Word count 1,509 The
Greatest Magic Act
Danny crawls out from under the
benches at the school gym/auditorium. He steps over the banner
announcing the 1969 talent show and stumbles up the stairway to the
stage just beyond the raised basketball hoop. The lights are off,
but Danny imagines the spotlight on him. His pant legs are too short.
So short that Joyce taunts him with chants of "High water" or
"Danny is ready for the flood."
He does not think about Joyce or
even Kevin McCarthy, who terrorizes him by demanding his lunch money,
which Danny seldom has. Kevin calls his dad a baby killer, but Danny
knows that can't be true. He is on a mission alone on the stage.
Danny opens a small box that has
seen better days. Masking tape covers one corner of the box, damaged
when his mother tossed the box and its contents into the trash bin.
Danny retrieved the box and now hides it from her. She almost found
it once in his underwear drawer. The red box has yellow letters
"Great Magicians Royal Magic Set." The set was a gift from his
father the day before he shipped off to Da Nang or Vietnam almost
four years ago. His dad was going to teach him magic and juggling
someday, but that day may never come.
The Marine Corp has given the family
an American Flag folded into a triangle stored in a case on the
living room wall. His dad is Missing In Action (MIA). Danny has heard
his mother stress about money, talking on the phone about collecting
on his dad's insurance policy.
He removes the first item from the
tattered box, six sets of metal objects. The magic in these is being
able to pull them apart and put them back together. Danny has
mastered two of them, one, he was separated but cannot reattach, and
three, he has not learned to pull apart yet. As he plays with the
three sets, he has not yet learned the secret of tearing them apart.
He thinks of the three groups of kids from school. Boys that play
baseball in the summer and football in the winter. Danny knows he is
a bit clumsy for that activity. He tried once but was hit with a
baseball and cried. These boys don't cry; he also has no baseball
mitt he could use. He dared not take his dad's glove without
permission. His dad was a good baseball and basketball player and
displayed several trophies on his dresser.
The intelligent kids always seemed
to get much better grades than he did. He wished he got good grades,
too, but as Miss Valentine wrote in his report card, "Danny could
do better if he focused on his work in class." School work was
tedious. They often teach the same stuff as last year. Danny would
often stare out the window and think about magic or his dad teaching
him how to play sports.
Another group of the kids he could
never join were the girls talking about clothes. Although if he
could sing like Bobby Sherman, the girls would like him. He once
tried singing "Easy Come, Easy Go," but Kevin heard him, laughed,
and told him he better go.
The bullies like Kevin are another
group that he did not fit into. He did not have the temperament to
be a bully, although it might be nice to pick on someone rather than
get picked upon.
Danny did not find where he belonged
yet. His dad once told him that no one is good at everything and
that he should find something he is good at and join folks who share
his abilities. Danny decided long ago that he would be good at
magic.
Pulling a small jug-like item that
he has not mastered the magic trick from the box, Danny thinks of the
Hippies that hang out on the hill just beyond the baseball field at
Forest Park. They are a few years older and seem to accept almost
anyone in their group. Well, anyone that is against the war. He
knows they will exclude him once they discover his dad is a marine.
The following items are pulled from
the box: a deck of cards and a plastic cigar cutter. He has not yet
learned the magic behind these items. He wished the book explained
how each magic trick was not lost when the box was tossed into the
trash.
Danny takes a position behind the
stool at center stage and practices his self-introduction. "I'm
the magnificent Daniel Chase. In the next hour, I will dazzle you
with magic, and once finished, you will...."
The slamming of the door leading
into the gym interrupts Danny's monologue. He is not worried that
his mother caught him; when he left the house, she was sleeping on
the couch with two wine bottles on the coffee table next to a framed
picture of his dad. She should sleep well into tomorrow morning or
afternoon.
The janitor, a rotund gray-haired
man, approaches the stage and asks, "School is closed. Should you
be home? It's late?"
"Sorry, Sir, I was just practicing
for a magic show," Danny responds.
"Well, do your parents know you
are here?"
"No, Sir, my dad is overseas, and
mom is; under the weather."
"Kid, my son is also overseas in
Nam. What's your name? I'm Eddie."
"Sir, I'm Danny Chase."
"Well, that's the bee's knees!
My son is a crew member on the Coast Guard Cutter Chase. A sign; that
we Chase men need to stick together. I have to lock up and leave
soon. You should gather your magic gear while I finish, then I will
walk you home; it's dark outside. Okay?"
A few minutes later, on the walk
toward Danny's house, Eddie asks, "So, are you any good at
magic?"
"Not yet. I'm still learning. I
might be better, but my mom threw out the instructions for my kit by
mistake."
"Well, my son may have a magic kit
from when he was younger buried in his closet. If I can find it, I'm
sure he won't mind giving it to you."
Danny responds excitedly as he
stumbles on a raised portion of the sidewalk, "That will be great!"
"Do you have a magic wand, Danny?"
"No, Eddie, do ya think I need
one?"
"Every great magician has one. I
think a magic wand and using magic words help a lot."
"Magic words?" Danny asks.
"Yeah, like abracadabra. Not sure
how it works, but we need to get you a magic wand."
"Eddie, where do I buy a magic
wand, and how much does it cost?" Danny thinks of the $4.67 he has
saved in the last month or so from delivering newspapers. He may
need to stop getting Orange Crush from Jefferson's filling station
soda machine.
"I don't think you buy a magic
wand. You either make one or get one handed down from a better
magician."
Danny picks up a stick from
Henderson's front yard and holds it up. "I found a magic wand."
He boasts.
The odd travel companions cross
Orange Street and turn right onto Oakland Street. The pair wind
around the trash cans on the sidewalk, waiting for the morning
pick-up. "Look, what I found, Danny."
Eddie takes a broken half of a pool
cue extended from one of the trash cans and wipes it down with a red
rag he carries in his back pocket. "This could be a great magic
wand."
"Wow, the ultimate." Danny
takes the broken pool cue and waves it back and forth. "It feels
like magic."
"Don't
forget to say abracadabra, too."
Danny taps the cue on the sidewalk
three times, then swings upward, making three circles and chants,
"Abracadabra, abracadabra, abracadabra!"
Scrape...
thump. Scrape... thump. Scrape... thump.
The pair, an older man missing his
son and the boy, missing his father, both hear the sound.
Scrape...
thump. Scrape... thump. Scrape... thump.
"Did you hear that too, Eddie? I
think it's coming from Shamrock Park." Shamrock Park was not a
natural park, just the area on Shamrock Street that was a vacant lot.
Locals called it a park because kids often played baseball using
trees for bases.
Scrape... thump. Scrape...
thump. Scrape... thump.
"Yeah, I hear it too. Nothing to
worry about, I think.
Scrape...
thump. Scrape... thump. Scrape... thump.
A silhouette of a homeless man
appears. The scrape is the sound of one leg dragging on the
pavement; the thump is the second leg landing harder than usual. The
homeless man moves slowly.
Scrape...
thump. Scrape... thump. Scrape... thump.
The homeless man wears a faded olive
jacket with sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The matching pants are
tucked into boots that were once black. He continues to march
forward awkwardly.
Scrape... thump. Scrape...
thump. Scrape... thump.
Suddenly Danny drops the pool cue
and the box of magic tricks. His Red Sox ball cap falls to the
ground as he runs toward the limping man.
"DAD!"
I wrote this as an entry to a
contest called "Character Prompt for August 2022" that included
the following prompt:
Write a story about a "fake"
magician (stage magician, illusionist, fortune teller, etc.)
encountering some kind of "real" magic for the first time.
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