Josie's Journey, A Beginning

             Josie Caroline Reynolds placed One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, the book Mrs. Whitehead, her fourth grade teacher, had loaned her, on the old chenille bedspread lying in a heap near the door of the kitchen shed.  She stepped back looking down at the book wishing she could see a display of the magic contained in these stories.  She was alone and the shed was a good place for a private demonstration…if only the cover would glow, that would be enough of a sign, at least for now. 

She heard her mother in the kitchen opening cupboard doors and drawers to take out bowls, spoons and knives she needed to prepare their supper.  Mother wasn’t likely to step out into the shed, but if she did and she asked Josie why she was standing there staring down at an old book, well, Mother was the one person Josie would dare tell about wanting to know if the magic in these marvelous stories could also happen to an ordinary nine-year-old girl living in Bratt, Tennessee, a town so small it was known only to the people who lived there and the U.S. Post Office.  Was the magic in these stories available only in far away, foreign places named in The Arabian Nights, or could a similar magic happen in northeastern Tennessee as well? Could once upon a time mean the same thing as today, Tuesday, 4:30 p.m., in real life?

Could believing in magic make it happen?  Was it possible real people, like the pretend characters in The Arabian Nights, are just as likely to meet up with someone or some idea that will help them get past unexpected and seemingly unsolvable predicaments that come their way?  If there were no magic to help an ordinary girl like herself, how could she be sure she would be rescued if she, like Sinbad the Sailor, set out on an ocean voyage and the ship she was traveling on broke up in a storm?  She had never sailed on a ship or even seen the ocean, but someday, maybe when she was eighteen or twenty-five, she might want to cross the ocean to see those far away places she read about in books.  It would be interesting to visit Italy to see Monte Cassino where Dad had been wounded during the Second World War.  Dad had taught her and her younger brother Will the few Italian words he had learned while he was in Italy.  Dad’s tutoring had made her think she might study Italian when she went to college. 

A kind of magic did happen in school after lunch when the third and fourth grade combination class came in sweating and dusty from the playground and Mrs. Whitehead asked them to rest their heads and arms on their desks while she read to them.  Just listening to the story was enough to transform Josie into the young boy who left home to seek his fortune. Third and fourth graders knew, just as the boy in the story knew, they would leave home someday, if only to go to a nearby town to work, or when they were ready for college to the University in Knoxville, and that was a long way from where they now lived.   

It was never comfortable listening to all the mishaps the young boy in the story had to overcome in order to learn to be resourceful.  However much she wanted to, Josie or any other child in her class couldn’t warn him ahead of time of the danger and trouble coming his way.  She and everyone else caught up in the story had to wait until someone, if not a helpful human being, then maybe a talking bird or magical animal would show the boy a particular thing he hadn’t thought to make use of until that very moment, so that in one way or another he would manage to get through the more worrisome and sometimes scarier parts in gaining useful new experience. 

No one wanted such a good story to end, but when it did, Mrs. Whitehead didn’t have to explain to third and fourth graders that when the boy was old enough to marry and rule his rightful kingdom he was no longer the inexperienced boy he had been at the beginning of the story, he was an adult and capable of taking on a great many responsibilities.  When Mrs. Whitehead closed the book and stood up to tuck the hanky she had used to blot the moisture around her mouth back into her pocket, the magic that had seemed real while they were listening to the story vanished in the children’s shuffling and scrambling to take paper, pencils and books out of their desks to be ready for their next class. 

If magic were available to third and fourth graders, they wouldn’t have to spend any time at all on schoolwork because they would understand everything written in a book by just touching its cover with their fingertips.  If they used magic, they would know how to spell words on their weekly spelling list and even those that weren’t.&nbs