Page 80 of Possibly Texas

“You have to work harder to find your art,” he said.

It wasn’t what I’d expected to come out of his mouth, but it wasn’t unfair.

“Deal,” I said.

Auggie held out his hand and I hesitantly took it, giving it a firm shake.

Ten minutes later, I was walking up the steps of Jack’s place. Though I was embarrassed by it, Auggie had walked me all the way to Jack’s from the creek. He hadn’t asked if I wanted him to, he had just taken it upon himself. Once I was in the yard and headed to the front door, he’d said his “goodbye” and headed off towards the barn. I was embarrassed to admit it, but Auggie walking me home had made me feel safe.

Inside, Jack was on the sofa, laid back, his eyes nearly shut. The T.V. was playing some old western film on low volume. When I opened the door, his eyes shot open and he sat up to look at me. I closed the door and stood there looking at him. After a moment, he signed “fun?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I had fun.”

Jack gave me the slightest of grins, then reached for the remote and shut off the T.V. He stood and stretched, then indicated he was going to bed. Then he signed “goodnight,” touching the tips of his fingers on his right hand to his chin, then held up his left arm across his chest and dipped the fingertips on his right hand over it like the sun setting.

“Goodnight,” I said.

I watched as Jack made his way through the living room and up the stairs, disappearing into the shadows of the dark second floor. When he was gone, I smiled. He didn’t say, and he never would have—just as I never would have asked—but I sensed he had been waiting up for me. Just to make sure I got home safely. Mom didn’t even do that. Jack waiting up had felt like…home.

After I’d stripped down to my boxers and was crawling into bed, I stole a glance out the window towards Auggie’s barn. Lights were shining from the skylight. When I glanced at my cell phone screen, the hazy blue light casting my bed in a bubble of light, I saw that Auggie had one minute. I put my phone on my bedside table and knelt there at the window, the moonlight making my chest look pale blue. A minute later, I saw the lights slowly blink out.

They hadn’t shut off suddenly as though Auggie had stopped the timer in the center of the maze. The skylight had closed as though he had failed.

I didn’t want to be glad that he didn’t solve the maze without me, but nevertheless, I was. When Auggie finally beat the maze and got to use his observatory, I hoped I was with him.

“So,” Levi Lee’s first word was punctuated by a gunshot down by Grandy’s, but we both ignored it, “I’m a mime magician, but I’m really bad at magic.”

Levi Lee was stationed in front of Starbuck’s, as was usual, but his green-screen suit was gone, replaced by a tuxedo with tails. A top hat rested upon his head. I wasn’t sure if I missed the green-screen suit or not, which confused me, so I chose to push that to the back of my mind. Golden curls peeked out from underneath Levi Lee’s top hat and beads of sweat dotted his forehead, which was painted white—like the rest of his face. But he smiled. It wasn’t an exceptionally warm summer day, but the tuxedo, top hat, and face paint had to be oppressive. However, even the heat couldn’t dampen Levi Lee’s spirit.

“Like, you’re bad at magic usually? As yourself? You can’t do it?”

Jeepers Creepers by Louis Armstrong was playing on all of AMOR’s speakers around town.

“Well, no,” he said. “But, like, my magician character is bad at magic. It doesn’t matter if I am.”

“Ohhhhhh. I get it.”

I didn’t get it.

Levi Lee smiled at my statement, so it didn’t matter if I got it. He obviously understood what he was going for—I thought—his art hurt no one, and he was happy. Did anything else really matter?

“But aren’t mimes supposed to not talk?” I asked.

He cringed.

“Yeah,” he said with a full-body sigh. “That will be the hard part. Being a hull was a nightmare, man! Being a mime is going to be so much worse. A hull isn’t a person, so at least I could tell myself—'Levi Lee, you’re not a person. You can’t talk.’ But mimes are people, so they could talk if they wanted to, right?”

“Right.”

“I’ve got my work cut out for me, my good man!” Levi Lee crowed.

In the next few moments Levi Lee straightened his bowtie, fixed his tails, tipped his top hat just so, and proceeded to pull a string of tulle scarves out of his pocket, but they kept falling apart. With mock surprise and horror, Levi Lee tried scooping up the scarves as they drifted to the ground, dropping some, sending some flying off in different directions—generally making a mess of his “magic.”

Watching Levi Lee try another form of art made me wonder if it would take me forever to figure out what my form of art was as well. From what I’d gathered, he’d been working a long time trying to understand what fit him best. Obviously, performance art was going to be his art, but how that presented was the question.

“What did you do before this?” I asked Levi Lee. “I mean, before you tried your hand at art?”

He took a second to finish his routine with the errant scarves, then stood up before stuffing them haphazardly in his pocket, smiling proudly at me.