She did not fully release her grip, though she let him hang at arm’s reach so she could look at him. “Since this morning? And this is the first I’m seeing of you?”
“It’s been a busy morning. Look, I’ve met someone new. Her name is Alice.”
Mrs. Pearson wiped her hands on her apron and offered me one to shake. “I can’t recall if we’ve formally met, or if you’ve only bought a snack or two—and rushed off to your next set of lessons. Mabel and Dr. Floyd have really been running you ragged.”
I smiled and shook her hand. “This is our first proper introduction, and I’m here to learn, so the lessons are a welcome necessity. Speaking of, Mr. Fine has declared that I need to learn more than just seminar subjects. He says it’s time I learned some secrets.”
“About the rum and cards? Oh, honey—those are hardly secrets.”
“Well, I didn’t know about them until just now!” I exclaimed. “And until Mr. Fine—”
“David,” he corrected me.
“Until David put forth his rather persistent invitation, no one else had mentioned it, either.”
“You’re new here, that’s all.” She shook her head and waved away any other explanation. “Also, you’re the pastor and Mabel’s new pet, and they probably wanted to keep you to themselves.”
“I’m nobody’s pet.”
“I’m only teasing.” She went to a back door that I’d assumed went to a stockroom, but I’d assumed incorrectly. “David, don’t make too much of a mess. Don’t let things get sloppy.”
“Do I ever?”
“Never, dear boy. That’s why I’m leaving you to it.”
She ushered us through the door, then closed it behind us—saying in parting, “When you’re ready to go, leave through the rear. I don’t want to hear about this from your father, you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am, as always.”
• • •
SO it turns out, Cassadaga has a speakeasy.
• • •
THE speakeasy at Candy’s is only big enough to hold three card tables and a bar, but that bar runs the full length of the short wall, and it’s nothing to sneeze at. The lighting is low, the décor is suitably subdued for a quiet operation, and there’s a jar on the bar’s counter full of money. Beside it is a sign that reads, “Spirit is watching.”
“Everything here works on the honor system,” David explained. “You make and drink your own beverages, because there’s no one on staff to serve you. But you’d better be fair about it, or everyone will know.”
“How?” I asked. Jesus, God in heaven—I was full of stupid questions today.
He raised one eyebrow and squared off the other one. “Really?”
“No, not really. The town’s full of clairvoyants. Kindly forget that I asked. Now, where’s the bourbon?”
“You’re sure I can’t persuade you to have—”
“No. What else have you got on hand?”
“Very well.” He went behind the bar with a heavy sigh and reached up to a shelf I could’ve never grabbed—not even with my tippy-fingers. Bless him forever, he pulled down a bottle of Maker’s Mark.
“Be still my heart . . .”
“It’s for medicinal purposes,” he told me with a grin. “The government lets them distill—they have a contract with the military or something.”
“This is . . . this is the greatest day of my life. Since I came here. Really, I’ve often thought that bourbon was the only thing missing, or Cassadaga would be heaven on earth.”
“Just wait until July rolls around. You’ll be cooking in your own juices, even after the sun goes down.” He poured himself a big slug and then made one for me. “You’re sure you don’t want to try the rum drink? We’ve got more rum than you could shake a stick at. This stuff I have to smuggle in from up north.”
“Maybe for the next round.”
Behind me, someone laughed. “The next round? I knew I liked this girl.” She was sitting at a table alone, nursing a mug full of something that probably wasn’t coffee.
“Hey there, Sister.” David beamed. “While I’m back here, can I set you up another one?”
“No, dear boy. I’m fine for now. I have to go lead a prayer group in another hour, so I’d best refrain. Hello again, Alice,” she said to me.
“Hello . . . Francine? Is that right?”
“It is correct indeed! You can call me that, or call me Sister, or call me Miss Getty, whatever suits you best. Come on, join me over here. There are no cards, but we can toast what little I’ve left in my glass.”
I saw only a few other people in the darkened room, but I didn’t recognize any of them. David said a few more hellos, but I took the seat next to the Irishwoman, who seemed genuinely happy to see me. Maybe she was genuinely happy to see everyone, because she beamed at David, too, when he pulled out a chair and joined us.
Three little candles in the center of the table provided most of the lighting, so we really did look like three witches sitting around a cauldron. A tiny cauldron. One that smelled faintly of paraffin and lavender, for someone had mixed some herb oil into the wax.
“I had no idea this existed. Does everyone know about it?” I asked.
Francine nodded. “I’d be shocked if they didn’t. Why? Did Mabel give you the old ‘Oh, there’s no real hooch any closer than DeLand’ story?”
“She did,” I said, and I hoped that the darkness of the place concealed some of my glowering.
“Oh, don’t get too upset about it. They’re only trying to protect you, and if they told you there was no liquor in Cassadaga, they’re technically correct,” David informed me. “We’re on the far side of the railroad tracks, and therefore we’re outside the campground boundaries. From a strictly pedantic standpoint.”
The geographic boundary hadn’t occurred to me. “So the camp is only”—I tried to picture it—“a handful of blocks, over that way?”
Francine nodded. “The camp property begins at the gates, beside the hotel. It includes everything from there to the lakes, and north along the hills—including the structures around the water. There’s not much to the place, and it’s especially noticeable in the dead of summer, when the snowbirds have all flown home. It only seems bigger right now because there must be a thousand visitors plumping up the population . . . but most of them will leave when the season turns.”
David held up his glass, calling for a toast. “But here, now, we clandestine three . . .”
“I count eight.” Francine cocked her head at the others—four men playing cards at the far table, and one woman alone, reading a book by candlelight and sipping a glass of wine.
“We clandestine eight,” he corrected himself. “We must toast to something. What will it be?”
I couldn’t think of anything, but Francine said, “To springtime!”
David declined to agree. “That’s silly.”
“Then . . . to new members of our little community!”
He nodded. “I like that one better.” But then as he brought his glass forward for a clink, he lowered his voice and leaned in so that the small flames lit him up from beneath his chin. “To new friends, and to secrets shared, and to candles, and cards. To flames, and to fortunes.” He tipped the glass forward so it knocked against mine.
Francine was game. She put hers up as well, and everyone clinked all around out of solidarity, except for the woman with the book. She only raised her glass in our general direction, without looking up from her reading.
I downed the bourbon happily and let it warm me from the throat down. I hadn’t realized I was chilly—it was the first time I could recall being cold since I arrived—but the alcohol took care of it in short order.
Then I sat up, startled. I almost spilled the drink, but I have better manners than that.
“What is it?” Francine asked.
/>
“I almost forgot: I was going to go see a movie.”
“You were planning to skip Gwen Millard’s ‘Philosophy of Modern Mediumship’?” David asked with big, accusing eyes. He wasn’t in the least bit serious.
“I was going to flee from it as though it were the devil.” I grinned back at him, though the admission left a funny feeling in my stomach.
Francine leaned forward and patted my arm. “No, dear. Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Feel guilty. You’re not here out of charity, and this isn’t a university—where your scholarship depends upon some grade or some continued performance. You’re in, don’t you see? You’re in the greatest club of all—a club full of people who have no rules except to do no harm, and help when able. Any puritanical leanings are strictly social, not spiritual. This is only a card room, and these are only drinks. Run toward drunkenness and problematic behavior, and you’ll get a talking-to, but mind your manners and take your vices in moderation, and even David’s father will look the other way.”
“Is he a stickler?” I asked.
David sighed dramatically. “Oh yes. He’s the worst sort of teetotaler—the sort who thinks that abstinence works for him, so it must surely work for everyone.”
Francine bobbed her head like she knew something I didn’t. “Abstinence of any sort is good for some and bad for others. Everything is relative, at a certain point.”
I must’ve frowned at her, not because I was upset, but because I was confused. “I thought you . . .”
She answered before I could ask: “Yes, you heard right, I’m sure. I was a nun, and I believed in absolutes. But now I am not, and now I don’t. I’m still a Catholic, but what can you do?”
“How does that work?” I wanted to know. I didn’t know much about Catholics, but I knew they must be sticklers. Probably the worst sort, like Oscar Fine (if his son could be believed).
“It’s very simple,” she said. “I believe there is truth to be found in the church of my fathers. But I do not believe it holds all of the truth—much less the only truth.”
Before she could say more, David hoisted his glass again. “I can drink to that. To all of the truth, whatever it looks like, and wherever it leads us. May we follow it wherever it leads, like the sunflower follows the light.”
Yes, yes, and yes again.
I could drink to that, too.
12
TOMÁS CORDERO
Ybor City, Florida
SOMETHING CHANGED YESTERDAY, and I don’t know if it’s my fault or not—but it probably is.
I’ve pursued this phenomenon, and welcomed it, and invited it into my life. I’ve called, and called, and chased after Evelyn, and she has responded. She is listening. But I’m beginning to fear that something else is listening, too.
I can’t control this. (I was never meant to control this.)
• • •
YESTERDAY I went to the post office to collect some stamps, and I stopped by the market for fruit and jam, since I promised Emilio that I would treat myself. (I treated myself as promised this time. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I lie.) I also visited the library to return a book, and paused to buy a newspaper before catching the trolley back to my neighborhood and walking the rest of the way home.
I was not gone more than ninety minutes.
In ninety minutes, something terrible happened.
I came home to find fire trucks again, with their hoses unspooling and their rubber-jacketed men shouting. My heart stopped, jolted, leaped up into my throat, and sat there choking me.
At first I could not see, for the smoke and the trucks blocked my way. I pushed forward and was stopped by a heavyset colored man wearing suspenders. He was holding his mask with one hand and using it to direct traffic away from the scene. With the other hand, he used a handkerchief to wipe sweat and ashes from his face.
(His mask looked like the mask I used to wear.)
“Please,” I begged him. “You must let me pass—that’s my home!”
“I’m sorry, sir—we can’t let anyone near the fire.”
“No, please, you must . . .” I craned my neck to see past him, around the trucks, through the smoke. “You don’t understand how I understand fire. You must let me . . .” I did not finish. The sea breeze took a breath and blew upon my block—scattering the billowing blackness. Hot cinders fluttered in the currents, singeing my hair and the exposed skin of my neck. They settled on my clothes and left small holes I would not find for hours.
The house that so brightly and wildly burned was not mine—it was the one next door.
“Mrs. Vasquez . . . ,” I breathed.
The fireman heard me over the bustle of men waging war against the flames. “I beg your pardon?”
“It’s not . . . that’s not my house. I thought it was, but that’s my neighbor, Carmella Vasquez. Where is she? Is she safe?”
“I’m sorry, sir.” He might as well have been reading it from a script. It didn’t tell me anything. The fire and the trucks and the rushing men in the rubber clothes and the flapping smack of hoses being rolled, unrolled, and deployed—the spraying water, the barking of a spotted dog—there was too much noise for me to read his tone and decide if it meant anything. There was too much distraction. It looked too much like a battlefield.
• • •
IT felt too much like war.
My head. It was filling with smoke. My headache. My shell shock. War strain. Who cared what it was called? My senses were overwhelmed. I thought I might faint, only I didn’t feel like fainting. I felt like exploding.
• • •
I took a step back, away from the fireman and to his right. I wasn’t trying to push past him; he was only doing his job, and he was correct to keep presumed civilians like myself away from the danger. I was only trying to see my house and assure myself that it still stood.
I craned my neck to see.
Yes, it was upright.
My walls that faced the Vasquez residence were black with soot, so black there was no chance of any pattern presenting itself later, I didn’t think. (How awful of me, that this was the first thing I wondered. What a horror I am.) The firemen had run a hose between our houses, and alongside the other one that was nearest. They were holding the blaze in check, doing their best to keep the damage to the single home.
“Mrs. Vasquez?” I called at the top of my lungs. “Mrs. Vasquez!”
I scanned the growing crowd for her face. I looked at the fire trucks, hoping to see her huddled under a blanket, wet and red-eyed but alive and well. Frightened and stunned, but present. Madly, I looked for her. I looked for Felipe, and every time the spotted fire dog barked, I jumped.
But through the noise, through the smoke, through the awful warmth of the fire and the din of battlefield memories in my head . . . I saw no sign of either one of them.
I stood amid the havoc (of the scene and of my own mind) until the fireman came back with his cohorts—and together they ushered everyone back, away, to the far side of the walkway where the smoldering cinders did not rain down so often. The police arrived, and there was more yelling, more instructions being hollered over the crackle and sizzle of a house collapsing into coals.
I stood amid the havoc, neither soldier nor victim. I was part of a crowd. An audience and nothing more.
We huddled and clustered together in fear and concern, and I recognized only a few faces. Many were unfamiliar to me. They must have been rushing past, heading home or elsewhere, when they saw the fire and heard the commotion. Human curiosity is disgusting, I thought, even as I could not look away.
I told myself that mine was a pure curiosity—a keen self-interest, since my home was only feet away from the Vasquez bonfire. My curiosity was virtuous. These other people were gawkers; they were the scavengers who pick through corpses when the fro
nt goes quiet. They are the ones who take wallets and buttons and photos from the dead, and pocket them, and sell them in the quiet stores where no one is shooting and no one is dying.
I hated them. Irrationally but forcefully, I hated them all.
• • •
IT was midafternoon, but the sky was darkened with the black, greasy haze I knew all too well. I remembered the taste of it in the back of my mouth. I remembered the sting of it, when I blinked and blinked and blinked. I could feel my eyes going crimson as I stood there, unable to leave and unable to look at anything else.
The police pushed us all back a little farther. They made us clear the street so that another truck could come through, and another police car, too. A jaunty little ambulance arrived, and that might be a good sign? Only the living require such services, or so I lied to myself. Even as I remembered how they brought the dead off the fields and loaded them up in those jaunty little ambulances—how they stacked the corpses like cordwood—I lied to myself, because it was so much easier than accepting the truth.
I did not (for a single honest moment) think that Mrs. Vasquez was alive.
“It’s the end of the world,” I said under my breath, for no real reason except to keep on lying.
My house was being saved. The block would not go up in smoke—only the house of Mrs. Vasquez, whom I searched for still, even as I was confident of the futility. There was no trace of her in the crowd. No chance of her face hiding away in some kind soul’s shoulder, where she cried as the sky burned down around her.
I don’t know how I knew, but I knew: She was inside her house.
And when the roof fell in, casting up sparks and flames a dozen feet higher—and hotter, and flush with the fresh air—I knew that was the last of her. I could only cross myself, like many others were doing. I could only offer up a little prayer that Mrs. Vasquez and her dog were long gone to some cool, breezy afterlife by the time the timbers came down and the walls cracked open like an overboiled egg.
• • •
FINALLY the worst was over.