This One and Magic Life Read Online Free PDF

shirtsleeve. He has been crying all day. Reese is so black, he is only visible when he moves into the late afternoon sunlight that strips the room.
    Dolly loves Reese; she loves the mystery of Reese. For no one can remember when he became a member of the family. He wasn’t there, and then he was, an integral part of Artie’s life. At seven each morning, his ’54 Studebaker rattles into the yard and the day begins. In the late afternoon, he rattles back to Harlow and Irene who towers over him and may or may not be his wife. No one knows how old Reese is or where he came from. His entire life is a mystery.
    Donnie wonders if the United States government knows Reese Whitley exists. Artie says how can it not know; she’s paid his Social Security twenty years. Who knows? When she first got sick, she wanted Reese tobe given power of attorney, but Donnie reminded her that Reese was illiterate.
    â€œWhy’d you tell him that?” she asked Reese.
    â€œSimplifies things,” was his answer. Made sense to Artie who had walked outside twenty years ago, found Reese planting pansies, and never questioned her good luck.
    â€œBut where did he come from?” Even seven-year-old Dolly had wanted to know.
    â€œHeaven.”
    The answer delighted Reese who was listening as usual. Now he sits on Artie’s mother’s Queen Anne chair and pushes the vacuum back and forth.
    â€œNobody knows de trouble I seen.
    Nobody knows but Jesus.”
    Reese sings loudly and mournfully over the whine of the vacuum. He learned years ago the power of a Negro spiritual on the white conscience.
    â€œI’ll finish this, Reese. You go on home.” Mrs. Randolph takes the vacuum. He goes out the back door. May, sitting on the steps, trying to comb an unwilling Jerry, the cat, with a flea comb, looks up and smiles.
    â€œYou going home, Reese?”
    Reese wipes his nose on his sleeve. “Soon as I get drunk enough, May.”
    Â 
    Hektor, upstairs in his old room, is learning that vodka and Valium will make you dream in color. He is amazed at this and intends to make a note of it when he wakes up.
    He dreams he is on the pier and the sun is glinting on all the fish scales sloughed from the day’s catch. His mother and father come hand-in-hand toward him. Hisfather has on a blue seersucker suit and white shoes. His mother has on a pale blue dress with a white collar.
    Hektor says, “You look beautiful as Easter eggs.”
    They seem pleased.
    â€œAs beautiful as words?” his mother asks.
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œBoth Easter eggs and words have to be handled carefully,” Sarah says. “Refrigerated or they’ll make you sick.”
    â€œYour mother and I are going for a sail,” Thomas says.
    â€œPlease don’t do that. This might be the day.”
    â€œDon’t be silly,” his mother says. “The sun is shining.”
    â€œRemember,” his father says, “it’s the search, not the finding. And the joy of the search.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” But they are in the boat out on the bay.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Hektor screams. “And why are you so dressed up?”
    â€œFor my funeral,” Artie says.
    Â 
    Awakened by May and told he is needed downstairs, Hektor still feels caught in the dream. A low red sun turns the living room golden. Across from him, seated on the sofa, his parents and Artie listen to Mr. Brock. Hektor closes his eyes.
    â€œI can’t believe it,” his father says.
    â€œWell, here it is in her own handwriting. I was afraid you might not know.”
    Know what? Hektor smoothes May’s hair. She is sitting on the floor, her head against his knee. Know what?
    â€œWe can’t do it, of course,” his mother says.
    Do what? His fingers slowly follow the ridge whereMay’s soft spot had been. He remembers seeing her pulse beating there. So fast it scared