Magic Street (14 page)

"Because of him," said Word. "Because of Bag Man."

"Mr. Christmas," said Ceese.

Puck, thought Mack. "So am I your..."

"I don't know," said Word. "You might be my brother. Or my half brother. But considering that things like that are impossible in the real world, I'm not altogether sure that you exist." He laughed again, that harsh laugh that said he really didn't think it was funny. "And if you do, what put you in my mother's uterus? Who could I tell? Who could I ask? All I could do was watch. I saw Ceese find you. And soon I heard that Miz Smitcher had taken you in. So you were okay."

"And what if I hadn't found him?" said Ceese. "Or what if Raymo..."

"I knew Raymo," said Word. "I wouldn't have let anything happen."

"So you just watched," said Mack. "Like Miriam watching Moses in the bulrushes."

"So you're a Bible reader," said Word.

"I listened in Sunday school," said Mack.

"Exodus. Moses was in danger of being murdered by Pharaoh's men, so they put him a basket and floated him down the river. I suppose today it would be a grocery bag, and he'd be set down in a field by a drainpipe."

"I'm not Moses," said Mack. "And nobody was trying to kill me."

Both Ceese and Word laughed grimly at that, then glanced at each other. Both of them probably wondering what danger the other one had known about.

"Do you read Shakespeare?" asked Mack.

Word shrugged. "My father almost named me William Shakespeare Williams. Instead of William Wordsworth Williams. So I might have been called Shake instead of Word."

"Or Speare," said Ceese helpfully.

"That would have guaranteed I never got a date in high school," said Word, and this time his laugh was a little more real.

"What can you tell me about Puck and the queen of the fairies?" asked Mack.

"Puck? Why?"

"Why? You think that Bag Man's an overgrown fairy or something?"

"Just asking," said Mack. "But if you don't know, I guess I'll have to read about it."

"Good luck on Shakespeare," said Word. "It's written in a foreign language. I heard a black linguist from Berkeley once say that English-speaking people are the only ones who never get to read Shakespeare in their native language. Instead we have to suffer through reading his stuff in the kind of English they were speaking back in 1600."

"I got through Shakespeare okay," said Ceese. "Romeo and Juliet. King Lear."

"High school's one thing. They spoonfeed it to you."

"In college I mean," said Ceese.

"Okay, well, fine," said Word.

"All I want to know is about the Queen of the Fairies," said Mack.

"Titania," said Word. "And her husband is Oberon. They fight all the time. Puck is Oberon's servant, and he plays terrible tricks on people. He takes this guy who's lost in the woods and magically makes him have the head of a donkey, and then Puck gives Titania a love potion and she falls in love with this half-assed guy."

"So Puck is a bad guy," said Mack.

"No, he's a trickster. Like Loki in Norse mythology. He just... plays pranks on people. But they're mean tricks. He has no conscience."

They rode in silence for a while.

Then Word glanced back and asked Mack, "So you think this guy is Puck?"

Ceese said, "He's just talking."

"I have a word of advice for you," said Word.

Ceese snorted. "You have a word."

"I know it's a pun on my own name. Don't you think I hear enough of that crap?"

"Your advice?" said Ceese.

"Leave it. Forget about it. My father broods about it. It still poisons him. He watches you from the window. He watches you whenever he passes you in his car. Because he knows. Baby found in a grocery bag, not an hour after Bag Man carried you out of the house. Dad hates that guy. But what good does it do?"

Then Word spoke again. "In the play—in Midsummer Night's Dream, that's the play that has Puck in it—what they're fighting about—the queen and the king of the fairies, Titania and Oberon—is a changeling."

"What's a changeling?" asked Mack.

"A little boy. That's all they say. I think there's an old legend that fairies sometimes come and steal away human children and leave fake children in their place. I suppose it's the kind of legend that was invented to explain autistic children. The changeling looks like a perfectly normal child, but he just doesn't respond right."

"Is that what I am?" asked Mack.

"You're not autistic," said Ceese. "Weird, but not autistic."

"How could you be a changeling?" said Word. "There wasn't a baby to swap you for. I don't know what you are. Maybe you're just... my magical brother."

"I don't see how you're any kind of brother to him," Ceese said irritably.

"Cecil," said Word, "you're his brother. His real one. Or his father or some combination.

Everybody knows that. Everybody in Baldwin Hills knows you gave up half your own childhood to look after Mack. They love you for it. I'm not making any claim that I mean anything in Mack's life."

"Less than nothing," said Ceese quietly.

"If I had told this story back then, would it have changed anything?"

Silence again, until Ceese finally answered, "They would have locked you up in the loony house."

"He had you in his life. And that was good. What if I had 'found' Mack in that grocery bag? I thought of it. But I couldn't have brought him home. If I had come in that door with that particular baby, I think my dad would have lost it. Might have killed the baby or run out of the house and never come back or... I don't know. Dad was crazy. You finding him, that was a good thing, Ceese."

That was the last thing Mack heard for a little while, because right at that moment, he slipped into a cold dream. Didn't even fall asleep first. Just felt himself walking into a hospital room that he had never seen before and firing eight rounds from a handgun right into Bag Man's bandaged-up head.

Only the bandages were nothing like the real ones, and the room was nothing like the draped-off area where Mack actually saw Bag Man, and suddenly Mack understood what he was seeing. It wasn't coming out of Mack's memory of the hospital, it was coming out of someone else's imagination. What Professor Williams wanted more than anything else in the world right now, far more than he wanted to be a great poet, was to murder Bag Man.

Mack had never thought of Puck as "Bag Man," but in the cold dream that's absolutely who the man was, what his name was.

Until he awoke shivering, with Ceese pinching the skin on his arm.

"Ow," said Mack.

"You fainted," said Ceese. "You were shivering like you were having some kind of fit."

"I was cold," said Mack angrily. "You don't have to punish me for it by pinching like a girl!"

"Just trying to bring you back."

And that's what Mack wanted him to do.

"We okay back there now?" asked Word. "We're almost to your house."

"I had a dream," said Mack.

"In three minutes?" asked Ceese. "That's quick dreaming."

"He's an efficient dreamer," said Word from the front seat. He pulled back into traffic and a moment later turned right on Coliseum and then left on Cloverdale. Both Mack and Ceese looked at where Skinny House was hidden but from the street, of course, they saw nothing.

When they got to the Smitcher house—Mack's house—Word got out of the car to help Ceese get Mack out.

"I'm okay," Mack insisted.

"You just fainted. That suggests you're not exactly okay," said Word.

"I had one of my dreams," said Mack. "Not a sleeping-type dream. A different kind. And somebody was trying to kill Bag Man."

"Who," said Word, laughing. "My dad? I'd believe it!"

Mack just looked at him.

Word stopped laughing. "Oh, come on. I don't really believe it."

"Your dad knows which hospital he's in," said Mack.

"My dad's not a murderer."

"I don't want him to be," said Mack. "But the things I see in dreams like this—sometimes they come true."

"Like Tamika Brown dreaming she was a fish and waking up inside the waterbed."

That knocked them both for a loop. They stared at Mack for a long moment. "You mean Tamika's dad wasn't crazy?" asked Ceese.

"Or lying?" asked Word.

"Like you, Word," said Mack. "Who could I tell?"

"Weird shit's been going on for years, and I never had a clue," said Ceese.

"So you think my dad might just magically appear in Bag Man's hospital room?" asked Word.

"I don't know what might happen," said Mack. "But when these dreams come true, it's always the thing the person wants most in all the world—only it happens in the ugliest way. If your dad gets his wish to have Bag Man dead, then I bet your dad gets caught. Or maybe shot down by the police.

And all of us arrested as accomplices, probably. All part of a big setup."

Ceese and Word looked at each other.

"I'm going back," said Word. "It's crazy, but so is everything else. I've got to stay there until... or I could call my father."

"No, let's go back," said Ceese. "But not you, Mack. It's too dangerous."

Mack just looked at Ceese with heavy-lidded eyes.

"Oh, don't give me that vulture look," said Ceese. He turned to Word. "But he's right. We got to take him, because he's more in tune with this weird stuff than either of us."

So they piled into the car and headed back for the hospital.

"I'm blowing off an exam to do this," said Word as they pulled into the hospital parking garage.

"So what do we do? Sneak into the emergency room? They know us there."

"He won't be there now," said Mack. "They move them out of there after an hour or so."

"Where will he be?"

"I'll find out."

It was easy, as long as they didn't go through Emergency, where they would all be recognized.

Instead, Mack went to an ordinary nurses' station where he was recognized only as Ura Lee Smitcher's boy, and nobody even noticed when he looked up the John Doe who had been admitted to Emergency as an indigent about two hours before—had it already been that long?

Mr. Christmas was still asleep, but now he was on a hospital bed and there wasn't a tube anymore.

"So what do we do," said Word. "Wait for my dad to appear?"

Ceese looked around. "Move the old man?"

"This isn't The Godfather," said Word. "We can't just move him. They'd notice. And besides, if he comes here by magic, we can't fool the magic, can we? He'll come to whatever room Mr.

Christmas is in."

They were interrupted by Mr. Christmas whispering from the bed. "Come here."

They all turned. The man was holding up a feeble hand. He was reaching for Mack. "Hold my hand."

Mack took a step toward him.

"You trust him?" asked Word.

"Don't do it, Mack," said Ceese.

"Help me," said Mr. Christmas.

Mack looked at Ceese and Word, then turned back to Puck. "The doctors already did what you needed."

Mr. Christmas glanced at Ceese and Word, and suddenly they smiled and began pushing Mack gently toward the bed.

"It's all right," said Ceese.

"He needs you," said Word.

And Mack knew right then that Puck was doing to them the thing he had done to Word Williams thirteen years ago. Making them want to do something they didn't want to do. Encourage Mack to obey Puck's command.

The thing was, Mack didn't want to do it. Didn't want not to, either. It's as if Puck had no power to make Mack want or not want anything.

"I touched you before," said Mack to the man on the bed. "I... carried you. It didn't help you."

Mr. Christmas responded by wiggling his fingers. Give me your hand, his fingers were saying.

his pocket.

Mr. Christmas still wiggled his fingers.

Okay, so I proved I could do it. But now as I take my hand out of my pocket and reach out to him again, is that because I want to or because I...

I could keep going back and forth on this all morning, and in the meantime, Professor Williams might pop out of thin air and blast eight rounds into Puck's body.

Mack took the man's hand.

His grip was weak. But the longer he held, the stronger it got. Until Mack said, "You're hurting me."

"Sorry," said Puck. But now he looked stronger. And when he let go of Mack's hand, he sat right up and pulled the bandages off his head and his body. "That really hurt."

"What happened to you?" asked Mack. "Was it the—"

Puck put up a hand to stop him from saying more. Then he stood up and looked down at the cast on his leg.

"Mack," said Puck, "can I lean on you to steady me?"

Mack came closer. The man leaned on him. He took a step. Another.

And then Puck wasn't leaning on him anymore. Mack looked at him, and now he was fully dressed as a homeless man, with grocery bags hanging out of every pocket and looped over his arms.

"No reason to hide these from you now," said Puck to Mack. "Now that Word here has told you everything."

And with a nod to Word and Ceese, and a wink to Mack, Puck flung open the door and strode boldly out into the hall. Nobody challenged him.

"You healed him," said Word.

"He healed himself," said Mack. "He's the magical one, not me."

"But he had to hold your hand to do it."

"That's crazy," said Mack.

"And when he was leaning on you," said Ceese, "his cast just disappeared, and he was wearing those clothes."

"We saved your father," said Mack. "From committing a murder and going to jail for it."

"If he was coming."

"Now we'll never know," said Ceese. "But isn't that better than knowing because we didn't stop him?"

"Yes, it is," said Word.

"Now let's go home," said Ceese, "before the nurses catch us here and demand to know what we did with the old man."

As they approached the car, Word pushed the button that made the Mercedes give a little toot and blink its lights. "You know what I don't want to do now?"

"What?" asked Ceese.

"I don't want to spend a lot of time trying to figure all this out. I spent years trying to make it make sense and I decided long ago that the best thing for me to do is act as if it never happened, just as my dad does, because there's not a damn thing we can do about it and it's never going to make sense. In fact, not making sense is why we call it magic instead of science, right?"