Just North of Nowhere (4 page)

That very day, he went to the White House for breakfast. He stumbled getting there, not sure yet where everything was in this dark. Daddy didn't help. “Best get used to it,” he said.

He got there barking his shins, bumping his nose, turning his ankle, sinking in mudholes, tangling in vines, stepping in horseshit; he tripped up the steps to the porch, slammed himself with the wall, then the door, slipped on the threshold and fell into his usual booth—barking his shins—then he ate his damn breakfast. Mrs. Tim was that good a cook!

Nearly a century later, the place was owned by a lady name of Esther, a State Civil Service lifer who’d taken early retirement in Philadelphia, PA. Esther and her husband had moved to Bluffton fifteen years before. She buried her husband a year after they arrived and when Egil Tim's granddaughter (the great-granddaughter of little Timothy Tim) decided it was time to thaw herself in Florida, Esther un-retired and bought the joint, lock, stock and two-barrel. She inherited Old Rattler Ken with the deed and Nora Tim’s secret recipes.

The day Cristobel Chiaravino came to town, Old Ken had had complimentary egg and grits.

When Cristobel walked into the American House—Eats that first morning she already felt for the old man. She’d seen him work his way up the street, taking a step, taking a minute, taking another step, taking another minute.

When he walked in to the restaurant and almost sat on her lap, Cristobel took pity.

Cristobel had made quite an impression on the breakfast crowd at the American House—Eats. First of all, she’d sat in Old Ken’s booth so everyone naturally wanted to see what that would lead to. Not much did. She swept herself out from under where he was going to sit as easy as a one of those ballet persons made a leap.

After that, there was her to consider: she was a looker. Lean, muscled, tall, dark and foreign, Cristobel carried herself like something important.

The Sons of Norway noticed. Her nose had a nice bump. Not a Norwegian bump, which tends to the bulbous and which usually is at the nose’s end. Her bump came from some other place and was in the middle. Some men loose their souls to such a nose. And those nostrils! Well, for the Sons of Norway, that nose of hers gave gravity to every move of her head. They were drawn to it. Others too.

And she didn't wear make-up! Women don't wear makeup? Well, some people think they're mad at something and the breakfast crowd was wondering what.

The cop at the counter noticed. He didn’t blink but his attention followed her.

Cristobel noticed the quiet when she entered. She didn't think too much about it.
Strange face, small place
, she figured. Besides, her head was occupied in disappointment, anger, pity, magic. A lot of stuff.

The disappointment was about the bum carburetor, just to get that straight.

Up at the (Formerly Amoco) Einar had walked a tight circle around the Volvo. His jaw worked like a rat having a quick chew before being chased. A couple minutes of staring, poking, stalking and grumbling and he threw up his hands. “Piece of foreign crap! Fifteen years and falling apart already,” Einar said. “Ain’t been cared of, you know! And who is it done this!?” he pulled back pointing.

Cristobel looked at the greasy spot Einar’s black finger quivered over. “No idea,” she said. Then, “Oh,” she said, “some person on the road got it started. Last night. A man in the rain by the bridge. He’s the one said I should see you. Is that what he did.”

“Bunch!” Einar yelled. “Now what’m I supposed to do? I make right Bunch’s mess?”

Cristobel’s eyes went wide, then they narrowed. “Fix it,” she said. “Make it work and I'll sell it.” Cristobel said. This Einar! He’d made her angry.

Then she’d almost been sat upon at the café and now she hunched over the steaming essence of tea bag at a table. She looked head-on at the old blind man seated in the booth she had dodged out of. He chewed quietly, listened politely to nothing. He spoke once or twice to no one. Then he got up, shuffled to the door. Left. Did not pay.

The woman who ran the place, warmed Cristobel's tea pot. “Guess you're wondering. Town pretty much takes care of the old guy,” she said. “Food, room, beer, all that. Don't you want to know why?” Cristobel raised an eyebrow. “Used to kill snakes. All the snakes around here about a hundred years ago.” She smiled. “You wondered that, huh?”

“Mm.” Cristobel said.

“That's the story, anyway. I wouldn't know. I was just a kid, then, myself!”

Cristobel nodded. “I see,” she said.

The woman laughed.

Everybody watched as Cristobel paid and left.

“Hope I'm not looking quite that old!” Esther said to the other diners.

But they were mostly still looking at Cristobel, still on the porch!

Einar fixed the Saab, grousing all the way. Cristobel paid him then did what she said she would: sold the old car; sold it to Einar, gave him a good deal.

Einar squinted sidewise and kept his mouth shut. He'd put one over.

The Saab never ran again.

Other things happened: In less than a week, Cristobel bought a two story wood frame house on Slaughterhouse Way at tax auction and moved in. A whim, like selling the car. She paid next to nothing for the house, but nobody bid against her.

Her little house was down the way from the stock pens, and a half-block above Commonwealth. The river was across the street and down in the trees. And the place was a nice place. Every morning Cristobel sat on her stoop, sipped her tea – real tea – and watched old Ken inch past, heading to his booth at the Eats.

Cristobel took.

She got boxes by mail and freight, things came delivered by trucks from the east, west, from all over the damn place.

Her short hair grew longer. It came in dark and wiggly, full of body; it spread down her neck and over her shoulders, spread like a thick soft cape, the Lightning Kiss stark against it. People looked, then looked twice. Something about the Italian Lady, made them a little nervous about a third look. That was rude, anyway, and too much like staring.

She wore thin cotton dresses in pleasant and surprising colors and sensible black high-top sneaks: Old Mother Hubbard gone city chic.

She had a scent, too. When she stood at the vegetable bins at the Wurst Haus Market or other places, she filled the place with a whiff of burning plant and dried herb. Add a zest of sweat, lemon rind and something else, maybe, and that was Cristobel. Cristobel Chiaravino. Always had to take two, three running starts at that name. Bluffton mouths had a time getting around that Italian stuff on the first go.

She scared lots of people. Hell, she'd been in Bluffton a day, a night and another day and was a property owner – wham! – like that! “Not some rich person from a city, but one that comes in some foreign piece of busted crap car, gets it fixed, sells it, buys a house and what the hell?”

“And that damn automobile never worked again!” everyone said.

She knew people talked.

“A woman looks like that, like she does,” one Son of Norway said to another at the Wagon Wheel Tap, “might find it useful wearing a little face stuff, maybe cut their hair up pretty. . .”

“. . .take a bath now and again. . .” someone down the way added.

“Oh, ya! She does all that and there she’ll go! Off being a weather girl up in the Cities.”

That thought had aired at the Wagon Wheel during the 10 o'clock news out of the Twin Cities. Everyone paused a moment, looked up and agreed, yep, the Italian lady was as much a looker as “that skinny German up there.”

“I seen Rock and Roll stars look like her,” Karl from the Wurst Haus said. He was rich. He probably had. By then Karl had finished his coffee and got the hell back to where he belonged: working, 10 P.M. or not! Was all he had to say on
that
anyway!

So, over morning tea on her stoop, Cristobel watched Old Ken, shuffle down the hill. She said good morning.

The Old Rattler said nothing. He didn't stop for much.

She saw him everywhere. He sat, sometimes speaking to the empty side of his bench at Elysium Field. He sipped free beer at the Wheel, slurped free eggs or sucked grits every morning at the American House surrounded by others with companions, colleagues, chums.

When she saw the old guy pinned by traffic in the middle of the intersection, Slaughterhouse and Commonwealth, she said, “I will fix that!” She said it aloud. “Good exercise,” she added to the thought she’d left in the air.

That was the pity. After pity came magic.

Memories of Creature came to her. Fixing death was a Thing, a Thing, perhaps, too large; too large, perhaps for anyone. Opening eyes was a lesser thing. Light wanted an eye to work. All she had do was encourage the flow, clear light’s path to the heart and soul.

She walked, considering. Walking, she shook her head.
No, no! Not something to enter lightly.
Her hair whipped her face, side to side. On the street she very nearly growled her frustration at fully peopled sidewalks.
A re-espousal of the Craft! What to do, Nonna?
Weighing the matter, Cristobel walked one end of town to the other, walked morning to night, day by day.

She saw Bunch in her walks; walking, she saw him everywhere.

“You still here?” he called one morning from the roof of the Lutheran church on Morning Bluff.

“Mm,” she said and walked on among dissolving soapstone monuments and goldenrod-lined, tea-smelling paths.

“You ain’t gone?” he yelled to her across the street as she moved through a spray of mist picked up from the spill water at the dam.

She may have heard. She never said back.

“Ain’t you leaving tomorrow?” he yelled up under her skirt as she crossed the expanded metal roadway of Bunch’s bridge at Engine Warm, heading. . . Well, heading nowhere in particular.

“I am not,” she said.

She topped the rise on Morning Bluff one dawn and there was Bunch, heading townward, barefoot, his toolbag sagged like sin across his shoulders.

“So this is it, huh?” he said.

She may not have heard because she drifted by without comment. When the sun caught her face, though, she turned back. “What?”

“Where you end up,” he said, “here’s where you are, huh?”

“Hm.” She said. She looked at the town, below, still in the shadow of night. “Well, huh.” Bunch was already half-way to the first bend in the road. “You!” she called, “You’re coming home from work, first of the morning?”

He didn’t turn; raised his hand and kept going.

The sun caught a plume of smoke from the chimney at the dinner, turned the gray stuff golden, red, deep blue and shades between.

“Yes,” she said, “I’m here.”

She pulled information from her laptop; the balding woman at the library suggested a book. She dug through the book, found some promise there, dug more and found another Sending with equal or greater surety. She matched one thought to another as she pored over pharmacopoeia, juggled cantations, mixed, matched, pasted and assembled a draft, a sketch of something, something that might just work.

First, she thought she'd have to order from Minneapolis maybe, maybe Chicago, farther perhaps.

Then she put her foot down. “No!” she said. She was alone at least, in her kitchen. “This is a new place.” She would remake it! All of it! Recast the herbals to
this
life. Her magics, here, would arise from local product. She was gifted, the place had power—she'd seen that, felt it the first night on that rainy bridge where that person, Bunch, had touched her car to life. No, this would all be from her, through her, “from where I live! After all,” she said to the spread of books, mixtures, dried veggies and filtered poultices, notes and printouts, “I am the town Strega!”

She walked more; scoured the hills and bluffs for warts, molds, and mosses. Some herbs she bought at Karl's Wurst Haus: Towne Butchery and Buttery Shoppe, others she got at the Amish Co-op. Things she couldn't buy or find in Bluffton she got at Krogers in Cruxton – close enough to local, she thought.

Some substitutions she was proud of, others? Well, the less said the better.

In a week and a half everything – full moon included – was ready. Nearly everything. Needed for improvement? Cristobel had to improve, well, her nudity. She knew she looked damn good naked, no reason not to be, well, nude, in front of – well, in front of anyone – but, there it was: She couldn't.

She thought about it. Alone in her bedroom at home, she thought:
there I am
, she thought,
my body, exposed! All I have! Available to the air and elements!
She gave a little yelp, shivered and rolled up in the sheets.
And
she’d been fully dressed! Knowing she looked good, naked, made it worse.

Bundled in her sheets, she reasoned with herself: nudity in the Craft, these days? Scarcely more than a cultural atavism, an optional convention. It played little. . . No, no! . . .played
no
part in the efficacy of a casting.

Ah,
she counter-reasoned,
that may be! But I favor it, embrace it, so to speak.
Unable as she was to bring herself to stand naked alone, or even to think about standing naked, she loved the
notion
of standing naked, loved the idea that the deep world should. . . no, no! . . .
must
touch her body in all its places at the height of her Gathering: night, sun, heat, cold, dust and mist were central principles of the Art. Loving that notion, she knew that to aim the miracles of the Craft, she must stand utterly, completely, totally, undefended from the elements and be, therefore, their governess.