As a Thief in the Night (8 page)

"Good.  Come up here and join me." 

Ezra made his way through the crowd to the magician, who was a smaller man than he had originally appeared to be.
 

"May I?" he held out his hand to Ezra for the silver coin. Taking it from him with both hands, he proceeded to carefully examine it. "Is this a Canadian quarter?" Ezra nodded. "That's fine. Watch it closely, please."
  The magician held the quarter in front of his face between his thumb and forefinger, stared at it intently, brought it to his mouth, and then bit off the top half of it. The crowd murmured and collectively leaned in closer. Ezra tilted his head in confusion and, as he reached forward for the coin, the magician took a quick, deep breath, and blew the top half of the coin back onto it.

Ezra's eyes widened as if looking for an answer to the magic. The magician took his hand and put the coin back in it, and Ezra held the coin up to inspect it. "This can't be the same quarter," he said, looking down at the magician's hands to see if the real coin was concealed somewhere.

"Is the quarter I gave you Canadian?" the magician asked, speaking loud enough for the rest of the crowd to hear.

"Yeah..." Ezra drew out slowly, still looking it over.

"And do you believe I keep a hidden supply of Canadian coins, just in case I happen to pull someone from your country out of my audience?" he asked politely. "Shall I repeat the magic for you?" Ezra nodded. "Then I'll need a different quarter."  Ezra gave him one and the man repeated the trick again to a similar, but tempered, response from the crowd. "That's twice I've done it. If you like, I'll perform the same feat as many as twenty-eight more times, for a total of thirty. Young man, what is your name?"

"Ezra."

"Ezra, do you have thirty silver coins in your pockets?"  The boy felt absent-mindedly around the front of his pants.

"No, sorry, I don't."

"Well then, I'll give you back over to your friends in hopes that one day you are fortunate enough to carry that much money around with you. Thank you for your help." The magician took his hand in both of his, shook it, bowed slightly, and sent him on his way.

Ezra watched the last ten minutes of the magician's act without speaking.

After they left it was on to the business of deciding what each would buy. Chad Lambda had had his heart set on a pair of samurai swords, one long and one short, that were being sold, along with a cherry red display rack, in an almost impossibly cluttered store perched just above the comic shop where Ezra's Marvel Heroes book was for sale. Fully believing in his ability to wield such weapons, Lambda had marched right up to the clerk and produced the exact number of American dollars, without taking tax into account, necessary to obtain the so-called "messengers of death". The clerk looked at Lambda, adjusted his thick glasses, and then sternly pronounced that he could
not
buy the swords because he was not eighteen years of age. To add to this humiliation, he told them to leave his store and never come back.

Full of disbelief the boys sat on a bench in front of the store and discussed the obvious injustice. Lisa Penny, walking alone and wearing shorts that earlier in the year had caused a scandal, approached them and then stopped at an odd distance. "Ezra, come over here for a minute. I need to talk to you about something," she said with an air of secrecy that women, and even girls, are able to make into something erotic. She motioned him away from the other boys.
  Unsure why he had been called, he leaned against the side of a bus shelter. Coyly, she moved closer to him. "Lou's upset, Ezra; she's crying."

"Why? What's the matter?"

"It's a necklace that she wants. Her parents didn't send her with much money. All the other girls have bought jewelry for themselves, and she can't buy a single piece." She looked at him shyly and shrugged. "You know, I saw the way the two of you were sitting on the bus together. I thought maybe you could buy it for her."

Ezra looked at her tentatively, immediately under the pressure of her suggestion. "How much is it?" he asked quietly, so the other boys wouldn't hear him.

"About sixty. Not too much..." Her voice rose happily: "Come on, I'll show you where it is." She quickly took him by the arm and led him down the street. "We'll meet you back at the bus!" she called to the other boys, who just shrugged and continued their lament over the samurai swords. 

Including sales tax the necklace came to sixty-two dollars, leaving him with only two dollars. Back on the bus, when he gave it to her, in a silver cardboard box, she screamed with delight, jumped up and wrapped her arms around his neck. His hands shook and sweated as he tried over and over again to fasten the clasp at the back of her neck. Lisa Penny stood beside him: "Here, let me," and she did it on the first try. Ezra smiled at her, looking for recognition for the selfless gift he had given, and communion with her as the only other one who knew how great his sacrifice had been. But Lisa only looked back at him blankly, raised her eyebrows as if to say: "Why are you looking at me?" and sat down without another word. He sat back down, a little confused, but forgot as soon as he saw her looking at her reflection in the bus window while adjusting the necklace. "I love it," she said beaming at him.

With only two dollars left for the next two days he did not eat lunch. Instead, he bought some sesame snacks and nibbled on them throughout the day. He told his friends that he had a stomach ache and wasn't hungry, when in fact, by the time evening came around, his stomach had begun to hurt
from
hunger. On his final night in Boston Ezra entered the Salem Witch Museum with an empty belly.

After accusations were made, after it had been ascertained that certain women had in fact been visited by the devil and had been asked to perform deeds on behalf of the Prince of Darkness, such as the baking of urine cakes and the murders of the servants of God, it was decided by the righteous right hand of Our Lord (personified by the local church and legal authorities) that those women so moved by the spirit of Lucifer should be put to death.
  It was also decided that in death their souls would suffer a degree of punishment that could never even be glimpsed or conceived of while their corrupt essence remained imprisoned in the flesh that had been its servant. So, while Ezra and the other children watched on, another group of bodies prepared to be added to that uncountable mass that is the result of believing metaphor to be fact, and believing God to be so limited as we are. Yes, those women would hang until they were dead, and their souls would be cast into infinite, unimaginable fields of fire where they would have the privilege of mingling their screams of terror and unending agony with their damned brothers and sisters—all of them burning, burning, burning. One by one the women were marched up the steps to the gallows.  Each had her head placed in the noose and each had it tightened around her neck. Each was asked if there was anything she would like to confess, and when she declined, the trapdoor was opened and the sorceress disappeared beneath the stage.

If anything were ever going to happen between them, if she were ever going to let him kiss her, it would be during their last night at the hotel. Before going back to their rooms though, they stopped at an Italian restaurant for dinner. All were planning to pay for the buffet that had been prepared for them, but Ezra, with his stomach and his pockets empty, pretended to be sick again so that the sacrifice he had made would remain hidden. He was not sure why it had to remain so, but the thought of disclosing what he had done filled him with shame. Telling his teachers that he thought he would be better off if he lay down, he waited on the empty bus while the others went in to eat. Lying across two seats, with his legs stretching across the aisle, he thought about how the night would go and listened to his stomach growl. In an effort to forget about his hunger he put his Walkman headphones on, but the batteries were dead. He calculated how many hours it would be before they were home and he'd be able to eat again. Eighteen before they were back at the school, and maybe one more before he got home. He thought about what Elsie might have in the fridge. Elsie and Uncle Gord: a few times since he'd been gone he had begun to miss them, but his thoughts now fell so obsessively on her that no one else was able to occupy the foreground of his mind, unless he willed them there, and then, once his will grew tired, the picture faded and she was back.

She would probably be in her thin cotton pajama pants again tonight. Two nights before, he had seen her sitting against the wall in the hallway. Louise had been wearing an oversized Espirit t-shirt that she had stretched out over the thin legs she held close to her chest. The lower half of her body hidden inside the scarlet cocoon of this shirt, she spoke to the friends that invariably surrounded her. He wondered if she was wearing anything underneath it. He sat across from her pretending to carry on a conversation with someone else, stealing hopeful, indiscrete glances when he could. Finally she had been pushed over onto her side by one of her friends, and her legs had, in an attempt to keep her balance, sprung out from under her shirt. Her skin's tender color eased itself into the almost transparent softness of the cotton. The thin material clung to her legs in places and hung loose in others. Ezra could see the outline of her underwear pressing against the smooth, worn material. He imagined running one finger along the inside of the waistband, his fingertip dragging along the thin cotton, his nail and the back of his finger traveling along her warm flesh.

"Ezra?" he heard someone call out from the front of the bus. He used the seat to pull himself up and saw Mrs. Simon, his English teacher, looking at him.

"I'm right here," he said a little groggy. He had nearly drifted off. Mrs. Simon wore small designer eyeglasses with circular frames and lenses that always seemed to catch reflections in such a way that her eyes were obscured.
  

"How are you feeling now?"

"I'm okay. I think I just need to lie down for a while longer." His face flushed. Long ago he had realized that he had no talent for lying—unless he believed the lies to be true.

"Are you sure you don't want to come in and eat something? I have some money I could give you if you need it."

"I really don't think I can eat, Mrs. Simon." His stomach stabbed at him in protest.  "Maybe later."

"Okay then. We'll be inside for a while longer if you change your mind. Ben Johnson is running tonight, you know. We're going to stick around until his race is over." She hopped down the bus steps and the double doors closed behind her.

He watched to make sure she went back inside the restaurant and then lay back down, hidden behind the seat. Elsie had always taught him to raise his legs up to his chest when his stomach hurt, and so, feeling a sudden wave of exhaustion, he pulled his legs into himself and gathered his hands just under his chin. Even when this did not offer him any relief, his eyes grew heavy again, and he began to fall asleep. It had been a long, warm day. Just after he lost track of his awareness, he shifted his weight forward, and slipped off the front of the seats. Waking with a start, he threw his arms out in front of him and braced himself against the floor before he hit it.  Taking a moment to understand what had happened, Ezra took a deep breath, hoisted his body back up, and wiped the floor grit off his hands. He pulled his legs up to his chest again, pushed his back snugly against the seat, and slowly drifted back into sleep.

Swing and spiral, swing and spiral, swing and spiral. The swing hung high in his grandfather's living room. It was night and a fire burned in the hearth across the room. The shadows from its flames licked the old hardwood floor. Across the top of the mantle lay a violin bow, perhaps six or seven times the size it should have been. All four (one, two, three, four) Mignon sisters sat together on the couch at the precise age they were in an old picture that hung in Elsie's kitchen. Even dreaming, he knew they were from the picture, and yet the picture was frozen and lost, and they were here and full of breath. Swept along on his swing Ezra called for his mother to look at him. The swing carried him away from her in its ebb, and toward her in its flow, and each time he came close to her he made another plea that fell on deaf ears. As her sisters sat back on the couch, Moira sat on its edge, leaning forward and intently looking down into something on the coffee table in front of them. As he swung forward he saw a glass of water that sat by itself on the unevenly stained wood. His swing stopped, and he too leaned forward. On the water's surface a strange white liquid moved, as if it were a cloud searching for its own shape. 

Then Ezra moved as one moves in a dream, without cause or reason. His eyes took the place of hers and slipped down into the water. Serpentine and murky, the substance sunk into a white desert at the bottom of the glass, reached out with an alien hand, formed faces, trees, fish, and a future, too, as it let the slow force of its will dissolve into the water's permissive constitution.

Without an answer to what he had seen, he found himself on his swing again, and everything suddenly became common. An old black woman, whom Ezra immediately recognized as the maid he had often heard about, was tending to a pot that hung above the fire.  She hummed to herself as she stirred, and the girls spoke quietly to each other on the couch, apparently waiting for whatever was cooking. The woman was heavy. Beneath the folds of her dress and apron her hips and butt stuck out prominently. Her plump wrists and hands strained against the cuffs of her blouse as she stirred, and heavy beads of perspiration ran down her dark forehead from the white bandana she wore to tie her graying hair back. Looking over her shoulder, she seemed to be asking his mother a casual question, but though her lips moved, as did his mother's to respond, he could not hear what was said.