Roach paused, as still as a snake testing the air for rat. Then he said slowly, “I seem to think I might.” He looked at me askance. “But why is it you’re wanting bad luck?”
“I’m not wanting it for me?”
“For who, then?”
“Can’t say. The luck won’t find ‘em if I do. You said so yourself.”
Roach’s eyes flared and then crinkled at the corners. “Yes, I did. I did, indeed. Because it’s the gospel’s own truth.” He reached deeper into the corner. Jars clinked and slid. Then he turned around, holding a different jar. Instead of a hazy clear, this one was a dark oily brown and somewhat lumpy, like it had spent some time in a fire. He handed it to me. It felt strange. Heavy. I gazed at it, watching the sunlight buckle and coil against the glass. It was almost impossible to see inside, but I could tell it was just as empty as the first.
And yet…if ever a jar was made to hold bad luck…
“Bad luck cost the same as good?” I asked, cupping the jar in both hands.
“Nosir,” he replied. “Bad luck’s a heap more. On account of the dangers involved. I fear bad luck is well beyond your means at present.” He held out his hand.
Frowning, I handed the jar back.
“But tough luck,” he continued, “now that’s a different story. Not nearly so harsh as bad. The kind of luck you might wish upon a friend, say, not nes’sarily an enemy. ‘Frinstance, say you and your friend are both courtin’ the same girl. Release that tough luck with his name’s ash inside, and it’ll be you taking her to the dance. You patting him on the shoulder afterward with a ‘Tough luck, buddy, tough luck.’ It might hurt ‘em a little, but it won’t harm. Might that be what you’re after?”
His other hand flowered open, revealing a lighter, almost dainty-lookin’ jar. Honey-brown, shiny, and covered with ancient-lookin’ lines and swirls.
I stared at it, entranced, while I weighed these facts.
“Tough luck cost the same as good?” I finally asked without much hope.
“Fraid not. It’s a mite more. Matter of fact, that particular jar’s been loaded with a dollar’s worth. But,” he added, “seeing as I don’t want you to walk away empty-handed, and seeing as Pa and Djembe ain’t here and don’t nes’sarily need to know, I reckon I can let it go for fifty cents. What say, Cap’n?”
“Heck yeah! So long as you help with getting the name inside.”
“Happy to. That’s all included in the price. Like I said, gotta be done by an expert. Otherwise, it won’t work for spit.”
He set about finding a leaf of brown rice paper from a drawer up front, behind the driver’s bench, and a red candle with strange black-and-silver scribblin’s on it from a box at the rear.
“Quick now,” he said. “We don’t want Pa to come and put a stop to our little transaction.” With that, he tore off a scrap of paper and handed it to me. Then plucked a pencil from behind his ear. “Now, write your friend’s name nice and clear. I won’t peek. Then fold it three times, nice and tight, and spit on it. Just a smidge. Then give it back. I’ll do the rest.”
I wrote the name, making sure to scratch it into the paper good and proper, so there could be no doubting on Lady Luck’s part. Then I folded it three times and gave it a lick of spit. I handed it back to Roach, hawking my eyes to make sure he didn’t unfold it. He didn’t. He’d already lit the candle and unscrewed the jar while I wrote. Now, he placed the clump of paper between a set of rusty tweezers in one hand and held the candle over the jar in the other. I watched as he put the paper to the flame. It flared and withered but didn’t drop into the jar until Roach tapped the tweezers lightly against the rim. Then the ash fell in, along with a fleck of unburnt paper. I frowned at that, but Roach didn’t seem bothered. He screwed the lid on, gave it an extra twist, and presented it to me. “There you go, that should do it.”
I slid my fifty over, along with a smidge of regret. That fifty was all I had, and I wanted full value for it. But I wanted revenge even more.
“Pleasure doing business,” said Roach, his hands spread either side of my half-dollar.
I nodded, and turned away.
“Before you go, Cap’n,” he said, “How comes you expendable?”
“Coz I ain’t ever afraid,” I shot back.
He looked at me a moment, then said in a flat voice. “In war, you wanna win the battle, ain’t no man’s expendable. And perish the commander that thinks he is. You remember that.”
Frowning at this riddle, I trotted off in pursuit of The Battalion.
For some reason, the further away from the Cudjoola’s truck I got, the more my pace began to slow. I began to think I wasn’t quite so sure of my purchase. I had felt the sting of Chester’s high scorn many times, as had we all, and I began to think he might consider an old glass jar, no matter how shiny, a particularly poor trade when weighed next to an artfully crafted, ghost-infested, brass artillery cannon made on the field of battle.
The sun was higher now and starting to warm my cheeks. I stopped; turned back to the Cudjoola’s wagon. Roach cut a lone figure in the load bed. Perhaps it wasn’t too late. The fair had only just opened to Jack and Jill public, but the townsfolk would soon arrive in their numbers. Perhaps if he were to take the jar back, he could still sell it on to some other luckless soul. I cursed and broke into a canter.
I decided to take a circular route and approach from behind, so he wouldn’t see me coming and prepare his defenses. Weaving between tents and stalls, my heart beat faster the nearer I got. From this side of the Liberty, with her opposite side hanging virtually to the ground, the underside of the load-bed formed the roof of a block-like cave. I scuttled between the big rubber tires into the darkness to prepare my lines on how to ask Roach for my money back. Above my head, I could hear him moving about. Light from the cracks between the planks shifted left and right, giving away his position, while the horizontal gap between the truck’s floor and the dropped side provided me with a thin visor to the main fairground.
I breathed deep, gathering my argument together, when, across the open field, I saw a tall figure striding toward us. For a heartbeat, I thought it was Mr. Cudjoola, but he was too tall and, clearly, white, dressed all business-like in a black suit with a bowler hat. As he drew nearer, he didn’t seem to be the free and easy, fair-going type.
Above my head, the planks bowed, and the light shifted. I could see the man clearly now. Not a face I recognized. Or wanted to get to know.
“Mister.” Roach greeted him slow and low, but got nothing in return.
The man walked right up to the truck, blocking my view until all I could see was the dull outline of his belt buckle peeking between his coat flaps, shaped like a wolf’s head. When he spoke, his voice was somehow both soft and hard at the same time.
“He’d like to buy some luck,” he said.
There was a long pause before Roach answered. “Would he now?”
“He would,” was the hard, soft reply.
“And what kind would that be?” asked Roach, again, low and slow.
“The worst kind,” replied the man.
Through the gap, I watched him reach into his coat pocket and pull something out. For a brief moment, I saw what it was, and my jaw dropped. It was a wad of bills bigger than any I had ever seen. Thicker than a pack of cigarettes. And then it lifted from my view, and I heard a dull thud above my head.
“Should cover it,” the man said.
I could hardly breathe. I was still reeling from the sight of all those bills. They had to be one-dollar bills, one-dollar bills, not ten, surely? Just how much could a jar of luck cost?
Above my head, the world had gone dead quiet.
Eventually, Roach spoke. “Name?”
The man’s hand dipped into his coat pocket once more, and I heard the rustle of paper. It returned with a folded sheet of newspaper and vanished from my view. The boards above creaked again. Like the man had just handed the paper to Roach, and it weighed a lot more’n it should. Another rustle followed.
“Third from the left,” the man said.
The air went quiet again.
“And when should this luck arrive?” Roach finally asked.
“Tonight,” the man replied. Then he turned, and my cave grew brighter as he walked away. I stared at his departing back. The boards above creaked and bowed, and glasses clinked. I was gobsmacked; all that money and he’d left his jar behind.
As though he read my mind, Roach called out. “Hey, Mister?”
The man stopped in his tracks and turned.
“You forgot your jar,” Roach said.
An object looped towards the man, sparkling black and red as it tumbled in its flight. The man plucked it from the air. With one last look in our direction, he turned and strode back the way he had come. I tracked him as he crossed the open field, heading towards town. On the far side, he passed a public trashcan, and I thought I saw something drop from his hand. Then he rounded the church and was gone from view.
I crouched in the darkness, too stunned to think, let alone move. But some distant corner of my brain advised that Roach would be none too pleased to learn of my presence just then. And, for some reason, I had lost all desire to push my luck with him anyway, so I shoved my jar in my pocket and slipped away.