Chapter Thirty #3
It wasn’t a fish. And it was white, not silver.
The furred creature had an abnormally long snout and white fur slicked across its bony frame.
Was it a possum? But if so, what were those thick tendrils like whiskers sweeping across the ground?
The creature flopped itself over, moving away from the water.
It launched itself toward Mazelle at an earnest pace, flopping left and then right, moving more like a snake than a furred mammal slick from the water.
Red soil caked across its belly as it slid.
When its arms unfurled for balance, they looked like bat’s wings.
This can’t be real, Mazelle thought. This is impossible.
She had never experienced the terror of impossibility, including the day of Mother’s frantic phone call, her words barely audible through screaming sobs: He fell down the stairs!
I don’t think he’s breathing. His head is so crooked.
I think he broke his neck. That horror, so deeply embedded in her psyche, felt oddly small today.
She had known that Daddy could die. Or Mother, with her debilitating asthma. Everyone died. Death was natural.
Nothing was natural about this beast scooting toward her.
But it was hers. The beast knew it was hers, and she knew too. Despite her fear, she felt no impulse to run away, or to avert her eyes. Whatever this was, her wish had brought it.
Only when it was close enough for Mazelle to see its eyes did she fully understand: The rims were bluish silver, but she saw its true eyes were brown. Soulful. Familiar.
Dear God, could it be…?
“Scout?” Mazelle whispered, testing the name.
The creature bounced with excitement, long tail lashing. One more flop to bring itself closer to her, and it rested its snout against her loafer, its long journey to her complete. Warmth crept through her shoe leather with its gentle, loving weight.
It was Scout. Changed, distorted, different in every way—but Scout all the same. She saw Scout in the eyes, but she also felt Scout vibrating in her thoughts, her missing piece returned. Scout reborn. Scout reimagined.
Tears watered Mazelle’s cheeks. Had her wish done this to her precious Scout? Had she summoned him from his well-earned rest to breathe again as this deformity?
“What happened?” she whispered as if Scout could answer her. “Why…?”
But she could think of a thousand reasons: Maybe wishes were only for children.
Maybe she had misremembered the ritual. Maybe she’d been punished for making the same wish twice.
Or maybe there was no real reason, just as Priscilla Stephens’s matter-of-fact warning had foretold: Wishes always try to trick you.
So you have to say what you want without leaving nothin’ out.
Down to every little itty-bitty thing. With her first wish, she had forgotten to ask for a human friend.
Today, she had neglected to wish that Scout would return exactly as he had been—or even as a dog.
If she had wished from true belief instead of doubt, she never would have been so rash and stupid.
Mazelle wailed from her chest in a way she had not been able to in front of the mourners at Gracetown Baptist Church.
Her agony vibrated the treetops and set off responses from unseen birds.
Why was Daddy gone so soon after such a macabre fall down the stairs, his body so twisted for Mother to see?
Why had the Wishing Pool cursed her this way?
The Wishing Pool was still again, with no evidence of Scout’s impossible passage.
“Damn you!” Mazelle screamed. “Damn you to Hell!”
But maybe the Wishmaker was already in Hell. Maybe Hell had fulfilled her wish.
The unholy return of Scout reminded her of the false promise of their first union.
With Scout, she had become the most famous Negro child star in the world, yes—but only for a time.
And then her reels had vanished in flames as if they had never been.
Scout’s current incarnation reminded her of her career now: hastily assembled scraps no audience could bear.
Jerry Lorenzo had been right when he had said she would always be Lazy Mazy, especially since he had forced her to fulfill her contract and make two more Lazy Mazy movies even after her own people—her own people!
—wrote editorials against her and carried picket signs to protest her.
She should have wished Lorenzo dead instead. He had touched her and promised to prop her up, and instead he had dragged her into infamy. The public saw her the way she saw Scout: a twisted, ugly thing. At thirty-one years old, she was already an embarrassing relic.
These thoughts consumed Mazelle as she slumped down against the pine tree and wept.
She barely realized that Scout—dear God, it was Scout, wasn’t it?
—climbed into her lap and nuzzled against her to comfort her the way he had countless times before.
The creature smelled like Scout, although in this new form the swamp odor seemed far more fitting.
Scout’s smell. Scout’s eyes. Scout’s sweet, protective nature.
She had wished to keep him forever so he could not go back. And if she found another penny in her sweater, what worse luck would befall her if she made a new wish? She didn’t dare, now or ever.
As before, Scout moved from her lap when he knew she wanted to stand up.
Her legs were unsteady, so she leaned on the tree as she wiped her tears.
Mazelle stumbled to turn around without a thought or plan, only wanting to be away from the accursed pool of water.
She walked back toward the creek, ready to follow it to the car.
Behind her, Scout slithered across the fallen pine needles. Following her.
“Scout—no,” she said, voice trembling with her heartbreak. “I can’t bring you with me. You have to stay here. Do you understand?”
Scout understood. He had always understood her. But when Mazelle began walking again, Scout followed on her heels, moving in his odd locomotion that made no more sense than his appearance from the Wishing Pool. Scout had the bat arms and stubby legs, but he glided more than he walked.
“Scout, no!” Mazelle said, her voice cracking into sobs again. “I can’t bring you with me. How would I explain you? I don’t have anywhere to hide you.”
Scout whined, revealing razor-sharp teeth when he opened his long mouth.
His teeth were much sharper than before, but the whine was the same one she remembered from the best years of her life.
And she did have somewhere she could hide Scout, didn’t she?
She had bought property on secluded Mount Shasta to build her lodge for herself and her show business friends, and most of the time it sat empty because she was still based in L.A.
Scout could roam near the lodge while she was gone…
couldn’t he? She had conjured him, promising to take care of him forever.
Who knew what might happen if she scorned her wish and tried to leave Scout behind?
Mazelle peeled off her sweater, which was damp with perspiration. Her clothes felt soaked in Gracetown’s summer heat. Mosquitoes landed on her bare arms, ready to feast, but she ignored them as she knelt to face Scout.
Ugh. She could barely stomach looking at him, so she focused on his adoring eyes.
“If I take you with me… you have to hide,” she said. “You can’t make a sound, day or night, until we get where we’re going. No one else can see you, hear?”
Scout shivered, which she thought might be the same as wagging his tail. Mazelle had a lot to learn about Scout in his new form, but his bright eyes looked happy.
“All right, then,” Mazelle said. “Come on.”
Mazelle wrapped Scout up in her sweater, which was just big enough to cover him. She knotted the sleeves around him to make sure he would stay in place. She bundled him like a baby, and he curled against her like a baby too.
Then Mazelle carried Scout back toward her waiting car.
Mazelle was sopping from sweat by the time she emerged from the other side of the PECANS sign with her precious load.