Gypsy Magic (The Little Matchmakers) (2 page)

He adjusted the mink, flipped a strand of her hair back, tucked one end of the silk scarf into her right hand—“For contrast, and to catch the eye—“ he said, then added, “but leave all that leg exposed.” With a final pat off “that” leg, he leaped to the sand below and sauntered off toward the waiting aircraft, making sure he gathered up everything that could mar the scene.

Gypsy lay on the hard, black shale, unappreciative of the thousands of dollars’ worth of animal pelts under her nearly naked body. All she cared about was the acute discomfort of the cool breeze off the ocean, the lonely feeling given her by the dwindling clatter of the helicopter as it circled out over the ocean. Too far out, she thought, half panicking, to begin its run in.

She turned her head fractionally to see if she could spot it out toward the setting sun and saw it as a crawling black dragonfly just at the edge of the orange blaze that filled half the sky. As she watched it grow larger, ever larger, beating its way across the molten lava of the sea, she kept her attention firmly on the bubble, expecting the flash, which would be her signal to draw the fur cape up around her body, smile her most seductively and laugh at an imaginary lover.

The noise grew louder and louder as the machine flew nearer, flattening and darkening the waves with its rotor-wash. As it approached, only a few hundred feet offshore, the nose raised up and the entire craft seem to shudder. It clawed at the blood red sunset clouds as if seeking purchase and then with a tortured screaming of overstressed metal, one blade appeared to cut helicopter in half, both pieces falling from the air to land with almighty splashes which, in dying, left a terrible silence.

Without quite knowing how she got there, Gypsy was on her feet, screaming into the wind, staring with horrified eyes at the empty, concealing ocean. She jumped from the high rock, intending to do something, anything, without fully realizing there was nothing in the world she could do, and landed on a slick, weed-covered boulder. It rolled under her impact, pitching her sideways and then there was nothing at all… Except the sensation of cold on her feet which made Gypsy pull them up, bending her knees toward her chest. It was dark, and dimly she grew aware of the cold light of stars wheeling slowly, remorselessly overhead and she wondered why they were there, then ceased wondering about anything as the night wore on.

As first light disturbed her, Gypsy struggled to her feet, wrapped the mink cape around herself for warmth and wandered away from the shore, totally unaware of her surroundings, or her reason for being in them.

~ * ~

Dawn came, pearling the rolling water with a fine, lavender glow, lighting the bent limbs, the black trunk of a solitary, wind-tortured pine tree. The rising sun turned to flaming red rusty streaks in the bare rock where the tree stood. Stark difference between light and shadow exposed to view the expense of empty sand, uninhabited except for one lone black oyster-catcher on a row of rocks jutting outward. The bird hopped away as the sound of approaching aircraft filled the morning air.

Circling the beach, the helicopter searched, then landed. Two men emerged, watched only by a bald eagle in a tall silver snag a quarter-mile away. Presently the men return to their craft and it left, to be joined in the distance by others, quartering the sea, back and forth, each to his own sector until at last the clatter died to a whisper and then nothing as the aircraft made their way east toward the other side of the island, flying into the rising sun.

~ * ~

Kevin climbed from his untidy bunk, pulled on muddy, tattered jeans and rubbed at his eyes with balled up fists. He tiptoed from the cabin, careful not to disturb the other occupant. He stood for a moment watching the sunbeams cut down through the overhanging boughs of a cedar tree at the corner of the hut, then ran to the creek where he knelt and drank thirstily before digging his already grimy fingers into the mud at the edge. He counted laboriously as each worm was, literally, unearthed and then stuffed the wriggling mass into a pocket. He followed the path of the creek through the shady forest, now and then sucking in his cheeks as one foot slipped into the water. He wasn’t allowed to get his shoes muddy or wet! But Auntie Lorraine wasn’t there, he reminded himself, and once, just once, deliberately stuck his foot into the water, swishing it back and forth. Daddy wouldn’t care. Daddy wouldn’t even notice.

Beside a gravel bar where the creek widened as it left the woods and ran through a sunlit glade, he knelt once more. Shading his eyes with one hand, he peered intently into the water. “Come on,” he called softly. “Breakfast’s ready. Come on fish.” By lucky accident, although in Kevin’s estimation, by dint of careful training, two small trout chose that moment to swim into view from under the shade of a large devils-club plant which hung over the small pool. One by one the worms plinked into the water. There, the greedy fish gobbled them up. “That’s good fishies,” he told them. “Now you’ll grow up and be big and swim far, far away and get to be salmon. I’ll be back.”

After a silent breakfast of his own, eaten with eyes downcast to obliterate anything but his cereal bowl, the child slipped away to a solitary play, leaving his father to the privacy of the cabin.

~ * ~

Lance failed to notice his son’s silence. In fact, Lance frequently failed to notice his child at all. It was much easier that way for both of them.

Picking up his sketchbook, Lance drifted slowly through the forest until he found a suitable subject. He crouched on one knee while his deft fingers made the charcoal fly across the page, capturing the fluid lines, the impudence of the grin and cheeky eyes of a squirrel perched upon a moss covered stump, making chips fly from a pine cone.

As page after page was filled with the same animal, catching it in different poses, Lance’s face lost its taut lines, his eyes, too often bleak and introspective, took on a warmth, a glow. His usually grim mouth curved in a slight smile. All this was wiped out as his son came tearing through the bush, not expecting to find his father at work in this place.

Kevin yelped like a stepped-on pup, his face becoming pinched, white, his eyes round and staring. His lip quivered. “I didn’t see you, Daddy, I didn’t,” he whispered, backing away, clenched fists held tightly by his sides.

Lance felt the rage he was scarcely able to control building in him. His teeth snapped shut as he clenched his jaw in order not to roar at the boy. But why? In God’s name why did the kid have to be such a namby-pamby little thing? Why did he have to cower and cringe? Why does he have to look at me like that? With great effort, Lance forced himself to relax, but the tension was still in his voice as he spoke.

“Was there something you wanted?”

“No, Daddy.” Again, the whisper, the lowered head.

“Then go and play.” How difficult not to bellow,
then get the hell out of my sight!

Kevin said, “Yes, Daddy.” Sad eyes in a guilt ridden face surveyed Lance for one brief instant before the boy crept, too late quiet, through the trees and underbrush.

The woods were scary, full of awful silences which made the roaring in his ears so loud Kevin wanted to make noise just to hear something other than nothingness or wind in trees. Even hearing his big, gruff father speak to him was better than silence, though it made him want to cry.

Lance groaned softly as he put the palms of his hands to his aching head. What the hell was the matter with him? Why had he spoken to the kid like that? And why had Kevin’s attitude been what it was? What a stupid idea this had been! If only he had listened to Lorraine, as always, instead of letting Keith talk him into this farce, this fiasco.

Keith Summers, an old friend who just happen to be a pediatrician as well had recommended this month—totally isolated, trapped on the island, in an fourteen by twenty-foot cabin with Kevin. It was all Keith’s fault. No, he amended, not entirely his. He, Lance, had not been forced to do it, but desperate, he had decided to forget the fact that Keith disliked Lorraine and would say anything simply to disagree with her.

Lorraine had said, “Look, Lance, I know both you and Kevin inside out. You can’t get along with him for more than two minutes, and he’s scared stiff of you. If you don’t want to listen to me anymore, let Marsha have him.”

“Marsha will never get her hands on him again. You know how I feel about that,” he had exploded.

“Of course I know,” Lorraine cut in smoothly as always, wanting to soothe him, make his path easier. Good, efficient Lorraine…

“But Lance, he’d be so much better off with someone who truly loves him.”

“Don’t you?”

“Frankly, no. And neither do you. He’s too much like— He’s not easy to love. Too prickly, too easily hurt.”

“But why doesn’t my own son love me? He used to. Lord knows I want to be the kind of father he needs. . And I think he wants me to as well. Trouble is, I can’t seem to break through the barriers, to get to know him. As Keith said, I have to learn about him and the only way to do it is like this.”

Lorraine’s mouth had thinned, and she remained silently disapproving for such a time that Lance found himself apologizing. “I’m sorry, Lorraine. I know I’ve always followed your lead when it comes to what’s best for Kevin, but this time I have to try it my way.”

“Keith’s way,” she had snapped, and sailed out, chin at an aloof, disapproving angle.

~ * ~

Kevin wandered across the narrow, south end of the island, staying close to the creek. Here, it was not so dark, so gloomy as under the trees. Dappled sunlight lit the shallow water and the child squatted down on the bank to talk again to his only friends—two silent trout. They reminded him of the goldfish Auntie Lorraine had let him have when he wanted a puppy like the one Mikey and Jennifer got. She said that the puppy was noisy and would bother Daddy and that the goldfish were better. They were quiet and clean. They stayed small, too, because they lived in a little bowl. Kevin had wanted a huge fish tank like at the aquarium, where they even had sharks with big, sharp teeth. Those sharks—even the salmon in other tanks—we big.

Maybe that was why his fish weren’t growing. Could it be that all the worms he’d been feeding them in the past three days since he and Daddy came here would never help them get big? Maybe they needed more room.

“I’m going to make your pool bigger, fish,” he told them, “and then you’ll be able to grow up and be big, big fish and go find your mother. I bet if you could find her, she’d like you.” He dug with his hands at the bank of the creek, hoping to widen it, but the mud and gravel just came right back in. He got a big stick and used that. The rocks he moved didn’t make the creek wider, they just sat there looking like little islands, until one rolled down and came up against a big limb, which had fallen from a tree and stuck in the stream. He noticed how the water sort of stopped for a minute or two when it came to the rock and the limb, then rose up and spilled over it. Where that happened, the creek was a bit wider, a little deeper, too, he thought. He dragged more fallen tree branches and put them with the first one. Mrs. Ford had showed the class how beavers built dams. That’s what’d he do. Build a dam to make his fish’s pool bigger. But the force of the flow carried the branches away, tumbling them downstream toward the western shore of the island, a place he had not yet visited. Daddy had told him not to go near the ocean. He had to stay where he could hear Daddy call when it was time to come and eat.

He wondered if Daddy would help him make a big pool for the fish. But Auntie Lorraine said he wasn’t to make a nuisance of himself or Daddy might get mad and then his head would hurt. Besides, Daddy was always too busy.

With a sigh, he gave up his attempt at dam building. “Sorry fish, but I guess you’ll just have to stay small until I’m big enough to make a better pool for you.” The fish swam uncaring into the shade of a the devil’s club again and settled onto the bottom. Kevin threw a small rock into the pool and watched successive rings of waves lap at the gravel bar. It wasn’t long past breakfast, so maybe it wouldn’t hurt just to follow the creek a little way… He walked on down the course of the stream, head hanging, deep in thought.

His quick imagination conjured up the next-door family. Mickey, only five, but bigger than Kevin, Jennifer, the three-year-old and Mr. and Mrs. Lawson. Mr. Lawson laughed a lot and sometimes smelled like beer, especially when he was barbecuing. Mrs. Lawson was pretty and made cake.

He tried to imagine them walking beside the creek with him, but they kept getting far, far away and waving, saying, “Bye, Kev. See you next month,” just like they had when they left for Disneyland the day before he and Daddy had come here.

It must be nice to have a mother. He tried to make Mickey’s mother come back like he sometimes could night when it was dark and he was just about asleep. Then, Auntie Lorraine would fling open his door and say, “What’s that doing in your mouth?”

Always, she waited until he was nearly asleep, feeling warm and happy thinking that Mickey’s mother had just tucked him in and kissed him and given him a cuddle like she had one time when he’d had a sleep-over at Mickey’s house.

When the door opened and the light flashed on all the same time sometimes he couldn’t get his thumb out of his mouth fast enough and then she scolded him and put that awful stuff on it.

Kevin was sure Mickey’s mother wouldn’t do that, and if he had his own mother, she wouldn’t either. It wasn’t Auntie Lorraine’s fault. She had never been a mother and didn’t know that at night it was dark and something might come out of the shadows, and the thumb made it not so bad. That’s what Mickey’s mother said, anyway, and she said she’d cuddle him just any old time he wanted her to. She had lots of cuddling room on her lap. But still, it would be nice to have a mother of his own…

So deep was he in his dream that he almost missed his great discovery. He thought, as he squatted down, that if it hadn’t been for the root he had tripped on, he would’ve missed it altogether. He touched gently, patted once, then rose to back away quietly. When he felt he was clear, he darted along the very edge of the creek, feeling the thick tangled underbrush tear at his jeans, at the bare skin of his torso. Panting, he skidded to a stop, wondering why he was running.