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By JD Hoggatt
FUCHSIA IWERSDATTER WAS thirteen years old when her Norwegian grandmother took her to the Liberty Fruit Company on Argentine Boulevard. The owner, Mrs. Capasanta, a tiny Italian woman with a lavender bouffant, led them to the warehouse where the nervous workers wore scarves tied over their noses. Little Fuchsia, in a paisley jumpsuit, told the Italian woman, ‘It stinks in here.’
The woman put a finger to her lips.
Piles of chewed up apple cores littered the aisles of the warehouse. Scratching sounds could be heard coming from a stack of pallets. Mrs. Capasanta repeatedly crossed herself and clasped her hands. Fuchsia’s Granny Dahlia, four foot eleven inches tall with frizzy black hair, found tiny droppings between the massive crates. She held the faecal matter upward, looking at it close in the light.
‘Mazzarot,’ the Italian woman said.
Warehouse workers gathered nearby. A plain looking woman in a blue smock stepped forward. ‘Them are little demons,’ she said.
Another woman said, ‘Lucille Di Carlo saw two of ‘em fishin’ through her lunch bag.’
‘They smell like dog shit,’ a gnarled looking man said from the back of the group.
Mrs. Capasanta pulled a rosary from under her collar and prayed in Italian.
Dahlia put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. ‘Gaaahd cannot help you, but I can.’
Late that same evening, Dahlia led Fuchsia back to the deserted warehouse. Out of a paper bag, Dahlia took two large jugs of Montezuma Tequila and three empty Miracle Whip salad dressing jars. After pouring a bit of tequila into each Miracle Whip lid and placing them in an aisle, Dahlia took Fuchsia to a shadowy corner.
‘Be quiet gaaahddammit,’ Dahlia told her.
Fuchsia put a hand over her mouth, lay her head against the brick wall, and closed her eyes. Whenever Granny swore, she knew she meant business. When she opened her eyes a while later, her grandmother was gone. She saw children across the dim space peering back at her. They disappeared between stacked crates. Fuchsia shook her sleepy head and stood.
‘Granny?’ she called, as something darted across the floor in front of her. Her heart began to beat hard. Granny Dahlia came out of the murk and took Fuchsia into an aisle full of more scattered apple cores. A foul smelling musk filled the air. Fuchsia stepped around the two tequila jugs sitting side by side, one half full and the other not opened yet.
Fuchsia grasped tight to her grandmother’s arm and let out a cry upon seeing miniature naked people lying all up and down the aisle. They were less than two feet tall with splashes of yellow and orange pigment smeared across their torsos. As the sleepiness left Fuchsia’s eyes, she could see others dancing and wrestling on the concrete nearby. There was drunken singing coming from somewhere in the darkness.
Dahlia took the half empty tequila jug and topped off the three lids. Several of the tiny beings slid over and sipped the tequila. ‘Goood,’ Dahlia said. ‘Ever’body have a drink.’
Several minutes later, a taller being, at over two feet, stood up. Stripes of yellow pigment ran down his shoulders and orange dots surrounded his eyes. The others quieted. He stumbled to the Miracle Whip lid nearest to Fuchsia and Dahlia, knelt, and took a long guzzle. He stood, raised his arms, and emitted a low squeak. The others burst into cheers. Some rolled over. A few tried to stand.
The tall one turned toward Dahlia and Fuchsia. He wobbled as he looked up at Dahlia’s face. Dahlia grinned. Fuchsia leaned back into the crate. The little being squatted with his hands out like claws, flashed the underside of his eyelids, and showed his canine teeth.
An agitated chatter began to rise through the warehouse.
‘Dis must be der little king,’ Dahlia said. Her smile grew bigger.
The little king planted his feet and stretched out his arms.
Dahlia reached down and took the king by his hair. He shrieked and slapped at her hand as she lifted him off the ground. The other creatures bellowed. Dahlia popped the little king on the side of his head with her free hand. He hollered.
‘You don’t like dat?’ Dahlia asked him. She poked a short index finger into his belly. The king groaned. There were muttered protests.
Fuchsia smiled big.
Dahlia looked out over the inebriated crowd. ‘Want me to stop?’ She flipped the king around and showed the assembly his naked backside. She slapped it.
Fuchsia snorted.
The king hooted and kicked his feet. Many of his people shouted out their displeasure. Dahlia whacked his bottom a few more times. He cried and pried at her fingers with his tiny hands.
Dahlia raised the little king above her head. He howled and clung to her wrist. She said, ‘I am da great witch Dahlia!’
The little creatures clung together.
‘I put curse on dis place and I put curse on you!’
The people moaned.
‘I send kitties to eat your babies,’ Dahlia told them.
Cries rang out from the group.
‘Big machines crush you into mud,’ she said.
The little people began to scatter.
‘Nowhere to hide!’ Dahlia said.
Panicked chatter filled the space as the creatures disappeared from the aisle. Dahlia dropped the little king. He grunted when he hit the floor and ran away.
A week later, Dahlia and Fuchsia met Mr. and Mrs. Capasanta at the offices of the Liberty Fruit Company.
‘One hundred a forty dollars,’ Mrs. Capasanta said, as she handed Dahlia a check.
‘Tank you,’ Dahlia returned.
‘Seems like an awful lotta money,’ Mr. Capasanta said.
‘Shut up,’ Mrs. Capasanta told her husband.
Fuchsia smiled.
‘We want a no trouble, witch,’ Mrs. Capasanta said to Dahlia.
‘Dis is business,’ Dahlia said.
‘Good,’ Mrs. Capasanta said. She leaned forward. ‘My sister hears some ting in her attic.’
‘Fifty to look,’ Dahlia said. ‘Hundred to drive out.’
‘A hundred dollars!’ Mr. Capasanta blurted.
Mrs. Capasanta hit her husband on the back of his head.
Fuchsia smiled again.
‘Thank you, witch,’ Mrs. Capasanta said.
Fifty years later, on a summer afternoon, Fuchsia Iwersdatter navigated her Buick Le Sabre across the wide floodplains of the Missouri River. She sang John Cougar Mellencamp’s Cherry Bomb as she drove along the east side of the Kansas City Airport. She felt an uncomfortable sourness deep in her belly, which usually meant there was some kind of trouble regarding her granddaughter. ‘I love that little tenderfoot witch with all my heart,’ she’d told her incarcerated daughter Pearl a week earlier at the Lansing Correctional Facility. The only thing Fuchsia hated more than ‘driving her damn Buick,’ however, was driving on a crowded freeway in an ‘emergency situation.’ But if her granddaughter needed her, Fuchsia would do just about anything. ‘Guess that means I’m gonna hafta white knuckle it,’ she told Pearl.
On the way to visit her granddaughter, Fuchsia exited onto Branch Street in Platte City and stopped by the Travelodge. She sat in the parking lot for about twenty minutes, big rig fumes in the air, contemplating the High Speed Internet sign. She’d once spent two days in a room there with a man she’d met at the Auto Barn in Leavenworth, Kansas. His name was Napoleon Neddenriep. She remembered noting, upon catching sight of the suit clad salesman, that he was about her height which was just under five feet. She was never attracted to men much taller than her, so this was an especially poignant memory.
That day in Leavenworth, sporting her trademark dyed burgundy up do, Fuchsia, unnoticed, plucked a hair off the balding head of Napoleon Neddenriep. ‘Never felt a thang,’ she told herself. After that, she retired to a handicap stall in one of the Auto Barn’s three bleach perfumed ladies’ rooms. There, on a stack of four issues of Used Car Dealer magazine, she conjured up one of her hybrid Cassandra Style love spells. The Cassandras were her favourite class of love spells because they infused the intended with what Fuchsia called ‘Thunderstorm Passion.’ Also, the spells only lasted a couple days rather than weeks or months. This ensured no long entanglements.
Fuchsia and Napoleon Neddenriep made love all Friday afternoon and evening at the Travelodge. Afterward they slept, wrapped in one other’s liver spotted arms, until resuming their ardent intimacy just as the sun rose. At around 8:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, while lying naked in bed, Napoleon Neddenriep touched his thick tongue to the tip of Fuchsia’s crooked nose and said, ‘I love you.’
‘I know,’ she said.
‘I’ve never felt like this before,’ he said.
‘Well, I’m happy for ya,’ she told him.
Napoleon twisted up his face and burst out a soft sob. He cried into Fuchsia’s shoulder.
‘My poor baby,’ she said, squeezing him. ‘It’s just the love spell talkin’.’
‘I don’t give a damn,’ he said.
She released as witch like a cackle as she could manage with a sobbing man in her arms.
After about an hour, the two dressed and drove to Napoleon’s bank where Fuchsia had him withdraw $1750.
‘That’s my fee,’ she said.
‘Worth every penny.’
Fuchsia kissed Napoleon’s bald head through the open window of his Nissan Altima. ‘Now remember, tell your wife the money was for testicular cancer.’
‘I’ll never love another woman as long as I live!’
‘You’re gonna feel completely different in about eleven minutes when this spell wears off.’ Fuchsia giggled while gripping the wad of cash in her right hand.
‘I love you,’ Napoleon said.
‘I know ya do, baby.’
Now, months later, sitting in her green Le Sabre outside the Travelodge, Fuchsia imagined Napoleon Neddenriep mortified in his driveway on the outskirts of Leavenworth. She hoped he’d offered to show his wife the scar on the underside of his scrotum, like she’d told him to.
‘She’ll never look under there!’
‘That’s the idea, Poopy Butt,’ she’d said.
If Fuchsia was going to take a full time man into her life, Napoleon Neddenriep would be just the right kind of guy for her. He was physically exactly what she yearned for: short, pale, and devoid of hair, like a beautiful ball of supple dough that she could stretch and form and roll out and fill up and bake in a hot oven and even swallow whole. Made me feel like a natural woman, she said to herself as she pulled out of the Travelodge parking lot and headed north.
Fuchsia took Highway 92 along the Platte River about a mile and a half, until she came to Tracy, Missouri. At First and Tribble Streets, in a muddy brown patch surrounded by thick woods, sat a hundred year old American Foursquare with a sagging front porch. She tapped the brakes on her Buick, upon seeing her granddaughter’s lime green Chevrolet Sonic sitting half on the gravel driveway and half in the yard.
First Street was made of cracked asphalt with no curb or sidewalk. Fuchsia parked on the road, exited her Buick, and side stepped a shallow puddle. She was overcome, for a second, by an earthy odour mixed with the river stench. The knot in her belly flared a little. A large shadow bounced in the front window of the house. ‘Nanners!’ Fuchsia’s granddaughter Cherry shouted from inside. Seconds later, the screen door burst open and yanked hard against its protector chain. Cherry sprang out the doorway.
Cherry looked like all the Iwersdatter witches: under five feet, round, crooked nose, bugged out eyes, with a head full of wiry hair. Fuchsia barely controlled her burgundy hairdo through the use of TRESemmé Keratin Anti Frizzing Finishing Spray. She kept an extra can of it in her Buick’s glove box.
‘Nanners, Nanners, Nanners!’ Cherry sang, as she danced up and down the concrete porch steps.
‘There’s my little Gordita,’ Fuchsia said.
At that, Cherry cartwheeled off the steps, across the patchy lawn, landing in front of Fuchsia in the driveway. Fuchsia applauded. The two hugged.
‘Yer mama says, Hi.’
Cherry stuck out her tongue. ‘Sour Puss Pearl?’
‘Hey!’ Fuchsia said. ‘Yer mama’s hadda helluva life.’
‘Right. Bein’ beautiful with men followin’ her around like ants at a picnic is a helluva life.’
‘Honey, it’s cuz a the curse,’ Fuchsia said. ‘You know that.’
Cherry threw back her head and growled at the sky.
Fuchsia pinched her granddaughter’s bottom. ‘We goin’ inside?’
Cherry turned and started for the porch. ‘I’ll make us Arnold Palmers!’
Fuchsia followed Cherry across the yard and into the house. The faded ornate entryway led straight through to an airless kitchen. Cherry pulled plastic pitchers of ice tea and lemonade from the refrigerator, while Fuchsia took a seat at a wooden table cluttered with half melted candles, several under ripe tomatoes, and an open bag of Envirokidz Peanut Butter Panda Puffs.
While Cherry worked on the drinks, Fuchsia eyed the back of her chaotic mane. This young woman was different compared to the past witches of the Iwersdatter clan. Just a month earlier, at her college graduation party, Cherry announced her aspirations to become an accountant and settle in an apartment on the Country Club Plaza. ‘No witches live there,’ Fuchsia had said in return. It only took one woman deciding to no longer practice the murky arts to end a long tradition of enchantresses. The skills, spells, and memories would all be lost.
Fuchsia took an Arnold Palmer from her granddaughter and gave a small belch.
Cherry froze. ‘What was that?’
‘I got a premonition in my belly,’ Fuchsia said.
Cherry looked at the linoleum. ‘Whadda ya mean?’
‘Somethin’s amiss.’
‘Well, it ain’t me,’ Cherry said, still not looking at Fuchsia.
‘Granny Dahlia was a witch. I’m a witch and so are you.’
‘I just got my Associate’s degree.’
‘Well, somethin’s goin’ on.’
Cherry’s eyes filled with tears. She lay her forehead on the countertop.
Fuchsia stood, tucking her arms around her granddaughter’s waist, and snuggling in tight. ‘You and me just ain’t beautiful,’ she told her. ‘We’re witches.’
Granny Dahlia had been a hardnosed mentor to Fuchsia. Fuchsia wanted to do the same for Cherry, albeit gentler. Fuchsia had often listened to Granny Dahlia’s wartime stories about Norway. How the Nazis had run an aluminium works near Bergen, where she and the girls of her village were forced to work. A young Dahlia had given the Nazi managers oral sex in exchange for extra food for the girls of her village.
After the war, Dahlia was labelled a German Slut. ‘I hated dos Nazi cocks!’ she’d pleaded with the seventeen crones of the Bergen Witches Council. Yet, they’d cast a severe curse on Dahlia and her descendants. The curse prevented all Iwersdatter women from finding true love and limited the women’s inherited witchery to only every other generation. Dahlia had spit on the floor in front of the council. ‘I dahn’t need men,’ she told them. ‘Yahr curse is useless.’ The young Dahlia had then made her way, with a two year old on her hip, from Bergen to Oslo and from Oslo to Kansas City, Kansas.
In the kitchen in Tracy, her head still on the counter, Cherry told Fuchsia, ‘I just wanna be pretty.’
‘Well, there’s spells and potions for that,’ Fuchsia said.
‘Those ain’t the real thang.’
‘Nobody can tell the difference.’
‘They don’t last very long.’
‘Beauty is fleeting,’ Fuchsia said.
Cherry raised her head and looked into her grandmother’s eyes. ‘I worry ’bout Chrystal.’
‘She’s gonna have a baby in just five years,’ Fuchsia said.
‘That’s what I’m worried about.’
‘We’ll help her. We’ll have us a little witch baby.’
The two women smiled at one another. ‘A baby witch,’ Cherry said.
‘Sweetest thang in the world,’ Fuchsia told her.
Chrystal was Cherry’s twelve year old daughter. Witch or not, all the Iwersdatter women birthed a daughter at seventeen years of age. Legend said the original witch in the Iwersdatter line, Lisbeth, had been a virgin when her daughter, Rebekkah, was born over four hundred years prior. Neither Dahlia, Fuchsia, Pearl, nor Cherry had been virgins when they’d given birth. But to be honest, Fuchsia often wondered if men’s seed was even necessary to the witch producing process. ‘Men are good for one thang,’ Fuchsia often told Cherry. ‘Stealin’ their money.’
There was a knock at Cherry’s front door.
‘Yooo hooo!’ The witches heard the screen door open and shut.
‘Who’s that?’ Fuchsia asked, still holding Cherry. She looked up to see a six foot five inch, pear shaped young man duck under the doorway from the vestibule. He brushed his long black bangs over his forehead and put his other hand on his hip.
Cherry let out a high pitched squeal and wiggled out of her grandmother’s grasp. She skipped across the room and fell into the giant man’s embrace. They kissed.
Fuchsia straightened and touched her hair.
‘Hi, Sweetie!’ Cherry said to the man.
He stroked her cheek and gazed into her eyes.
‘Ain’t nobody gonna inner-duce me?’ Fuchsia asked.
‘This my fiancé,’ Cherry said.
Fuchsia went dead quiet.
‘His name is Gee, but he spells it G U Y,’ Cherry told her.
Guy put a big hand to his chest. ‘Oh my gooo’ness,’ he said. ‘I been spittin’ nickels, I’m so nervous meetin’ you.’
Fuchsia nodded. She wasn’t sure if she should put her adult granddaughter over her knee and spank her bottom or clap her hands together and jump up and down in celebration at the young witch’s first real magical achievement. This tall young man was in love with her granddaughter, she could see that, but she could also see his affection was absolutely artificial. Fuchsia was an expert in the field.
Cherry held both arms out at her sides, blocking Fuchsia’s access to the man. ‘Gee is a pastor,’ she said.
‘Oh, my gooo’ness,’ Guy said.
Fuchsia looked closer at the young man. She sensed something familiar in him. She recognized his face. It wasn’t him she knew, though. It was a quality. Something that reminded her of someone else. She took a step closer to the two and pointed a finger at Guy. ‘Yer one a them Foot Washin’ Baptists, ain’t ya.’
Guy drew in a big breath and said, ‘Oh my gooo’ness! I am the Reverend Gideon Narcissus Sunday, Assistant Pastor of the Dawn Bringer’s True Light Covenant Church of Platte City, Missourah.’
Fuchsia smiled. ‘And yer daddy is old Whitefield Sunday!’
Guy raised his arms, closed his eyes, and quoted from Proverbs:
‘There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords,
and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from
off the earth, and the needy from among men.’
Fuchsia gasped out loud. ‘Oool’ vampire killer!’ she announced.
Cherry pulled away from Guy. ‘What?’
‘How many vampires ya killed?’ Fuchsia asked him.
Guy dropped his arms and frowned. ‘I’m a chihuahua in trainin’, itching to make my first kill.’
‘You didn’t tell me ya killed vampires,’ Cherry said. She cleared her throat.
‘Bloodsuckers are everywhere!’
‘Hey!’ Fuchsia asked Guy. ‘How many vampires does it take to screw in a light bulb?’
‘Huh?’ Guy said, a perplexed look on his face.
‘Nanners!’ Cherry said, swatting in the air toward her grandmother.
‘Go on,’ Fuchsia said. ‘How many?’
‘Oh my gooo’ness,’ Guy said.
‘None!’ Fuchsia said.
Guy and Cherry looked at Fuchsia with blank faces.
‘You know why?’ Fuchsia asked them.
‘No,’ Guy answered.
‘Cuz yer vampire hatin’ religion is a loada bullshit!’ Fuchsia let out a loud guffaw.
Guy’s mouth dropped open.
This wasn’t Fuchsia’s first encounter with the Dawn Bringer’s True Light Covenant Church. In fact, hundreds of funerals around the area were picketed by the nineteen church members every year. One evening, two months prior, Fuchsia had sat in her Le Sabre across from their church with her boss Toth Abraham, director of the Vampire Rescue Network of North Eastern Kansas, and a one hundred and forty year old vampire named Egidio. They watched as the Christian disciples disembarked their renovated school bus, which was painted with colourful slogans like Vampires are Not Worthy of Immortality!, Jesus Scorns the Undead!, and Stake the Heart Just in Case!
The vampire in the back seat of the Buick, barely fitting in an XXL University of Kansas hoodie, spoke with a long forgotten accent. ‘Vampire killers?’ he said with a snort.
‘They ain’t never killed nobody,’ Fuchsia said.
Three children chased each other around the bus. A pregnant woman carried a jumbo package of toilet paper into the church. An elderly couple waved hello from the front door.
‘I eat ever’ one in four days,’ Egidio said.
‘No fuckin’ way, Edge!’ Toth said. ‘That’ll take ya two weeks.’
‘Nobody’s eatin’ nobody,’ Fuchsia said.
‘They’re vampire killers!’ Toth said.
‘They ain’t never even seeen no vampires,’ Fuchsia said.
‘Gonna see me,’ Egidio said. ‘Real soon.’
‘They’re all bark.’
‘Protectin’ vampires is what I do.’ Toth fumbled with the electric lock on the car door.
Fuchsia started the Le Sabre’s engine.
‘Fuchsia, dammit!’ Toth said.
‘I’m leavin’,’ she said. ‘You can walk home.’
‘I’m the director!’
Fuchsia put the Buick into gear and drove away from the church.
In the kitchen in Tracy, Cherry pulled away from Guy. ‘Ya never said ya hated vampires.’
Fuchsia reached up and checked her hair. ‘There ain’t no vampires in Missourah no more, anyway.’
‘Whadda ya mean?’ Guy asked.
‘Law enforcement massacred a dozen of ‘em in Raytown ‘bout thirty years ago,’ Fuchsia told him. ‘Rest high tailed it outta the state.’
‘Oh my gooo’ness,’ Guy said.
‘And there’s only five in all a Kansas, I’m pretty sure,’ Fuchsia said.
‘Only five?’ Cherry asked.
Fuchsia held up two fingers. ‘Got my two in Riverview.’
‘Yer two?’ Guy’s eyes were wide open.
‘Then, ya got Kooky Katerina up in Bonner.’ Fuchsia added a finger.
‘She’s bossy,’ Cherry said with a frown.
‘There’s some lunatic out in Garden City,’ Fuchsia said. ‘Family keeps him in the basement of their orthopaedic boot business.’
‘Nice he has family,’ Cherry said and gave a thumbs up.
‘Then, ol’ Wing in Tonganoxie.’
‘I love ol’ Wing!’ Cherry said, looking into Guy’s eyes. ‘He can make himself invisible!’
‘Wing’s a sweetheart,’ Fuchsia said.
Guy fell back against the door frame, hands clutching at his throat.
‘What about Edge?’ Cherry asked Fuchsia.
‘He’s in Riverview with me.’
‘Not Lenexa?’
‘He ate the old lady there.’
Cherry snorted and put a hand over her mouth.
Guy straightened himself and shook his head. He grasped Cherry’s left hand and pulled it toward his chest. Cherry balled her hand into a fist. The befuddlement in the man’s eyes drained into distrust. Cherry tugged her hand back.
‘Where’s Queenie’s ring?’ Guy asked.
The knot in Fuchsia’s stomach burned white hot. ‘What ring we talkin’ about?’
‘My engagement ring,’ Cherry said.
‘My Pee-Paw dug that diamond outta Black Lick Mountain in Arkansas!’ Guy said.
Fuchsia and Cherry locked eyes with one another.
‘Be quiet,’ Fuchsia told Guy.
The room went fuzzy. Guy froze in place. The witches smiled.
Fuchsia shook her head. ‘What spell ya use on him?’
‘Honey Jar,’ Cherry told her. She nudged the rigid man next to her.
Fuchsia crossed her arms. ‘Ya seal it up with vegan soy wax?’
‘From the farmers’ market on Minnesota.’
‘Organic honey?’
‘That’s what the label said.’ Cherry popped Guy in his elbow with her right shoulder. He teetered but otherwise remained wooden.
Cherry’s smile faded. ‘Ya ain’t mad at me?’
‘I ain’t no more.’
Cherry burst out a relieved sob and grasped her grandmother.
‘Oh, sweetie,’ Fuchsia said. ‘Lotsa emotion.’
‘I don’t like bein’ in love,’ Cherry told her.
Fuchsia held her crying granddaughter while Guy stood immobile in the kitchen doorway. All of sudden, Cherry was an ornery witch who had swindled herself a piece of jewellery through the use of a powerful love spell. This was the granddaughter Fuchsia had set out to raise.
‘Wanna see the ring?’ Cherry asked. She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and brought up a photo framing her plump hand. The ring looked delicate against the taupe of a Dairy Queen table top.
‘That’s glass,’ Fuchsia told her.
‘Glass!’ Guy shouted, unfreezing in the doorway. The room was clear again.
‘You can see the writin’ on the french fry box right through it,’ Fuchsia said.
‘My Pee-Paw dug that diamond-’
‘Can’t read through diamond!’ Fuchsia spoke over Guy.
Cherry frowned and put the phone back in her pocket.
‘Where’s Queenie’s ring?’ Guy asked again.
Fuchsia looked at Guy. ‘Be quiet,’ she told him. He froze. The room was fuzzy once more.
‘Where is Queenie’s ring?’ Fuchsia asked Cherry.
Cherry began to weep again. ‘Oh, Nanners! They took it!’
Fuchsia stepped back from her granddaughter and looked her in the eyes. ‘Who took it?’
‘Them little nekkid people!’
‘Little nekkid people?’ Fuchsia asked.
‘They come outta the trees in back when I was workin’ on my tamayta patch.’
Fuchsia raised her nose in the air and took in a whiff. A remnant of the earthy odour she’d noticed when getting out of her Buick lingered in the space. ‘Little people?’ she said. ‘Little people talk in jibber jabber?’
‘I didn’t understand ‘em.’
‘Smell kinda like dog doo?’
Cherry narrowed her eyes for a second, then nodded.
Fuchsia twisted her neck and looked back toward a windowed door at the rear of Cherry’s kitchen. She crossed the room and peeked out of it. The backyard was only about thirty feet deep, curtained by thick trees. In its southwest corner was a vegetable garden surrounded with chicken wire. Fuchsia unlatched the door.
‘Oh Nanners, don’t!’ Cherry reached out for her.
‘I ain’t scared a no Moon Babies,’ Fuchsia said. She stepped out the door onto the back stoop.
‘Moon Babies?’ Guy said, unfrozen again.
Fuchsia noted a garden hose piled next to the stoop along with assorted rakes, hoes, and other yard implements. She made her way down a short set of steps to the rutted backyard.
Cherry came out onto the porch and watched as Fuchsia crossed to the garden. Guy stayed in the kitchen. Fuchsia circled the garden, every so often getting down on all fours and looking closely at the ground. ‘I found poop!’ she said after a few minutes. ‘Like little rabbit turds.’ She crossed to the edge of the woods.
‘Don’t go in the trees!’ Cherry shouted, as she came down off the porch.
‘Gotta find their hole,’ Fuchsia hollered back.
Guy stood just inside the kitchen doorway.
Fuchsia took wide strides through the undergrowth, tapping on tree trunks and digging through leaf litter.
Cherry made her way to the vegetable garden.
After several minutes in the woods, Fuchsia crossed back to the porch and picked the rake with the longest handle from the pile of garden tools. She dragged it, tines in her hands, into the trees. Next to a split trunk resembling an arrow, she shoved the rake, handle first, into the ground. She pulled the shaft from side to side, like a giant gear shift. ‘Mooon Baaabies!’ she sang.
Guy hollered from inside the kitchen, ‘That diamond’s real!’
‘Mooon Baaabies!’ Fuchsia answered back.
‘There’s no such thang!’ Guy said from the doorway.
Fuchsia stepped away from the rake handle and brushed her hands together. She marched out of the woods and crossed to the foot of the porch. She addressed Guy direct. ‘Don’t the Bible say that Moses turned the Nile into blood?’
‘Huh?’ Guy said.
‘And didn’t God tell Job he made the uny corns?’
‘Unicorns?’ Guy said.
‘Don’t it also say if you get your ding dong cut off, you can’t go to church no more?’
‘I don’t know nothin’ about no ding dong,’ Guy answered, and backed further into the kitchen.
Fuchsia picked up the end of the hose and dragged it across the yard, into the woods, to the arrow shaped tree trunk. She pulled the rake out of its hole and began to feed the hose into it.
‘Baby?’ Fuchsia called to her granddaughter. ‘Turn on the water.’
‘Turn on the water?’ Cherry said.
‘Full blast!’
Cherry crossed to the spigot. Guy came out onto the porch as Cherry cranked it all the way open. She then moved, followed by Guy, to the edge of the woods.
Fuchsia began dancing and singing, hands in the air. ‘Mooon Baaabieees! Mooon Baaabieees!’ The old hose twisted and buzzed under the pressure of water running through it. ‘Mooon Baaabieees! Give us back the ring!’ Fuchsia wiggled her bottom and played air guitar.
It only took about three minutes before the Moon Babies began emerging from the forest floor. Covered in mud, leaves, and their own filth, and ranging in height from ten inches to two feet, their pale bodies were painted with random splashes of ochre coloured dye. They gave off agitated chatter.
‘Mooon Baaabieees!’ Fuchsia continued her dance. ‘Give us back the ring!’
Cherry stood at the edge of the trees. She clapped her hands and sang along with her grandmother. ‘Mooon Baaabieees!’ Guy was frozen with fear, clinging to a tree trunk next to Cherry.
The largest Moon Baby, a male with especially elaborate yellow dots around his eyes, marched up to Fuchsia. He shrieked, stuck out his tongue, jumped in place, and raised his arms. Fuchsia took hold of his hair. He gave off a high pitched screech as she raised him up. ‘Look what I got!’ she called. All the other Moon Babies dove behind trees or under the forest litter.
‘Think you can hide from me? Ol’ Witch Fuchsia?’
The Moon Babies hunkered further down in their hiding places. ‘Mooon Baaabieees!’ Some small females darted from behind a nearby tree and grabbed at the male’s legs. Fuchsia kicked them away. Two others came from the undergrowth and bit at Fuchsia calves. She knocked one away with her free hand and booted at the other while belting out John Cougar Mellencamp lyrics.
More Moon Babies came at Fuchsia, but all were kicked or swatted away. They bounced off tree trunks and landed in leaf piles. Most crawled back to their hiding places, crying in defeat.
Cherry cheered on her grandmother. ‘Nanners!’ she called.
Guy let loose a moan that harmonized with the wails of protest coming from the big male in Fuchsia’s grasp.
As water continued to flow into their underground labyrinth, more muddy creatures appeared among the trees. The male in Fuchsia’s hand pried at her fingers. He was becoming noticeably tired. His legs began to dangle. Fuchsia held him up toward her face and said, ‘Where’s the damn ring? Give us back the damn ring!’
The male bellowed out a defeated command to the others. Loud chatter filled the trees. The male repeated his mandate. Wailing from his people followed. Fuchsia shook the male. ‘You tell ‘em, Daddy,’ she said. ‘We want that ring back.’
The male screeched out another command. The Babies shouted. ‘That’s how ya do it,’ Fuchsia said. She shook him more. He hollered. The Babies chattered in distress. A small female stood up about six feet from Fuchsia. She held up Cherry’s engagement ring.
‘That’s Queenie’s ring!’ Guy shouted from the yard.
‘Bring it on over, honey bun,’ Fuchsia said.
The ring was the size of a teacup saucer compared to the shaking female. Tears fell down her muddy face. She stepped toward Fuchsia.
‘Hand it over and I’ll drop this jackass,’ Fuchsia told the little girl.
The tiny female held the ring up to Fuchsia. Fuchsia reached down with her free hand and took it. She tossed the male to the side and he landed rough.
He stomped his feet and raised his arms. Mud came from somewhere in the trees and splashed across his forehead. He dropped his arms, flashed the underside of his eyelids, and bared his small canines.
Dozens of Moon Babies emerged from their hiding places and converged on the male. They pushed and kicked him into the trees. He moaned as he scampered away from them.
Fuchsia grinned.
Once the Moon Babies had disappeared, Fuchsia took Cherry and Guy back to the kitchen. ‘Yer gonna forget about ever’thing ya seen today,’ Fuchsia told Guy while he sat at the kitchen table.
The glassy eyed young man nodded.
‘Ya ain’t gonna remember nothin’ about me or Cherry or this house or them Moon Babies,’ Fuchsia said.
Guy grinned.
‘And ya gave Queenie’s ring to a hooker ya met at the Travelodge in Platte City,’ Fuchsia told him.
Guy raised his face to the ceiling. ‘I’m a sinner!’
‘Ain’t we all, sweetie?’
Cherry shook her head. ‘Oh, Nanners.’
‘Ya want the ring or not?’ Fuchsia asked.
Cherry nodded.
Guy, still grinning, said, ‘Her name is Juanita.’
‘Huh?’ Fuchsia asked.
Guy said, ‘We’re gettin’ married.’
Cherry’s mouth fell open.
Fuchsia took her granddaughter’s hand. ‘Guess there’s more’n one fiancé.’
‘You sonuvabitch,’ Cherry said.
Fuchsia cackled.
Three days later, at Central Pawn on 10th Street in Kansas City, Kansas, sixteen year old Lyndon Yeboah was two hours into his after school shift as the new assistant manager. The premature balding boy had spent his first break polishing the expensive watches. He was putting a bottle of Jewel Brite back under the counter when the electronic doorbell sounded.
A six foot tall woman, sporting a dyed burgundy French Twist and wearing an emerald green knit dress which hugged tight to her curvaceous figure, entered the shop. A rail thin woman followed the first. She had on a suede tank dress and a pink hat with a large brim. She struggled getting her hat through the cluttered shop’s glass door. ‘Nanners, wait,’ the woman called. The doorbell sounded again.
‘Oh, look, Claudine,’ the first woman said, over loud. ‘The may ter dee is this way.’
The doorbell sounded a third time.
The women passed a display case of taxidermy animals. The young man straightened his maroon Central Pawn company vest. ‘Good afternoon, ladies,’ he said.
‘Hello to you, my good sir,’ the taller woman answered, then cackled.
Lyndon shook his head and kicked his Shoes for Crews sneakers together. His face flushed. ‘I I’m sorry,’ he said. He nodded repeatedly.
Claudine winked at him as she wandered toward a peg board full of women’s handbags.
The tall woman reached out and took Lyndon’s hand. ‘My name’s Lolita,’ she said. ‘We come to get us an appraisal.’
‘Oh,’ Lyndon said, overcome by a fit of jittery giggles. ‘Owner ain’t in today.’
Lolita tightened her grip on Lyndon’s hand. His anxious laughter devolved into skittish breaths. In her other hand, Lolita held up a silver ring with a small clear stone in it. ‘Can’t you just have a look?’
‘I ain’t ’sposed to do that no more,’ he told her.
Claudine looked up from the well-used Louis Vuitton bag she was inspecting. ‘Why? Ain’t ya no good?’
‘Better’n him,’ Lyndon said, trying to pry himself loose from Lolita’s grasp.
Claudine returned the handbag to the rack and crossed to the counter. Lyndon pulled harder. ‘Dammit!’ he said.
Lolita and Claudine burst into guffaws.
‘Let go!’ Lyndon told her.
‘When you give us our appraisal.’ Lolita held up the ring.
No matter how near Lyndon got, however, he found that he couldn’t quite see the ring. The whole room became blurry to him.
‘Look real close,’ Lolita told him. ‘Then, you’re gonna tell us it’s worth $1100.’
Lyndon’s vision became clear. ‘$1100?’ he said. ‘That ring’s just a toy.’ Lyndon’s face relaxed and the leftover pain in his hand disappeared. The air conditioner in the ceiling clattered above him. The violet irises of Lolita’s eyes swirled into whirlpools. He leaned in to look at the ring again.
‘That diamond got dug outta the Ozarks,’ Claudine said.
‘It’s the real thang all right.’ Lolita’s voice echoed in Lyndon’s head.
Lyndon all of a sudden realized he was unable to move. He tried to ask the women what was going on, but found his mouth wouldn’t open any longer. The room filled with purple fog. His nose became saturated with the aroma of bubble gum. There was singing from somewhere in the distance. It got closer and louder.
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