The ninty?? little sailor with the fly on his nose and the cigarette dangling from his lips guffawed on and on, swaying in the force of his hilarity and wringing answering giggles from the girls The girls had eyes as bright as young fillies‘. They were incredibly young, even for a bright October day in Seattle.

Wizard could only marvel at it. When the coin ran out and Jack was mercifully still, they stepped up to Estrella the Gypsy.

“Oh, I did her before. Come on. Nance. That’s a dumb one.

She just gives you this little printed card.“

“It’s my dime,” Nance declared loudly, and slipped the coin in the slot. Estrella lifted her proud head. She gave the girls a piercing look and then began to scan the tarot cards before her.

She made a few mystic passes and a small white card dropped from a slot in me machine. Estrella bowed her head and was still. Nance picked up the card. Haltingly, she began to read Estrella’s prophecies aloud. “‘Your greatest fault is that you talk too much. Learn to—’”

“Geez, Nance‘ You coulda learned that from me and saved your dime!” Her friend rolled her eyes. and with much giggling the two girls departed. Nance waving the little black and white printed card before her like a fan. Wizard shook his head slightly after them. Sylvester breathed a small and dusty sigh.

Estrella lifted her head and gave Wizard a slow wink. A second card emerged from the slot.

Wizard stooped cautiously to take it up. He glanced at the brightly painted tarot card in his hand, and then peered sharply at Estrella. But she was as still as a painted dummy, her eyes cast modestly downward. Wizard stared at his card. It was more than twice the size of the one the girls had received.

Depicted on one side m gaudy colors was a man, caught by one heel in a rope snare and dangling upside down. Wizard was fascinated. Slowly he turned the card over. In ornate letters of dark red was printed A WARNING. That was all. Estrella wouldn’t meet his eyes, and Sylvester gave a hollow groan.

Even the pickled piglet in its glass Jar squirmed uncomfortably.

Wizard tucked me card into his shirt pocket and gave a farewell nod to Sylvester. The wind hit him as he emerged from the shop, pushing him boisterously as it rushed past him.

He strode down the street, letting, the exercise warm him. A tiny pang reminded him that he had not yet eaten today. Time to take care of that. He heard the approaching nimble of a bus.

Tucking his shopping bag firmly under one arm, he sprinted to the stop just ahead of it-

The bus gusted up to the stop and flung its door open before him. Wizard ascended the steps and smiled at the bus driver who stared straight ahead. He found a seat halfway down the aisle and sat looking out the window. “… Cannot rival for one hour October’s bright blue weather,‘” he quoted softly to himself with satisfaction. He stared out the window.

The bus nudged into its next stop and five passengers boarded.

The four women took seats together at the back, but the old man worked his slow way down the aisle to stop beside Wizard’s seat. Wizard felt his presence and turned to look at him.

The old man nodded gravely and arranged himself carefully in the seat as the bus jerked away from the curb. The old man nodded to the sway of the bus, but didn’t speak until Wizard had turned to stare out the window again.

“My boy isn’t coming home from college for Thanksgiving this year. Says be can’t afford it, and when we said we’d pay, he said he needed the time to study. Can you beat that? So I asked him, ‘What are Mother and I supposed to do, eat a whole turkey by ourselves?’ So he said, ‘Why don’t you have chicken instead?’ No understanding. He’s our youngest, you see. The others are all long moved away.”

Wizard nodded as he turned to look at the old man, but be, was staring at the back of the next seat. As soon as Wizard turned back to the window, he started it again.

“Our second girl had a baby last spring. But she won’t come either. Says she wants to have their first Thanksgiving together, just her family alone. So when I said, ‘Well, aren’t we family, too?’ she just said, ‘Oh, Daddy, you know how small our place is. By the time you drove clear down here for Thanksgiving, you’d have to spend the night, and I just don’t have any place to put you.’ Can you beat that?” The old man gave a weary cough. “Eldest boy’s in Germany, you know. Stationed there fourteen months now, and only three letters. Phoned us three weeks ago, though. And when his mother asked him why be didn’t write to us, he says, ‘Oh, Mom, you know how it is.

You know I do love you, even if I don’t find time to write.‘

After he hangs up, she says to me, ‘Yes, I know he loves us, but I wish I could feel him love us.’ It’s for her I mind. Not so much for me. Kids were always a damn nuisance anyway, but it hurts her when they don’t call or write.“

The bus pulled into Wizard’s stop. He kept his seat with his jaw set against the grumbling of his stomach. As soon as the bus lurched forward again, the old man resumed.

“I guess I wasn’t around that much when they were growing up. I guess I didn’t put as much into them as she did; maybe I didn’t give them as much as I should have. So perhaps it’s only fitting that they aren’t around when I’m feeling my years.

But what about Mother? She gave them her years, and now they leave her alone. Can you beat that?“

Just as the old man’s voice trailed out, the Knowing came to Wizard. He always wondered how the talkers knew to come to him, how they sensed that he had something to tell them.

Even Cassie had no answer to that question. “Every stick has two ends.” she had mumbled when he had asked her. “Mumbojumbo!” he had replied derisively. But now he had something for the old roan, and it must be delivered. He took his eyes from the window, to stare at the seat back with the old man.

He whispered as huskily as a priest giving absolution in a confessional.

“Buy the turkey and the trimmings. Tell her that with or without kids at the table, you wouldn’t miss her holiday cooking. Your eldest son got some leave time, and he’ll be flying in from Germany. But he wants to surprise her. So keep it to yourself, but be ready to go to the airport on Thanksgiving morning. Don’t spill the beans, now.”

He never looked at Wizard. At the next stop the old man rose and made his slow way to the door in the side of the bus.

Wizard watched him go and wished him well. At the next stop he hopped off himself and went looking for the right sort of restaurant.

It took him a moment to get his bearings, and men he recalled a little place he had used before. He mussed his hair slightly, took his newspaper from his shopping bag and tucked it under his arm, and clutched the plastic bag by its handles.

His stomach made him hurry the block and a half to the remembered location.

With a flash of light and a roar of wind, he appeared in me door of the restaurant. A secretary hurrying through her halfhour lunch break paused with her burger halfway to her lips.

Framed by a rectangle of bright blue October, the man in the door blazed blue and white and gold. A strange little squirt of extra blood shot through her heart‘ at the sight of him. Wasn’t he me illustration of me wandering prince from some half forgotten book in her childhood? Sunlight rested on his hair like a mother’s fond benediction. He was too vital and sparkling for her to break her stare away.

Then the tinted glass door on its pneumatic closer eased shut behind him, revealing to her me cheat. Bereft of wind and sun at his back, the man who had seemed to fill me doorway was only slightly taller than average. The gold highlights on his hair faded to a brown tousle; even this boyishness was denied by a sprinkling of gray throughout it. His lined and weathered face contradicted his youthful stance and easy walk.