by Billy Coffey
“I got letters. They’re from my daddy. He’s nice in them.”
Arthur tilts his head in that way old men do, like he’s caught Abel in the middle of an important lesson. “So if it isn’t for love that you came here, and it isn’t for fear of your daddy, what is it? I can’t imagine what else it could be. Love and fear are the two greatest forces in life.”
“Guess they are. But I was promised. Promise is a force too.”
“And what promise was that?”
“Healing. I was to get treasure and healing and a reward. I already got the treasure, and we got to get to Fairhope and back home with my daddy for the reward. Dorothy said the only way I’ll get healing is if we come to talk to you. I need healing, Mister Arthur. I got a condition.”
He grins. “Don’t we all.”
The hum-tick of the air conditioner fills the gaps in their silence.
“Knowledge of the holy place has been held by my people since the world was yet young,” Arthur now says. “It is passed from parent to child among a single line of my tribe. You call us Indian. Some say Cherokee. But we are the ani-yun-wiya. The Real People. And we have held these lands as our own since time immemorial. The Real People are its guardians. And my line is guardian to the hidden places.”
“So it’s real?” Abel asks. “The spring ain’t just a story?”
“You would be unwise to see it as mere story. There is great power there. And great danger.” He looks off toward the open door. “Just as there is danger with her.”
“Her name isn’t Dorothy,” Abel says. “She said she’s got no name, so that’s the name I gave her.”
“What sort of person has no name?”
It’s a trick, a question asked because the answer is known, if not to Abel then surely to the man sitting in front of him. Arthur’s face is steady. His eyes invite an answer that will not be judged.
“I’ve seen magic. It was up at this church back home when I seen it. And then Dorothy saved us. I think she’s magic some, but small. The real kind. She’s not tricks.”
“All the magic you’ve seen is small, Abel. That’s all this world can hold right yet. The big magic waits. It yearns and it waits. Has she spoken to you of going home?”
“I wouldn’t let her take me,” Abel says. “I got to get to my daddy first. I won’t go back before then. There’s some trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“I won’t say, if you’ll excuse me. And it don’t matter anyway, because I was sent.”
“You weren’t, child. You were not sent. Would you know me for more than a night, you would know I speak only truth. Go no further with this, Abel. Tell Dorothy you want to go home. Let her take you.”
“I can’t.”
“Because of the trouble?”
Abel bobs his head. “Dorothy only wants me better.”
“Turn away, Abel.”
“No. I’m supposed to go on.”
Arthur sighs. “I have been in this chair long, Abel. I offer myself no pity to the men I employ here. They would see that as weakness, and weakness is a thing they would abhor. But it is only you and me here, and so I will tell you the truth. I hate it, being trapped in this chair. This feeling of helplessness. Of not being able to do those things I always did before, run and play. I can’t even be with a woman now.” He taps his legs. “No feeling. No pleasure. And so in many ways, my life has been harder even than yours. You have never known things to be any different than they’ve always been. I hold memories of what I once was. Do you understand?”
Abel can. He understands helplessness very well.
“Belief has not healed me. I have belief. The Real People have always had that in abundance, which is why we have survived so many trials for so long. We once worshiped the old gods. Some still do. Not me. My mother taught me religion. I have sought the Lord’s healing for longer than you have been alive, and at every seeking, that answer has come as No. I will be in this chair until I pass from this world into the next, but I will live a good life. I will have joy and purpose that wash away my tears. But still I seek healing. I seek it wherever it may be found. I risk my heart breaking and being broken. Some would call me gullible, if they knew. Though I think you understand.”
Arthur reaches for the paper in his lap. It is thick and glossy and does not bother Abel so much as the manner in which it is turned over; Arthur will not look at him. Abel’s throat catches at the black-and-white picture. The same hair, the same skin and build. The same grinning face.
“He came through this way,” Arthur says, “not two years ago. It was at a little church way out from the city.”
But Abel cannot hear the man speak. His eyes are too full of the picture, Arthur standing upright on a stage, hands raised in victory, his left one stretched toward heaven and his right clasping Reverend Johnny’s wrist, a wheelchair toppled over on its side in the background. Like it’d been kicked that way, just as that old farmer had kicked away his walker inside that hill country barn back home. It’s the same wheelchair Arthur sits in now, again.
“My healing, if it can even be called such, lasted a mere day. I went home, Abel. I walked to my bed and gave such thanksgiving to the Lord as no one ever had before. And when I woke up that next morning, my legs couldn’t move. They were slabs of meat. Nothing more. Reverend Johnny Mills is a shyster. He is filth.”
All the noise of this place, the buzzing of the air and the song of the evening bugs outside, the imperceptible hum of the earth’s turning—Abel knows these not as the music of night but of his own heart breaking.
“It’s not true,” he croaks. “You didn’t see him. You didn’t see what happened. Something got in him.”
Arthur hides the page away as though trying to save further pain. It does not matter. That picture is in Abel now and will never fade.
“I have letters”—his voice is cracked and jagged as he reaches into his back pocket, spilling the folded papers like pieces of discarded trash, like something Dumb Willie would hide in his pocket or Arthur would bury in his dump—“he told me I’d find treasure and I did. Now I’m going to be healed. You told me the spring is real. Reverend Johnny knew it was, that’s why he sent me. He wants me to find my daddy.”
“He?” Arthur asks. “Or you?”
“It’s a lie. You’re lying to me.”
Dorothy and Dumb Willie peek through the open door.
“I’m not lying, Abel. I speak the truth. It is not meant for you to go on. You must keep from the spring. I promise only death waits there for all you love. You must go home.”
Abel screams, “No!” as a wave of cold grips him with a fierceness that seems to strip away his skin, and here is Dorothy come into their midst, driving Arthur back with a look that isn’t Dorothy at all but something terrible. Dumb Willie looks upon them not as one ignorant but as one straining beneath the knowledge of too much. Arthur yelling, “I did not harm him,” and Abel feeling his body tilt and sway as the picture Arthur holds falls to the ground in front of him, the one of him and Reverend Johnny smiling.
-5-
He watches the three of them move off around the piles of fill dirt and refuse, back toward the gate. They will not be gone for long. An hour is all Arthur told them to wait, and he suffers no illusions that his words have reached deep enough for Abel to ask Death to lead him home. The boy is too stubborn. Too loyal.
The big man carries Abel as a father would a child or a dimwit his pet. Patting the boy’s head, as though that alone will quiet Abel’s tears.
No, they will return. In an hour the three of them will be either at this very door again or at the gate, and Death will demand what it will. Arthur cannot stand against a power such as that. No people can, not even the Real.
And so what is left? What choice does the Keeper of the Stories have open to him now?
Arthur turns his head to see three stragglers still lingering after the landfill’s closing. Harold, Lonnie, and Lester are making their way from one of th
e tanks to the front of the office. Lester leading them, as he always does.
“Boss. Everything all right?”
“Yes, Lester. It’s all fine.”
Lonnie asks, “Them two friends a yours?”
“Wouldn’t call them that.”
“I’d call that young thing a friend,” says Harold, “if I wasn’t married.”
The four of them stand watching as the girl and the big man (as well as the shining boy whom Arthur knows only he can see) blink out around the corner. That big man. Death didn’t give that big man’s name. Arthur knows why. That face has been on the news all week.
“Y’all got anything going on the next little while?” he asks.
“Don’t guess so,” Lonnie says.
“You up for a little overtime? Pays good.”
“How much is good?” asks Lester.
Arthur grins at them. “How about twenty-five thousand?”
-6-
“It’s true,” Abel says. “I seen it myself. It’s Arthur standing with Reverend Johnny. Standing, Dumb Willie. Arthur got healed but it didn’t take. It was all a trick, like my momma said.”
The tears are gone now, all cried out, and all Abel can manage is a whisper that sounds more like a bark through a nose still running with snot. He wipes it with the edge of his cast. They have not gone far from the gate. Dorothy says they shouldn’t in case Arthur decides to sneak away, though she adds she doesn’t think he will. Abel got the feeling Dorothy scared him, though Abel can’t see how that is possible. She’s too pretty to scare anybody, much less a genuine Indian.
Real Person, he corrects.
They’ve taken refuge in a clump of trees across from the landfill’s entrance. Dorothy sits away from them and stares at the locked gate, not crying. Abel has never seen her cry, but she looks like she could.
Dumb Willie says, “That preecher’s . . . magic.”
“No, he ain’t. Reverend Johnny’s just a trick.” Abel wants to cry again now.
Dumb Willie shakes his head, refusing to believe such a thing. “I seen that. Preecher he’s . . . magic.”
“You don’t know, Dumb Willie. You believe everything ’cause that’s your way. Ain’t nothing wrong with it. But I shoulda known. I shoulda seen it.”
“What we gone. Do?”
It hasn’t been easy coming all this way. Their trip from Mattingly has been an arduous one, fraught with dangers aplenty and some sadness too, but those dangers and that sadness have always been softened by the bright times and the fact that, in the end, Abel knew they were all being led. Every step they took and every mile they rode was paved clear by a hand he could not understand or define but only believe. Now that hand has been taken away.
“I don’t know, Dumb Willie. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do now. Or even if I’ll find my daddy. If Reverend Johnny’s a fake, there ain’t no sureness whether I can bring Daddy back home with us or not.” And this thought, which is even worse and which Abel can barely speak: “Or even if we can ever go home again.”
From the trees ahead comes a single soft word: “No.”
Dorothy has turned her head. Her hat sits on the ground beside her and her ponytail has gone missing, leaving her long hair to dangle and curl around her face. The last rays of the day’s sun lights upon her, and in her eyes is an unwavering that speaks not of truth, but of hope.
“What do you mean, no?” Abel asks.
“I mean no. You will go home, Abel. I don’t know when. You want it to be soon, but I don’t. I want it to be as close to forever as you can make it, because I want you to have time to learn and grow and discover and love this life. But you will go home.”
“It’s fun being a hobo,” Abel says, “but not forever, Dorothy. Home’s where I belong. You can go with me.”
Her smile is a sad one. “I don’t know if that’s true. But I know what is. Your Reverend Johnny.”
“He ain’t true. You seen that picture.”
“I did. And that picture doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter a thing.”
She rises and walks to where the two of them sit. Dumb Willie scoots aside to make room.
“Let me ask you something, Abel. Do you believe in magic?”
“Yes.”
“I mean really believe. Not tricks, not the way you make stuff appear and disappear and how you can make folk laugh and go wow. I mean magic, Abel. The big and the small.”
“Yes,” he says again. “Maybe not before, I didn’t. But I do now. All this way we’ve come, everything I seen. Having you with me and Dumb Willie. That night we spent at the pond and then at that woman’s house. Meeting Arthur, who’s nice. I believe it.”
“Then believe a little more. Reverend Johnny didn’t heal you, Abel. He gave you a word. Those two are different things.”
“But it’s the same tricks. I bet all he wanted was to break my heart like he did Arthur’s.”
“That might be what he set out to do, but that’s not what he ended up doing. Was that really him who give you that word, Abel? I wasn’t there, so I don’t know. Dumb Willie wasn’t there either. It was just you, so you’re the only one who can answer it.”
Abel has to admit, “I ain’t ever seen a trick like that. Not even on the TV.”
“Let me tell you something,” Dorothy says. “Something I’ve learned. It’s a ruined world we walk upon. You take a look at all you see and everything that happens. The air ain’t clear no more. Can’t hardly see the stars because of all the lights there is. People die because of earthquakes and hurricanes, die because of a disease they get from being bit by some flying bug. Everywhere you look, it’s like there’s something either dying or dead. But then you look close, you see it ain’t all spoiled. You see mountains like we passed on the trains, how pretty they are and how unspoiled. You step at the ocean’s edge and feel that wind in your face and that sand in your toes, or you walk through a field of wildflowers on a summer’s eve and let your nose fill with honeysuckle. You watch the sun set and you watch it rise. You do those things, you’ll know it isn’t all ruined, Abel. There’s a spark of beauty still. There’s a sense of holiness. There’s magic.”
Dumb Willie mutters, “Magic.”
“Yes,” Dorothy says. “And it’s the same with folk too. Don’t matter how ruined folk are, there’s still that spark inside them. And that spark can’t be killed no matter the bad they do or are, because they didn’t put that spark in themselves. They were born with it. That spark, it’s like a door that can open up inside folk to give them a glimpse of places they forgot was there. It lets them see there’s more to things than they think. And sometimes that door opens so others can see that very same thing.”
“So you think that really wasn’t Reverend Johnny’s trick he did?” Abel asks. “It was that door inside him swinging open for me to see? Or hear? So I could get that word?”
“I think, Abel, there’s more than the three of us know. And I think it’ll take faith to see us the rest of this way. But that way’s not back. That word you got was a shield.” She looks across the empty road to the landfill’s gate. “And you know how to hold a shield, Abel?”
“In front of you,” Abel says.
“That’s right. And you know what that means?”
Abel grins. “Means it only works if you’re going forward.”
-7-
Dorothy doesn’t have to lead the boys over the fence another time. Arthur is there when they cross the road, waiting. He unlocks the gate and swings it open without a word, then locks it behind them.
“We’ll have to take your truck,” Dorothy says. “We came by rail.”
“No need for a truck,” he answers.
He wheels his chair around and pushes it down the dusty road that leads into the landfill. Abel and Dumb Willie trail at a distance.
“He is fading,” says Dorothy.
“I know he fades.”
“How far must we go, then?”
“I would rather dine with the
devil,” Arthur says, “than lead you on.” As to her question, he will not answer.
Dorothy glances back, making sure the boys remain close and yet far enough to be spared the hearing of their words. “You promised your words to Abel would be kind.”
“My words were as kind as I could make them. It is no easy thing to tell a child he has built a foundation upon sand.” He rides on, the wheels crunching gravel. “And I spared him from the worse truth that he drifts at the boundary between worlds. That will be yours to confess. There is time yet, but little.”
He looks a beaten man through the soft light of evening, pale and weakened. To Dorothy, it is as though Arthur Free has surrendered his heart to the belief that he goes to a place from which he will not return. That may be true, and not for him alone. Perhaps they are all moving toward legend, one a protector of the hidden places and one a shepherd for the gone, a boy passing into the veil and his friend the imbecile. And there in the midst of the sacred, Dorothy believes true they will each leave some part of themselves that can never be reclaimed.
“I tell you as I told the boy,” she says. “It matters not what you say or what is in your picture. We are here now, and we have been led by a voice other than a charlatan called Johnny Mills. That is what matters now.”
Arthur grins. They move beyond the trailer and dirt mounds, back toward the office and farther into the landfill’s bowels. Heaps of brush and trash surround them. “You think I don’t know your heart, but it is laid bare before me, and I curse you for it. You may have cared for Abel and his friend. You even may have thought once that the path to free the boy’s soul lay in finding his father. But no more. All that counts for you is to return Abel to the living. And not even that, if I speak true.” He looks ahead. “The voice that has led you is none but your own, and dripping of your own arrogance. You want only to rage against what you are. For that, you would have me betray my people to soften your own pain, and you would fill the boy with lies so that you may ease your own burdens. What have you told him? That the waters will heal his brittleness? That it will leave him more acceptable to a father who never wanted him? It will do neither. It will bring the boy back to the world, and with him will come all the troubles he faced while in it. You know that.”
