Chapter Six

On our way home, I told Olivia about my hair-raising encounter with Bellman. Of all the reactions I expected from her, disgust won the day as she wrinkled up her nose at my description of Bellman’s standing buck-naked in front of me.

“Gross. So he was just standing there? With his big, ugly junk just hanging in your face? Gross!”

“Yeah, that’s about the size of it,” I said, hoping it didn’t sound like some lousy pun. Olivia still didn’t take this seriously and it concerned me. After her successful takedown yesterday, she felt recklessly invulnerable. “O’, he means business…and it’s nasty, life-threatening business.”

“His junk in your face? That kind of nasty business?” Maybe I scarred her for life with my description. “I always thought he was a closeted gay guy.”

“Yeah, well, the last thing I’m concerned with right now is Bob Bellman’s sexual orientation.” I sighed. “Actually, he’s probably ‘omni-sexual.’ Sex with men, women…animals.” If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, I thought, trying to find the levity Olivia sought comfort in.

“Okay, really, really gross!” While Olivia’s laughter rang out with abandon, mine felt forced.

“Just stay out of his path. Do not confront him, provoke him, and for God’s sake, don’t laugh at him.”

“Yes, Father,” she said. But I knew she wouldn’t hide or run away from anyone.

“I mean it, Olivia. He threatened my life and yours, too. He’s all about the ‘cray-cray.’ I believed him when he threatened to kill us.” The Bucket backfired at that instant as if in agreement. Olivia released a small, surprised yelp before turning it into another laughing jag.

“Oh, he won’t hurt me,” she said. “He’s afraid of me now. Seriously, Tex, we’re not dealing with a murderer here or anything. He’s just a kid. A hairy, gross, scary bully kid…but that’s all he is.”

I could see Olivia truly wanted to believe in the good inherent nature of mankind, but here her rose-colored optimism did no good.

“But, he’s not. He’s not just a kid. Hell, I don’t think he ever had a childhood. He’s absolutely crazy and capable of anything. You saw that first-hand yesterday. If you hadn’t come to my rescue, I really think he was going to kill me.”

Olivia sat silently, lost in thought. “Okay,” she said quietly. “Okay, I’ll stay out of his way.” I looked over at her and sadness overwhelmed me. I’d popped her balloon full of sunshine and bunnies. Disheartening, to say the least, when you discover the world is a horrible and unjust place, full of darkness and little hope, something I’d painfully discovered myself several years back.

****

I dropped Olivia off and headed straight for Chicken Heaven. Mickey and I had agreed to meet tomorrow night, but the urgency of my school situation set me on edge. I needed to move our meeting to now. I hoped to get some sort of “protection spell” as my friends and I definitely needed it. There was no way we could hold out much longer.

I bypassed the screen door this time and knocked on Mickey’s front door.

After a few minutes of silence, I heard her tell one of the cats to move. She yelled, “Who is it?”

I sighed, thinking I’d better get used to this ritual. “It’s Tex, Mickey! I brought chicken.” I held up the red and white bucket offering to the window but remembered she couldn’t look out because of her height.

The long rattling of the chain commenced as she screamed, “Goddammit!” At least, Mickey’s behavior seemed consistent, something I could count on.

The door swung open. Dressed in the same robe and slippers, I wondered if she had a multitude of blue robes or just lived in the one. She held her head back to peer at me through the ends of her glasses. She didn’t appear happy.

“I know I’m a day early, Mickey, but something came up, and I was hoping we could meet this afternoon.” She fumed at me in silence. Once again, I held up the sacrificial bucket of chicken, hoping it would lick any wounds. “Chicken?”

“Well, dammit, come on in then. Still haven’t learned to use a phone, I guess. Kids, today.”

“Sorry, Mickey. I also thought since tomorrow was Halloween, you might be busy.”

Her mouth fell open, and she fell back a step, looking as if I had just drop-kicked one of her cats. Hands on her knees, she guffawed loudly before giving into a racked, coughing fit.

“Oh, kid, you kill me. Halloween! You think just because I practice witchcraft that Halloween is my Christmas or something?” She sat down on a nearby beat-up ottoman, still chortling hysterically.

“Well, kind of.” I shrugged, feeling totally stupid but not knowing why.

“All Hallow’s Eve.” she cried. “Boil, boil, toilet trouble! Let me go get my cauldron!” Okay, so the only person who can teach me about witchcraft is now making fun of my lack of witchcraft knowledge.

“Kid, Halloween is strictly amateur hour for us witches. It’s like New Year’s Eve for alcoholics! Ain’t nothin’ special about a day created to sell candy. Good God! Halloween…” She shook her head in disbelief.

“Okay.” I sighed. “If we’re done having a good laugh at my expense, here’s some chicken.” I held out the bucket, hoping the power of it would prevail and make me quit feeling like a jackass. Jackpot. She greedily snatched it from my hands and looked inside.

“Extra crispy?” She gazed at me skeptically.

“Nope,” I said, hoping to get this one right, “nothing but the original recipe.”

She smiled broadly. “Good boy. Come into the kitchen.” Like a herd dog, she prodded me ahead of her into the small, dark kitchen. She flipped on a power-saving light that stubbornly lit up the orange-painted walls and green cabinets. I noticed five or six pet bowls on the floor next to the refrigerator, covered with photos of small children. Were they her grandchildren, or did she lure them in with candy and cook them in her oven?

It surprised me how clean the linoleum floor and countertops were, as I earlier got the impression being the world’s greatest housekeeper didn’t interest Mickey. In front of the open kitchen window sat a small round table adorned with a bowl of plastic fruit. Only two chairs sidled up to the table—not many more would have fit comfortably—and a floral patterned placemat lay at the window-facing side. Mickey loves her floral patterns. The table itself appeared in immaculate condition even though it looked old, possibly older than Mickey.

Mickey flapped at me to sit down in one of the chairs. She pulled open a drawer, intently studying the contents before deciding what she wanted. She said “Ah!” and whipped out a placemat and flung it down in front of me along with a handful of napkins. A Santa Fe motif adorned the mat with two coyotes howling next to an abstract cactus. “This is the best placemat I have for a boy.” It somewhat amused and touched me with the thought she put into it. Maybe she had a placemat for every occasion and visitor.

“Okey-dokey, let’s eat.” She grabbed a chicken leg and nibbled at it, with small but determined bites. Like an ear of corn, she worked it around in a circular fashion.

“Hey, Mickey, can I ask you a favor?” Mickey’s cats had begun to circle the wagons and nestled against my legs. One particularly bold brown and white cat kept trying to jump into my lap. I nudged him away with my foot.

“What, you mean more than I’m already doing for you?” She stopped eating and held the bone in front of her like a miniature baseball bat.

“Yeah, I guess. I’m allergic to cat hair, so could we…I don’t know…put the cats away or something?” She continued to stare quietly. “Maybe just for a little while?”

And, we’re back to her rowdy shrieking and coughing. “Oh, kid, you just kill me!” I sure hope she had thoroughly chewed her chicken, as I couldn’t remember my Heimlich maneuver technique very well.

“Um, I’m glad I kill you…”

“Okay, okay,” she said, her chuckling winding down. I totally slayed it today. If I ever decide to do stand-up comedy, I’m going to plant Mickey in the front row at all my gigs. “Tex, you’re some kinda’ witch! Whoever heard of a witch who’s allergic to cats?”

Mickey stood and raised her hands above her head. “Sampson, Delilah, Romeo, Juliet,” she yelled, “upstairs, just for a little bit.” The cats stopped cold in their tracks. They whipped their heads from around my legs to look at her, as if saying, you can’t be serious. Deciding seriousness ruled, the cats sprinted for the kitchen door, and I heard them stampede up the stairwell.

“So, I see you’re a Bruce Springsteen fan,” I said, trying to find some common ground with her. I assumed she named the four aforementioned cats after the lyrics from the Springsteen song, “Fire.”

“What are you talking about, kid? Wait…is that the kid on that soap opera?” Mickey considered everyone a kid. I decided it best to drop it.

“Is that better, Tex?” she asked after the last cat vanished upstairs.

“Yes. For a little while at least.” The cats may’ve vacated the kitchen, but their hair lingered behind them. “How’d you do that? With the cats?”

“Why, they’re my familiars, of course. That’s why it’s coconuts for you to be allergic to cat hair! Every witch benefits from their familiars.”

“What is a ‘familiar,’ exactly?” I knew I risked her ridicule again, but I realized learning from Mickey was like a fishing expedition. I needed to keep the bait flowing freely.

“A ‘familiar’ can be a pet. Sometimes even a person. But that’s rare. Usually they’re animals,” she explained, holding court with her chicken bone as her gavel. “Some witches believe familiars are spirits. My cats are mine. I believe the animal world is closer to communicating with the spirit world than we are, so I use my cats to help with messages and even spells, sometimes.” She looked at her chicken leg, decided it’d served its purpose, and laid it neatly at the edge of her placemat.

“Mom didn’t have any cats. She couldn’t have any because of my allergies.” Mickey rummaged through the bucket for a thigh. Not at all hungry, I fidgeted around with my chicken breast.

“Kid, just because you didn’t have any pets, don’t mean your mother didn’t have any familiars. They could have been neighbor pets, or birds, or anything she may’ve consulted with a few times in the yard.”

I thought of my feline visitors at home. “Mickey, I’ve been…ah…quite popular with cats all of a sudden.”

“What do you mean?”

“Lately, there’ve been lots of cats coming to my house and bothering me.” Mickey dropped the thigh onto the placemat with a thump. I braced myself for another round of crazed laughter.

“Kid, I don’t know if this is a good thing or not,” she said thoughtfully. She rubbed her chin and looked toward the ceiling, one eye shut. “Some spirit has a message for you. The familiars are either trying to communicate it with you…or warn you.”

“Were these my mom’s familiars?” Both excited and nervous, I welcomed Mom finally entering into the conversation. “Is my mom trying to contact me? Does she have something she wants to tell me?”

“Too early to tell, kid. And we’re gettin’ way too ahead of the game for you to go messin’ around with the spirit world and familiars.” She picked up the thigh and began to meticulously chew at it again. “We’ll get to that in good time. I may have to come over and see these kitties for myself. As for your mother, well, these may or may not have been her familiars. Just leave ’em alone for now.”

“Gah! Every time we start to get somewhere, or talk about my mom, you shut me down! This is…frustrating.” I knew I shouldn’t lose my patience with Mickey, but this irritatingly endless and pointless dance routine just put me more on edge. “What can you tell me about Mom?”

“Okay, kid, didn’t anyone ever tell you about patience and all that?” She wagged her finger at me. “I ain’t rushin’ this for a reason as I told you the other night. To learn—and learn right—you got to take your time. I’m not yankin’ your chain. This is a safety issue.” She leaned in toward me. “Your mom would agree with me, and don’t you forget that, kid.”

“Fine. Sorry. Could you please tell me a little bit about my mom to start? About her…witchcraft?”

“All right… Let me finish my food first.” She nibbled noisily while staring at me. I finished my piece of chicken as well as I could.

I stood up holding the chicken carcass and asked, “Where’s your trash, Mickey?”

“Hold on, hold on…” She bounded up, opened a drawer, got a plastic bag, snatched the bone from my hand, and put it with hers inside, sealing it with an efficient zip. “You never know when you might need these.”

“For spells?”

“Hee! Don’t be dumb.” She laughed and slapped the back of my head. “For the cats. For spells, land’s sake! You’ve got a lot to learn, kid.”

We retreated into the living room where she prodded me toward a long white sofa. I sat down with a flump as the soft, deep cushions threatened to swallow me. In front of the sofa a rickety dinner tray, decorated with yet another floral pattern, threatened to topple. Sitting next to me, Mickey looked like a tiny, wrinkled child awash in a sea of white upholstery.

I glanced about the room where literally hundreds of porcelain eyes ogled me. Tiny figurines of small children in sleepwear, most accompanied by lambs or cats decorated every nook, corner, and cranny of the room. Many were praying, a lot of them with their back flaps open, exposing their butt cracks. I fought the urge to get up and turn them facing the wall. The clutter—especially of these demonically angelic porcelain faces—felt suffocating.

“Ah, you’re appreciatin’ my collection, I see,” she said proudly.

“Yeah…” Or something.

“Tex, as I told you last night, your mother came to me one day and wanted to learn how to use her powers. There are two different types of witchcraft…white magic and black magic. Your mom was always very careful to keep on the side of white magic, and it’s a thin line separating the two.”

Mickey snuggled into the sofa. I worried she might sink too far into the impossibly plush sofa and suffocate.

“I taught her some simple spells,” she continued, “and before long we were practicin’ together, and she was showing me things I’d never dreamed possible. But she made it clear she only wanted to use her powers for good, and she didn’t want to use them for her own self-gain. She was a smart woman, your mother was, and she understood that once you start using spells for your own purposes, you were gettin’ closer to crossin’ over into that black magic.” She shook her head in a pained manner. “Once you start doin’ this, you’re getting closer to making deals with dark powers you don’t want no kin with.”

“Mickey, are there practitioners of black magic here? I mean in Clearwell?”

She paused for a minute. “Oh, kiddo, you’d be surprised. There’s a huge group of witches in Clearwell, both white and black.” She suddenly seemed a bit less confident, more worried.

“In Clearwell, Kansas?” I asked stunned. “Why in this Godforsaken place of all places?” I couldn’t believe it. I figured my mom was just an anomalous one-off because I didn’t understand why anyone would want to live here, let alone an entire group of witches.

“Oh my, yes! There are a lot of witches on both coasts, Florida, and some of the Northern states, but I’d have to guess we have the most witches located here in Kansas. Let me show you something…” She began her routine of swinging her short legs back and forth for momentum and popped off the sofa as nimbly as a woman half her age. At the bookshelf, she snagged an Etch-A-Sketch and brought it back to the sofa.

“My great-nephew left this here. I ain’t had time to mail it back to him yet.” Okay, so she did have great-nephews and didn’t just eat kids.

She started turning the round white knobs, faster than I would’ve thought her age allowed, reminding me of Ian on his video game module. She turned her drawing toward me. “You know what this is?” It was a five-pointed star encased within a circle.

“Sure, it’s a pentagram.” I’ve seen enough horror films to recognize this. Score one for me on witchcraft knowledge!

“That’s right, Tex.” She beamed at me proudly. A first! “And it’s probably the most important tool of the trade in witchcraft. Now…what would happen if you laid a giant pentagram over the United States of America?”

I thought for a minute before the light bulb clicked. “Kansas is the center of the pentagram. And the areas you said have high witch populations represent the points.”

“Gold star for the kid. Many witches think the center of the pentagram represents the main area of mystic power, so they migrate here, hoping to ramp up their powers. For some, like your mother, it works great…but you’ve got to have some powers to begin with.”

I guess that explains why Mom moved from Denver, her birthplace, to Kansas. I never could think of any other reason.

“I had no idea that Kansas of all places was such a hot-spot for witches.” I knew we still had the Klan running about some areas—and sure, there would always be the occasional one-off satanic death-metal high school incident—but this seemed unreal.

“You better believe it, kid. Now, the pentagram is used in spells and usually you draw it on the floor or some parchment paper. Talented witches like your mother can get away with drawing it in the air, other times they can draw it on the surface of an object. Many witches see it as a way to control the elements with each corner representing God or man and fire, water, earth, and wind. This is how your mom liked to look at it.”

“Yeah, Dad said she was sort of a Christian witch.” And it still didn’t make any sense to me.

“That’s right. And I’ve never seen anyone pull it off like her before. She believed that the upper-point of the pentagram pointed toward God, and that he was ultimately responsible for the good things she could do.” She folded her hands, deep in thought. Thankfully, she sat up on the edge of the sofa so I didn’t have to worry about the sofa eating her alive. “She never did give enough credit to herself, your mom.”

“I always thought witchcraft was the worship of Satan. Do you really believe my mom was a God-worshipping witch?” I suppose I wanted to believe this, even though it went against my current beliefs of the universe; the agnostic in me wanted to worship reason and nothing else. Except for maintaining a healthy fear of the Fates.

“Kid, didn’t you know your mother better than that? Haven’t you been listening to a thing I’ve told you? Witchcraft is open to interpretation. That’s part of the beauty of it.”

“I guess. I’m just learning about a side of my mom that two days ago I never knew existed. I’m trying to make sense of it all.”

“Let me tell you a story,” she said. “When I was a kid, about your age, I reckon, I was going to a Catholic school. I started questioning the stories in the Bible. One day I asked the ol’ nun who was teaching class, I says, ‘I’m having a hard time believin’ all these stories about arks and parting of the seas and Adam and Eve. How can I believe in something that don’t make no sense? How come none of these miracles are happenin’ today?’ Well, most of the class looked at me like I was the Devil himself come to roust them all to Hell, but the ol’ nun, she just looks at me and says, ‘Sometimes you’re not supposed to take the Bible literally. Sometimes, it’s best to interpret the teachings as fables, and the most important thing to take away from them is the morals.’ I thought about this good and long and finally thought well, now, here’s a way I can make the Bible work for me.”

My world is crazy. I came here to learn about witchcraft and am now getting a lecture on Christianity.

“Anyway, kid, I done come around full circle again, but that ain’t the point. The point is that this ol’ mean nun actually talked sense and made believin’ in the Bible work for me. So, if you can’t even believe in your poor mother and what she believed in, then you best just leave here right now.” For the first time, Mickey appeared on the verge of tears. I could tell she missed my mother almost as much as I did. “But leave the rest of the chicken,” she added as an afterthought.

Mickey was right. You have to believe in something, and the least I could do is believe in Mom and what she stood for. Sure, I still felt a little betrayed about the deceit—or at least, lack of forthcoming information—going on in my family, but my mother always did try to live the best life she could. For her family, friends, neighbors—through witchcraft, Christianity, good Samaritanism, whatever—Mom shone as an outstanding example of the selfless kind of behavior everyone should strive for. So if she believed in something, I should at least try and understand it.

“You’re absolutely right, Mickey,” I said. “My mom earned my trust. I’m here to learn and soak up your knowledge, oh great mentor.” I mock-bowed.

“Damn straight, kid-o!” She whooped and hollered, and I do believe she enjoyed being bowed to.