Some Small Magic by Billy Coffey

Author:Billy Coffey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2017-02-09T16:00:00+00:00

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The people are fewer here, offering a sense of relief in spite of the old men gathered at the barbershop across the way. One of them is staring. Abel shields his eyes with his bad arm and judges his own side of the street. A mother and her little girl approach. The woman stops at a newspaper box halfway down the block to straighten the bow in her daughter’s hair. Dumb Willie assumes the stance of protector in front of Abel—feet wide, hands clasped at his back.

“Say, Dumb Willie.”

“Whut?”

“What you think Dorothy meant by that? ‘Remember what we talked about.’ ”

Dumb Willie stands silent, his back to Abel’s front. It is in fact all the answer Abel needs. He’s seen the two of them together, the side glances Dorothy and Dumb Willie share when they think he isn’t looking. Their private talks.

“Guess maybe she means all that stuff about being ghosts and all. But now that I think about it, I don’t guess that’s what she meant at all. Know what I think, Dumb Willie? I think you and her got something going on that I don’t know. I don’t know what it is, but I think it’s something.”

The woman and child pass. Dumb Willie breaks his stance when they’re close. His attempt to make himself look small only serves to draw the mother’s attention. She stares, placing her hand at the girl’s neck, and gives Dumb Willie a wide berth. To Abel’s comfort, the woman doesn’t even look his way.

“Dumb Willie, you got a secret you ain’t telling me? Something about Dorothy?”

Now he turns. Only some, and only long enough to say in a small voice, “I’m. Dumb.”

“Not as much as you think you are,” Abel says.

The gentler rhythms of Greenville may not be apparent but they do exist, a subtler noise beneath the tumult and thrum. Still, this is a foreign place. He and Dumb Willie are now even farther from Fairhope than when they started, and there’s yet a long way to go. Abel wishes his momma were here. Better, he wishes for Reverend Johnny and one of Reverend Johnny’s words. His mind reaches back to that night behind the barn, if only because that place seemed so less strange than the place he is now. He shuts his eyes and feels the cool mountain air on his cheek, loamy earth beneath his feet as Greenville falls away, leaving Abel too deaf to hear what Dumb Willie says

(“A Bull it’sa. Fedder.”)

and too blind to stop what happens next. He blinks to find himself alone and Dumb Willie down the sidewalk, stooping to catch something blown on the breeze.

“Dumb Willie, what you doing?”

The feather slips from Dumb Willie’s grip, sending him farther away.

“Dumb Willie. Dumb Willie, you look at me.”

A passing car honks. No sign of Dorothy, but the men across the street are watching. Abel stands helpless as Dumb Willie lunges forward, pinning the feather beneath his boot with a “Got. Choo” of victory and his hand upon the newspaper box.

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