Magic Street

Chapter 9

CAPTIVE QUEEN

Mack awoke in the first light of morning, cold and covered with dew, but not uncomfortable, not even shivering except one quick spasm when he first bounded to his feet.

Only when he was standing did he realize that the panther had slept close to him all night, and from the sudden chill of evaporating sweat he knew that the beast had been pressed up close to his back. Now it lazily rose up and stretched and padded away from him, back toward the clearing where two lanterns hung suspended in the air.

Mack wasn't interested in going back there now. Miz Smitcher would worry and he didn't want her to be unhappy or worried, though truth to tell she probably wasn't, since she was bound to assume he had spent the night in somebody's house.

Alone now—for the panther felt to him like more than an animal—Mack did as his body required, stepping right out of his pants in order to empty his bladder and then squat down to hold on to a sapling trunk while he emptied his bowels. It had been a long time since he'd done it outdoors, but his body was so healthy and worked so naturally that his turd came out dry and he didn't even need to wipe himself, though he scooped up some old leaves and made a pass at his butt just to be sure.

Then he stood up and took a step and then snatched back at the sapling, because his foot didn't find the ground, it hung out in the air, and he realized that the trees and saplings here leaned out over the ravine or grew up from inside it. He had slept on the edge of a cliff last night, the cat between him and death, and the turd he laid had fallen down into nothing.

It knocked the breath out of him, but not the sense—he knew as he slid down toward the water that he had to stop himself or he'd be caught up in the current and battered to death against the banks and stony bottom of the stream, if he didn't drown first.

He caught a tough root growing right at the water's edge, as his legs went into the water. It was so cold, right up to his waist, that it knocked the breath out of him all over again—not that he'd had even a moment to catch it after the fall—and the shock was so great he almost lost his grip.

But he held on, and even though the water tore at him and held him out almost horizontal in the water, he was able to get a leg up into the roots of another tree and then climb up out of the water.

He sat on the bank, still without his trousers, trembling with the cold of the water and the pain and bruises of the fall and the fear of having come so near death.

Far above him, he knew, were his pants. And his shoes? He couldn't remember if he had been barefoot yesterday when he went to take a look at the strange spot between Chandresses' and Snipes'. He wore shoes more and more these days, and he might have been wearing them, but he couldn't remember taking them off last night when he went to sleep. Main thing was, he was naked from the waist down, and somehow he had to get home, only a block or so but that was a long way when your butt was naked and the neighbors all knew where you lived and how to call and tell Miz Smitcher.

Should he climb back up and get those pants?

The ravine was a lot less steep on the other side. And Mr. Christmas—or Puck, if that was really his name, and why would the house lie to him?—might have something he could wear. At least a towel he could wrap around himself as if he was coming back from somebody's swimming pool.

So he rested a little more, then jumped the stream and climbed up the other side. Then he just walked, trusting that he'd run across the path and know it when he saw it. And sure enough, he did.

It was still that faint light of earliest morning when he saw the back of the Skinny House. Mr.

Christmas was no longer standing at the door, of course, as Mack lightly ran along the mossy path until his feet touched brick. And in a few steps the house was itself again, and the patio was concrete with the rusty barbecue and the umbrella clothesline stand and the old screen door that stood just the tiniest bit ajar.

Mack opened it, and turned the knob and the door into the kitchen opened, and there was Mr.

Christmas, looking like himself again—or not like himself, depending on which version was really him.

The dirty dreads, anyway, and the clothes he was wearing, and he sat at the kitchen table sipping something that wasn't coffee but Mack didn't know what.

"Forget something out there?" asked Mr. Christmas.

"Somebody steal your pants or you give them to a beggar? Or have you decided to go au naturel today?"

So he wasn't going to answer, and Mack wasn't interested enough to keep pushing. "I need something to wear."

"As I was saying."

"Got anything that would fit me?" asked Mack. He looked at Puck's thickish body and said, "Or something that won't fit me unless I tighten a belt really tight and roll up the pantlegs?"

"I got nothing that fits me, if you haven't noticed," said Puck. "But you're welcome to look in the closet and see what I got. Seeing how this house responds to you a lot better than it does to me."

Mack walked into a bedroom that didn't look like anybody had ever slept in it, considering that there weren't even sheets or blankets or a pillow on the bed, and the bed was just a bare mattress on the floor.

He went to the closet and slid the cheap sliding door open and there were six pairs of pants hanging there on hooks, each one identical to the pants he had left behind on the wrong side of the ravine. Four of them were clean, but one was damp and muddy, and another was torn as if by savage claws and covered in half-dried blood.

"Guess things might have turned out a few different ways," said Puck.

"But they turned out this way," said Mack. He took one of the clean pairs of pants out of the closet and put them on.

"You know how these pants would have gotten so wet and muddy?"

"I almost fell into the stream at the bottom of a canyon," said Mack.

"So these torn and bloody ones..."

"The panther," said Mack.

"Panther?"

"The one guarding the lamps."

"Ah," said Puck. "Lamps."

"They just hanging there in the air."

"Oh, they got something holding them up," said Puck.

"Duh," said Mack. "Magic, of course."

"So if you come close, this panther..."

"You never gone there?" said Mack. "You never saw that dead man? With a donkey head?"

Puck chuckled and shook his head. "Once she loves you, you never forget, you never give up."

"He ain't trying no more," said Mack. "Whatever it is he was trying to do."

"He was trying to set her free."

"Set who free?"

"The queen."

"I don't know what you talking about. I got to go home now."

"Why you pretending you don't want to know?"

"Cause whatever I ask, you don't tell me nothing. But when I don't ask, you full of information."

"She's the most beautiful woman who ever lived," said Puck. "But her soul's been captured and locked in a glass cage."

"The queen."

"The Queen of the Fairies," said Puck.

"And the dead guy with the donkey head, he was in love with her."

"Shakespeare, that asshole, he never understood anything. About love or magic. Always had to

'improve' the story." Puck winked. "He couldn't take a joke."

"You don't like Shakespeare?" asked Mack.

"Nobody likes Shakespeare. They just pretend they do so they look smart."

"I like Shakespeare," said Mack.

"You never read Shakespeare in your life."

"Some college students, they put on a play for us. I liked it."

"Yeah, yeah, cause they told you to like it. And cause they didn't put on Othello with some white dude with his face painted black."

"So it was Shakespeare locked a queen's soul in a lantern in the woods?"

"No," said Puck scornfully. "Shakespeare wouldn't have the power to pick his own nose, he come up against the queen."

"Himself," said Puck. "If you think I saying his name in this place, you crazy."

"What about the queen. What's her name?"

"She has so many. Mab, some call her, and that's closer to her true name. But also Titania.

Shakespeare knew those names but he didn't think she was the same person."

"So why don't you go out into the woods and set her free? Guy can make a whole house disappear from the street, you got to be more powerful than a panther."

"How far off the ground was that lantern?" asked Puck.

Mack held his hand out, about shoulder high.

Puck laughed bitterly. "So he didn't shrink you."

"Shrink me?"

"I step off the bricks into the woods, I shrink down to fairy size. Small enough to ride a butterfly.

Only they's no flying across that ravine. You think you had a hard time climbing down and up again?

Crossing that water? How hard you think it be, you this high." He held up his hand, his thumb and fingers about four inches apart.

"You? That tall?"

"In those woods."

"And you can't do anything about it?"

"That my natural size," said Puck. "When I'm home."

"Is that home for you, in there?"

"It's part of home. A corner of home."

"So what's it called?"

"Faerie," said Puck. "Fairyland."

"Not Middle-earth, then," said Mack. "Not Narnia?"

"Made-up bullshit, that stuff," said Puck. "There's no lion in that place, making people be good.

There's just power, and those who got more of it and those who got less."

"And in that place, you're little." get me if I try to fly. I can't get in to set her free."

"But I could," said Mack. "I'm tall enough."

"But you scared of that panther."

"Only a little," said Mack. "What I'm scared of is dying."

"Same thing."

"Don't care how," said Mack. "Just don't want to do it. Panther no worse than any other way."

"What did she look like?"

"If it was her, and you not just shitting me, then she was this little bit of light bouncing around inside the glass. Bright, though."

"Couldn't look right at her, could you."

"Burned a spot in my eye, didn't wear off till morning. Saw her in my sleep."

"Ah," said Puck. "You had her dream?"

Mack shook his head. "Not like that. I just dreamed about that point of light."

"Ah," said Puck, clearly disappointed.

"So who's the other one?" asked Mack.

"Other one?"

"Two lanterns, two lights. One of them might be this queen, but who's the other?"

"A prisoner of love," said Puck, and then he started singing it.

When grownups started singing old rock songs, the conversation was over. Mack had his pants on, and he better get home.

"You going to set her free?" asked Puck.

"You get me a can of panther repellent and a big stick, I get that glass open."

"Is that a lie or a promise?"

"If she's really in one of those jars."

"That's a good point," said Puck. "What if you open the wrong one."

"I told you."

"You told me nothing. You always tell me nothing."

"I told you it was Queen Mab in that jar."

"That's probably just another lie."

"I don't lie," said Puck. "These days, I don't even spin." He demonstrated how slowly he moved when he tried to turn himself around.

Mack didn't wait to watch. He headed out of the bedroom and out of the house. When he reached the sidewalk, he turned around to look, and the Skinny House was gone.

Mack reached down into his pants pocket and found the five-dollar bill he carried around in case of emergencies. Like having a magic wand. You have a five-dollar bill and you want a drink or some candy or a bus ride, then you got it. Small magic, but magic just the same.

Puck's magic—now, that was big time. But it seemed to Mack that maybe Puck wasn't the one did that magic. He didn't seem all that powerful. Couldn't make Mack do anything. Maybe he was trapped in that house the way that fairy queen was trapped in the lantern in the woods.

If he wasn't lying about what those lanterns were about. Had he really been there and seen the lights? Was he really so small and flightless that he couldn't get to either lantern? When Mack was telling the story, Puck nodded his head like he knew all about it, but then from his questions it seemed like he'd never been there, had no idea what it took to get there from here.

Puck hadn't even known that Mack would have pants in the closet. And did each one of those pairs of pants have his five-dollar bill in the pocket? If he was ever running short of money, could he come back here and get another Lincoln from the extra pants? Or would they be gone if he ever came back?

Mack turned away from the house and looked up the street and then took a step forward, then back, until he saw the house come into view again through the corner of his eye.

Had to make sure the house wasn't gone for good. What if he wanted to go back? Had to make sure he could.

Then he turned and ran home in the predawn light. A few cars out and running. Dr. Marvin heading out to put big tits into some woman or liposuck the fat out. Mack waved at him, and Dr.

Marvin waved back.

Miz Smitcher was standing by her car when Mack jogged up to the house. Mack remembered that she was covering the early shift this week.

"Where you been?" she asked.

"Don't scare me like that, Mack Street," she said softly. "You all I got."

My mother lives in this neighborhood, Miz Smitcher. Did you know that? Did you keep that from me? You lying to me all my life, or you didn't know?

Out loud, Mack said, "I didn't mean to. I won't do it again."

"Until the next time you don't mean to but it just happens."

Mack hung his head, showing his shame.

She touched the back of his head. Not rubbing his hair, like Mr. Christmas did. Just touching him. Laying her big nurse hand on his head like she laid it on her patients at the hospital. Felt good.

Felt like a promise that everything going to turn out okay.

She took her hand away and his head felt cold without it.

"I be home late tonight, kind of working half a double," said Miz Smitcher.

"I'll do my homework the minute I get home."

"Don't wait dinner for me, what I'm saying."

"I won't."

She got in the car and backed out of the driveway and pulled out into the street. He watched her out of sight, then went into the house and took a shower.

When he came out, he heard a voice from the kitchen. "Mack Street, when you get dressed, would you mind coming in here and talking to me?" It was Mrs. Tucker, Ceese's mom. It was plain she knew that Miz Smitcher was gone, so it was Mack she wanted to talk to. She didn't sound agitated—in fact, she sounded downright perky. But it wasn't like adults came calling on him every day. Had to be something wrong, and had to be she thought he had something to do with it or knew something about it, so whatever it was, Mack was probably going to wish it wasn't happening.

Didn't make him dress any faster; didn't make him dress any slower. He'd find out what it was, deal with it as best he could. Mack wasn't one to worry, or at least he didn't go to great lengths to avoid facing whatever was coming at him.

Once he had his briefs on, he paused for a moment before putting on his pants. They weren't too dirty to wear—though they did look as though they had made the passage through the woods. Thing is, he wasn't sure he could trust them. He'd read plenty of stories about magic stuff that disappeared at midnight or some other inconvenient time. But at least he'd have his briefs on, if the pants vanished off his butt. So he pulled on the pants and padded into the kitchen where Mrs. Tucker was sipping tea and looking a little tense.

Ceese was sitting in the chair next to her. Well, that was no big deal, Ceese probably didn't have a morning class.

"It's just a little thing," she said. "Hardly worth mentioning, but it's been bothering me since it happened last night." And then she stopped.

Mack looked at Ceese, who was staring at the table looking solemn.

"I brought Ceese along because he's going to be a policeman now," said Mrs. Tucker. "Not that I think any crime has been committed!"

"And not that I know a thing about police work yet," said Ceese. "I just signed up to train for the test."

"You're going to be a cop?" asked Mack, fascinated. "You never hit anybody in your life."

"I did so," said Ceese, "but that ain't what decides you on being a cop. The idea is you try not to hit anybody, but if you have to, then you know how. Same thing with guns. You hope to be a cop who never has to fire a gun at a person, but if the time comes when you got no choice, then you know how to do it right."

"So why you doing it, Ceese?" asked Mack. "I thought you were going to build bridges."

"I was going to design electronics," said Ceese. "Lots of different kinds of engineering, Mack.

But I was bored. Didn't feel like anything I was doing mattered to anybody. Being a cop, now, that matters. You make a difference. You keep people safe."

"Like you looked after me," said Mack.

"Like that."

"So what do you think I done wrong?"

"No," protested Mrs. Tucker. "We don't think you did a thing that's wrong. In fact, if you did it, then it definitely wasn't wrong, but I just have to know."

"Know what?" asked Mack.

"What happened to the leftover chili I was heating up for Winston and me for supper last night."

Mack knew at once what happened to it, and it pissed him off. If the magic at Skinny House could arrange for half a dozen copies of his pants to hang from hooks in a closet, why couldn't it simply copy Mrs. Tucker's chili out of her fridge instead of stealing it?

But he couldn't very well say so. He could just imagine how they'd react if he said, I ate it, but not from your fridge, it got magically transported to the fridge at an invisible house down the street, so when I ate it I didn't know I was eating yours. But it sure was delicious. I did my hot-mouth dance when I ate it.

"That's what we don't know," said Ceese patiently.

Mack just sat there, looking back and forth between them.

"I was preparing dinner," said Mrs. Tucker. "I checked in the fridge to make sure there was enough chili for the two of us, and there was. And then I went to the sink and washed the corn on the cob and cut up some bananas to put with a can of mandarin oranges to make a little fruit salad. And when I came back from the can opener with the oranges to drain off the liquid into the sink, there was the chili dish, freshly washed and still wet, in the drain-dry beside the sink. And a spoon."

"Somebody snuck in and ate your chili and washed the dish while you were opening the mandarin oranges?" asked Mack.

Ceese gave the tiniest sigh.

"I'm just so afraid I'm losing my mind," said Mrs. Tucker. "I was hoping you'd tell me that... that you perhaps did it as a prank. Meaning no harm. I'd be so relieved to know that it was you, and that I'm not crazy."

"You not crazy," said Mack.

"Then you did it?" said Ceese, sounding calm but also just the tiniest bit incredulous.

Mack shrugged. "I was not in your kitchen yesterday or last night, Mrs. Tucker."

"Where were you?" asked Ceese.

Mack looked at him calmly. "You asking for my alibi, Officer?"

Ceese got a small smile. "I guess so, Mack Street."

"Got no alibi," said Mack. "I was walking around in the neighborhood and in the woods and I slept under a tree last night with a big black cat. I reckon that cat ain't much of an alibi."

"But you didn't eat Mom's chili," said Ceese.

"I was not in your kitchen yesterday."

"I just can't imagine," said Mrs. Tucker, "why somebody would eat my chili and then wash the dishes."

"I think," said Ceese, "we're not quite ready to start an urban legend about a sneak thief called

'Tidy Boy' who steals food from fridges while the cook is in the kitchen, and washes up without a soul noticing he's even there."

Magic always found a way to be cruel. Mack couldn't even have a chili supper without hurting somebody.

"Mrs. Tucker," said Mack, "I can't tell you what happened to your chili, but I can promise you this. You're not going crazy, you're not getting old, something really happened, but if you keep talking about it people going to think you crazy. So maybe you better let it go."

For the first time, Ceese got real alert. He didn't say anything, but now he was looking at Mack real steady, and the amusement was gone.

"Do you think so, Mack?" asked Mrs. Tucker. "I know it's silly, you're only a boy, what would you know?"

"I know that the chili was really in your fridge when you saw it. I know you didn't accidently eat it and wash up afterward and then forget you did."

"How do you know, Mack?" she said plaintively. "How can I know you really know?"

"Doubt me if you want, but I know everything happened just the way it seemed to you, and you didn't forget anything. That's the best I can do."

She looked at him searchingly, then reached out and clutched at his hands, there on the table.

"Mack, you're an angel to say that to me. I know Ceese doesn't believe me, though he's too kind ever to say so. I just needed somebody to believe me."

"I do, Mrs. Tucker."

"Well then," she said. "I'll just wash up my cup..."

She stood up.

"I'll do that, Mrs. Tucker," said Mack. "I like washing dishes."

"You do? That's very strange of you," she said, and then laughed. It sounded only a little hysterical. "But very nice."

Ceese left with her out the back door, but as Mack expected, he was back before Mack finished drying the cup and saucer and spoon and putting them away.

"All right, Mack, what was all that about?"

"Ceese, why should I tell you?" said Mack.

"Cause I think my mother is losing her mind and if you know some reason I shouldn't think that, you better tell me."

"That's not good enough," said Ceese. "Just your word like that?"

"I ever lie to you, Ceese?" asked Mack.

"Not telling me the whole story, that's the same as a lie."

"Not if I don't pretend that it's the whole story when it's not."

"So you're going to keep it a secret."

Mack laughed. "All right, Ceese, I'll tell you. I went into an invisible house four doors up from Coliseum on Cloverdale, between Chandresses' and Snipes', and in that house I got hungry and opened the fridge and there was your mama's chili in a glass dish. I nuked it for two minutes, ate it, did the warpath dance cause it was so spicy, then I washed the dish and spoon and put them in the dish drain in that house."

Ceese shook his head. "So you're not going to tell me."

"I suppose it's better you think I'm a liar than you think I'm wacked out," said Mack. "Except that if I'm a liar, you're going to think your mama losing it when she ain't. And you also won't trust my word, but I never lied to you, Ceese, and I didn't start now."

"An invisible house."

"It's only invisible from the street," said Mack. "You get closer, it gets bigger."

"Show me."

"I don't know if I can," said Mack. "Maybe I'm the only one can see it."

Ceese shook his head. "Mack Street, I'm going to hold you to this. You going to show me."

"I can try. I just... maybe you'll see it, maybe you won't. I see a lot of things I don't tell people about," said Mack. "They just think I'm crazy. Miz Smitcher, she showed me early on that I better not tell what I see. It just makes folks upset."

Ceese's face looked cold and distant. "Let's go now," he said.

Mack led him down to the place and all the time he was half afraid that it wouldn't be there anymore, that weird spot in the sidewalk where you could see Skinny House out of the corner of your eye. But it was there.

"You see that?" asked Mack.

"See what?" straight up Cloverdale and then step backward and forward.

"I don't even know what I'm supposed to see."

Mack shook his head. "It's there. But like I thought, you can't see it."

Ceese sighed. "Mack, I don't even know why you doing this. It's one thing to make my mama feel better, I don't blame you for that, but telling this stuff to me when it's just us two—"

Mack didn't hear him finish the sentence, because he figured the only proof he had was to have Ceese watch him disappear. That must be what happened when Mack went into Skinny House, so he'd do it when Ceese was watching.

So Mack lined himself up with the thin vertical line of Skinny House and then strode right toward it. As before, it grew wider until it was the full width of a house. He reached out far enough to touch the front door, then turned around.

There was Ceese on the sidewalk, looking around every which way, trying to see where Mack went.

Mack opened the front door and went inside.

There was nobody there. And not a stick of furniture. Nothing in the kitchen, either. No fridge, no dishes in the cupboard, nothing.

But there were five pairs of pants in the closet, hanging from hooks. And when he checked the pockets, five dollars in each of them. Mack took all the bills and put them in different pockets of his pants. Then he went back out the front door and jogged toward the sidewalk.

Ceese was a few paces away, and partly out in the street, still looking for him. Mack called to him, but Ceese couldn't hear him. Not till Mack actually set foot on the sidewalk. Then he whirled around.

"Where were you?" Ceese demanded.

"Watch me carefully," said Mack. "Your eyes right on me."

Ceese watched. Mack stepped off the sidewalk. Skinny House disappeared and Mack clearly did not.

"Shit," said Mack. "All right, look away, but keep me visible in the corner of your eye."

Ceese rolled his eyes, but did as Mack had ordered.

This time when Mack stepped off the sidewalk, Skinny House grew larger and Ceese whirled around to see what had happened to Mack. Mack walked right back to the sidewalk and reappeared right in front of Ceese's eyes.

"Of course I can't disappear," said Mack. "It's not my magic, it's the magic of Skinny House. It's not like I can disappear by stepping off the sidewalk anywhere else in Baldwin Hills."

"You been magic the whole time I looked after you?"

"I'm not magic!" said Mack, and now he was getting a little angry. "Or can't you hear me?"

"I hear you, I just don't—I never saw anything like that before."

"You seen it all the time," said Mack. "In movies and on TV"

"Yeah, but they fake it."

"But do you know how they fake it?"

"Not exactly, but it has something to do with... hell, I don't know."

"You don't know how to do it, it's magic to you." Mack held out his hand.

"What," asked Ceese.

"Take my hand and look up the street. Don't look toward the houses at all. Stand right... right there."

Ceese obeyed.

"Now, when I pull you, you just follow, but don't look where we're going." When he could see that Ceese was following orders, Mack stepped off the sidewalk and headed toward Skinny House.

He half expected to feel Ceese's hand vanish from his, or to have the grass just be the grass between the two visible houses.

But no, Skinny House loomed, and Ceese's hand stayed in Mack's, and in a moment they were standing on the front porch and Ceese was looking back and forth between the neighboring houses and touching the door and the walls, saying, "Good Lord."

"Ceese, I know the Lord got nothing to do with this, and I'm pretty sure that it ain't good."