Malus Domestica

by Hunt, S. A.

  A car door clapped shut behind him and they moved out of the way so Wayne’s dad could back out of the drive.

  The Subaru hooked into the road and Leon paused, rolling his window down. “Have a good day at school,” he said, turning the radio off. “If you need me, you know how to get me.”

  The bulge of Wayne’s cellphone lay against his chest inside an inner jacket pocket, next to Mom’s wedding ring. “Yep. Have a good day, Dad.” The phone was a cheapo crap phone half his own age, didn’t have any apps or games other than a measly pinball game and some kind of game where you made a rabbit jump around and eat carrots, but he could make calls on it and text Leon’s number.

  The school bus came wheezing up the road toward them. Leon pointed at the kids and said, “Stay frosty, compadres,” driving away.

  Wayne rolled his eyes.

  They filed onto the bus, a creaky-drafty thing already teeming with noisy kids. As they sorted themselves into the elephant-skin seats, Wayne gazed out the window. Black wings swooped out of the treeline and a crow landed in the grass by the roadside.

  Picking up the remainder of Pete’s Pop-Tart with its beak, the bird struggled back into the air and flew away.

  ❂

  After spending his childhood thus far in Chicago, Wayne found King Hill Elementary School almost too quiet, funereal in its own country-bumpkin way. The lunchroom burbled with sleepy conversation, puffy-eyed kids mumbling to each other and nuzzling into the crooks of their elbows, trying to catch a few more minutes of shut-eye before the day started.

  Most of them were white, he noticed as he and Pete came shuffling in twenty minutes before the bell.

  He’d sort of expected that. There were almost no Mexicans at all, not a single Asian, and the handful of black kids he saw were all several years older, a band of gangly teenagers clustered together in a tight group in the corner, slumped against the wall and fighting sleep like a roost full of pigeons.

  Lawrence had taught him to stick to the lakes he was used to, as TLC so eloquently put it. The scrawny, bespectacled boy stayed close to Pete.

  To his surprise and relief, the morning went smoothly. When he had to stand up in front of homeroom class and introduce himself to everybody, something he’d been dreading since the drive down, everyone chanted, “Hi Wayne,” and except for a few half-hearted Batman and cowboy jokes, that was it.

  The classwork was easy compared to what he’d been doing back home—almost a year backward in terms of academic progress. It gave him the feeling of having accidentally been enrolled in special education classes, or he’d somehow stepped into a timewarp that forced him to re-live the previous year over again.

  Oh well, Wayne thought, that just puts me a year ahead of the other kids. I can coast through and blast all the tests.

  Another thing he didn’t expect was the claustrophobic closeness of the smaller school population—none of the classes exceeded twenty-five children, and a few of them had under fifteen.

  Each period had a strangely informal, floaty atmosphere, as if a bunch of people had decided to congregate in one place for an hour and listen to somebody talk. Instead of sulking menacingly at the head of an unruly class, the teachers turned out to be friendly, engaging, and upbeat.

  Huge picture windows down the side of each classroom were full of bright sunlight, and instead of being enclosed in the darkness of Chicago’s monolithic buildings he could see swishing treetops, but the desks framed him in broad polo-shirted backs and the faint baby-formula body odor of the congenitally rural Caucasian.

  Several of the boys showed up in honest-to-God bib overalls and smelled like rotting compost. Wayne felt like he’d moved into an Amish village. Some part of him kept expecting to spot a butter churn in the corner, or for a chicken to wander into a classroom in the middle of a lesson.

  He was dismayed to find that no one would really talk to him except for Pete and Pete’s friend Johnny Juan. The white kids were cordial but standoffish, as if Wayne were a ghost that was only physically solid and present when someone was forced to interact with him. The rest of the time he was invisible.

  “So what do your mom and dad do, Wayne?” asked Johnny at lunch, spooning chili into his mouth one bean at a time.

  “Johnny” Juan Ferrera was a skinny Middle American kid that, according to Pete, had moved up from Florida the previous year. Juan and his extended family lived in one of the more urban neighborhoods on the southeast end of town, where several of his relatives worked at the Mount Weynon textile factory and the Mexican restaurant on the south end of town near the college.

  Pete had gone to Johnny’s place once for a birthday sleepover. According to what Wayne was told, Johnny Juan had the newest Xbox and possessed more Legos than Pete had ever seen in one place in his life, but Johnny and his brother slept on the floor in sleeping bags because his grandparents slept in his bed.

  “My dad teaches Literature. He’s working at Blackfield High School.” Wayne took out the ring hanging in his shirt and stuck his finger through it, rubbing the rough engraving around the inside. The meditative gesture was always soothing. “My mom…she died a few years ago.”

  Johnny Juan paused for a brief moment to watch Wayne stare into his chili, then scratched his head and went back to eating. A tray clattered onto the table and a girl plopped into a seat between them.

  “Howdy, kids,” said Amanda Johnson.

  Pete looked up from his shredded cinnamon roll. “How’s it hangin, dude.”

  She leveled a glare at him and picked at her food with a spoon, demurely folding and folding her chili if it were expensive lobster bisque. Amanda had wide-set blue eyes and an upturned nose that gave her the affect of a big pink bat. Up close, Wayne could see the shotgun-spatter of acne in the middle of her forehead that she’d covered with makeup.

  “What’re you looking at?” Amanda asked mildly.

  Wayne shrugged and went back to eating. His cellphone hummed inside his jacket. A text message from his father. you wanna ride bus home or me pick u up?

  “So have you kids heard the rumors?” Amanda asked them with the panache of a campfire story. “Apparently there’s a killer in town.”

  Johnny Juan sniffed his milk. “Where’d you hear that?”

  Tap, tap tap, Wayne sent his father a text in reply: i guess pick me up

  “Day before yesterday, Jeff Beesler’s dog brought home a bone that looked like it came from a human.” Amanda’s explanation became condescending. “You know who Jeff Beesler is, don’t you? He’s that kid in eighth grade that plays football. I’ve known him all this year. He likes—”

  Johnny Juan broke in. “No way.”

  “Bullshit,” said Pete. “What kind of bone was it?”

  The girl winced in annoyance at being interrupted. “How should I know, do I look like a bone scientist to you? They said it was a piece of a spine. Jeff gave it to the police and they sent it to the GBI Crime Lab in Summerville.”

  “Man, that’s bullshit,” reiterated Pete. “Nobody’s gonna kill you. It’s probably a bone from like a dead deer, or, or something.” He gestured with the ice cream sandwich he was eating. “I ain’t afraid of no killer. I know how to get home quick and super-ninja, man. Ain’t no killer can catch us where I go.”

  Wayne looked up from his phone. “For real?”

  “Yeah. It takes a little bit longer than the bus, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only person that knows about it. Or, at least, the only person that uses it. I know this town like the back of this hand.” Pete splayed his thick paw out on the table and played at stabbing between his fingers with his fork. Thunk…thunk…thunk. “We should go my way when we go home from school today. You gonna go with me, or are ya chicken?”

  “Man, that crap don’t work on me.” Tap, tap tap.

  can i walk home with pete?

  Pete tucked his stubby hands into his pudgy armpits and made slow wing-beating gestures with his elbows. His grim face made the Funky Chicken all the more imperati
ve. “Is that so? …Buckok. …Buckok.”

  are u crazy? thats too far.

  “If you’re scared, I’ll even go with you two.” Amanda, leaning close. Her spackled-over acne looked like stucco at this range. “As a chaperone, of course. Are you scared? It’s okay if you are.”

  “Cause you’re just a wittle guy,” said Pete. “Hey, nerd, get off your phone. We’re tryin to peer-pressure you.”

  Pete knows shortcuts. well be home in no time. Johnny leaned into the conversation. “Hey, I’ll go with you. I’m not scared.”

  No.

  “You don’t even live out that way,” said Amanda. “How are you gonna get home?”

  “My uncle can come get me. He works first shift, he gets off at like five.” Johnny tossed a shoulder dismissively. “Besides, it’s not like they’re gonna miss me. They don’t even know I’m there half the time. And it’s Friday anyway. I don’t have anywhere to be until church Sunday morning.”

  you said to make frends dad. this me makin friends.

  There was no answer from the elder Parkin. The lunchroom monitor—a seventh-grade homeroom teacher named Mrs. Janice—started to corral all the children, going by how long they’d been eating, and Wayne shuffled into line with the other kids to leave. He was in the middle of an argument with Pete over the comparative tensile strength of Batman’s skyhook and Spider-Man’s webbing when the cellphone in his pocket vibrated.

  alright. but u go straight home. lock al doors. gota work l8 anyway. b home soon.

  “Your dad spells like crap for a Literature teacher,” said Pete, peering over his shoulder. “Looks like we’re walking home.”

  7

  MIGUEL’S PIZZA TEEMED WITH the lunch-time crowd, out-of-towners and locals both trying to get in their climbs before the weather turned. Robin was forced to take her pizza and Macbook out back to the patio, a large conglomeration of trestle tables under an aluminum awning. It was airy and clammy, but she sat at the end of the enclosure where warm sun fell on her and it could have been August again.

  She was halfway through a chicken salad when Kenway Griffin appeared and sat across from her with a meatball sandwich and a bottle of local brew. In light of last night’s revelation, she was impressed by the ease with which he moved on his false leg—if he hadn’t told her, she wouldn’t have even guessed.

  “Good morning,” he said, blowing on his sandwich.

  Robin peered at the clock on her Macbook. The sun felt good, but made it a little hard to see fine details on her screen. “It’s noon.”

  “Well, morning for me. I don’t sleep well and I tend to get up late.” He crammed the end of the sub in his mouth and bit through the crusty bread with a crunch, talking with his mouth full. “I haven’t eaten actual breakfast in years. Unless you count lunch as breakfast.”

  “I’m sure there’s a word in German for that.”

  “Brunch?”

  “That’s not German. Besides, ‘brunch’ is what comes between breakfast and lunch.”

  “Sprechen ze brunch?”

  She shook her head, smirking. “So what are you doing out here, anyway? Don’t you have things to see, pictures to paint?”

  “Today’s my day off.”

  “Is that so?”

  He washed the sandwich down with a sip of beer. “Yup.”

  “You’re off every Friday?”

  “I’m off when I say I’m off. That’s the nice thing about being a freelance artist.”

  “Artiste.”

  “No, just an artist. I haven’t reached artiste-level proficiency yet, I don’t think.” A floppy pickle-spear wagged in his hand. He took a bite out of it and pointed with the stump. “So what are you up to?”

  “Editing yesterday’s footage.”

  “You never did tell me what your YouTube videos are about.”

  Robin paused, leaning back to brush imaginary crumbs off of her jeans, stalling for time. She took a deep breath and blew it across the keyboard. Finally she said, “If I tell you, do you promise not to laugh or think I’m crazy?”

  For a second she thought he was going to say, ‘I already think you’re crazy,’ but all he said was, “I promise.”

  “I hunt witches,” she said, saving the footage progress and opening a browser window. “And I videotape it for the internet.” She clicked the bookmark for her channel and hunted through the video thumbnails as if she were rifling through a filing cabinet. “I monetize the videos with ads and sell T-shirts and things like that.”

  She pulled up a video she’d done and turned the computer around so he could watch it. “Neva Chandler. My first solo witch.”

  According to the upload date on the page, the Robin in the video was a couple years younger, sitting in the cab of her CONLIN PLUMBING van. In one hand was a baby-food jar full of water. In the other was a dagger, silver and glittering in the rusty glow of the streetlight outside. The camera sat on the dash, recording her half-shadowed face as she spoke. “I’ve been tracking her for weeks,” said the Robin in the video, punctuating weeks with the point of the dagger.

  Back in those days, she actually had hair, silky black hair in a Russian-burlesque-girl bob. But instead of Uma Thurman from Pulp Fiction, she looked more like preteen Natalie Portman in The Professional, tiny and delicate.

  “Looking for all the signs. Missing pets. Unusually lucky lottery plays. An over-population of cats. Weird accidents. And all that shit I told you about, you know, in that video about runes and witchcraft paraphernalia.” Past-Robin tucked the water-jar into a jacket pocket and picked up the camera, aiming it out the window. “I’ve been hunting down all the runes in Alabama that I can find, and here, in Birmingham, they’ve started to converge. There are more here than anywhere else in the state.

  “Like I told you, they always live in ‘the bad part of town’. But I don’t think they choose to live there. I think it’s shitty because they live in it.

  “They suck the goodness out of it, they eat the pride, they devour the heart of the neighborhood until the people don’t care about anything anymore. There’s just drugs and poverty and garbage. And then when there’s nothing left, the witch packs up and moves somewhere else. Like psychic vampires, or something. Tapeworms in the intestines of the world.

  “If you’ve got any doubt about what I’m doing, you’ve got to get this in your head right now: they’re not Wiccans or hippies, they’re not those chicks from The Craft, they’re not Sabrina or the lady from Bewitched. These bitches are the real deal. Lieutenants of Hell on a vacation to Earth. Soul-sucking hag-beasts.”

  Across the street from the van was a board fence. Someone had spraypainted incomprehensible graffiti on it—could have been an ambigram for all she knew, legible upside-down as well as rightside-up. “A lot of times they’ll hide the runes in the graffiti. Check out that sideways Jesus-fish in the middle—see how it’s a different color than the rest of it?”

  Past-Robin’s arm thrust into the shot as she pointed at different parts of the graffiti with the dagger. The symbol she indicated appeared to be a simple diamond-shape that crossed at the bottom to make the tailfins of a skyward-facing trout.

  “This is what I’m talking about. That’s not an English letter, that’s a rune. It means home, or homelands. It’s there to let you know you’re in a witch’s territory. And you see that little crown on top of it? That means there’s a witch living somewhere on this block.” Past-Robin turned the camera around and put it on the dash again.

  Kenway picked up his sandwich and went back to eating it, but his eyes were locked on the Macbook’s screen as he chewed.

  “The runes, they’re there to help them find each other. I mean, there are seven billion people on this planet, even with the internet—which a lot of them don’t use—it’s not easy. And the taggers don’t even know they’re doing it, either. The witches, they…I don’t know, they influence them somehow, it’s like they send out a radio signal that the kids can’t help but catch. Like queen bees.

&
nbsp; “Maybe it’s…Hell, I don’t know. But whatever it is, it needs to stop.” Then-Robin opened the door and got out of the van, slipping the silver dagger into a sheath hidden in the lining of her jacket.

  Taking a pull off his beer bottle, Kenway worried at the edge of the table with his thumb. “Intense. You say you do this for a living?”

  “Yep.” Robin leaned over the table, resting her chin on her folded arms, looking up at him. “For a few years now. I have a little over four million subscribers.”

  Kenway’s eyebrows jumped.

  He sipped from the beer again and set it next to her elbow. “Wow. That’s a hell of an audience.”

  Past-Robin was stalking across the night-dark street on the Macbook’s screen, clutching the dagger and water-jar inside her jacket. The witch-hunter approached the board fence and rounded the corner, holding the camera up so that it could see into the front yard of a run-down tract house.

  Overgrown grass around a lemon tree, shadowy front porch with no porch light. A rocking chair lurked in the gloom.

  “It’s probably rude to ask, but I’m dyin to know,” said Kenway, and he burped into his fist. “What kind of money do you make doing this? YouTube videos, I mean. It can’t be enough to pay bills, much less car insurance. It’s why you’re living in the van, right? You know, other than the fact that you travel around to shoot this stuff.”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me.”

  The Robin in the video crept up the front walk of the tract house. Hoo, hoo, hu-hu. Halfway across the yard, she paused and slowly turned to point the camera up into the branches of the lemon tree, the aperture whirring as she zoomed in on it. A snowy owl perched in the hatchmark master-work of shadows some eight feet up, throat pulsing, hoo, hoo, hu-hu.