A Snicker of Magic

by Natalie Lloyd

  I prayed for Roger Pickle. I prayed he’d write a song about me, maybe sing my name tonight when he sang down the stars. Maybe I would see my name spelled in galaxy dust and I would know he remembered me.

  And then the pastor said:

  “Felicity …”

  I gasped and my mama glared at me, nostrils flared, thinking I was causing some silent ruckus, no doubt. But the pastor wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were still closed tightly. His hands clutched the podium so hard his knuckles were pale.

  “Felicity,” he said, “means ‘intense happiness.’ The world is a sorrowful place. And we know there are kinds of happiness that don’t last, that fade off, that leave us feeling wrung out and fickle —”

  “Pickle!” Frannie Jo gasped. “They’re kicking us out!”

  Mama clamped her hand over Frannie’s mouth and pulled her into her lap.

  “But there are true, intense kinds of happiness,” the preacher continued. “Felicity is a particular kind of joy … a wondrous joy. This week, I dare you to choose joy.”

  And then the preacher said, “Amen.”

  “Amen.” Cleo nodded.

  “Amen!” Frannie echoed. And then she nudged me with her elbow and said, “Will you watch me do a backflip off the pew?”

  “No way,” Mama answered for me. She grabbed our hands and hauled us toward the door, smiling sweetly at folks. The only thing Mama disliked more than church was pointless small talk. But we’d barely even stepped out of the pew when somebody reached for her arm.

  “Holly? Is that you?”

  Mama nodded curtly and didn’t object when the woman threw her arms around her and squeezed tight, like they were long-lost best friends. I thought she might scoop me and Frannie up into a hug, too, but she didn’t. She just smiled down at us. I liked the way her red lipstick hugged her gap-toothed grin.

  Made from scratch

  Ready to rise

  Those were her words.

  “Girls.” Mama rested her hands on my shoulder. “This is Ponder Waller. She owns the pie shop on Main Street. We went to school together —”

  Before Frannie or I could say hello, Ponder spoke up again. “I never met an artist more talented than your mama. I always said she was a star — I knew Holly Harness was gonna go places. Cleo’s told us all about some of the murals you painted —”

  “Cleo exaggerates.” Mama grinned, and prodded us on ahead of her out the door. “But thank you for the compliment. We gotta get going.”

  “You and the girls come by for some pie one day!” Ponder said as we bumped our way through the crowd. “My treat!”

  Mama never looked back. But I did. As she hauled us out the door, I saw my name, Felicity, shimmering across the stained-glass window. I’d never seen my own name before. I’d never thought about how pretty it would look with the light shining through it.

  “Tell you who’s found their wondrous joy,” said Aunt Cleo. The Pickled Jalapeño rocked us down the road while we dined on French fries and chicken nuggets.

  “The Beedle!” she hollered, when none of us said anything.

  I stopped mid-chew. “What about the Beedle?”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full, June Bug,” Mama said.

  Aunt Cleo took an extra-big bite and said, with her mouth especially full, “The Beedle is a local hero, a do-gooder. He or She or It leaves notes on people’s doors, flowers in mailboxes, extra change in that one space downtown that has the meter. The Beedle is always watching. Always doing what needs to be done. Has been for fifty years now.”

  “Fifty years!” I nearly choked on my French fry. “That’s impossible!”

  “That’s magic!” Cleo reached for some of Mama’s French fries, but Mama slapped her hand away.

  And now I was more confused than I’d ever been. Because I knew the Beedle wasn’t magic. The Beedle was that spikey-haired Jonah Pickett. And I couldn’t figure out how the hayseed a twelve-year-old spikey-haired do-gooder had been in business for fifty years….

  “The Beedle puts flowers on Abigail Honeycutt’s grave,” Cleo said.

  She nodded back toward the direction we’d come from, toward the church. “The Honeycutts have all been gone for so many years now. I guess most of us had forgotten their story. Or we’d decided not to remember it, which is very different but every bit as bad. The Beedle was the one who reminded us. One day the weeds were pulled up and the kudzu was cut back and there was a bundle of red roses settled against Abigail Honeycutt’s grave.”

  “I didn’t think Abigail Honeycutt had a grave,” Mama said sadly.

  “Her memorial, then,” Cleo clarified. Then she looked back at me. “That’s too sad a story. We’ll talk about that some other day.”

  We let the sad quiet linger in the van for a time. Finally, Mama sighed and said, “I can’t believe the Beedle is still doing those things. That doesn’t make any sense. That’s impractical. The Beedle can’t last forever.”

  “That’s magic, I guess,” Cleo said. She glanced up at me in the rearview mirror. “What’s got you looking so perplexed, Felicity Juniper?”

  Of course, I couldn’t tell them the Beedle was my first honest-to-goodness friend and he was only twelve. So instead of answering Cleo’s question, I said, “Day Grissom told me to tell you hello.”

  Mama let out a low whistle at exactly the same time Cleo said, “Lord help us all.”

  “Is he still sweet on you, Cleo?” Mama asked.

  “Was he sweet on you ever?” I asked.

  Cleo didn’t answer either one of us. She pushed her big round sunglasses up on her nose and said, “Somebody pass me my cigarettes.”

  And that was the end of it. Cleo didn’t say another word until we got home, but Mama laughed. “Day Grissom. Some things never change.”

  Mama’s laughter sounds prettier than any word I’ve ever heard.

  Frannie was the first one to see the surprise waiting for us at Cleo’s. Propped against the door was a box of dog treats, a coloring book, and a giant carton of Dr. Zook’s called Hannah Banana Coconut. All three presents were tied up with a red ribbon.

  Mama read the note out loud:

  “God bless the Beedle,” Cleo laughed.

  Mama didn’t say anything, but the smile on her face reminded me of the smile she used to have: her painting smile, her dancing smile. Magic.

  She picked up the box and carried it inside.

  There in the hallway, I said another prayer with my eyes open and without speaking any words at all. I thanked God for Jonah, because somehow he’d managed to make Mama smile without even knowing her. I prayed I could give him something in return, too: something as good as that smile and as pretty as the red silk ribbon he’d tied around the dog treats.

  I wished I could give him the word red. Red is a blooming word. I watched it rise up in front of me and sprout leaves and vines that stretched all across the apartment complex. Mama and Cleo and Frannie didn’t see it, of course. But I did. I picked an invisible flower and I tucked it in my hair.

  “Shannon Buchanan, don’t you cry for me! I come from down in Ducktown with a ban-jer on my knee!”

  Day Grissom slapped the knee of his worn-out jeans as he sang. He kept his other hand squeezed tight around the big fat steering wheel of the bus, thank goodness. Midnight Gulch was full of fog and rain, and even though the fog looked pretty billowing out of the mountains and over the roads, driving through that mess can make a person nervous. Especially if you’re being driven by a Grissom.

  Day’s radio was broken, he said, so he’d decided to serenade us. His voice crackled as loud as old radio speakers when he sang, and I kinda liked the sound.

  “I like how some people say it ban-jer instead of ban-jo,” Jonah said. “Makes it sound more special.”

  I pinched Jonah hard on the wrist.

  “Um … ow!” he said. And he pinched me hard right back.

  “I thought maybe you were a ghost,” I said. “I figured that’s maybe how you’ve been
in business for fifty years.”

  Jonah sighed. “I can’t explain stuff about pumpernickel here on the bus. I’ll tell you later.”

  “When later?”

  “Soon as we get off this bus later.”

  “Everybody sing!” hollered Day Grissom.

  We sang along as the bus circled around the mountain roads of Midnight Gulch, then down into the valley, then past the Sandcut Apartments toward downtown.

  The bus zoomed past the Gallery that Aunt Cleo told me about. I squinted real close trying to see magical pictures underneath all the layers of paint. But my eyes weren’t attuned to pictures, only words. And the only words I saw on that wall were the ones somebody’d spray-painted there. They trembled and shivered against the bricks. They didn’t belong.

  “They should let somebody repaint the Gallery,” Jonah said when he saw where I was looking. “But I don’t know if anybody in Midnight Gulch has the knack.”

  “My mama has the knack,” I said. And I remembered the summer when she always had paintbrushes in her pocket and paint freckles in her hair. I couldn’t understand how somebody who liked to paint as much as Mama could just up and stop. Put the brushes away and quit, completely. I wondered if she’d ever start again. I wondered if she even wanted to. I sighed, “She used to have the knack, anyway.”

  “You worry about her a lot, don’t you?”

  I nodded, remembering what I’d seen last night. I’d waited up like always, until I finally heard the soft click of Mama’s key in the door lock. I rolled off the inflatable mattress and crawled to look down the hallway. Mama sat on the edge of Cleo’s couch with her head braced between her hands. I held my breath, afraid she was crying. But I didn’t hear any sobs. Didn’t see any tears. I didn’t see any words, either, but I’d never seen words floating near Mama.

  After a time, she stood up and walked to the window and leaned her forehead against the glass. And I knew. Somewhere out there, beneath the stars and shadows, the road was calling out to her already. She was itching to go again, and we’d only been there a day. Before long, we’d set out. We’d load up the Jalapeño and leave another town, never to return. Just like the Brothers Threadbare.

  “She’s always looking for a reason to leave.” I swallowed. “No matter where we go.”

  Jonah nodded but didn’t say anything. At first, I was afraid talking about Mama made him uncomfortable. But when I glanced over at him, I realized his forehead was crinkled again, like he was thinking up some tremendously great idea. “Maybe that’s why you have to do the Duel.”

  So much for great ideas. “How you figure that?”

  “Maybe if your mama sees you competing in the talent show, sharing your words … If she sees how happy you are here in Midnight Gulch, then she’ll want to stay for a while.”

  “I wish it was that easy,” I groaned.

  “Maybe it is,” Jonah said. And then he leveled me with one of his deep-dimpled grins, the kind that made me feel like butterflies were tap-dancing inside my chest. If Jonah didn’t grow up to be a professional do-gooder, he should be a politician. With a smile like that, he could convince anybody to do anything. Someday I might work up enough nerve to tell him about his marvelous smile, but not yet. Instead, I turned my red face toward the window and concentrated on the foggy mountains surrounding Midnight Gulch.

  “I haven’t been to this part of town,” I told Jonah. Mama first said no when I asked if I could spend the afternoon with him, but then Aunt Cleo said she’d take Frannie for the afternoon and they’d have a big time together. So there I was.

  “You’ll get to see plenty of the town today,” Jonah said. “We’re one of the last stops. I’m taking you to meet Interesting Person Number One. He knows all about pumpernickel.” Jonah grinned. “Even better, he has inside information about the Threadbares.”

  “How?” I whispered.

  “You’ll find out.” Jonah smiled. “Tell me more about the way you see words. Can you poke them? Can you kick at them? Can you hold them in your hand?”

  “Sort of,” I laughed. “But no more than you can hold a soap bubble in your hand. Words are pretty while they last, though. They never look the same. Sometimes words are blinky bright. Firefly bright. Sometimes words are shadows. I collect them on my shoe if I run out of room in the blue book.”

  “Show me!” Jonah’s green eyes sparkled.

  I pulled off my sneaker and hoped to heaven that my striped purple sock didn’t stink like a dead skunk.

  Jonah inspected the words I’d inked along my shoe.

  “Sometimes words cluster together. They’re cloudy.” I pointed to the heel. “Takes a while to pull the words apart and decide which ones I want to keep. Some words have thin wings when I see them. Others hum; they make an electric sound, like they’d light up if I plugged them in. The words that hum and buzz are the ones that can’t stand to not be said, I figure.”

  I pointed to the white stripe over the toe of my shoe. “Kaleidoscope: That one sparkled and it had a sound. Popped like Coke fizz until I wrote it down.”

  “What’s ardwolf?” Jonah tapped the heel.

  “It’s a hyena that stays up all night and eats termites.”

  “Excellent.” He nodded. “I already know what paradigm is.” He traced his finger across the inky-purple spikes of the letters. Paradigm was a fun word to collect; it copied along the ceiling of the Pickled Jalapeño over and over. Same word, but it spun out at least a hundred different ways before it finally dissolved.

  “Did this word dance when you found it?” Jonah pointed to pirouette.

  “Spun through the air,” I said, and nodded. “It reminded me of a purple ribbon.”

  Jonah raised his eyebrow. “Spindiddly?”

  “I saw it on a carousel at the fair. I don’t think it’s a real word, so I gave it a meaning: Spindiddly means ‘better than awesome.’ ”

  “Did you see sailboat bobbing along on the ocean?”

  “Nope. Vehicles and motorized things have words around them, but they never make much sense. They’re fun to say but not much for keeping. I saw sailboat in a rinky-dink antique shop near Myrtle Beach, hovering around a fake sailboat, one of those little bitty boats they keep in glass bottles. Dreaming of what it could never be, I’d guess.”

  “What’s this?” Jonah asked.

  “Needler,” I said. “That’s what Aunt Cleo calls a person who won’t mind their own business. Like when I try to eavesdrop on Cleo’s conversations with Mama, she’ll say, ‘Felicity, stop needlin’ in.’ ”

  Jonah nodded. “My mom’s a needler.”

  “That’s mean!”

  “She wouldn’t be offended. She’d say the same of herself. She says her first job is styling hair and fixing carburetors but her favorite job is sorting out other people’s business.”

  Jonah and I both laughed.

  “Will I meet your mom today?” I asked.

  “Probably not today. But definitely soon.” Jonah split apart a granola bar wrapper.

  Crunch

  Cluster

  Cram

  Those words shot out into the air first, but then he pulled the granola free and broke it in half to share with me. He gave me the bigger half.

  “Felicity … can’t you picture yourself at the Duel, sharing your words? Just a little bit?”

  Truth be told, I could picture it easy. And as I pictured it, my heart dropped somewhere in the vicinity of my belly button. I thought of standing on a stage with shaky hands and tingling ears and sweaty lips. I thought of how my words came out twisted when I tried to say them in front of all those people. My words were a mess to everybody but my family.

  And Jonah.

  “Uh-oh,” Jonah said. “You look like you’re about to puke.”

  I sighed. “That’s a possibility.”

  “Day!” Jonah yelled toward the front. “Pass back Le Barfbucket!”

  Once Le Barfbucket made its way back to our seat, Jonah held it toward me. “Okay,” he sai
d. “Launch!” And he turned his face away.

  “I’m fine now,” I said. And I smiled in spite of all my nervousness. “I’ve never had a friend willing to catch vomit for me.”

  Jonah seemed relieved that he wouldn’t have to be that friend, either. He tucked the barf bucket under the seat and said, “What’s the word you see most often, Felicity?”

  “Lonely,” I said. “I see it all the time, mostly in school and in church and in malls and driving down the road. Always the places where the most people are. Isn’t that weird?”

  “Probably not,” he said. “Probably not at all. Do you see a word close to me right now?”

  I nodded. And I nearly laughed out loud again. “It’s a word I’ve never seen out and about before, not on any other person ever. Splendiferous. That’s your word. It’s yellow with six legs and it’s crawling up your arm.”

  “Splendiferous, huh?” Jonah glanced down at his arm, even though he couldn’t see anything. “I like that. Tell it to stay for a while, okay?”

  But when he said that last part, he looked right at me, at the freckles on my face and the laugh on my lips and the sad in my stare. If his green eyes had been lasers, they would have zapped right through me.

  He smiled as he reached for my wrist, and I thought he might pinch me again the way I’d pinched him. But instead, he grabbed the red pen he kept clipped to his newspaper and he wrote that word:

  splendiferous

  Right on my hand, in the messiest letters I’d ever seen.

  “There.” He smiled. “That’s the first word I ever collected. Keep it safe for me?”

  I felt my face heat up, so I looked at my lap instead of his face. I realized I still held half of his granola bar. My hands were sticky and my wrist was inky. My heart pounded out the happiest melody — yes — I’d heard in a long time.

  Bus 5548 dropped Jonah and me off in front of a swirly, spiraled gate. The rain was only dribbling by then. A thick river of fog rolled around my ankles. Maybe it was the fog that made the mansion behind the gate look extra creepy. Or maybe, I decided, the house doesn’t just look creepy. Maybe that house was so spindiddly creepy I shouldn’t be walking toward it.