Some Small Magic
ACCLAIM FOR BILLY COFFEY
“Unforgettable. Evocative as memory, haunted as the South. Some Small Magic is big story magic written on the heart. Don’t read if you’re not prepared to be broken and awestruck at once.”
—Tosca Lee, New York Times bestselling author
“On one level, this novel continues a long line of appealing road books, as three adventurers hop trains, scrounge meals, and sleep in barns as they cross the rural South. But Some Small Magic is also a tale of a journey from doubt to faith, and from hardscrabble despair to the highest form of hope. It’s a vivid and compelling read, with characters so alive you expect them to step out of the pages and say hello. The final pages are so beautiful they hurt a little.”
—Stephen Kiernan, author of The Curiosity and The Baker’s Secret
“Rich, vivid language and description make up Coffey’s latest. Bobby’s voice is intense and rich. His flaws cause him to stand out against the colorful characters who surround him. An inventive, intricate plot, cleverly written and filled with humor, There Will Be Stars is a truly engaging, entertaining read.”
—RT Book Reviews, 4 stars
“In the first line of the book, Coffey’s hillbilly narrator invites his accidental guest (that would be us, the readers) to ‘come on out of that sun’ and set a spell. The spell is immediate. We are altogether bewitched by the teller, by his lyrical telling, and by the tale itself, whose darkness is infernal . . . Everything is at stake in this battle between good and evil—including the identity of the narrator, revealed at last. To Christians and non-Christians alike, this roaring tale will leave a powerful mark.”
—BookPage on The Curse of Crow Hollow
“Coffey spins a wicked tale . . . [The Curse of Crow Hollow] blends folklore, superstition, and subconscious dread in the vein of Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery.’”
—Kirkus Reviews
“An edge-of-your-seat, don’t-read-in-the-dark book with amazing characters . . . Coffey takes readers on a wild roller-coaster ride without ever going over the top.”
—RT Book Reviews, 41/2 stars, TOP PICK! on The Curse of Crow Hollow
“Conjures a sense of genteel Southern charm . . . this creepy tale will delight enthusiasts of Tosca Lee’s Demon and other horror stories.”
—Library Journal on The Curse of Crow Hollow
“With lyrical writing and a rich narrative voice, Billy Coffey effortlessly weaves a coming-of-age story into a suspenseful, page-turning novel. In the Heart of the Dark Wood is a beautiful journey that takes the reader down a road filled with Southern gothic characters and settings; perfectly balanced with redemption and triumph of the human spirit. Allie is a courageous character that is sure to capture any reader’s heart. In the Heart of the Dark Wood is not to be missed.”
—Michael Morris, author of Slow Way Home and Man in the Blue Moon
“Coffey pens a coming-of-age story about the tribulations of the heart that is profoundly believable. The dialogues between characters are intensely rewarding to follow, and readers will anticipate the danger ahead; they will not pull away from the novel until it is finished. Suspense and mysteries of spirit make for a winning combination for any reader.”
—RT Book Reviews, 41/2 stars, on In the Heart of the Dark Wood
“The Devil Walks in Mattingly . . . recalls Flannery O’Conner with its glimpses of the grotesque and supernatural.”
—BookPage
“[The Devil Walks in Mattingly is] a story that will hold your attention until the last page.”
—Jessica Stringer, Southern Living
“Billy Coffey is one of the most lyrical writers of our time. His latest work, The Devil Walks in Mattingly, is not a page-turner to be devoured in a one-night frenzy. Instead, it should be valued as a literary delicacy, with each savory syllable sipped slowly. By allowing ourselves to steep in this story, readers are treated to a delightful sensory escape one delicious word at a time. Even then, we leave his imaginary world hungry for more, eager for another serving of Coffey’s tremendous talent.”
—Julie Cantrell, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Into the Free and When Mountains Move
“Coffey (When Mockingbirds Sing) has a profound sense of Southern spirituality. His narrative moves the reader from Jake and Kate’s false heaven to a terrible hell, then back again to a glorious grace.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Devil Walks in Mattingly
“[A]n inspirational and atmospheric tale.”
—Library Journal, starred review of When Mockingbirds Sing
“This intriguing read challenges mainstream religious ideas of how God might be revealed to both the devout and the doubtful.”
—Publishers Weekly review of When Mockingbirds Sing
“Readers will appreciate how slim the line is between belief and unbelief, faith and fiction, and love and hate as supplied through this telling story of the human heart always in need of rescue.”
—CBA Retailers + Resources review of When Mockingbirds Sing
“Billy Coffey is a minstrel who writes with intense depth of feeling and vibrant, rich description. The characters who live in this book face challenges that stretch the deepest fabric of their beings. You will remember When Mockingbirds Sing long after you finish it.”
—Robert Whitlow, bestselling author of The Choice
“When Mockingbirds Sing by Billy Coffey made me realize how often we think we know how God works, when in reality we don’t have a clue. God’s ways are so much more mysterious than we can imagine. Billy Coffey is an author we’re going to be hearing more about. I’ll be looking for his next book!”
—Colleen Coble, USA Today bestselling author of The Inn at Ocean’s Edge and the Hope Beach series
OTHER NOVELS BY BILLY COFFEY
Snow Day
Paper Angels
When Mockingbirds Sing
The Devil Walks in Mattingly
In the Heart of the Dark Wood
The Curse of Crow Hollow
There Will Be Stars
Some Small Magic
© 2017 by Billy Coffey
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.
Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.
Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version. Public domain.
Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Coffey, Billy, author.
Title: Some small magic / Billy Coffey.
Description: Nashville : Thomas Nelson, [2017]
Epub Edition February 2017 ISBN 9780718084431
Identifiers: LCCN 2016044576 | ISBN 9780718084424 (paperback)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Christian fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3603.O3165 S67 2017 | DDC 813/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016044576
Printed in the United States of America
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For Salina, who went west and found home
Acclaim for Billy Coffey
Other Novels by Billy Coffey
Publisher’s Note
Part I: Home
Part II: Revival
Part III: Treasure
Part IV: The Train
Part V: Greenville
Part VI: The Woeman
Part VII: Raleigh
Part VIII: Fairhope
Part IX: Home
Discussion Questions
An Excerpt from There Will Be Stars Part I: Heaven
About the Author
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Billy Coffey’s novels are all set around Mattingly, Virginia, and can be read in any order. If you’ve read previous Mattingly books, you may be interested in knowing that Some Small Magic takes place after There Will Be Stars.
Enjoy!
Well I am Death, none can excel
I’ll open the door to Heaven or Hell
Whoa, Death someone would pray
Could you wait to call me another day.
—LLOYD CHANDLER
No one knows whether death, which
people fear to be the greatest evil,
may not be the greatest good.
—PLATO
PART I
HOME
-1-
It isn’t the horrible thing he’s done that bothers Abel, nor that he knows exactly why he did it, nor even that what began as the perfect plan frayed to tatters even before Mrs. Heizer chirped her whistle to end the last recess of the school year. No, what bothers Abel is that fate must always be so cruel.
Most of the last hour not spent watching the girl beside him on the bench or figuring what to tell his momma he has given over to this notion: how it is that things never seem to work out for him the way he envisions. That he now understands he was warned early this morning to simply leave Chris alone provides little comfort. But it’s true—Abel was warned. The morning train had seventy-six cars. Seventy-six is an even number, which usually means good. But seven and six add to thirteen, and thirteen is the unluckiest number of all.
What makes things worse is that the bench Mrs. Heizer has left him upon is dangerous. The wood is too unforgiving for his back and hips. Sharp edges wait on all sides like traps rigged to spring. The carpet is too far from the seat to offer cushion should Abel fall. He wants to tell someone about this, Miss Ellie or the girl beside him. Wants to warn that making him sit here like a criminal may well end in disaster. But Miss Ellie is huddled with the four teachers who have gathered around her desk, and the girl has scooted all the way to the other end of the bench, leaving him alone. No one would hear him over the ringing phones and high chatter and distant yawps of children. They are happy sounds—the noise of things ending, if only for a little while.
The glass door beside him swings open. A scent like flowers follows another teacher who joins the little crowd on the other side of the counter. No student is supposed to go back there, though sometimes Miss Ellie lets Abel sit at her desk when there’s no one around to tell. Abel watches her now, the way Miss Ellie’s eyes smile even bigger than her lips and how her blond hair sparkles when the sunlight catches it through the window behind her. He’s pretty sure he loves her. Once, Abel did a trick so good that Miss Ellie’s face turned the color of a rose and she laid her hand on his knee for six whole Mississippis. That had been a good day, even though Abel had gotten hurt again.
The girl beside him won’t act like he’s here. She was already waiting on the bench when Mrs. Heizer brought Abel in, and she scooched over like what was wrong with him could catch. Abel thinks she’s a third grader, then amends that when he spots the report card jacket on her lap—fourth grader now.
Shouting from the office down the hall. Abel leans his head forward some to see, though not so far as to risk a toppling. Principal Rexrode’s door is still shut. He sighs and scratches at the cast on his right arm.
Abel’s own report card is back at his desk, though the golden apple sticker for A/B honor roll (barely, he concedes—this time there were a whole lot more B-minuses than A-pluses) won’t do much for his cause now. Nor will asserting that at least part of the reason for doing what he did can be laid at Mrs. Heizer’s feet. Then again, she could have scrawled You suck eggs, Abel Shifflett instead of Enjoy middle school, Abel! and things still could have turned out this way. Abel still would have given Chris the present that morning, and Chris still would have squatted behind the monkey bars and blown through his pants a few hours later. Mrs. Heizer still would have seen it, and Abel would still be on this wood bench in the office where all the current delinquents / future convicts sat and waited.
He leans toward the girl, making sure not to bump his cast, and says, “What you in for?”
She keeps her head steady and pointed forward, then tugs at the left side of her hair—long and the color of garden dirt, utterly beautiful—and moves it over her eye.
Normally that response would signal the end of things. Yet if Abel has learned nothing else this day (other than never to carry out a plan, even a perfect one, when the morning train promises ill luck), it is that the last day of school provides a unique opportunity to do those things one would otherwise never attempt.
“You hear what happened?” He cocks his thumb, the good one, down the hall to where the shouts are coming from. “All that’s ’cause a what I did.”
The girl doesn’t look his way—won’t—but whispers, “Leave me alone,” in an angry voice that sounds anything but a third (fourth) grader’s. She scoots even more, stopping only when her body meets the armrest. Even more hair covers her face now, though Abel can see she is pretty in a way that will one day place her far from his grasp. Chris Jones says the only sort of woman Abel will ever marry is someone like the lunch lady, who has a lazy eye and four black hairs growing from a mud-colored mole on her forehead. The girl is wearing blue jeans that look new and tennis shoes that lie flat on the carpet. Abel looks down at his own shoes, a ratty pair of knock-offs his momma plucked from the bargain bin last summer. They dangle far above the carpet like dead things. He scoots down until his toes touch the floor, wincing as the wood cuts into his back and neck. His arm is itching bad now. Just below the elbow, where Dumb Willie wrote WILE in scrawling orange letters.
“Hey.”
No response.
“Hey, you got a pencil?”
“Go way.”
“I can’t. I got in trouble. You hear what I did?” He reaches into his pocket and then out with a motion quicker than required, given the girl isn’t paying attention. “You got a pencil?” he says again. “I’ll pay you for it.”
He makes the switch and lifts his left hand out to her, thumb up and palm out, the nickel hidden in the fleshy part of his thumb and forefinger. Holds it there until she peers from between the strands of hair to see Abel’s fingers empty. He flicks his hand outward, throwing the nickel forward and snatching it from the empty air. Her full lips part as her eyes widen in a moment of glory, bringing a smile to Abel’s face before it begins to fade as the girl’s gaze drifts from his hand to the rest of him—the mop of blond hair that cannot manage to hide his broad forehead; eyes dull at the irises with whites not the color of milk but a pale blue; the stained, brittle teeth; one shoulder wedged higher than the other, giving the appearance of a boy forever locked in a confused half shrug; the compact, dwarfish body. The last bell of the year sounds through speakers already gathering dust in hallways and classrooms, but to Abel it is more than a notice of freedom. It’s the alarm going off in the girl’s mind as she registers the ugly truth of the ruined boy beside her.
Abel’s sleights of hand have seen him through his six years of schooling, won him three Mattingly Elementary School talent shows, and produced no small measure of oohs and aahs from classmates enchanted by his ability to produce something from nothing. But those tricks have never bought him their love. Love is a magic too powerful for even Abel to master.
The girl leaps up and shoots f
or the door, scurrying to safety just ahead of the teachers filing out, and all Abel can manage is to remain half-prone with his feet on the floor and a nickel in his hand as the school empties for summer. Behind the wooden door down the hallway, the yelling continues. The words aren’t from Principal Rexrode, which is good. But they’re from Chris Jones’s daddy, which is certainly bad. Abel winces and tries to fool his mind by scratching again at his cast. Pain is something to which he has mostly grown accustomed over his eleven years, but not the itching. It always starts at a place he cannot reach and ends somewhere deep inside his brain.
“Here go.”
Miss Ellie has come around the counter. She crouches in front of Abel and slips a pencil into his good hand. He jabs the sharpened end down between his wrist and cast, shuddering with pleasure.
“Thanks, Miss Ellie.”
He grins now, drawing her gaze as the fingers of his good hand push the pencil deeper. They slip off to grasp the plastic stick hidden inside. Abel draws the stick out with a flourish and twists his wrist at the last moment, producing a fake daisy. The yellow center and each of the white petals is caked with dead skin and lint that Abel’s sweat has rolled to tiny gray balls. He offers the flower to Miss Ellie anyway, who accepts it with a chuckle. She puts her hand to Abel’s knee
(One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Miss—)
and tilts her head toward Principal Rexrode’s office. “Sounds testy in there.”
“You hear what I did?”
“Honey, whole school heard what you did.” She flashes a smile before wrangling it down, but not before Abel can tuck that memory away. Maybe all he’ll manage to marry someday is a woman like the lunch lady, but Abel will lie down with her every night thinking of Miss Ellie’s smile. “Not that I’m condoning it,” she says. “That was an awful thing you did, Abel.”
“No awfuller than what he’s done to me. I ain’t scared a them.”