“Wh-what are you?” Tabitha asked. A fear welled up in her throat. A familiar fear, as if remembering a nightmare she had months ago.
“I’m a witch, Tabby. You know that,” Julie said.
“What kind of spell did you put on me?”
“I didn’t. I undid a spell I put on you six months ago. An enchantment spell. You saw what you wanted. However I looked, it was all part of your imagination, your fantasy. But I just used the antidote. That’s why you see the real me,” Julie explained.
“You didn’t look like this the first time I saw you,” Tabitha said, looking for an explanation.
“You don’t even remember the first time you saw me. That night at Pete’s apartment, that was just a show,” Julie said. “Let me lay it all out for you. We’ve been at this a while, me and you. Whenever I need to restock my supplies I come looking for you. This time when I found you, you were with Pete. I couldn’t let that slide. You’re my bitch. So I went over to his apartment and dumped some hot coffee right in his lap. That’s when you showed up. Timing couldn’t have been better. Pete walking around wiping coffee off his nuts, me walking out the door, you getting all upset and crying. I’ve known you for years, you’re so vulnerable when you’re crying. It was all too easy.”
“If that’s what happened, then why didn’t Pete call me and explain?” Tabitha asked.
“He forgot dear. I made him forget,” she said.
Tabitha was sobbing into her hands but stopped long enough to ask two questions; “Did you ever really care for me?” and “What are you going to do now?”
“I do care for you. I’m not leaving you for good. I’ll be back once I’m out of ingredients and we’ll do it all over again. But for you, it’ll be like doing it for the first time. I like it that way. You’re so…passionate, intense. If we stayed together for a long time you’d lose that.”
Julie didn’t answer the other question. Instead, she grabbed the second container and popped off the lid. The ingredients went in, and the flames went up. Tabitha kept sobbing.
Julie cleaned up the kitchen, placing the Crock-Pot under the sink. She packed the plastic containers of ingredients into trash bags. Tabitha kept sobbing.
Julie took the labels off the bookshelves and deleted Witchcraft 2.0 from Tabitha’s computer after transferring it to a thumbdrive on her keyring. Tabitha kept sobbing.
Julie kissed Tabitha on the hands that covered her wet cheeks and left, taking the trash bags full of containers with her.
Tabitha stopped sobbing.
She pulled her hands away and looked at them. Why am I crying? she thought to herself. In the bathroom she splashed some water on her face and brushed her teeth. Out the window was nothing but darkness.
Sleep-walking again, she figured. It was a recurring issue. Once or twice a year she’d find herself standing in her apartment, crying. Tabitha thought it was about time to see a doctor about the problem. But for now, she went back to bed.
THE OBLIGATION
by R. Marquez
The bus squealed to a halt. Waves of heat rose from the asphalt surrounding the silver coach, causing the wing emblem on its side panel to shimmer in the hot sunlight.
“What you looking at, Jessica?” Gabriel swiveled on his stool and squinted out the front window of the diner.
The bus’s pressurized door whooshed open. A moment later, the vehicle pulled away from the curb, a tail of diesel smoke boosting its escape. The exhaust dissipated and a woman, clutching a valise, appeared on the sidewalk across the street.
I refilled Gabriel’s mug. “Someone’s come to visit.”
“What kind of dang fool visits Duncanville in summertime?” Gabriel poured sugar and cream into his cup. “Or any time.”
Gabriel, my favorite customer, stopped at the diner every afternoon and entertained me with the local gossip while he ate a piece of pie and drank a cup of coffee.
The woman plodded across the street toward us. “No one came to meet her.”
Gabriel rose and grabbed his cane. “One day in this inferno and she’ll catch the next bus out.”
Gabriel spent his entire life in Duncanville and gave his unvarnished opinion of the town whether asked or not; and at eighty-years old, no one challenged or paid much attention.
“Jessica, you need to hightail it out of here before this place sucks the lifeblood out of you. Whatever happened to college?”
“Someday…”
He puffed out his wrinkled cheeks. “Damn your old man.”
I didn’t respond. We lived in Duncanville, a small farming community in Central Valley, California with a population of two thousand, not including the migrant workers, and though Gabriel’s eyes and ears might not be keen anymore, he knew the life story of everyone in town.
I picked up his empty plate and found two quarters nestled underneath it, a generous tip for a man living off social security. I dropped the change into the pocket of my apron.
The bell hanging above the door tinkled and a gust of wind blew into the diner along with the woman from the bus. Gabriel nodded at her before he ambled down the street.
The woman blinked several times, no doubt, adjusting from the brightness outside to the diner’s darker interior.
“Ma’am, can I get you something?” I asked.
Though her freckled face lost some of the redness from the heat, her scalp remained pink underneath her halo of salt and pepper hair. She walked to the counter, dropped the battered suitcase on the floor, and settled onto the stool Gabriel occupied earlier.
“A glass of water?” The bell-like timbre of her voice didn’t match the worn, middle-aged woman in front of me.
“Thank you, miss.” She sipped the water and opened a package of saltines Gabriel left behind.
Though I wasn’t supposed to encourage non-paying customers to linger, from the faded dress and scuffed shoes she wore, I suspected the woman didn’t have much money to spend.
“The bathroom’s in the back.” That was another no-no on my part.
The lines around her gray eyes crinkled. “Thank you.”
“What brings you to Duncanville?”
The woman’s face brightened. She reached into the pocket of her dress, took out a wallet-sized photograph, and placed it on the counter.
“I’m looking for my son.”
The picture showed a teen-age boy with his mother’s gray eyes and a graduation cap on top of his head.
“I believe he visited this town two years ago, perhaps even made it his home. Do you know him?”
I turned my back on her and returned the water pitcher to its stand. “No, ma’am.”
“He’s older now, turned twenty-eight in May. Would you mind taking another look?”
I forced myself to glance at the man’s face again. “He doesn’t live here.”
Though the dinner crowd wouldn’t show for another hour, I concentrated on making a pot of coffee. After I finished, I glanced her way. Her gray eyes contemplated me and her lips parted, posed to ask another question.
I grabbed two fistfuls of dinnerware and began setting the tables.
“The cook’s gone until four-thirty,” I said over my shoulder.
“I don’t want anything fancy.”
I finished and returned behind the lunch counter. The woman studied the menu board hung over the mirror on the wall behind me.
“All that’s left is the gumbo. There’s a burger place further down Main Street.”
“Soup will do.”
I ladled a serving into a bowl and pushed it toward her.
The woman probed the murky broth with her spoon. “Matt is my second oldest.”
I ran back to the storeroom and returned with a bundle of paper napkins.
Not put off, the woman went on. “I bore six children, three boys and three girls. The boys came first.”
“Mmmm.” I began refilling the dispensers.
“I had my first son at sixteen. What’s your name, dear?”
I let a split second pass before I replied, “Jess.”
“I’m Macy.” She reached her hand over the counter. I barely touched it with my own.
“My husband was a traveling man.” Despite my lack of interest, Macy seemed determined to tell her story. “He stopped at our town in Washington State and took a fancy to me. My parents weren’t too pleased and they gave him a choice— marriage or jail. He left soon afterwards.”
I couldn’t stop myself. “Where did the other five kids come from?”
“Every few years, he remembered he had a wife and stopped for a visit in Couper. That’s near Portland.”
“He saddled you with six kids?”
“I consider each a blessing.”
“I didn’t mean— I’m sure you love all of them.”
“I do. The youngest married six months ago and moved to Seattle with her husband. With all of them grown and living in different cities, I decided to find out what happened to Matt. I sold my house and took the train and a couple of buses here.”
“You came a long way for nothing, ma’am.”
“Macy, call me Macy.”
“The bus stops here at four p.m. Monday through Friday. You can buy a ticket from the driver and he’ll drop you at an Amtrak station.”
Her gray eyes narrowed and I began to squirm. I braced myself for what she might say next.
“A few more crackers might improve this California gumbo.”
I handed her several packets and refilled her water glass.
Macy returned to her story. “The girls all married decent men who promised to treat them right. I made a point of drumming it into my daughters’ heads that they avoid fellows with no prospects and bad characters.”
“I bet your youngest already misses you. Can’t be more than a few days ride to Seattle.”
She ignored me.
“The boys all inherited their father’s restless spirit.” Macy broke the crackers into her soup. “I didn’t win that battle. Though I did make sure they grew into strong, young men, hard workers who knew the difference between right and wrong.”
I caught myself in mid-nod and distracted Macy with another question. “Did your husband ever settle down?”
“My eldest daughter turned thirteen the last time he visited.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I didn’t want him near the girls.” I scarcely registered the flash in her eyes before her mild expression returned. “I made the boys promise to send me postcards from the towns they visited. I’d pin them on a big map of the United States on the living room wall. Looking at those cards made me miss them a tiny bit less.”
She reached into her pocket, took out a picture of Duncanville, and placed it next to the photograph.
“This is the last communication I received from Matt. The postmark’s from here.” She turned it over. A short message scrawled on the back read:
Mom,
Met a man here who promised me work. I’ll be home for Christmas.
Love,
Matt
The writing began to blur.
“Jess?”
I blinked hard. “I doubt anyone will remember him.”
“My son’s hard to forget.” She dropped the spoon into the half-empty bowl. “Is there a place to stay in this town?”
I directed her to the Duncanville Inn, two doors down and impossible for her to miss. She thanked me and left a dollar tip. I stopped myself from running after her to return it.
The next day after Gabriel left, I began to refill the sugar pourers at each table.
The bell tinkled and Macy entered the diner wearing yesterday’s dress.
She perched on a stool. “Hello, Jess. The soup de jour and a glass of water, please.”
She tasted a spoonful. “Is this some kind of chowder?”
“I think so.”
“Your cook must be self-taught.” She touched her lips with a paper napkin and pushed her food aside. In a tone I’d use to discuss the weather, she said, “Matt stayed at the inn for a couple of days two years back.”
I couldn’t believe Beverly, who ran the place for the Duncan family, volunteered that information to a stranger.
Macy read my mind. “I took a peek at the register while the clerk fetched me extra towels. Matt wrote down Duncan Ranch as a forwarding address.”
The door slammed open and my head jerked toward the diner’s entrance.
Joe Duncan slouched in the entryway, letting a hot blast of air along with the smell of his unwashed body assault us. Locks of hair formed dark spikes on top of his head, and his pig-slit eyes lit at the sight of me.
“Coffee and don’t serve me that stale shit left over from lunch.” He swaggered into the diner, dropped his dirty gloves on a table, and sank into a chair.
I picked up the carafe and a mug and walked over to him.
“It’s fresh,” I lied.
He watched me pour the coffee and when I tried to walk away, he grabbed my wrist. “You miss me, Jess?”
“I never miss you.”
His eyes flickered and I knew I’d hurt him. I didn’t care.
“Aren’t we sassy today.” He pulled me onto his lap. “Why do you always try to piss me off?”
I sat silent on his short, thick legs and endured his hand on my thigh.
“Whether you miss me or not, we still have a date Friday night.”
I loathed Friday nights.
“It’s that time of the month,” I said.
“I swear, your time of the month comes every two weeks.”
He’d taken long enough to figure that one out.
“And that better stop or I’ll tell Pop what your old man took from him.” He rubbed my back. “You wouldn’t want that, would you, Jess?”
“He might not care anymore.”
“Two minutes, two years ago, it doesn’t matter. Pop isn’t a forgiving man.”
His hand travelled underneath my apron front “Please, Joe.” I glanced over at Macy who watched us in the mirror hanging behind the counter.
Joe noticed her for the first time. He pushed me off and I scampered to my feet.
“What you looking at, old woman?” He gave her a hard stare.
Macy studied Joe’s reflection.
“I don’t remember seeing you here before. New in town?”
Macy drank from her glass.
“Not much work here for a woman your age, unless you’re strong enough to work the fields on my pop’s ranch.”
Macy didn’t reply.
“What’s the matter? You too high and mighty to pick vegetables or are you deaf?” Joe squealed at his own wit. “If you change your mind, let my gal know.”
Joe deluded himself into believing I was his girlfriend and that he spoke with the weight of his family behind him. Now he turned his attention back to me.
“I’ll pick you up at the tavern tomorrow night and you better let everyone know how happy you are to see me, do you understand?”
I kept quiet. I figured my mouth had already caused me enough trouble. Joe lingered at the door and allowed another hellish blast of heat and stink to despoil the place before he left.
I straightened my clothes and slunk back to my station. I avoided Macy’s eyes.
“A woman shouldn’t take that from a man she hates,” Macy said.
I kept my eyes lowered.
She pushed her empty water glass toward me. “Was that the man who offered Matt work?”
I over-poured her glass. “Dang, I’m sorry.”
I scurried to the back for a fresh rag. When I returned, Macy was gone and the money for the meal and another dollar tip lay on the counter.
I expected her the next day and had her bowl ready.
“Thank you, dear.” She wore the same cotton dress. Whatever she brought in that suitcase, it wasn’t clothes.
She wrinkled her nose at the steam rising from her food. “I can’t begin to guess what’s in this. The old gentleman I met the other day warned me
the cook appeared out of sorts this morning.”
“You talked to Gabriel?”
She nodded. “I ran into him at the hotel. We chatted and the topic of how few people visit Duncanville came up. He remembered a young man visiting for a few days a couple of years back. The man asked everyone on Main Street for work. Gabriel figured the fellow didn’t find any since he disappeared soon after that.”
“Gabriel’s memory isn’t too reliable these days.”
“He remembers more than you think. I described the man who came into the diner yesterday, and he gave me an earful.”
A feeling of inevitability began to seep into me.
“He said Joe is the youngest son of the Duncan clan.”
“True.”
“He washed out of college and every job his father arranged for him. Eventually, his dad banished him to their ranch. I hear he doesn’t do much except lord it over everyone.”
I refused to contribute to her trove of information.
Macy continued. “You began seeing Joe two years ago, right?”
Instead of answering, I asked, “Did Gabriel inquire why you’re here?”
She shook her head. “No, he’s a wise old bird.”
Macy was treading on dangerous ground and I needed to stop her. “Forget everything he told you and take the next bus home. No one goes against the Duncans and wins.”
Macy banged her spoon against the soup bowl and red droplets splattered on the counter. “Listen, young lady, I’m not helpless against them and neither are you.”
I didn’t know how to respond. She paid for her meal and strode toward the door. Her hand on the knob, she gazed back at me with what seemed to me to be a mixture of pity and wrath. Then she was gone.
The next afternoon arrived but Macy didn’t. The hours ticked away and I felt the dread that each Friday evening brought me. After I closed the diner, I walked home, changed into fancy underwear, and took the tags off a skimpy dress Joe bought me. I needed to make up for my smart mouth and I wasn’t looking forward to it.
Kzine Issue 9 Page 10