Wizard of the Pigeons

by Megan Lindholm

  Or had he? He coughed again, not as strenuously this time, a racking cough nonetheless. He had walked in the cold rain yesterday, and then slept damp and chill. It was no wonder he had a cough. The only strange thing was that he hadn’t gotten it long before this. He brushed his hair back from his damp forehead, feeling the tenderness of old scar tissue just back of his hairline. He took his hand away from it and shoved it deep into his jacket pocket. He hunched his shoulders against the evening and began the cold trek to a bus stop.

  THE BUS RIDE did not warm him. When he disembarked in the general area of home, he was still deeply chilled. The city seesawed around him. His feet knew where to take him, but nothing looked familiar. He focused himself on the streets determinedly. He belonged here. He had worked a long time to belong here. He knew this place, knew every damn square foot of it. He knew more about Seattle than people that had lived here fifty years. It couldn’t turn its back on him now. He willed it to be alive, in the frightening and invigorating way Cassie had opened him to. But the building’s remained faceless, mere stone and mortar and wood and glass. When his magic had fled, it had taken all magic with it.

  He stamped his feet a little harder on the sidewalks, to waken his numbed toes and stir the city beneath him. These sidewalks were hollow. He knew that. How many residents of Seattle knew that the sidewalks were hollow, with enough space beneath them for folk to walk around? Well, it was true. The hollow sidewalks came into being after the fire of 1889, as a very indirect result of it.

  After the great fire, when the whole damned downtown area burned in less than seven hours, the city decided to rebuild itself in brick. No more wood buildings to invite another tragedy like that. And shortly after that, the city decided to raise the streets and suspend the plumbing mains under them. It was all the fault of those newfangled flush toilets. They had worked fine, on an individual basis. Folks just piped the stuff out into the garden patch or over the property lines. But when there got to be a lot of them, and folks joined up to funnel the stuff into big pipes that went out into the bay, problems cropped up. The system worked just fine, as long as the tide was going out.

  But when the tide came in, the sea paid back a dividend to all the residents in the lower parts of town. The easy solution was to raise the streets and put the plumbing mains under the new, higher streets. The sewage backup would be solved! But by the time the city got around to raising the streets, a lot of businesses had already constructed new buildings. So you had buildings that had their ground-floor store front windows eight to forty feet below street level. People had to climb up ladders to cross the streets. Horses fell from the streets onto the sidewalks below. In 1891 alone, there were seventeen deaths due to falls from the street to the sidewalks. It was not a good town to get drunk in.

  So, of course, the city finally had to raise the sidewalks as well. This changed a lot of ground floor space into cellars.

  That’s how the underground shopping began. For years the people of Seattle strolled along on the original sidewalks, their way lit by bottle-glass skylights set into the new sidewalks above. At first, the city had tried skylights made of thick clear glass. But young apprentices soon took to spending their lunch hours gazing up through the skylights at the passing ladies.

  Some of the more obliging hookers wrote their prices on the bottoms of their shoes. Morality demanded that the skylights be made opaque.

  “I ain’t interested!” The man walking in front of Wizard turned around and growled at him.

  Wizard halted off the sidewalk in confusion. He had been wandering, not watching where he was going, and talking out loud about the history of Seattle like a weirdo. He shut his jaws firmly, clenching his teeth shut. They wanted to chatter against each other. He pulled his jacket closer around himself and hurried on, passing the man who had snarled at him. First and Yesler. Home was only a few blocks away.

  As he entered Occidental Square, the pigeons rose and swirled over his head. A pang of loss jarred him. He had nothing for the hungry ones. He bowed his head and tried to hurry past them, but they refused to be ignored. Down they came like huge, dirty snowflakes, eddying around him, obscuring his vision with their flicking wings. The snap of pinions stung his face as they fought for the privilege of alighting on him. They settled on his shoulders, a feathered yoke of responsibility. He shook them off, gently at first, then more violently, like a dog trying to shake off water. Their questioning coos became alarmed. One tried to land on his head, missed his perch, and Wizard felt small cold feet and claws scrabble down his cheek.

  “Leave me alone!” he cried out, and as swiftly as the storm had come, it dispersed. He watched them scatter up to black tree limbs and desolation filled his soul.

  Ashamed, he fled them, scurrying across the square to the Grand Central Arcade and the gas fireplace. He rattled facts in his head to hold his despair at bay. It dated from 1889, this ivy clad building, and it had been the Squire Latimer Building.

  It boasted access to the old underground shopping. He squeezed his lips shut to keep from muttering to himself, but his wayward mind clutched at the distraction, hooking his identity to the city. He was losing his grip on both.

  The sudden warmth of the mall made his nose start to drip. He hurried to the men’s room for tissue. He plucked a handful of stiff leaves from the dispenser and scoured his nose with them. He stared blearily into the mirror. He looked like hell. Like he had died and someone had reheated the body in a microwave. He smiled mirthlessly at himself, a death’s head grin. As he stuffed extra tissues into his pocket, his hand encountered coins. He fished them out and looked at them. A quarter, a dime, and a nickel. Forty cents. Worth virtually nothing in terms of food. Coffee was up to fifty cents a cup, and the ten-cent donut was a fragment of the past. But the coins were something to clutch as he strolled through the mall stores, seeking some sort of sustenance.

  He made three circuits of the shops. He ventured up the stairs that had once led him to Cassie and safety. They stopped at street level and looked at him blankly. He pushed gently at the bare wall, feeling weak, tired, and sick. It turned him away and he returned to the underground stores.

  He found a blacksmith working his forge and selling coathooks. He found greeting cards with cats on them, and crystals for sale, and jewelry, flowers, and an art gallery and rare books.

  He found nothing edible for forty cents. And he felt no warmer.

  The chill that swept through him in waves seemed to come from his bones, flowing from the chill ashes of his magic. It was an exhausting, shivering cold that wearied him into an icy sweat. He stumbled back up the stairs to the street level of the arcade and the gas fireplace. He had no trouble finding a seat near the flames; the shoppers were thinning as the stores began to close for the night.

  Numbly he sat, trying to absorb warmth. His eyes fixed on a woman tending a vendor’s cart. It was a red popcorn stand, selling salted or caramel popcorn. The woman was scooping up her cooling wares with a shiny metal scoop and packing the popcorn into big plastic bags. Wizard stared at the placard on her cart until the words burned into his senses. Popcorn, eighty cents. Carmel Corn, sixty cents. Small, forty cents. The misspelling of caramel vexed him unreasonably. He wanted to demand that they change the sign immediately. Then the final line hit him. Forty cents. Salt beckoned him.

  The woman looked up at him in a bored but guarded way as she went on shoveling popcorn. “Can I help you?” she asked in a voice that indicated she didn’t want to.

  “Popcorn.” Wizard was amazed at his croak. He tried to clear his throat and coughed instead as he brought the change out of his pocket and proffered it to her.

  “It’s cold, you know. I’m just cleaning out the machine.”

  “That’s okay. It’ll be fine.”

  “I already counted out for the night.”

  He tried to reply, but a chill hit him. He pulled his jacket closed across his chest. Her eyes narrowed, then relaxed into a guarded pity. Poor junkie. She snapped
open a small bag and packed popcorn into it. She pushed it into his hand and dropped his coins in the till without counting them.

  Wizard took the bag awkwardly. She had stuffed it over full and as he put his fingers in, a few kernels leaped out onto the floor. A man who had walked up beside him glared down at the popcorn on the floor as he commented loudly. “Arcade stores are getting ready to close now.” Wizard nodded without looking at him and headed toward the tall doors.

  Outside, a gust of wind carried off the top layer of popcorn.

  The darkening skies had banished the pigeons. No one would salvage the flurry white puffs until they were sodden and gray beneath the dawn. He was just as glad there were no birds to greet him. There wasn’t enough here for a tenth of his flock.

  He stuffed a few kernels into his own mouth and immediately lost his appetite for more. A fit of shivering rattled him. He twisted the top of the bag to seal it and stuffed it into his pocket.

  “So here you are,” she said.

  He turned, needing Cassie. She smiled up at him and the depth of his misfortune engulfed him. He could only stare at her. Her face was turned up to his and raindrops misted her lashes. He realized belatedly that it was raining. Drops were darkening her blond hair. She was giving him a strange look, half-smile, half-frown.

  “Don’t look so blank, honey. Lynda, remember? I told you to meet me here this morning, for breakfast. But I was late and I guess you gave up on me. So I felt just awful. But I figured, well, maybe he’ll be around there when I get off work tonight. So I came by here, and sure enough, there you are coming out of the arcade.”

  Her chatter went too fast for him. By the time he absorbed the meaning of one sentence, she was two sentences away. He groped to reply. “I wasn’t here this morning.” The words dragged past the rawness of his throat. Lynda didn’t appear to hear them. At the sound of his croak, her eyes went wide. She pressed her cold hand to his forehead and then the side of his neck.

  “You’re burning up! Let’s get you out of this rain. Hey— I know just the place; it’s a great little place, lots of really healthy food, you know, fiber and vitamins and stuff that’s good for you. Come on, now.”

  Her arm was through his and her hand gripped his jacket right above his elbow. She hurried him along with short quick steps that put his long legs off stride. She appeared not to notice as she chattered on about a customer who had left her tip in the bottom of his water glass, and another who had wanted her to go out with him after work. “He smelled just awful, like mildewed cheese, you know what I mean.”

  Her words pattered and splashed against him like the rain, drowning his thoughts. The streets were shiny, their wet pavement reflecting the streetlights. She hurried him across south Main and into the Union Trust Annex and down some stairs.

  She paused for breath on the stairs and he murmured, “Back into underground Seattle.” Lynda frowned up at his non sequitur. He felt a tiny triumph. “Notice the rough brick work of the building fronts down here. These all used to be ground floors, and now they’re basements. Did I ever tell you the story of the fire of 1889? A carpenter’s apprentice let a pot of hot glue boil over. I learned all about it at the Klondike Gold Rush Memorial National Park. Just down the street.”

  “You don’t make any sense,” she told him earnestly. “Come on.”

  She tugged at him and he followed her into City Picnics,.

  She didn’t pause to order at the counter, but took him straight to a table and parked him on a bench with her shopping bag and raincoat. Then she left him. He looked around dully. The tables were inlaid with genuine artificial wood. He didn’t like it, but had to admit it was well done. He put his hand against the honest brick of the wall, feeling its integrity.

  Someone loomed over the table. He turned to look up at her. But it was a stranger who bent down to put her face close to his as she whispered.

  “You dummy! If you had listened, you would understand. War,” she hissed, her breath vile, “is a sin, and it has to be atoned for. Penance. That’s the only way out of it.”

  That old accusation. Someone had beaten her recently. Her features were swollen and blue, her ragged hair caught back in a ratty old scarf. Her words accused and snagged on old scars. “I didn’t start the war,” he tried to explain. “I didn’t want the war.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” she snapped. “Listen to me. It’s not a sin you commit, fool. It’s a sin that happens to you. Passed on, like heredity and original sin. Like your mother’s dimples or syphilis. It might not have been yours to start with, but once you’ve got it, it’s yours. Are you going to let it infect you and eat up your whole life?”

  “It wasn’t my war,” he insisted, begging her to say it was true. But she only smiled evilly.

  “No? Then whose was it? Are you going to tell me it wasn’t a hell of a lot of fun, when it wasn’t just plain hell? Are you going to tell me that you’ll ever feel that alive again? Isn’t your life all the same now, day after day, beset by problems you’re not allowed to solve? Wasn’t it all simpler with a rifle in your hands?”

  “What do you want of me?” he groaned.

  “Get up. Come on. This one is your war, and yours alone. Don’t run away from it. You have to fight.”

  He stared up at her, shaking, trickles of sweat or rain funneling down his face. She was so ugly and so close. She kept leaning closer, leering at him with her puffy eyes and squashed mouth. She was making him want to hit her, just so she would go away.

  “Excuse me!” Lynda’s voice was politely venomous. “We’re together.” She shouldered past the woman with the professional grace and balance of a waitress, to land food on the table before him. A huge sandwich like a torpedo for Wizard, salad for herself, and two foaming mugs. “Michelob on tap!” she said with a flourish, and slid one over to him. She plumped down on the bench beside him, squeezing him up against the wall.

  The old woman wandered off muttering. Lynda glared after her. “Jee-sus H. They ought to lock up some of the crazies in this town, you know what I mean? What was she saying to you?”

  “I don’t remember.” He stared down at the food in front of him. The smell had flooded his mouth with saliva. He could think of nothing else.

  “So eat!” Lynda laughed, seeing his stare. “I got you a Gobbler on sourdough. Hope you like everything in a turkey sandwich, ‘cause that’s what you got.”

  Wizard ate ravenously, scarcely chewing, enjoying the scraping of large hunks of food moving down his throat. He washed it down with draughts of the cold beer whenever his mouth got too dry to chew. There was lettuce, tomatoes, onions, turkey and cheese, and the fragrant, chewy bread itself. He didn’t see Lynda as he ate, only becoming aware of her when she replaced his mug with a full one. He didn’t care for the beer, but drank it for the moisture. He recalled the taste, the slight bitterness. He seemed to remember that when be had been thirsty, they never let him have any, but there were too many times when there was too much of it and he had drunk beer until his belly sloshed. When that had been he could not be sure; there was only the unpleasant memory of thick cigarette smoke and too many people talking too loudly. His mind veered from the thought. He took a final swallow and stared in surprise at his empty plate.

  “Hungry guy,” Lynda observed with maternal pride. “Finish off your beer. Bet you feel better now.”

  Wizard checked. He was not sure himself that better was an accurate description. He felt heavy, logy as a sated wolf.

  His neck did not seem as strong as usual. It took a small portion of his concentration to keep his head upright; it wanted to sag onto the table. Setting down his empty mug, he leaned heavily into the wall and sighed. The honesty of the bricks comforted him. He looked at the woman beside him very carefully. This was the second time she had fed him, yet she did not make him feel that he owed her anything. She was smiling at him, seeming glad of his attention. She had blue eyes and a straight. nose and abundant blond hair. Her mouth was too generous for contemporary
beauty, but he found he liked it. Her hands, lying soft and empty on the table top, were small, but not well cared for. Working hands.

  “What?” she asked softly.

  “I am trying to figure you out,” he told her solemnly.

  “There isn’t much to figure out.” She gave a deprecating little laugh. “I’m just me. Just what you see. Maybe you think I want something from you, because of the way I’ve, well, almost picked you up. But that’s not how it is, really. I don’t like to be alone. That’s part of it. And I like helping people. I know that sounds corny, but it really is true. When I saw you sitting alone on the bench with only pigeons for company, my heart just went out to you. I mean, at first I was really pissed at you for the way you took Booth’s breakfast, and let me get all the blame for it. But even right there in Duffy’s, I looked at you and couldn’t stay mad. The way you peeked around your newspaper, suddenly it just seemed so funny. Did you see Booth’s face when he tossed down my keys and his food was gone? Did you see him?”

  Lynda began to giggle. Wizard watched her face, studying the sparkle that came into her eyes and made her girlish. There was something here for him, something warm. He caught at that thought and tried to find the sense in it, but he could no longer follow it.

  She had his hand. He looked down in some surprise, wondering why he hadn’t noticed her touch before. Her hands were white in contrast to his. His were browned and bony with little gristly scars on his knuckles. The comparison made him feel strong. She squeezed his hand gently, and the touch was good.

  “You haven’t told me a thing about yourself. And I’ve talked and talked about me, and I suddenly realize that I just bought dinner for a man, I don’t even know his name. So what’s your name?”