Charlie Smith - Ginny Gall

I remember him well, the older man said. He came up here eventually to live with his sister, aint that right?

Yessuh.

They sighed and made soft sounds like swallowed humming and Delvin listened as the stories went around. The old man told a story about a magician who kept losing things. You know that magic’s just a trick, he said, but this fellow — lived over just outside Birmingham in a little crossroads settlement I believe it was, called Cherrytown, and he had a magic act at the Gifford show.

What you mean he started losing things? Albert said.

These objects that he made disappear, for his show act, he got so he couldn’t bring em back. First, so they said, it was a blue rubber ball. You know how they wave a cloth or some such thing and it’ll disappear? Well he waved his cloth over this blue ball and it disappeared, but when he went to wave it again it wouldn’t come back.

Where was it? Albert asked.

That was the thing. He didn’t know. He looked everywhere for that ball but it didn’t show up. He wondered about it, so they said, but he didn’t think too much of it. Maybe it had rolled off under the couch or something. Then a Mason jar filled with honeybees disappeared and was lost forever. Same way as the rubber ball. He waved the cloth over the jar and presto it was gone, but then it wouldn’t come back. That jar filled with bees — he’d punched holes in the lid so they could breathe and so the customers could hear the bees buzzing — was gone for good.

Haw, Sterling said. It had to be somewhere.

Well, where was it? Nobody saw it again. He tried the trick again, with a new silver dollar and. . wham!. . it vanished and was never heard from again. He couldn’t find it in any of the pockets it usually wound up in. He tried the trick on a little hairless dog and the dog vanished. Gone for good, though his little girl, whose dog it was, said she sometimes could hear the dog’s squeaky little bark, ghostly like, as she lay in her bed at night. Well, he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know whether he had discovered a blessing or a curse. He tried it on a bushel of fresh peaches and lost all the cobblers his wife was planning to make for the lawn supper over at the church. He tried it on a pile of trash in the backyard and found a lazy man’s way to work.

It was gone too, Delvin said.

Like it had never been there. He decided that this was a power that he had to be careful with. It was too important to use as a trick. He wouldn’t use it at all. But then a thought began to come on him. He started to wonder if it would work on a person. He’d never got along with his wife. She was a fine woman, but she had a sharp tongue, as the wives of magicians are said to have. She was on him night and day. Even with the new power he was still not bringing any income into the family circle. His wife began to nag him to use the power in his act. He would become the best known magician around, and maybe the richest. He pointed out that not being able to bring back what you made disappear cut into the value of the trick. That didn’t matter to his wife. She went right on picking at him. Plenty of folks, she said, want to get rid of things. Think about all that trash, those busted wagons and such and old barrels you see piled up in people’s yards. You want me to be a garbage collector? I want you to collect a few dollars, she said. Well, finally he decided that he would use the trick one more time. He’d use it to get rid of his wife.

Albert guffawed.

Yes, thass right, the old man said, bending toward his listeners. He licked his narrow black lips. As his wife sat sleeping in her porch rocker one Sunday afternoon he took out his cloth, so they said, and with his daughter and his daughter’s new fyce pup watching, he waved it over his wife. The old man paused. Could you get me another lemon drink there, Sally? he asked the proprietress. And sat back in his chair.

Damnation, Sterling said, what happened? Did she disappear?

Naw.

It didn’t work?

Oh, it worked.

But she didn’t vanish?

Naw. He did.

Albert guffawed as Sterling sputtered. He half-raised a fist in mock attack. You rascal.

It’s a true story, said the old man, smiling behind white store teeth.

There were other stories. A man in khaki clothes, juggling boxes of 20 Mule Team Borax, joined them and told a story of his uncle who walked from California to Alabama, traveling through the desert for hundreds of miles carrying water in two army canteens. He said his uncle, Uncle Dorrit, told him that one night the stars filled the sky so thick they looked like they were poured out of a bucket. They formed themselves as he lay watching them. Took shapes, like clouds on a summer day. They made shapes of houses and horses and absent relatives and the shape of a huge angel right at the top of the sky. The day after this happened his uncle came on a donkey walking loose in the scrub and he rode this donkey through New Mexico and across Texas through the byways and little hamlets and across Louisiana, through Mississippi into Alabama and all the way to his home on the Jemeson farm out from Dothan.

I thought you said he walked, Delvin said.

I did, but I misremembered. He only walked part of the way.

The man in the bathrobe, Albert, told a story of a two-headed child who strangled one of the heads so he could have the whole body to himself.

The others laughed, but Morris said the story was true. The man told the family that the other head — his brother — had died during the night. They had to cut the dead head off and they buried it in an apple crate. But the man felt so much remorse for the murder that he fled his home and disappeared. It was said that he traveled around the country by himself, taking a job here and there — bean picker in California, deliveryman in Kansas for a dairy — but never staying any place long. In some places he pretended to be his brother, even though no one in the place knew either of them. He called himself by his brother’s name and wore the kind of clothes his brother preferred. At night in his room — he stayed usually in a rooming house — people could hear what sounded like two people talking. Sometimes they’d argue and sometimes one begged forgiveness from the other, a forgiveness the other would never give, and sometimes they would sing a duet. How that could be no one knew, but two voices is what some people said they heard, singing old songs like “Wonder Where Is Good Old Daniel” and “’Buked and Scorned.” Almost always the old jubilees, folks said. He was a good worker, people said. He had a habit of leaning his head over to one side, like he was resting it on something, and when he did this a wistful, tearful look would come into his face. He never stayed in any job long, never stayed long in any place. One day you’d see him on the road walking toward the next town. Or maybe you wouldn’t see him at all. The housekeeper would come into his room and find the bed made and the towel and washcloth neatly folded and dust tracks on the floor where he tried to sweep the room clean. Usually there was a note and the note always said the same thing. My brother and I thank you for our stay . It was said he left the rural life and moved to the city where he took jobs in restaurants, working in sculleries washing dishes and such. Some people in the cities had heard of the two-headed man, some had even heard that one of the heads had died, but nobody suspected this man of being that person. It was said that in the beginning he lived in rooming houses, even in a small apartment a few blocks from the river, but then, so it was said, he began to appear in flops and missions where often his few belongings were stolen and his wistful look was taken for a sign of weakness and he was sometimes beaten up. He moved to the streets, where he lived in alleys and parks. On summer nights sometimes you could see him sitting by the river. Some said he had a little dog, a spotted mongrel, that followed him everywhere. Others said he had no dog. Eventually no one saw him again. Once or twice some reporter, having got wind of an old story that was said to involve such a man, something overheard in a newsman’s bar, would look for him, but he was not found. It was said that one summer night — when Castor and Pollux were in their ascendancy — he slipped into the river and was carried away.