The Magic Touch (19 page)

The street took a long, angled curve before reaching the corner where he had to turn to get to his own street, which lay back to back with this one. Ray decided to take a short cut, and knock a good block and a half off his walk. He couldn’t go through the yard that lay directly behind his house, because the neighbor there kept pit bulls. He suspected, as did every kid who lived in the neighborhood, that the man sponsored dogfights in his basement, but it was more a whispered rumor than known fact. The white dog with the black ring around his eye was fact, so Ray scooted between apartment buildings and leaped over a four-foot fence into the alley that ran between the backyards.

He heard the furtive pitter-pat of footsteps and stopped to listen. The footsteps halted, too. Ray knew suddenly the furtive sound meant that the other walkers were stalking him. He felt cold sweat run down his chest, and his palms went damp. He reached into his pocket for his wand. The goodness warmed his hand. Could the wand get him out of there before there was trouble?

“I’ve got to fly up,” he said under his breath. “I have to help children. Right now! I’ve got to get onto a roof, wand!”

The wand didn’t buy the excuse. It knew he was off duty. He was a mere, ground-bound mortal, with people who meant him no good following him. Was it the Jackals again? If so, he had the Conquistador’s choice of the cross or the sword, or in this case, the lamp or a swim in Lake Michigan.

He hurried down the alley, looking around anxiously for the gangbangers.

It was no use trying to hide from genies. Clouds of color and shadow swept in on him from every direction, crowding him. They coalesced into eight gangbangers, all wearing the Jackal colors. Ray felt his heart sink when he saw that one of them was Zeon.

“Decision time,” the big youth said, putting an arm around Ray’s neck. Nonchalantly, Zeon admired the fingernails of the other hand. “What do you say to us, my brother? It’s yes, right?” He glanced at Ray under the curtain of his long eyelashes. “You gonna say yes?”

Ray didn’t answer for a moment. He was afraid of being roughed up, but there was no way he would give in to the gang. He’d had some setbacks in his life, some of which he was responsible for, like his grades, but he refused to throw the rest of his life down the toilet. These creeps were not going to make it easy for him to keep to his resolve.

Well, nothing was going to change.

“I can’t, Zee,” Ray said, hating himself for sounding whiny, but maybe if he made himself out as a world-class bummer, they wouldn’t want him. “That stuff scares me, man.”

Zeon held him tighter, now examining his own fingernails up close. Ray waited for the big youth to curl up his fist and punch him in the stomach. He knew it was coming. It also smelled like it had been years since Zeon took a bath. He almost gagged on the other’s odor, and it distracted him from the moment that Zeon took that first punch.

Whoof! Ray doubled over, his arms over his belly. Another Jackal stepped right up and drove a fist into Ray’s left ear. With his head ringing, Ray tried to dodge another blow, and ended up throwing himself into the arms of two more genie-Jackals. They dematerialized all but their hands, so that their bodies wouldn’t obstruct the others who wanted to pound on Ray.

Ray threw his weight onto the arms holding him and kicked out with both feet. Some of the genies, unused to immaterial bodies, jumped backward. Ray yanked one of his arms away from one of his captors. With all of his strength, he tried to free the other arm. He didn’t try to go on the offensive. That would be fatal. So would yelling for help.
Pure defense
, he thought, dodging another power punch from Zeon.
Pure defense.

One of the genie-Jackals flicked out of existence. The next thing Ray knew, something struck him in the kidneys with crippling force. Pain exploded in his back. Groaning, Ray slumped to his knees. The other Jackals gathered around, kicking. Ray heard their taunts and jeers. He just curled up, trying to protect his face.

Suddenly, he heard another sound like clattering footsteps. A man’s strong voice rang out through the alley.

“You boys better get out of here now! Let him be!” Ray recognized the voice as the Reverend Barnes’. He dared a peek up. The reverend stood a few feet away, poised on the balls of his feet as if ready to tackle the gang single-handed. “Go on!” he ordered, pointing a finger at Zeon. “Scat!”

“You don’t scare me, old man,” Zeon said, his eyes flashing. He started walking toward the Reverend Barnes, turning into smoke as he went. Instead of recoiling in fear or surprise, the minister just stood there. His body seemed to glow with a strong, glad light. Ray blinked. The light was still there. He wasn’t imagining it.

The gas form that was Zeon surrounded the Reverend Barnes in a ring. It crunched down, then, to Ray’s amazement, bounced off, diffusing into insubstance all over the alley. Zeon appeared about five feet off the ground and fell heavily, shaking his head. The other genies dematerialized and tried to attack, but the same thing happened, over and over.

“There,” the Reverend Barnes said, shaking his head. “Don’t you boys feel silly? Go on home.”

Zeon snarled at the clergyman. He went back to his one sure target: Ray. He grabbed a fistful of Ray’s shirt and hauled him up. The Reverend Barnes reached out and put a hand on Ray’s shoulder. The glow surrounded them both, and Zeon lost his grip. Ray staggered. The Reverend Barnes caught him and helped him get back on his feet. The rest of the gang grouped at a distance, with Zeon at their head, clenching his fists as if he wanted to try it again. One of the others, staring wide-eyed at Ray and the Reverend Barnes, grabbed him and pulled him back.

“This youngster is under my protection,” the Reverend Barnes said. “Hear that? From now on, you leave him alone.”

“He’s not worth worrying over,” Zeon said at last. Folding his arms, he dissolved into a fume. The rest of the Jackals followed suit, and the whole mass swept away like animate fog. It seeped under a fence at the end of the alley, and disappeared.

“Are you all right, son?” Barnes asked, letting Ray go. The glowing light had faded, but Ray could still sense a magical goodness, like his training wand’s.

“What are you?” he asked. He’d known this man all his life, and never suspected anything unusual about him. But then, he’d never known his grandmother was a fairy godmother, either.

“I’m your guardian angel,” Barnes said, smiling. “Up until now you’ve been pretty good at staying out of trouble on your own, but it looks like you’re starting to need a little special intervention. That’s all right. After a while you’ll be able to take care of yourself again. Right now, you’re a little vulnerable.”

Ray was reeling a little. That sound he’d heard just before Barnes intervened had sounded like the clap of wings. He’d heard it the night of the electrical cable fire. All those people were guardian angels, real ones, the kind that George Aldeanueva said didn’t hang around in the bars. Ray certainly hadn’t recognized any of them from the jolly group in uniform.

“You know all about”—he felt his pocket to make sure the wand was still there, and patted it—“this stuff?”

“Sure do,” Reverend Barnes said, smiling broadly. “For a long time, now. Why don’t you go on home now? The crisis is all over and it’s late.”

“Yes, sir,” Ray said fervently. “Thank you, sir.”

“See you on Sunday, son,” Barnes said. He waited where he was until Ray hopped the fence into his own backyard.

Chapter 18

The events of the night before chased through Ray’s mind all the next day while he was digging, weeding, and chopping at plants on behalf of the Chicago Park District and his paycheck. His supervisor, Steve Landis, had to yell at him more than once to pay attention to what he was doing. Ray’s thoughts kept bouncing from one emotionally heavy moment to another. He wished he’d brought his CD player along to break the tension.

The Reverend Barnes was a big surprise. Ray certainly never expected to find out he had a guardian angel. And he never expected to have his be anyone he knew. In spite of sitting in the bar only tables away from a whole cluster of the GAS for months now, his mental picture of guardian angels was of big, shining men and women in gowns and armor, with flowing hair like flames, who carried burning swords. The Reverend Barnes in his sweatshirt or his jacket and dog collar was nothing like the wonderful picture in his mind, but Ray had to admit that he was a lot more comforting than a remote, terrifying being that probably didn’t exist in the first place.

Ray was also worried about the obsession that had overtaken him in the hospital. The
magic
hadn’t taken him over, as he had feared. Instead, he had lost control of his emotions. Rose hammered away at her lectures on proportion, and he hadn’t paid any attention to them, until he came face-to-face with his own sense of helplessness. She wasn’t upset about that. She felt it herself. Ray could see that in her eyes. And she truly cared about him. He was ashamed at how he had behaved toward her the night before. He hoped she would forgive him. Here he was, always protesting he wanted to be treated like an adult, and he couldn’t handle a perfectly understandable setback that was his own fault. He was doing more growing up this summer than he had in all his eighteen years of life to date. That was good. He had to tell Rose about his revelation.
After
he apologized.

The sunlight revitalized him, and he wondered how he had let himself become so gloomy the night before. With giant electric clippers, he snipped stray shoots off the hedges around the perimeter of the park. Behind him, Doug Worster pushed the aardvark-like lawn vacuum to pick up trimmings and garbage together, leaving the ground tidy. Ray liked to see the parks looking nice. In the summer, people took advantage of the good weather to eat outside and catch a few rays over their lunch breaks. Three young women, having discarded their drugstore smocks, lay sunning themselves in swimsuits and sunglasses on towels in the middle of the grassy square. Ray and his coworkers took a moment now and again to admire them.

The park was also just a couple blocks from a few fancy apartment high-rises. Small children, accompanied by mothers, nannies, or very rarely, fathers, shrieked and raced with one another, chasing pigeons and being chased by lapdogs. Ray laughed at one two-year-old who stood on the edge of a bench, trying to get the pigeons to come up to him by holding out his zwieback cracker.

“What’s funny?” shouted Doug over the roar of the lawnvac.

Ray pointed to the tot, now flinging pieces of cracker at the birds in his frustration at failing to be another St. Francis of Assisi. The birds fluttered out of the way, then swooped down to eat the offerings. The child pouted and tried to take his donation back. Doug grinned and signaled a thumbs-up.

“Bag’s full!” Doug shouted. “Be right back!” He shut off the engine and wheeled the unit back to the curb where their truck was parked.

Ray went back to clipping shrubs. He was worried about the genie-Jackals. Their attempt to make him join by force was nothing new. If it didn’t hurt, he could pass it off as routine. It was the availability of magic to immoral thugs. Rose had told him time and again that magic was neither good nor evil. It did what you told it to do. He was bothered by something else. Zeon’s body odor had an unnatural quality to it. At the time Ray had been offended by it, but hadn’t associated it with anything. Now that he thought of it again, he was reminded of someone. Who? Now he knew: it was the man in the lamp shop, and what Rose had said about him. That stink was the smell of evil. Zeon and the Jackals had perverted the power they got from the DDEG for evil. He’d have to say something about it at the next meeting of the Fairy Godmothers. The committee needed to report the connection to the federation office, to make sure the bad element got weeded out, or no merger. There must be some way to expel members who broke the rules. Not that he’d be too sorry to keep the merger from going through. If the DDEG was too stupid to know that gangbangers made lousy wish granters, then he wanted no part of them.

How do you like that?
he thought.
A few weeks ago, I didn’t believe in unions. Now I’m concerned about one’s continuing operations.

In his new incarnation as the protector of children, Ray kept a close eye on the kids who played in the parks he maintained during the day. He had the training wand buttoned up ready in his front pocket just in case he needed to grant an emergency wish. Landis was annoyed that he started to drop the task he was working on to mediate disputes between children. When one small boy almost fell off the water fountain as he tried to take a drink by himself, Ray practically made a sacrifice catch, sliding on his belly to save him. The mother, who had been digging in her purse and not paying attention to her offspring, came rushing up to thank him.

Landis glanced up as Ray came back to the hedges, feeling a little sheepish and brushing at the stains on the front of his coverall.

“You don’t have to kill yourself to save the city money on liability lawsuits, Crandall,” he said gruffly.

“Sorry,” Ray said. He went back to work. With the wand tingling its good vibes against his chest it was difficult not to be conscious of the children and their feelings. He watched a couple of little girls who were sitting very, very quietly on a park bench as their mother read. They radiated unhappiness. Ray purposely moved close enough to them to try and strike up a conversation, but it took a long time before they looked his way. He waved a friendly hello.

The mother became aware of his hovering, and watched him with alarm. Just then, the elder looked back and Ray smiled to catch her eye. That was too much for the mother, who gathered up her belongings, and hustled the children hastily out of the park. She thought he was some kind of pervert. Ray felt stupid. Maybe he was being too intense. He buckled down to work.

Only real need strings, right, wand?
he thought at the little star.

That afternoon, Landis had them dig up a bed of pink petunias that were past their best, at one edge of the park, and replace them with golden summer marigolds. The petunias looked sad, their blossoms ragged and darkened. Their time was past. Ray gave them each a mental apology as he knelt along the bed, pulling up the dry shoots and tossing them into a basket. The marigolds, in wet, plastic flats, were just leaves and tight, yellow-green buds. In a week they’d be a sea of bright orange-yellow, gladdening the eye, just in time for Independence Day. Ray thought of college botany classes, and wondered if they went into genetic manipulation. He wanted to breed a hot yellow marigold that you could see a mile away, like natural fireworks.

The wand turned the air around him into a nest of fine threads with a single unhappy string in the middle of it. Ray glanced down at his chest, feeling for the little pencil shape in his breast pocket. There was a need string that required attention. It was even close by. He turned his head and glanced over his shoulder. There! He saw a small boy of five or six walking with his mother. The kid pouted as the woman hauled him along. They came over toward the flower bed to watch him. Ray saw an easy opportunity to grant a wish, freelance. He’d handle it all by himself. Rose would be proud. He got to his feet as the woman approached.

“Afternoon,” he said.

“What are you doing?” she asked, pitching her voice in the way mothers did when they were trying to teach their kids something.

“I’m replacing spring flowers with summer flowers,” Ray said. He knelt down next to the boy and showed him an infant plant. “This is a marigold. It’ll have bright orange petals. It’s a hardy flower, and ought to keep blooming all summer.”

“I don’t see any petals,” the child said sullenly. He turned away, kicking at the basket full of dead petunias. The mother sighed.

“Thank you,” she said. She took a firm hold of the boy’s hand and pulled him away, hissing at him angrily.

“You were very rude to that man,” she said. “He was telling you something interesting.”

“I don’t care about stupid flowers!” the boy shouted. The mother smacked his hand. They headed hastily toward the park exit. Ray settled back onto his knees, frustrated. There was no chance even to ask the kid what was eating him, let alone grant a wish. He glanced after the boy. Ray would never know now what it was the boy desired. He’d failed as the child’s fairy godfather. He wondered if he should run after them and ask bluntly.

A nice woman in an expensive summer suit intercepted the mother and son just inside the park. They were too far away for Ray to hear what they were saying, but by the pantomime he guessed the nice woman was praising the child to the mother. The child pouted, but the mother smiled and preened herself. The nice woman dropped to her knee beside the boy and chatted a little bit. When the mother and the boy turned away to go, the woman opened her purse and drew out a wand, and whisked it a couple of times over the retreating form of the boy. Ray’s jaw dropped open. No one else commented on the glistening wand with the peach-and-gold star because no one else could see it. But the nice woman was aware of him. She turned and smiled at him, recognizing another fairy godparent. Ray stared at her.

“Forget it, Crandall,” Landis’s voice growled from behind him. Ray jumped. “She’s too old and too rich for you, kiddo. Dream on.”

Ray started to dig furiously, pulling up plant after plant. Now he’d seen what Rose had been talking about. It was nice to know there were people to pick up cases he missed. He did not have to do the whole job all alone. There was a union out there to support him.

O O O

“Forget it. You keep saying we stink,” Bobby said, as he scraped his dinner plate into the trash. At just fourteen, he was still skinny and small-boned, but their mother was always saying that one day Bobby would be taller than Ray’s six feet. Bobby waited impatiently for that growth spurt. “I don’t want you sitting in with us. You’ll throw us off.”

“I’m sure you stink less,” Ray blithely told his younger brother, reaching over him for a dish towel. “I know your band’s been practicing hard. Let me hear it. I’m willing to change my opinion.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Bobby said warningly, holding up a forefinger. He opened the refrigerator for a can of soda, which he opened with very deliberate motions, watching Ray out of the corner of his eye. Ray could tell Bobby was dying to have him to hear them play, but he would rather have his fingernails pulled out with red-hot pincers than say so.

“Come on, Bobby,” Ray wheedled. “I’ll sit quiet. The only noise you’ll hear me make is applause.” He made it sound like his brother was granting him a special favor. Bobby relaxed. This was not a ploy by his elder brother to cut him down.

“You’re honestly interested?” he asked.

“You bet,” Ray said.

“Well, okay. Then you move the car out onto the street for me.”

The Voice Dancers, as Bobby and his three friends called their embryo band, had been evicted from Kevin’s house down the block, and the music practice room at school before that. After a lot of pleading, the Crandalls had agreed to give them temporary shelter in the detached garage on the alley. Since Bobby couldn’t drive yet, he had to ask one of the four adults in the house to re-park the family cars every time the Voice Dancers wanted to rehearse. So far, there had been no complaints about the noise from the neighbors. So far.

The instruments played by the Voice Dancers had all come from pawnshops and Salvation Army stores except for Kevin’s keyboard, a Christmas gift from his grandparents in Georgia. Bobby’s electric guitar looked great, but sounded terrible. Ray guessed that that was why it had ended up on the unredeemed shelf in a pawnshop. The rhythm guitar was acoustic, imperfectly adapted to electronic use with a microphone leading to an amp. The percussion section was represented by a couple of snares and a pedal cymbal, played by Kevin’s brother DeVon. On the whole, it was an impressive assembly for a group of boys in their freshman year of high school who got by on odd jobs. They had a set of ancient folding chairs, plus six silver globe lamps on adjustable tripods that had once been in a photography studio. These acted as backlighting, spotlights, or just lights to play by at night.

Bobby ordered Ray to sit on a folding chair as far away from the band as he could, to give them the most room possible to practice their moves. When the Voice Dancers struck up their first number, Ray thought that it was a good idea to give them all the distance he could. Put most tactfully, they were still very rough. Only Bobby had a sure sense of pitch. The others made from one to three tries to find a note, unless it was music they knew very well. There wasn’t a lot of music they knew very well. They were also very nervous about having an audience. Ray kept smiling, and tapping his hand on his knee to the beat, when there was one to follow. One thing he could say about the Voice Dancers was that they were loud. Their music rang off the walls of the garage and echoed down the alley. The occasional motorist passing through had a pained look on his or her face.

After an hour and a half of torture, practice ground to a halt over an argument on how to play the musical bridge from “Soul Man.” Bobby tried to play it as it had been done on the record made by Sam and Dave.

“I’m the leader of this band,” he said, looming as pugnaciously as anyone could at eighty-five pounds, “and I say it ought to be just guitar and nothing else.”

“It needs more keyboard,” Kevin said, plunking out chords that were half a key too high. Ray winced. DeVon threw in a few percussive tricks.