The Messenger of Magnolia Street (19 page)

Monday, 5:53 P.M
.

Blister has driven now for hours. Driven up and down all the back roads of Shibboleth. And he still doesn't know who he's looking
for or why, but he's certain that he needs to remember something because it's important. “Critical,” he says aloud to no one listening but you and me.

He has driven to the east side of Shibboleth. He has driven to the west side of Shibboleth. He has driven downtown and is now circling the square.
Well look-a there. You don't see that anymore. Women just sitting under the oak tree.
He drives around the circle again.
Boy, they sure do look kinda familiar.
He slows down to a crawl and drives around a third time. And then his eyes lock with
the Mighty Magnus
and something explodes inside his brain. It is the past, present, and future all meeting in the same moment. And he knows what he has to do. And that he has to do it. And without further notice, he floors the Chevy, drives full speed on around the square and on down the road.

“He didn't even wave,” Kate says. She would have waved, but Magnus had such a tight grip on her hands that she couldn't move one. “Just like he was a stranger to us.”

“He's no stranger,” Magnus says.

“Well, of course not. Everybody knows Blister.”

“His name is John Elias Robert.” She peels back seven layers of her skin as she reveals, “and he is the father of my baby.”

Kate's head turns quickly toward the receding red truck. “I never would have guessed it.” And then she says quietly, “John Robert is her daddy, then. All these years I wondered but I was afraid to ask.”

“Who'd you think?”

Kate shrugs. “Maybe the old Debbie Cake salesman. They seem to be good at sweeping women off their feet.”

“Kate Ann, does she ever ask about herself?” Magnus is crying now, but it's a silent cry. The tears stream down her face as she talks. She doesn't wipe them away. She doesn't let go of Kate's hands. “Don't she wonder about how she came to be in this world?”

Kate, her big blue eyes floating in saltwater, replies, “She asked when she was little. For no reason, because she had me and Phillip for momma and daddy. There weren't no reason for her to be asking. But she was eyeing me with those blue eyes.”

“You know something funny? She's got those blue eyes like yours.”

“Well, God's got a sense of humor, I reckon. But she kept eyeing me funny. I'd catch her out of the corner of my eye. Like she knew from the beginning I come by her in an extraordinary way. And she'd ask me every few months until I finally told her she was a gift from God. A bona fide miracle. That I raised her up from the wishing well.”

“And she believed it.” Magnus doesn't say it with a question mark in her voice. She says it with a smile.

“She's Trice. She believes in miracles, Magnus.”

“That's 'cause she is one.” Magnus finally releases Kate's hands, stretches both palms out and wipes her face flat.

“Well, she is to everybody that knows her.” Kate straightens her apron, pushes the hair back from her eyes.

“And we don't ever need to tell her any different, Kate. Just let things go on being the way they are.” But then she looks up at the sky and remembers the way things are. “Or maybe the way things used to be.”

“We've kept that secret a long time, haven't we, Magnus?” Magnus nods. Kate looks up at the oak tree branches. “And just to think, it all started right here with us working out the details. Remember?” Magnus nods. “We were young.”

“Not
so
young. Not me anyway. I was already an old maid—thirty-five and done for. You were a little younger. Young but already strong.”

“I was married. Let's not forget that. Made it easier for me to be strong.”

“I was so scared,” Magnus says, and looks off somewhere over Kate's shoulder as if she could see the whole thing. The conversation on the bench. That long bus ride. That year away.

“You were scared back then. I've been scared ever since.”

Magnus looks at her in surprise. “What have you got to be scared of? You don't look like you'd be scared of the devil.”

Kate Ann looks over the empty streets again. “Scared of losing her, Magnus. All of her life, I've been scared of losing her.”

“Me too,” says Magnus, “losing her to you.” And the two of them, tired and turning gray, somehow manage to cross that long, decayed, invisible bridge to one another. And to hold on.

Monday, 6:14 P.M
.

Old Blue pulls up at the south entrance of the springs. This time they have left the shotgun at home. Shotguns won't make a bit of a difference in this fight. They could bring in grenade launchers, tanks, and troops to no avail. It's not that kind of battle.

Nehemiah looks up at the sky with Billy watching him.
Maybe he's gonna call down that rain. Maybe that will help us.
So he asks him. Figures it can't hurt.

“You gonna call down that invisible rain, Nehemiah?”

Nehemiah continues looking at the sky. “No, Billy,” he says. “We're past that rain now. We need to hurry.”

The three of them begin to walk through the rough sand pines, the scrub oaks and underbrush, occasionally a magnolia is to the left or right, and Trice notices that the blooms that should be just coming out, just exploding into white, are withered and brown.
The smell of sulfur grows stronger, and with every step their footsteps crunch and crackle. It is the sound of dry, dry, dry. They are approaching the cave from a different entrance. They are trying to go in at a different level. Come up in a different room. They are trying to take a shortcut. But sometimes shortcuts are deceptively long and treacherous.

I look at Billy's stomach, at his shoulders. I am thinking it's not going to be a tight squeeze—it's going to be impossible. But they don't know this yet. They have forgotten that time's natural passing means growing up in more ways than one.

“Where's the wind, Nehemiah?” Billy asks. Trice keeps a hand on Nehemiah's hand, his arm, his jacket. She is holding on. And silent. She doesn't want to tell them now what she sees. And what she doesn't see.

“I can't tell you, Billy.” Nehemiah shifts his pack.

“I don't understand this,” Billy says, “and I don't like it, either. This is downright suspicious. Like if we were expecting the wind, we won't find it, so something else is gonna come up.” Billy looks around and whispers under his breath, “Something else that's no good.”

Nehemiah begins to contemplate Billy's
something else
with each step. Watching the ground, watching the trees, watching the sky. What he wants to say is,
Brother, I got a bad feeling. A curious feeling. One that says we're not gonna make it out of here alive.
And then he stops, pulls up short because what he sees is a different set of tracks. He looks down at his boots and they're a different pair of boots. As if the tracks and the footsteps belong to another man from a long time ago. In a jungle a long way away. And he realizes this feeling is not his feeling. It is his father's feeling. The second to the last feeling he would ever have as he walked straight into the middle of nothing but a heavy silence. A red sky. With no visible enemy. And with no
return. His final words, “Get down!” were shouted just before an ambush of enemy fire opened up from all sides and land mines began to explode as men tried to take cover. And David Trust's final thoughts had not actually been complete thoughts at all. Only images. Images of the face of the woman he had always loved and the two small faces that would grow into men's faces without him. And any closing prayer he had that day was simply
Dear God,
and it was attached to those faces just before he laid down his life. He hung those two words on those faces, and then he died.

And in an inexplicable folding-over of time and fruit from one of the shortest prayers ever heard, Nehemiah says,
Get down!
but then he realizes he has said the words to himself. “Get down!” This time he forces the words over his lips as he reaches for Trice and pulls her down with him. It appears that finally, after so many years of being wrong, Cassie Getty has gotten something right. As far as Shibboleth is concerned, the end of the world has come.

Monday, 6:24 P.M
.

Kate and Magnus are embracing. Right out there in public. Sitting right there, on the bench. Out in the open under that unrelenting black-red sky. Rocking one another back and forth. It's too bad that it had to come down to the end for this to happen. It would have been a glory for Zadok to see and point it out to the men in the barbershop. They would have all said, “I'll be” and “Would you look at that!” If Cassie Getty had been coming out of the beauty shop after her regular appointment, she would have just looked backward one time through the open door and shouted at
the top of her lungs, “Hell has just froze over. Thought y'all would like to know.” Ellen over at the Piggly Wiggly would have gotten on the intercom and called up Rudy from the back and said, “You just got to get up here and see this.” But that isn't the case on this day. And in only seven seconds, a shock wave will roll down the street and knock Magnus and Kate back so hard that the bench they are sitting on will carve a permanent notch into the oak tree. It will hit them both as they cling to one another knowing that at least now they can stop worrying about their big secret. Because the big secret will die with them.

Blister has driven five miles farther, has spotted Old Blue pulled off on the side of the road. He is just beginning to turn around, to go back, to follow the path that he knows he needs to follow, when the shock wave catches the side of his truck with such fury that it lifts the truck as it's turning, lifts it up on two wheels and holds it there. The truck freezes with Blister's hands on the wheel, then it begins to slide toward the ditch. Then it begins to roll. Over and over on itself, as Blister thinks,
Just when I was fixin' to get something right.

Monday, 6:25 P.M
.

The waves that roll over Nehemiah and Trice and Billy's head are tangible. Can actually be seen with the naked eye. There is an electric current that pulses across the edges of their backs, and if they were to look up they would see them. But they are huddled as close to the ground as possible. And by force shoved against one another, and then against the tree line and unable to breathe. But the rolling continues beyond them, tilting trees, blowing rocks, and
somewhere in the distance Billy hears the glass blown out of his windows and thinks about Sonny Boy alone at home and hopes that he's all right.

In a little while they will pull themselves to their feet. They will find that they can stand. And then they will discover that they can run, because, without any explanation, Nehemiah begins to run toward the southern entrance to the cave. He is not slowing down, he is not looking back. And without question, Trice and Billy run after him. Trice in a desperation to put her hand back on the body before her. Billy in determination to save his brother from becoming a sacrifice to something he can't see for a reason he doesn't understand.

Monday, 6:27 P.M
.

Exploding glass causes Butch to freeze in the kitchen, where he has one finger in his mouth licking the remainder of the blackberries from the empty pie plate. He drops the pie plate to the kitchen counter and quickly pulls his gun from his shoulder holster and takes a step into the dining room. All the windows are blown out. Butch doesn't know exactly what he's doing here or where all the pie came from, but he does recognize a war zone when he sees one. He walks to the window, the glass crunching underneath his feet. He surveys the street.
There's no sign of the enemy. But there does appear to be a couple of wounded, and from this distance they look like old women
. He is trying to remember his mission because right now it evades him. And he would really like to know.
What are my orders? And whose side am I on?
Then, as he surveys the women struggling to their feet, he
thinks,
Looks can be deceiving.
He takes aim at the shapes of Kate and Magnus as he steps through the empty door frame.

Monday, 6:29 P.M
.

Nehemiah, Trice, and Billy are approaching the opening, but from a level distance there is nothing to see. This is the passage of their childhood. This is the passage where the world disappeared into mystery and possibility. And eventually into the place where they found the stuff that they were made of. But that was many years ago, and today some things have changed.

Nehemiah reaches the downward path before them, and Trice catches her breath as he descends the natural rock steps until he is out of sight. She pushes forward even harder, and by the time she arrives he is already below, leaning into the crevice doorway. Trice looks down and follows him, hurries down the steps, grabs his arm for reassurance. Billy arrives panting. He stops and puts his hands on his knees, breathing heavily.

Nehemiah, turning sideways, tries to push through the opening, but it's too tight. He pulls back out, removes his blue jean jacket and hands it to Trice. Then he finally realizes what I already know. He looks up at Billy standing above them looking down. Then he looks at Trice. Then they both look back at Billy.

“What is it?” Billy is still catching his breath in great, gaspy gulps. Billy needs to run more often, I am thinking. Bank fishing is a fine sport but not much exercise.

“Billy,” Nehemiah is looking up, “we're bigger, a lot bigger now.”

“And let me guess, I'm biggest of us.” Billy stands up, crosses his arms over his chest, starts down into the hold. “Well, that settles it. I guess I'm the official lookout.” He looks back over his shoulder, “Or I can go around, enter from the other side, and find you two.”