Authors: Peter Straub
Tom nodded.
'Come on up and shake my hand. Please.'
Mystified, Tom stood and went toward the magician, who slipped off the table and went to the edge of the stage. Herbie Butter bent down to take his hand; but instead, his fingers closed about Tom's wrist. Tom jerked his head up and looked into the white anonymous face. He could see nothing of Coleman Collins in it.
'For your benefit.' The fingers tightened around his wrist. 'Everything you will see here, and you will see many odd things, comes from your own mind — from within you. From the reaction of your mind with mine. None of it exists elsewhere.'
Herbie Butter released Tom's wrist. 'For three months, for as long as you stay,
this
is the world for you. Which you will help to create.' He smiled. 'That is one of the meanings of the King of the Cats.'
Yes,
Tom thought.
'Give yourself to it. I ask you because you are one of the rare ones who can.'
Yes I am,
Tom thought. He was aware of Del giving him a sharp look.
'And you are alone this summer. Your mother goes to England tomorrow. Her cousin Julia is getting married to . . . a barrister, is it? And after the wedding, your mother will travel in England? Isn't that right?'
'But how . . . ?'
'So this is the summer of Tom Flanagan's growth as well as the summer of my unburdening. You are a very special boy, Tom. As you showed me last night.'
He would have been worried by the expression now on Del's face, which was dark and considering, but he was looking into the white asexual face and seeing Coleman Collins there — the robust Collins of the night before. 'Thank you,' he said.
13
'Shall we have some fun?' the magician said. 'It will be necessary to close your eyes.' '
Tom shut his eyes, still feeling the roughness of Collins' fingers about his wrist, still glowing from the praise, and heard the magician say, 'This is Level Two.'
He snapped his eyes open, remembering the wrecked train and angry with himself for being duped so easily: Del, he supposed, had opened his eyes too. He turned to see, but Del avoided his eyes.
They were still in the big theater. On the stage beforethem was not the single table, but a large complicated wooden construction like an illustration from a book — so foreign, it seemed to Tom. Some tinny happy music played over them: to two fifteen-year-olds in 1959, this peppy simple jazz was irresistibly like the soundtracks to the old cartoons they saw on television on Saturday mornings. The building was at once complicated and comfortable, full of odd angles and tiny windows. On the big front window had been painted in black: apothecary.
'Well, let's look inside,' Collins said; now he wore half-glasses and a striped apron. His face shone bare of powder — he looked like everybody's favorite old uncle.
The building swung open, turning itself inside out. The sides pulled back and revealed rows of bottles and jars, a serving counter, a high black register.
'You wouldn't happen to require any cough medicine, my young men?'
A row of jars labeled
cough syrup
coughed and bounced on their shelf. 'Sleeping pills?'
Another row of bottles snored loudly — almost sending up
zzzz
in white balloons. 'Reducing tonic?' Two bottles shrank to half their size. 'Rubber bands?'
A box of rubber bands on the counter stood up and played cheery music: the same tinny happy jazz that had begun as soon as, they had closed their eyes. Tom saw the bell of a trumpet, the slide of a trombone . . . 'Vanishing cream?'
A jar next to the rubber bands slowly disappeared. Del was giggling beside him; and he giggled too. 'Greeting cards?'
The corny joke fulfilled itself: A rack of cards before the counter shouted 'Hi!' and 'Hey, how you doin'?' 'Hello, neighbor!' 'God be with you!' 'Get well soon!' 'Have a good trip!' 'Take it easy!'
'Bon-jour!' 'Shalom!'
'Come on up and take your seats for the boxing match,' the kindly old pharmacist called to them.
As they left their seats, the yelling cards and trumpet-playing rubber bands and coughing jars and snoringbottles swung outward. In the middle of the stage a roped-in boxing ring was occupied by a fat cartoon man with bristling jowls and a flat, malevolent head. Boos erupted from the persistent soundtrack. The man grimaced with cartoon ferocity, beat his chest, bulged his tattooed biceps.
'Bluto,' Del said in delight, and Tom answered, 'No, I think . . . ' He could not remember what he thought.
A bell rang with a clear commanding insistence, and the kindly old pharmacist, now wearing a flat tweed cap and a vibrant checked jacket, called out, 'Hurry and take your seats for the first round.' They scrambled up onto the stage and got into metal camp chairs placed just outside the ring.
'It's the big fight, you know, the dirty scoundrel's comeuppance,' said the boxing fan. He had a monocle and protruding teeth, and a voice faintly, ridiculously English. 'Now, our hero is somewhere about. . . ah, yes. Chap's a trifle late.'
A very familiar rabbit bounded into the ring and clasped his hands together over his head to the sound of mass cheering. The villain glowered. He spat on his gloves and smacked them together. The rabbit, who was nearly as tall as the man, darted toward the villain and clasped his arms around the obese waist. He bounced a couple of feet off the canvas, then rebounded once, and then took off so powerfully that he and the villain sailed straight into the air. Tom craned his neck: the pair of them were still going up. They were just a dot in the sky. Now they were plummeting down. They were going to crash. The rabbit produced a frilled parasol and floated back to the canvas; the villain splatted down and was as flat as a dime.
He rose up and shook out his two-dimensional body. His flesh miraculously plumped. He slavered with rage, with the brute need to punish. The rabbit circled round him, lightly dancing on his big rear paws, landing short but stinging blows. The tattooed villain cocked back a fist suddenly as large as a ham, and brought it around in a whooshing haymaker. All his upper body bulged with effort. The breeze flattened the rabbit's ears; and the wind from the punch tore at Tom's hair, tugged at his shirt.
More than the villain's upper body must have bulged.
The rear of his boxing shorts split with an awful rending sound, revealing polka-dot underpants. The man's face flashed bright red, red as a stop sign, and he bent forward and clasped his gloved hands over his outthrust bottom; he minced pigeon-toed around the ring, face flashing like a neon sign.
'Bit cheeky, what?' asked the boxing fan. 'But I fancy . . . '
Bugs, who had momentarily disappeared, now returned astride a bicycle. He wore a frock coat, a topper like the Mad Hatter's, and swung a bell in his hand. The bicycle bobbed from side to side in rhythm with the ringing of the bell. A sign around his neck read: Stychen Tyme, Instant Tailor.
Tyme.
Tom thought. Now, who . . . ? He remembered. The Reverend Mr. Tyme, speaking pompous nonsense at his father's funeral. April; the brisk wind blowing sand over the graves, bobbling the flowers. His body went cold. He was aware, as if a great distance from his own feelings, that he was horrified. It could not have been an accidental reference.
Bugs wheeled around the tattooed man, weaving a large needle this way and that. Occasionally he touched his fingers before his face and nodded, just as the Reverend Dawson Tyme had done: Tom's outrage broke. As Bugs sewed up the villain in a cocoon of thread, he was giving a running parody of the minister's manner. He bobbed his head, shook his fuzzy jowls, looked chummy and superior and pontificating all at once — almost, Tom could smell the little minty puffs of breath.
When the tattooed Bluto
(Snail?)
was invisible, tied up like a wriggling worm, Bugs jumped from his bike and set to work on it with whirring, flying hands; in a second, it stood upright in a single column, the seat supporting an open book: a lectern. Bugs bowed, knitted his hands, preached a silent sermon over the bound body — his gestures were hilariously oily. Tom felt a vast and subversive relief, seeing the Reverend Mr. Tyme parodied so deliriously.
'Awful old bore, isn't he?' asked the boxing fan.
'Yes. Yes,' Tom said.
This
is what magic can do, it came to him: magic existed in the teeth of all the
hypocrites and bores, in the teeth of all the proprieties too. He had scarcely ever felt so good.
Bugs's hands went a flurrying over the bicycle again: a hammer rang, nuts and bolts flew out. Sparks sprayed comically overhead. When he raised it up, he held a rifle. Bugs ripped off the frock coat, turned it inside out, and it was a military uniform. A bugle zipped from a side pocket, and Bugs blew taps. The rifle went to his shoulder, he sighted over the bicycle seat, and fired a salute. Then he jammed the rifle barrel-first into the ground, jerked it sharply toward him, and the wrapped body fell through a trapdoor.
The rabbit danced clog-footed for a moment, shook the rifle until it became a bicycle again, mounted and rode off until he was a speck in the misty green distance.
'Hope you enjoyed it,' Cole Collins said.
Tom turned euphorically toward the boxing fan and saw that now he was the magician again, in his striped suit. He looked tired and jovial: any elderly uncle showing nephew and nephew's friend a good time.
'I see you did,' Collins said. He extended his hand and set it carefully on Tom's head. 'You wonderful child.'
Tom's expression of joy turned rigid.
'Do you know what day it is?'
Tom shook his head, and the magician gently lifted his hand.
'It is Sunday. I would be very remiss if I did not include some religious instruction in this little show. On Sundays, it is always best to display a little piety.'
He clapped his hands, and the wing of the set before them began to revolve. The music which had buzzed cheerily about them altered; settled into a smoother, still pumping rhythm. Tom began to tap his foot, and the magician nodded approvingly.
The set revolved completely, showing a long refectory table with wine goblets and plates; the table sat before a window showing a long green Italian distance, a brilliant sunset. Thirteen robed men sat behind the table, their heads and bodies in attitudes as familiar as the rabbit, but not as immediately recognizable.