The Witch's Key (22 page)

I reached up and cupped her hand that still rested on
my arm. “Is he in pain?”

She gave me a subtle shrug. “He says he isn’t. He
knows he can have something if he wants, though.”

I gave her hand a little squeeze. “Can I go up
now?”

She smiled softly and nodded toward the elevator.
“Sure, go on. He’ll be glad to see you.”

I leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks,” I
said, and I turned and walked away.

As I headed to the elevator, I spotted India in a
wall mirror across the lobby. She was still holding her cheek where
I kissed her, watching me fade into the depths of the corridor. It
made me think how lucky a guy could be with a girl like her: kind,
sensitive, pretty and bright. Who could ask for more? With India, a
guy wouldn’t need to worry whether or not his girlfriend was out
witching it up at night, dressed like some midnight hobo vigilante.
He would not lose sleep wondering when the next will-kill spell or
witch’s brew would trick him into doing something stupid or
embarrassing. Girls like India don’t go around leading a guy on,
toying with his emotions while harboring secrets that could get a
guy killed. It struck me odd why I didn’t just turn around and
march right back to her and tell her that yes, I did want to go to
lunch with her. And yes, I did want to start seeing her, maybe
seriously—maybe forever.

But as I stood at the elevator doors, looking at my
reflection looking back, I could think of only one question to ask
myself. Why on God’s green earth did I fall in love with a
witch?

I stepped out onto Pops’ floor and immediately I
thought I heard the faint signal of a train whistle. It sounded
distant but clear, and I assumed it came from the yard at Minor’s
Point a few miles away. However, as I neared Pop’s room, I noticed
that the sound grew exponentially louder, which seemed impossible.
In relative terms, my advance toward the source amounted to no
perceptible gain. Yet with every step, the hollow bellows of steam
and steel carried on a wave of feathered air, fading like whispers
in ghostly trails that seemed to resonate within my bones. I needed
only to break my stride and click my heels at Pops’ door to realize
that the trains at Minors Point had not the soulful spirit as that
of which sang throughout the halls around me.

I leaned into the room as far as the open door
allowed and laid my head against the jamb. Over by the window,
where the bed had been centered for his sovereign view, Pops stared
out aimlessly, blowing into a wood block whistle with breath as
faint as scattered mist. At once, a vision came to me, a memory
from another life. I recognized that train whistle. Pops played it
for me long ago when I was just a boy. “It’s a catch out call,”
he’d say to me. “If you listen closely you can tell that the train
is leaving”. And I could. As I listened to him blow, I could hear
the train pulling out, calling all whom wished to catch out one
last time. In the tranquil respite between calls, I cleared my
throat and announced my presence.

“Pops?”

He turned his ear to the door. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Spitelli.”

“Dominic?”

I pushed the door open further and stepped into the
room. “Yes sir. May I come in?”

“Already are, ain’t cha?” he said, though he still
could not see me. His voice had grown noticeably weaker since just
the day before. I attributed some of that to his whistle blowing,
which had undoubtedly robbed him of an already diminished
breath.

“I am now,” I said. I came around the bed and sat
down on the edge of the windowsill. “How are you feeling
today?”

“Oh, fair to middling, I guess.” He tried to smile
through the answer, but I could see it just wasn’t in him.

“I like your train whistle. Did you make that
yourself?”

“I did.” He held the slender block in both hands and
rolled it slowly, passing his thumb over the flattened corners,
worn like tumbled stone through years of use. “This used to be a
hobo’s best friend on long lonely nights.”

“That was the catch out call, wasn’t it?”

His eyes lit up smartly. “Yes! You know that?”

I smiled. “I’ve heard it once or twice before.”

“You must have heard it from a hobo,” he said.
“Trains don’t have whistles no more. They have air horns.”

“I know.”

He looked into my eyes. “You’re a good boy, Spitelli.
Your daddy must be proud of you.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said, finding myself suddenly
choking up. “He is.” I pointed outside, hoping to change the
subject. “Anything rolling out today?”

He cast his gaze out the window and began scanning
the horizon beyond Minors Point. In my mind, I pictured a
lighthouse beacon sweeping the seas for lost ships. And like an old
seafarer too frail for the sail, there was no better place Pops
would rather be than watching the tides of his past come and go
like steady rain. “Not much,” he said. “It’s a slow day at the
yard. Tomorrow, though.” He nodded lightly to himself.

“What happens tomorrow?”

“New crews coming down from Maine. Y`ought to see a
swarm of boxcars, tankers, flatbeds and gondolas coupling up for
all points south tomorrow.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Amtrak,” he said, though only the ‘trak’ came out
audibly. His voice was fading quickly. “They own most of the rails
and right-a-ways. On slow passenger days they open `em up to
heavier freight traffic.”

“You know a lot about the business,” I said, and
before he could answer, I added, “don’t you Jake?”

He barely batted an eye. “You know who I am?”

I waited until he looked at me again. “I do. You are
Jacob P. Stevens. Or do you prefer, Jersey Jake?”

He smiled softly, his eyes squinting for the secrets
he still held. “Jake will do, thank you.” He held me with his stare
for several moments, and in that time, I felt him reaching into my
soul, trying to figure out who I really was. “Are you gonna rat on
me, son?”

I shook my head. “I wouldn’t do that.”

He nodded. “Like I said, you’re a good boy.” His gaze
floated back to the window. “So, how did you know?”

“You forget? I’m a cop. I did a background check on
you and found out that Anthony Marcella died in France during World
War Two.” That seemed to surprise him. “You didn’t know?”

“No. I knew he joined the army, but I never knew for
sure what happened to him. I just knew he never came back.”

“Well, now you know the truth, which is more than I
can say about you. Would you care to come clean with me now?”

“
`Bout what?”

“Everything. Let’s start with Gypsy. What really
happened between you and her?”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t believe it.”

“Try me. You might be surprised.”

He took a deep breath and seemingly reeled in all the
threads of his loose memories to spin a tale that even I had to
allow special tolerances to believe.

“Well, for starters,” he said, “most everything I
told you so far is true. The difference is that you can pretty much
flip-flop the names around to get the real who’s who. Marcella was
the outsider that came into our lives and swept Gypsy off her feet.
He was the one arguing with her that last night and the one who
left early the next morning after finding out she was pregnant.
Near as I can tell, that is when he joined the army. Poor bastard
was so scared of Gypsy he had to go overseas to get away from her.
When Gypsy told me she was pregnant, I didn’t care much who’s kid
it was. I just wanted us to be a family.”

“Wait a minute. She didn’t tell you who the father
was?”

“How could she? She didn’t know.”

“I thought…I mean, don’t women usually know them
things?”

“No, son. You gotta understand one thing about Gypsy.
She liked to roll with the wind. The only thing important to her
was the moment, and she lived it like it was her last.”

“And that was all right with you?”

“It wasn’t all right, but it was what it was. I was
just happy to have Gypsy back to myself.”

“I see. So, what happened next?”

“The damnedest thing.” He leaned toward me and hooked
me with his stare. “She turned into a witch.”

“What!”

“I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“No, no. I believe you. You caught me by surprise.
That’s all. What makes you say that?”

He settled back into his pillow. “I had always had my
suspicions about that woman. She used to do strange things.”

“Like?”

“Like speaking in rhymes and chanting in whispered
nonsensical gibberish.”

“Glossolalia,” I said.

“What?”

“That’s what it’s called.”

He shrugged lightly. “I don’t know `bout that, but it
freaked me out sometimes.”

“Did she do anything else?”

“Sure, lots. You know she had this trick where she
would cast pebbles into standing water and then read the
overlapping ripples to find stuff like food and drink or
money.”

“And it worked?”

“Like magic, forgive the pun. We almost never went
hungry. But after Anthony was born, everything changed.”

“Wait. Why did she name the boy Anthony if Marcella
took off?”

“Why else? Gypsy insisted upon it. I later came to
think it’s because she didn’t want me to get too attached to
him.”

“I don’t understand”

“Just wait. I’m getting to it.”

I backed off with an apologetic grin. “Sorry.”

“Anyway, at first she got wickedly depressed. Later,
she just got wicked.” I watched his eyes narrow until they settled
on a spot out the window as far off as his thoughts. His voice now
came out only in broken whispers. “We set up a squatter’s nest in
an abandoned shack outside of New Castle. It was the autumn of 42.
We expected a mild winter and so we passed on the usual migration
south. Traveling in freight cars with an infant didn’t seem
appropriate, even to a couple of veteran hobos like us.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” I said, but he seemed not to
hear me.

“One night, I left Gypsy and the baby at the shack
while I went out to scrounge up a little grub. I must have come
home on her unexpectedly, because when I walked in the door I found
her hovering over Anthony with a carvin` knife in her hands.”

Pops stopped to shake the image from his mind, but
his eyes never left the spot outside the window where they had
settled earlier. I pulled a chair alongside his bed and sat down
beside him. “Go on, Pops,” I said, patting his arm to reassure him.
“You can finish.”

His hand skirted slowly to the edge of the mattress
before balling into a fist below the covers. “I say hovering
because she was,” he said. “She hovered over him, floating on air
with nothing below her to keep her up. She arranged candles in a
circle around the boy, and tiny specs of white light flickered like
fireflies above him.”

He shuddered briskly again and the image was gone
from his mind. I put my hand over his balled fist and squeezed it
lightly. His eyes returned to mine, glazed but not fully in tears.
“What happened after that?” I asked.

“I took him,” he said. “I ran in and scooped him up.
You had to see her. She would have killed him.”

“What was her problem?”

“I don’t know, but she would have. You have to
believe me.”

I nodded. “I do. I believe you.”

“Well, that’s it, then. You know my story. I spent
the next five years with Anthony, running from Gypsy.”

“On the rails?”

“No! Heavens no. She’d have found us for sure. As it
was, we had plenty of close calls. You know, about that time there
were a number of hobos murdered all along the NEC.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Word around hobo circles was that Gypsy killed
them.”

“But why?”

“To flush me and Anthony out of hiding.”

“Do you believe it’s true?”

“Might be,” he said, with no hesitation in his voice.
“And I’d have come out to face her, too, if not for my boy. But I
just couldn’t take that chance.”

“You really loved him, Pops, didn’t you?”

He narrowed his gaze some. “Course, I loved him.
That’s what made it so dang hard to do what I did.”

“Which is what?”

“I gave him up. Long about five years of running, I
learned that Gypsy was back on my trail. Anthony was getting close
to school age, and I really did not want him becoming a hobo like
his daddy, so I did what I should have done when he was born. I
took him to an orphanage, rang the bell and left him there.”

My heart sank with his shared pain. “That must have
been hard.”

“Yeah, for me and half a dozen other guys, and some
gals, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s called fledgling day. Every spring about a week
before school starts, a hobo’s fancy turns to riding the rails
again. Can’t rightly do that with rug rats under your arms.
Needless to say, that’s when hobo kids get abandoned on the
doorsteps of farmhouses and orphanages all up and down the
NEC—hell, all over the country for that matter, I suppose.

“It never was my intention to give Anthony up at the
start, but things being what they were with Gypsy and all…well,
what could I do? I took him down to the orphanage with Dickey
Skittle and his son, and we left them there, two scared little boys
holding each other’s hand like best friends. Guess they had to be
after that.”

“Wait. Did you say Dickey Skittle?”

“That’s right.”

“Huh. Did he call his boy, little Skittle?”

“S`pose he might have. Why?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. It just sounds
familiar.”

He smiled. “It does have a cute rhyme to it. Little
Skittle, makes for a fine hobo moniker.”

I’m not sure what Pops remembered about the younger
Skittle, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember that kid at
all. The name, however, stuck in my head like a song. I think after
we were taken in at the orphanage, little Skittle and me were
probably separated and then both of us became too overwhelmed with
all the new faces to remember much more.