Some Small Magic

by Billy Coffey

  This time there will be no means of hemming that soul back.

  There is a concern (a small one stacked against the many larger worries that now plague Dorothy) that Arthur knows of Abel’s father and Fairhope. It is well within his power to alert the law of where the three of them will likely turn next, leaving Dorothy to trust Arthur will hold that knowledge as secret. He will call the men’s deaths an act resulting from the collapse of a rising mound of household appliances that should have been buried long ago and not tempt fate further than he already has this night. More than most, Arthur must understand there comes a day when all must settle the accounts of their lives and lay their own hearts in the balance. Perhaps it will be to Arthur Free of the Real People’s comfort that his judgment does not fall to Dorothy. But that comfort will be tempered by the understanding that none can hide from Death. No, not one.

  She turns the letter over in her hands, Abel’s proof that where they go is right—meant. The few smudges and squiggles Dorothy can make out offer her little assurance. Only pain waits for the boy in Fairhope. Only a father who will not see the face of his child even if that father is found, at which point Dorothy will take Abel home. There will be no choice in that, not now. Abel will leave and will leave Dumb Willie to face the cold world alone, and Abel will look back.

  He will look back as they all look back.

  Abel rummages through the glove box and finds a plastic card that he hands back to Dorothy. He says this truck is owned by a man named Harold Franklin of Raleigh. Dorothy knows the face as one of the two she took to the path.

  “Don’t think that man will begrudge us the use of his full tank of gas,” she says.

  Dorothy believes her words to be true. Harold will understand, seeing as how he has been reunited with his own daddy now.

  -2-

  Every so often Abel will turn and grin at the wonder that has ruined Dorothy’s melancholy, if only for a while. Only twice since their meeting has she looked caught in genuine surprise. When Abel said he loved her was one. Then tonight, when those men came bearing their guns and shot Dumb Willie. Abel suspects he could count what happened after as well, though it hadn’t been surprise on Dorothy’s face when Dumb Willie got put in that water. Her expression then had been something more, and worse.

  But that’s okay now. Dorothy doesn’t know, but it is. They are on their way to Fairhope, and everything is going to be fine.

  “See?” Abel asks, his grin so wide that he feels the back of his scalp flexing. “Told you Dumb Willie could do it. He drives all the time.”

  Not that Abel (or Dumb Willie, for that matter) held the belief that maneuvering a real vehicle over real pavement could ever be akin to steering Henderson Farmer’s tractor over empty fields. But surely the principles of operating a dead man’s truck must work just the same, and Dumb Willie’s going is made smoother with Dorothy to offer direction and Abel to tell which signs mean stop, which mean look-before-you-go, and how fast the state of North Carolina says they can proceed with a degree of safety. Abel subtracts ten from every posted limit and keeps an eye on their speed.

  To his credit, Dumb Willie responds as a champion. Whether through luck or will or the presence of some extra something in that water, he keeps the car’s nose to the center of the unmarked road they travel and only runs off the shoulder three times—none of them to harm. Even these cannot be laid to Dumb Willie’s blame. He is distracted by Abel’s presence, asking, “You oh. Kay?” and “We oh. Kay?”

  Yes, Abel thinks. Everything is fine.

  *

  They dump the truck near midnight in an algae-covered pond not far from a stretch of lonely railroad tracks, along a dirt road none of them believe leads anyplace in particular.

  Dumb Willie sets the gear to neutral and pushes hard on the open door, guiding the truck down a slight incline. He scatters to safety as the front end crashes into the water. Abel and Dorothy watch at a distance. The three of them wait in silence as the pond roils and gurgles, swallowing the wheels and windows and finally the tip of the antenna.

  Dumb Willie officiates the burial. He thanks the truck for bringing them here and the man named Harold Franklin for filling up the gas tank before he died, and then he lifts a final petition that they will find Abel’s daddy and his daddy will have hot food.

  Abel thinks it a fine prayer.

  They walk a mile or more and find an open space along a bend in the tracks that Dorothy says is good for waiting. There’s no telling when the next train will come, and they’ll have to wait for an eastbound. That should get them to Fairhope, hopefully by morning.

  Dumb Willie curls his head atop Dorothy’s bag and drifts to sleep among dewing grass and the flicker of a thousand lightning bugs. The air is warm. They go without a fire.

  Abel is on his back, staring at a great swath of Milky Way above. Dorothy lies next to him. Crickets sing, a distant frog. From far away comes the night song of a lonely mockingbird.

  “Dorothy?”

  “Yes?”

  “You mad at me?”

  He cannot look at her as he waits for the answer, too afraid of what he may see. His momma got mad at him sometimes, like when she found out what Abel did with Chris and like with that money he gave to Reverend Johnny. Lisa never looked angry. She never pursed her lips and puffed out her cheeks and yelled. Her eyes never turned cold and flinty. Never once did Abel’s momma bare her teeth at him but to smile. What she would sometimes do instead was drop her shoulders and put her head low, or breathe heavy as she pressed her hands to her temples. Sometimes, when it was really bad, Abel’s momma wouldn’t even look at him at all. Abel never thought those things meant anger. He reckoned them more as disappointment, and seeing that in his momma’s eyes was always harder to bear. Having to see those same things now with Dorothy would be even worse. Abel doesn’t think he could see those things and not cry, no matter how brave he is.

  “I could never be mad at you, Abel,” she says. “No matter what.”

  “Because you looked mad. Back there at Arthur’s place. And when we left. You looked mad.”

  “Maybe I was, but not at you. Mostly at me. You were the one supposed to get in that water, Abel. Not Dumb Willie.”

  “It wasn’t meant for me to get in that water. I thought it was, but now I know it wasn’t. I had to put Dumb Willie in.”

  “Sometimes we have to sacrifice a lot to get a taste of the things we want most,” she says.

  “Not that much. Nothing I’d ever want would be worth letting Dumb Willie die. I had to save him, Dorothy. He saved me.”

  “That isn’t a debt that should have been repaid in such a way. You gave up too much, Abel. More than you know. It was your only chance to be made well.”

  “It weren’t a debt,” Abel says. “That’s not why I did it.”

  “Then why?”

  Abel shrugs his good shoulder, though he knows Dorothy can’t see.

  “Because it’s what folk do,” he says. “I don’t guess you know that, seeing as how you always been all by yourself and alone. But folk take care of each other. That’s how it’s always been. It’s the only way anybody can ever get on. Dumb Willie was dying, Dorothy, but he was still trying to get me in that water. All I saw was him in trouble. I had to help. Just like you helped us.”

  She goes quiet. The stars shine down.

  “Abel, there’s something I got to tell you.”

  “Let’s have it wait.”

  “I don’t think it can.”

  “I do. Let’s have it wait, Dorothy. Just lay with me here, and let’s look at the stars.”

  She goes quiet again.

  Near dawn, the train comes. It begins with a low whistle far off to their right and deep shadows that cut through the thin night like a needle, and by the time that train reaches them it has slowed to such a speed that Dorothy and Dumb Willie do not clamber on but merely climb, Abel in Dumb Willie’s arms. There is no boxcar, though an empty cattle car trailing at the end is far from t
he eyes of the conductor and engineer. The side door is swung wide, welcoming them. Straw lines the wood floor inside.

  To Abel, it is as though the train was sent for them alone.

  -3-

  They wait out that ride in the way each of them has now grown accustomed, sitting side by side at the wide-open door as the world flies by, their feet keeping to the edge so as not to be discovered. Beyond them the sun awakens to shine over the corn and tobacco fields of the Carolina coastal plain. Abel has never seen land such as this, so flat and wide. There is neither a mountain nor a hill to be seen.

  “I never did see the ocean,” he says. “Not in my whole life. You ever seen one, Dumb Willie?”

  He shakes his head as though that word is foreign.

  “Ocean’s not far from here,” says Dorothy. “Though I don’t suppose we’ll get quite that way. Our road ends not far on, Abel.” She lays a hand to his knee. “We’re almost there. Fairhope’s not far.”

  Not far.

  Fairhope. The word remains as beguiling now as it was when Abel first read it on the front of that envelope. He only wishes the expectation that has carried him all this way could carry him these last miles as well, making him float to town rather than feeling as though he and his friends stumble toward it.

  “Thank you, Dorothy,” he says.

  “For what?”

  “Bringing me here. I know you didn’t have to.”

  “I did,” she says. “I don’t know much of life, Abel, but all I have seen has told me there is little sweetness to it deep down. Every breath drawn holds promise and passion both, but it’s all tinged with a measure of sadness that the things folk hold on to carry as much sadness to them as they do joy. At the end of it, all people are is restless. They always go searching but seldom find, even as the thing they search for is most often right in front of them. I didn’t want that to be the same for you. I wanted you to find, and here we are.” She bends down, putting her face to his ear, whispering, “Are you still excited?”

  “I am,” he says, though Abel does not say he is only excited some. His anticipation is great no more. Not gone, but tempered by the knowing that the end of their adventure is near. All things must end sometime, he thinks. Even the good things.

  Just as all that comes after is to bow to what must be.

  *

  They jump for the last time near a crossing where the train slows and whistles its warning. Abel stands in the center of the track and watches the last car fade. He takes Dumb Willie’s hand and Dorothy’s, putting himself in the middle as they follow the rails a few miles more. Houses begin to rise at either side. Roads appear, stocked with vehicles that look like ants marching. And in the distance, a town rises.

  The mark Dorothy finds farther on is their first since Greenville, carved at the bottom of a welcome sign with Fairhope, NC, est. 1787 burned into the wood. Abel kneels to see it. The symbol looks like a rectangle with its bottom portion missing and a dash scratched upward from the top line.

  Dorothy runs a finger over the grooves. Her lips move but no words come, and her eyes, wet and unbelieving, shine as glass.

  “What is it?” Abel asks. “What’s wrong?”

  Dorothy shakes her head. “Don’t believe it is all. Thought we was cast off, but we weren’t. We never were.” She lays a hand against the sign and dips her chin as if praying. Dumb Willie does the same, though Abel doesn’t know why.

  “What do you mean ‘cast off’?”

  “Tell you soon enough, Abel. But this is the way we’re to go. Always was. Ain’t no hobo made this mark.”

  “Then who did?”

  “Something other. Beyond. I’m a fool, Abel. Thought I was leading you all the time. Turns out, you were leading us.”

  She rubs the symbol again. Softer this time and only after wiping her hand on the leg of her jeans, as though she caresses a holy thing.

  Abel looks at Dumb Willie, whose head remains bowed.

  “What’s that sign say, Dorothy?”

  She looks up to him, smiling even with her eyes.

  “Says, ‘Here. This is the place.’ ”

  *

  Few things of this world exist in as much perfection as they are dreamed of in the heart. Fairhope is one. The town is not only all Abel imagined, it may even be more.

  The first homes are a smattering of Cape Cods and farmhouses that have worn well in old age. An elderly woman sits in a rocker on her front porch, her company a steaming cup and the morning’s paper. She looks up to smile and wave. Dorothy and Dumb Willie return good mornings as they pass, leaving Abel to stare and wonder about how things could have been. Their road becomes a street not far on, rows of mailboxes and flower beds, American flags tilting from porch posts or waving from aluminum poles. A yellow ribbon is cinched around an oak, the words Come home soon, Johnny written in crayon on a cardboard sign beneath. A child’s bike sits on its side in fresh-cut grass, the front wheel turning slow. Long backyards. Swimming pools.

  “Is a nice place, Fairhope,” Dorothy says.

  Abel agrees. Aside from the flatness of this place, it’s as if they’ve not left Mattingly at all.

  They walk on, none of them speaking. Abel suspects the same is true of Dorothy and Dumb Willie as of himself: nothing they could say would approach what they feel. There is no need to ask for directions; nothing has been left unsaid. And isn’t this itself, Abel thinks, a kind of enchantment? One no less and no more than any he’s found on their long way?

  Doesn’t everything and all hold its own small magic, waiting to be revealed to one who merely bends close enough to behold it?

  They do not wander Fairhope’s streets but walk with slow purpose, keeping themselves as ghosts. Passing storefronts with doors wide to the summer air, smells of fresh bread from a diner not unlike Roy’s and fresh petals from a florist, the thick scents of rubber and grease coming from a busy mechanic’s shop. The sidewalk grows from somewhat empty to mostly full. Dorothy keeps them away from the center and into the shadows cast by the awnings. Those who pass do so quickly. Some rub their bare arms; others sigh beneath wrinkled brows and looks of fleeting worry.

  Cars idle at a lone stoplight. Birds sing from the trees rising from the pavement’s edge, making Dumb Willie cock his head and listen. Abel’s eyes are to every street sign, reading the letters with such intensity that he feels his lips moving with each word—Sunset Street, Kinley Boulevard, Maple Circle. All through the town of Fairhope they move, from one border of quiet neighborhoods through its center filled with shops and newspaper vans and street sweepers and on, until the bustle of early morning yields once more to the stillness of fields and homes.

  And here, two blocks down and at the end of a quiet lane shaded by dogwoods, Abel spots a slender metal pole sunk into the ground. Two signs rest at right angles. The one parallel with them reads Barterbrook Rd. The other, pointing left, is what stops Abel with a suddenness that would have made Dumb Willie barrel into him were it not for Dorothy’s outstretched arm.

  The words on that sign read Kable St.

  “We’re here,” Abel says. “Dorothy, we’re here.”

  A smile creeps in, a burning Abel cannot push back and so allows to bloom and consume him.

  Dorothy shields her eyes and peers through the traffic toward the opposite side of the street. “Kable?” She stands motionless except for the slow rocking of her knees, the hand over her brow trembling. Abel watches her. It’s as though she reads in this sign not words but a portent of their ruin. “Does that say Kable?”

  “We made it”—chuckling now, Abel yielding himself to joy. Yes, he thinks, joy. That was what he had felt on that old wood bench outside Principal Rexrode’s office so long ago, that tingly feeling he couldn’t quite explain. And on the heels of this revelation he finds another, more powerful one, that what he’d felt while talking to Miss Ellie and waiting on his momma wasn’t joy at all. That had only been joy’s shadow, some poor imitation of a thing he now believes had passed by the
short days of his life, never to be experienced. He smiles again, thinking of that word—joy. Feeling it now and finally, reveling in the knowing that its fleetingness cannot in any way dim it. “I can’t believe we’re here.”

  Dorothy says, “Wait, Abel. I didn’t know this place was Kable. I didn’t know—”

  But Abel has had too much of waiting, and he knows time is short. He takes Dumb Willie by the hand and they run, leaving Dorothy to beg them to stay. Into the street and across, weaving among squealing tires and bellowing horns as Dumb Willie waves and hollers, “Koose. Me,” then scurrying down the empty side street cooled by morning shadow.

  Pear trees and willows and dogwoods stand to their left, green in the sun. Beyond sits a baseball field. A pile of bicycles rests against one of the light posts, their owners children who have already gathered for the day’s pickup game. Abel inhales the smells of summer, grass freshly cut and flowers blooming in sweet dew.

  On they run, Dumb Willie struggling to keep up and Abel refusing to slow, propelled by his stumpy legs and uneven hips in a speed near unimaginable to him, driven by love. He turns to see the grin on Dumb Willie’s face and Dorothy charging from way behind. Her hair flies. The leather bag bounces at her hip with each stride. Upon her face is a look not of joy but of fear. She is yelling.

  Past where the children play and hit and catch is another field, this not of chalk lines and bleachers but flowering crops. The garden is larger than any Abel has ever seen, bigger even than the woman’s, and here he stops at the call from behind.

  “Sparra,” Dumb Willie yells. “Sparra A. Bull.”

  Abel turns. Dumb Willie’s face has gone bright red and he heaves, bending to put his hands on his knees. He points toward three sparrows turning in the air over the field.

  “It’s. There,” he says.

  “Come on, Dumb Willie. There ain’t no time.”

  “No A. Bull it’s. There.”

  A sign not far reads Fairhope Community Garden, Mon.–Sat. 1 pm–7 pm. Men work in the field, all of them dressed in jeans and denim shirts rolled past their elbows to ward off the morning heat. At the sides of the field stand two more men, watching.