by Celia Jerome
“Why should I? That’s not one of my goals. None of your bullshit is. I’m not you. I don’t have your ambition, your burning need to be someone else, someone who wouldn’t deign to live among us common folk.”
“I resent that! Just because I want to have more of the world than this tiny corner. And no one here is common! You are all as rare as … as that bird no one can find.”
“Well, just so you know, my cooking isn’t as good out of Paumanok Harbor. I’ve tried. I got through cooking school, got a job. I wouldn’t have advanced much further, anywhere, except here. You of all people ought to understand the power of this place. My cooking is magic in the Harbor. Combined with Grandma’s ingredients, it’s almost irresistible. My meals show people how to relish life and savor all its tastes. They are as happy to eat what I cook as I am happy to feed them. That’s my goal, my ambition. So, no, I will not leave the Harbor, where my friends and family live, where people stood by me when I was having treatments, where they ran pancake breakfasts to help pay for my doctors, and Uncle Bernie kept up my health insurance when I didn’t work for six months. I am a little more loyal than that.” She picked up the sodden tennis ball and tossed it into the woods. “Unlike some I could name.”
“Yeah, well I am sure you’re making everyone proud and happy, playing the whore.”
“You’re not my mother.”
“Thank God.”
“And you’re not so perfect yourself.”
“I never said I was. But you’re not my mother, either. So stop accusing me of heaven only knows what every chance you get. Or running to Grandma Eve with your snitchy stories. I haven’t done anything!”
“Sure.” She headed toward the house, this time over-concentrating on where she put her feet. She turned back when she got to the porch. “You haven’t done anything but fill the wading pool in the middle of night. You think we’re weird? Well, you can go to hell. You cause more damage and danger than any fifteen of us, and it takes fifty of us to mop up after you. No one ever got hurt by a weather magi or a clairvoyant or a telekinetic. But you? You’re havoc on wheels.”
“Wheels? I don’t drive drunk like you do.”
“Hah. You operate really heavy machinations, Willow Tate, playing in your own head, drunk on your creative high. So go back to your precious big city where no one gives a damn about you and your stupid plots that come true.”
The front door slammed.
Then it opened. Susan stuck her head around the corner. “And you look guilty as hell.” Then she slammed the door again.
I waited, but the door stayed closed.
I stayed outside for another hour, in case the un-oiaca came back. I also stayed out so Susan wouldn’t hear me crying. I hated confrontations of any kind, but especially with my cousin, the relative I was closest to. Now I knew what she thought of me, and that made me cry more.
I hated being a nag. Mostly I hated to think I was turning into my mother, who specialized in it.
Susan hated me. According to her, the rest of the town did, too. Maybe I should be afraid to let Janie at the beauty salon touch up my hair color again. Or let Kelvin put air in the Outback’s tires. Maybe I should simply camp out in the back of my house going “twee, twee” until someone came to lock me up.
The flashlight batteries gave out. Camping mightn’t be such a great idea, not when I couldn’t see past the side yard, and I never did find out what the aberrant parrotfish ate.
The dogs were glad to see me, at least. They hadn’t received their good-night cookies. See? Everyone wanted something. Little Red wanted to be carried and cuddled, after being left alone for a whole two hours.
I needed the affection, too.
The answering machine light flashed for a new message I missed while I was outside feeling sorry for myself. Such a late phone call had to mean more trouble. I thought about leaving it till morning, but what if it had been a real emergency? Not Aunt Jas checking to see if Susan got home safely.
“Sorry to call so late, baby girl.” My father’s voice sounded shaky and I started to panic. “But I woke up in a sweat, gasping for breath.”
“And you called me instead of nine-one-one?” I shouted at the telephone. “You are—”
“I am worried about you. I dreamed someone tried to hit you on the nose. I love your nose, Willy. It’s just like your mother’s, not mine, thank goodness. So you be careful, okay, sweetheart? I’m going back to sleep. We have an early tee-off tomorrow, so don’t try to call when you get in. I don’t know any more about it, anyway. Just that someone is going to try to hit you on the nose. Love you.” There was a pause. “Oh, this is your father.”
As if I didn’t know. Who else had me running to the mirror to make sure I didn’t have Mom’s nose? Nope, it was my own, and I liked it just the way it was. Not perfect, but better than crooked, or black and blue, or heaven forbid, needing surgery. Damn. And I couldn’t call my father until his golf game ended.
I gave the two big dogs their cookies and belly rubs and carried Little Red up to bed. The door to the guest room where Susan slept when she stayed here, which was most of the time because her mother didn’t approve any more than I did, was shut tight. Locked too, I bet.
“It’s a good thing I have you,” I told Little Red, and kissed him on the nose. No one better try to hit him on the nose, not if they liked their fingers.
Sleep didn’t come. The whole argument with Susan replayed itself over and over, along with my dad’s warning and the fish/bird encounter. I left my window open to listen for its call, but if the creature returned, I didn’t hear it.
Until I eventually fell asleep. Then I heard the “twee.” Only I couldn’t, because I stayed asleep.
Twee, twee, echoed plaintively in my dreams, like the nightingale’s “Adieu! Adieu!”
Twee? begged in my head. I turned over to find a more comfortable spot. Red growled to remind me not to roll on him. Half awake now, I listened for real noises, not carryover dreams. Nothing. I went back to sleep.
This time I dreamed pictures instead of sounds. Not of the hero I’d been drawing, not of Matt, its model, not of the faceless man who wanted to hit me on the nose. No, I pictured a flounder in feathered drag.
Twee?
A cockatoo with scales.
T-wee? T-wee?
The bird was not in my room, yet I could sense its presence in my dream, even smell the wet feathers and the oily fish scent. I dreamed in the vivid colors I’d seen outside, too.
Then a new image crept into my sleeping unconscious, only not new to me. The familiar drawing of a tree, a weeping willow tree, was one I’d drawn to show the previous trespassers from Unity my name. I couldn’t mindspeak the way they did, so I did my best trick, I visualized. Willow, that’s me.
Twee! Twee! Now Oey perched in the tree, hopping up and down, wagging its fish tail furiously enough that I felt a breeze on my cheek.
Bloody hell. In the depths of sleep I remembered how I’d fiddled with my hero’s companion. Make it unique and sympathetic, I’d thought. Make it a little silly.
Give it a lisp, a speech impediment.
Argh.
Awgh?
CHAPTER 10
“NAH, WILLY, NOT EVERYBODY IN TOWN hates you.” Uncle Henry Haversmith, Paumanok Harbor’s Chief of Police, shoved some papers aside, leaned back in his swivel chair, and patted his bulging gut.
I watched in case he reached for the antacids, a sure sign that he lied. He didn’t seem to be in distress, so I guess what he said was true. A few of the locals hardly knew me enough to have an opinion.
“Some people even like you. Of course, the mayor helped them forget the chaos your night mares caused, and the fires from your lightning bugs.”
“They weren’t my—”
“And there are those in town who think you’ve brought more excitement to the Harbor than we’ve seen in decades. Some are grateful to catch a hint of the ancient True Magic, thanks to you.”
We were sitting in
the chief’s cramped office in the police department wing of the village hall. I’d passed Mrs. Ralston at the central office and she’d waved, with all five fingers. Baitfish Barry gave me a wide berth, but he always did, to save everyone’s sensibilities from the fish smell he never lost. He never went fishing without catching something, either. He always shared, so no one minded the odor except Big Eddie, the master sniffer who stayed outdoors. They both gave me smiles.
So did Joanne at the deli when she handed me a buttered roll, just the way I liked it, warm but not toasted. Two customers at the counter nodded politely, too.
No stink eyes. Maybe Uncle Henry was right and Susan was wrong about the whole village blaming me for all its troubles.
She slept late as usual, with the door closed, not as usual. I left a note near the front door, apologizing. The note had a quick caricature of her, eyebrow rings and all. I like you just the way you are, I’d written across the top.
I doubted if anyone was going to like me when they heard about the bird, if the whole thing wasn’t a dream, which I felt likely, by the light of the crisp September day. Still, I had to give the chief fair warning. I started slowly. “Well, I think we might have a small problem now.”
Uncle Henry reached for the Tums.
I held up one hand. “No, it’s just one of my father’s premonitions.”
His hand went back to rubbing his stomach. He did that a lot, now that he’d given up the horrid cigars he used to smoke and chew on all day. Every employee of Town Hall had signed the petition protesting the secondhand smoke and stench. Mrs. Ralston threatened to quit, which would have shut down the local government, courts, and tax office.
“I know all about your father’s knack. Played cards with him every summer for years, didn’t I?”
“He could predict the deals?”
“No, but everyone thought he could tell what card he’d get next, so it changed the game.”
“He only sees dangers, and then only to people he loves.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t live here, only came out weekends in the summer when you and your mom stayed here. All people knew was he had precog talent. That was enough to discourage betting against him.”
“Well, right now he’s predicting that someone wants to hit me on the nose.”
“Hell, Willy, I could have told you that and I’ve never had an inkling of the future yet. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t an officer of the law, sworn to protect and defend. You were bad enough as a standoffish kid—”
“I was shy.”
“Who wouldn’t let anyone check you for talent.”
“I was a good artist, for a child.”
“Not that kind of talent. You could have gone to high school in England, where the experts could have figured you out.”
“I didn’t believe in all that crap then. No one bothered to explain it to me.”
“You didn’t want to hear it. Or see what was right under your eyes. You went your own way—not that we’re not proud of your books and all—but now you’re our headache.”
I chose to ignore him. “The man’s name might be Stu.”
“The man who wants to hit you on the nose? What did you do to him? Leave this one at the altar?”
“I don’t even know anyone by that name. And Grant and I never set a wedding date, as you know very well. We were almost engaged, that’s all, and not for very long.”
“When you broke the cowboy’s heart by not going out west with him.”
“Ty’s heart belonged to his horses, not me. And Piet the fire-damper? He had no intention of settling down in one place with one woman, so our relationship never— Hey, this is not about my private life, although you and everyone else in Paumanok Harbor feels they have a right to comment on it, as if you’ve all friended me on Facebook. Wrong.”
“Still standoffish. What’s wrong with being friendly?”
I’d spent too much time with Little Red; I almost growled. “I didn’t come here to discuss our different definitions of friendliness, or my personal business. What I want to do is to pass on my father’s warning to me before I left the city to watch out for Stu. He was pretty certain the Stu he glimpsed wasn’t like beef stew, or a stewardess. I can’t call him until later to find out if Stu and my would-be attacker are one and the same.”
The chief pulled a pad closer to him, then searched his desk for a pencil. “Okay, I’ll put out the word. Between them, my guys know almost everyone in town. They’ll ask strangers for ID. Although we can’t arrest every moke named Stu. On what grounds? A precog’s intuition?”
“I understand that. Thanks for checking around, though.” I let him lean back in his chair, then said, “There’s more.”
“I figured. No one drops by here without a better reason than Tate’s iffy talent, not even some ancient professor the big shots in London think might have wandered our way.”
“We might have a bigger problem than Stu and a missing scholar.”
“You already said that, and we already have enough problems to last a year. The robbery gang hit a Lion’s Club dinner at a restaurant last night in Quogue, where the Suffolk County squad didn’t have cars patrolling.”
“I had nothing to do with that!”
“I never said you did. Or the fact that they traced the embezzlement of East Hampton town money right back to here.”
“Paumanok Harbor has a cyber thief?”
“Not Paumanok Harbor, but right here, in Town Hall. That’s where the order to transfer the money came from. Where it went is anyone’s guess. Offshore secret accounts, the Feds suppose.”
“But here?” I thought of Mrs. Ralston who knew the sex of pregnant women’s babies. The cops, the judge who made his verdicts without hearing evidence, only the accused’s plea. “Everyone who works here is …”
“One of us, and honest, right? There’s not a one who’d use his or her power for that kind of villainy. We might bend the rules here and there for the good of all, but break them for personal gain? I don’t know anyone here who’d do such a thing. Problem is, people come and go all the time. They need to get parking permits and clamming licenses, hand in a lost wallet, pay their taxes, and plead their traffic violations. It’s wide open to the public.”
“That doesn’t give anyone the opportunity to hack into the system.”
“They don’t need to work so hard. The mayor keeps all the passwords taped under his chair so he doesn’t forget them. Mrs. Ralston has to remind him where they are whenever he needs to communicate with East Hampton Township. The Feds think his computer was used. They took it away.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Oh, crap, more like it. So unless you have useful information I don’t have, I don’t need another problem.”
He moved some papers around on the desk, waiting for me to leave. Then he stopped pawing through his correspondence. “You don’t have anything to do with the crazy dolphins, do you?”
“No, and before you ask, they are not in my new book. There’s a massive, majestic water god, yes, but he’s fighting an evil, sapient sea serpent.”
He nodded. “Sounds good.” Which meant no indigestion. Which meant I hadn’t lied. “And the computer thefts are far beyond your skills. Mine, too. The robberies? You have alibis.”
“You checked?”
“Shit, Willy, you’re the number one troublemaker around here. Where else would we start? You’re all clear.”
Thanks for nothing, Chief. Now I didn’t feel like telling him about Oey.
He bent over a stack of folders in front of him. “So are we done?”
Someone in charge had to be told, to prepare for whatever else could happen. Like they prepared for hurricanes. Sometimes they hit close to home; sometimes they passed on by. I took a deep breath. “It’s the rare bird. Only it’s not a bird.”
“Tell me its name is Stu and I swear I’ll hit you in the nose myself.”
“I have no idea of its name. We didn’t really converse and the whole thing might
be a dream anyway. I figured you should know.”
I think he groaned, so I hurried on: “I’m calling it Oey, for the oiaca everyone supposes it to be. It’s not.”
“You’re saying it’s not a bird, not Stu, not an endangered species, maybe not real?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And what do you want me to do about it? I could have sworn you’d come to ask for more traffic cops near your grandmother’s place.”
“That, too, until we get it to go home.”
“‘We’? There is no ‘we.’ I’m going to find the burglars. You are going to get rid of it, whatever the devil it is, before its friends come. Or its enemies.”
I sighed. “I thought you might say that.”
“So what’s your plan?”
Did I have a plan? “So far I’m thinking about asking Matt to come over tonight.”
“Your plan about the bird, Willy, not about your piss-poor love life. Of course he is a nice guy. You could do worse.”
Teeth gnashing gave me headaches. I did it anyway. “I thought I’d invite Matt to my yard to look for Oey. To see if he really can see things no one else but me can.”
“You can’t.”
“Why? He knows enough about the otherworld to understand. And he doesn’t think I’m crazy.”
“Well, maybe he’s not so bright after all. Either way, you can’t invite him. It’s poker night.”
“The quasi bird is more important. Disinvite him.”
“I can’t. We’re playing at his house. He called early this morning to say he’s got emergency surgery this afternoon, the Camerons’ beagle jumped the fence and got hit by a car. Doc will operate as soon as the pup is stable enough.”
“That’s terrible. The beagle was one of my mother’s rescue dogs, wasn’t it?”
“Right, and the Camerons are real attached to it. We’ve got people saying prayers, and healers ready to put hands on the animal if Matt needs us. Or if the poor woman who hit the dog does.”
“But he’s still going to play poker?”
“He said he’ll be up all night anyway, checking the dog every half hour, despite having a kennel man on duty. So he asked us to his place.”