Some Small Magic Page 23

  The house reminds Abel of the one he has left behind, just as the grounds call him back to the field where he counted the coming trains. There is nothing here but rot and the remains of what time can strip away, and yet Abel sees that the woman’s farm does offer the safety Dorothy promised. No one would know of a place like this, so hidden in the mountains. He sees, too, the treasure that once must have flourished here. A ruined thing can only be called such if it once was beautiful, just as something can only be broken if once it was whole.

  The woman, too, is a frightening thing, though in a way the house is not. Dorothy would never confess that same feeling even though Abel believes she shares it, and in a deeper way than Abel can know. Dumb Willie does not seem frightened of her at all.

  He stands in front of the porch and looks away toward the barn. Dorothy has rolled up the sleeves of her shirt and tied her hair back with a bit of twine. Sweat gleams from her chest as she forks hay from above to Dumb Willie below. Abel shakes his head, Dorothy being just about perfect. She’s pretty like his momma, and works just as hard.

  To the side of the house are more wildflowers, along with roses that still look tended to. Abel follows a path that empties to a backyard and a garden that Dumb Willie would likely slobber over, rows upon rows of corn and potatoes and peppers and beans, watermelons and cantaloupes, more tomato plants than seem possible for one woman’s care. He catches a glimpse of the woman’s billowing dress, far toward the back where the leaves of thick standing oaks shake and sing in the breeze. Not wanting to trample the struggling plants, Abel follows the garden’s edge as he keeps his eyes to where the trees stand. The woman stands there, silent and still. Her hands are clasped to the front of her waist and her head is bowed, looking more grieving than prayerful at the two wooden crosses sunk into the ground in front of her.

  -3-

  A tugging is what draws Dumb Willie into the barn not long after the hay is put out and the chickens and cow and pig are fed. It is not a tugging, but a tugging is the best he can think it. Do-tee has gone off. She said, Dumb Willie, I don’t guess I can be here right now, and walked off out to the fields. Do-tee’s sad, but Dumb Willie don’t know why. A Bull went with her because A Bull can’t be seen. A Bull’s a secret.

  That woeman ain’t here. Dumb Willie knows she’s a woeman because he can see it in how she walks and talks and looks. She’s sad like Do-tee. That woeman got a Bible by her bed. Dumb Willie looks inside it because of that tug, even as he doesn’t think he should. None of the pages inside are marked. Dumb Willie’s ma always marks her pages and his da’ee marks them and that means you’re a Good Christian.

  Dumb Willie don’t have no Bible because he can’t . . . it’s a word . . . reed. He can’t reed so he guesses he’s no Good Christian. That woeman don’t have no lines marked so she must be no Good Christian too.

  He thinks on this, how maybe it’s why that woeman is so sad, and what Dumb Willie decides to do is smudge over a part of a page near the middle of her Bible with his finger. It’s a dirty finger, it’s got pig poop on it and mud and some flower smudges, but it’s some lines marked in that woeman’s Bible and that makes her a Good Christian now.

  Outside, the cow lows. Dumb Willie goes out there and pets it. He likes that cow but it looks sad too. Dumb Willie comes up with his own word (woecow) and laughs at how it sounds. But there’s that tugging again. That cow can’t feel it, but Dumb Willie can. He turns and faces the field where A Bull and Do-tee have gone off, and that tug isn’t going there. Now toward the house, closing his eyes because there’s spuruts there, that woeman said. He turns himself back to the barn next and hopes that tug won’t point him to the pail inside the door, that pail stinks, but Dumb Willie doesn’t make it that far. He stops midway between the house and the barn, to an empty space leading toward the back.

  That tug.

  “Bye woe. Cow,” he says, walking off as he looks away to the field of flowers on the other side of the house. A Bull and Do-tee are there. They’re sitting in the flowers and talking where the field drops off big. Even from that distance, Dumb Willie can see A Bull’s shine. That’s his soul wanting out, he thinks—what Do-tee told him. They got to get A Bull home or A Bull will bust, and what Dumb Willie thinks is he’ll be sad no matter which one A Bull does.

  He tries the words “Dumb woe Will-ee” and “Woe Dumb Will” and “Will woe Dumb.” None of these sound right to his own mind. Nor does Dumb Willie believe they should. As he moves toward the hidden places behind the woeman’s house, all Dumb Willie can do is wipe his eyes.

  And yet what sadness leaks out of him now is tempered when Dumb Willie reaches the backyard. It is as though he runs headlong into a wall he cannot see and so can only stand, shocked at what lies before him. He has seen gardens before, not just the one in back of his own house that he grows for his daddy, but others. Smaller ones in town and bigger ones out on the farms, gardens that grow good and ones that sprout few of anything but weeds. Yet never has Dumb Willie looked upon such a garden as this, one stretched so long and wide that it looks like the school field where the kids throw balls.

  He sees corn here. And peppers. The watermelons have started and the cantaloupes and beans, those beans look good. Rows untold of potatoes and tomatoes. Carrots. Onions. All laid bare to sun and wind and the mountains that tower close, pockets of wildflowers that have sprung up along the edges. Dumb Willie blinks as the picture of it begins to shimmer and dull, then realizes he has forgotten to breathe. He does so not in gulps, but in a slow and soft way, like you do in church. This place is like a church because it’s holy.

  He remembers a story of a man (it’s a word, Dumb Willie cannot recall the man’s name) who came to a holy place and the Lord said, “You take off your shoes.” That’s what Dumb Willie does. He stoops, thankful to find those unseen walls around him gone, and places his boots in the grass before stepping into the garden’s warm earth. Treading down the rows of corn first, casting an expert eye to their spacing and giving a light touch to the stalks. It is good corn but struggling—it’ll need hilled. Bugs have gotten to the potatoes. Birds are here. They sit in the trees and come down and eat the woeman’s food and so do the rabbits. The rabbit eats the leaves and Dumb Willie eats the rabbit and then Dumb Willie buries the rabbit because all things end up in the ground. Like Chris. Like A Bull. Like Dumb Willie one day and like—

  It takes him remembering if there was a scarecrow in the garden but there wasn’t, then Dumb Willie sees that the scarecrow is the woeman. She’s standing away to the other side staring at him with a glass and something covered in her hand. The way she’s staring isn’t the way most people do, like Dumb Willie is a freak and they should either run or throw something at him. She’s a dirty woeman. Her hair ain’t combed. There’s pig poop and mud and flower smudges on her dress, like what’s in her Bible.

  “It’sa. Garden.”

  The woeman stares. Not like most people but like A Bull sometimes does, like a way that’s sad on the ends and smiling in the middle. She comes along up the rows and doesn’t look down as she steps over the plants and around the tomatoes. That gun of hers is gone; Dumb Willie had checked that earlier too, it had no shells. She stops when she gets close enough to be heard but not touched. Holds out that glass.

  “I brought water,” she says. “And supper. It’s been earned. You hungry?”

  Dumb Willie nods. He’s always hungry.

  “Well, here then.”

  He sits down in between the rows of corn. The woeman stands there for a little bit like she don’t know why, holding that glass and food out, and now on her face is a smile on the ends and sad in the middle. She sits too.

  “It’s . . . Mozes,” Dumb Willie says, now remembering.

  “What?”

  “Mozes found the fire inna . . . tree. It’sa holy. Place.” He waves his hand around, covering all the land behind the old house with the spuruts inside.

  She uncovers the dish and hands it. It has apples sliced into
pieces and pemmican and potatoes and carrots. There’s a fork to eat with. Dumb Willie uses it like he’s supposed to. He’s happy for the food; there’s nothing to bury.

  “Where’s she?” she asks. “That woman you’re with.”

  “Do-tee inna . . . field.”

  The woeman turns her head that way. She puts a hand above her eyes to shield the sun and her hair blows back, and Dumb Willie sees she was pretty once. Like A Bull’s ma and Do-tee are pretty.

  “She would go there. I cannot stop her, but let her see. She deserves to see. She calls herself Doty?”

  “No A Bull. Say it’s. Do-tee.”

  “Who’s Abel?”

  Dumb Willie stops chewing, his face feeling flush. He says, “Ain’t no A. Bull,” through a spray of meat and vegetables.

  “That thing’s name is not Doty,” the woeman says. “She’s deceived you.”

  “No Do-tee’s. Nice she. Good.”

  Her hand shoots out. Dumb Willie barely has time to flinch before it strikes the plate he holds, sending food flying and the crows cawing in the trees. Her face has gone from soft to thunder, her eyes two fiery holes. She bares her black teeth and screams, “Good? You call what she is good? Are you the devil then, stranger? Come to claim me since it is not . . . Doty’s time?”

  The hand again, this time balled to a fist. It strikes Dumb Willie in the chest and neck and shoulder, one fist and now two. He rolls to his side, smashing the young corn beneath him, his body pressing the plate into the soil. He screams, “St . . . op,” as the woeman straddles him. Her hair has gone over her face and there are crawly things in it.

  That woeman’s a munster like Chris was a munster. Dumb Willie shuts his eyes.

  “Taker,” she yells, “she takes all and leaves me nothing,” and Dumb Willie doesn’t know what it is she says because he’s crying now. He opens his eyes and meets the woeman’s own and she stops, hand raised to block the sun.

  The woeman stumbles as she climbs off, crawling on all fours from the garden. She reaches for something in a patch of wildflowers and stands, gripping a rusted hoe in one hand. On her face is all the hate in the world.

  Dumb Willie struggles to his feet. The edge of the hoe’s blade is shiny and sharp. It glimmers in the sun. The woeman raises it slowly—“Taker,” she says—and Dumb Willie sees that munster.

  His eyes narrow. His hands ball to fists. The wind sings. It rattles the leaves of the tall oaks on the far side of the garden, sweet and smelling of honey. Dumb Willie’s eyes look down at the ruined stalks at his feet, pretty things that have now gone sad and broken. Those stalks got trampled but they can still be saved. They can be saved is what Dumb Willie thinks.

  That woeman screams again, drawing his stare, and Dumb Willie has to blink because he doesn’t see a munster there now. It’s the woeman, she’s sad not a munster, she’s just a broken stalk.

  He comes for her. The woeman stands her ground and raises up the hoe, swinging the blade down in a wide arc with both hands and all her power. Dumb Willie catches the shaft in his left hand. He holds on as that shaft shakes, the woeman’s eyes two things of terror, then lowers the hoe in a slow motion that ends when he wrenches it from her hand.

  Her fists rise once more. She hits him once, twice, smashing Dumb Willie’s cheek and the side of his face. Dumb Willie thrusts himself forward, pinning the woeman’s arms to her chest. She expels a gust of air and clenches as his hands move to her back. His fingers spread wide, gripping her. Holding her. Rocking her frail body as a father would a child, back and forth, back and forth, as her screams melt to tears and then to nothing but the sound of her soft whimpers and the feel of her wet face laid soft against his chest.

  -4-

  Abel keeps his gaze to the ground ahead and the sky above, the wildflowers that have overtaken the field and the crows and sparrows perched in the far trees. He looks anywhere but at the young woman who walks beside him, because Dorothy is too sad to behold.

  Her shirt is streaked with sweat, the hollow part of her neck now flushed, all the softness in it gone. Harsh, scraping breaths leak from her nose and mouth. Her hair is a tangle beneath her black hat. And though she continues to speak in the soft tones of ease, Abel knows this girl he loves possesses no ease at all. She has worked too hard this day. Dorothy has brought down the hay and fed the animals and tended to the most dilapidated parts of the fencing, all the while telling Abel not to lift a hand and making sure Dumb Willie does as little as possible. It is as if she has worked not only to set the woman’s farm to order but to set to order some hidden part of herself. She has labored not so that something outside of herself can be finished but so something inside of her can be driven out.

  “Is a quiet place here,” she says. “None quieter. Don’t many even know this farm. The few who do don’t care.”

  They step through the field easy, holding hands. Abel wants to say he’s sorry and would, if he knew what to be sorry for.

  “You see anything in that house?” she asks. Abel glances up now, sees her grin. “Seen you while we were gettin’ that hay down. Glad you only kept to the porch and front window. Ain’t polite, barging into somebody’s place.”

  “There’s lots of books in there,” Abel says. “That’s all I saw. Why don’t that woman live there?”

  “Show you why.” Dorothy looks over his shoulder, back toward the house. “She catches me out here, might not be good. But I expect she’ll see to Dumb Willie before coming to look for me.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because Dumb Willie’s special, like she is.”

  “There ain’t no ghosts in that house.”

  Dorothy shakes her head. “You’re part true. Ain’t nothing in there but memories, but those can haunt as sure as any ghost.”

  “I found something out back. She’s got just about the biggest garden I’ve ever seen.”

  “I remember such.”

  “And there’s trees. A bunch of them. You remember those?”

  “I do,” Dorothy says.

  Ahead the field ends at what looks like a drop off the edge of the earth itself, a swath of nothingness and the base of the mountains beyond. Abel struggles over the slight ridges in the field. They are covered in grass and flowers and weeds but must have been rows in a time long past, plowed but never planted.

  “You remember the graves?”

  Dorothy stops. “The what?”

  “There’s graves back there underneath the trees. She was there. Don’t worry, she never seen me. Must be somebody she knew. She looked to mourn.”

  The wind kicks up, sending a ripple among the tall grass. Abel can smell Dorothy’s sweat, a combination of sweet and salty.

  “Come on,” she says. “I’ll show you.”

  They stop at the field’s edge, where a steep bank falls away to a level place of scrub and downed wood some fifty feet below. A wire fence sags where the farm’s boundary must end, though from Abel’s vantage there is no one left in the world to stop the woman from claiming as much of these mountains as she desires.

  “There,” Dorothy says. She points down and far to their right. “See that?”

  It takes a moment for Abel to recognize what it is, not only due to its poor condition, but because of the way it sits—upside down and nearly on its nose. Two rotted tires hang in the air, barely supported by a pile of rusted and mangled metal.

  “What is that?” he asks. “That a tractor?”

  “What’s left of it. Let’s sit here, Abel. I don’t think I could get no closer to that even if I tried. Nothing more a good hobo likes than honest work. But the day’s worn on me, and I’m tired.”

  He sits first and takes hold of Dorothy’s elbow, guiding her to the ground. The two of them stare out over the expanse of trees beyond, the world silent but for the breeze.

  “I was here once,” she says. “Right here in this very spot, long time ago. Passing through. And before you go asking me how it is that a woman of the rails can be so far from one
, I’ll say I’ve been almost everyplace once and most places at least a dozen. It’s what I do, Abel. You could say it’s meant. This farm was something back then. I wish you could’ve seen it. Like something out of a picture book.”

  She goes quiet here. Abel looks at his bowed legs and the cast on his arm, that wreck of a tractor, and then Dorothy last. Wanting her to go on.

  She says, “Those graves is her husband and her boy. Got to be them. Can’t be anybody else.”

  Abel doesn’t know what to answer other than, “What happened to them?”

  Dorothy looks down at the mass of iron and metal below. “What happens most times,” she says. “Three of them woke up one morning thinking the day ahead would be no different from any other. Come supper, only one was left. It was cold that day. It’s colder up here in the mountains than it is down the valley. And there was a pour.”

  She looks at him, wanting Abel to say the words. He knows what they are:

  “Thirty-four and rain,” he whispers. “Is that right? That why you said Daddy’s letter sent us here?”

  “That’s how I took it. Wasn’t no place else close we could hide awhile from all the people looking for Dumb Willie. There’s hidden places all about this world. Don’t you ever listen to anybody says different, that folk have found all there is and there’s no mysteries left to wonder at. No magic to be had. There’s places that hold great things. Great . . .” Dorothy pauses as though she’s just lighted on something, an idea that until now has never crossed her mind.