The Messenger of Magnolia Street (20 page)

“It's been a long time, Billy,” Trice says. “I don't think you'd find us. The tunnels are too confusing.” Years ago, they had used the sound of underground rivers coming up and disappearing again as their guides. A watery map of sound telling them where to turn or how far away they were from a room or a hallway. Now there would be no waterfalls to their right or streams to their left for guidance. Only darkness.

Another shock-wave blast rolls over their heads, shakes the ground, and throws them against the cave walls.

“You better go on now, Brother.”

Nehemiah nods at him, wants to apologize for missing out on his life for so long. Wants to tell him all the things he's never said. Now he knows those are words that should have been said years ago. But years ago is gone. He simply says, “Be careful, Brother,” as he turns and pushes himself through the opening so tight it scrapes the skin from his back and chest before he makes it through.

Trice reaches into their cave bag and tosses Billy his light helmet and a flashlight before she pushes the bag through to the other side. She turns and looks one last time at Billy, who, when all is said and the day is done, has been her best friend for the last twelve years.

“No matter what happens, Billy, I'll see you on the other side.”

“If you beat me, Trice, you tell Momma and Daddy…” and the bear breaks down but doesn't cry. But he can't say anything more.

“I'll tell them that you still need a haircut,” she says, then she turns and disappears inside the cave.

Just inside, the temperature drops significantly. Nehemiah has strapped on his helmet and turned on the light, and is passing one to Trice. He shoulders the backpack, reaches for Trice's hand, and they begin to walk deeper into the darkness of the earth. And toward the presence of evil.

Monday, 6:41 P.M
.

Butch is standing over the disheveled figures of Magnus and Kate. They are pulling up to their knees as they try their best to collect themselves, to remember where they are and what has happened. Then Kate looks up and sees the man with the gun, and she pokes Magnus in the side. Magnus takes her eyes off of her feet, where she is standing with one boot on and one boot off, and looks up at Butch.

“Do you know him?” she asks Kate.

“He looks familiar. She pulls the glasses down on her nose that have amazingly stayed on her face and looks over them at Butch. “I think he's a friend of Nehemiah's.”

“If you ask me, he doesn't look like a very good friend,” Magnus says, and she makes the motion of spitting through her fingers although she has actually swallowed her tobacco.

At the name of Nehemiah, Butch slowly lowers the gun. He looks around the town square. At the broken glass and the uprooted trees, as if he was a man waking up from a dream. Because he is. It is the same dream that has been stealing intentions and leaving people vulnerable to all manner of madness.

“We better get inside,” he says to Kate and Magnus. He shoulders his gun and stretches out two hands to help the women to
their feet, and the odd threesome walk, looking frequently over their shoulders until they feel safely inside.

Cassie Getty is lying on the floor where the rocker dumped her before tumbling onto her back. She rises to her knees and pushes it off. She sets the rocker back upright and goes to the window and looks out. The windowpanes shook with complaint but held fast to their form. Cassie squints through the panes and sees that the earth is still there.
So far,
she thinks. She decides she will go to the kitchen and get a snack. “I might need to keep my strength up,” she says out loud as she pulls a box of graham crackers down from the shelf. She returns to the living room with her hand in the box and is standing there, just like that, when the next wave rocks the floor under her feet so that she looks as though she is dancing, trying to keep her balance. Suddenly Cassie wishes that she was not alone. A wish that has been a long time in coming.

Monday, 6:44 P.M
.

Zadok was sitting in the back of his shop when the first shock wave hit and knocked out his glass storefront. He didn't pay much attention. Just kept sitting, staring at the walls like he had done for the previous hours of the day. Zadok was disappearing inside of himself, and when a thought came he would just let it go on by until he was back on empty. If there had been someone who had any intent of stealing, they could have easily walked right in and taken all the money in the register, if there had been any. For that
matter, they could have taken the register. Zadok would still be sitting in the chair, his scissors hanging limply from his hand.

If Zadok had been able to stare through walls, he would have been looking into a mirror image of himself in Obie's salon. Right now she and Zadok are bookends staring through a cement wall. Finally, Obie reaches around behind her and turns on the hair dryer. She is hoping that it will drone out the noise inside her head, the same noise that has been bothering her all day.

Monday, 6:47 P.M
.

Blister wakes up where he is lying, fallen against the passenger door. Blood is dripping from a cut on his hand, and he can feel blood running down one leg. He feels like all of his body parts have been dislocated and put back together the wrong way. He pulls himself as upright as he can get. “What do you know? I'm still alive,” he says. Then he looks up toward the open door window above him and begins pulling himself upward by hanging onto the steering wheel.

Blister tries to push the door open and, when he fails, settles for pulling his body through the open window. He falls out toward the hood and rolls down the front, catches himself and falls to his feet.
I'm a regular action-adventure character. That's what I am,
he thinks.

Then he locates Billy's truck and starts walking in that general direction. He is staggering, but it's not from drink. It's from dizzy. Blister hasn't taken a drink for a very long time.

Monday, 6:59 P.M
.

There is Pastor Brown. Right where he's been all afternoon and now into the darkest of nights that Shibboleth has seen.
No moon or stars tonight,
he thought.
We are being erased.
And there was a truth in his statement that I wish he had captured earlier. A truth that I wish he had conveyed to his sleepy, contented congregation. But the pastor has recognized the fullness of this truth an hour and a day and a decade too late. He missed the opening signs of the shifting of Shibboleth. They were so easy to overlook that they almost weren't even there. Subtlety is a favorite weapon of the enemy. And unless you look very closely, you might just believe he has mastered its maneuverings.

As the first shock wave rolled its way from the dried-up springs and across Shibboleth and down into the town square, Pastor Brown dropped to his knees and prayed very simply, “Forgive me.” The remainder of his prayer was nothing but a silent heartache. But it was just as easily understood.

Monday, 7:14 P.M
.

Nehemiah and Trice are walking deeper and deeper into the earth. They have gone as far as their feet remember. “Let me see our map, Trice,” Nehemiah says, and waits for her to pull it from her pocket. He waits as she reaches into her rear pockets. As she reaches into her front pockets.

“Don't tell me,” Nehemiah says, but Trice doesn't have to tell him anything. “I just had it, Nehemiah, when we…” Then Trice
stops because she can't remember where they were when she had it. She can't remember much of what happened before this very moment. Things are getting foggy inside her mind. And if Trice could see herself the way she sees everyone else, she would understand why. “We have to go back.”

“There is no time left for turning back.” Nehemiah looks down the corridor before him, tries to remember a thousand childhood trips. “Let's just move forward and see what happens. Maybe something will trigger our memory.”

Trice wants to tell him that this is suicide, that moving forward in the darkness is insanity, but she doesn't. Their choices are so limited. So missing. So gone. She takes his arm and they move forward, following the beams of their headlamps down the long, dark corridor, with nothing but blind faith to guide them.

Monday, 7:23 P.M
.

On the surface, Billy is tapping his fingers on his arm. He rocks slightly in the hole. Not like Nehemiah but back and forth on his feet. One foot to the other foot, the helmet swinging in his hand. Then he looks at his watch as if it mattered. Then he looks down. And what he sees causes his heart to beat twice as fast. It's a rolled-up sheet of yellowed paper. He bends and picks it up gently. He is hoping that Trice has burned the images into her brain, knows them like the back of her hand.
If she hasn't,
he is thinking,
they'll never make it out of there alive
. He takes one look into the cave's entrance, shoves an arm through and half of a shoulder, listening for sounds in the distance. Nothing. He shoves the map in his jeans pocket and crawls up out of the path's entrance. He
is thinking that he will find them. He is hoping he will find them. Or he is determined that the last good thing he'll do is die trying.

Billy begins jogging back to Old Blue as fast as he can. He is singing as he goes in—a march tune, “No time like this time, no time like this time, and this time is all the time I need.” And he doesn't stop when he reaches the truck. He is still chanting softly as he knocks the loose glass out of the window with the light helmet. He quickly picks up the largest pieces from the seat and tosses them to the ground and is engrossed in doing this, chanting and picking up glass, when a bloody hand taps him on the shoulder. That's when the chanting stops and the cussing begins.

Monday, 7:24 P.M
.

Kate, Magnus, and Butch make their way back into the diner. Kate puts her hands on her hips and says, “Well, ain't this a mess.”

Magnus just says, “Get me a broom.” And the two of them set about cleaning up what's most obvious. They do this in spite of the night. In spite of air so thick a person almost can't breathe. They clean as though company was coming, as happy as two reunited friends can be when they are scratched up and shook up and in a state of shock. That is, until Kate discovers the empty pie plate. A pie that was most recently made. The one that explains her sticky hands. She holds up the tin, looks at it for a moment, and then nods to herself. She walks out of the kitchen, holds it up before Butch's face, and says, “You owe me some labor.” And Butch, with the taste of berries on his tongue, says, “I guess I do.”
He dutifully follows Kate to the kitchen with Magnus grinning at him every step of the way.

 

Cassie Getty has decided not to let the world come to an end. Not today anyway. It's a simple thought in her mind but a good one. She has decided that there are a few things still worth saving. She puts on her raincoat (although it doesn't look like rain) and gets her pocketbook (I guess she has decided to take it to heaven with her) and begins walking. I want to tell her she has a car. Want to tell her that the keys are right there in the side pocket of her purse where she always keeps them. But she doesn't seem to notice the car. She pulls the door closed behind her, takes out her keys, locks the front door, and puts them directly back where they were. Then she hooks the purse firmly inside her crooked arm, straightens her hat, and sets off walking down that dirt road with a determined look on her face. I am thinking this could take a while. It's a lot farther than a country mile.

Monday, 7:35 P.M
.

Magnus continues sweeping. Continues picking up exploded glass. She goes to the kitchen, pulls the garbage can out into the center of the diner and sweeps up dustpan after dustpan, emptying them as she goes. She can hear Kate in the kitchen telling Butch what to do, and Butch doing it.

Magnus is thinking about her cats, particularly General, and about Trice. About the way that things almost work out, then sometimes do and sometimes don't. Then she starts sweeping again.

Monday, 7:36 P.M
.

Nehemiah and Trice walk steadily forward and steadily deeper. They can see their breath, just visible now when they speak, which isn't normal. It shouldn't get this cold in their cave. It never has. “We should have turned by now,” Nehemiah says.

“Which way?” Trice's teeth begin to chatter. Nehemiah puts his jacket over her shoulders.

“I don't know, actually. It just seems…” and he pauses, trying to get his bearings in a place where there are none. “Seems we should have turned one way or the other. We've been going forward a long time.”

“We just don't remember yet, Nehemiah. This way is different.” And Trice pauses, looks up at him quizzically. “Why are we going this way again?”

“Because you said to, Trice.”

“No, I didn't.”

“You did. You were looking at the map and said this way was the shortest. It's the way we always came in.” Trice doesn't respond. “To get down to the treasure.” Nehemiah pauses again. “Remember?”

“I'm not sure, Nehemiah, what I remember.” Both of Trice's hands are in her hair. “And what I don't.”

Nehemiah wants to hold her. Wants to kick himself for taking so long to get back to her. But the only way to remain with Trice is to end this thing that they're caught in and can't see. “We can remember, Trice, if we try. We know this cave better than anyone. You, me, and Billy. We could have found our way there with our eyes closed when we were kids. We had memorized our steps. We could count them out, right down to perfection.” He squeezes her hand. “Now the two of us have to do this.”

“Should we go back and count from the beginning?”

“No time, Trice. Just no time left.” And now Nehemiah releases her hand, runs his fingers through his own hair, trying to think. Trying to find their way when all ways are lost. When the path is nothing but darkness with no light at the end. Only tunnel. And Nehemiah does something he hasn't done for a little while. Or maybe a long while. Depends on your frame of time. What does he pray, you ask? Well, what would you pray if everything you loved was passing away? If the key was somehow in your hand to turn the door to change? A change that would put a rock back in its rightful place? Make water spring from dry places? What if? Then
those
words you'll have to tell. Those you'll have to fill in here. And in the wonder of workings, perhaps it's
your
words that will light the way.