Perhaps his sister intuited what Edom was about to say, because she didn't let him get started.
Somehow, Agnes knew that in his younger days, Obadiah had been a stage magician. Artlessly, she drew him out on the subject.
Professional magic was not a field in which many Negroes could find their way to success. Obadiah was one of a rare brotherhood.
A music tradition was deeply rooted in the Negro community. No similar tradition in magic existed.
'Maybe because we didn't want to be called witches,' said Obadiah with a smile, 'and give folks one more reason to hang us.'
A pianist or saxophonist could go a long way on his talent and self instruction, but a would-be stage magician eventually needed a mentor to reveal the most closely guarded secrets of illusion and to help him master the skills of deception needed for the highest-level prestidigitation. In a craft practiced almost exclusively by white men, a young man of color had to search for mentoring, especially in 1922, when twenty year-old Obadiah dreamed of being the next Houdini.
Now, Obadiah produced a pack of playing cards as though from a secret pocket in an invisible coat. 'Like to see a little something?'
'Yes, please,' Agnes said with evident delight.
Obadiah tossed the pack of cards to Edom, startling him. 'Son, you'll have to help me. My fingers have no finesse anymore.'
He raised his gnarled hands.
Edom had noticed them earlier. Now he saw they were in worse condition than he'd thought. Enlarged knuckles, fingers not entirely at natural angles to one another. Perhaps Obadiah had rheumatoid arthritis, like Bill Klefton, though a less crippling case.
'Please take the cards from the pack and put them on the coffee table in front of you,' Obadiah directed.
Edom did as asked. Then he cut the deck into two approximately equal stacks when requested to do so.
'Give them one shuffle,' the magician instructed.
Edom shuffled.
Leaning forward from his armchair, white hair as radiant as the wings of cherubim, Obadiah waved one misshapen hand over the deck, never closer than ten inches to the cards. 'Now please spread them out in a fan on the table, facedown.'
Edom complied, and in the arc of red Bicycle patterns, one card revealed too much white comer, because it was the only one face up.
'You might want to have a look,' Obadiah suggested.
Teasing out the card, Edom saw that it was an ace of diamonds-remarkable in light of Maria Gonzalezs fortune'-telling session last Friday evening. He was more astonished, however, by the name printed in black ink diagonally across the face of the card: BARTHOLOMEW.
Agnes's sharp intake of breath caused Edom to look up from his nephew's name. Pale, she was, her eyes as haunted as old mansions.
Chapter 44
With bright beach under assault by one miserable flu and by an uncountable variety of common colds, business was brisk this Monday at Damascus Pharmacy.
The customers were in a mood, most of them grumbling about their ailments. Others complained about the dreary weather, the increasing number of kids zooming along sidewalks on these damn new skateboards, the recent tax increases, and the New York Jets paying Joe Namath the kingly sum of $427,000 a year to play football, which some saw as a sign that the country was money-crazy and going to Hell.
Paul Damascus remained busy, filling prescriptions, until he was finally able to take a lunch break at two- thirty.
He usually ate lunch alone in his office. The room was the size of an elevator, but of course didn't go up or down. It went sideways, however, in the sense that herein Paul was transported into wondrous lands of adventure.
A floor-to-ceiling bookshelf was crammed with pulp magazines that had been published throughout the 1920s, '30s, and '40s, before paperback books supplanted them. The All-Story, Mammoth Adventure, Nickel Western, The Black Mask, Detective Fiction Weekly, Spicy Mystery, Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, Astounding Stories, The Shadow, Doc Savage, G-8 and His Battle Aces, Mysterious Wu Fang
This was only a fraction of Paul's collection. Thousands of additional issues filled rooms at home.
The magazine covers were colorful, lurid, full of violence and eeriness and the coy sexual suggestiveness of a more innocent time. Most days, he read a story while eating the two pieces of fruit that were his lunch, but sometimes he lost himself in a particularly vivid illustration, daydreaming about far places and great adventures.
Indeed, even the distinct fragrance of pulp paper, yellow with age, was alone sufficient to start him fantasizing.
With his startling combination of a Mediterranean complexion and rust-red hair, his good looks, and his fit physique, Paul had the exotic appearance of a pulp-fiction hero. In particular, he liked to imagine that he might pass for Doc Savage's brother.
Doc was one of his favorites. Crime fighter extraordinaire. The Man of Bronze.
This Monday afternoon, he longed for the escape and solace of half-hour pulp adventure. But he decided that he ought to at last compose the letter he'd been meaning to write for at least ten days.
After using a paring knife to section and core an apple, Paul withdrew a sheet of stationery from his desk and uncapped a fountain pen. His penmanship was old-fashioned — in its neatness, as precise and appealing as fine calligraphy. He wrote: Dear Reverend White
He paused, not sure how to proceed. He was not accustomed to writing letters to total strangers.
Finally he began: Greetings on this momentous day. I'm writing to you about an exceptional woman, Agnes Lampion, whose life you have touched without knowing, and whose story may interest you.
Chapter 45
Though others might see magic in the world, Edom was enthralled only by mechanism: the great destructive machine of nature grinding everything to dust. Yet wonder suddenly bloomed in him at the sight of the ace bearing his nephew's name.
During the preparation of the cards, Barty had fallen asleep in his mother's arms, but with the revelation of his name on the ace, he had awakened again, perhaps because with his head resting on her bosom, he was alarmed by the sudden acceleration of her heartbeat.
'How was that done?' Agnes asked Obadiah.
The old man assumed the solemn and knowing expression of one guarding mysteries, a sphinx without headdress and mane. 'If I told you, dear lady, it wouldn't be magic anymore. Merely a trick.'
'But you don't understand.' She recounted the extraordinary draw of aces during the fortune-telling session Friday evening.
Out of a sphinx face, Obadiah conjured a smile that lifted the point of his white goatee when he turned his head to look at Edom. 'Ah? so long ago,' he murmured, as though speaking to himself. 'So long ago? but I remember now.' He winked at Edom.
The wink startled and baffled Edom. Oddly, he thought of the mysterious, disembodied, and eternally unwinking eye in the floating pinnacle of the pyramid that was on the back of any one-dollar bill.
In recounting the fortune-telling session, Agnes had not told the magician about the four jacks of spades, only about the aces of diamonds and hearts. She never wore her worries for anyone to see; and though she had
