Free Pigeon Feathers by John Updike Page B

and in the tiptop of the tree was an enormous wise old owl.”
    “Good.”
    “ ‘Mr. Owl,’ Roger Skunk said, ‘all the other little animals run away from me because I smell so bad.’ ‘So you do,’ the owl said. ‘Very, very bad.’ ‘What can I do?’ Roger Skunk said, and he cried very hard.”
    “The wizard, the wizard,” Jo shouted, and sat right up, and a Little Golden Book spilled from the bed.
    “Now, Jo. Daddy’s telling the story. Do you want to tell Daddy the story?”
    “No. You me.”
    “Then lie down and be sleepy.”
    Her head relapsed onto the pillow and she said, “Out of your head.”
    “Well. The owl thought and thought. At last he said, ‘Why don’t you go see the wizard?’ ”
    “Daddy?”
    “What?”
    “Are magic spells
real?
” This was a new phase, just this last month, a reality phase. When he told her that spiders eat bugs, she turned to her mother and asked, “Do they
really?
” and when Claire told her that God was in the sky and all around them, she turned to her father and insisted, with a sly yet eager smile, “Is He
really?
”
    “They’re real in stories,” Jack answered curtly. She had made him miss a beat in the narrative. “The owl said, ‘Go through the dark woods, under the apple trees, into the swamp, over the crick—’ ”
    “What’s a crick?”
    “A little river. ‘Over the crick, and there will be the wizard’s house.’ And that’s the way Roger Skunk went, andpretty soon he came to a little white house, and he rapped on the door.” Jack rapped on the windowsill, and under the covers Jo’s long body clenched in babyish delight. “And then,” Jack went on, “a tiny little old man came out, with a long white beard and a pointed blue hat, and said, ‘Eh? Whatzis? Whatcher want? You smell awful.’ ” The wizard’s voice was one of Jack’s own favorite effects; he did it by scrunching up his face and somehow whining through his eyes, which felt for the interval rheumy. He felt being an old man suited him.
    “ ‘I know it,’ Roger Skunk said, ‘and all the little animals run away from me. The enormous wise owl said you could help me.’
    “ ‘Eh? Well, maybe. Come on in. Don’t git too close.’ Now, inside, Jo, there were all these magic things, all jumbled together in a big dusty heap, because the wizard did not have any cleaning lady.”
    “Why?”
    “Why? Because he was a wizard, and a very old man.”
    “Will he die?”
    “No. Wizards don’t die. They just get more and more cranky. Well, he rummaged around and found an old stick called a magic wand and asked Roger Skunk what he wanted to smell like. Roger thought and thought and said, ‘Roses.’ ”
    “Yes. Good,” Jo said smugly.
    Jack fixed her with a trancelike gaze and chanted in the wizard’s elderly irritable voice:
    “ ‘
Abracadabry, hocus-poo
,
    Roger Skunk, how do you do
,
    Roses, boses, pull an ear
,
    Roger Skunk, you never fear:
    Bingo!’ ”
    He paused as a rapt expression widened out from his daughter’s nostril wings, forcing her eyebrows up and her lower lip down in an expression of mute exclamation, an expression in which Jack was startled to recognize his wife feigning pleasure at cocktail parties. “And all of a sudden,” he whispered, “the whole inside of the wizard’s house was full of the smell of
—roses!
‘Roses!’ Roger Fish cried. And the wizard said, very cranky, ‘That’ll be seven pennies.’ ”
    “Daddy.”
    “What?”
    “Roger
Skunk
. You said Roger Fish.”
    “Yes. Skunk.”
    “You said Roger
Fish
. Wasn’t that silly?”
    “Very silly of your stupid old daddy. Where was I? Well, you know about the pennies.”
    “Say it.”
    “O.K. Roger Skunk said, ‘But all I have is four pennies,’ and he began to cry.” Jo made her crying face again, but insincerely, as a piece of acting. This annoyed Jack. Downstairs some more furniture rumbled. Claire shouldn’t move heavy things; she was six months pregnant.