Magic Times

by Harvey Click

  “I’m sure. This is far more dangerous than a shotgun.”

  Jason returned to the study and noticed one pile was missing and so was Hatter. He picked up one of the remaining piles and lugged it to the back yard, wondering if he should tell Drew about the theft. It was a perplexing question, and he wasn’t sure what Conan would do. Maybe after this was over, maybe after Drew had destroyed part of his book and simmered down, maybe he’d be happy to know part of it still remained.

  “Get the rest and bring out some matches,” Drew said. “You’ll find some on the kitchen counter.”

  Jason found a box of wooden matches and brought them out with the final pile, which appeared to have shrunk to half its size since the last time he’d seen it. Drew struck a match and lit one of the wadded-up pages.

  Hatter came rushing out of the backdoor. “Please don’t do this,” he said. “Hell’s bells, at least let me read it first! I’ll pay you whatever you want, just name your price.”

  Drew ignored him. When the wads were burning nicely he added a few more sheets to the flame and then some more until a good blaze was going.

  “For God’s sake,” Hatter said.

  Drew threw a thick pile of pages on the flames and watched them catch. “Eighteen years of work up in smoke,” he said. “Good riddance to a lot of damned ugly memories.”

  He threw on more pages, and as the blaze grew higher he began to laugh.

  ***

  When there was nothing left but ashes, they went inside.

  “I been stuck in here too long,” Jason said. “I need to get out. Can you keep an eye on Drew for a while?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Hatter said glumly. “It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

  His face looked even wearier and baggier than usual, as if he’d just watched his own house burn down instead of some pieces of paper.

  “No one needs to keep any sort of eye on me,” Drew said. “What Rue Anne wanted is gone, and so is the danger.”

  “She don’t know it’s burned,” Jason said. “She tried to kill you once and maybe she’ll try again.”

  “He’s right,” Hatter said. “You’re going to need some company for a while.”

  Drew shrugged. “Whatever. In the meantime I’m going to have a bite to eat and go to bed. Death is rather exhausting, I’m afraid.”

  He opened the refrigerator and said, “Damn. What a putrid mess. Now I have to go buy groceries—just one of the many inconveniences of being alive.”

  “And exactly how do you plan to do that?” Hatter said. “Since I’m the only one with a car, I guess I’m the designated sucker here. Make out a damn list, but keep it short, no five-thousand page manuscript.”

  Drew wrote down a few items, and Hatter said he’d be back in half an hour.

  “I can heat up a can of soup for you,” Jason said.

  “Would you?” Drew said. “Bean soup would be nice.”

  He had looked excited when he was in the back yard feeding his bonfire, but now he looked old and pale and sad, and Jason wondered if he was beginning to regret having destroyed eighteen years of work.

  “Maybe you oughta be back in that there hospital,” Jason said.

  “No, I’ll be all right, I’m certain of that. I thank you for scrubbing my kitchen and guarding my manuscript and of course for bringing me back from the dead, though to be honest I’m more grateful for the first two favors than the last.”

  Jason dumped the soup into a saucepan and lit the burner, thinking it wasn’t much thanks for all he had done.

  “I was hoping you might could let me stay here for a short spell,” he said, “since I brung you back to life and all that.”

  “My dear boy, you’re more than welcome to stay for as long as you need to. I wouldn’t mind having some help around here till I get my strength back. On the other hand, if you want to leave I can get along just fine on my own.”

  “Then maybe I’ll stay till I can find me a job and get a little money stored up.”

  “Good. Well then, that’s all nicely done and settled—you may have free room and board until we start driving each other insane. Just don’t ask me for any more spells. So I take it you’re not planning to go home?”

  What is home? Jason wondered, and for some reason the question gave him a chill.

  “I guess not,” he said.

  He poured the hot soup into a bowl, set it on the table in front of Drew, and watched him eat. He kept thinking, what is home? It’s a place where you can put all your—

  “There are some paper napkins in that big cupboard,” Drew said.

  Jason got him one, and Drew delicately dabbed the corners of his mouth with it.

  “I thought you were my son, or rather the reincarnation of my son’s spirit,” he said. “But Marmalade told me you’re not. I admit I was greatly relieved. When I believed you were my son, every mistake you made upset me terribly. Now you’re just another person who makes mistakes like all of us.

  “Well, that tasted good. It’s baffling how hospitals can perform brain surgery but can’t prepare food that tastes as good as a cheap can of bean soup.”

  Jason took the empty bowl and washed it.

  “I noticed my guitar in the living room,” Drew said. “Have you been playing it?”

  “A little.”

  “Do you play well?”

  “Not as good as I want. Will it bother you if I strum it while you’re sleeping?”

  “Not at all. In fact, I don’t intend to sleep. I’m going to lie down and read a cheap detective novel.”

  Drew went to the study to find one, and when he emerged he didn’t shut the door.

  “No need to keep it sealed up like a tomb anymore, since I’m no longer going to waste my time typing dirty secrets in there,” he said. “It’s time to air out the room and air out my life.”

  After he disappeared into his bedroom, Jason sat on the sofa, turned on the recorder, and strummed quietly. The phone rang and he grabbed it quickly so the noise wouldn’t bother Drew.

  “Hello?”

  “You’re thinking of home,” Rue said.

  “Yes,” he murmured.

  “What is home?” she asked.

  “It’s a place where you can put all your weapons aside and unfold yourself like a blanket and trust that no one will ever cause you any harm,” he said.

  “You’re thinking that my home is your true home,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You’re thinking that you want to come back here and stay here forever and let Rue take care of you in any way she wants.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Then come home now. You will be here before sunset.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You won’t remember this call. You may hang up now.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Part Eight

  The Fourth Apostle

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Jason hung up and tried strumming some more, but his fingers felt stiff and nervous. He kept thinking he needed to go somewhere, but he didn’t know where and besides he couldn’t leave Drew alone. As soon as Hatter got back he was going to take a nice long walk and let his feet take him wherever they wanted to go.

  But waiting for Hatter was difficult. His feet were anxious to start moving and they didn’t seem to care that Drew would be left alone. He squirmed on the sofa and tried to ignore them.

  His feet were winning the argument and he was about to get up and leave when someone knocked. The door didn’t have a peephole, so he asked who was there and was surprised when a voice answered, “Emily.”

  “Am I interrupting anything?” she asked when he opened the door.

  “No, come in. We can’t talk too loud ‘cause Drew is sleeping.”

  “Hatty just called and suggested I drop by,” she said. “He told me what’s been going on, Drew dying and then burning his book and everything.”

  “Hatty?” Jason said.

  “Well, I can
’t very well call him Maddy since that’s a woman’s name, and I don’t want to call him Mad though he’d probably like that, and I don’t like the name Madison.”

  She sat in the armchair and Jason sat back down on the sofa.

  “It’s a phony name I guess,” he said. “Mad Hatter. It’s made up like all the rest a him.”

  “That’s part of what makes him so interesting,” Emily said. “He doesn’t just create novels, he creates himself. In a sense he’s a work of fiction too.”

  Jason had no idea why Hatter had sent her, but he enjoyed looking at her. She looked pretty with her bookish brown glasses and her light brown hair tied back in a neat ponytail. Her face wore a serious expression even when she smiled, but serious like a thoughtful little girl instead of a know-it-all schoolteacher. There were a couple small pimples on her forehead that he hadn’t noticed before, and her chin maybe looked a bit too small, but Jason decided he liked it that way.

  His feet were still eager to walk, but his eyes were content to stay where they were.

  “He’s a brilliant writer, even if almost nobody reads him,” she said.

  Jason didn’t want to admit he knew nothing of Hatter’s books, so he said nothing.

  “This is an odd experience,” she said. “Imagine being able to talk to a character from a novel written by one of your favorite writers. Well, that’s exactly what I’m doing. You’re a character in his work in progress, and now I’m becoming a character too, though a minor one. He told me it will all be from your point of view, so other characters will be on stage only when they’re with you.” She smiled shyly and said, “So that means I’m on stage right now.”

  Jason began to feel awkward. The cameras were rolling and he couldn’t remember his lines. He noticed the tape recorder was still running and shut it off.

  “So that’s why you come here, huh?” he asked. “So you can be in the book.”

  “No, Hatty told me you might want some company. But I think maybe he has another motive. He finds you interesting, but I don’t think he has any idea why. I don’t think he understands you as a character—he’s not sure what makes you tick. I think he’s hoping I can figure that out and maybe help him bring you to life as a character.”

  This made Jason feel even more awkward. “So this is like an interview or something?” he said.

  “No, no, nothing like that. I guess I shouldn’t have come—I’m intruding on your privacy.”

  “Don’t leave,” he said. “He’s right I can use some company. I just ain’t sure I want you to hear me ticking.”

  They sat there for a while without saying anything. Jason realized she looked nervous too; she was fidgeting with her ponytail and squirming a bit in her armchair.

  “I guess you like books,” he said. “I been reading quite a bit myself here lately.”

  “Oh? What are you reading?”

  “Just some stories with magic and all that. But they’s a lotta real-life stuff in there too.”

  “Oh, you must mean magic realism, Gabriel García Márquez and the like. It’s such an interesting genre!”

  “Yep, that’s ‘xactly what I been reading,” he said. “I just didn’t know what you call that kinda writing.”

  There was another long silence. She stared at the guitar and finally said, “Do you play guitar?”

  “Not real good,” he said, and couldn’t think of anything else to add.

  “Looks like you’re growing a beard,” she said after a while.

  He proudly felt his stubble and said, “Nope, I just don’t have my razor handy. I must look a sight.”

  “You look fine, though I don’t think you should grow a beard. You have a nice face.”

  He grinned and they both squirmed in their seats for a while.

  “So you’re pretty interested in Hatter I guess,” Jason said at last.

  “Oh yes. I’m doing my thesis on him.”

  “I mean, you know…”

  “Oh no, nothing like that. Hatty’s a perfect gentleman, he’d never make any advances.”

  Jason tried to picture Hatter as a gentleman but couldn’t.

  “Maybe he’s thinking it would make an interesting twist in his book if we like, um, well, I mean, you know, got to be friends,” he said.

  “Maybe so, but it wouldn’t be Hatty’s style for anything romantic to happen,” she said rather briskly.

  “Well then, what would he have us do?”

  “I don’t know, something ironic and ambiguous, I suppose,” she said. “Or he might have something horrible happen to us.”

  “I don’t want that,” Jason said, and neither of them spoke for a while.

  “I probably should leave,” she said. “This is beginning to feel more like Harold Pinter than Madison Hatter.”

  “Harold who?” he asked.

  “I just mean this is feeling uncomfortable.”

  “Maybe if we try to pretend we’re not characters in his book and just act like we’re real people,” he said. “Maybe that would help.”

  “It might,” she said. “Maybe it would be easier to do that if we went for a walk.”

  “Yeah, I’m itching to get outta here too,” he said. “Soon as Hatter gets back with them groceries.”

  A minute or two later Hatter returned and Jason slipped on his jacket.

  “Who just came in?” Drew called through the bedroom door.

  “Hatter,” Jason said. “Ain’t you asleep in there?”

  “No, I’m reading.”

  “I’m gonna leave for a spell, but Hatter’ll be here.”

  “By all means, go out and get some fresh air. By the way, who called on the phone?”

  “Nobody called,” Jason said. “You musta been dreaming.”

  He and Emily headed toward campus without speaking. She seemed so small beside him; the top of her head barely came to his lips.

  The air was cool but not chilly and seemed fresher than usual, as if it had been washed clean by yesterday’s rain. A couple days ago the leaves had all been green but now many of them were turning—maybe the cold rain had made them give up the ghost, he thought.

  The sun was getting low and seemed to be staring at them. The lateness of the hour made him uncomfortable, and he kept thinking he was supposed to be somewhere else doing something different.

  When they reached the Oval for some reason he headed to the bench where he had sat with Holly—how many days ago? As he sat on it now with Emily, he wondered how he would feel if Holly walked by, wondered if he’d want her to feel jealous, and he realized he wouldn’t care one way or another, he’d probably just nod his head or say hi to her and let her walk on by to whatever sort of life she wanted. Why should he want her to feel jealous, since he really didn’t want her anyway?

  He realized he wouldn’t have felt like this a few days ago. Somehow he had changed, and he didn’t know why. Nothing seemed familiar anymore. For some reason he felt frightened, and he pulled his jacket tighter.

  He and Emily still weren’t speaking, but now the silence didn’t feel awkward. They watched the sun disappear behind the library, painting the sky pink and purple.

  After a long while he asked, “Where you from?”

  “You can probably guess from my accent.”

  “I don’t hear no accent. You just sound normal.”

  “Probably that’s because you’ve been surrounded by it all your life.”

  “Well, you sure don’t talk like me. You don’t say ain’t and all that stuff. I know I’m not s’posed to but it’s in my blood.”

  “That’s just grammar,” she said. “Anybody can learn grammar.”

  “I dunno, I been talking this way my whole life.”

  “You can change the way you talk if you want to,” she said. “It’s all a matter of will power. I’m from a tiny town near Parkersburg. My father was a truck driver, at least when he was sober, and my mother worked in a grocery store. We didn’t have much money, and we said ain’t a lot.”

&nbs
p; “How’d you get into all this?” he asked. “I mean college and books and all that?”

  “Wuthering Heights. I read it when I was thirteen, and it changed my life. I didn’t have many friends, I was homely and lonely, and then Heathcliff appeared on the moors and swept me away.”

  “You was homely as a girl?”

  “Yes. I’ve always been plain, but I was even plainer as a girl.”

  “You’re sure as hell not plain. You’re pretty. You’re damn pretty.”

  She smiled and straightened her ponytail.

  “So when I was thirteen I decided I wanted to read all the literature I could and maybe even write my own books someday. I managed to change my grammar, but I can’t quite get rid of the accent, and in fact I no longer want to. It’s a part of me, and being ashamed of it means being ashamed of myself and my family. Flannery O’Connor’s accent was probably a lot heavier than mine, anyway.”

  “Don’t know what I want to be and I never did,” Jason said. “I guess I always figured I’d end up living in Glum Fork my whole life and working in the mines like my pa. But that’s all changed now. I don’t feel like the same person.”

  He realized just a few days ago he would have been pulling every damn-fool lie he could think of out of his hat trying to impress her, but none of that seemed to matter now.

  “We never had no money to speak of,” he said, “and then the last few years we didn’t hardly have a pot to piss in. First my ma got cancer and the doctors milked us dry, making her sicker and sicker till she died. Then my pa come down with black lung. He got too sick to work, so he sold damn near everything we owned, and now there’s not a plug nickel left. The bank was trying to repo the house when I left town. They probably got the locks changed by now.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I don’t care so much now,” he said. “What’s home anyway?”

  The question sent a cold chill down his back, and he didn’t know why.

  “It’s a place where you can put all your weapons aside and unfold yourself,” he said, but for some reason he couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “What did you say?” Emily asked.

  “Nothing, just thinking out loud. It’s all changed now, everything is different. I think it’s ‘cause I saved Drew’s life, I think maybe that’s why. I didn’t save my pa. He died ‘bout three weeks ago, and I didn’t do nothing to save him.”