Just North of Nowhere (5 page)

Yet she couldn’t! The old man’s blindness, the man Bunch’s questions about where she belonged aside, this was a quandary! This was madness.
This is Madness!

It happened like/
that
! In full daylight. The sun poured in her kitchen windows, the world was out and about. People passed by, walking, driving the streets of the town when, thinking madness, she suddenly ripped off her shirt without thinking, unspun her skirt, not knowing she would do so. She kicked out of her panties and, incidentally, her sneakers, and there she was: complete to the world! Stark and sweated, she ran shrieking from her clothes, ran from one end of the house to the other streaming wordless vowels as she did. She ran up the stairs and upstairs again to the attic. She danced in front of her mirrors, each and every one. She ran downstairs cheering. She raced herself one end of the place to the other, front to back, tagging each wall, shouting, “IT!” to the stinging slap, then dashing the opposite way. She sang glamours at volume, shouted songs from childhood and jingles from the radio, she twirled until she was dizzy. She yodeled the long-gone husband’s name and paused before each window, up, down, front back, curtained or wide, and gave herself to the outside! Daring anyone to see her naked!

She didn’t think anyone had but,
“there,”
she panted, “I don’t care if they did!” Finally, to the bathroom mirror, she said
“how was that?!”
She was a breathless, dripping mess, hair everywhere, goosebumped skin and the Lightning’s Kiss spread and plastered to her face. She shook, she laughed, she was unlocked!

That inadequacy? Gone!
she shouted silently to her soul.

By bright midnight at the leading edge of the nearest hour of the fullest of the full moon, therefore, Cristobel was prepared. She took herself and her mixtures, mirror, wand and knife, bowl and candles, a bottle of good domestic wine and went forth to her yard. She went all the way to the far back, to where the oak tree and shed shielded her from the general view and from where she could see the upper floors of Old Ken's rooming house.

On a bare spot of ground, she drew her figures, placed her candles, cleared herself. Then she waited for the moment, the moment of opening herself to the night, the air, the world; the moment she would lead light to the blind.

She wondered what Bunch was doing.

Two doors away, Leslie B. Fritz, aged 12, on the verge and pissed at everything, stared at the Goddamned moon.
Crap.
She hated it.
Crummy stars? Phooey.
They just hung there, didn’t fight back!
The rotten town?
It stunk.
Dad?
Clueless.
Mom?
Dead.
Course she is! Just when you need a mom!
And what was going on in her stupid body? And there
was
stuff going on!
Friends? Duh!
Who cared? She was the only person like herself in all the lousy world. Now here she was: treading water at the edge of when stuff was supposed to happen.
And nothing IS! And nothing will. Nothing ever will happen! Not here. Not to me! Except in here.
She hugged her bony crummy self!
Gaak. And nowhere to go!

She dropped and gave herself twenty-five!

The only thing she had was the best damn morel patch in the whole damn county.
Big shitty deal!
By her twenty-second pushup, she had decided to shave the left half of her head in the morning. At twenty-five she gave herself another set and for the twelfth time that one full-mooned evening she ran her list of hatreds of all there was about her stupid little life.

When she rose from the floor, wet and stinky, a flicker of something outside her window and up the way, caught her. In the dark, something moved near the light. When she shoved her glasses over her slippery nose, the glimmering blob became a ring of candles by the rotted shed at the Italian Lady’s place.

She squinted for an hour. A minute, anyway. A
good
half-minute! Then she got her binoculars and
yipes. The Italian Lady! Stripped to the fur and wiggling in the moon. Oh, holy shit!

Leslie B. Fritz? Outta there like a shot!

Ken hadn't heard. Cristobel hadn't asked. She had figured he’d want to be not blind. Who wouldn’t? In any event, she wanted to see how it would come out before she mentioned it to him. Wouldn’t want to disappoint an old blind man.

Wouldn't have mattered. The last 40 years Ken's hearing wasn't what it had been. Sounds still moved in his world, it was just that Ken didn’t necessarily hear what other folks did.

Here's for instance: Everyday, the shift whistle at the sawmill told Ken: time to roust yourself from the Restrant and git down to the Wagon Wheel—“The Parker” as he knew it – time for the daily beer to show.

The sawmill whistle marked noon like clockwork. While the mill had been gone 40 years and longer, Ken heard its noon call, daily. The whistle stirred him, midday’s, forth. Any and all who heard the screech of the American House screen door and saw Ken heading up Commonwealth could – and did – set their watches by that internal sawmill whistle, long gone or not.

No, Cristobel Chiaravino had not told Ken of her plan but at 3:20 that morning, she let slip her robe and felt air catch her, her skin a sail, her body a vessel.

As the elements moved her—maybe a little too quickly—she joined her senses and her deep being to the ley lines of Earthpower. The forces moved between her toes, burrowed into the damp dirt of the clear-circle. The power rose through her in the moonlight. She spoke the words, nervously poured the fluids of being into the ground. She lit her mixtures with a trembling hand and moved 'round the candle flames as prefigured. She felt the power penetrate her and tried not to think about her body (bare and out of doors as it was) and in a few minutes the night air and the stillness had calmed her. She felt only a little silly, now and was focused wholly on the modality of vision. She flooded Old Ken's distant room with the concentration the earth was giving. It felt good. It felt right. It felt weird. The old man would see! Even if Creature (poor old tufted red and fluffy white Creature) had not returned to her or life, Ken would see again! Her nipples were hard and not just from chilly night!

Then she was finished. She didn’t know quite what to do. Some ending there should be, something maybe not useful but a thing to cap the ceremony.

I will work on that,
she thought as she stooped to snuff her candles. Cristobel shrieked! She saw a flicker in the mirror she had leaned against the garage, it was less than a white blink, reflected, but that blink was a small face among the chokecherry branches behind, at her naked back.

Cristobel skittered around and flopped onto her bare butt.

“Holy crap,” the face said, rising, “you're a witch or something!”

Cristobel scrambled to cover herself.

“Cripes. It's okay! I mean, holy shit, okay, man! Thank God! A witch. In town! Here! All right! Shake stuff up, man. Oh! Didn't mean to say that. 'God,' I mean. Jesus Christ, you probably you don't do the 'God' thing, do you? Oh, shit, again! Jeeze. That is
tres
cool!”

Sitting in the mud Cristobel thought,
the child's words will not stop, for breath, thought, response, for nothing!

The child, didn’t stop. Not until Cristobel had gotten to her feet, gathered her robe around herself and held up a hand did Leslie shut up. “You! Come forth. Be seen.” Cristobel beckoned, “and do it now!” She’d never spoken that way before. It felt good.

The child stepped out. She was stopped, but her whole body chugged, like a tractor-trailer idling.

A skinny child. A girl. A girl in a long tee-shirt,
Megadeath
jagged across the chest in electric letters. The colors were uncertain by moonlight. Bare legs stuck out the bottom of the tee. Sneakers, no socks.
An unattractive child
, popped into Cristobel’s head. Her red hair was self-chopped and tufted. Scabs, picked and bleeding, dotted her shins and arms. She had a squinty face, an unfinished body. Cristobel also noted that the child was not frightened.

In a heartbeat, Cristobel was also not frightened. She was not frightened about being caught beneath the full moon’d sky, about the spell or whether it had worked or not worked. Neither was she frightened about having been seen naked, abroad, and seen to be doing the work of the Craft! This red-topped creature stared in her squinty way – so familiar – yes, in that way her old red cat had had about her. Yes!

“I dislike spies!” Cristobel said. To the point: she hated empty curiosity, those who wandered after dark sins, imagined. She hated what prying people thought of her, of the Craft, she hated the assumptions, always made!

Well, no harm: the shape of the spell was formed, cast and abroad, working. Nothing that happened here would halt or harm it now.

“First, who are you?”

“Leslie,” the girl said, “B. Fritz,” she added, “Leslie B. Fritz.”

“Why are you here, Leslie?”

“Saw your lights, saw you dancing, saw you naked,” Leslie winked and waited again. “From there,” She pointed. “Number 6 Slobberhouse. Slaughterhouse. My window’s there. Stupid window.”

Cristobel looked at the back end of a dark house, a house like her own. “I am pleased to meet you. I’m Cristobel Chiaravino. You will help me with these few things.”

Leslie B. Fritz? On top of it like
that!
She scampered around the circle on hands and knees whiffing out the candles. She made another circle gathering, then depositing them – gently, respectfully, no wax dripped – in the empty bowl. She took up the mirror – careful, careful, sniffed the nearly empty bottle of wine.
She’s economical, like a cat. Helpful, when silent
, Cristobel thought.

“So,” the Strega said, not realizing she was going to and considering that the child was not quite so ugly now, laden with burdens, “you want lessons in the Craft, do you?” They walked toward Cristobel's kitchen.

Leslie squinted, picked up the pace
.
Duh!
she said.

Old Ken woke, wrestling smelly sheets in his flop. Something touched his face through the torn shade, touched like warm morning. Different, but like.
Huh!
He jolted upright. “Morning?” He pried his eyes open as he did every day, put his face toward the source of the sensation. “Yep. Still blind. . .” he began, but, “Whup. No, I ain't,” he ended.

He could see. He saw something. The feeling on his lids wasn't sun warmth rousing, it was by-God light. Light of the moon! Moonlight on thin old eyelids.
Huh!
He could see.
Cripes, about time
, he thought.

He looked.

The room was dim, faint, it wiggled in and out of view, but there it was: view.
Crimminies, where is this?
he wondered. He splashed himself with water from his sink, and remembered half way down the hall, to go put on some clothes.

When he’d dressed, he eased down the steps one by one.

The street was quiet, empty. “As any fool can see!” he said.

A breeze came off the bluff and crossed the river. As it ran up the town, it picked up,
yep
, the smell of horse.
Daddy's livery stable!
Yep.
There t’was, down where it always had been. Ken could find it by smell alone! “I ain't gonna have to!” he called to the empty street, “I can see where ‘tis.”

There: bright in the moonlight, livery, horses, carts and carriages. All the way down there—where the Rexall had been since 1951. Yet, there it was: Daddy's stable in the moonlight! No snakes nailed to wooden battens, but what the hell! It'd been a while.

There, where it had been before Ken’s birth, was the sawmill's smoker stack, just past the White House Restrant.

Sawyers up and cutting!
he thought, or s
oon they will. Soon the stack will smoke.

The stack smoked, puffing hard in late moonlight!

The boiler, soon, will make steam
, he reckoned.

In the distance, brass hissed, cylinders cracked.

. . .leather belts'll turn and flap!

In the distance: flapping flutters of wide, wide leather. . .

. . .them big blades! Spin!

Buzz saws moaned alive, grew to howls. . .

. . .
trees scream!

ripped trees, shrieked. . .

. . .sliced thin or cut wide for beams. . .

. . .dust filled the night.

Yeah,
he sighed. It was all there, just as it always was, before.

Before the place was torn down, the wreckage hauled off, 1962, after the Big Fire of ‘60.

Ken never knew. Or, if he did, he'd disremembered. It never mattered, that old mill coming down. Not to Ken. Not then, 1962. ’62 was blind black! And now, particularly, it mattered not a bit since there it was – it flickered, steamed, flapped, whirred, buzzed, and screamed, in that night’s moon.

Not a soul stirred. Ken heard the river, the gentle lowing and farting of the cows in the pens up the way, waiting for the hammer to the head. He listened for the horses’ whicker and saw it all, mist-thin in moonlight, but there it was. As always it had been, turn of the old Century, turn of the old life.