Lion and Magic Boy

Here’s a bit of what I’m writing for this month’s Novel-writing extravaganza:

Kate had always believed in omens, even since she was a child.  At five, she knew, for instance, that although stepping on cracks would not actually break her mother’s back, perhaps they would break someone’s mother’s back somewhere, or had done so once, and so it was prudent not to step on them anyway.

This avoidance of cracks became almost an obsession with Kate which lasted for several years.  In the car she knew she had to lift her feet, for instance, whenever they drove over any sort of line over the road. This included shadows of telephone poles, railroad tracks, painted lines, and crosswalks.  Kate needed to remain vigilant while riding in the backseat, and avert disaster by lifting her feet whenever it was required.

Sometimes Kate’s legs grew tired with her constant effort, but she knew it was worth it when they reached their destination safely.

Kate also counted things.  This wasn’t a choice, really, but it just happened.  Her steps had to be counted wherever she walked, and “one, two, three….” was just barely breathed under the edge of her consciousness.  Tooth brushing.  Up, down, one, two, three, four.  Hair brushing.  She had heard that in order to maintain beauty, one must brush their hair one hundred strokes every night.  Not that Kate aspired to beauty especially, but brush strokes were another natural thing to count.

Kate also counted her chewing.  This seemed to drive her parents, her father in particular, crazy.  Not that either parent seemed to give much attention to Kate at that stage in her life, but it seemed that the simple act of focusing on chewing was enough to distract her father.

“Sit up straight, Kate.  Get your elbows off the table.  And please chew like a lady.”

Kate always wondered what ladies chewed like.  Slowly?  She could do that.

“Stop chewing so slowly, Kate, you look like a cow with a cud.”

Maybe ladies took tiny bites, that was it, tiny bites and chewed them with their tiny sharp white front teeth.  She could do that.

“Kate, will you stop playing with your food, please?  Do you want to get sent to your room?”

Kate looked at her plate.  Perhaps she would never be a lady.

Kate also knew she could travel to a special, magical world, whenever she wanted to.  It was hers and hers alone, although sometimes she was surprised to meet other people in it.  Those were ladies, she was sure of it, in colorful bright gowns and jewels, who never had to worry about their chewing.  She mostly went to the magical place when she was almost asleep, but lately she had been able to get there during the daytime as well.

Now, at 32, she was still visiting that magical world, except there had been some important changes in the meantime.  What was once populated by princesses and fairies was now chock-full of eligible bachelor-types who were vying for a chance to sweep her off her feet.

Married at 19, divorced at 22, Kate spent her 20’s in a haze of work and not-work.  Weekends were never her own as she was generally appointed to cover for those who had families and homes to go to, her coworkers breezily departing in a flurry of hasty goodbyes as they left for their other lives, the lives away from the office, leaving Kate alone with silent desks and papers to sort and file.  Apart from work, Kate stayed home with her cat mostly, but at 29 decided that she had had enough of this life and it was time to make something better happen.

That’s how she came to file a personal ad in the Pennysaver, the throwaway circular attached by rubberband to everyone’s doorknob so as to force them to detach it, unroll it, and maybe even read it before throwing it away, as surely 98% of people in Kate’s neighborhood likely did.

Ironically, when Kate was 11 she begged her parents for a chance at taking a job.  She wanted a full paper route like the boys in the neighborhood had, awakening early before the town arose, riding through the semi-darkness alone and with creaking bicycle wheels, laden with hundreds of heavy papers in the canvas saddlebags behind them, then expertly tossing the paper just so, so that it would land with a quiet plop squarely on the doorstep, awaiting the moment when Mr. Smith or Mrs. Smith would step out of their house, glance around shyly or boldly as was their particular mien, wrapping a robe around themselves more tightly perhaps, taking a quick breath of the frosty pre-dawn air while allowing that brief glance into their abode, cavelike and secure with a family portrait hung on the wall behind as if to remind them that This is Where They Are, then furtively or defiantly grasping that newspaper and bringing it into the fold of home and hearth, to be unwrapped in the ceremony that marked the beginning of a new day.

Kate wanted to be a part of people’s lives like that, so she wangled an audition with one of the seasoned paper boys of her neighborhood.  Her conduct on this audition would be passed along to the route manager who ultimately would decide whether she was fit to join the ranks of the early-morning army that fanned the town with the day’s news.  She awoke early in the stillness that was 3:30 am, surprised by her own fatigue yet curiously energized by her task and by the promise of this daily rhythm and the $30 or so it would bring to her passbook savings account each month, to be turned later into something so special she dared not even think about yet what it might be.  The neighbor boy instructed Kate in the art of folding the newspapers just so.  Kate was surprised, as she had assumed that the riding and the throwing would be the largest part of her task, yet here they were, quietly folding and rubberbanding on his livingroom carpet, for a good hour before the papers were ready for distribution.  Kate finger’s fumbled with the rubber bands, and she worried about the black ink smears on her fingers.  When the hour was over there were smudges on both cheeks from when she had smoothes stray strands of hair back in her concentration.  Soon she found a rhythm to the fold, turn, slide motions of the work, and felt pleased that she had mastered this so quickly.

This is an easy day, said the neighbor boy.  You should see it on Sundays.

Sundays? asked Kate.

Yep.  They’re full of inserts.  Sunday funnies.  All that, answered the boy.  This is nothing.

Kate was a little deflated.

The boy instructed her to fill the canvas saddlebag while he brought his bicycle out of the garage.  She was surprised by the heaviness of the bag as she lifted it to bring it to him.  She could barely lift it high enough to place over the rear fender.

Kate got on her own bike, the brown Schwinn she received as a surprise on her 10^th birthday, and they were off in the still dawn.  The sky lightened and she could see glimpses of faint pink and purple through the trees.

Now the first thing you gotta remember, said the neighbor boy, is to get it on the porch.  Like this, and he expertly tossed a paper sidehanded so that it landed with a neat quiet plop on the porch of the house they passed.  Here, you try.

Kate took a paper.  Should she throw right-handed or left? she wondered.   She was right-handed but the house was on the left side of the street.  Well, here goes, she thought.

The paper landed in the bushes, far short of its mark.

You gotta go get that! yelled the paper boy as he rode off to the next house on his route.

Kate got off her bike, carefully parking it on its kickstand, and gingerly approached the house where she had thrown the paper.  Would the house’s occupants see her? she worried.  Would they come out and yell at her?  Hey, who do you think you are, skulking around here in the middle of the night?  I’m gonna call your parents!

Kate rooted around in the bushes, and finally found the newspaper, a little damp from the morning dew still on the ground.  She brushed it off on her pants and slowly walked with it to the porch, placing it very quietly and gently on the doormat.  She wondered if she should ring the doorbell, to signal that the newspaper was delivered and ready for consumption, but decided against it.  Instead, she got back on her bike and peered into the lightening gloom of the street.  The neighbor boy was nowhere to be seen.

Kate pedaled to the nearest intersection and looked both ways.  No paper boy.  She rode all around the neighborhood, crossing and recrossing the route he had outlined for her back at his house.  She never saw him.

She rode back to the neighbor boy’s house and waited for him in the driveway for awhile, then sadly rode home, put her bike back in its place in the garage, careful not to scratch the Pontiac housed there, and went in her room and lay fully clothed on her bed until it was time to be up for school, the weight and shame of failure too great to afford her any sort of rest.

Her career as a paperboy was apparently over.

Even though Kate was a failure as a regular paperboy, her parents thought she could manage the once-weekly opportunity (this is how they presented it: an opportunity!  You, too, can strike it rich!) to deliver the Pennysaver.  All she had to do was attach each tiny paper to every doorknob on every porch, just once a week.  Easy, right?

Kate felt foolish wearing the canvas newspaper poncho, the word “Pennysaver” emblazoned boldly across front and back as if to magnify her shame of holding a job distributing what was essentially junk mail, bird-cage lining, filler for the trash can, that held 200 thin tubes exactly the size and shape of a few sheets of rolled-up sheet of typing paper.  She knew these would likely be thrown away as soon as they were detached from the doorknobs.  Her parents always threw theirs away, and Kate herself had never even read one.  But for $11 a month she walked weekly around her neighborhood, hoping no one she knew would see her, approaching each porch and securely attaching each paper to the house’s doorknob.  Sometimes people would see her approach and would open their doors, surprising Kate and alarming her somewhat, as this was out of the ordinary arena of expectation, this having to deal directly with the paper’s recipient, and she would offer the paper shyly, mutely, eyes cast downward, knowing it would probably go unread directly into the trash.  The recipient would accept the paper sheepishly, as if accepting an unwanted gift, and then silently close the door again in comment as to the unworthiness of the gift received.