Slice of Cherry

by Dia Reeves

  Fancy raised the bag with her record inside. “What about you? You find something exciting to do?”

  “Not really.”

  “Who was that on the phone?”

  Kit sat at the tea table. “Nobody.”

  “You were singing to nobody?” Fancy put her new Louis Armstrong on the phonograph and decided to smash the Helen Kane record later.

  “I wasn’t singing to him. I was just . . . singing.”

  Kit could barely look Fancy in the eye. “Let’s read the mail.”

  “Slim pickings today.” Fancy skimmed the letters, disappointed. There was still hate mail, although they didn’t get nearly as much as they’d used to. But no one had written to them for help, at least not the kind of help the sisters were offering.

  “Just means ain’t that many people who aim to see someone dead. At least not today.”

  “I’m really sorry for not letting you come with me to Amelia’s.”

  “Here’s one,” said Fancy, as though Kit hadn’t spoken.

  “‘Dear sisters, I think there’s a monster stalking me. It’s green and feathery and has long red teeth. I’m scared to go outside anymore. Could you help me?’”

  “It’s just, you get so weird whenever I pay attention to other people.” Kit was staring at the tea set as though she’d never seen it before, as though she had been taken over by a replicant.

  Fancy wrote, “Sorry, Gayle. Human monsters we understand. Monster monsters are out of our league. Be safe, and good luck not getting eaten.”

  Kit stroked Fancy’s hair, petting her as though she were a cat. Though Fancy tolerated this, she wasn’t anywhere close to purring.

  “There’s gone come a time when I meet somebody and you won’t be able to just whisk him away to la-la land—”

  “It’s the happy place. It was. I’m not happy anymore.”

  Kit stopped touching her. “I’m sorry.”

  “You apologize so much about so many different things that the words don’t even make sense anymore.”

  “What do you want me to s—”

  A knock sounded at the door. The sisters regarded each other quizzically—the Cordelles rarely received visitors.

  They answered the door and found a little boy, about eight years old, standing on the front porch. He was dressed in fall clothes—long-sleeved shirt and pants—so of course he was monumentally sweaty and breathing sharply as if he had run all the way to their door.

  “I’m Doyle. You sent me a letter.”

  Kit stepped forward. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.” He had thick, dark eyebrows that made him look fierce. “I want you to kill somebody for me.”

  “I guess I spoke too soon,” Kit said to Fancy as she waved the boy inside and led him to their sleeping porch, where she sat him at the tea table.

  “Who needs to die?” Kit asked as Fancy poured the iced tea.

  The boy drank it in one gulp. “My godfather. Kent Butterman. He beats me.”

  Kit tugged at the boy’s sweaty shirt. “Let’s see.”

  The boy removed his shirt. He was a kaleidoscope of colors: blacks, blues, yellows, greens. And not just his chest and back. He raised his pant legs and showed them additional colors painting his legs up to his thighs.

  Kit whistled appreciatively while he straightened his clothes. “You must be a tough little kid.”

  “Not tougher than Godfather.” He slouched on the mushroom stool like a grim gnome. “He been beating on me for a year, ever since Daddy went to jail.” He gave Kit a knowing look. “My daddy’s in jail too.”

  He jumped at the sound of the screen door slamming shut. He and Kit watched Fancy hurrying across the yard to the cellar.

  “Where she going?”

  “To get something to help you. She’s good at this sorta thing.” Kit put “Beans and Corn Bread” on the phonograph. “Why’s your dad in jail?”

  “He tried to rob somebody. It was on the news. But then I saw this other thing on the news, about this kid. He was six. His neighbors heard him get beat every night, but they didn’t do nothing, even the night the kid died. At least Godmother tries to do something, but then he beats on both of us, ’stead of just me. I’m not gone sit around and wait for him to just beat me to death.” As if to illustrate his point he shot off the stool.

  The sight of Fancy coming back to the sleeping porch reminded Kit of something.

  “How much money you got, Doyle?”

  “Seven bucks.” He handed over the crumpled bills.

  Kit pocketed the money as Fancy came in with the kinetoscope. She poured Doyle another cup of tea. “Go out on the front porch and wait for us.”

  After Doyle exited through the inner door, Kit turned to Fancy and handed her the money. “You don’t need me to go with you, do you?”

  “How can you ask me that?”

  The bedsprings creaked as Kit sat. “This is your thing. We both know that. At the tea party? At the talent show? What did I do? Nothing. You don’t need me.” The words hung in the air, buzzing and stinging like wasps.

  “I got something planned for this godfather of his, and I do need you to pull it off. You’ll be center stage.”

  “I don’t need to be center stage; it’s not about that.”

  “Yeah, it’s about whether or not we’re a team. Me and you against the world, remember?”

  Kit didn’t answer, and the buzzing grew louder: You don’t need me. Fancy turned her back on it.

  “But if you’d rather abandon me yet again—”

  “Don’t gimme that shit, Fancy! You’re the one who won’t accept my apology.”

  “Talk is cheap.” Fancy held open the door to the inner room and waited for Kit to walk through it.

  When Kit did walk through, a wave of relief washed over her. She hurriedly shut the door on those buzzing, hateful words, but their sting—that she couldn’t shut away.

  The sisters followed Doyle through the woods to his house, which was about a mile or so down El Camino Real and then another half mile through the woods. Dandelion fluff had turned the air into a snowy tableau. Doyle led them down Mission Trail, past the old ruins of one of the first missions to be built in Texas. Kids from upsquare haunted the ruins on the weekends, and when the wind was right, the sisters could hear their drunken revels from the sleeping porch.

  As Doyle walked, he sang the first line of “Beans and Corn Bread” over and over until Kit told him to shut up. He did for a while; then he asked, “What’re you gone do to Godfather?” They left the path and waded through a patch of gory Annas. “Shoot him?”

  Kit laughed at the hopeful note in his tone. “Whatever we do we won’t do here. We’re gone take him somewhere else.”

  “Can I watch?”

  “Please yourself, kid. We don’t c—” Kit stumbled and nearly smacked face-first into an elm tree. She looked at her feet and heaved a sigh. “Not again.” But she didn’t seem particularly put out, unlike Doyle and Fancy, who stood frozen by the sight of the hand gripping Kit’s ankle.

  The corpse climbed Kit, as the first one had done, and when it was free of the earth and face-to-undead-face with Kit, it asked, “Will you grant my plea?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then get me outta these stinking woods! I don’t feel safe here. He said I’d never feel safe anywhere, but you have to find somewhere for me.”

  Kit was patient with the babbling. “Where would you feel safe?”

  “Anywhere else. Anywhere he can’t get me.”

  “Okay.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  Instead of collapsing back into the ground as the first corpse had done, as soon as Kit finished speaking, this one disappeared.

  “What’d you do?” Doyle asked.

  “I think I sent her to heaven.” She was looking at Fancy, who looked back, awestruck.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know.” Kit took Doyle’s hand, and then as an afterthought took Fancy’s
hand as well. Fancy pulled away, uninterested in being anybody’s afterthought.

  “I was thinking of paradise, something afterlifey like that.”

  Doyle stared openly at Kit as they walked. “Are you a witch?”

  “Ain’t no such thing.”

  “I know. But are you?”

  “What do you think?” Kit asked him.

  Doyle decided to keep his opinion to himself. “Is it easy to kill?”

  “Yep.”

  Her quick answer seemed to trouble him. “I put a knife to Godfather’s throat while he was asleep,” said Doyle, “but I couldn’t do it.”

  “Didn’t say it was easy for everybody. If it was, everybody would do it. You leave the killing to pros like us.”

  Doyle nodded thoughtfully. “Do dead bodies always come to life around you?”

  “Lately, yeah.”

  This was news to Fancy. Kit looked away, guiltily.

  “I can’t cross the street without ’em grabbing at me. I was thinking I’d be smart like Big Mama and just stay out of graveyards, but there’s so many bodies buried all over. I can feel ’em. Even the ones that don’t rise. When I pass over ’em, my legs start to shiver like they’re full of electricity.”

  “Is she a witch too?” asked Doyle, pointing at Fancy, swinging Kit’s arm like a regular kid instead of one with murder in his heart.

  “If I am, she definitely is.”

  “What can you do?”

  When Fancy didn’t answer, Kit squeezed Doyle’s hand. “You’ll see when we get to your house.”

  “There it is.” Doyle pointed out a tiny red house with a swing in the yard and pinwheels in the flower bed.

  Before they even reached the front door, a woman came out to meet them, to meet Doyle, as if she had been waiting for him. “Doyle.” Her voice was barely audible. “He’s looking for you.”

  She said “he” like a Christian too frightened to speak the name of God for fear of the wrath it would bring.

  “Who’s she?”

  “My godmother, Steffie.”

  Kit stepped forward, all smiles. “Hey, Miz Steffie. We came over to hang out with Doyle. That okay?”

  Steffie had a young face, a whisper-thin body, and a caged expression. She regarded the sisters nervously, as if they were the problem and not the man she lived with.

  “He don’t like being disturbed in the afternoon.”

  “What’s the holdup, Steffie?” boomed a voice from within the house, less like God’s voice and more like a cranky child’s.

  Kit pushed past Steffie and went inside, Fancy, Doyle, and Steffie following in her wake. They entered a den—a smallish room, Fancy was happy to note. It was cigar-smoke sweet and paneled with dark wood, neat and tidy except for the large man sprawled across a leather recliner, a newspaper spread over his lap, reading glasses perched on his nose. He removed the glasses when he saw them. He had striking eyes: golden irises like a cat’s, with large, dark pupils that stood out like pebbles caught in amber. He did not look happy to see them.

  “We’re the holdup,” burbled Kit, standing before him.

  “Whatever it is, I ain’t buying.” He refolded his newspaper and shot Steffie a cold look.

  “We’re not selling, Godfather.” She giggled. “Godfather. I feel like I should kiss your ring.” Kit knelt before the recliner, startling the godfather, and took his hairy-knuckled hand. “No rings. Not even a wedding ring, huh, Steffie? But lots of bruises. Why is that? You been knocking some sense into the kid?” She glanced at Doyle, who was leaning back in Steffie’s arms. “Looks like he needs it. I can read that smart-ass look from all the way over here.”

  Godfather seemed to enjoy the sight of Kit at his feet holding his hands. A smirk spread across his face like slime mold. “It’s done with love.”

  Kit’s eyes widened. “What’s it feel like to get punched with love? Does it feel like this?” She leaned forward and kissed the godfather on the mouth. Fancy watched, appalled, as Kit did a very thorough job.

  Kit pulled away from the kiss and punched the godfather in the balls.

  “Is that what it feels like?” Kit asked him as he doubled over in pain.

  As the godfather struggled to catch his breath, Kit stood and spoke to Steffie, who was watching her man with a greedy look in her eyes, as if she was enjoying his every grimace of pain, savoring it as if it were nutritious.

  “Hey!”

  Steffie snapped to attention and focused on Kit.

  “I said, why don’t you go into another room? We don’t want you along.” Kit glanced at Fancy. “Do we?”

  Fancy shook her head, wondering how had Kit learned to kiss like that? Like some sexpot in the movies?

  “Along where?”

  “Never mind where.”

  “I’ll be okay,” Doyle said, pulling away from her. “They’re the good guys.”

  When Steffie wavered too long, Kit snapped, “Go on!” Steffie was schooled to follow orders and didn’t question further. “Okay, but we eat at six.”

  When Steffie had gone, Kit sat on the arm of the recliner and clapped her hand on the godfather’s shoulder. “You know what you’re gone do?” she asked Fancy.

  Fancy knew exactly. The godfather, still doubled over, turned away from her, as if Fancy’s expression alone were more painful than his balls. Kit patted his shoulder, sympathetically. “Don’t be scared; she only gives that look to the bad guys.”

  “He is the bad guy!” Doyle cried, afraid Kit had missed the point.

  “He is?” she said in surprise. “Well, then.” She put her mouth to the godfather’s ear as Fancy turned the crank. “Go ahead and be scared.”

  FROM FANCY’S DREAM DIARY:

  UNCLE MILES WAS A REAL TINY LITTLE BOY, BUT HE WAS SMART. HE TAUGHT ME HOW TO UNLOCK A DOORWAY THAT WOULD LEAD ME TO DADDY. BUT WHEN I STEPPED THROUGH, THE FLESH OF MY LEG FELL OFF. UNCLE MILES LOOKED CONFUSED AND SAID, DADDY, DEATH; I ALWAYS GET THE D WORDS MIXED UP.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  As they entered the happy place, the minions whisked the godfather away, and the sisters and Doyle followed after. They left the Headless Garden and went down into the village, the sea breeze so refreshingly cool Fancy wished she could bottle it and take it back with her to Portero.

  A crowd had gathered in a field around a boxing ring, and Fancy, Kit, and Doyle arrived just in time to see the minions taking the godfather into a small tent nearby.

  “Somebody’s gone beat up Godfather?” exclaimed Doyle, ecstatic at the idea.

  “This is hilarious.” Kit laughed. “Who did you get to fight him?”

  “You,” said Fancy. “He’s Beans, you’re Corn Bread.”

  “Me?”

  She clapped Kit on the back. “If you can give yourself wings, why couldn’t you give yourself some boxing skills? You could whup that turkey even without extra skills. You’re not a little kid. In that other tent is a change of clothes for you. Good luck, not that you’ll need it.”

  “True.” Fancy watched Kit’s shoulders go back and her spine straighten. “I can take this guy.”

  Doyle kicked his foot awkwardly after Kit left. Sometimes Fancy wished she had Kit’s easy way with people, especially around little kids. She didn’t like it that Doyle was scared of her. She tried to take his hand as Kit had, but he shied away.

  “Let’s sit down,” she snapped, annoyed with him and with herself for caring that he preferred Kit. Didn’t everyone?

  As Fancy and Doyle took their seats in the front row, Kit came out of the tent in shiny pink boxers and a tank top and climbed nimbly into the ring. The announcer, a woman wearing a mask made of peacock feathers and a sparkly evening gown, introduced the contestants, speaking into an even sparklier microphone.

  “In this corner, at six feet and weighing two hundred seventy-five pounds, is Kent ‘the Godfather’ Butterman!”

  The crowd erupted into boos. Doyle booed more loudly than anyone.

  The godfather, in his yellow trunks,
was solidly built, only a little flabby around the middle. He was spoiling for a fight, and so of course he turned his anger on the weakest person there: Kit, who was waiting on the other side of the ring.

  “And in this corner, at five foot four and weighing a hundred and seven pounds, is Christianne ‘Kit’ Cordelle!”

  The crowd surged to its feet, cheering. “Get him, Kit!” Doyle yelled.

  Neither the godfather nor Kit wore gloves. Kit pranced around, shaking out her long arms and legs, blowing kisses first to the crowd and then to the godfather, who was yelling at her and trying to attack her. There was no referee, so the announcer had to keep him distracted until the bell sounded, signaling the beginning of the match. The announcer fled the ring, and Kit had to deal with the angry godfather on her own.

  He immediately grabbed Kit by the throat and choked her, much to the crowd’s dismay. Their dismay didn’t last long. Kit stepped back and left her neck and head in the godfather’s hands. He wrung her neck several moments before he realized Kit’s body was several feet away, tapping her foot impatiently.

  The godfather did a double-take when Kit’s head blew a raspberry at him, and he yelped and flung her head away. Kit caught it and placed it on her shoulders, then bowed to the appreciative audience. Then she ran forward and punched the godfather in the mouth.

  Kit had somehow made her fists larger than normal, like sledgehammers, so he flew six feet through the air, then dropped to the mat like a bomb. Though the godfather somehow climbed to his feet, he didn’t stand a chance against Kit’s new fists. When she was done with him, he looked like a man who had been stung by the residents of an entire beehive. Kit did a little Mexican hat dance all around his swaying figure, to the merriment of the crowd, who shouted, “Olé!” When she was done, she bowed again and accidentally on purpose knocked her butt into the godfather, laughing as he dropped, unresisting, to the mat. He didn’t get up again.

  As he lay on his back, Kit knelt at his feet and, starting at his toes, began to curl the godfather as if he were a tube of toothpaste and she were determined to get every last drop. Doyle was actually standing on his chair, cheering deliriously along with the rest of the crowd. After Kit finished literally squeezing the life from the godfather, she stood and tucked his rolled hide under her arm. The sparkling announcer reentered the ring and slipped in the godfather’s remains as she thrust Kit’s arm in the air and declared her the champion.