The Witch's Key (5 page)

“Handy,” I said.

“Yes. Oh, but then there was my favorite: the
upside-down crown. That one let you know that a shop owner would
give you something just to get rid of you.”

“So, there was a symbol for everything?”

“Just about. At one time, I personally could identify
over six hundred. Of course, a lot of them meant duplicate things.
It’s like a dialect. You had to learn the nuances from place to
place.”

“It’s like an accent, I guess.”

“Exactly. But, like I said, that was the old days.
It’s not like that anymore.”

I watched his gaze turn toward the window again.
Though he looked out over the train yard, I suspected that his
thoughts were much, much further away. It made me sad to think that
this old veteran of the rails was quickly approaching the end of
his tracks. A dying breed, both literally and figuratively, and he
had no one to see him off at the platform.

“Mister Marcella?” I said. He turned to me sharply.
“I mean, Pops. I want to ask you about a few men, to see if you
knew them.”

“They’s hobos?”

“Yeah, they were.”

“Then I might,” he said, smiling thinly. “I’ve known
a few.”

I smiled back. “I’m sure. I have a list here.” I
broke out the list that Carlos gave me, unfolded it and allowed the
sunlight to spill over my shoulder to better see it. “I want to
read some names to you. Stop me if you hear one you recognize. All
right?”

He nodded.

“Fine, I’ll start now: Jim Taylor, Fred Long,
Theodore Bishop, Christopher Jennings, Raymond Kosinski, George
Wagner, Terrence Forman, Peter Corey. Any of these names ring a
bell to you?”

He shook his head, emphatically. “No, none of `em.
Those ain’t hobo names. Hobos use monikers. That way the bulls
can’t learn who they are. Ask me `bout guys like Stretch Tweets,
Reno Ricky, Blind eye Eddy, Boston Bill, or Skins Mackenzie. Thems
are hobo names.”

“I’m sorry, but these guys don’t have hobo
names.”

“Then they ain’t hobos,” he said, almost indignant.
“They must be young guys—all of them.”

“They are.”

“That figures. Angellinas, they don’t have what it
takes to be a hobo these days. They can’t appreciate the thirst for
adventure it requires.” He looked into my eyes, and for just a
moment, I got the strangest feeling that he recognized me. “You
know, when I was your age,” his demeanor softening considerably.
The disapproving tone in his voice seemed to melt with the incoming
tide of memories. “A young man like you could own the world,” he
said. “You could travel free as a bird with just a bindle on your
back and a nickel in your pocket.”

Outside the window, somewhere beyond the yard at
Minor’s Point, a train whistle blew, almost magically. It called to
Pops, and he answered it unconsciously. I saw his eyes roll to the
window on tracks of steel, his mouth agape in frozen call. From
where I sat, I could see no train, but I knew that Pops could see
it. In his mind, he was already on that train, the wind in his
hair, the smell of axle grease filling his senses. That young man
with the bindle on his back and a nickel in his pocket was free
again. I reached out and touched his hand, and before I could ask
him if he was all right, he spoke.

“She loved me,” he said, his words muted, barely
above a whisper. I assumed he meant the rails, a metaphoric
expression of endearment for that which he loved. But I quickly
realized otherwise. “The most beautiful woman in the world loved
me, and oh, how I loved her.”

“Your wife?” I asked.

He looked at me, shook his head and then turned away
again. “Not by law,” he answered. “But I would have married her in
a heartbeat if I could. Things might have been different then.”
Outside the window, the whistle called to him once more, this time
he answered with a vacant stare, as though the train had left
without him.

“Her name was Gypsy,” he said, “the prettiest thing
this side of heaven’s tracks. She had the face of a Goddess, the
body of a gymnast and the temper of a rattlesnake. Her wit was so
sharp it could cut you, and if you let it, she’d probably laugh in
your face. You never met anyone like her in your life, son, I
promise you that.”

“Really?” I said, and I wanted to tell him that he
had obviously never met Lilith. But then, from his description, I
could not be so sure that he was not talking about her anyway.
“Gypsy, huh? Was that her real name?”

He shook his head. “We didn’t have real names, only
real love and adventures. Man, did we have some adventures? You
have no idea how romantic riding the rails at night under a clear
summer’s sky can be.”

“I can imagine,” I said. “It sounds nice.” In my
mind, I had formed a keen image of what Gypsy probably looked like
based on my comparison of her to Lilith. I pictured her long black
hair, teased by the rushing wind and flirting about her face and
neck. I imagined her eyes like big black pearls, glistening in the
moonlight so brightly that I might see my own reflection in them. I
even fantasized about making love with the rumbling of steel wheels
below us, tapping in rhythmic time to our quivering inclinations.
But then the thought hit me, the sudden realization that he could
be talking about (and I romanticizing over) my own mother. I
quickly shook the image from my mind and mentally washed it out
with soap.

“Yes,” he said, unaware of my incestuous mentations.
“It is nice, and it was.”

I scooted my chair in closer. “Tell me about her,
won’t you? About Gypsy, how did you two meet?”

He smiled at that, so much so that his eyes pinched
themselves closed and the lines beside them dimpled at his temples
like tiny pushpins. I knew then that his feelings for Gypsy were
real and everlasting. His scrawny pigeon chest gave rise below the
blankets in a savory breath that seemed to fill him with her love.
He exhaled in a bout of coughing, though, his tumor-filled lungs
unwilling to grant him such liberties. I pulled some tissues from a
nearby box and handed them to him. Then I stood, conceding that I
had overstayed my welcome, and awaited the chance to say goodbye.
But Pops would have none of that. A scrapper, as I supposed all
Marcellas were, he flagged me down into my seat and insisted I
remain.

Within minutes, and without help from Melissa, India
or anyone else who maybe should have been around to assist him in
his possible final moments, Pops pulled himself together and was
ready to tell his story.

“I met Gypsy on Christmas Eve at a homeless shelter
run by the mission. It’s always a good time for hobos, the
holidays, I mean. People are more tolerant and giving then. Shame
they can’t hold that disposition all year. But they don’t, and I
ain’t one to complain.

“So it’s Christmas. I get my soup and I stake out a
little corner by the nativity scene, complete with woodcarvings of
Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus and two of the three wise men. I guess the
third hadn’t yet arrived. I can’t say I blame him though. It was
frightfully cold that night. Anyway, I’m sipping my soup, minding
my own business, when I hear this blasted disturbance behind me. I
look over my shoulder to check out what’s going on and I see Gypsy.
It seems some yegg tried to lift her bindle, or maybe he was just
riffling through it, I don’t really know. It didn’t matter much to
her, either. She turned like a cobra and pitched that hot soup
right in the guy’s face. Then she commenced to pounding on him
somethin` awful. The next thing I know, this preacher and a couple
of burly bouncer types grab her from behind. They start hauling her
off into the back room somewhere, which in them days meant that she
was in for a righteous beating.

“Well, I tell you, I didn’t know what to do, but I
knew I had to do somethin`. So I dropped my soup, picked up the
baby Jesus and clobbered the first bouncer right over the head. He
dropped like a stone. Then, when the second bouncer turned to see
what happened, I clobbered him, too. The preacher, who was no
slouch himself, grabbed the baby Jesus and started wrestling it
away from me. That’s when Gypsy hauled off and kicked him in the
most unholiest of places. Ooh, how I shudder every time I think
about that.”

I saw Pops’ hands slide under the blankets to his
nether region, accompanied by a genuine wince. If Gypsy had kicked
that preacher as hard as I imagined Lilith kicking someone, then I
supposed I’d have been shuddering, too. I asked Pops what happened
next. He explained how he and Gypsy ran from the shelter and ended
up under a bridge, sharing a bottle of cheap wine with a fella
named Patches, and singing Christmas carols over a barrel fire.
After the wine ran out, Patches climbed into one bedroll, Gypsy and
Pops into another.

“You and Gypsy in one bedroll?” I asked, though it
came out more of a tease, really.

He smiled bashfully. “Hobos are pragmatic, if
nothing.”

“Of course.” I said, and I left it at that.

Outside, though more distant, another whistle blew.
This one didn’t seem to grab him as the others did. I gave him a
curious look, which he interpreted intuitively, and without being
asked, he volunteered, “Passenger train.”

“Oh. You don’t hop those?”

He shrugged. “You can. If you can’t catch-out any
other way, then it’s all right. Not as romantic, though.”

“I see. Tell me, what happened next, after you and
Gypsy…you know?”

“We fell in love, simple as that. Then we spent the
next couple of months riding freights up and down the entire
northeast corridor. The girl was a natural. She could board a train
on the fly better than any man, and she could hit the grit, too, if
it came to that. It was a great time with great adventures. We used
to liken ourselves to Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper in, To Whom
the Bell Tolls. But then things changed.”

“How so?”

“She had a baby.”

“Oh,” I said, and my heart dropped to my stomach. I
had always tried to imagine the circumstances of my being. I never
knew my real mother, and only vague memories of Pops existed in my
mind. But they scattered like autumn leaves whenever I tried to put
them together and build a lasting image that I can hold on to. So
to compensate, when I was very young, I convinced myself that I
came from a happy family, that I lived in a big house with lots of
brothers and sisters, and we had a dog that romped in a yard
bordered by a white picket fence. I built those memories from books
and movies I had seen and I treasured them until my early teens
when a stern, but kind couple adopted me and took me in. They gave
me what I needed to become a man and an asset to my community. But
what they could never give me was answers. And now, sixty years
gone, I felt I might find them.

I reached out, set my hand on Pops’ shoulder and
patted it gently. “Is that when you lost Gypsy?” I said. “Did she
die giving birth?”

He looked at me strangely. “No! She didn’t die,” he
said. “She ran off! Can you believe it?”

I reeled back sharply. “Ran off? I don’t
understand.”

“And neither did I. Sure, you have to figure what a
change in lifestyle having a baby can be for a couple of hobos, but
I was willing to make a go at it.”

“So, let me get this straight,” I said. “You’re
telling me that my mother…I mean, that the child’s mother just
picked up her bindle stick, tossed it over her shoulder and walked
out?”

“Pretty much. That is to say that she didn’t leave
right away. She waited a couple of weeks. But in that time, oh-ho,
man what a witch.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, what a bitch. The woman was a total bitch,
excuse my French. Damnedest thing, too. All through her pregnancy
she was such a sweetheart, collecting little pink baby dresses,
setting up a nursery in the little shack we were staying in. You
would have thought she was about to give birth to the princess of
Whales or somethin`. But then, after baby Anthony came—”

“You named him Anthony.”

“Sure, after his dad.”

“Of, course. Please continue.”

“After baby Anthony came, she flipped out. She became
irritable, argumentative and unruly. She began throwing things and
calling the baby names.”

“Like what?”

“God awful names, like Satan’s child and Devil Boy
and…. Please, don’t make me go there.”

“I won’t. Forgive me.”

“Things got so bad,” Pops continued, “that one day I
told her to leave. I had to. I thought she might hurt the boy.”

“You did the right thing. You had no choice.”

“I thought she’d come back after she calmed down,
after the depression or whatever it was had passed. But she never
did. And so little Anthony and I carried on without her.”

“But you lost Anthony,” I said. “What happened?”

He looked at me funny again, as though gauging my
perception. “I never said that.”

“Didn’t you?” I felt suddenly cornered. “I guess you
implied it somewhere. I’m sorry if I—”

“No, that’s okay. Perhaps I did. It doesn’t matter,
though, that’s what happened. I raised Anthony until he was about
five. Then with the war going so badly overseas, the defense
department saw it fit to draft me to go fight in it. I left Anthony
with a child welfare agency, but when I returned for him, well, he
had been placed with a family.”

“You couldn’t get him back?”

“I didn’t know where to look. The building the agency
was in, burned to the ground with all its records. He was
gone.”

“But I don’t get it. You still could have—”

“That’s it, gentlemen, sorry. Visitation is over.
You’ll have to go home Mister Spitelli.”

I turned to the door and saw India standing there
with a clean bedpan in one hand and a large wet towel in the other.
I looked to Pops. His smile said it all. “Can I visit you again?” I
asked.

He nodded yes. I tapped my watch face and mouthed the
words, “See you later.”