Jack builds up the fire and takes the cloth from the birdcage to find that she hasn't got a bird caught in there, but a toad. A toad girl, actually. An old spirit who'd never heard about avoiding the kindness of witches. Didn't pay attention to the learning stories when they were told to her, I guess, or maybe she was just never in the company of anyone who knew them, which is probably more likely.
Well, he takes her out of the birdcage and puts the cuckoo witch in, lays the cloth over the cage again. Then he sits by the fire with that little toad in the palm of his hand, considering her, not like the witch did, weighing what she might be worth to him, but taking into account what she's worth to herself. He thinks he's trying to discover her name, but that's only because he doesn't remember that once on a time, back on that first day, he knew everybody. What he's really doing is trying to remember her name.
When it finally comes to him, he says it aloud.
"Charlotte."
And that lets her shake off her toad skin. He sets her down on the ground and the next thing you know he's got himself a brown-skinned toad girl sitting there with her broad face smiling at him.
" 'Cept my friends call me Tottie," she says.
"I guess I knew that," Jack tells her. "But naming you Tottie might've brought you back as a hot drink."
"That's a toddy."
Jack shrugs, which makes her giggle and him smile. But that toad girl's good humor doesn't last long. After a moment she turns to look into the fire and sighs.
"What's the matter?" Jack asks.
"Guess I'm pretty much a dumb old toad," she tells him.
"What makes you say that?"
"Letting myself get taken in the way I did,"
Jack shakes his head. "Smartest person in the world can still be tricked—especially when she doesn't know the rules. You don't want to start on belittling yourself, Tottie. You've got a good heart and that's more important than just about anything."
"Doesn't stop a witch from catching you and fixing to fry you up in her skillet."
"Maybe not. But the evil people do, that's their responsibility. The burden they have to carry. Sure, when we see 'em starting on causing some hurt, we've got to try and stop 'em, but mostly what the rest of us should be concerning ourselves with is doing right by others. Every time you do a good turn, you shine the light a little farther into the dark. And the thing is, even when we're gone, that light's going to keep shining on, pushing the shadows back."
"Yon really think so?" Tottie asks.
Jack gives her a solemn nod. "There's a lot of things in this world I've got to guess at, but that's one thing I know for sure."
3.
Long after everybody else is gone, Kerry and I are sitting in the grass by that old stone in Jack's field of grace. I'm feeling a little strange, being here. This is where Jack buried that little bundle of bones and hair that the doctors took out of Kerry all those years ago. There's no marker with my name on it, though. There's no marker for our mother's grave, either. The only one Jack has for now is a small plot of turned earth, but soon enough the grass and wildflowers will grow up and cover it over. Which is how they would have wanted it, I tell Kerry when she asks why there's no gravestones.
"I didn't get that story Jack wanted you to tell," Kerry says after a while. "I mean, I understand about treating people right—the way you'd want them to treat you—but there seemed to be more to it that went right by me."
I lean back on that stone so that I can look up into the sky. I've never been to this place before, but I understand now why it meant so much to our parents. It's one of those places where the Grace can shine, untouched by meanness or spite. If they come into this field, it's only because we brought them. Which is pretty much how it works everywhere, when you think about it. The difference is, this piece of grace hasn't been spoiled yet.
"I think the other part of what he was saying," I tell her, "is that everything has an existence separate from ourselves. People, animals, trees, art … everything. So when you're interacting with something—it doesn't matter what it is—you shouldn't be concentrating on how clearly you see yourself in it. The trick is to recognize the worth of a thing for its own sake instead of recognizing its worth to you."
"Jeez, I didn't get that all."
I give her a small smile. My hand lifts, clasps the crow pendant hanging at my neck.
"Or maybe that's just what I see in it," I say.
4.
Newford, Sunday, September 8
Sender: [email protected]
Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 19:32:16-0500
From: 'Lily Carson'
Organization: Not very
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: How I spent the day after Labor Day
Hey, Donna,
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.
>how crazy all of this sounds?!?
Yes, I do know. And that makes me appreciate how supportive you've been all the more. To tell you the truth, if you came to me with a similar story, I don't know if I'd be as supportive. I'd want to be, no question, and I'd try, but I don't know if I could.
But that's one of the main problems when you're dealing with something like corbae. Katy says that people have a natural gift of denial, some sort of a genetic thing that lets us retain our safe view of a normal world no matter what. We can forget the most momentous, bizarre experiences like they never happened. Because if we couldn't, we wouldn't be able to operate efficiently in the world that most of us have agreed is real. We'd always be looking under the surface, around the corner, paying more attention to our peripheral vision than what's right in front of us. So we forget it instead.
I remember that happening after Hank and I first met the crow girls in that alley. The whole experience kept sliding away from me - partly, I guess, because it was so upsetting to remember Philippe Couteau's attack on us, but also because things happened that night that shouldn't be able to happen.
It's like all those people who were drawn to the Harbor Ritz when the Grace's light enveloped it. Katy says none of them remember it. They might dream about it sometimes, or catch the way light falls in a certain way and have one of those niggling feelings of deja vu, but they won't consciously remember.
I don't know if that's true or not because I don't know anybody who was there. But I know it's true for Rory, and he saw a lot more than any of those people ever did. It's impossible to talk to him about what happened. He just gives you this blank look, or smiles like he knows you're putting him on.
It drives me crazy because this is something I can't *not* talk about. I have to keep it alive and fresh because it's important to me. I don't want to lose the knowledge that the world really is a bigger, stranger place than we ever thought it was. Or that there really is a thing called a spirit inside us. That's why I wrote it all down in the first place.
I have to tell you that I really had to think long and hard before sending you a copy. I didn't want you flying back here to have me committed or something. :)
But I'll tell you now, the next time you do come back - Thanksgiving? Xmas? - I've got some stuff to show you. I don't know if you've got animal blood or not, but for some things it doesn't matter. Margaret's been teaching me how to find those shortcuts I was telling you about, and those little pockets of the world that got trapped in a fold and can't be seen unless you know how to look. Those are things I *can* share with you.
Oh, jeez. Listen to me. I sound like I was born again, or have started selling Amway or something. Look, just tell me to shut up if I'm getting on your nerves.
>And how are things working out with Hank?
Well, it hasn't even been a week since we first slept together, you know, but so far it's good. Forever? I don't know. He's an odd contradiction. On the one hand, there's this whole street-smart tough guy that he is. I mean, you wouldn't want to mess with him - at all!! - and he obviously had a really hard time as a kid growing up. Seriously bad home life, on t
he streets when he was really young, in trouble with the law, in prison. He's been through stuff that I don't think we could ever understand. I mean, it makes having been tormented in high school like we were sound like a cakewalk.
But he came out of it with such a big heart and a positive attitude. And he's really bright. Actually, his whole 'family' at that junkyard is really sweet and smart once you get to know them. You keep wanting to tell them to do more with their lives, but then you realize that they see things differently and you have to remember to respect the choices they've made. I don't know as much about them as I do Hank, but just from stuff I've overheard, I know that they've all had really hard lives, so if this is how they want to deal with that past pain, who am I to tell them different?
Truth is, I kind of admire the way they live outside regular society. In that way, they're kind of like the corbae - invisible people that the rest of us don't normally see because we're not paying attention. Getting to know them the little I have has sure given me a different perspective on street people, I'll tell you that much. I mean, not to romanticize them or anything, because some of them are users, or broken people that can never be fixed, but they're still people. They just deal with things differently than we do. Sometimes by choice, sometimes not.
Anyway, getting back to Hank. He's very sweet and attentive, but we move in such different social circles that I don't know what's going to happen in the long run. I think I'm more comfortable with his family than he is with the people I know. The weird thing is, I'm starting to notice pretensions in certain people myself. It's not anything Hank says about anyone - he's got to be the most circumspect person I've ever met. But I can tell what he's thinking and it makes me think about things differently, too. Which is a good thing, I suppose.
Now, you're probably thinking that it's that falling in love syndrome, you know, where you suddenly take a great interest in, oh, say reggae music because your new sweetie's so into it, but I don't think that's entirely it. For one thing, there are people like Christy, who Hank immediately liked and respected, which makes me trust my own reactions more because he's always been one of my favorite people, too.
>gangster's money?
I don't know what to do with it. Giving it back will just cause problems for Moth and since he's starting to loosen up around me, I don't really want to get him irritated with me again. But it doesn't seem right to keep it either. Maybe I should just give it to some charity.
Well, I guess I've run on at the mouth long enough. Thanks for being so patient with me. And now it's your turn. You haven't told me *anything* about what you've been up to lately. Whatever happened to Peter? Or are you seeing that Andy Parks fellow from work now?
You have to come home for a visit soon. (I know, I know, Boston's home now, but you know what I mean.) It's just that I miss you and right now I've got *no* money or I'd fly out to visit you.
Or maybe we should just use that $10,000 for travel, money to ferry us back and forth when we *really* need a visit! ;)
Love you.
Lily
5.
It was early evening and Hank was watching the sunset from one of the lawn chairs in front of Moth's trailer. He had a tape in Moth's boom box of some classic tunes from the mid-thirties, Lester Young playing with a quintet that included Count Basie on piano and Carl Smith on trumpet. On the ground beside the tape player was a thermos of tea, in his hand a half-full mug. There were dogs sprawled all around his chair, but Bocephus wasn't among them.
Hank couldn't see the sun anymore from where he sat, but the sky behind the deserted tenement buildings of the Tombs was still smeared with pinks and mauves. Bo was out there somewhere, haunting the streets that ran between the empty lots and buildings.
He liked this recording a lot. The basic Kansas City grittiness of the playing, particularly Young's staccato style on his sax. The understanding expressed between Young's horn and the piano. They were just finishing up a version of Gershwin's "Lady Be Good" when Moth's cab pulled into the junkyard, dirt crunching under the tires. The dogs jumped up, but didn't bark. Like Hank, they'd recognized the car by the sound of its motor. Moth came over to join him and the dogs crowded around the chair he took. Hank reached over to the tape player, turning off the music.
Moth smiled. "And here I was hoping to catch you playing one of my Boxcar Willie tapes."
"You think that's going to happen in this lifetime?"
"Hope springs eternal in the human breast," Moth told him.
Hank raised his eyebrows.
"Comes from something Alexander Pope wrote," Moth said. "You'd know that, too, if you'd spent more time in the prison library."
"You know me. I was always too busy planning my big escape."
Moth laughed. He shook a cigarette free from his pack and lit up.
"Saw that dog of yours when I was driving up," he said. "You forget to feed him this morning?"
"He's not my dog."
"Whatever. He looked hungry."
"Bocephus always looks hungry."
Moth blew out a wreath of blue-gray smoke. Beyond the tenements the sky was losing all of its color and the shadows grew longer.
"Bocephus," Moth repeated. "Now, I would have thought you'd name him after one those horn players you like so much instead of after Hank Senior's boy."
"I didn't name him."
"Yeah, you told me that."
Lily had pointed out an odd fact to Hank, though she hadn't needed to since he'd already twigged to it himself: Nobody really remembered anything about the corbae. In her case it was Rory. In his, except for Moth, what personal experience the rest of his family had had with the corbae had slipped out of their memories; everything else was just stories Jack had told. Katy and Kerry hadn't vanished from the middle of the junkyard. They'd only wandered off. Hank hadn't had a bullet hole miraculously heal. It was just some old wound he'd been carrying from before he and Moth had met up in prison. Jack wasn't a magic man, and he certainly wasn't dead. He'd hit the road like he'd been known to do from time to time and he'd be back. The cuckoos were only a bunch of mob-connected punks from New Orleans. Dangerous, sure, but not magical either.
Hank had already given up trying to argue any of those points with Paris and the others, and he and Moth didn't bother to talk about any of it around them anymore. There was no point.
"So where is everybody?" Moth asked.
"Lily's at her place writing some letters and that's about all I know. There was nobody around when I got here."
"I think Benny's been hitting the track again."
Hank nodded. "He's about due. What's it been this time? Two months without laying a bet?"
"Two and a half."
Moth took a last drag and butted his cigarette out under his heel. His gaze traveled over to where the dark bulk of Jack's school bus was slowly being swallowed by the encroaching night.
"I miss Jack," he said after a moment. "Without him and his stories, it's going to make the winter seem long."
Hank sighed, remembering that last look of Jack he'd seen when the chalice came back together in his and Lily's hands. Remembered the things that Katy had explained to him. Like Lily, they were things he kept repeating to himself, holding them in his head so he wouldn't lose them like the others had. Trouble was, that remembering also made him know that Jack wasn't coming back.
"Yeah," he said. "I miss him, too. But Katy knows a lot of those stories of his and she'll be around."
"Won't be the same."
"Won't be bad either—just different."
Moth nodded. "I suppose." A smile touched his lips. "I even miss those crows of his, though I don't guess the dogs do."
"No, I guess they don't."
Moth went and got himself a beer, sat back down, lit up another smoke.
"I'm thinking of getting an apartment," Hank said.
" 'Bout time," Moth told him.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Moth shrugged. "I always thought you could do
more with your life. Getting yourself a place you can call home's a good first step."
"You never said anything before."
"Didn't want you to take it wrong. So are you going to be moving in with Lily?"
"It's a little early to be thinking about that kind of thing. We're taking it a day at a time for now. But it's good."
"You hold on to that," Moth said. "There's little enough of feeling good around as it is. You find some, it's worth keeping a hold of."
"I know," Hank told him.
Moth dragged from his cigarette. "I didn't warm to Lily right away, you know, but I guess I don't warm to most people first time I meet them. It's an old, bad habit that I don't know if I'll ever break. Can't seem to hang on to a faith in people the way you do. I look at a stranger and I see trouble. You, you see someone who could be a friend."
Hank didn't know if it was exactly so cut-and-dried, but it was something he worked at, trying to see the good in people. To see the Grace in them.
"Don't be too hard on yourself," Hank said. "You didn't exactly grow up in an environment that promoted trust."
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