Magic Creek

MAGIC CREEK

By Vicki Williams

Copyright © 2012 by Vicki Williams

Smashwords Edition

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Discover other titles by Vicki Williams at Smashwords.com

Sociopath?: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/126930

To Love Or To Be Loved: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/146893

Table of Contents

Magic Early 1800s

Magic – The Journey

Tory – The Move

Tory – The Kitten

Magic – Winter

Tory and Magic

Magic – The Last Years

About the Author

Magic - Early 1800's

I know reincarnation is so because I remember my life as Magic here on this very spot. Where a large industrial city in the nation’s mid-section now sprawls was once a wild and mostly uninhabited territory, the land that Magic shared with the wildcat, Creed, and the moon-silver pony.

I began that life as an only child of privilege in Philadelphia. My father, Noah, was a silversmith of some repute. My mother was the darling of her social set. We lived in a large brick house in an upper-class neighborhood. I have not been back there but I assume it still stands and that its solid Federal brick bulk would qualify it as a mansion today, even as it did then.

I was a changeling child, not at all like my serious father, who questioned none of the morals or mores of his day. To my father, the laws must all be fair because they were the laws. Our leaders must all be wise because they were our leaders. My father was content. He resisted change, believing things were as they were because it was God’s will. His own good fortune only proved his point. By contrast, even as a toddler, I seemed to rebel against the restrictions that bound my life.

My mother was all golden curls, amethyst eyes, cameo skin and trilling laughter. My father loved her inordinately. If she yearned for furnishings imported from Britain or frocks brought over from Paris, then he would work day and night to see that her every desire was fulfilled.

I was also my mother’s opposite. Sometimes, only half-teasing, she called me her dark devil’s child, suggesting that Lucifer himself had stolen into her womb, replacing his own offspring with the golden babe that should have been hers. My hair was thick and black and resisted rags and curling devices. My skin turned brown as a walnut when only briefly exposed to the sun. This occasioned some of my earliest arguments with my mother as she tried in vain to force me into hats and veils and other coverings to protect the milk pale skin sought after by elite Philadelphia females. I loved the sun and once alone outdoors, I quickly shed any artificial layers put between me and it. My eyes were so brown as to be almost black. Them eerie, starin’ witches’ eyes, my nurse, Hetty called them.

Hetty was the last in a series of nurses my parents employed to care for me. Most of them left because they said I was too much for them to handle. I required constant watching to keep me from sneaking out of the nursery and into the back garden. Even into the early morning, as everyone else in the household slept, I had no fear of the dark and would silently slip outdoors to sit on the step where I would listen to the stirrings of bugs and birds and bats and marvel at the brilliance of the stars. One nursemaid, whose name I forget, fainted when I came to her room with a large snake wrapped around my neck. Another, a German girl, left when she found me high in the top of an elm tree and I refused to come down even when she first ordered, then pleaded, and finally sat on the ground and wept in the fear that she would be blamed if her charge fell to her death.

Hetty, who was old and black and enormously fat, finally stayed, not because she loved me, which she didn’t, but because she adored my mother.

Doan ya’ll know whut a trial ya’ll bein’ to yoah sweet Mama, Chile? It was a question I heard over and over from Hetty. The fact was that I did know but it bothered me not at all.

My mother and I were sunshine and shadow. Only the softest white clouds ever crossed my mother’s sky. Meanwhile, my child’s mind unerringly focused on cruelty and injustice and it seemed to me that humankind was the sponsor of most of what was ugly in the world.

I was only about seven when I begged my mother to do something about our neighbor, Mr Parrett, and his dog, Job. Job was a watchdog, turned loose at night to guard the grounds of the Parrett home. Mr Parrett lived in fear that some poor citizen, envious of his prosperity, would sneak in at night to steal some of his wife’s fine jewelry or his expensive silver pieces. In order to encourage Job in his meanness, Mr Parrett underfed him so that he remained always on the verge of starvation. He kicked Job whenever he passed by to keep him in a state of rage so that should he ever encounter a stranger in his night time rounds, he would launch himself instantly to an attack. I even heard Papa saying that Mr Parrett sprinkled what food he allowed Job with gun powder which he believed made the dog more vicious yet.

As often as I could get away with it, I sneaked into our pantry at night to steal whatever was available to give to Job. This required oh-so-quietly unlatching the back door, crossing our vast rear lawn and going through the common gate between our property and the Parrett house.

Poor Job, red and rawboned and slat-thin, knew me well so that when he detected the creaking of the gate, he would come silently and sit before me, patiently waiting for his treat. I had to be careful about what I took so that no one would notice my petty thefts. Some nights it was only a hunk of day-old bread dipped in fat grease. Sometimes, I pulled as much meat off the ham as I thought I could get away with. It didn’t matter to Job as he was grateful for a chicken neck or even just some few leaves of cooked cabbage.

On one particular evening, I saw that Job’s ear was bloody and swollen. Evidently one of Mr Parrett’s kicks had landed there. I sat on the ground with his sad red head on my lap and gently rubbed his other ear and while I sat, I decided that I would go to Mama. Surely, she would think of something that could be done to help Job for how could we all stand knowing a creature was being abused only yards from us.

But, of course, Mama told me that it was none of our business how Mr Parrett treated his dog. She was, in fact, horrified that I’d been going next door where I might have had my throat ripped out by Job.

Mother, he isn’t truly vicious but only hungry and mistreated. He likes me because he knows I mean him no harm.

Still, Darling, we can’t be poking our nose into the affairs of our neighbors. She smoothed my long black hair from my face with a sigh. Whatever will I do with you, Daughter? You need to learn that you can’t right all the wrongs of the world. Worrying about such things will only give you frown lines as you grow older.

Job’s ear became infected. Within days, it puffed and seeped and stank. Now, at night, he didn’t even care for the food I brought, although my company seemed to sooth him. Finally, Mr Parrett shot him. I prayed he would not get another dog, vowing that if he did, I would take it away and let it go on the street where it might at least have chance of finding a kinder owner. But no other dog appeared. Mr Parrett told Papa that Job had not been worth the food he ate and that he would henceforth make do with the rifle that stood at the side of his bed for protection.

When I was ten, I leaped out of our carriage to berate a shopkeeper who had swung his broom at a slum child and sent him sprawling into the street, calling him a worthless little gutter rat. My father was mortified. He told my mother that either she took me in hand herself or he would do it. So, I was summoned into my mother’s elegant rose and gold sitting room.

I knew when I saw her seated in the ivory chair before her secretary instead of reclining on her favorite fainting couch that this was going to be a more serious than usual discussion.

She began firmly. Your father will not tolerate the kind of behavior you exhibited today. Young girls from prominent families simply do not rant like fish wives on the street. If any of your Papa’s colleagues had seen this, this fiasco today, you’d have been the talk of his gentlemen’s club. And, here she thought she was issuing the coup de grace, how will you ever find a suitable husband if you continue to behave in such a common manner?

Mama, I don’t care about finding a suitor! Who would that suitor be? Let’s see, among the sons of Papa’s friends, there is the obese Boydsdon Barnett. He can barely walk across a room without stopping to catch his breath. Perhaps Jacob Cromer who loves nothing so much as tormenting kittens and pulling the wings off flies. I suppose he will turn his cruelty on his wife as soon as he has one. Then there is William Paddock, so stupid that I doubt he knows who the Mayor of our city is. Or how about a man just like Papa, who sees so much injustice in the world and raises not a finger, nor even his voice, to stop it?

This last was my own coup de grace and it got exactly the response I expected. My mother’s face paled, her nose flared and her voice quavered. As hard as she tried to be the kind and patient parent, I could always rouse her to full-blown fury.

I do not want to hear you talk like that ever again, you ungrateful child! Your father is a good man, a kind man, who works hard to take wonderful care of us. He doesn’t deserve your scorn and I will not listen to it. Her voice hardened. You will comport yourself like the lady we have reared you to be. Do you hear me? Do you? She shook an angry finger in my face.

I hear you, Mama. I thought it the most neutral answer I could give, a simple statement of fact. I did hear her. But the answer made no promises I hadn't any intention of keeping.

It was enough. So grateful was she to have our confrontation over and done with that she burst into tears.

I hate it when you provoke me this way! Please, leave me now and go ask Hetty to come up.

Obligingly, I went down the backstairs to the kitchen and told Hetty that Mama needed her. Hetty gave me a stern look. Have ya’ll been up to yoah tricks agin, Young Miss?

I shrugged and went out the backdoor as Hetty rushed to the aid of her mistress.

I tried my best to be as cooperative as I could after that. I knew I’d pushed my parents as far as possible without a serious consequence. The one I feared most was being sent to boarding school, where the regulations dictating the lives of young ladies would be even more stringent, a fate I did not even want to ponder.

As it was, I attended the Brookheart Academy with my best friends, Lizbeth and Anne. We learned such subjects as sewing, fashion, flower decorating, French and handwriting, along with a smattering of history and science so that we could intelligently take our places in the drawing rooms of Philadelphia society.

From the ages of ten until 15, I tried to mold myself into the pliant daughter my parents desired. I agreeably attended my mother’s teas and was the ever-helpful if serious hostess. I did not argue with the clothes she had made for me other than to tell her pastel colors and frou-frou lace were not at all what I would have chosen for myself. I did balk somewhat when I passed into my early teens and she declared that it was time to begin pinning up my waterfall of midnight hair. I liked my hair long and loose. Pins and combs made my head hurt. We compromised with my agreement to wear it up at social events if I could set it free when at home alone.

During those years, my transgressions were small ones, enough to pique my parents but not enough to occasion full-scale outrage. I still brought home starving puppies and orphaned kittens although I’d been forbidden to do so. I still made the casual rude comment about my parent’s friends. I still climbed trees and hiked up my skirts to wade in our back pond on hot afternoons. During equestrian lessons, I horrified my instructor by scorning the sidesaddle to ride astride like a boy in addition to encouraging my mount to gallop rather than confining myself to a dignified canter.

I did well at all my school subjects though, being an excellent seamstress and having a flair for French. I was creative with flowers although I didn’t especially like cutting the beautiful blooms to bring them indoors to die. Mostly I loved the serious subjects – science and history. Our headmaster, Mr Blow, was my ally in bringing me books for additional reading. Although he knew my father would most likely not approve of my delving so deeply into biology, which was considered the province of men, he himself had such a love of learning that he could not bear to deny that thirst in anyone else. I kept these books hidden in my room, only bringing them out to read by lamplight after everyone else was fast asleep.

In spite of all my efforts, the rebellious child who still lived inside me was restless and contrary as ever she had been. She still took passionate notice of the brutalities of the world and the men who dominated it. The differences in a society where some believed themselves worthy of living as kings while others struggled for their very survival rubbed her nerve endings raw. Her helplessness in the face of the mistreatment of animals and children drove her alternately from rage to despair. That her father was one of the men of power who not only tolerated but bolstered the myriad ways men of lesser rank, women, children and animals were looked upon as chattel kept her heart in a state of distress.

When I turned 13, my mother’s conversations with me became more and more centered around my coming out and then my eventual marriage. For this was the goal, of course, of every woman. (And my mother gave the impression that she would be enormously relieved to pass her responsibility for me on to a future husband). It was intensely important because the man she gave herself over to would dictate the path she trod for the rest of her life. Marrying was a momentous decision that once made could not be taken back.

First and foremost, her husband must be prosperous in order to give her the material things that were essential for her to maintain her place in society – the home, the furnishings, the fashions, the carriage. He must be a kindly man, as my Papa was, or she would go into the future tied to a mate who denigrated her verbally or emotionally, or perhaps even abused her physically. He must be generous because as we well knew from some of the families in our circle, a man could be rich as Croesus and still be niggardly with his wife and children. He could not be a jealous man. Again, we knew of women who were scarcely allowed to leave their homes because of their spouse’s over-possessiveness. Other qualities were desirable but less essential than those listed above such as good looks and intelligence and faithfulness.

Judging by these standards, my mother had been extremely favored. My father was not only wealthy and good but handsome and bright as well. And my father would never have taken a mistress because he believed no other woman could begin to compare to his beloved wife, his precious Abby.

When Mama first began to talk of marriage in general terms, I listened and nodded my head politely. That future seemed so far away that I could ignore it but as I got older, the discussions became more pressing. Specific potential suitors were compared. She gently lectured me about the attributes men look for in a wife. Smile, always smile, she told me. Gentlemen like ladies who have a pleasant demeanor. Smiling had never been my strong suit, as Mama well knew and had often remarked upon. You hoard your smiles as if you are afraid you’ll run out of them.

No, Mama, I replied, but I only bother when the occasion deserves.

Another of her sermons dealt with the way a woman defers to a man. Always nod in agreement when he makes a pronouncement. In order to want to go out into the world every day to provide you with an abundant home, he must know he is appreciated and admired. Even if you disagree, bend to his judgment in small and unimportant matters so that he will agreeably give you your way on issues that you care deeply about.

Is this life of pretense how you get along so well with Papa?

Oh, no, my dear, I never have to disagree with your father. He is so much wiser about the world than I am, I simply assume he is always right.

Both Lizzie and Anne leaped joyously into the debates about boys and marriage. Neither could wait until we reached the age of coming out. They could talk for hours about seed pearls and French lace. They could discuss endlessly corsages and hairdressing. Their attitudes changed regarding boys we’d known all our lives. Where once we’d poked fun at awkward John Fennell for stepping on our toes at dance lessons, they now ticked off the strengths he would bring to matrimony – a good Philadelphia family, the substantial estate he would inherit. And, I added, no sense of humor and a nose the size of a pumpkin.

We giggled and tried to decide if we could spend our whole lives with a pumpkin-nose.

Do you think he could manage to tip his head to get it out of the way so as to be able to kiss you? asked Anne, her red ringlets bouncing as she laughed.

"Who would ever want him to kiss you?" asked I.

Well, then, said plump little blonde Lizzie, there is always Beau Atkins. His family is rich and he’s deliciously handsome."

Yes, I replied, and so stuck on himself that he can hardly acknowledge that anyone else exists. He’ll expect his wife to thank him day and night for lowering himself to marry her.

What do you expect then, Miss Priss? For some hero to coming riding to Philadelphia on a beautiful black stallion and sweep you away? asked Lizzie. "These are the boys we know and we have to marry someone!"

I don’t! I don’t have to marry anyone and I don’t believe I ever shall.

The girls both looked at me in disgust, as if to say, oh, grow up but I knew I meant it from the bottom of my heart.

When I was 15 and a half, an event occurred that changed my life completely and it was similar to the others that had gotten me in trouble. We were once again in the family carriage, this time on our way to church, when we came upon a wagon whose horse had fallen. The wagon-driver stood over the animal with a whip, slashing down upon its skinny, bleeding rump, as he yelled, get up, you stupid beast, get up or I’ll beat you plumb to death! Each time the whip found its mark, the horse gave a strangled whinny and tried to rise but it was clear, it hadn’t the strength. My mother’s eyes closed, in her typical way of shutting out unpleasantness. I expected rather more from my father in such an egregious case of brutality but other than setting his lips in disapproval he made no comment.

Incensed, I leaped from the carriage and ran over to the driver, grabbing his arm as it was raised to bring the whip crashing down yet again upon his horse.

Stop it, stop it! I screamed, can’t you see its beyond him to rise? Have you no heart?!

The driver looked down in amazement at the impudent young girl who dared to question his actions.

Aye, Mister, he looked to my father, if this wench be yours, call her off!

My father’s eyes were steel. He ordered me to return to the carriage at once.

I hesitated, please, Papa, please buy this horse and have him delivered home where he can receive humane care. Please, Papa, I can’t stand to watch a helpless creature mistreated in such a way!

Come here now! my father roared. I’m not concerned about a worthless horse but about my daughter acting like uncivilized street trash!

We didn’t go on to church but instead turned directly back to our house. I heard my father telling my mother that he had allowed her to deal with me all these years but he was at the end of his patience with me and would handle my misbehavior himself this time. Upon arriving home, he told me to go to his study where he would join me shortly.

In his inner sanctum, I sat on one of the green leather chairs that faced his mahogany desk. Surrounded by his calf-bound books, his hunting prints and the savory smell of his pipe tobacco, I thought that his strategy was to let me squirm and worry about what his judgment would be. This I determined I would not do. I felt I was entirely in the right in the way I’d behaved and if he had any conscience, he’d have taken my side.

When he arrived and seated himself behind his desk, he asked, staring at me in bewilderment, wherever did you come from? Are you a throwback to some past family member who was a brigand or an eccentric?

My dearest dream before you were born was for a daughter. I envisioned a miniature of your mother, the epitome of gentle womanhood. I imagined a little blond doll, loving and lovable. He shook his head, sadly. Instead, no matter how much your mother and I have tried to love and teach you, you’ve rewarded us with selfish defiance. Since the day you took your first step, you set out to go in the opposite direction you were guided. You have made me a laughingstock with your wild ways. And, further, you’ve made your mother cry more times than I can count and that is something I can never forgive.

And then it was my turn - if you are disappointed in me, Father, no more than I am in you. Instead of using your wealth and your strength to right a wrong or two, you surrendered to conformity. You can clap your old friend, Mr Cromer, on the back in friendly approval, ignoring that his children sometimes bear bloody welts across their backs from his beatings. You can drink a cheery toast with Reverend French although you know full well that young girls must run from him lest they feel his hand beneath their skirts. You consider Amos Adair an admirable man although you know his servants are lucky to get one decent meal a week. My mother has always called you a courageous man and perhaps you are but it seems to me that courage that atrophies from lack of use is worse than having none at all.

At this last, Father shot out from behind his desk and grabbed me by the hair. Pins went flying as he shook me back and forth like a rag doll.

Shut up! he shouted. Shut your insolent mouth or by God, I’ll shut it for you!

At this, my mother came flying in the room to stand between us.

No, Noah, No!

Get her out of my sight, Abby. I mean it. Keep her out of my way until my temper cools.

As we left the room, my mother was weeping but I was dry-eyed. Hetty, who’d been standing by in the hall listening to all the commotion with my mother, came and wrapped sympathetic brown arms around her. To me, she said, ya’ll done gots yoah mine set on keepin’ yoah Mama and Papa riled up.

I wandered out into the back lawn, following the flagstone path through the flower gardens and out to the orchard, a’glow with the pink and white blooms. I skinned up to the tallest limb of my favorite old tree and sat in a bower of blossoms. From there, I pondered my future. I seemed to live in a different world from my parents. The things that were passionately important to me weren’t worth a toss to them and what they considered important mattered not a whit to me. I didn’t give a fig for being a debutante, nor even less, a bride. I was unconcerned about what clothes I wore or whether my