Free The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford Page A

said.
    A moment later Mary came through the curtain behind the stairs and over to where we were standing.
    â€œI’m not going to be mad at you if you did, but did you touch any of the stuff in Botch Town?” he asked, smiling.
    â€œCould you possibly…?” she said in her Mickey voice.
    â€œDid you move Mrs. Edison here?” I asked, and pointed to where the clay figure stood.
    She stepped up to the board and looked down at the town.
    â€œWell?” asked Jim, resting his hand lightly on her shoulder.
    She stared intently and then nodded.

The McGinn System
    The next day on the playground at school, I overheard Peter Horton telling Chris Hackett that there had been someone at his mother’s window the night before.
    â€œWho was it?” asked Chris. “Batman?”
    Peter thought for some time and then laughed so his whole giant body jiggled. “No, course not,” he said. “She thought she was lookin’ at a full moon, but then it was a face.”
    â€œWhat a dip,” said Chris.
    Peter thought just as long again and then said, “Hey,” reaching out one of his man-size hands for Chris’s throat. Hackett took off, though, running across the field, yelling, “Your mom’s got a fart for a brain!” Horton ran four steps and then either forgot why he was running or became winded.
    The minute I heard what Peter had said, I thought back to the board the previous night and remembered the shadow man’s pins scratching the back wall of the Hortons’ house. When I got home that afternoon, I told Jim, and we went to find Mary. At first she was nowhere to be found, but then we saw little clouds of smoke rising from the forsythias in the corner of the backyard. We crossed the leaf-covered grass and crawled in to sit on either side of her.
    â€œHow do you know where to put the people in Botch Town?” asked Jim.
    Mary flicked the ash off her cigarette exactly the way my mother did and said, “Ciphering the McGinn System.”
    â€œYou’re handicapping them?” I asked.
    â€œFrom your morning line,” she said.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I asked.
    â€œYou read them to me,” she said.
    â€œMy notebook?”
    She nodded.
    â€œA town full of horses,” said Jim.
    â€œIt’s not a race,” I said.
    â€œYes it is, in the numbers,” she said, staring straight ahead.
    â€œDo you figure it in your head or on paper?” I asked.
    â€œSometimes,” she said.
    Mary stamped out her cigarette. We sat there quiet for a time, the wind blowing the branches of the bushes around us. Above, the dying leaves of the oak tree scraped together. I tried to understand what she was doing with the information I was giving her but couldn’t stretch my imagination around it.
    â€œWhere’s Charlie Edison?” asked Jim.
    â€œGone,” said Mary.
    â€œBut where does he belong on the board?” he persisted.
    â€œI don’t know. You never read him to me,” she said, turning to me.
    â€œI never read you his mother either,” I said.
    â€œI saw her,” said Mary. “Saw her on the street and saw her with Mommy.”
    For the next fifteen minutes we told her everything we knew about Charlie Edison: all of his trials and tribulations in school, what color bike he rode, what team insignia was on his baseball hat (the Cleveland Indians), and so on. She nodded as we fed her the information. When we were done, she said, “Good-bye now,” and got up and left the forsythias.
    Jim started laughing. “It’s all luck,” he said. “There’s only so much space in Botch Town, and the figures have to go somewhere. There’s a good chance you’ll get it right sometimes.”
    â€œI don’t know,” I said.
    â€œYou think she’s Dr. Strange,” he said, and laughed so hard at me I was convinced I’d been a fool. For my trouble he gave me a