bull always looks pitiful, he’s got bad bonez.
“They always look back. Do you know that? After their last breath is done and I come for them. You should see it, Dumb Willie. I guess you will one day, but I mean, you should see it. That path. It looks so beautiful. And I’m there helping them to that path, and they all just look back. Every single one. It’s like all of them know they’re not losing anything, they’re gaining, but there’s still so much behind they never finished or never did. Like there was so much left to say.”
She plucks a bit of meat off, tastes it. Dumb Willie wipes his mouth.
“Abel would have looked back too. He all but told me he would. He didn’t want to leave his momma all alone, wouldn’t have never seen his daddy. And he didn’t want to leave you to the life you have, Dumb Willie. I think it was that most of all. Abel loves you.”
“I luv A. Bull,” Dumb Willie say.
“I know. That’s why I can’t take him on just yet. And that’s why we can’t tell him, okay? It’s our secret. You can’t tell.”
He shakes his head.
“Good. We’ll get Abel to his daddy in Fairhope, but that’s as far as things can go. I’ll be in trouble if I do more.” And in a sad voice, she adds, “I’m in trouble now.”
“Home,” Dumb Willie say.
“Yes, we got to get Abel home. He’s hanging on to so much, Dumb Willie. That boy has the whole world on him. He wouldn’t even tell me about Chris. What happened.”
“Chris. Stinks he’s a. Weed.”
“I know. But he’s got to face it, Dumb Willie. He has to know he isn’t alone in this.”
Dumb Willie looks off to where A Bull sits. He’s holding his letters and . . . it’s a word . . . envelopes. A Bull looks small all the way from here. He looks like he’s fading in the dark, like he’s not here all the way.
“A Bull’s. Dayed.”
“Just his body is,” Do-tee say. “That’s all. That’s not Abel’s body you see; that’s just the mask left to hold his soul until I take him on. That’s why nobody can see him. Just me and you, because you’re special. Do you understand?”
Dumb Willie nods. He don’t understand.
“Body always dies, Dumb Willie. Even yours someday. But the best part of people? That lives on.” She turns the spit, making the meat brown and good, and casts her eye toward the boy far off. “But only for a while, so long as he’s kept here and refuses to go home. No mask is meant to be worn forever.”
-8-
She has watched them all this evening and supposes that could be called guarding, though in this hidden place at the edge of a bustling town there is not much to guard from at all. It is safe here, and that is why Dorothy keeps them.
The fire, lit more to cook Dumb Willie’s supper than to keep them warm, is now nothing more than a thin sheet of orange embers set against the glow of passing cars and streetlights from the hill above. Dorothy and Dumb Willie are huddled close to that faint light and the little heat it continues to give, which punctures the air with an occasional snap and crack. The air still holds the faint scent of cooked meat. Above them shines most of a moon and a smattering of stars. A slight breeze follows over the pond, cool and comforting, rippling the water. Dorothy has removed her tennis shoes and socks. She squeezes her toes into the soft earth and grins at the feeling, grins at Dumb Willie’s building excitement, his nudges that are followed by whispers of “Watch . . . this.”
Death takes the form of many things, but a hobo is among its favorites. There is a kinship there, a bond between it and those whose lives are defined by the steady rhythms of rail and road, who are leaves of flesh and bone caught in a gentle wind that blows in no particular direction, yet brings them still to where they are meant. Death hopes that’s the case now, with these two boys.
From the trees comes, “Ready?”
“Ready,” Dorothy calls.
Dumb Willie begins to clap. Abel waddles from the darkness with singular aplomb, trying to weave among the shadows and passing headlights in a way that gives credence to the mysteries about to unfold. He stops just beyond the fire’s arc and holds his good hand out as an acknowledgment of the applause, then bows low at Dorothy’s presence.
He straightens and asks, “Who here believes in magic?”
Dumb Willie raises his hand.
“Me,” Dorothy says.
“Who here is willing to plunge into the world of . . .” His arms move in small circles of ever-increasing speed that end with a quiet snap that produces a mashed plastic rose in his left hand. “Possibility?”
“Oooh,” Dumb Willie shouts, clapping again. His face gleams.
Dorothy shrieks with delight (and no small measure of surprise—she had seen the fingers of Abel’s left hand slide down into his cast but had been unprepared for his polished practice) and feels a blush when Abel bends to hand her the flower.
“My lady,” he says.
“My handsome prince,” she answers, which nearly buckles the boy’s knees.
He produces a warped deck of cards from his front pocket and asks Dorothy to shuffle them. Then, wedging the deck between his cast and thumb, he says, “Watch carefully, and pick a card.”
Abel runs the first two fingers of his good hand along the top of the cards, fluttering them in a steady speed.
“Get one?” he asks Dorothy.
“Yes.”
“What’s your card?”
“Jack of hearts.”
Abel looks worried. “Jack of hearts?” He looks to Dumb Willie. “That’s a hard one.”
Dumb Willie places a hand over his mouth. Between his fingers, Death hears, “Uh . . . oh.”
Abel says, “Well, I guess we’ll have to rely on the magic of possibility to make this trick work. It�
�s never been the jack of hearts. Never ever. Shuffle the cards again, Dorothy.”
She does, handing them back. Abel keeps the cards face-down and kneels by the fire.
He looks into Dorothy’s eyes and says, “Now I’m gone start laying these cards down. You look at them and tell me when to stop.”
“When will I know to stop?” she asks.
“You just will. That’s the magic.”
He lays the first one down, then the next. Halfway through the deck, Dorothy halts him.
Abel turns that card over. Ace of diamonds.
“Uh . . . oh,” Dumb Willie says. His hand is back over his mouth, shocked at this unfortunate turn of events.
“I don’t get it,” Abel says. He looks at Dorothy. “You sure you saw the jack of hearts?”
Dorothy’s grinning. “I’m sure.”
“Wait,” Abel says. “Wait just one second. Dorothy, what’s that behind your ear?”
Before she can answer, Abel leans in close and whips his good hand behind her right ear, just beneath her hat. He draws out a card in his hand and slowly turns it over.
Jack of hearts.
To Dumb Willie it seems the grandest thing he has ever witnessed, nothing more than a miracle. Dorothy’s mouth drops in a look of fear and wonder mixed, a look born not from the card in Abel’s hand but from the light leaking out from behind his eyes. Where they were a dull blue, there is now a white like snow struck by sunlight—Abel’s soul, seeking its freedom from the thin bonds that hold it.
He makes coins appear and disappear and a tiny copper ring to float in the air. Deals a royal flush three times in a row no matter how well Dorothy shuffles the deck. Dumb Willie cuts a piece of string in half with his teeth that Abel somehow fashions together again and guesses whatever number between one and ten that Dorothy can imagine.
And when all the magic is done and the traffic is slow on the hill and Greenville has been laid to slumber, Abel stands apart from them and rests his good hand in his left pocket. He grins a showman’s smile and bows once more, then says, “I have one small magic left, lady and gentleman. Just words. Always believe in possibility. Things are never what they seem. Let the magic guide you, because then”—he pauses here, grinning—“anything can be real.”
He lifts his good hand from his pocket and raises it high before throwing it hard toward the ground. Dorothy spots a small gray cylinder that hits in the center of one of the larger rocks near the fire. There comes a loud pop! that makes Dumb Willie yell with glee and then a heavy cloud of smoke. Dorothy follows the muffled sounds of Abel’s coughs as he circles around behind them. The cloud thins, revealing nothing but the pond.
Dumb Willie jumps up. “Where he. Go?”
“Right behind you,” Abel says.
Death cannot help but smile.
*
The light has come to his eyes, meaning the thin covering of what is left of Abel’s body is beginning to wear. And yet what is left is still enough for him to manipulate things—cards, coins, even a smoke bomb—which means there is still time yet. Dorothy doesn’t know exactly how much (she has never done such a thing as this, keeping the dead held to earth), but it may be enough. Enough to get Abel to Fairhope. Then home. It must be home afterward, because the boy is coming apart from the inside. Even now, staring at her from across the remains of the fire, Abel looks more two than one.
“Did you like it?” he asks. “My show?”
The words come in little more than a whisper. Beside them, Dumb Willie snores. Dorothy didn’t think the big man would sleep at all this night, such was his excitement over finding Abel not lost.
“It was the most amazing thing I ever seen,” she whispers back.
He beams. The light from his eyes flashes from a glow to a shine. “Really?”
“Really.”
“I ain’t never done a whole show before. I did a few tricks at school. For the talent show. I got a ribbon. But it weren’t a whole show.”
“Well, I’m glad I got to be the first.”
This looks to please him to no end. He leans forward, putting his cast to the ground as a balance, and draws the letters from his back pocket and turns them over. Where his cast was there are now small impressions in the dirt, barely there. The place where he sits is hardly disturbed.
“Must be some powerful words,” Dorothy says, “to get you to take off like you did.”
“You want to see them?”
“Wouldn’t do me no good. I never did learn to read. Most folk tell you anything you need to know so long as you ask, even if you got to see past their own spin on things to get anyplace near the truth. Guess that’s the same with any words, said or writ down. Time I thought maybe I should learn it, wasn’t nobody to teach me. Meet quite a few folk in my goings, but it’s meant they all move on.”
“Road’s ever long.”
Dorothy lifts an eyebrow. “What?”
“That’s what Reverend Johnny told me before he gave me his word. He’s magic.”
“Well, he was right on that. Road is long. Though every one’s got its end.”
Abel says, “I don’t know what all of my daddy’s letters say. There’s a lot more than these, but I couldn’t bring them all. I was afraid Momma’d find them gone and know where I went.”
“So one letter’s enough to get you to pick up? Leave home and Momma both?”
“Yes,” Abel says. “No,” he corrects. “Reverend Johnny’s the one made me leave. He said I’d find the letters and tole me what else would come. It’s why I left. Me and Dumb Willie. Only way I could was knowing I could bring my daddy back. It’s my reward, to have a family again. But now I don’t know if we ever can.”
Dorothy leans forward.
“Why can’t you go back, Abel? We a long ways from Mattingly, so it don’t matter to keep it secret anymore. And you need to say it. That’s where it all begins.”
“Where what begins?”
“Being ready to move on.”
“I’m ready now. Longer we stay here, longer it’ll take to get to Fairhope. That’s where everything is, and not just my daddy. Reverend Johnny said so. He said I’d get healed.”
“Healed of what?”
“My bad bones.” He holds out his cast as though she needs the reminder. “He said if I left to go find my daddy, I’d be fixed.”
Dorothy lowers her eyes. “I don’t know if that’s a thing that can be had for you now, Abel. Not in the way you want, least.”
“Yes, it can. I believe it. There’s a reward for me. But something happened. Right when that train came.”
“What happened?”
Abel turns the stack of letters over. Unfolds the one on top. He says, “I can’t say.”
“I spent more years than I know wandering about. Met all kinds. Good folk and bad and others—about all, if I’m true—that’s some of both. There’s ones so proud they think they can get through life and death with no help at all. Then there’s ones who know there ain’t a soul strong enough to stand on its own for long. People are built to need each other.
“Out here, all a hobo’s got is the kindness of others. None of us’d make it without that. That’s always been true for you and Dumb Willie, ain’t it? Now you both got me, and I’m bound to come along—back to home if I have my way, Fairhope if that’s your will. But time is precious. We ain’t got a lot.”
“What’d you mean yesterday,” he asks, “when you said the way is dark?”
“Only what I did. You go on and call this an adventure if you want. Ain’t nothing finer than an adventure. It’s about the only thing that gets folk out of the world for a spell by putting them deeper in it. But you better believe ain’t a thing in it gone come easy. Gone need me,” she says, then points to where Dumb Willie sleeps. “Gone need him. You can’t afford to close yourself up no more.”
Abel’s eyes move to the page in his hand. His lips move in silence.
“Why don’t you go on and read that to me?” Dorothy asks.
>
“Really?”
She smiles again and wonders why Abel looks at her so funny. “Really.”
*
27 March 2005
Dear Abel,
It is a cold day here and dreary. I often get sad when the weather is this way (I get sad a lot, but the rain brings it even more) and I think of you. I do that no matter what the weather is.
I looked at the calendar the other day and realized you must be two now. Is that right? Too young to read anything I write. But I guess I’m writing these as much for me as for you because I don’t think your momma will ever let you read them. I didn’t think I would be gone long, but now I think it will be long and I guess that’s why she won’t tell you about me. Because she’s mad. I don’t want you to think bad about her for that, Abel. It’s better I guess if you go on not knowing anything about me except for what she says, which might be all of the truth or some or none. It was bad when I left. That’s all I’m going to say. But maybe even if you never read the things I send you, she will. I don’t have much reason to think so, but your momma gave me this address and said write but never call, and if I called she would up and move and the two of you would be gone forever. But it has to be something that I can send these, right? (Are you reading this, Lisa? Do you remember how we loved each other?)
Abel, there are so many things I want to say but don’t know how. It’s hard saying it. But the truth has to come, doesn’t it? Even if it’s forced, the truth must come. Lisa, you know that. Tell Abel. I don’t care if he doesn’t understand. Tell him I can see what no one else can. Secret things. Tell Abel there is more. I know you don’t believe that, Lisa. You have to see things and touch them to know they’re real. But I have. I’ve seen and touched. Tell Abel that.
Tell him it’s real.
Love,
Dad
*
The page shakes in Abel’s hand. He doesn’t look up and says no more, both things for which Dorothy is thankful. There is too much in the boy’s letter for him to consider, and yet hearing Abel read those words has brought a light into her mind that had gone missing ever since she pulled the boy from the rails.
