Page 1 of The Messengers of Magic

Chapter One

B efore Pen Turner was ensnared by the boundless void of time, he lived in a cramped tin-can of a house with his parents and three restless younger brothers.

It was a small single-wide trailer with only two bedrooms and one bathroom, the kind of place dreams went to die.

His parents occupied one bedroom, while he and his brothers crammed into the other, a tight space where double bunks filled nearly every inch of the room.

The dump had been home since the day he was born; now, at eighteen, he had outgrown not only the bed he slept in but also the house itself.

The trailer sat on the smallest lot on Haward Street in Oak Ridge, West Virginia, an undeniable eyesore.

All the other homes were stick-built houses, not trailers, owned by lower-middle-class Americans.

Pen always thought it looked as if the trailer had fallen from the sky and no one had bothered to remove it.

Most people who walked past turned their heads, pretending it didn’t exist, and he couldn’t blame them.

Across the street was a modest two-story house owned by Ward Richardson, a retired high school history teacher. Pen mowed Mr. Richardson’s lawn every Thursday afternoon. Afterward, he would go inside and have iced tea with the old man and talk for hours, sometimes staying late into the evening.

Pen liked Ward. He was a nice man who had an endless supply of stories of his travels and adventures.

Ward had been to Europe after the war, taking a ship over to France in ‘47, once travel restrictions were lifted.

He spoke of riding steam trains through England, seeing the ruins of bombed-out cities, and walking the streets of Paris.

Scenes that, to Pen, sounded like something out of a Hemingway novel.

Pen wished he could have been adopted by him, as his own father was an abusive drunk who had nothing to offer the world other than brake jobs and oil changes.

He was happy working a dead-end job and living in a crappy old tin-can of a house.

That was not how Pen planned to spend his life.

He wanted to travel and see the world, chase adventure, and get as far away from Oak Ridge as he could possibly get.

He was smart, one of the brightest students in his entire high school, but that didn’t matter to his father, whose head was as empty as the old well on Sycamore Lane. Ward was the only person he could share his academic achievements and awards with, the only person in his life who genuinely cared.

The heat was already creeping in on that mid-May morning in 1950, so Pen grabbed the mower and headed out to cut Ward’s lawn before the worst of it settled in. Cicadas droned in the trees, and down the street, a neighbor’s AM radio crackled out Perry Como’s “Wanted.”

When he’d finished, Ward was waiting with a pitcher of iced tea. “I think we’re in for a hot summer this year,” Ward said as he poured Pen a tall glass.

“It’s looking that way. Graduation is in two weeks, and they’ve already decided to have it in the gymnasium,” Pen told him.

“Have you told your parents about the letter from Bates yet?” Ward asked.

“No. Not sure they’d even care.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true,” Ward replied in his polite tone.

Ward had helped Pen fill out an application to Bates College and had even written a letter of recommendation on his behalf.

Pen, despite his homelife, had worked hard throughout high school and had almost gotten straight A’s.

It was thanks to Ward’s tutoring and the quiet refuge of his den that Pen had been able to focus, to read, to think.

The acceptance letter had come just last week, sent to Ward’s address.

Pen had been awarded the grant he’d applied for, covering nearly all his tuition.

Without it, he would have never been able to afford to go.

This was his way out. Bates College was his escape plan.

He knew if he stayed in Oak Ridge, his future would mirror his father’s.

And that was the worst fate he could imagine.

Ward had been thrilled when they read the letter together; however, Pen knew convincing his parents that college was a good idea wouldn’t be easy. His father wanted him to get his head out of the clouds and “be a man,” which meant working with his hands, not his mind.

“Why don’t I go over and have a talk with them?” Ward suggested as he refilled Pen’s glass. “Maybe if they heard it from me and knew there was little obligation on their part, they might feel differently about it.”

“I’m not sure that would do much good,” Pen said. “Other than tick the old man off even more.”

Pen’s father didn’t like Ward Richardson. He labeled him as a pompous old man who thought he was better than everyone else, which wasn’t the case. Deep down, Pen knew the real reason: his father hated Ward, not for anything he had done, but because Pen looked up to him instead of his own father.

“You’re probably right,” Ward responded. “But I don’t want you giving up on that just because he can’t see past the edge of Oak Ridge. It’s your life and you need to live it the way you want.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon talking and paging through old books about New England that Ward kept on a large old bookshelf in his den. Pen felt a flicker of excitement as he imagined visiting the historic places pictured in the worn pages, places he’d see for himself when he was at Bates.

As the sky darkened, Pen headed back across the street to the tin-can. Somewhere a few blocks over, an ice cream truck jingled its tune, and the distant laughter of kids echoed down the street as they chased after it.

When he arrived home, his mother was cooking dinner, and the youngest of his brothers, Val, was playing with a set of wooden Lincoln Logs that had once been Pen’s.

The older boys, Dave and Will, were in the tiny backyard kicking a ball around and making all kinds of racket.

His father was sitting in an old pea-soup-colored chair, drinking a beer and smoking.

The whole place reeked of baked beans, cat piss, and stale cigarette smoke.

After coming from the crisp scent of Ward’s house, the stench hit Pen so hard, he almost retched as he stepped inside.

“Where the hell have you been? You should’ve been home an hour ago to help your mother. Were you over there with that old windbag again?” his father snapped, a spray of beer spitting from his lips.

“I mowed his lawn. It’s Thursday, remember?”

His father lurched to his feet and grabbed Pen’s shirt, twisting the fabric into a knot within his fists before landing a hard slap across his face.

“Don’t you talk to me like that, boy. I’ve got no problem putting you in your place.” He let go, shoving Pen to the floor. He caught himself with one arm, elbow dragging across the worn carpet, leaving a raw burn.

Pen stayed there on the floor, looking up at his father, a balding, overweight mechanic who had to push his own kid around just to feel like more of a man. Pen almost felt sorry for him; this was the only semblance of authority he would ever have.

As Pen pulled himself to his feet, he glanced at his mother. She didn’t say a word, just kept stirring a pot of beans and franks on the stove. His father settled back into his chair, cracked open another beer, and tuned in to an evening radio program.

This was Pen’s life. Every day, the same as the last.

The day Pen graduated from high school, he handed the Bates acceptance letter to his mother. A glimpse of pride flashed across her eyes before it faded as his father snatched it from her hands and began to read.

“You think you’re so much better than all of us, don’t you?

There ain’t no way you’re getting out of this town.

And if you think I’m gonna give you even a cent to send you to some pansy-ass school so you can read books and sit on your ass all day, you have another thing coming,” he spat, throwing the letter on the ground and making sure to step on it as he walked off.

“I think it’s wonderful, honey. But we just don’t have the money to send you to school,” his mother said, patting him on the shoulder as she picked up the letter, now emblazoned with his father’s footprint.

Pen watched as she smoothed the letter out in her hands. Her face looked drawn, her skin paler than usual, and there was a hollowness in her eyes he hadn’t noticed before. Maybe it was just the moment, but she looked more worn down than normal.

“Remember,” she added gently, handing it back to him, “you can still have plenty of adventures in those books you love. With a good imagination, you’ll never be trapped in one place.”

He understood what she meant.

He knew it was how she had survived all these years with his father, trapped in a life that allowed little escape.

It was the one thing she had taught him, the one thing they had in common.

Despite her lack of education, she could read, and she did so in every spare moment, fleeing into worlds far beyond the one that confined her.

Pen had often woken in the night to find her at the kitchen table, a tattered library book open beside a half-drunk glass of Coca-Cola, the bubbles long gone.

Determined not to be trapped like his mother, Pen decided he would get a job and save whatever he could to cover the rest of his tuition money for Bates in the fall.

He applied for a few jobs in town, but as fate would have it, the only place that would hire him was the gas station attached to the garage where his father worked.

Thankfully, they were on opposite sides of the building, and he rarely had to see his old man.

One day, however, Pen was asked to fill in for George, an older man who had worked in the garage for as long as he could remember, doing oil changes with his father. George had fallen ill and never returned, and before Pen realized it, his temporary role had become a permanent one.