Black and Blue Magic (3 page)

But strangely enough it had turned out all right. The old man had stared at Harry a long time and then in a slow, splintery voice he’d said, “The boy has a rare gift, and his magic will be of a very special kind.” Harry never had been sure what that meant, but it seemed to make Dad happy. He talked about it a lot and he always called it “The Prophecy.” After that he made Harry work even harder with the cards and handkerchiefs.

It really makes a guy feel miserable to think about messing up a prophecy and being a disgrace to a name like Harry Houdini Marco. So, because he was in that sort of a mood, Harry thought about it some more, until he had worked himself into a really colossal case of the blues. He was just doing a quick rerun of his list of troubles to see if he’d forgotten anything, when a familiar voice said, “Hey!”

Harry’s carefully constructed castle of gloom exploded as he lurched to his feet with a force that sent the swing thudding back against the wall. “Hey Mike!” he yelled.

Mike Wong had been one of Harry’s best friends for years—but only during vacations. That was because Mike really lived in Berkeley. It was only when school was out that he came to spend a few days with his grandparents, who lived in an apartment over their store on the corner of Kerry Street.

Mike was almost exactly Harry’s age and just about the same size. But that’s where the likeness ended. The difference was that Mike Wong was just about the best athlete that Harry had ever known. Mike could run the fifty yard dash in six and a half seconds, he had a terrific batting eye, and he could pitch a ball that was almost impossible to hit—and right over the plate, too. And in kick ball, he kicked a low hard fly that whistled over fielders’ heads like a bullet. He could do it time after time without one goof, and without asking for “bouncies” either.

Mike was standing on the veranda stairs, grinning up at Harry. There was a bat over his shoulder with a mitt stuck on the end of it, and he had a ball in his hand. “Want to go to the park and knock a ball around?” he said.

“Sure,” Harry said. “Just a minute till I ask Mom.” He was halfway through the door when he remembered about the loaves of bread. “Oops,” he said. “Hey, I better run down to your store first. I was supposed to get some bread a long time ago and I sort of forgot about it. I think I’d better get it before I ask about the park, if you know what I mean.”

Mike grinned. “Yeah, I know what you mean,” he said.

Mike’s grandfather, Mr. Williamson Wong, waited on Harry at the store. Mr. and Mrs. Wong were quiet gentle people who gave suckers to little kids and let customers who were having a bad time wait and wait to pay their bills. They’d helped Mom out more than once when the boarding house wasn’t doing too well. Except, maybe, for Lee Furdell, they were just about Harry’s favorite people on the block.

When Harry and Mike clattered into the kitchen with the bread, Mom was so glad to see Mike again that she didn’t say much about how long it had taken Harry to get back. She said it was all right about the park and she even made them some sandwiches to take along.

The bus ride to the park was just about long enough to catch up on all the gossip since Easter, when they’d last seen each other. Harry knew a lot of good places in Golden Gate Park where there was room to bat a ball around, particularly on a weekday when it wasn’t so crowded. They found a nice deserted stretch of lawn and had a good time practicing batting and pitching and catching. Harry did a little better than usual and it really made him feel encouraged.

Actually, it wasn’t that Harry was so awful at sports; at times he did pretty well. It was more that he was so unreliable. Just when he’d been doing fine, he was sure to fall on his face—or flat on his back, like the time he’d stepped on a ball he was trying to kick. But he always tried, at least.

Once, a long time ago, Mike had said, “The thing about you, Harry, is you’ve got guts. You never chicken out, no matter how much you goof up.”

That was one of the nicest things anybody had ever said about Harry. But that was the way Mike was. Even though he was so great at everything, he never gloated, like some hot-shot types. And he always said some little thing to make you feel better. Even if it was just, “Nice try,” or “Tough luck.”

That day at the park started out to be terrific. Late in the afternoon a bunch of big guys, about fourteen years old, let Harry and Mike join their game and it was great to watch their eyes bug out when they saw what Mike could do. And Harry wasn’t so bad himself. He hit a couple of Mike’s pitches and caught a sizzling line drive without even spraining a finger. It would have been a neat day except for one thing.

They were resting under a tree before starting off for home, when something happened that spoiled everything. They’d been talking about how great it was that summer vacation had started and Harry said, “Hey, why don’t you see if you can spend a lot of time at your grandparents’ this summer? Maybe a whole month or two. We could have a lot of fun. We could go to the zoo and Playland and come here to the park.” He broke off noticing the funny expression on Mike’s face.

“It sounds great,” Mike said, “but I guess I can’t. My dad’s got a summer coaching job at this old camp up in the Sierras. Mom and I are going with him, and we’ll be gone almost till school starts.”

So there went one of Harry’s best plans for the summer. Poof! Just like that—the way his Dad used to make a fish bowl disappear in a puff of smoke.

O
N THE WAY HOME
from Golden Gate Park in the bus, Mike kept bringing up good things to talk about; like how the Giants were doing; and this spooky TV show, about a huge bloodshot eye that came down from Mars and crawled around like a spider. But Harry had a hard time keeping his mind on the conversation. He was feeling too disappointed—and jealous.

He kept thinking that some people sure were lucky. Mike’s father was a high school coach in Oakland; so, no wonder Mike was so terrific at sports. And if that wasn’t lucky enough, now Mike was going to get to spend a whole summer in the Sierras. Mike had tried to make it sound as if it weren’t anything great so Harry wouldn’t feel bad, but that didn’t fool Harry. There’d probably be swimming and all sorts of other sports, and maybe even horseback riding every single day. Harry sighed.

Mike went on chattering away and Harry mostly just sat there staring straight ahead. They were in their favorite seat, at the very back of the bus, and there wasn’t anyone else in the whole back part except one funny little man. Harry noticed the man because he had a dusty out-of-date look about him and his hair stuck out in a funny way around the brim of his hat. He kept fidgeting all the time and looking at a big old pocket watch. He’d hold up the watch and then glance out of the window, and then he’d look under the seat where there was a great big suitcase that stuck out into the aisle.

Harry was just thinking, rather bitterly, that he’d be sure to fall over that suitcase if it was still there when they got to Kerry Street, when, suddenly the little man leaped to his feet. The bus had pulled to a stop and some people were getting on at the front door. The man grabbed frantically at his suitcase and started to leave, but it was jammed under the seat so tightly that it didn’t come loose. Then when it finally did come loose, it came so suddenly that the little man staggered backward. By the time he got going forward again the door was starting to close. The little guy lurched through and made it to the sidewalk, but the suitcase wasn’t so lucky. In the rush, it hadn’t gotten turned around endways so, of course, it got stuck in the door. When the suitcase stopped coming, the little man’s feet flew up and he sat down quickly on the sidewalk. The bus doors finished shutting and as the bus moved slowly forward, the suitcase just slid down into the step well and stayed there.

Afterwards, Harry couldn’t imagine what had gotten into him. It really wasn’t any of his business. Maybe it was because he knew what it felt like. Having fallen out of and into so many things himself, he knew too darn well what it felt like. Anyway, he didn’t wait to explain it to Mike, who hadn’t seen the whole thing, or to tell the driver, who apparently hadn’t noticed it at all. Instead he just leaped to his feet, pulled the stop cord, and started tugging the suitcase up out of the step well. It was jammed so tight that he didn’t get it loose until the bus had almost reached the next stop.

As he started out the door Mike yelled, “Hey, where are you going?”

“I’m taking this suitcase back to the man who lost it,” Harry called back. “Want to come along?”

Mike started to jump up, but then he sat back down again. “I can’t,” he said. “I haven’t any more bus money.”

As the bus pulled away, Harry shouted through the window, “So long. See you later—at the store!”

It wasn’t until Harry had started back down the sidewalk, staggering a bit under the weight of the suitcase, that it occurred to him that he didn’t have any more money for the bus fare either. As he struggled along, setting the suitcase down now and then to rest and change hands, he began to realize that he’d done a pretty stupid thing—as usual. What if the man had hailed a taxi, or caught another bus? It would be impossible to find him. Harry couldn’t just go off and leave the suitcase and, just as certainly, he couldn’t walk all the way home carrying it. And how would it sound if he tried to explain it to a policeman? “Oh-er, Mr. Policeman. Have you seen a little man in a funny hat? You see, I jumped off a bus with his suitcase and ... No, Harry decided, it would be better not to try to explain it to anyone, except as a last resort.

But the suitcase was unbelievably heavy, and Harry had just about decided that he’d reached the last-resort stage, when he saw the little man. He was sitting on a bus bench with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, looking terribly tired and dejected. His face, which Harry really hadn’t seen before, was as round and pink as the Gerber Baby, only with wrinkles. But there was no mistaking the old-fashioned hat, or the hair that stuck out in funny little tufts over his ears. He looked so mournful, sitting there staring at the ground, that you couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.

He didn’t even look up until Harry tapped him on the shoulder. “Excuse me, Mister,” Harry said. “I think this suitcase belongs to you.”

The man jumped, gasped, and the minute he saw the suitcase he grabbed it and sort of hugged it up onto his lap. “Yes, yes,” he said, “my suitcase. It
is
my suitcase. It really is my suitcase! I felt quite sure I’d never see it again. Quite sure. And here it is back again. I don’t know how to thank you, young man. Indeed I don’t.” The suitcase was so big that he had to stretch to look over the top of it, and he kept patting it as he talked, as if to make sure it was really there.

“I saw you lose it on the bus,” Harry said. He didn’t mention the part about getting stuck in the door and falling down, because he always preferred not to have it mentioned when he did that sort of thing. “So I grabbed it and jumped off the bus as soon as I could, and then I came back this way looking for you.”

The little man looked astounded. “You did that?” he said. “You really did? My! My! How very clever of you—and how kind. You really don’t know how I appreciate this. You can’t imagine how important this case is to me, and how necessary it was for me to get it back before ... Well, I can only tell you that I would have been in very serious trouble if it had been lost or if it had fallen into the wrong hands.” The little man’s shoulders twitched in an uncontrollable shudder and for a moment he seemed lost in thought. Not very pleasant thought either, judging by the pained expression on his face.

Then suddenly he seemed to pull himself together. “But that’s neither here nor there,” he said, crinkling his face into a smile that made him seem, more than ever, like a weather-beaten cherub. With a jerky little bounce, he hitched himself over on the bench to make room for Harry. “You must sit down and rest a moment. I know only too well how tiring it is for a rather small person to carry this heavy case.”

Harry was in a hurry to get started for home, but he sat down for a moment to be polite. The stranger was still chattering away. “I am greatly indebted to you. You can’t imagine what the loss of my case would have meant. I’m very much afraid it would have been the last straw—the Final Mistake, you might say.”

“Final?” Harry asked. The word had such an unpleasant sound.

“Yes, in a sense. At the very least it would have greatly increased my troubles.”

“Are you already in trouble, then?” Harry asked.

“Trouble?” The man gave a deep sigh, and his face, for a second, seemed to take on a depth Harry would have thought impossible a moment before. “Is it not trouble that I am a wanderer upon the face of the earth; that I have no place to call my own; that my back is tired and my feet ache; that I must find a place to stay in a new city every few days ...

It was at that point that Harry interrupted. He hadn’t helped run a boarding house for almost six years for nothing. “Have you a place to stay in San Francisco?” he asked quickly.

“I stopped at a small hotel last night. But it was not particularly satisfactory. If it looks as if my business will keep me in the city for a while, I may have to look elsewhere.”

“I know just the place for you,” Harry said quickly, pulling out his wallet. He always carried a few of his mother’s cards for just such occasions. “My mother runs a boarding house on Kerry Street. Nice and quiet and good home-cooking. A lot of traveling salesmen come back to our place every time they’re in town.”

The man stretched his arm up over the suitcase to take the card. It was a little dirty and beat up, but you could still see that it said:

MARCO’S BOARDING HOUSE

318 Kerry Street

Mrs. Lorna Marco, Proprietress

Quiet—Comfortable—Good Food

“You are a salesman, aren’t you?” Harry asked.

The little man gave one of his big sighs. “Yes indeed,” he said. “I am a salesman.”

“I thought so,” Harry said. “I can usually spot a traveling salesman right away, because we have so many of them stay with us. I don’t know, though, if I would have guessed about you or not. That is, if we hadn’t talked. But I do know something about what you’re selling, I’ll bet.”