"Mrs. McCallister," said Grand, "I don't know how, but you got down in there without the ground being disturbed. Nobody dug to put you down there. We only dug to get you out."
"Why would I wish to be with my husband's dead body?"
"You dreamed," said Mack, "of dancing with him when he was a soldier in that fine uniform. He was heading out for Germany, stationed there, same time as Elvis. You called him 'my own Elvis' and you kept saying, I want to be with you forever and he said, You can always be with me, Feely."
Ophelia McCallister leaned across the table and tried to slap him, but Mack backed away in time. "That's private!" she said. The teacup trembled in her hand so that Grand took it away from her before it tipped and spilled or broke.
"Ma'am," said Mack, "I saw your dreams. I know how these dreams come true. In an ugly way.
A way you'll hate. A way that makes you wish you had never wished. Like—"
"Like Tamika Brown," Ophelia said impatiently. "But what her father did to her is nothing like—"
"Her father pulled her out of that waterbed and saved her life, just like Mr. Harrison and me saved your life tonight. We didn't put you in there, and Mr. Brown didn't put Tamika in there either.
You want to believe there's no such thing as magic, fine. But I know there is, and it nearly killed you tonight."
Ophelia tried for one more long moment to hold on to a rational world. Then she gave up and burst into tears. "I want to lie down."
"We tried to get you to lie down before," said Grand.
"Nothing makes sense!"
"You love your husband," said Mack. "That was the center of your world, missing him. But there's an evil force loose in the world, making wishes come true."
"It's that witch!" cried Ophelia.
"What witch?" asked Mack.
"That motorcycle-riding witch! She did it!"
Grand helped her sit down on the sofa in her living room. "Mrs. McCallister, Yolanda White was helping us. She held the flashlight while we dug. She kept the security guard from coming over and finding out what we was doing."
Mack and Grand looked at each other. Why would she believe such a ridiculous thing? Where did the idea come from?
"She hates me," said Ophelia, lying down on the sofa. Mr. Harrison pulled off her shoes. "Get rid of that witch...," mumbled the woman. She was nearly asleep, even if she wasn't quite there yet.
"I've got to go," said Mack. "I'm worried about Yolanda. If people start thinking she's a witch..."
"Nobody's going to believe that."
"Ophelia McCallister does," said Mack.
"Well," said Grand, "I guess you got to believe something, strange things like this going on."
"Mr. Harrison, I—"
"After what we just did, Mack Street, I think we definitely on a first-name basis."
"Sir," said Mack, who couldn't call a man older than Miz Smitcher by his first name no matter what he said, "what's going on here is magic, and Yolanda White is a magical person, but she did not cause these things tonight. It was her worst enemy caused it, and she's trying to fight him, and if she gets blamed for it, well it's just what that enemy wants."
"I'll stay with her," said Grand Harrison. "I won't let her go calling Yolanda White a witch." He thought for a moment. "I'll call my wife to come over with me."
Mack thanked him and headed out the door.
He jogged down the steep hill and as he rounded the hairpin turn he saw two things.
First, the standpipe was glowing. No longer the color of rust, it was a deep red, and it glowed as if it were being heated by lava under the earth.
And second, there was a crowd outside Yolanda's house, shouting, and some of them were beating on the door with their fists.
Was Yolanda even in there? When she left them at Ophelia's house, she said she was going to find Ceese.
But even if she wasn't in there, she could arrive at any time, and in the mood they were in, even she might not be able to keep them from dragging her off her bike. Could she change them all so they loved her? Maybe there was a reason witches in the past were mobbed—if they were really malevolent fairies, it would take a mob to overwhelm them.
Was it all true? Fairies that might be tiny or regular size. Giants. Possession by devils. Witches that flew and cursed people. All distorted memories of real encounters with beings like Puck and Yo Yo, or real trips into Fairyland.
But the reason people believed in witches in the first place—they didn't just make them up.
Maybe they met Yolanda. Or Puck. Or Oberon. Saw their power. Felt their own helplessness. Hated them, feared them. And remembered.
Did that mean there were werewolves and vampires, too? What about Superman and Spider-Man and why not Underdog, too?
It couldn't all be true. But some of it was. There was real power in the world, and it was dark and cruel, and Mack didn't know if he was right to trust Yo Yo; he knew he was right not to trust Puck.
Maybe the human race had reason to fear little creatures lurking in the woods, or people who walked the earth in human form but were really controlled by cruel entities who could make you love them, or beings of light that could be captured in bottles or jars, and if you turned them loose they'd grant your wishes and then laugh at the agony your own wishes brought to you.
Maybe the mob outside Yolanda White's house had the right response. Maybe powers like this needed to be destroyed whenever they surfaced.
Then again, he liked Yo Yo.
But how could he trust that feeling, when he knew she could make him like her, make anybody like her?
The people gathered outside her house, pounding on her doors and getting ready to break her windows, they were his neighbors. She was the stranger.
Hadn't Ceese said she tried to kill Mack himself when he was a baby? He owed her nothing.
But when he tried to imagine himself joining his neighbors in attacking Yolanda, he knew he couldn't do it. She wasn't the one who put Tamika Brown in a wheelchair. There was evil in this world, but right now, at this moment, it wasn't her.
It was the hatred he saw in the faces of his neighbors. It was the wolflike howling of their voices.
So he kept jogging down the hill until he was among them, pushing his way through them. Then he stood on the porch, shoving aside the men who were kicking at the door.
"Where's your burning cross!" he shouted. "You can't have a lynching without a burning cross!
Where are your white hoods? Come on, do this right! You gonna kill somebody without a trial, just because you're scared, then get the gear, wear the outfit, follow the recipe!"
"Why are you doing this?"
"She's a witch!" shouted a man. The others murmured their assent.
"So when LAPD shows up and wonders why there's a riot in Baldwin Hills and maybe even a lynching, you'll all explain that you had to burn a witch, is that your plan? That's what we'll see when they show your pictures on the evening news. Niggahs riot again but this time it's cause they all 'fraid of witches." He poured all the scorn he could muster into his words.
"Mack," said Ebby DeVries, "I'm scared."
"Of course you're scared," said Mack. "Ugly things happened here tonight. And it doesn't make sense, because what happened, it was magic. Evil. Just like you think. Just like poor old Curtis Brown tried to tell us all those years ago. He woke up and Tamika was swimming around inside his waterbed and he only just saved her life. Impossible! Couldn't happen! Like Deacon Landry. He never did nothing to Juanettia Post. He wished for it! That's all he did! Any of you men ever wish for a woman wasn't your wife? That was all it was, wishing. Then all of a sudden, just like Tamika in the waterbed, he's in the middle of church naked with Juanettia Post right when people start arriving for church."
"Choir practice," somebody corrected him.
"Tonight Grand Harrison and me, we dug up old Mr. McCallister's grave and opened his coffin and saved the life of Ophelia McCallister because she wished she could be with him and that same evil magic granted her damn wish."