♦
I was delighted when Barry called and asked to drop by the shop again before he left town. The door admitted him soon after I opened at 9 p.m.
“Have you been drinking?” I asked him. I could smell the alcohol on him.
He shook his head so hard that his hat rocked. “No, ma’am.”
My nose was telling me otherwise, so I gave him my best schoolmarm look.
He looked down at his boots. “I only had a couple of beers. You can’t have barbecue without beer, right? Besides, beer’s not really drinking.”
I supposed that in his world, he was probably right, so I let it go.
“So, when are you pulling out?”
He perked up, relieved that I had changed the subject.
“Late tomorrow. I need to start working my way north again.”
Anybody else, I might’ve given them a farewell hug, but Barry wasn’t the huggable type. It took everything he had to give me a shy kiss on the cheek.
I thought he’d be headed out the door at that point, but he lingered. I waited for him to spit it out. He finally looked at me from under the brim of his hat and asked: “Could I ask you a favor?”
“Anything — you know that.”
“Could you teach me a little?”
I understood what he was asking. Everyone in our circle of friends has magical abilities. My Aunt Daisy has her herbal healing. Mark can draw spells and incantations from the written page and speak and understand the most arcane languages. But Barry was just Barry, and it vexed him mightily.
He had been born into an ancient Spanish lineage that had been ranching in South Texas since before the territory was ceded over by Mexico in 1848. The women in his family were all seers or fortunetellers, and as he grew up, they ruled his life with an iron hand, anticipating his every thought before he knew it himself. As a result, he had shut down his emotional life and gone deep inside. He took any latent magical abilities he had with him.
I knew all this because Barry had confided in Mark, one of many revelations during a week-long whiskey bender early in their friendship. Mark believed — and Barry believed it, too — that Barry’s only real talent was for violence.
But Barry was getting older now, and it was no longer guaranteed that he would always come out the winner. He couldn’t ask his family, so he was asking me for help.
“So, what is it that you want to learn?” I asked, hoping he wasn’t just looking for a spell or two to put his bar opponents on the floor.
His answer surprised me. “The other night…”
I got it. “When you and Mark were here looking at the drinking horn.”
He nodded sheepishly. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You felt something when you put your hands over it.”
Barry’s eyes widened. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And you want to understand what that was.”
Barry sighed in relief. “Yes, ma’am.”
The drinking horn had responded to Barry, and he to it. I needed to find out if this was a generalized talent or specific to that one magical object.
Barry’s approach to magic was full-on bull-in-a-china-shop. He wanted to learn how to do all the hocus-pocus he’d seen in the movies.
I explained to him that it doesn’t really work that way. We needed to identify his real abilities and build on that.
I retrieved a small velvet bag from the bottom of my desk, and Barry and I sat at the table. I poured out the three items in the bag: an acorn, a fossilized shark tooth, a small blue robin’s egg. I had Barry hold each one for a moment, then place them on the table in front of him.
“Choose,” I said.
Barry reached without hesitation for the acorn. Of land, sea and air, Barry had chosen the land. The auras confirmed it: there had been no reaction to the tooth or the egg, but the acorn took on a slight glow in the palm of his hand.
“What do you carry in your pockets?” I asked, taking the acorn from him and putting all three objects back in the bag.
He gave me a puzzled look. “My pockets?”
“Yes,” I said, giving him what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “Turn them out on the table, please.”
He stood up and did as he was told, and from his ragged jeans emerged a battered leather wallet, a handful of loose change, a plastic guitar pick, and an old Zippo lighter.
“That’s not all of it,” I told him.
Barry patted his back pockets and pulled out a small folding knife with horn handle grips. “I forgot it was in there,” he said with a grin. “I’ve had it so long, it’s sort of like a part of me.”
The knife was exactly what I had been looking for. “Tell me about it. Where did you get it?”
Barry got comfortable in his chair again, his fingers absently caressing the old knife. “My dad had it made for me, the summer I turned 18. The night before my birthday, a bunch of my friends took me out in the mountains and we camped out. We were up most of the night, drinking beer and carrying on — you know, the stuff 18-year-olds do — but we all fell asleep just before sunrise. The next morning I was the first one awake, and right in the middle of the campground there was this huge elk antler, just laying there on the ground.”
“One of your buddies, horsing around?”
“Naw. They swore they didn’t. They were just as freaked out as I was. We wasn’t even hunting or anything like that. We was just out there to have a good time. So, here’s this big antler, maybe three feet from where I’d been sleeping. That bull elk must have walked right past the campfire, right through our camp.”
I knew that wasn’t the whole story. “So you brought the antler home.”
“Yeah, I did. All the guys wanted it, but I said it was my birthday. When I got it home, my dad had this knife made up for me. I’ve carried it ever since.”
“Barry, I want you to do something for me,” I said. “Put your knife on the table, and then run your hands above it. You know: like you did with the drinking horn.”
Barry looked puzzled, but he did what I asked. As his hands cupped over the knife, his aura strengthened — and the horn grips on the knife glowed back in response.
The air sizzled with blue energy. Barry snatched his hands away and stuck them in his pockets. “That’s never happened before!” he gasped. It was the first time he’d ever seen an aura.
“You’ve never focused on it that way before. Up until now, that knife has just been a tool for working and whittling, right?”
Barry nodded.
“I think we may have figured out your talent. The women in your family — they can see things, right?” I wasn’t going to tell Barry that Mark had already told me so.
“My grandmother and her grandmother, a long way back,” Barry confirmed.
“What those women were doing was tapping into what their clients already knew, and putting it into terms that the client could understand. It’s a different kind of communication. You have it, too, but what you can communicate with is land animals.”
“You mean Dr. Doolittle stuff? My mother used to read me that when I was little.” Barry looked skeptical.
I laughed. “Sorry, no. You’re not suddenly going to be fluent in animal languages, if that’s what you’re thinking. This is on a much deeper level. It’s more like you see what they’re seeing, feel what they’re feeling.”
Barry thought about that. “Like when I used to work stock with my dad? One time we were way out the middle of nowhere, and out of the clear blue sky comes this big lightning bolt. Split the tree right in half that we’d been under just a minute before — except that I’d had a bad feeling about it and went out to check the horses just before it hit.”
I nodded. “The horses knew the lightning was coming; they could feel the changes in the atmosphere. You picked it up from them. They saved you.” I looked him in the eye to see if he was believing me. He was working on it.
“It can go the other way, too,” I said. “Have you ever ridden a bull that you knew was out to
kill you?”
Barry grinned. “Every Sunday.” He got serious. “But there was this one time, up in Colorado. There was this little bitty rodeo, and they’d got their bucking stock from some fly-by-night operation. All the bulls were mean, but there was this one named Rosebud. The minute I got up top, I knew somebody’d treated him awful in his younger days. He hated all humans, and he was looking for some payback.”
“What did you do?”
“I walked away. Good thing, too. An hour later, the state inspectors came and shut the show down.”
“What happened to Rosebud?”
“Last I heard, the animal welfare people had him along with all the rest of the stock. I’ve always wanted to believe that he got put out to pasture someplace. Maybe in his old age, old Rosebud got to find some peace.”
I couldn’t help but think that Barry was talking about himself, too.
Barry fingered his pocket knife. “So you don’t think it was an accident that bull elk dropped his antler next to my sleeping bag, do you?”
I didn’t say anything, just let him work it out. He thought about it for a few minutes, touching the elk horn handle with a faraway look on his face.
“So, what do I do now?” he finally whispered.
♦
I think, at first, John saw himself as being on vacation. After all, that’s what people in Scottsdale do. It’s the land of the snowbirds, of Cactus League Baseball and endless golf. The people who come to Arizona to play or retire enjoy themselves without a care in the world. Those of us who work for a living are pretty much invisible to them.
But John wasn’t cut out to be a gentleman of leisure. After six months, he was bored. Then again, he couldn’t exactly go out and get himself a job, either, in his current condition. Being a ghost wasn’t very good for his resume.
John had been a sportswriter in his former life. These days, he spends his time sprawled on my sofa, endlessly flipping through the channels, watching the game. And with ESPN, there is always a game.
But during his life, he’d worked a brutal schedule, always traveling, always on deadline. He was obsessed with sports statistics and an expert researcher. He had been very, very good at what he did. Which gave me an idea.
“John, could you help me with something?”
He rubbed his eyes and swung his legs onto the floor. “Sure, sweetie. What do you need?”
“John, what are your plans for the day?” I asked again.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“That’s what I figured,” I said. I sat down next to him. “Honey, you know this isn’t healthy.”
He made a face. “I’m dead, remember?”
“You’re a couch potato. That’s not good, dead or alive. Besides, I need some help with the shop,” I said.
He made an awful face.
John used to think magic was cool, but being dead has made him cautious about being around magical people. To be fair, I guess he has a right to be flinchy. He’d been murdered with a spell on the front door of our house in New Orleans. Getting zapped like that would spook anybody, no pun intended.
“No, no, I just meant I have some work that you could do around here. It would really help me out.”
He was suspicious, but he was willing to listen. “Go on.”
“You know that every item I take in at the shop has to be researched,” I said, not pausing to give him a chance to interrupt. “It takes a lot of time. Lissa and I are pretty busy since the snowbirds came back, and it would help me a lot if you might be willing to do some of the research.” I paused for effect. “It’s pretty easy.”
He was interested, but he still wasn’t entirely buying in. “So what exactly would I have to do?”
Gotcha.
“It’s mostly just looking stuff up on the web.” I let that sink in.”I already have the links on the computer in the living room.”
John was fully awake now.” You mean to tell me that you can research magical objects out on the web, just like that?”
Well, no. The sites where I was going to be sending John don’t show up in Google. They aren’t on the dark web, either. The magical community has its own web, accessed by using the proper incantations instead of passwords. I wasn’t sure that John was ready to hear that part.
“There are a few specialized databases that we use,” I fudged. “Like I said, it’s pretty easy. With your experience, you’ll get the hang of it in no time.”
John had already proven that he was able to manipulate electronic devices. He scared the bejeebers out of me the night that he figured out how to work the remote control for the big screen. One minute I was sound asleep; the next I had Big Ten basketball on at full volume in the living room. But his poltergeist skills were still pretty random: remote control, yes, coffee cup, no. And people: absolutely not. It made him nuts.
He was pretty good with the computer as long as I left it on for him — the power switch still gave him trouble — but he hadn’t been online in days; he’d grown bored with surfing the Web. But if he was willing to take on my research, we’d be getting him off the couch — and I really could use the help. Everybody wins.
I watched him consider the idea. He glanced over the couch, where the remote control awaited him. I figured that even a sports nut like John had to overdose eventually. I was right.
“I guess I could give it a try,” John said with a sheepish grin.
“Great!” I said, and I meant it. “I’ll bring your first project home for you tonight.”
Chapter Four
I opened the shop late on the night Jerry left so I could throw him a going-away party at the barbecue joint down the street. I invited Lissa and her boyfriend Orion, Mark, Daisy, Barry, and of course, Stella, but word gets out fast in the magical community, and our little party for eight soon included more than fifty people. Jerry’s loyal clientele wanted to say goodbye and wish him well.
The band swung into a credible cover of “All My Exes Live in Texas,” and the dance floor was literally swirling with magic as the witches and wizards two-stepped.
Jerry and Stella went off in the corner to talk shop. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but Stella looked like she might still be a little worried about what she was getting herself into. Jerry was reassuring her, getting her to laugh. By the middle of the next song, she was more relaxed. She was going to be all right.
The beer was flowing, and we had reached that point that comes in every party where the jokes are stupid but everybody laughs anyway.
Jerry was holding court in the center of the bar, reminiscing about some of the wild rides our mutual patrons had given him. “...When I first started, I didn’t quite understand what Maggie was getting me into. Then I picked up this little old lady who had something in her hand she didn’t want me to see. It looked like an egg. You know, some people are kind of odd...” he glanced around at his magical audience “... present company excepted, of course...” he said, and his crowd laughed. “I didn’t think much of it until she lost control of it in the back seat. Then I was looking at a full grown bald eagle in my rearview mirror.”
The crowd was still chuckling when I headed back to our table with another basket of fried okra. I overheard Stella and Lissa getting acquainted by the bar.
“So, does your dad live here in town, too?” Stella asked.
Lissa gave her a rueful little smile. “I have no idea. He left when I was small.”
Stella blushed. “Oh, I’m so sorry — I had no idea.”
Lissa put her hand on Stella’s arm. “Don’t worry. It’s okay. I never really knew him. Really, I’m doing just fine.”
Lissa’s family is complicated. All I knew about her father was the gossip, that Alex was a prominent investment banker in the ’80s, and he made and lost several fortunes in penny stocks. Alex and Penelope spent the money as fast as they got it. When the bubble finally burst, Alex cashed out and split. Lissa and Penelope were left to fend for themselves.
Penelope may hav
e been gullible as far as Alex was concerned, but she was no fool. It turned out that she had secretly stashed back a little, every time Alex brought home a payday. If he’d known, that money would have vanished, too, but there was so much money flowing so fast that he never caught on. After Alex fled, Penelope used the cash to grubstake herself. Alex was clever, but Penelope was genuinely gifted with money. She thrived on her own.
Unfortunately for Lissa, with Penelope’s independence came those control issues that she and her daughter had been dealing with ever since. Lissa was right; she was doing just fine, but it was more a tribute to her own resilience than to her mother’s support. I was happy to see Lissa spending time with Stella. My former student would be a good influence on her.
Back at the table, Mark and Barry were deep in a spirited intellectual argument.
“No way!” Barry shouted, banging his hand on the table.
Yes, way!” Mark shouted back, getting up in Barry’s face.
“Boys!” I said in my best teacher voice as I got between them. “What’s going on?”
Barry looked away first.
“This young man,” Mark said disdainfully, nodding at Barry, “believes that one acquires magic only by growing up properly in the craft. I’ve been trying to explain to him that it’s about nature and nurture. One can be born with talent, or one can acquire it. It’s not an either/or.”
So, I thought, Barry is still obsessing over his limited powers. I sat down between them. “Barry, these things can’t be forced. One of these days, I promise you, you’re going to be in the right place at the right time, and your magic is just going to rise up and smack you in the face. You just have to be patient and keep your eyes and your heart open.”
Barry looked doubtful.
“Meanwhile,” Mark said, pouring Barry a mug from the pitcher and raising his own glass, “there’s beer.”
I left them to it. People were starting to gather their belongings, so I headed for the door to say goodbye. Jerry noticed and came to stand beside me.
“So, how do you like your motor home?” I asked him.
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