A Snicker of Magic (14 page)

“Me, neither,” Boone said. But he stared down at his banjo like it had betrayed him.

I traced my finger back and forth across the smooth face of the locket. I
did
want to talk about the curse. I had too many questions buzzing inside my brain now, such as, if the curse was real, had it traveled my family’s history all the way to us? Did that mean us Pickles would always be wandering from town to town? That Boone would never catch a break? That Cleo would always have so much sad caught in her eyes?

And what about me and Frannie Jo? Would we fail at everything we tried?

What was the point of even trying to do the Duel if I was cursed to fail? What difference would it make for Mama to see me happy if she was cursed to keep on traveling?

I had too many questions fighting for the front seat on my tongue. Right at that moment, I didn’t care about getting any answers. There was only one thing I wanted.

“I sure wish Mama was here.” I gulped. Cleo kept the window shut that night because of the storm, so I couldn’t
smell the waffle cones baking. That smell always made me feel like Mama was safe, even if I couldn’t see her. On my way home from the Gallery, the air hadn’t smelled like anything at all. Instead, the wind felt too warm and too prickly. Electric, almost.

“I sure do, too,” said Cleo. “I wish she’d stay here is what I wish.”

As if we’d willed it to be, the front door burst open and Mama pushed her way inside. I squealed in relief just as the thunder
SMACKED
, so loud and clear you’d think somebody’d dropped the world and broke it in two.

“Tornado warning!” Mama said, locking the door behind her. As if that little bitty door lock could keep out a whole big tornado. “They let us leave work early. The radio says we need to get to a safe place.”

We all looked at Cleo then. She was the only safe place any of us really knew.

“We probably ought to get in the bathroom,” Cleo said, heaving as she got up off the floor.

Frannie Jo hopped up into Mama’s arms. Then all three of us Pickles plus two Harnesses were picking up all our worldly possessions — which wasn’t much — and running for the bathroom.

“Biscuit!” I ran for my dog’s hiding place. But Boone was already kneeling down in front of the couch, pulling my dog up into his arms. I didn’t know much about Boone Harness/Taylor, but I decided right then I loved him.

Mama and Cleo were already in the bathroom, hollering my name, but I ran to my backpack first. I wouldn’t have been able to see anything if it weren’t for all the purple lightning flashing outside. My heart was thumping
yes, yes, yes
… or maybe
RUN, RUN, RUN,
as I shoved aside all the crumpled homework papers and books. Finally, I found my blue book.

“We gotta go, Liss!” Boone hollered. He had a banjo on his back and a trembling dog tucked under his arm. And he was holding out his hand, waiting for me to grab on.

“One more thing!” I yelled. But the storm was yelling louder than me.

I ran to the corner of Cleo’s apartment where we’d piled the grocery sacks full of clothes and junk that we’d brought from Kentucky. I dug through the bags until I found mama’s paintbrushes, still tied together and wrapped in an old T-shirt. I held the brushes, and my blue book, tight against my heart, and I ran for Boone.

“Good girl,” Boone said. His hand was strong around mine as he led me down the hall. I wasn’t afraid of the storm at all right then, not with him leading the way. Not with my cursed family so close to me.

We all crammed into Cleo’s dark bathroom and shut the door.

At first, none of us talked. We listened to the storm howling all around the apartment complex. I heard the rain whoosh up against the building. I was glad Florentine had
her stupid burdens there with her on a night like this. At least they kept her safe from the wind and rain.

Mama sighed and stretched her arm around me to pull me close. She smelled like the sugar wind.

“What have y’all been talking about tonight?” she said. Her voice was tired.

I couldn’t see Cleo’s face in the dark, but somehow she told me, without words, to keep our conversation a secret.

So I leaned against Mama’s shoulder and said, “Nothing.”

And then lullaby music filled up the air around us. Boone strummed the sweetest tune on his banjo. The thunder outside was a rock song, electric and loud and strange. But the rain only whooshed and swooshed; the rain was a gentler song. Boone played like the rain.

Cleo didn’t turn on the flashlight but if she had, I probably would have seen all kinds of dancing words. Words like
failure, fake, regret, curse
.

Mama leaned over and kissed the top of my hair. I laced my fingers in with hers. I would keep her safe and steady in a world that kept rocking her soul.

Stay
, I wanted to tell her.
Rest your heart here. Stay.

But I knew I was no better at keeping her in this place than Cleo’s door lock was at keeping out the storm.

When the storm finally passed and we all shuffled back to our sleeping places, I flopped down on the inflatable mattress, thinking about all I’d heard, and all I’d seen.

“We’re cursed,” I whispered.

“We’re Pickles,” said Frannie Jo.

“Same thing,” I said back.

I licked my chapped lips and reached over for the locket Cleo’d given me. “I wonder …” I held the locket up and let it swing back and forth. “I wonder if there’s anything stronger than a curse,” I whispered.

Frannie Jo didn’t answer me. She was already breathing steady, sweet-dream breaths beside me.

I didn’t speak the words out loud. I just moved my mouth around them, wondering what in the world they meant.

As I swung the locket back and forth, I heard something. A familiar something that sent shivers up my spine.

I sat up and lifted the locket up to my ear. Then I shook it.

I shook it again to make sure I wasn’t imagining things.

Berry Weatherly’s locket had the wind-chime wind caught inside it.

The next afternoon, Jonah told me to meet him at his mom’s beauty salon. The shop is called

Jewell Pickett’s Lube & Dye

because it happens to be the only salon offering beauty services and minor car repairs in the entire town of Midnight Gulch and possibly the whole world. Jonah said the shop came about because his mom, Jewell, had two great passions in life: tinkering with carburetors and coloring people’s hair.

So Jewell signed up for beauty school on the same day she signed up for mechanic school. When she moved back to Midnight Gulch a few years ago, she decided to blend her two passions. Now every mechanic Jewell hires has to be well versed in rotaries and acrylic nails. And every stylist at the Lube & Dye knows how to change oil and cut a perfect mid-length bob.

I didn’t need a perfect mid-length bob or an oil change, but I certainly had business to attend to at Jewell’s Lube & Dye. Bad business. Awful business.

My business: I had to tell Jonah that the Duel couldn’t happen. Somewhere way back in my twisty-turny family tree, I was related to a couple of dueling, feuding magicians who wrecked a whole town and cursed my family in the process. It didn’t matter what spindiddly Beedle plan Jonah cooked up: Mama was cursed to wander. I was cursed to wander.

I dreaded the way Jonah’s eyes would flicker from neon-happy green to mossy-sad all because of what I had to tell him. His know-how had never failed until me. I was broken up over it, too. I didn’t want to leave the only place I’d ever felt at home. But there was no reason I should go through with the Duel, especially after Cleo’s storm tale. I’d mess it up, no matter what. We would leave town, no matter what. I freewrote about my dilemma in the blue book:

Florentine was right. I did have magic in my veins. But it was the wrong kind of magic. My family magic was way worse than whatever she was packing along in her traveling bag. Worst of all, I didn’t need to collect words or practice for the Duel anymore. So Jonah wouldn’t have any reason to hang out with me.

As I shuffled my way toward the Lube & Dye, I imagined going through with the Duel, standing in front of the entire school, hoping the right words would work their way out. They wouldn’t, though. And even though I was only at the Duel in my imagination, my hands trembled the same as if it were real. The skin above my lip got sweaty and the back of my head started to itch.

Itchy

Twitchy

Puke-ish

That’s an awful way to be remembered. It was all for the best, really. As long as I didn’t Duel, I wouldn’t disappoint Jonah or embarrass myself.

“I’ll tell him quick,” I said to Biscuit, who trotted along beside me, wagging her tail. “It’ll be like ripping off a Band-Aid.”

Then I let out a sigh. I dragged my sneakers slower across the sidewalk. “You think he’ll still be my friend? Even if I don’t compete?”

I knew Biscuit wouldn’t answer for real. But she stayed close beside me. Sometimes you don’t need words to feel better; you just need the nearness of your dog. Or your best friend.

Biscuit and I stood outside the window of Jewell’s Lube & Dye for a while, watching all the chatter and commotion happening inside. I could see Jonah sitting in the back of the room. He was polishing an elderly lady’s nails.

Biscuit sat down and pressed her paw against my shoe.

“I know he’ll be sad,” I said. “But I have to tell him today. Wait here, okay?”

Biscuit lay down on the sidewalk, resting her fuzzy head on her paws.

The door jingled as I pulled it open. Jonah smiled at me from the corner of the room. As I made my way toward him, words fell down in such thick curtains I thought I might have to push them back just to get by. I’d never expected so many words in this place.

In Jewell’s Lube & Dye, words were crashing into each other like bumper cars. And they were exploding up above me like fireworks. Some words looked extra lovely, though.

H o p e

Hope
was lipstick red, reflecting back at me from the mirror over Jewell’s station. On that same mirror, Jewell had taped a yellow ribbon and a picture of a handsome soldier: Jonah’s dad. He looked brave and strong. Even in a picture, his eyes were full of love and sorrow. I wished he
could climb out of the picture and see hope so close to him, right there beside him.

Hope
didn’t fade when I walked past Jewell’s station.
Hope
doesn’t fizzle or flicker or burn out.
Hope
isn’t the same as other words.
Hope
holds steady.

I pulled the pen from the pocket of my jeans and wrote
hope
on the inside of my wrist. I’d put it in the blue book later. For now, I wanted it as close to me as I could have it.

Jewell Pickett was nodding her head
mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm
while she trimmed Elvis Phillips’s hair. He tapped his foot to the music on the radio, antsy for his haircut to end so he could get back to dancing.

Most of the words above the rest of the clients were all people names:

Divinity Lawson

Burl Honeycutt

Cleopatra Harness

Holly Harness

My mama’s name was fading, floating up slowly toward the speckled ceiling. I wondered which one of those clients had been thinking about her. I wonder if they’d said something kind or something sorrowful.

Jonah waved me over to the corner table where he was sitting. Working beside Jonah was a rotund man with a shiny bald head. He wore sparkly diamond earrings and had muscles in his arms the size of cantaloupes. The man
had tattoos from his wrist to his shoulder, bright pictures of dragons and angels with wings of fire.

“This is Big Bruce.” Jonah nodded toward his coworker. “He used to do detail work out in the shop, but he missed the personal interaction with the clients.”

“Gets lonesome dealing with motors all day long,” growled Big Bruce. He was gently holding Ponder Waller’s hand, painting little yellow flowers onto her nails.

“We sure get lonesome without you in here.” Ponder batted her eyelashes.

“Huh,” Big Bruce huffed. But his ear studs seemed to sparkle extra brightly at her compliment.

Jonah picked up a bobby pin and used the tip to add tiny blue polka dots to the freshly painted nails of the old lady in front of him.

“Pull up a chair, Felicity,” Jonah said. “I wanted you to meet my dear friend Rosie Walker. Miss Walker, this is my best friend, Felicity Pickle.”

Rosie Walker’s milky-blue eyes met mine. She smiled and said, “You doing okay, child?”

I said, “Yes, ma’am.” Even though that was a lie. I wasn’t okay at all. I was plumb
awful
because of what I had to tell Jonah. I didn’t want to tell him in front of Rosie Walker, though. I figured I could at least wait until he was finished doing nails to break his heart.

“Sit here beside me, Felicity,” said Rosie. Her voice was a pretty old-rasp, like the rush of pages in an old, dusty
book. “I do love your name.
Felicity.
It sounds so lovely to say, doesn’t it? Like a secret.”

“I like your name, too,” I said. And I also liked her dress: because it was as bright red as a summer tomato. Rosie’s skin was pale, brittle-looking as a piece of crinkled paper. Her white hair was fuzzed out and fluffed high up on her head. She had a red flower pinned tightly in her nest of white hair. I liked that, too. And when she crossed one leg over the other, I saw her cowboy boots. They were scuffed-up brown and embroidered with red roses. I crazy-liked those cowboy boots.

Jonah must have noticed me checking out Rosie’s fancy boots, because he said, “Rosie Walker is a famous country music singer.”

“I
was
a singer,” Rosie corrected. “I lived in Nashville for a time. I wasn’t Rosie Walker out there, though — I was Ramblin’ Rose. I sang songs I wrote myself. And people came from a hundred miles away just to hear my voice.”

“My uncle is a musician,” I said. “His name is Boone Harness and he played in Nashville. He had a stage name, too — Boone Taylor. Do you know him?”

“Been years since I’ve been to Nashville, honey,” said Rosie Walker. Even though she smiled at me, I could hear the sadness crackling in her voice. I saw words shimmering against the fabric of her dress, inching up her sleeves as slowly as silkworms:

Saturday song

Lonesome sky

Rebel

Scandal

Summer rain

Jonah smiled proudly and said, “Miss Walker played at the Grand Ole Opry. She sang on stage with Minnie Pearl.”

“I’m a blessed woman. I saw every one of my dreams come true,” Rosie Walker stated. “I’m proof that it’s never too late to take hold of a dream. I thought I was too old to set out for Nashville and be a singer. I thought nobody’d listen to me since I wasn’t no young, flouncy little spring chicken. And I always thought my songs were just for me, to keep me busy, to keep my mind moving. But God bless the Beedle.”

Rosie didn’t look at Jonah. I glanced his way, but he stayed focused on his polka-dot project. She didn’t know the Beedle was sitting right across from her.

“What’d the Beedle do for you?” I asked.

“Twenty years ago, the Beedle left me a guitar and a hundred-dollar bill on the front porch of my house,” said Rosie. “There was a red ribbon tied around the guitar. And slid in underneath the ribbon was a note with very specific instructions. That’s a special guitar the Beedle left me, you see.”

Rosie leaned over and whispered to me, “The Beedle said my guitar originally belonged to one of the Brothers Threadbare.”

Of course, I’d figured that out already. But the shine in Rosie’s eyes was so pretty when she told me, that I pretended to be surprised all over again.

“The note told me that every time I played that guitar, I had to lead off with the same song. I could play anything I wanted after that, but I had to start with the same tune. It’s an old mountain song, the very same one the Brothers Threadbare started their shows with. I knew the tune, of course. Everybody in the mountains knows that tune.”

A sad smile stretched across her face. “Not a single note of music would come outta that guitar unless I started my set with that song. If I sang ‘Fair and Tender Ladies’ first, then everything else I played sounded lovely. Otherworldly, even. That’s magic if I ever heard it.”

Rosie inspected her polka-dot nails and thanked Jonah for his hard work. “I was fifty-seven years old when I set out for Nashville. I embroidered red roses on my favorite pair of cowboy boots. I put new strings on that magical guitar. And I lit out. I played on the sidewalks of Nashville for a time; that’s the only place I could play. I played for pennies and day-old coffee. I played through the storms and through the rain. Some people didn’t listen at all. Some people listened and told me I was no good. But I’ve always had a heap of determination caught up in me. So I kept on playing. And I played my way all the way to the stage at the Ryman.”

“What’s a Ryman?” I whispered.

Because the way she’d said the word made it sound like some dreamy, fog-covered castle.

“The Ryman is a place where people go to play music and to hear music. Before it was a music hall, it used to be a church. The pews are all still there. That building’s got stained-glass windows and beer-stained floors. There are thousands of prayers and songs caught in the bones of the walls. You can feel them — the prayers, the music — all around you whenever you sit down in that place.”

“Then why’d you stop going there?”

“Yeah, Rosie,” Big Bruce sniffed. His eyes were sparkling with tears. “Why’d you stop playing?”

“I know when it’s time to bow out,” Rosie said sadly. “But I’ll tell y’all this: The Ryman is sacred. And the Ryman is wild. And when you find a place like that in this world, a place that is wild and sacred, you should treasure it.”

“I wonder if Uncle Boone has played at the Ryman?” I asked.