Dandelion Wine (22 page)

Douglas looked around at this night town, where anything at all might happen now, a minute from now. Here, by night of day, how few the slots to shove your money in, how few the cards delivered to your hand for reading, and, if read, how few made sense. Here in the world of people you might give time, money, and prayer with little or no return.

But there in the arcade you could hold lightning with the CAN YOU TAKE IT? electrical machine when you pried its chromed handles apart as the power wasp-stung, sizzled, sewed your vibrant fingers. You punched a bag and saw how many hundred pounds of sinew were available in your arm to strike the world if it need be struck. There grip a robot's hand to Indian-wrestle out your fury and light the bulbs half up a numbered chart where fireworks at the summit proved your violence supreme.

In the arcade, then, you did this and this, and that and that occurred. You came forth in peace as from a church unknown before.

And now? Now?

The witch moving but silent, and perhaps soon dead in her crystal coffin. He looked at Mr. Black droning there, defying all worlds, even his own. Someday the fine machinery would rust from lack of loving care, the Keystone Kops freeze forever half in, half out of the lake, half caught, half struck by locomotive; the Wright Brothers never get their kite machine off the ground....

"Tom," Douglas said, "we got to sit in the library and figure this thing out."

They moved on down the street, the white unwritten card passing between them.

They sat inside the library in the lidded green light and then they sat outside on the carved stone lion, dangling their feet over its back, frowning.

"Old man Black, all the time screaming at her, threatening to kill her."

"You can't kill what's never lived, Doug."

"He treats the witch like she's alive or was once alive, or something. Screaming at her, so maybe she's finally given up. Or maybe she hasn't given up at all, but's taken a secret way to warn us her life's in danger. Invisible ink. Lemon juice, maybe! There's a message here she didn't want Mr. Black to see, in case he looked while we were in his arcade. Hold on! I got some matches."

"Why would she write us, Doug?"

"Hold the card. Here!" Douglas struck a match and ran it under the card.

"Ouch! The words ain't on my fingers, Doug, so keep the match away."

"There!" cried Douglas. And there it was, a faint spidery scrawl which began to shape itself in a spiral of incredible corkscrew calligrapher's letters, dark on light ... a word, two words, three ...

"The card, it's on fire!"

Tom yelled and let it drop.

"Stomp on it!"

But by the time they had jumped up to smash their feet on the stony spine of the ancient lion, the card was a black ruin.

"Doug! Now we'll never know what it said!"

Douglas held the flaking warm ashes in the palm of his hand. "No, I saw. I remember the words."

The ashes blew about in his fingers, whispering.

"You remember in that Charlie Chase Comedy last spring where the Frenchman was drowning and kept yelling something in French which Charlie Chase couldn't figure. Secours, Secours! And someone told Charlie what it meant and he jumped in and saved the man. Well, on this card, with my own eyes, I saw it. Secours!"

"Why would she write it in French?"

"So Mr. Black wouldn't know, dumb!"

"Doug, it was just an old watermark coming out when you scorched the card...." Tom saw Douglas's face and stopped. "Okay, don't look mad. It was 'sucker' or whatever. But there were other words...."

"Mme. Tarot, it said. Tom, I got it now! Mme. Tarot's real, lived a long time ago, told fortunes. I saw her picture once in the encyclopedia. People came from all over Europe to see her. Well, don't you figure it now yourself? Think, Tom, think!"

Tom sat back down on the lion's back, looking along the street to where the arcade lights flickered.

"That's not the real Mrs. Tarot?"

"Inside that glass box, under all that red and blue silk and all that old half-melted wax, sure! Maybe a long time ago someone got jealous or hated her and poured wax over ;j her and kept her prisoner forever and she's passed down the line from villain to villain and wound up here, centuries later, in Green Town, Illinois--working for Indian-head pennies instead of the crown heads of Europe!"

"Villains? Mr. Black?"

"Name's Black, shirt's black, pants're black, tie's black. Movie villains wear black, don't they?"

"But why didn't she yell last year, the year before?"

"Who knows, every night for a hundred years she's been writing messages in lemon juice on cards, but everybody read her regular message, nobody thought, like us, to run a match over the back to bring out the real message. Lucky I know what secours means."

"Okay, she said,'Help!' Now what?"

"We save her, of course."

"Steal her out from under Mr. Black's nose, huh? And wind up witches ourselves in glass boxes with wax poured on our faces the next ten thousand years."

"Tom, the library's here. We'll arm ourselves with spells and magic philters to fight Mr. Black."

"There's only one magic philter will fix Mr. Black," said Tom. "Soon's he gets enough pennies any one evening, he--well, let's see." Tom drew some coins from his pocket. "This just might do it. Doug, you go read the books. I'll run back and look at the Keystone Kops fifteen times; I never get tired. By the time you meet me at the arcade, it might be the old philter will be working for us."

"Tom, I hope you know what you're doing."

"Doug, you want to rescue this princess or not?"

Douglas whirled and plunged.

Tom watched the library doors wham shut and settle. Then he leaped over the lion's back and down into the night. On the library steps, the ashes of the tarot card fluttered, blew away.

The arcade was dark, inside, the pinball machines lay dim and enigmatic as dust scribblings in a giant's cave. The peep shows stood with Teddy Roosevelt and the Wright Brothers faintly smirking or just cranking up a wooden propeller. The witch sat in her case, her waxen eyes cauled. Then, suddenly, one eye glittered. A flashlight bobbed outside through the dusty arcade windows. A heavy figure lurched against the locked door, a key scrabbled into the lock. The door slammed open, stayed open. There was a sound of thick breathing.

"It's only me, old girl," said Mr. Black, swaying.

Outside on the street, coming along with his nose in a book, Douglas found Tom hiding in a door nearby.

"Shh!" said Tom. "It worked. The Keystone Kops, fifteen times; and when Mr. Black heard me drop all that money in, his eyes popped, he opened the machine, took out the pennies, threw me out and went across to the speak-easy for the magic philter."

Douglas crept up and peered into the shadowy arcade and saw the two gorilla figures there, one not moving at all, the wax heroine in his arms, the other one standing stunned in the middle of the room, weaving slightly from side to side.

"Oh, Tom," whispered Douglas, "you're a genius. He's just full of magic philter, ain't he?"

"You can say that again. What did you find out?"

Douglas tapped the book and talked in a low voice. "Mme. Tarot, like I said, told all about death and destiny and stuff in rich folks' parlors, but she made one mistake. She predicted Napoleon's defeat and death to his face! So ..."

Douglas's voice faded as he looked again through the dusty window at that distant figure seated quietly in her crystal case.

"Secours," murmured Douglas. "Old Napoleon just called in Mme. Tussaud's waxworks and had them drop the Tarot Witch alive in boiling wax, and now ... now ..."

"Watch out, Doug, Mr. Black, in there! He's got a club or something!"

This was true. Inside, cursing horribly, the huge figure of Mr. Black lurched. In his hand a camping knife seethed on the air six inches from the witch's face.

"He's picking on her because she's the only human-looking thing in the whole darn joint," said Tom. "He won't do her no harm. He'll fall over any second and sleep it off."

"No, sir," said Douglas. "He knows she warned us and we're coming to rescue her. He doesn't want us revealing his guilty secret, so maybe tonight he's going to destroy her once and for all."

"How could he know she warned us? We didn't even know ourselves till we got away from here."

"He made her tell, put coins in the machine; that's one thing she can't lie on, the cards, all them tarot skulls and bones. She just can't help telling the truth and she gave him a card, sure, with two little knights on it, no bigger than kids, you see? That's us, clubs in our hands, coming down the street."

"One last time!" cried Mr. Black from the cave inside. "I'm. puttin' the coin in. One last time now, dammit, tell me! Is this damn arcade ever goin' to make money or do I declare bankruptcy? Like all women; sit there, cold fish, while a man starves! Gimme the card. There! Now, let me see." He held up the card to the light.

"Oh, my gosh!" whispered Douglas. "Get ready."

"No!" cried Mr. Black. "Liar! Liar! Take that!" He smashed his fist through the case. Glass exploded in a great shower of starlight, it seemed, and fell away in darkness. The witch sat naked, in the open air, reserved and calm, waiting for the second blow.

"No!" Douglas plunged through the door. "Mr. Black!"

"Doug!" cried Tom.

Mr. Black wheeled at Tom's shout. He raised the knife blindly in the air as if to strike. Douglas froze. Then, eyes wide, lids blinking once, Mr. Black turned perfectly so he fell with his back toward the floor and took what seemed a thousand years to strike, his flashlight flung from his right hand, the knife scuttling away like a silverfish from the left.

Tom moved slowly in to look at the long-strewn figure in the dark. "Doug, is he dead?"

"No, just the shock of Mme. Tarot's predictions. Boy, he's got a scalded look. Horrible, that's what the cards must have been."

The man slept noisily on the floor.

Douglas picked up the strewn tarot cards, put them, trembling, in his pocket. "Come on, Tom, let's get her out of here before it's too late."

"Kidnap her? You're crazy!"

"You wanna be guilty of aiding and abetting an even worse crime? Murder, for instance?"

"For gosh sakes, you can't kill a dam old dummy!"

But Doug was not listening. He had reached through the open case and now, as if she had waited for too many years, the wax Tarot Witch with a rustling sigh, leaned forward and fell slowly slowly down into his arms.

The town clock struck nine forty-five. The moon was high and filled all the sky with a warm but wintry light. The sidewalk was solid silver on which black shadows moved. Douglas moved with the thing of velvet and fairy wax in his arms, stopping to hide in pools of shadow under trembling trees, alone. He listened, looking back. A sound of running mice. Tom burst around the corner and pulled up beside him.

"Doug, I stayed behind. I was afraid Mr. Black was, well ... then he began to come alive ... swearing.... Oh, Doug, if he catches you with his dummy! What will our folks think? Stealing!"

"Quiet!"

They listened to the moonlit river of street behind them. "Now, Tom, you can come help me rescue her, but you can't if you say 'dummy' or talk loud or drag along as so much dead weight."

"I'll help!" Tom assumed half the weight. "My gosh, she's light."

"She was real young when Napoleon .. ." Douglas stopped. "Old people are heavy. That's how you tell."

"But why? Tell me why all this running around for her, Doug. Why?"

Why? Douglas blinked and stopped. Things had gone so fast, he had run so far and his blood was so high, he had long since forgotten why. Only now, as they moved again along the sidewalk, shadows like black butterflies on their eyelids, the thick smell of dusty wax on their hands, did he have time to reason why, and, slowly, speak of it, his voice as strange as moonlight.

"Tom, a couple weeks ago, I found out I was alive. Boy, did I hop around. And then, just last week in the movies, I found out I'd have to die someday. I never thought of that, really. And all of a sudden it was like knowing the Y.M.C.A. was going to be shut up forever or school, which isn't so bad as we like to think, being over for good, and all the peach trees outside town shriveling up and the ravine being filled in and no place to play ever again and me sick in bed for as long as I could think and everything dark, and I got scared. So, I don't know; what I want to do is this: help Mme. Tarot. I'll hide her a few weeks or months while I look up in the black-magic books at the library how to undo spells and get her out of the wax to run around in the world again after all this time. And she'll be so grateful, she'll lay out the cards with all those devils and cups and swords and bones on them and tell me what sump holes to walk around and when to stay in bed on certain Thursday afternoons. I'll live forever, or next thing to it."

"You don't believe that."

"Yes, I do, or most of it. Watch it now, here's the ravine. We'll cut down through by the dump heap, and ..."

Tom stopped. Douglas had stopped him. The boys did not turn, but they heard the heavy clubbing blows of feet behind them, each one like a shotgun set off in the bed of a dry lake not far away. Someone was shouting and cursing.

"Tom, you let him follow you!"

As they ran a giant hand lifted and tossed them aside, and Mr. Black was there laying to left and right and the boys, crying out, on the grass, saw the raving man, spittle showering the air from his biting teeth and widened lips. He held the witch by her neck and one arm and glared with fiery eyes down on the boys.

"This is mine! To do with like I want. What you mean, taking her? Caused all my trouble--money, business, everything. Here's what I think of her!"

"No!" shouted Douglas.

But like a great iron catapult, the huge arms hoisted the figure up against the moon and flourished and wheeled the fragile body upon the stars and let it fly out with a curse and a rustling wind down the air into the ravine to tumble and take avalanches of junk with her into white dust and cinders.