The Sorcerer's Apprentice

There was a time, long ago, when many sorcerers lived in South Carolina, men not long from slavery who remembered the white magic of the Ekpe Cults and Cameroons, and by far the greatest of these wizards was a blacksmith named Rubin Bailey. Believing he was old and would soon die, the Sorcerer decided to pass his learning on to an apprentice. From a family near Abbeyville he selected a boy, Allan, whose father, Richard Jackson, Rubin once healed after an accident, and for this Allan loved the Sorcerer, especially the effects of his craft, which comforted the sick, held back evil, and blighted the enemies of newly-freed slaves with locusts and bad health. "My house," Richard told the wizard, "has been honored." His son swore to serve faithfully his teacher, then those who looked to the Sorcerer, in all ways. With his father's blessing, the boy moved his belongings into the Sorcerer's home, a houseboat covered with strips of scrap-metal, on the river.

But Rubin Bailey's first teachings seemed to Allan to be no teachings at all. "Bring in fresh water," Rubin told his apprentice. "Scrape barnacles off the boat." He never spoke of sorcery. Around the boy he tied his blacksmith's apron, and guided his hand in hammering horses-shoes from iron ingots, but not once in the first month did Rubin pass along the recipes for magic. Patiently, Allan performed these duties in perfect submission to the Sorcerer, for it seemed rude to express displeasure to a man he wished to emulate, but his heart knocked for the higher knowledge, the techniques that would, he hoped, work miracles, and, at last, as they finished a meal of boiled pork and collards one evening, he complained bitterly:

"You haven't told me anything yet!" Allan regretted this outburst immediately, and lowered his head. "Have I done wrong?" For a moment the Sorcerer was silent. He spiced his coffee with rum, dipped in his bread, chewed slowly, then looked up, steadily, at the boy. "You are the best of students. And you wish to do good, but you can't be too faithful, or too eager, or the good becomes evil."

"Now I don't understand," Allan said. "By themselves the tricks aren't good or evil, and if you plan to do good, then the results must be good."

Rubin exhaled, finished his coffee, then shoved his plate toward the boy. "Clean the dishes," he said. Then, more gently, "What I know has worked I will teach. There is no certainty these things can work for you, or even for me, a second time. White magic comes and goes, and I have taught you a trade, Allan, so you will never starve. After fifty years, I still can't foresee if an incantation will be magic or foolishness."

These were not, of course, the answers Allan longed to hear. He said, "Yes, sir," and quietly cleared away their dishes. If he had replied aloud to Rubin, as he did silently while toweling dry their silverware later that night, he would have told the Sorcerer, "You are the greatest magician in the world because you have studied magic and the long-dead masters of magic, and I believe, even if you do not, that the secret of doing good is a good heart and having a hundred spells at your disposal, so I will study everything--the words and timbre and tone of your voice as you conjure, and listen to those you have heard, then I, too, will have magic and can do good." He washed his underwear in the moonlight, as is fitting for a fledgling magician, tossed his dishpan water into the river and, after hanging his washpail on a hook behind Rubin's front door, undressed and fell asleep with these thoughts: "To do good is a very great thing, the only thing, but a magician must be able to conjure at a moments notice...