“How did you know he was going to ask me?” Carter wondered out loud.
“I didn’t know,” Mr. Vernon said. “But I had a very strong hunch. B. B. Bosso is a greedy man. He’s also something of a collector. You’ve got some skills that would make a fine addition to any collection.”
Carter put his hands in his pockets. “You obviously don’t know me very well.”
“Nonsense. You are a young man with great intelligence, even greater common sense, and an honorable code for living. No matter where we live or how much we have, these are the most important things. You have quite the talent with your fast hands. In my entire career as a magician, I have only seen one other person with such nimble fingers.”
Carter was stunned into silence. Did Mr. Vernon know he was homeless and poor? Or was he guessing? Carter felt undeserving of such compliments. He wondered suddenly if Mr. Vernon was the one who’d left the blanket. But how could Carter ask him without revealing the truth of his situation?
“You’re wrong,” Carter whispered. “I’m a… a…” He tried to think of the word Bosso had used the previous night. “A misfit.”
“Aren’t we all misfits of some sort or another?” Mr. Vernon called out, suddenly upstairs, looking over the balcony.
“How’d you—?” Carter gasped.
Mr. Vernon took a book off the shelf and dropped it down to Carter. The old orange cloth cover was embossed with black lettering: Vanishing & Unvanishing, by Bailey & Barnes.
“What’s this?” Carter asked, cracking open the cover and flipping through the first few pages. It was slim enough to fit nicely in his bag, and yet—
“Homework,” Mr. Vernon said. “Read it. I suspect you’ll appreciate it.”
“I don’t have any money,” Carter admitted.
“Consider it a gift,” Mr. Vernon said with a toss of his hand. “From one magician to another.”
“I’m not a magician,” Carter said, his voice trembling. “I just do tricks.”
“Then you don’t see what I see,” Mr. Vernon said. “And seeing is believing, as the saying goes.”
The man hurried down the stairs and grabbed his cape and top hat from their hooks on a wall. He led Carter toward the door. “Unfortunately, I have a terribly busy day and need to close the shop while I see about a few things around town. But you should come back. Say, about four o’clock?”
“Uh, sure, I can do that,” Carter said, confused. He was both grateful for the gift and surprised to be getting kicked out after such a short talk.
“Brilliant,” Mr. Vernon said, pushing him out the door. “Four o’clock sharp. See you then.”
SEVEN
Carter spent the warm day in the park reading the book Mr. Vernon had given him. He’d never owned a book before. As soon as he opened it, he was unable to remove his eyes from the simple black-and-white illustrations explaining magic tricks he’d once thought impossible.
He pored over the drawings and words from cover to cover. Then he began again at the beginning and started to memorize the first trick. Before he knew it, the bell in the town hall clock tower chimed four times. Looking up from the book, he discovered that Mineral Wells had come to life. A great many people of all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages walked along Main Street. The adults were carrying shopping bags filled with clothes, and groceries, and art supplies, and antique knickknacks. The kids wandering home from school wore heavy knapsacks on their backs.
A large sign had been erected on an easel in front of the huge gazebo. It read:
Four performers, dressed in matching jackets with red-and-white vertical stripes, bow ties, and straw steamboat hats, climbed the steps up to the gazebo’s platform. Three were men, and one was a woman. Though they all looked somewhat similar, each stood out from the next. One man was tall with a razor-sharp snout. Another was short with a curly mustache under a bulbous beak. The third man was medium height; his face was scruffy, and his belly spilled slightly over his belt buckle. The woman had a great big smile with teeth that flashed an almost-blinding white. Carter slipped his book into his satchel and walked over to watch.
The four singers hummed. Then, like spokes on a train, the four bobbed up and down in unison.
“Pock????pock
pock????pock
pick????pick
pick????pick—”
“Look, a barbershop quartet!” someone said. A circle of onlookers began to gather in front of the stage. Somehow the singers kept alternating the pock-pick rhythm the whole time they sang.
“What a town! What a town!
What a marvelous town
For a showwwwwwww!
“You have rings, you have gold,
You have fortunes untold
To blowwwwwwww!
“Hold your hats, peel your eyes,
’Cause you’re in for a surprise.
One thing is for sure,
We sing now to procuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.…”
Their hats raised in harmony, the four held the note so long the crowd began to clap. In unison, the singers wheezed for breath comically before launching into a rhythmic chorus.
“Pock pock pock pock,
Pick pick pick pick,
Walk walk walk walk,
Trick trick trick trick.”
Hats in their hands, the foursome descended the steps and fanned out into the crowd. They danced with a tall woman wearing a pearl bracelet. They embarrassed a shy man who held up his hands in surrender. They blew kisses at a blushing lady with gold earrings. They tweaked the nose of a beaming pigtailed girl with a lollipop.
The crowd continued clapping, many giving them the loose change from their pockets and purses. Within moments, all four singers’ hats were overflowing with coins and bills.
“Pick pick pick pick
Pock pock pock pock
Quick quick quick quick
Bock bock bock bock…”
They flapped their arms and waddle-stepped like crooning chickens back to the stage, where they dumped their hats into a dirty white sack marked with a big black dollar sign.
But as Carter looked back through the crowd, his learned instinct kicked in: The tall woman no longer had her pearl bracelet. The shy man no longer had a watch. The blushing lady no longer had her earrings. And the pigtailed girl no longer had her lollipop.
The audience had been so impressed with the singing that they hadn’t noticed the singers taking more than tips.
“When the Pock-Pickets come to town
You’ll never guess what’s going…
Dowwwwwwwwwwwwwn…
In!
Our!
Sensational!
Showwwwwwwwwwwwww!”
As part of their finale, the stripes of their jackets switched from red to black, as if somebody pulled a tab in a pop-up book. The showpeople now looked like jailbirds with their bag of money. The crowd went wild. No one would have guessed their act wasn’t a joke. They were crooks. They had robbed the watchers blind.
Carter felt a pang in his side. But he ignored it. He didn’t know these people. It was none of his business.