Magic Street (32 page)

"My children to be happy," she said.

"You're already Miss America to me, Mom," he said, grinning.

"Well, I do want that. But I guess that's not what you meant. I honestly don't know the wish of my heart. Maybe I like my life the way it is. I'm pretty content."

"That's what happy means in this world, Mom."

"Well, aren't you the philosopher."

"Not since I got that C in aesthetics."

He got up and kissed her cheek and left her to her tea and her contentment with life. Maybe she'd feel differently if she knew that a child of her loins had lived in the neighborhood for the past seventeen years, and just tonight slept with a woman at least ten years older than him after a sort of fake marriage. Maybe that would spoil her contentment just a little. Especially the part about not remembering giving birth to the kid.

Word got undressed and went to bed, but it didn't do any good. Well, maybe he dozed for a while now and then, but he kept opening his eyes and seeing the clock. One-thirty. Two-ten. Like that.

And then, all of a sudden, right in the middle of a plea to God, he felt the hand down his spine start to stir.

I've woken it. I'm going to be punished for asking God to take this spirit away.

He felt it slide up and out of him. And just like that, it was gone.

"O God," he said out loud. "Was it thy spirit? Hast thou taken thyself from me because of my unbelief?"

But in the next moment, now that the presence down his back was gone, he felt a powerful lightness, as if the hand cupping his heart had been a great weight he was carrying around with him.

And now he was at peace.

"I thank thee, O God most holy," he whispered. "Thou hast cast out from me the evil spirit."

He prayed a moment longer, giving his thanks. And with the thanks still in his heart and a murmuring prayer on his lips, he rose up from his knees and went to the window and turned the long handle on the blinds and looked out into the grayish light.

There was a red glow from behind the houses to the right of his window. A glow so intense that it could only be coming from a fire. But whose house? He could see all the houses on Cloverdale, and behind them there was nothing. Just the empty basin around the drainpipe.

At that moment, a column of red light shot upward and something dark rose within it. Word watched in fascination as the thing writhed a little. Like a slug.

A slug with wings. He saw them unfold. He saw the bright and terrifying eyes. He saw the wings spread out and beat against the red and smoky air and lift the great worm into the air.

Not a worm, really. Too thick and stubby for a worm. The ancient lore had it wrong. Not a worm, but a Wyrm. The great enemy of God. The one cast out of heaven by Michael the archangel.

He heard footsteps behind him. He glanced back and saw his father, his eyes red-rimmed as if he'd been up way too late. Or as if he'd been crying.

"So there it is, Father," said Word.

"Can you figure out what a chopper's doing flying over our neighborhood this time of night?" asked Father.

"Chopper?"

Word knew.

"What were you looking at then?"

"No, I just... I'm kind of bleary-eyed. Didn't know it was a chopper."

"You can hear it," said Father. "Waking people up all over the neighborhood, I bet. Have you slept at all tonight, son?"

"If I have, I must have slept through it, cause I don't remember."

It was an old joke between them, and Father laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "Guess they'll have to do without you at that church today."

"Maybe," said Word.

Father walked out of the room.

Word watched the chopper head out toward the northwest, right over the Williamses' house.

It was a slugdragon, thought Word. I knew it when I saw it—this was the beast.

And yet it was a chopper all along. Heading northwest.

A dragon in disguise?

Word had to see. He was responsible for this thing, somehow. It had been in him. Who knew what it took away? What knowledge it stole from him.

Word ran to his dad's office. "Can I take a car?"

"When will you be back?" asked Father.

"Don't know."

"You're too tired to drive."

"Won't be far, Dad." Word hoped he was telling the truth. And then hoped he wasn't—because whatever business that flying slug had, he didn't want it to be in his own neighborhood, among his friends.

"Take the Mercedes," said his father, and then Word caught the keys in midair and headed for the garage.

Ura Lee wore her nurse's uniform as she stood on the overpass with the earliest of the Olympic Avenue traffic passing under her. There weren't many cars out at this time of day—but the surprise was that there were any at all. Early shifts? Or just people who figured it was better to be at work two hours early and be productive than to arrive at work on time after an hour and a half on the 405 or the 10.

Folks from Cloverdale walking up a cloverleaf.

And before she let herself go off on a mental riff about that, she reminded herself: Sometimes coincidences aren't signs of anything.

Would she ever see Mack Street again?

My son, she thought. As much of a son as I could ever have had. And I raised him about as much as I ever could. I was never cut out to be a fulltime mother, that's for sure. Thank God for Ceese. That boy gave Mack Street a terrific childhood. Full of freedom and yet completely safe, with someone always watching over him.

Maybe I could have been a fulltime mother. Maybe I wouldn't have run out of patience if I hadn't already had a long shift of taking care of people made fretful by their pain. Not to mention the bossy people and the sneaky relatives and the selfish visitors who never noticed that their victim was worn out. The buzzers going off. The bureaucrats making demands. The incompetent trainees. The inept doctors that you had to keep covering for.

Maybe Ura Lee would have been a great mother.

In another life.

She was going to lose Mack this morning. That's what she felt in the pit of her stomach. And she didn't get to say goodbye. Did the boy even know she loved him? Did he love her? He said he did.

He showed he did.

He was supposed to be with me when I died. That was the only wish of my life. To have someone to love me, to hold my hand as I leave this world. I thought it would be Mack. I thought God had granted my wish by putting this child in my life.

Selfish. To grieve more because he wouldn't be there to grieve for me, than for the life that he should have had, and now he wouldn't.

Don't be such a mope, Ura Lee! He's not going to die. Why do you think you're suddenly a psychic. When have you ever been able to tell the future?

She noticed a child's alphabet block up on the sidewalk right beside her. How in the world would something like that be abandoned here, of all places? Did some child throw it out of the car?

And look, there's another. Did they dump the whole thing?

"Look!" she shouted to the other people on watch. "Alphabet blocks! Look! Stand on them!

One of you on each of them! Get the signs! Don't let anybody drive over the blocks or move them!"

They started obeying her. She turned to face Ralph's and waved her arms. Then she remembered that it was still almost completely dark. She switched on her flashlight and pointed it at them and blinked it.

She got an answering blink, and saw some people start trotting up the sidewalk.

That won't last long, she thought. Not many of them were in shape to run uphill all the way to the overpass.

Apparently some of them had sense enough to know that, because a few cars started up in the Ralph's lot and swung out to turn left on Olympic.

Well, let them get here when they come. I've got a block to stand on.

The blocks were too spread out for anybody to hold hands with anybody else. And there weren't seventeen people up here, so they couldn't even cover all the blocks. Why didn't we think to make sure there were at least seventeen?

A single car came from the south. Not part of their group, just some early riser heading for some office in Century City. He blinked his lights when he saw the old black people standing out in the road.

"Let him through!" Ura Lee called out. "But stay close, so he'll drive slow."

They stepped back, leaving a gap barely wide enough for a car to pass. The guy pressed the button and his automatic window rolled down. "What the hell are you doing at this time of day? Stay out of the road!"

"We're here to commemorate the death of an asshole who yelled things at old people out of his car!" shouted Eva Sweet Fillmore.

The man probably didn't even hear her—he was already on his way, with his window going up.

The blocks hadn't been touched.

And now more people began to arrive, carrying signs. Now it would be obvious it was a demonstration. Now they could let them honk or turn around and head back the way they came. No explanation needed. The signs would say it all.

Ura Lee took the sign that Ebby DeVries handed her. SAVE THE CHRISITANS IN

SUDAN," it said. She looked at the others and smiled. It was actually a cause she cared about. After all, this might end up on TV, so they might as well demonstrate for a worthy cause.

REMEMBER AFRICA

FREE THE SLAVES IN AFRICA

IF BLACK SKIN COULD RUN YOUR CAR WE'D LIBERATE SUDAN

WHAT DOES IT MATTER IF A MILLION BLACK PEOPLE DIE?

As far as Ura Lee knew, nobody in LA even knew this was a cause. They certainly didn't expect to have a bunch of black people stop traffic in Century City. So she had made them add a couple of signs: THIS IS THE AFRICAN CENTURY!

WHY AREN'T ANY STARS LOOKING OUT FOR AFRICA?

That would explain, sort of, why they were in Century City; blocking the Avenue of the Stars.

"Are we up to seventy-seven?" shouted Grand Harrison.

Someone on the other side, where the doverleafs were, called back, "No, we still got about six straggling up the hill."

"Well hurry! We got to close this circle."

Ura Lee felt a strange tingling in her feet. She turned to Ebby, who was now holding her hand on the left. "You feel that?"

"Tingling feet?" asked Ebby.

"Gotta dance," said Ura Lee. She yelled at the others. "No more time! It's started! Grab hands and let the latecomers join in as soon as they get up here!"

The circle formed, and they started moving—though five or six people forgot about counterclockwise and there was a moment of confusion. In a few moments, though, with hands joined around the handles of picket signs, the whole circle was slowly but smoothly walking rightward as they faced the center. The stragglers joined in as they could.

Only when the last one—Sondra Brown, wouldn't you know it—took her place did the tingling start to rise from Ura Lee's feet. Her feet began to get a little jiggy. Her hips began to sway a little as she walked. A little attitude. A little shine. A few people laughed with delight.

The circle moved faster and faster, but nobody was running out of breath. The tingling covered her whole body, every bit of her skin and deep inside as well.

No way was Yolanda White a hoochie mama. Cause if men could get this feeling just by paying a hundred bucks, she'd never have had time to ride that motorcycle.

They heard the hum, the roar, the thud-thud-thud of a helicopter. Ura Lee looked up. "Good Lord," she said. "How did we get a news chopper here already?"

They heard the hum, the roar, the thud-thud-thud of a helicopter. Ura Lee looked up. "Good Lord," she said. "How did we get a news chopper here already?"

"

"Well, you done with your little hearts and flowers?"

"Just hearts," said Mack.

"Are you done?" she said impatiently.

"One on every pillar."

"All right. Stand here in the middle. And... how can I put this... when he gets here..."

"Keep myself between you and him," said Mack.

"That would be so very helpful," she said.

She went from pillar to pillar, kissing the hearts. "They ought to be feeling that now."

She ran back to the center of the circle.

The flying slug let out a cry of such rage that the pillars seemed to tremble.

"Get in front of me, Mack! Don't leave me out here alone!"

Mack ran to put himself between the Queen and her husband.

Is this the fulfilment of her dream?

In the dream she didn't even know I was there. But in reality, she needs me.

It made him feel good.

"Dammit, Mack, what's going on there? We're not connected yet."

"Maybe it took some of them longer to get up from Ralph's than they expected," said Mack. "It's not that long since I started drawing the hearts."

"What is this, a bad cellphone system?" said Titania. "Can you hear me now? Can you hear me effing now?"

"Please," said Mack. "Don't get angry."

"You're right," she said.

The slugdragon circled at a distance, reconnoitering. Mack sidled around her, as she pointed at each pillar in turn. "I'm not filling up, Mack. This is going to be a short fight if he's got you to draw on and I don't have anybody."

"I can't, Mack, and you know why," she said. And then: "Oh, praise the Lord. They finished it."

Immediately Titania pointed at each pillar, but this time she sang a low note as she did it, and the pillars began to glow.

"Oh, he sees that," she murmured—on the note. "He knows now. Watch out, Mack. Stand up for me."

Mack could hardly think about the dragon, because he was watching the pillars. They were starting to move, sliding around the circle. Clockwise.

"I thought you said counterclockwise," said Mack.

"If the circle moved the same on both sides," said Titania impatiently, "there wouldn't be any friction, now, would there?"

"Silly me," murmured Mack.

"You do know that I love you, don't you, Mack?"

"What are you doing, kissing my ass goodbye?" he said.

"Here he comes, the son-of-a-bitch!"

The flying slug swooped down at them and a talon caught Mack a glancing blow. But it tore open his chest diagonally from waist to shoulder. Mack screamed with the pain and dropped to his knees.