The Magic Spectacles (20 page)

Shapes appeared in the rising smoke. The ghostly outlines of old automobiles and faces swirled up into the air, stretching and pulling themselves into smoky wreaths in the sea wind. The gray images of plates of food and of radios and television sets rose like spirits from a grave. The shapes of houses and trees and shoes and fishing poles wisped out, followed by a furry-looking dog with no tail. The dog seemed to look out at the ocean, and as if he suddenly saw Mr. Deener sitting out there alone, he opened his mouth in a silent bark before disappearing forever in the air over the forest.

Flames licked up along the sides of the hat, and the brim suddenly caught fire like a burning wheel. The marbles inside glowed like a hot red circle, and the smoke poured out, streaming up into the sky.

“Done,” Mrs. Barlow said at last. She shoved two sticks into the flames, one on either side of the hat, and lifted it out of the pit. The burning brim fell away onto the ground, and John stamped it out in the dirt.

“All the pie that’s fit to eat,” Mrs. Barlow said. “Enough is as good as a piece. Hand me that plate.”

Danny did, and Mrs. Barlow set the plate on top of the pie and then flipped the whole thing over so that the pie sat on the plate with the round side up. Mr. Deener’s hat was a wreck, what was left of it. She pulled fragments of it away from the doughnut crust, which was scorched black in the spots where the hat had burned through. Finally the pie sat there finished, round on top, like the hill with the caves in it, exactly the size and shape of Mr. Deener’s head. Hot marbles shone from between the rings of doughnut crust.

“We’ll let it cool for a bit,” Mrs. Barlow said. “Some pies are good hot, but this isn’t one of ‘em.”

“What are we going to do with it?” John asked, kicking dirt in to the pit full of hot coals in order to put out the fire.

“We’re going to feed it to the Deener,” Mrs. Barlow said.

Out on the front lawn, Mrs. Barlow put down the basket with the pie in it. Ahab lay down next to it, as if to guard it, and Mrs. Barlow shook the flour sack in Mr. Deener’s face. The periwinkles inside clattered together like marbles. Mr. Deener’s hand shot out and he grabbed the sack, quick as a snake striking, as if someone would try to snatch it away again.

“Mine,” he said.

“That’s right Deener,” Mrs. Barlow told him. “They’re yours. Time’s wasting. What’ll it be?”

“It’ll be mirrors and smoke,” Mr. Deener said. “The world is mirrors and smoke. Now the mirrors are broken and the smoke has blown away on the wind. There’s nothing left but to throw these into the deep ocean. Nothing else left.”

“We’re left,” Danny said.

“Nothing’s left!” He shook his head, his eyes clamped tightly shut. “I’ve made a hash of it. Breaking things up and casting them away. I had choices to make. Too many choices. I want to rest from them. No more choices. No more questions.”

He swung the bag slowly, back and forth, listening to the periwinkles clacking inside. For a long time he said nothing. Then, with a sigh, he said, “I loved her. That was worth something.”

“It was worth everything,” Mrs. Barlow said. “And yet I betrayed her.”

“You betrayed yourself. In your heart, Deener, you don’t have any enemies except yourself. Quit pulling your own hair out. Love was worth everything, wasn’t it? Do you think you’ve used it up? You can’t use it up. Blame isn’t worth dirt. It’s a fraud. But you keep carrying it around, like a fifty dollar bill. All this idiot magic, and you still haven’t got rid of it. That’s what you want to throw away, Deener – the blame.”

“Then I’ll truly have nothing,” Mr. Deener said.

“You’ll still have your memories,” Polly said. “The good ones. And you can get more good ones.”

“And you’ll have us,” John said.

“That’s right,” Danny said. “you’ll have us as friends. That’s a start.”

But he shook his head as if he wasn’t convinced, as if it was too late for starting. He had tried to give away all the old memories, all the old regrets, but he was still holding them in his hand, tied up in a sack. He rattled the bag again, listening to the clacking from inside. “Sounds like a lot of old bones,” he said.

Abruptly he stood up, planting his feet widely, as if the sea wind would knock him over. He opened his eyes a little, squinting out at the ocean. The sun dimmed and the sky grew dark. The wind blew fiercely, and the cries of the unseen seagulls were drowned by the sound of pounding surf, Waterspouts rose and fell beyond the waves, barely visible now in the twilight.

Taking the flour sack in both hands, he swung it slowly in a circle around his head. There was the sound of a low
whump, whump, whump
, as it passed through the air. The black waves rolled in toward shore over the murky rocks, higher and higher, as if within Mr. Deener himself a shadow was rising that would fill him with darkness. Around and around the sack swung as the sky grew darker and the ocean rose over the beach.

Suddenly Danny raised his hands as if he would grab the sack away, and John cried, “No!” at Danny and Mr. Deener both.

The sound of his voice seemed to break the spell. The spinning sack slowed, the tide fell away, the sun shone again. Mr. Deener let the sack fall at his feet. He looked utterly worn out, like a man come home at last from a dark journey. Suddenly he began to cry, and he hugged Polly to him. His glasses fogged up from the crying. He took them off and wiped them with the hem of his coat. Then he kicked the memory bag with the toe of his shoe. The bag flew open, and periwinkles rolled out of it.

Mr. Deener looked at them, horrified. “They’ve rotted!” he cried. “Black and rotten! I’ve waited too long!”

“They’re just periwinkles,” Danny said, picking one up. “See. It was just a bag full of snails.”

“Snails?,”
Mr. Deener said flatly, taking the winkle from Danny and looked closely at it. “All my memories have turned into black snails.” He looked around, trying to make sense of things.

“No they didn’t,” Danny said. “We tricked you.”

“It tricked you, too,” John said to Danny. “You were going to grab the sack, weren’t you? You were going to stop him from throwing it away.”

“Of course I was going to stop him,” Danny said.

“What about what you said, about him making his own choices?”

“So it was a stupid choice. What can I say? And he didn’t choose that anyway, did he?”

“Black crawling things,” Mr. Deener said, bending over and poking at the periwinkles in the sand.

“You passed the test,” John said to him. “You didn’t throw everything away. It doesn’t matter what was in the bag.”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Barlow said. “Let’s eat.” And then, as if by accident, she reached across and knocked Mr. Deener’s glasses off his nose, saying, “Oh my!” The glasses fell on top of the scattered periwinkles. Immediately Mrs. Barlow stomped her foot down on the glasses, and the hard shells cracked them to pieces. “I
am
sorry!” she said, as Mr. Deener groped after them. He held up the empty frames and wiggled his fingers through them.

Just then Mrs. Barlow opened the basket and took out the plate with the marbleston pie on it. It was maybe the awfulest looking piece of food that John had ever seen, all patchy and burnt and with melted sugar glaze from the doughnuts bubbled up through the marbles like dried slime.

Mr. Deener looked closely at it, blinking his eyes rapidly. “It looks…” he started to say. “I mean, without my glasses…”

Mrs. Barlow winked at Danny, who pulled the doughnut monocle out of his pocket. “Try mine,” Danny said, slipping the monocle in front of Mr. Deener’s face.

“I say!” Mr. Deener said, peering at the pie through the monocle. “Cherry! Fat as anything too, and with a crust like a cloud.”

Vapor rose out of the pie, curling in a wispy line through the green glass lens in the monocle. Mr. Deener breathed deeply, smacking his lips. “Delicious!” he said. To John the pie smelled like something out of an incinerator. “I’m as hungry as two dogs!” he said. Then he looked at Ahab and said, “No offense.”

“Then don’t wait for company, Deener,” Mrs. Barlow said. “Dip in.”

While Danny held the monocle, Mr. Deener scooped out a handful of pie and took a huge bite, chomping it down and making a terrible crunching noise. “Mmm,” he said, as if he hadn’t eaten anything that good in years. He paused for a moment to dislodge something that was stuck in his teeth, then went back to eating.

He scooped out another piece, and then another, and as he gobbled it all down, Mrs. Barlow nodded and smiled, very happy with herself.

“Filling,” Mr. Deener said, pausing for a moment. “Very rich.”

“Nutritious,” Mrs. Barlow said. “Have another little dab.”

He ate another piece, chewing very slowly now. The pie was almost gone. A few more marbles lay in the bottom among broken pieces of crust. He put his hand on his stomach and groaned a little, then sat down on the rock again and waved the pie away.

“I’m full,” he said. “Not another bite.”

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Barlow said. “I’ve seen you eat pies twice this size. One more little nibble?” She gathered the last bits of the pie together in her fingers and shoved them into Mr. Deener’s mouth. Then she wiggled his chin up and down, making him chew them up. “That’s right,” she said, “down they go.”

Mr. Deener swallowed, then staggered backward as if he’d been punched in the stomach. “Ooh!” he groaned. “I’ve got a bellyache.” He passed his hand in front of his eyes, then held it out in front of him as if he didn’t quite know what it was. His eyes shot open, and a look of puzzlement came into his face, like a sleepwalker just waking up. His face began to bounce and twitch. He clutched his forehead with both hands and strode out toward the ocean, kicking through the shallow water until he was waist deep. “Cold!” he shouted. “Cold!” His arms jerked helplessly and his head bobbed up and down.

“He’s digesting them,” Mrs. Barlow said.

Polly nodded. “I don’t think they agree with him,” she said.

“They give him the fantods,” Mrs. Barlow said. “I wish I had a bi-carb to give him.”

Mr. Deener hooted something at the sky. His arms waved around his head like a windmill, and he came skipping back up into shallow water, his wet pants clinging to his legs. The waves sucked out to sea, leaving him high and dry. Hundreds of fish flopped around his feet, their scales glittering like jewels in the sunshine. Another wave washed through, rolling up around Mr. Deener’s knees, clutching at him, trying to drag him backward as it rushed away seaward again. He grabbed his stomach, reeling up the beach toward dry sand and making a fearful moaning noise.

“I think they’re making him sick,” Danny said.

“If only he can keep them down…” Mrs. Barlow started to say, but just then came a tremendous explosion from behind them, like a volcano erupting. The ground shook, and there was a tearing noise and a sound like an enormous tea kettle going off, louder and louder and louder until the whistling filled the air like the sound of the wind at the end of the world.

And then, as if the earth were blowing its top, the entire hill of caves flew into the air, end over end, sailing up into the sky on a tremendous, uprushing billow of steam.

The earth beneath the hill looked like an ant colony under glass. Goblins ran this way and that way, up and down sunlit pathways that had once been dark tunnels. The heavy wood and iron doors toppled to the ground in clouds of rusty dust, shaking the earth. Some of the goblins tried to flee into the woods, but fell in the sunshine and simply evaporated into the air, leaving behind them black, goblin-shaped blotches.

A night-dark shadow lay over the ground like a heavy, low fog, right at the center of the hill. It surged back and forth, as if blown by a great wind, and dark swatches of it tore off and blew away, stretching into ghostly heads with wide, gaping mouths and hollow eyes. A terrible moaning noise came from the mouths of the ghosts, and from the shadow on the ground arose the sound of doors slamming, faster and faster and faster. The goblins that were left fled away from it with wild cries that echoed down toward the sea.

John knew what the shadow was; it was the thing he and Polly had seen in the cave. And right then, like the sudden touch of fear and sorrow, something wintery-cold and dark ran through him. His heart beat in his chest, and he threw his hands in front of his face. Ahab howled. Mr. Deener shouted one long, drawn-out, “Noooo!”

At the sound of Mr. Deener’s voice, the shadow tumbled up into the air like dirty smoke. For a moment the moon was blotted out and there sounded a thin and distant cry, like the windy shriek of a goblin flute. John put down his hands. The fear and the sorrow had passed away, swallowed by the moon. The sky was clear.

There was nothing left of the caves but toppled doors and the crawling shapes of the last few goblins. Like bad dreams, the goblins faded and vanished. The stony pathways disappeared, and the hundreds of wood and iron doors blinked away with a sound like the faint and distant popping of soap bubbles.

Where once the caves had stood, green grass billowed in the wind. At the far edge of the grass stood the fountain, with the oak woods rising behind it. Water flowed from the fountain now, and the sunlight shone on the spray as it blew away on the breeze. Beyond the fountain and woods lay the meadow, and beyond that stood the house with its diamond-paned windows and its weather vane like the skeleton of a fish.

John thought suddenly of Kimberly’s treasure can, and the words written on it: “East, West, Home’s Best,” and he knew that what he was looking at now, from down at the edge of the sea, was the very scene that was painted on the lid of the can. Right then it seemed to him that he could see the window again, hanging small and distant over the meadow.

Mr. Deener lay on his back, staring at the sky. Sycamore leaves lay scattered on the ground roundabout him, but there wasn’t a henny-penny man to be seen. Mrs. Barlow took his hand and rubbed it, and he blinked his eyes and sat up.

“It is a brand new day,” he said, looking around. Then he stretched and yawned and said, “My heart feels like an alligator.”