Welcome to Witchlandia

by Steven Popkes

  “Sir? Excuse me? Can you wake up?”

  He stirred and coughed, then rolled on his back.

  I stepped back. It was David Sabado.

  Chapter 1.12: David

  I opened my eyes and saw the sky and Katelin. I guessed I was alive but I felt like hell. For a moment, I thought I was going to throw up but my stomach thought better of it.

  “Katelin?” I asked. I really, really hoped it was her name and I wasn’t foggy from last night. Sandy? Sandy. Katelin was her roommate. Good.

  “What are you doing here? How drunk were you last night?”

  I shook my head and sat up. The world spun a little but stayed mostly where it was. “I wasn’t drunk.” I stopped for a second. “Well, not then, anyway. I just went for a walk.”

  “From the dorm?”

  I nodded. Rolling over to my knees occupied my attention. Knees are good, I thought.

  “David, it’s sixteen miles from Columbia.”

  “I remember it took a while.”

  “Why?”

  I slowly pushed myself up. Full height. A triumph of the will. I would have given anything right then for an easy chair and a cup of coffee. “It seemed the thing to do at the time. Then, I was standing on this hill looking at the river. The bluff shook me off into the water. I made it here.” I looked upstream. “There was a boat ramp? I could have crawled up the damned boat ramp instead of the mud?” I shook my head and laughed.

  Katelin looked up at me. She smiled. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “I am,” I said, still grinning. My face was tight. It felt good. “I am at that.”

  “Where’s your coat?”

  “New Orleans, I think. Along with my shoes.”

  “I’m sure they never made it past Jefferson City. Why didn’t you walk over to the store? There’s got to be somebody there by now.”

  “Store?” I looked up the road. Perhaps a hundred yards away there was a small wisp of smoke over the trees. “I thought it was a bait shop. Wasn’t it closed?”

  “That’s McBane. This is Easely. You must have floated a mile or so.”

  “That far?”

  “The current’s six miles an hour on a calm day. Covers ground pretty quick.”

  She helped me to walk down the road. The gravel was sharp and hurt my feet. I followed her inside the store and picked out overalls, a shirt and a pair of sandals. Katelin told the man behind the counter what had happened and he agreed to let me pay later as my wallet was on its way to New Orleans, too. Or at least Jefferson City.

  I couldn’t keep from grinning. It was like I could hear for the first time. The fan in the window had a Verdi-like rhythmic clanking. I swear there was a bird outside singing Dvorak. The cash register had a Fats Waller beat when it closed.

  Katelin waited for me while I changed in the bathroom. The wet things I threw in the trash. I grabbed a brownie and two cups of coffee on the way outside and handed her the brownie as I sat next to her on the bench. My head was stuffy and my feet hurt but my hands were okay. It was important that my hands were okay.

  She took the brownie, broke off half and gave it back to me, then took her cup of coffee.

  It came to me as we sat on that bench in the warm sun that I had been thinking about it all wrong. Sure, it was fine that I felt great stuff when I played—I never wanted to give that up. I was right to think of it as breathing.

  But if that were all there was, there would be no difference between playing in a concert hall or a closet. When I played for anyone else, I was there for them. They were there for me. It had to be something we did together. That’s what I had been missing since it all began at McLean’s. All those years of lessons and performances.

  I listened to the birds, the river and the air conditioner. There was a rhythm there. A beat. I could hear the song underneath. I could play it right now. I could play all night for Carl’s audience. Or for Eisenhart. Or for Senbein. The well was inexhaustible because I didn’t have to do it alone.

  I looked over to Katelin. She was watching the birds.

  I could play for you.

  “I didn’t do anything with Sandy,” I said out loud.

  “I know. She told me.” Katelin tilted her head and watched me for a moment. “You look different.”

  “Near-death experience, maybe?” I smiled at her. “Could change a man’s attitude.”

  She stared at me searchingly. “Maybe.”

  I stared back. She looked different as well. Happier, maybe. I wondered why.

  “So,” Katelin said, turning away. “I’ve got my cell. Want me to call a cab?”

  “I think I’ll walk.”

  “Are you sure? It’s sixteen miles. ‘Near-death experience,’ remember?”

  “I walked down here, didn’t I? I’m not so frail.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. “I’ll walk with you for a while.”

  I nodded. “And then you’ll fly off on your broomstick?”

  “Yup.”

  Katelin looked small and tough and warm. I thought of her flying over the trees in the sunlight. It was a point of view I’d never considered. The damp world seemed bright with possibility. “I’d like the company.”

  She stood up and hoisted her stick over her shoulder.

  “This place isn’t so bad,” I said as we started walking.

  She grinned at me. “Welcome to Witchlandia.”

  And we were off.

  Part 2: Katelin, 1999

  Chapter 2.1: Monday, October 18

  I woke to a buzzer. For a long time I just ignored it. It didn’t go away. Sleepily, I rolled away from it. My head spun and for a moment I thought I was going to be violently ill—but my stomach just lurched and relaxed, grumbling. My head pounded and the inside of my mouth made my think of a factory pig farm.

  More buzzing.

  I thought about sitting up but didn’t actually attempt it.

  It’s not my pager.

  What the hell did I do last night? I panicked and turned to look at the bed. It was blissfully empty. Relax. Okay, then. I tried to piece together the previous night. Out at the Sevens with some witches in town for Conclave—a lifter from Somalia and a flyer from the Ukraine. I didn’t remember their names. Then we had rolled over to some nameless dive in Somerville. Obviously I’d gotten drunk. Obviously weighing not much more than a promise it didn’t take much. Everything was a blur.

  How did I get home?

  The buzzing grew louder. It was my cell.

  I rolled over the edge of the bed, grabbed it and rolled back to horizontal and level before my vestibular system was able to react. “Yes?”

  “Takes you long enough to answer the phone, Loquess.”

  “What the hell do you want, Dooley?” I closed my eyes and leaned my head back on the pillow. Slowly.

  “You’re on shift in an hour.”

  “Right. It’s Monday. I’m not on shift until Tuesday. I worked Saturday, remember?”

  “You’re half right. It is Monday. Gifford quit over the weekend.”

  Which meant Boston Police Department only had two flyers instead of three. Which meant only solo work, since Sneizek wouldn’t fly with me. No loss there. The feeling was mutual.

  Which meant I was on shift come Monday.

  I felt queasy again for an entirely new reason. Sean Gifford might have quit because of me.

  Welcome to Witchlandia.

  I sat up and pulled on my robe.

  “Loquess?” came Dooley’s voice, tinny and faint.

  “Yeah.”

  “When are you going to get in here? Horn wants to know.”

  The apartment had a porch that faced down over the Corridor Park and the Orange Line. I could have walked outside, wrapped myself in a flight bubble and taken off, just me and my stick. It was only a short flight. Even in bad conditions, all I had to do was descend down the hill and follow Columbus Avenue towards the city. That was the main reason David and I had found this apartment. Hell, Parker
Hill was close enough to the BPD headquarters I could have walked it. I was safe enough; Parker Hill wasn’t that rough. I was a cop and I carried a weapon. A small gun, to be sure. I’d managed to sweet-talk that out of Horn—mass counts. The smallest gun practical. Technically, as a police officer in flight I didn’t even have to request clearance with either BPD or Logan, but it was important to announce the first flight of the day. That way traffic controllers knew who you were when the transponder popped up on the radar.

  I looked around the room. Two years and I could still pick out a dozen items David had left when he moved out. A coffee cup emblazoned with shrimps and dragonflies we’d found in a pottery store. A pot showing a Van Gogh sun on the side and containing the dead stick of some long withered and unidentifiable plant. I’m not good with plants.

  I’d replaced most of these relics while I’d been with Sean: a picture of Sean and me picking apples in Ipswich took the place of the picture of David and me in front of the Paquin Street Café in Columbia. In the east window a rose made of stained glass had replaced David’s collection of lead crystal pendants. I considered Davidian artifacts as the remains of a dead civilization. They had no meaning and I refused to think about them.

  I could see downtown Boston, gray and miserable, a cityscape of tall buildings, top half obliterated by clouds, base corrugated by three-story brownstones and houses. Last night the weather had been pleasant but overnight a front had rolled in. I opened the window: salt air mixed with something unnamed and unpleasant. The harbor at low tide with the wind coming from the sea. And misty. And wet. And cold.

  “I could come get you?” Dooley offered.

  “Okay. Downstairs in ten.”

  I hung up before he could take the offer back. So I’m avoiding flying through a miserable Boston soup. Sam would be so proud. Sue me.

  In the shower and out again, dressed up in the oil slick uniform, cover that with the insulating coverall and a rain jacket over that.

  It was October: leaves turned but still stuck to the trees. Halloween coming, I told myself. Always a lot of parties at Conclave. Be nice if I got it off. It made me think of something. I checked my calendar. Sure enough, this was the week Oscar Plante came to town. I made a mental note to drop by Faneuil Hall and catch his act. It’s not common that one of the world’s most famous jugglers would return to his roots as a street performer, but Plante did it every year. Turned on the weather radio and got the gist: miserable now but severe clear later in the morning. Never a dull moment with the Boston weather.

  On with the official black sneakers. I grabbed my solo BPD stick out of the closet. Not as bulky, or as functional, as the team stick Gifford and I flew—used to fly—but still with the standard fittings for baton, radio and paperwork. Always the paperwork.

  What did Gifford mean to me, anyway?

  Ten minutes start to finish and down the stairs.

  Dooley was standing, leaning against his car.

  Dooley’s name suggested some pale Irishman fresh off the boat. In fact, Dooley was half Samoan, half African. He towered over the world from six foot five and outweighed some small automobiles. He stared down at me from a great height wearing his perpetual expression of offense against the disorder in the world.

  I stared back. “You made good time.”

  “I was here already. I had ample opportunity to view the vacant lot across from Heath Square. I thought if I were lucky, I could watch the junkies or observe a new body being taken away. There’s always an opportunity for good police work.”

  Right. “Let’s go,” I said.

  Dooley nodded and opened the door. “All right, then.”

  Dooley had been the handler for all the fliers for a year and a half. But Sniezek worked out of the North End and avoided any handler. With Gifford out of the picture, I was effectively getting in the car with my new partner.

  Boston Police Department followed the partner system. It is my private belief that they would have partnered a flyer anyway. Normal people liked to humanize freaks. Sort of like partnering black cops with white cops a couple of generations back—not that Boston had ever been so proactive and forward-thinking.

  I sat down in the passenger seat of Dooley’s issue, leaned back and closed my eyes. Swaying gently in the early morning traffic. I knew the route so well I could see it, eyes closed or not. Around the square, vacant trees hanging over us. Parker Street to the Heath rotary. Down Heath Street towards Columbus Avenue, low bomb shelter apartment buildings opposite the vacant lot. Things looked different from the ground. Grittier. Nastier. I regretted my decision not to fly in to work.

  Dooley glanced at me. “Aren’t you going to ask me about Gifford?”

  “No.”

  “He was your partner. Don’t you want to know why he left?”

  “No.”

  “Ah. I didn’t realize he had left because of a cold lover’s bed. Now it makes sense.”

  I opened my eyes and looked at him. “Excuse me?” I wondered if everyone in the department knew Gifford and I had been sleeping together or if it was just Dooley.

  Dooley gave no clues. “Gifford took a job in Seattle.”

  “He’ll hate it.”

  “That would be because?”

  “He operates under visual flight rules just like me. He won’t be able to fly half as much as he did here.” I looked out the window. “Besides, Sean hates the rain.”

  Dooley didn’t speak for a moment. “It is said that he announced he was giving up flying when he transferred.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “I saw the letter myself. Horn showed it to me. He’d apparently made his decision some time back and the two of them were waiting for the right moment to act on it.”

  Left onto Columbus Avenue, alongside the Orange Line and the Southwest Corridor Park. Opposite the park were first houses, then the open campus of Roxbury Community College. Everything looked open. A few people were moving quickly between shelters: coffee shop to classroom, classroom to ripoff grocerette. They watched us as we drove past, black faces turned out of the rain. Slab-sided brick buildings sprouting out of concrete, punctuated by thin trees.

  When I came out to Boston it struck me as such an exciting place to live. I heard a new language being spoken at every street corner: French, English, German, Swahili, French again, Spanish. Everybody was so different from one another and I wanted to embrace it all, to bury my face in it. It made everything back home seem narrower. Back there we had blacks and whites, Catholics and Protestants, city and country. But the divisions I’d grown up with seemed so small compared with what I saw out here.

  David had grown up in Gloucester, miles and miles from here. He seemed as far away from it as I was. We picked the Parker Street apartment and buried ourselves in the city. For a year it had been so exciting—a real Small Town girl comes to the Big City sort of story.

  Now it just seemed like a place to me.

  “And what a dismal place it is,” I muttered.

  “Yes,” agreed Dooley.

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. This isn’t an easy place to live. You know about the pilgrims, don’t you?”

  “Mayflower Compact. 1627. Funny hats and shoes.”

  Dooley chuckled. “The hats were a later invention by those who didn’t think the Puritans should be considered progressive. Only half of them made it through the first winter.”

  “You said this place wasn’t easy.”

  “True enough, but that’s not my point. Boston was built by those who lived. It took rough, dour, nasty, unsympathetic, intelligent, practical people to survive here.” He waved out the window. “That’s the way it’s always been. Those that can’t hack it leave. They go to easier places: Ohio. Kentucky. Missouri, New York City. Places where winter doesn’t start in September. Places where the summers are always warm. Places where the day doesn’t start out balmy and by midnight it’s ten below. Those who stayed here were tough.”

  “There’s got to be mo
re to life than just surviving.”

  “A distinction meaningful only to those who have survived.” He looked west. “And it’s not always dismal.” He pointed at the lightening sky. “Might see some sunshine today.”

  Both Sean and David had grown up here. Maybe I liked survivors.

  Gifford and I: two years, off and on. First person I’d slept with since me and David split up. A big man—I like big men. He’d had that much in common with David. Big, that is, in a long wiry sort of way since, like me, he had to keep his weight down and muscle mass up for flying. But dark and quiet and as tone deaf as a man could be and still speak—a personal requirement of mine after living with a professional musician.

  Tremont Street sideswiped Columbus Avenue and all of a sudden the avenue was no more and only Tremont Street remained. Names change all the time in Boston whether or not the thing itself changes. It was still early enough the rush hour hadn’t really started.

  Me and Gifford had been a flyer pair since I had moved out here. That is, the last two years minus three months. I stared out the window.

  It should mean something when your lover moves three thousand miles away to get away from you. It should at least make you sad.

  oOo

  Geography is important to a flyer.

  Boston was a small town. Route 128 bordered the city itself and the immediate surrounding suburbs. From top to bottom, the entire area was no more than twenty miles, and from left to right no more than ten. Boston proper was smaller than that. From the river and trees of the Esplanade down to Roxbury was no more than eight miles. Beacon Hill wealth, North End mafia and MIT intelligentsia—all within easy reach. Distance has no meaning in Boston. Things can change crossing over a foot of pavement or don’t change for generations.

  A witchflyer could be in the air from the BPD headquarters and reach the farthest point in no more than eight minutes without breathing hard. Faster if she (meaning me) used a JATO. And that meant point to point. From the roof of the Boston office to on the ground, gun drawn, in ten minutes, no siren necessary. Two minutes, if the flyers were paired.