A Snicker of Magic (7 page)

“Oliver owns Dr. Zook’s Ice Cream Company,” Jonah explained.

“People sure must love ice cream,” I said.

“It’s not just the ice cream,” Jonah said. “Oliver created a special formula that makes the ice cream stay cold for at least twenty-four hours even if it isn’t in a freezer. His invention revolutionized the world of frozen novelties.”

I pictured Oliver as a cantankerous old millionaire sitting in a dark office in the farthest corner of that expensive stone house. He’d probably be wearing a black suit. He’d probably have a pinched face and wiry glasses and a beard. Definitely a beard. He probably never looked up from his desk.

Jonah’s wheelchair made a steady
zrrrrrr
as he led me down the foggy walkway to Oliver’s mansion. The yard was bordered by fancy hedges trimmed into animal shapes: a bear, an elephant, an anteater, a lion. The tallest hedge, so tall it could have been a tree, was cut into the shape of a hot air balloon. We passed by two tall columns with stone gargoyles situated on top of them. Both gargoyles had a pair of sunglasses positioned over their eyes.

Beside the steps leading up to the porch, somebody’d built a sturdy-looking wheelchair ramp. Before we could get there, the front doors squeaked open.

An elderly lady stood in the doorway — she was plump the way grannies sometimes are, pillowy and huggable-looking. She kept her white hair tied back behind her head
in a poufy bun. She grinned at us and clapped her hands and ran down the ramp, squealing.

“Should I be afraid?” I asked.

“Charlie Sue Hancock is Oliver’s assistant. She gets excited over company.”

Charlie Sue ran at us full speed, both arms straight out like she might take off and fly.

“Should I duck?”

But I didn’t have time to duck. Instead I
OOFED!
as Charlie Sue swooped in and flung her arms around me and Jonah both. She smelled like coffee and expensive perfume.

“Welcome to Midnight Gulch, Felicity Pickle!” she hollered, pushing me back to take a good look at me.

“
Laaaaaaws
, Jonah,” she said. “You were telling the truth. Felicity is
plumb
adorable.”

Plumb adorable.

Plumb
ADORABLE?!

My face burned bright red. Prickly red. I’d never been called plumb
anything
before. I didn’t glance at Jonah to see if his face was prickly red, too, but I had a feeling it wasn’t. Jonah never seemed embarrassed over his words. Not that those
were
his words. I was certain Charlie Sue Hancock was elaborating. Mega elaborating. Elaborating to the ten-thousandth degree of elaboration.

“Oliver said he’d meet you both in the boardroom,” said Charlie Sue. “He’s been on the phone all day with some clients up north. They’re wanting a shipment of Blackberry
Sunrise and Oliver’s been telling them
NO, SIR, NO WAY
all day long. You
know
how he feels about
that one
.”

“That’s his most popular flavor,” Jonah told me. “But Oliver won’t let them sell it anywhere besides Midnight Gulch.”

“Why’s that?” I followed Jonah and Charlie Sue into Oliver’s mansion.

“ ’Cause that stuff’s got a little secret ingredient.” Charlie Sue winked at Jonah. “We call it M-A-G-I-C.”

Oliver’s boardroom was actually a library. A good library. A library where books looked worn-out and well read and loved on. The library was two stories tall with a balcony that wrapped around the top level. The big window on the top floor was propped half open. A rebel beam of sunlight pushed through the clouds, shining through the rain beads stuck to the screen and glass. And then that strange, golden rain light shone warm and pretty over Oliver’s books. I wondered if the sun had missed the books, had waited as long as it possibly could to shine over those spines again. I knew how that felt, to love a story so much you didn’t just want to read it, you wanted to feel it.

And Jonah was right about Oliver’s mansion being good for word collecting. I wasn’t really participating in the Duel, of course. But if I were, Oliver’s house was the perfect place to collect. I saw them everywhere:

So.

Many.

Hundreds and billions and trillions

of words.

Woven across the ceiling. Shining as soft as the September sun. I was surrounded by words and stories and dust-speckled light. That’s a pretty perfect way to be.

In the center of Oliver’s library was a round table. Jonah pulled a chair out and wheeled underneath the tabletop. While he prepared for his meeting, I explored the first level of Oliver’s library. The walls were mostly covered by bookshelves, but one wall was full of maps and photographs.

There was a map of Midnight Gulch and another map of the state of Tennessee. Tennessee was poked full of so many stickpins that it looked like one of Cleo’s stuffed hedgehogs.

Pictures were propped against the books on the shelves — black-and-white photos of people, mostly.

Jonah pointed to a colored picture in a frame made of aluminum can lids. “See that one right there? That’s how I first met Oliver.”

The photograph showed a little white building. A line of smiling kids stood in front of it, grinning toothy-big. They looked Frannie Jo’s age.

“Can you keep another secret?” Jonah asked.

“Yes,” I said. Which was mostly true. I knew as soon as I got home I would tell Biscuit. I tell her everything, but as far as I know, she doesn’t go blabbing to anybody else.

Jonah said, “I started saving up Coke cans a few summers ago. I took them to the recycling center and saved up all the change and eventually I had enough money to build a little school for some kids in Haiti. My uncle is a missionary there and he’s always sending me letters about the dreams he’s working on. One day I read his letter and my know-how kicked in. So I started saving.”

I looked at the picture. I looked back at Jonah. “How many cans did that take?”

“Thousands,” Jonah said. “But it didn’t take all that long. Mom and the guys at the shop all helped me; they all saved up Coke cans and sent them my way.”

“You built a
school
?”

His cheeks burned bright red. “It was a little school.”

“With
Coke cans
?”

The red on his face crept quickly from his cheeks all the way to his hairline. He nodded and unfolded his newspaper and started concentrating on the stories there. “Keep it a secret, okay?”

“No problem. I sure wouldn’t want people knowing I built a whole entire school. Out of Coke cans. That’s definitely the kind of secret you don’t want getting out.”

“It feels better when it’s secret,” Jonah said. “Oliver heard about what I’d done, even though I did my best to keep it quiet, and one thing led to another and he appointed me the new Beedle.”

“The
new
Beedle?” I asked. “What happened to the old Beedle? Why even call it a Beedle?”

“You’ll see,” Jonah said. He pointed to the air all around us. “See any words worth keeping?”

“I see a sky full of words.” I scribbled furiously in my blue book:

Becoming

Halcyon

Ravel

Serendipity

Summer

“Ice cream!” Charlie Sue hollered as she pushed a silver cart through the library door.

She set down tall glass ice-cream dishes in front of me and Jonah. Then she spread a towel across the center of the table and set out six cartons of ice cream. I still wasn’t sold on Dr. Zook’s Ice Cream being the best thing to come out of Midnight Gulch. But that’s because I’d only tasted Aunt Cleo’s carton of Chocolate Chip Pork Rind, and I’d gagged four times. The flavors Charlie Sue set out looked a whole lot more intriguing:

“I’m partial to Aunt Lillie’s Lavender Rosewater,” said Charlie Sue.

“Are they all named after people?” I asked.

“Not all of them.” Jonah reached for the Chocolate Orange Switcheroo flavor. “People in Midnight Gulch like to send in their ideas, though. If it’s any good, Oliver gives them credit.”

Jonah plopped a spoonful of Chocolate Orange Switcheroo into my glass. “Try this one.”

I took a small bite to start with. The ice cream melted against my tongue, sweet and fruity and smooth. Then came the switcheroo part — a chocolate fudgy flavor that caused the corners of my jaws to tingle with happiness.

Bittersweet

Tangy

Citrus

Crazy good!

I watched the words freeze against my ice-cream glass. I stopped to write them down, and that’s when I noticed a very familiar word drifting across the table:

Stoneberry

“Stoneberry,” I mumbled.

“Makes sense.” Jonah nodded. “Like I said, Oliver has done all sorts of research on the Weatherly brothers.”

“Didn’t need to go far for research,” said a man in the doorway.

Even though I knew that man had to be the mysterious millionaire Oliver, I was still a little surprised. Because
Oliver did not
look
like a millionaire. He looked like a farmer or a cowboy, maybe. But mostly he just looked like somebody’s grandpa.

Oliver was shorter than I figured he’d be. He had a shiny bald head and a fuzzy white mustache. He wore faded jeans, and a flannel shirt rolled up to the elbows.

“Hey-yo!” Oliver grinned at me. “And good morning and welcome!” He didn’t talk like a millionaire, either.

When he reached to shake my hand, I noticed a dark tattoo on his forearm. But I couldn’t make out what it was just yet.

“Hey-yo and thanks,” I said.

Oliver glanced at Jonah and raised one fuzzy eyebrow. “Pumpernickel?”

Jonah nodded. “Felicity’s the one I told you about. Remember? She’s cool.”

“All righty, then.” Oliver nodded. “Jonah says you’re interested in the Weatherly brothers, Miss Felicity?”

Yes!

Yes!

Yes!

“Yep,” I answered.

Oliver pulled a picture frame off one of the bookshelves and handed it to me.

The photograph was old, black-and-white, and faded. But I could tell that the man in the picture was young. His dark, shaggy hair fell down over one eye. He wore overalls sized a bit too short for his long, lanky frame, and he held a
banjo high up, right across his chest. I could tell he wasn’t playing that banjo, though; his hand clutched too tightly around the neck. I wondered if he was in a habit of holding his banjo over his chest to protect his heart. Maybe that banjo was a shield to him. Maybe he felt safe behind it.

Oliver tapped the picture frame. “Berry Weatherly. He was a famous magician, but you’ve heard that already, I reckon?”

I nodded.

“Well,” Oliver sighed. “There is always more to the story than what you’ve heard. Here’s what most people don’t know about Berry: He liked cold weather and hot coffee. He loved to sew. And he loved to tell stories. Stories were his best magic. And” — Oliver’s fuzzy mustache turned up at the edges when he smiled — “Berry Weatherly was my grandfather. I’d be happy to tell you more about him. The
truth
about him.”

Yes. Yes. Yes
, my heart pounded over Oliver’s words. My heart always pounded out a
YES
when people were fixing to tell me a good story.

“Felicity,” Jonah finally said, “in case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is Oliver Weatherly … the original Beedle of Midnight Gulch.”

“Charlie Sue!” hollered Oliver. “Could you bring me a —”

Before he could finish, Charlie Sue bumped the door open with her hip. She set down another glass ice-cream dish and a new carton of ice cream on the table.

“You’re a wonder!” Oliver said to her.

“And don’t you forget it!” Charlie Sue said with a nod. She pulled the door closed when she left.

“Jonah says that’s your most popular flavor,” I said, pointing to the pale purple carton.

“Hey-yo! You better believe it,” Oliver answered. “People buy it by the gallon because it helps them remember. The problem is that you don’t know what
kind
of memory this ice cream’s going to dredge up. We make every carton out of the blackberries that grow wild down by Snapdragon Pond. If you take a bite” — he tapped the carton with his spoon — “and the blackberries taste sweet, you remember something good. But if you take a bite and the blackberries are sour, well … that means you’re
about to have a sad memory. Remembering is still important, though, no matter if it’s good or bad. You want to try it?”

“I’d better not.” I shook my head. Because there was one memory in particular I’d worked too hard to forget.

Oliver nodded. “Jonah says you’d like to know about the Beedle.”

“And the Brothers Threadbare,” I said, trying to sound casual.

“I know plenty about both,” Oliver said, “… as long as I have some Blackberry Sunrise to help me along.”

Oliver’s shoulders slumped as he took his first bite. I wondered how good a memory could possibly be if it weighted so heavy against him.

Oliver began, “I was a rotten kid, Miss Felicity. Spoiled, self-centered, and careless. Honest truth: I used to sit up in that very window and shoot ever’ dove that flew past here. Just for meanness’ sake.

“My mama said that was an awful offense, to shoot a dove. I told her people did it and they’ve been doing it forever. She said one thousand people doing a thing didn’t make it right. She said doves were sweet birds. They’re small and gentle and they only wanna sing. She said that whenever you see a dove, that means hope’s coming down. Where’s the sport, my mother asked, in shooting a creature so sweet?”

Oliver sighed. “Her words stuck to me, even though I pretended they didn’t. ’Cause I wasn’t just mean to doves. I was mean to people, too.”

“But all of that changed!” Jonah interrupted. He pushed away his empty ice-cream glass. “You
always
spend too much time on the before parts, Oliver. Tell Felicity about the good. Tell her about the woman preacher who changed the course of your days.”

A sad smile stretched over Oliver’s face. “Her name was Eldee Mae Cotton and she was, indeed, a traveling preacher. She drove a red pickup truck from Knoxville, Tennessee, all up through the Appalachian Mountains. When she came here, to Midnight Gulch, some folks got real backward over it.
Law sakes
— they said.
A woman preacher! It ain’t right!
”

“What’s wrong with being a woman preacher?” I said. “I think that’s awesome.”

“So did I.” Oliver grinned. “Eventually.” He ate another spoonful of Blackberry Sunrise. “But honestly, the reason I first drove out to the fairgrounds to listen to her speak was to see if the crowd might start heckling and hollering and teasing her. And if they did, I figured I’d jump right in. Just to have something to do.”

“But then,” Jonah butted in, rushing Oliver along.

“But then I got flabbergasted when I saw her,” Oliver admitted, “and I couldn’t say a word. Firstly, I liked the way she talked — gentle as a songbird. But mostly, I got tongue-tied ’cause she was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen.”

Mama would have loved to paint the look on Oliver’s face right then. His eyes sparkled, sad and blue. His cheeks wrinkled up into a lonesome smile. If the midnight moon
could smile, it would look just the same as Oliver’s. Two words arched over his shiny head:

Eldee Mae

Her name looked as pretty as writing in a storybook. I watched the letters of her name curve and stretch, taking up all the space in the room before they faded away.

“Sweet Eldee Mae,” Oliver sighed.

The way he said her name made my heart cramp. In all my years of word collecting, I’ve learned this to be a tried and true fact: I can very often tell how much a person loves another person by the way they say their name. I think that’s one of the best feelings in the world, when you know your name is safe in another person’s mouth. When you know they’ll never shout it out like a cuss word, but say it or whisper it like a once-upon-a-time.

Oliver sighed again and said, “I stood there and listened to Eldee Mae talk about heaven and hope and love. I’d never cared much for that sort of talk in a church house, but I could have listened to her for hours. I got so caught up in what she was saying that I didn’t even realize she’d come to stand right in front of me. She was a tiny thing. Probably no taller than you, Felicity, no bigger than a dove. I saw a feisty-spark in her eyes and I thought —
This is it. This crazy preacher lady’s about to tell me what’s what….”

“Did she?” I asked.

“No, ma’am,” said Oliver. He leaned up on his forearms. I could see his tattoo clearly now: a dove with ink-black wings.

“Eldee Mae reached out for me” — he tapped his chest — “pressed her hand right over my heart. And she said to me, ‘
God ain’t forgotten about you, Oliver Weatherly. He doesn’t forget anybody. Hope’s coming down
.’ ”

“What’d you say back?” I sighed.

“I laughed in her face,” Oliver admitted. “But she didn’t look offended. She went back to preaching and I drove home as fast as I could.

“I fell asleep underneath that very window.” Oliver pointed toward the second story again. “And when I woke up the next morning, that’s when I saw the shadow” — Oliver fluttered his fingers in front of his face — “just weaving back and forth across the room. I glanced out the window and hey-yo! As sure as I live and breathe, there was a hot air balloon swooping back and forth across the sunrise. I staggered outside just in time to see it crash-land in my front yard, honest truth.”

As Oliver spoke, my mind called up a peculiar memory.

… the picture on my aunt Cleo’s wall.

… the sad man beside the hot air balloon.

“Who was in the balloon?” I whispered.

“An old man,” Oliver said. “A very, very old man. He was a stout-looking fellow, though, despite his age. He tumbled out of the balloon basket and shook the dust out of his thick white hair, cussing up a firestorm of words until he looked at me. Then his eyes opened up wide, big as gumballs.

“That old man put his hand over his heart and blinked at me like I might disappear. And then he said … ‘
Berry?
’

“I said to him, ‘
Yes, sir?
’ But then I corrected myself real quick. ‘
No, sir. Berry Weatherly was my grandfather. I’m Oliver Berry Weatherly, his grandson, named in his honor.
’

“Hey-
yo
,” Oliver sighed, taking another bite of Blackberry Sunrise. “That man looked like he might fall over dead when I told him that. He kept his hand pressed against his heart when he said, ‘
What do you mean
… was
your grandfather?
’

“And I told him that I’d never actually seen Berry Weatherly. He took off long before I was even born and never came back to town.”

Oliver shook his head sadly. “Those words barely left my mouth before the balloon man started crying. I’ll never forget the big tears rolling down his face. ‘
You look so much like Berry
,’ he said to me.”

I reached over and patted Oliver’s tattooed arm. “What’d you say back?”

Oliver sighed. “I got feisty with him, I admit. I asked
him how the heck he knew my grandpa Berry. And where the heck he came from. And why the heck he’d crashed a balloon into my yard.

“That old man looked me right in the eye and said, ‘
I come from everywhere now. But before that, I came from this town. I landed my balloon here because I have words worth saying. And I knew your grandfather … I know your grandfather … because he’s my brother
.’ ”

I put down the carton of Chocolate Orange Switcheroo with a thud. “So that means …” My eyebrows raised so high I thought they might float off my forehead. “That man was …”

Oliver settled back into his chair. “You remember how I told you there’s always more to the story than what you hear? Well, this is exactly what I was talking about. Most people in this town only know the story of the Duel.”

Oliver looked up toward the second-story window with a sad sparkle in his eyes. “They don’t know about the day Stone Weatherly came back to Midnight Gulch.”