The Witch's Key

by Dana Donovan

  “No, I mean, I was speculating that maybe I’ve come in the middle of his lunchtime. If so, I could come back later.”

  Her smile evaporated. “I see. Of course, you are busy. I shouldn’t have presumed....”

  “Oh, it’s okay. We can do lunch another time, maybe. I’d love that.”

  “Yes. Another time.” She faded back a step, probably unaware that she was buttoning her blouse as she spoke. “I’ll check my calendar.” I watched her toss her hair off her shoulders with twin flips. “Maybe if you leave your number with Melissa—”

  “I will. I promise. So, you think I wouldn’t be intruding on Mister Marcella’s lunch hour if I went up now?”

  She cast an empty gaze to the floor, but then returned it to me in solemn order. “Actually, Detective—”

  “Please. Call me, Dominic.”

  Her cheeks dimpled. “Okay, Dominic. You see, Mister Marcella hasn’t been eating much lately.”

  “He hasn’t?”

  “No, in fact he’s stopped eating all-together.”

  “Why? Is it because of that episode yesterday? I can talk to him about that. I’m sure—”

  “Dominic.” She reached out and grabbed my arm. “It’s not that. He hasn’t eaten anything in over a week.”

  “What?” I blinked back in confusion, daft to the subtle inclination of her meaning. After a dull stutter and false start, my obvious inability to articulate an understanding eventually triggered the need for her to spell it out.

  “You know he’s dying, don’t you?”

  More blinking. “Of course.”

  “Then you must know that it’s not unusual for people to stop eating towards….” She paused, and I got the feeling for a moment that she could see it in my eyes, the true kinship Pops and I shared. I broke the hold she held on me, or perhaps I held on her, by shifting my eyes away for only a second and then back again. “…When the time gets very near,” she finished.

  “Is it?” I said. “The time, is it very near?”

  “It’s getting closer.”

  “How long does he….”

  “That’s hard to say. Every day he grows weaker, naturally, but he is taking in fluids fortified with things like vitamins, potassium and sodium. It’s really all we can do now.”

  I reached up and cupped her hand that still rested on my arm. “Is he in pain?”

  She gave me a subtle shrug. “He says he isn’t. He knows he can have something if he wants, though.”

  I gave her hand a little squeeze. “Can I go up now?”

  She smiled softly and nodded toward the elevator. “Sure, go on. He’ll be glad to see you.”

  I leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks,” I said, and I turned and walked away.

  As I headed to the elevator, I spotted India in a wall mirror across the lobby. She was still holding her cheek where I kissed her, watching me fade into the depths of the corridor. It made me think how lucky a guy could be with a girl like her: kind, sensitive, pretty and bright. Who could ask for more? With India, a guy wouldn’t need to worry whether or not his girlfriend was out witching it up at night, dressed like some midnight hobo vigilante. He would not lose sleep wondering when the next will-kill spell or witch’s brew would trick him into doing something stupid or embarrassing. Girls like India don’t go around leading a guy on, toying with his emotions while harboring secrets that could get a guy killed. It struck me odd why I didn’t just turn around and march right back to her and tell her that yes, I did want to go to lunch with her. And yes, I did want to start seeing her, maybe seriously—maybe forever.

  But as I stood at the elevator doors, looking at my reflection looking back, I could think of only one question to ask myself. Why on God’s green earth did I fall in love with a witch?

  I stepped out onto Pops’ floor and immediately I thought I heard the faint signal of a train whistle. It sounded distant but clear, and I assumed it came from the yard at Minor’s Point a few miles away. However, as I neared Pop’s room, I noticed that the sound grew exponentially louder, which seemed impossible. In relative terms, my advance toward the source amounted to no perceptible gain. Yet with every step, the hollow bellows of steam and steel carried on a wave of feathered air, fading like whispers in ghostly trails that seemed to resonate within my bones. I needed only to break my stride and click my heels at Pops’ door to realize that the trains at Minors Point had not the soulful spirit as that of which sang throughout the halls around me.

  I leaned into the room as far as the open door allowed and laid my head against the jamb. Over by the window, where the bed had been centered for his sovereign view, Pops stared out aimlessly, blowing into a wood block whistle with breath as faint as scattered mist. At once, a vision came to me, a memory from another life. I recognized that train whistle. Pops played it for me long ago when I was just a boy. “It’s a catch out call,” he’d say to me. “If you listen closely you can tell that the train is leaving”. And I could. As I listened to him blow, I could hear the train pulling out, calling all whom wished to catch out one last time. In the tranquil respite between calls, I cleared my throat and announced my presence.

  “Pops?”

  He turned his ear to the door. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me, Spitelli.”

  “Dominic?”

  I pushed the door open further and stepped into the room. “Yes sir. May I come in?”

  “Already are, ain’t cha?” he said, though he still could not see me. His voice had grown noticeably weaker since just the day before. I attributed some of that to his whistle blowing, which had undoubtedly robbed him of an already diminished breath.

  “I am now,” I said. I came around the bed and sat down on the edge of the windowsill. “How are you feeling today?”

  “Oh, fair to middling, I guess.” He tried to smile through the answer, but I could see it just wasn’t in him.

  “I like your train whistle. Did you make that yourself?”

  “I did.” He held the slender block in both hands and rolled it slowly, passing his thumb over the flattened corners, worn like tumbled stone through years of use. “This used to be a hobo’s best friend on long lonely nights.”

  “That was the catch out call, wasn’t it?”

  His eyes lit up smartly. “Yes! You know that?”

  I smiled. “I’ve heard it once or twice before.”

  “You must have heard it from a hobo,” he said. “Trains don’t have whistles no more. They have air horns.”

  “I know.”

  He looked into my eyes. “You’re a good boy, Spitelli. Your daddy must be proud of you.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, finding myself suddenly choking up. “He is.” I pointed outside, hoping to change the subject. “Anything rolling out today?”

  He cast his gaze out the window and began scanning the horizon beyond Minors Point. In my mind, I pictured a lighthouse beacon sweeping the seas for lost ships. And like an old seafarer too frail for the sail, there was no better place Pops would rather be than watching the tides of his past come and go like steady rain. “Not much,” he said. “It’s a slow day at the yard. Tomorrow, though.” He nodded lightly to himself.

  “What happens tomorrow?”

  “New crews coming down from Maine. Y`ought to see a swarm of boxcars, tankers, flatbeds and gondolas coupling up for all points south tomorrow.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Amtrak,” he said, though only the ‘trak’ came out audibly. His voice was fading quickly. “They own most of the rails and right-a-ways. On slow passenger days they open `em up to heavier freight traffic.”

  “You know a lot about the business,” I said, and before he could answer, I added, “don’t you Jake?”

  He barely batted an eye. “You know who I am?”

  I waited until he looked at me again. “I do. You are Jacob P. Stevens. Or do you prefer, Jersey Jake?”

  He smiled softly, his eyes squinting for the secrets he
still held. “Jake will do, thank you.” He held me with his stare for several moments, and in that time, I felt him reaching into my soul, trying to figure out who I really was. “Are you gonna rat on me, son?”

  I shook my head. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  He nodded. “Like I said, you’re a good boy.” His gaze floated back to the window. “So, how did you know?”

  “You forget? I’m a cop. I did a background check on you and found out that Anthony Marcella died in France during World War Two.” That seemed to surprise him. “You didn’t know?”

  “No. I knew he joined the army, but I never knew for sure what happened to him. I just knew he never came back.”

  “Well, now you know the truth, which is more than I can say about you. Would you care to come clean with me now?”

  “`Bout what?”

  “Everything. Let’s start with Gypsy. What really happened between you and her?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “You won’t believe it.”

  “Try me. You might be surprised.”

  He took a deep breath and seemingly reeled in all the threads of his loose memories to spin a tale that even I had to allow special tolerances to believe.

  “Well, for starters,” he said, “most everything I told you so far is true. The difference is that you can pretty much flip-flop the names around to get the real who’s who. Marcella was the outsider that came into our lives and swept Gypsy off her feet. He was the one arguing with her that last night and the one who left early the next morning after finding out she was pregnant. Near as I can tell, that is when he joined the army. Poor bastard was so scared of Gypsy he had to go overseas to get away from her. When Gypsy told me she was pregnant, I didn’t care much who’s kid it was. I just wanted us to be a family.”

  “Wait a minute. She didn’t tell you who the father was?”

  “How could she? She didn’t know.”

  “I thought…I mean, don’t women usually know them things?”

  “No, son. You gotta understand one thing about Gypsy. She liked to roll with the wind. The only thing important to her was the moment, and she lived it like it was her last.”

  “And that was all right with you?”

  “It wasn’t all right, but it was what it was. I was just happy to have Gypsy back to myself.”

  “I see. So, what happened next?”

  “The damnedest thing.” He leaned toward me and hooked me with his stare. “She turned into a witch.”

  “What!”

  “I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “No, no. I believe you. You caught me by surprise. That’s all. What makes you say that?”

  He settled back into his pillow. “I had always had my suspicions about that woman. She used to do strange things.”

  “Like?”

  “Like speaking in rhymes and chanting in whispered nonsensical gibberish.”

  “Glossolalia,” I said.

  “What?”

  “That’s what it’s called.”

  He shrugged lightly. “I don’t know `bout that, but it freaked me out sometimes.”

  “Did she do anything else?”

  “Sure, lots. You know she had this trick where she would cast pebbles into standing water and then read the overlapping ripples to find stuff like food and drink or money.”

  “And it worked?”

  “Like magic, forgive the pun. We almost never went hungry. But after Anthony was born, everything changed.”

  “Wait. Why did she name the boy Anthony if Marcella took off?”

  “Why else? Gypsy insisted upon it. I later came to think it’s because she didn’t want me to get too attached to him.”

  “I don’t understand”

  “Just wait. I’m getting to it.”

  I backed off with an apologetic grin. “Sorry.”

  “Anyway, at first she got wickedly depressed. Later, she just got wicked.” I watched his eyes narrow until they settled on a spot out the window as far off as his thoughts. His voice now came out only in broken whispers. “We set up a squatter’s nest in an abandoned shack outside of New Castle. It was the autumn of 42. We expected a mild winter and so we passed on the usual migration south. Traveling in freight cars with an infant didn’t seem appropriate, even to a couple of veteran hobos like us.”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” I said, but he seemed not to hear me.

  “One night, I left Gypsy and the baby at the shack while I went out to scrounge up a little grub. I must have come home on her unexpectedly, because when I walked in the door I found her hovering over Anthony with a carvin` knife in her hands.”

  Pops stopped to shake the image from his mind, but his eyes never left the spot outside the window where they had settled earlier. I pulled a chair alongside his bed and sat down beside him. “Go on, Pops,” I said, patting his arm to reassure him. “You can finish.”

  His hand skirted slowly to the edge of the mattress before balling into a fist below the covers. “I say hovering because she was,” he said. “She hovered over him, floating on air with nothing below her to keep her up. She arranged candles in a circle around the boy, and tiny specs of white light flickered like fireflies above him.”

  He shuddered briskly again and the image was gone from his mind. I put my hand over his balled fist and squeezed it lightly. His eyes returned to mine, glazed but not fully in tears. “What happened after that?” I asked.

  “I took him,” he said. “I ran in and scooped him up. You had to see her. She would have killed him.”

  “What was her problem?”

  “I don’t know, but she would have. You have to believe me.”

  I nodded. “I do. I believe you.”

  “Well, that’s it, then. You know my story. I spent the next five years with Anthony, running from Gypsy.”

  “On the rails?”

  “No! Heavens no. She’d have found us for sure. As it was, we had plenty of close calls. You know, about that time there were a number of hobos murdered all along the NEC.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Word around hobo circles was that Gypsy killed them.”

  “But why?”

  “To flush me and Anthony out of hiding.”

  “Do you believe it’s true?”

  “Might be,” he said, with no hesitation in his voice. “And I’d have come out to face her, too, if not for my boy. But I just couldn’t take that chance.”

  “You really loved him, Pops, didn’t you?”

  He narrowed his gaze some. “Course, I loved him. That’s what made it so dang hard to do what I did.”

  “Which is what?”

  “I gave him up. Long about five years of running, I learned that Gypsy was back on my trail. Anthony was getting close to school age, and I really did not want him becoming a hobo like his daddy, so I did what I should have done when he was born. I took him to an orphanage, rang the bell and left him there.”

  My heart sank with his shared pain. “That must have been hard.”

  “Yeah, for me and half a dozen other guys, and some gals, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s called fledgling day. Every spring about a week before school starts, a hobo’s fancy turns to riding the rails again. Can’t rightly do that with rug rats under your arms. Needless to say, that’s when hobo kids get abandoned on the doorsteps of farmhouses and orphanages all up and down the NEC—hell, all over the country for that matter, I suppose.

  “It never was my intention to give Anthony up at the start, but things being what they were with Gypsy and all…well, what could I do? I took him down to the orphanage with Dickey Skittle and his son, and we left them there, two scared little boys holding each other’s hand like best friends. Guess they had to be after that.”

  “Wait. Did you say Dickey Skittle?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Huh. Did he call his boy, little Skittle?”

 
“S`pose he might have. Why?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. It just sounds familiar.”

  He smiled. “It does have a cute rhyme to it. Little Skittle, makes for a fine hobo moniker.”

  I’m not sure what Pops remembered about the younger Skittle, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember that kid at all. The name, however, stuck in my head like a song. I think after we were taken in at the orphanage, little Skittle and me were probably separated and then both of us became too overwhelmed with all the new faces to remember much more.

  While I tried scratching through the years of memory paint that had dulled the chapters of my youth, Pops drifted off on a cloud of his own, kept aloft by the whimsical rhyme of a hobo named young little Skittle. I let him romp for as long as he pleased, which seemed like quite awhile, but when he was ready to come back, he did so as though not a second has slipped away.

  “We hid around the corner and waited for someone to answer the door,” he said, recounting how he and Dickey Skittle abandoned us. “Wouldn’t you figure, though, the bell didn’t work. We watch the poor boys take a seat on the steps and cry their little hearts out. I wanted to go back, but Dickey stopped me. He knew if we did that then we wouldn’t be able to let them go again.”

  “I don’t remember that,” I said.

  Pops looked at me queerly. “What?”

  “I mean, I bet the kids didn’t remember that. You know how they are.”

  He dropped back to that spot out the window where time and distance melted into one. “Yeah well, I remember,” he said, “the way Anthony, especially, cried and cried for the longest damn time. It broke my heart. I suppose if watching him was my punishment for leaving him the way I did, then remembering it has been my penance.”

  “How long did they sit there?”

  “I don’t know. If an hour was a minute, it was too long. Eventually, a young lady came by and stopped to help the boys. At first, I almost jumped out and hit her.”

  I jerked back in my seat. “Why?”

  He laughed. “I thought it was Gypsy.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, can you believe it? She looked just like her. Course, it had been five years, and through my own tears I might have thought that any pretty young lady looked like Gypsy. It was the damnedest thing, but I kept my cool. This nice lady knelt down by Anthony and she helped dry his tears and gave him a hug.” Again Pops laughed, or tried to. “Probably the first time the boy felt a woman’s hug in his life.” I suspected he was right.