Magic Street Page 0,54

"And nobody was trying to kill me."

Both Ceese and Word laughed grimly at that, then glanced at each other. Both of them probably wondering what danger the other one had known about.

"Do you read Shakespeare?" asked Mack.

Word shrugged. "My father almost named me William Shakespeare Williams. Instead of William Wordsworth Williams. So I might have been called Shake instead of Word."

"Or Speare," said Ceese helpfully.

"That would have guaranteed I never got a date in high school," said Word, and this time his laugh was a little more real.

"What can you tell me about Puck and the queen of the fairies?" asked Mack.

"Puck? Why?"

"Why? You think that Bag Man's an overgrown fairy or something?"

"Just asking," said Mack. "But if you don't know, I guess I'll have to read about it."

"Good luck on Shakespeare," said Word. "It's written in a foreign language. I heard a black linguist from Berkeley once say that English-speaking people are the only ones who never get to read Shakespeare in their native language. Instead we have to suffer through reading his stuff in the kind of English they were speaking back in 1600."

"I got through Shakespeare okay," said Ceese. "Romeo and Juliet. King Lear."

"High school's one thing. They spoonfeed it to you."

"In college I mean," said Ceese.

"Okay, well, fine," said Word.

"All I want to know is about the Queen of the Fairies," said Mack.

"Titania," said Word. "And her husband is Oberon. They fight all the time. Puck is Oberon's servant, and he plays terrible tricks on people. He takes this guy who's lost in the woods and magically makes him have the head of a donkey, and then Puck gives Titania a love potion and she falls in love with this half-assed guy."

"So Puck is a bad guy," said Mack.

"No, he's a trickster. Like Loki in Norse mythology. He just... plays pranks on people. But they're mean tricks. He has no conscience."

They rode in silence for a while.

Then Word glanced back and asked Mack, "So you think this guy is Puck?"

Ceese said, "He's just talking."

"I have a word of advice for you," said Word.

Ceese snorted. "You have a word."

"I know it's a pun on my own name. Don't you think I hear enough of that crap?"

"Your advice?" said Ceese.

"Leave it. Forget about it. My father broods about it. It still poisons him. He watches you from the window. He watches you whenever he passes you in his car. Because he knows. Baby found in a grocery bag, not an hour after Bag Man carried you out of the house. Dad hates that guy. But what good does it do?"

Then Word spoke again. "In the play - in Midsummer Night's Dream, that's the play that has Puck in it - what they're fighting about - the queen and the king of the fairies, Titania and Oberon - is a changeling."

"What's a changeling?" asked Mack.

"A little boy. That's all they say. I think there's an old legend that fairies sometimes come and steal away human children and leave fake children in their place. I suppose it's the kind of legend that was invented to explain autistic children. The changeling looks like a perfectly normal child, but he just doesn't respond right."

"Is that what I am?" asked Mack.

"You're not autistic," said Ceese. "Weird, but not autistic."

"How could you be a changeling?" said Word. "There wasn't a baby to swap you for. I don't know what you are. Maybe you're just... my magical brother."

"I don't see how you're any kind of brother to him," Ceese said irritably.

"Cecil," said Word, "you're his brother. His real one. Or his father or some combination.

Everybody knows that. Everybody in Baldwin Hills knows you gave up half your own childhood to look after Mack. They love you for it. I'm not making any claim that I mean anything in Mack's life."

"Less than nothing," said Ceese quietly.

"If I had told this story back then, would it have changed anything?"

Silence again, until Ceese finally answered, "They would have locked you up in the loony house."

"He had you in his life. And that was good. What if I had 'found' Mack in that grocery bag? I thought of it. But I couldn't have brought him home. If I had come in that door with that particular baby, I think my dad would have lost it. Might have killed the baby or run out of the house and never come back or... I don't know. Dad was crazy. You finding him, that was a good thing, Ceese."

That was the last