Magick Words No. 1: the cat on the mailbox post outside Beloit

The mailbox post outside Beloit had a cat chalked on it, low down, where a man on foot would see it and a man in a car never would, and I only saw it because a tire dropped off the shoulder. Depression-era hobo code. A cat means a kind woman lives here. Under it was the wavy line for good water. Under that, a zero with a line through it, which is in no glossary I own.

I went up the drive. A woman opened the door before I reached the porch. Behind her, on the kitchen table, sat a plate of sandwiches cut corner to corner and a place set for two, in a house with one coat on the hook.

"Chalk goes up every spring," she said. "I never see who."

She said it like weather.

I ate. Ham on white, crusts left on, the old yellow mustard. She asked if I took sugar. I said I hadn't asked for coffee, and she said she knew.

At the post the cat was gone. So was the water. The zero had been wiped from the top down, and the line through it was still wet. I put my thumb to it. It came away white, and at the next gas station the white stayed on through two washings.

Filed from the shoulder of Highway 24.

TO BE CONTINUED

Read next: the woman in the café already knows his name

That mark is in no glossary you own either. The First Frequency is the one that teaches you to write it.