Everyday Magic: Three Sisters, #1

By Barbara Bartholomew

Granny magic has gone out of style. The year is 1947 and Sydney Wagstaff's youthful love has returned from the war looking for peace and an ordinary life in the rural Oklahoma community where he grew up. He has a lingering affection for the girl he calls 'Blue Eyes,' but is taken aback to find she has changed into a dignified spinster school teacher about whom the whole community is whispering. People are saying that one of the three Wagstaff sisters--Sydney, Airdrie or Cairo--is a witch, having inherited the ancient everyday magic of their ancestors that sustained the community back in the old country. But this is a modern world of doctors and scientists with no place for herbal remedies and mysticism. Still Lucas finds himself struck dumb when he once again encounters the magical oldest daughter of the Wagstaff clan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barbara Bartholomew
• Release date: Jan 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507058558

Barbara Bartholomew

Barbara Bartholomew lives in western Oklahoma, dividing her time between the farm which has been in the family for over a hundred years and a 1940s house in a neighboring small town. She frequently draws on this background and her years living in Texas for her books. She is the author of more than forty published novels and dozens of short stories.

Book preview

Chapter One

Sydney sat at the front of her class behind the old wooden desk that had seen years of service at Whippoorwill Corners School and considered what it meant to be a witch.

Thirty years old and the eldest of three sisters, it was not a question she had considered before. Even when really strange things occurred out on the family farm, she remained convinced of natural factors. She was not one bit superstitious.

Now she surveyed her class of 27 fourth, fifth and sixth graders. After eight years of teaching she still had to stay on her toes to keep all the balls in the air.  Fourth grade geography she announced. Get out your books and read Page 42 through 45.

She’d give them time to read up on the western states before she led questions and discussion.

Fifth grade! She frowned at Tommy Jackson in the back row on the far left, a fourth grader who was  on the long locks of Suzie Ogle who was seated in front of them. Always full of mischief Tommy had no real harm to him, but Suzie was shy and easily stirred to tears. She’d have to think about rearranging the seating to put Tommy near a thicker-skinned classmate.

She’d perfected the technique of controlling rowdy little boys with just a glance and allowed her attention to go back to the pupils in the middle rows in the room. Fifth grade, she said again. Get out your spellers for a brief review before this week’s test.

Two of the girls started whispering and this time she walked down the row between the desks to lean close to the one in front. She put a finger to her lips in a shushing gesture.  Then she drew close to two other girls who rarely got into trouble but had a hard time keeping from conversation.

Sydney prided herself on a well-run classroom. She couldn’t have whispering and scuffling  if she was somehow to educate 27 unique young persons and three grades at the same time. That was why she only infrequently allowed herself to smile or exchange glances with the youngsters. Absolute awe was required from student to teacher if order was to be maintained. She knew from early experience that an hour, or even a minute, of laxness and chaos would reign in her classroom.

Her gaze moved across the room from right to left. Not a wiggle was beneath her notice. She looked to see if the fourth graders were focused on their geography texts even while fifth grade took out their spellers, many of them anxious about the test to come. At this school spelling was a competitive sport.

She glanced at the clock in back. Already ten minutes into the fifty minute period. She had to keep the pace up if they were to do everything that had to be accomplished during this last period of the day.

She directed her attention to the larger desks on the east side, a chain that marched in two rows from back to front and meant for the older students. As she well knew, the wooden surfaces were marred with names and messages written from back in the days during and even before she had been a student here herself.

Not one of her pupils had ever guessed that the notice on the back desk that proclaimed ‘Lucas loves Blue Eyes’ referred to her and she certainly never intended they find out. She had never quite forgiven Gabe Cabot for that bout of notoriety and back when she’d been a sixth grader had refused to attend school for three days until her dad told her to get over it and be ready when the school bus came by the next morning.

She had acquired an expression of stony-faced dignity in response to the unmerciful teasing that had been her lot for the next few weeks and it had been at least six months before she ever as much as acknowledged the existence of either Lucas Dade or his buddy Gabe Cabot.

It was one of the things that enabled her to secretly empathize with her fourth, fifth and sixth graders that she could remember with acute emotion her own school days. Of course, she rarely allowed anyone to see her sympathy. There was nothing worse for a kid than to have a teacher feel sorry for him.

She led a brief discussion on the planets in sixth grade science, encouraging the kids to do most of the talking and was pleased that at least two of them found the subject exciting. Then she left them to break up into groups of two or three to work on their projects and went back to ask questions about the geography lesson of her fourth graders, making sure that the eager kids with the constantly waving hands didn’t give all the answers.

Once they were at work on the maps they were drawing and coloring of the west coast states, she administered the spelling test to fifth grade.  Two students had to be excused and when one of them didn’t return within the expected time, she had to send a trusted youngster of the same sex to go to the toilet outside to escort the deserter back.

The last ten minutes of the day were allotted to packing up homework for the trip home and clearing away the room. When the bell finally rang, her students didn’t bolt from the room, though a few did a little dance of eagerness from an abundance of energy as they stood in line to file out. She nodded and waved as they left, continuing to watch them from the hallway, observing from windows with a view to the back as they filed on to the big yellow school buses for the ride home.

She was tired as always after a long day of constantly being at attention and on her feet, feeling like a mother of 27 children who didn’t quite know how to let down when they all fell asleep. Her day wasn’t over yet, however, and she was clapping chalk dust out of erasers, wrinkling her nose at the clouded air when a voice called, Howdy, teacher, in a sound that seemed to ring through the now silent school building.

She turned to look at the broad-shouldered man standing in her doorway. Lucas! she said in a voice as disapproving as the one she used for her students.

He hadn’t dropped by the school specifically to see Sydney Wagstaff, but during the nightmare years in the Pacific he’d remembered his time at school as an escape from the horrors of battle. School, the farm and his family, fishing down on the river, swimming in the Wagstaff pond, these had been the memories that kept him sane.

Even the people he hadn’t much liked had turned special in his memory in what he now recognized as a kind of extreme homesickness. He’d wanted nothing so much as to survive to get back to the little western Oklahoma farming community, centered by the stone school, the country store across the road and the half-dozen houses where a few families lived.

He’d wanted to come back to what he’d left in early 1942 and had expected somehow that though he himself was much changed by what he’d been through, the world at home would be the same. Well largely the same.

Of course that wasn’t what had happened. Nineteen forty seven Whippoorwill Corners was a whole lot different than it had been in 1941. The store across the street was operated by a new family now. The couple he remembered buying candy bars and soda pop from were gone and the newcomers sold ice cream cones and hamburgers along with the usual groceries now. The highway that ran through the intersection had been newly graveled and more cars buzzed through than he remembered. His Dad had grown old and his brothers were no longer little boys.  Even Sydney Wagstaff , standing in front of him, looked different. Sidney seemed almost middle aged in her neat navy blue suit and sensible heels, something of a disappointment in contrast to the girl he’d remembered in crazy colors and wild prints, often barefooted and always defying convention. She’d been the odd one, the funny one. Teasing her had been his favorite hobby. Good Lord, what had happened to her?

Welcome back, Lucas, she said and he jerked to the realization he’d been staring.

But that wasn’t too awful. Sydney was staring at him. I hadn’t heard you were back, she said in that husky voice that had sent chills down his back since he’d turned thirteen.

He nodded. Just for a visit, he said. Wanted to see the folks and the old community.

She smiled. Once they’ve seen Paree, she said, You can’t keep them on the farm.

If only. I wasn’t in France, he said, but in the Pacific.

Something flickered across her face, almost a look of pity, and he guessed she knew more about what the fight against Japan had been like than he’d expected. He’d found most home folk, including his family members, had little idea and he didn’t want to disturb that merciful ignorance. He would have nightmares of those times until the day of his death. And he’d sworn never to tell those stories to anyone back here.

Even while he was in the Pacific, he hadn’t exactly remembered Sydney with cloying sentimentality. She’d been a girl with a bite to her, able to put a fellow down with a few choice words. He’d enjoyed sparring with her, but would never have thought of asking her out on a date.

Now, in his eyes, she looked more like somebody’s mother than the girl you couldn’t wait to come home and see, dressed up as she was in this staid schoolteacher outfit.

He thought of the girls he had dated, soft, pretty, fun girls like Connie Taylor and Lizzy Marshall. Both of them long married and with kids, according to his Mom.

I’m glad you survived to come home, she said in that throaty, unintentionally sexy voice of hers. So many didn’t.

He squirmed with discomfort in the civilian clothes he hadn’t yet become accustomed to wearing, a crisply ironed plaid cotton shirt and beige twill pants. He didn’t want to think about the years that lay just behind him and how they’d been filled. It was just like Sydney to bring up the wrong thing when all he wanted to talk about was old school days and the friends they’d shared.

Sydney never did have much tact.

He left soon after that, taking with him all the images she’d caught of blood, death and battle. She almost gagged as poison spread up her throat and she had to close her eyes, even though she still saw the sprawled, bloody bodies of young men on a beach she’d never visited in her life.

She was seeing through his eyes, perceiving the view locked in the memory of this recently released soldier who had been her classmate. Long ago she’d learned how to keep her face and her reactions as carefully controlled as possible, hidden from others. But this was too raw and real to keep her body in line after she was left alone. She vomited into the waste basket, giving herself a few minutes before clearing away the mess and washing her mouth out with clean-tasting water.

Then, her tasks for the day accomplished, she went by the office to say goodbye to the superintendent and his part-time secretary before going out to the old farm truck that she drove back and forth to work. She lingered over the two mile drive, trying to take in the warmth and color of late spring where green grass spread thickly against the red soil. She tried to think how grateful they all were that this was a decade of generous rain after the devastating drought of the thirties, but she had a hard time shoving the scenes of death and devastation from her mind that had been the unwitting homecoming gift from Lucas Dade.

Going slow didn’t keep her from getting there. The farm where she’d been born and had lived all her life was so familiar that most days she didn’t even see it in detail, but today was different.

Unlike most places homesteaded early this century when land in Oklahoma was free for settlement, the farm had been purchased after settlement. Her mother and her aunt, past the age when most young frontier women married, had bought their own property next to that claimed by their parents. When dad came along and he and mom married, he was simply added on, and they’d proceeded to have three late in life daughters.

Mom was gone now, as was Aunt Nora. Dad was, to say the least, not quite himself. He went around mumbling a lot and announced to anyone who listened that at least one of his daughters was a witch. They came from a long line of witches, he claimed, and didn’t seem to think that was a bad thing.

So it was that turning into the long, hard-packed dirt drive that led up to the house, Sydney no longer felt the mixture of gladness and safety that used to be hers when she came home. Always before this was the place on earth where she most longed to be.

But now with Mom and Auntie gone and Dad hardly himself, she was the senior responsible member of the family. These days the family and the farm seemed like heavy weights on her shoulders.

The chickens stayed mostly around the barnyard, the cows and pigs were enclosed within fences, but three dogs came bounding up to greet her with the kind of enthusiasm that said they’d worried all day and were afraid she would never come home.

She greeted Scout, Pal and Samson, two Collies and a small short-legged mutt who was alpha of the three with genuine warmth. It was always pleasant that these creatures were just so glad to see her.

The house, a two-story white-painted building, looked anything but threatening, she thought now, though if Dad kept on telling his wild stories people around here might start whispering that it was haunted.

A more unlikely haunted house she’d never seen. It looked like what it was, a comfortable farm house, plain and unpretentious and Sydney would never admit to anything else.

Well, she did have to confess that the women of the Valen (Mom’s maiden name) family were a bit . . . unusual. But that certainly didn’t make them witches.

What nonsense! What superstition! This was 1947 for goodness sake. How could her down-to-earth practical father go around saying such things?

But then he’d never been quite himself since they lost Mother. Nothing had been the same.

Chapter Two

Gabe Cabot stood waiting for him under the big Mulberry tree in the front yard. Lucas got slowly out of the old Model A Ford he’d purchased second hand once he’d been dismissed from the hospital back east. It had taken most of his remaining cash, but he hadn’t exactly been up to thumbing it across country after having recovered from months of treatment for the bullet in the shoulder he’d taken during the last days of the war.

The wound had turned infectious and after that it seemed one health problem piled on another to keep him away from coming home.

Gabe, tall and thin with a long narrow face, regarded his approach with amused eyes. His best friend had always looked at the world with a glint of humor in his eyes, Lucas thought now. They hadn’t seen each other since their last furloughs had allowed them to come home at the same time. They’d partied big time, got thoroughly drunk, and talked about old times. Neither of them had exchanged battle stories and, Lucas figured, never would.

Got shot did you? Gabe nodded at his left shoulder so Lucas figured somebody had