The Messenger of Magnolia Street (4 page)

“We're trying to tell you you need to come home.” Billy sur
prises Trice by adding this. Shocks her, actually. “Trice is wired a little different. That's her way of telling what she sees. But you
know
, Brother, it's real.” He swallows the last bite of the orange. “And you
know
what I mean. We've had proof.”

“Like the time Blister almost died except I
dreamed”
—Trice slams the word
dreamed
like a gas pedal to the floor—“about him standing in the middle of those flames screaming.”

“That was when he was still just John Robert.” Billy adds, “Blister came later.” Billy pushes his chair back on its hind legs. “After you got me and Nehemiah to go over there with you at three in the morning, and we pulled his body out of that house.”

Nehemiah is remembering the smell of scorched flesh on a hot night. Is remembering staring at the blaze engulfing the house, pacing back and forth. Back and forth. Remembers wishing for, needing, rain. Then clouds, fast, white, powerful, rolling in from the east, a clap of thunder, a sudden downpour dousing the flames. Him crashing through the door and John Robert's identity altered into something, someone else. Remembers looking at Trice with a new respect. A knowledge that her strange dreams were more than crazy hunches. Right then he made a silent vow that no matter how foolish they appeared, he would not deny her their validity. At the time, this vow was not contained in words. At the time, he didn't know one day her dreams would try to rip him from his world.

“All I know is that you have something to do with this entire picture or I wouldn't be here in front of you.” Trice crosses her arms over her chest. It's a habit she has picked up from the two brothers.

“I know all about your dreams, Trice. I don‘t doubt their…” He starts to say
reality
but he drops the word. Nehemiah rubs his nose, attempts to rub away the smell of remembrance. Now he has a decision before him. Has an unexpected
Y
in the road. One that he wasn‘t expecting when he rolled out of bed at precisely the same
time he does every day, beginning the exact same morning routine. Which choice will he make, you ask. Which road will he take? Time will tell. It always does.

Nehemiah wants to say, “You don't need me.” He wants to say, “You have an entire town, take care of the problem.” The unidentifiable, nebulous, dark-cloud future of a problem. But he doesn't. He stalls. It only works for a little while, but that may be all he needs. He reaches over and slaps his brother on the shoulder, rocks him a little under his hand. “You look tired, Brother. And Trice,” he looks over the table and cocks his head with his dimpled smile, “you look just the same.” But he's thinking,
Better actually. Even better. How could that be?
And then he smiles that grin at her, the one with the dimple. And lo and behold, Trice smiles back. I look to Nehemiah, back to Trice, and back to Nehemiah, whose dimpled grin is still held firmly in place. I write down the words
electric
and
current
.

Trice interrupts his thoughts with “You don't have anything living here, Nehemiah.” She has put her finger on the absent spot. “No dog, no cat, no bird,” she smiles at him, “not even a fish.”

“Maybe,” the dimple grows deeper, “I have all of them,” he points down the hall, “in the bedroom.”

“No, you don't.” Trice points to her chest, “I would
feel
it. But regardless of what you don't have, I also know you do have hot water and I'm in desperate need of a hot shower.”

And these are about the final words of the evening. Billy and Trice deflate into a puddle of road-weary and Nehemiah begins to clean up the dishes. They say goodnight and get settled into proper sleeping arrangements after moving Old Blue to a nontowing location.

Then Nehemiah goes to bed, turns out the light, and just as he is falling asleep gets a feeling he doesn't like. A push from the inside out. Not a physical one, but a push just the same. Let's just
say it is a deposit into his soul. One that he'll need should he accept the road ahead of him to the right.

In the following silence, the traffic fades away. The city itself fades away and is replaced with one single solitary image. It is an image of Nehemiah sitting in Old Blue at midnight down at the entrance to the springs. That's what he sees, just as clear as if he were sitting there in person.

He gets out of bed, walks down the hall, and nudges Billy, who is already snoring on the sofa. (Trice has rightfully commandeered the extra bedroom by declaring that she “doesn't care how big or how tired Billy is, that the last time she checked she was a girl and she is getting her privacy.”) “Hey, Billy.” There is a rattle of rhythm. “Billy?”

“What—what?” His breathing is almost normal again.

“What's going on at the springs?”

“What?”

“I said, what is going on at the springs?”

“Springs ain't there no more.” Billy rolls over on his side, speaks into the back cushion. “It's nothing but dust now. The water has left town.”

Nehemiah nods, although the water drying up makes no sense. No sense in any natural realm. Doesn't even make any sense the way that Billy rolls it sideways out of his sleeping mouth. As if somehow the water leaving town were an acceptable option.

He walks to his room, and gets back into bed. He lies wide awake now with his arms behind his head, watching the day-glo green numbers on the clock changing by the minute, remembering a place where his memories were once drawn up from cool, clear water.

But now memory has run dry.

Nehemiah is on his way home and into the unknown. Driving south, trailing the two-day-old fumes of Billy's truck, the demands and concerns of Washington occupying his every thought. So much so that he is missing the dogwoods. Missing the sunlight that's left streaming across the road through the pines. Just missing it all.

Before leaving, he had gone to his office, taken off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and then sat down, only to stare at his day-old sketch of the Shibboleth Oak. Bam. There it was, waiting to face him straight from his own hand. And if there had ever been a feeling that he was going to have a hard time escaping whatever this call was, it was then. For a second, but only for a second, he thought he had seen the leaves move slightly on the tips of the branches. He had rubbed his eyes and risen from his desk, walked to the window, and looked out past the borders of green hedges, beyond the traffic, until he could almost see Billy's truck beating back the wind.

He had thought about how very long it had been since he saw his brother and how he had let that happen. How he had let that much time get away from him. And how amazingly good Trice had looked. Not good in a hubba-hubba way. Not good in a sleek, city fashionably perfect way. Trice had looked good like, well, good, like for real. Real natural. Or maybe she had just looked familiar. Maybe it was just good to have a slice of his old life invading the new and improved version for the first time. Or maybe she was just
the sexiest, most uncontrived woman he had encountered in, well—forever. He was still thinking about this, still stumbling and troubling over it, when Senator Honeywell walked in unannounced. He had to clear his throat twice before Nehemiah heard him.

Let's take a moment to consider the senator, to consider his Southern charms. He looks Texan big, although he's not from Texas. He's from a poor county in a poor part of the country. (It is this fact ultimately that helped win him the election.) He has been on this earth sixty-two years and carries himself like a man of determined accomplishment, which of course he is. Senator Honeywell is also a man with extreme observation skills. Able to spot deception a mile away. Also able to recognize loyalty when he sees it. He knows a thing or two.

Nehemiah had pulled himself away from the window, away from the past, and taken a seat alongside the senator. He has worked for this man for almost a decade. They have become, and there is no other word to describe it, friends in every sense of the word. And the fact that Nehemiah has never, never tried to take advantage of this fact rests well with Senator Honeywell.

They had, at this point in Nehemiah's day, this minute portion of his life, proceeded with business as usual. They had discussed current developments and the upcoming elections. Mind you, these developments are crucial by all means, but not crucial to our story. My assignment is to watch the unfolding path that leads back to the Key. My only purpose at that moment was to watch as Nehemiah made his choices and to record the consequences of those actions.

“I've had a surprise visit.” This is how Nehemiah had broached the subject. He had paused then, trying to summon up the words or perhaps the courage to go on. To try to unwrap something that he didn't fully have his finger on. “A visit from my brother.” And
then Nehemiah had looked up at the senator with an earnestness. “Apparently, there is trouble in Shibboleth.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“I wish I knew, Jim, I really do.” Nehemiah only calls him by his first name when in private. In public, he refers to him as Senator. Always. “That's part of the problem. They can't seem to articulate it. Just to implore me to ‘come home,' as they put it.”

“They?” the senator had asked. Ahh, a man that doesn't miss the details.

“Umm.” Nehemiah had tried to skip over explaining about Trice because that might open up a door to explain about Magnus, Blister, Covey, Catfish, Shook, Wheezer, and so on and so forth, and it would never end. “A friend came with him,” Nehemiah had said and tried to roll it off with such nonchalance that it wouldn't open the door to any further discussion. Nehemiah had tried to explain that although he had no evidence, no exacting evidence, the request had come from a reliable source.

The senator was a good listener. What he had heard between the lines was that a choice had been made, a decision reached, but that Nehemiah would defer to him. Would not leave without his permission. Or his blessing.

The senator had then quietly, quickly steered the conversation back to business. Back to meetings, to votes and to voters. He had covered every necessary topic that a man of his position needed to know from a man who had been his veritable right hand for two terms. Then he had risen to leave. It appeared that the matter of Nehemiah's personal situation had gone unaddressed. But when Senator Jim Honeywell had reached the door, he had turned and said, “Go home, Nehemiah” with a finality that meant no argument. “Take a few days off and just go see for yourself.” Then he had added, “But call me,” as the door was closing.

It may have been the senator who held the ticket to Nehemiah's trip home. But it's God who is the conductor on these rails of time. There's a lot to be said for divine favor. And it's all good.

And Nehemiah is replaying that moment, and his fast packing, his turning the key in the deadbolt on his door and saying to himself,
Just a few days. I'll be back in just a few days.
And he's still thinking about his return when a red fox runs in front of the car and stops dead in his tracks, forcing Nehemiah to slam on the brakes. The fox turns, locks eyes with Nehemiah, and holds them there, until it finally darts across the asphalt into the afternoon shadows on the other side. This is how it happens that thirty-eight miles from Shibboleth, stopped in the middle of long, empty highway, eyes locked with a red fox, the ties to Washington snap loose. Nehemiah rolls down the window, searches for a fast blur of a tail, a flash of red fur, but there is no sight of him.

Later he will tell Billy about the fox at the kitchen table. He'll say it in wonderment. “Won't believe what I saw,” he'll say.

And Billy'll say, “Tell it,” the way he does to Trice.

“Saw a red fox run right out in front of me, stop and stare at me, if you can believe that, and then take off like lightning across the road.”

“Ain't no foxes around here anymore.” Billy will sit down at the table with a hefty sandwich, take a bite, and keep talking with his mouth full. “Ain't been for years, Nehemiah. You know that.”

Nehemiah will cross his arms over his chest and say aloud, “I know what I saw.”

But that will be later, when it comes back to him, when the flash of red hair brushes against the synapses of his cortex.

Right now, Nehemiah rests his head back against the seat of the rental car, opens up the sunroof, and feels the early evening sun
warm on his bones. Bones that he didn't realize had felt so cold for so long.

The melt begins, just around the edges, just along the surface. Nehemiah turns on the radio and the refrain from “Southbound” by the Allman Brothers kicks in as he says, “What do you know?” and turns up the volume as the Malibu seems to take to the road of its own accord. And a thousand important, trivial problems masquerading as life fly right out that roof, getting lost in the translation of winter to spring. Our Nehemiah is a glacier moving south. Ahh, sweet impetus.

Thursday, 6:21 P.M
.

Old, white-frame, paint-peeling, sagging porch of a house. Nehemiah loves it all over again. Instantly. The way one loves any piece of home unchanged and forgotten until you're standing in the middle of—sinking in the middle of—memory.

Old Blue is not out front. Nehemiah calls out for Billy anyway. He hasn't heard so much quiet since he can't remember when. He stands under the oak tree, shadowed in its reach. The sun is setting, the red undercarriage of clouds a moving mirror that says,
One more revolution.

Nehemiah pulls a piece of moss from a tree branch and holds it up, saying aloud to no one but the tree, “Parasite or poetry, depending on your frame of mind,” which sums up his entire thoughts of Shibboleth in general. But tonight, as the wind picks up, stirs winter leaves around his feet, Nehemiah is remembering poetry. And the words are wrapping around his skin, sinking into his being
with every sigh of the earth's groaning. Every smell, every sight, every sound forming an orchestra that takes him back to the beginning.

He climbs the porch steps and opens the door. The last of the sunlight, in its final crash, slants across the wood floor at odd angles, the dust particles becoming a living entity of their own. He walks down the hallway and straight back to the heart of the house, the kitchen, which smells like years of layered grease and fatback and white flour. This is what he remembers most, and he almost expects to see his mother, hands covered in flour, greet him as he steps through the door. Almost. As if, if he wills it hard enough, long enough, it might happen. A circumvent of time. The earth turning backwards.

He turns, walks down the familiar hallway, looks into his mother's room. No mother. But everything else just the same. He reaches the next bedroom on the left, the smallest one, his room. Billy was the oldest. Billy got the larger one at the end of the hall. His mother got the one with the most light. The door to his room is closed, and he stands with his hand on the knob, starts to go in, then backs away, walks out to the porch and steps outside. The screen door slams behind him. It is a comforting
hello
and
good-bye
sound. Then he sits in one of the three old rockers waiting there for a warm body. The cool starts rising up from the ground, and the stars begin appearing high in the sky.

The moon hasn't yet risen when Billy pulls up, gets out grinning with Sonny Boy, who howls at the apparition on the porch. “Oh hush, boy,” Billy says, “you can't even see good. That there's your brother.”

Nehemiah doesn't feel correcting him on this fact is necessary.

“Why didn't you call?”

“I don't know. Figured I didn't need to.”

“Reckon you don't.” His boots are heavy on the porch steps. “Did you eat yet?”

“No. Just sitting. Waiting on you, I guess.”

“Well, let me wash up and we'll head on over to Kate's and get a bite.”

Later That Evening

Later, sitting at the diner sawing on T-bones, Billy spends his time chewing and watching Nehemiah. Nehemiah watches everything and everybody. (Public awareness has become an ingrained habit.) Sonny Boy watches through the diner door every bite that Billy cuts and puts into his mouth.

“Trice is gonna be mad that we didn't ask her to come eat.”

“Why didn't you?”

“Didn't think about it then. Just thought about it now.”

“Well, I'll be doggone! Ed, Ed, look who's here, will you just look?” Catfish has come in and spotted Nehemiah. “Hey, Billy, look who's here.” He says this to Billy as if Billy hasn't been sitting with his brother all along.

“Hey, Catfish, good to see you.” Nehemiah puts out his hand.

“Doggone,” Catfish says again, looking at Nehemiah like he's just been resurrected. “I guess we're gonna hear it now. Ed, you ready to hear a good one?” Ed is nowhere to be seen as Catfish pulls a chair from a table, turns it around, and straddles it at the booth's edge, between Nehemiah and Billy. “Tell us a story, Nehemiah.” He looks down at Nehemiah's plate, at the half-eaten
steak, the fork and knife in his hand. “Aww shoot, you're eatin'. I got so excited, I didn't even notice. You go ahead and eat, Nehemiah. Get that out of the way, we'll come back over in a minute.”

Nehemiah looks down, looks up with an attempt at a smile, trying to find the right words. “Sorry, Catfish, I don't have any stories.” Catfish stands, disbelieving. “Well, sure you do. You don't have to tell a new one, just tell us one of the old ones. Hey, tell us the one about John thinking he'd caught a big one when it was Billy under the water holding on to his line.” He whoops with the memory. “Tell that one.”

Nehemiah looks at him vacantly, and Billy sees what Catfish doesn't. He sees that his brother doesn't even remember the story. Not from being there on that funny fifteen-year-old day. Not from telling it over and over again in the years to come and go. Doesn't remember it at all.

“Catfish, I tell you what, me and Nehemiah's got some catchin' up to do. But he's gonna be around for a few days, so you drop by before he leaves, and one of us will pull a story out of the bag for you.” Catfish is as docile as a man can be. Not a mean-spirited bone in his body. He doesn't want to tell Billy that his stories are fine, just fine, but they are not the same. And of course, he doesn't need to. Billy knows this. He's just trying to buy Nehemiah some time. He isn't certain what for. Catfish tries to smile but leaves heavy in the chest, deflated and shaking his head. He is mourning the loss of words that dance. Words that bring life like fire brings warm.

“Billy,” Nehemiah puts his fork and knife down, “why isn't Trice married?”

Billy doesn't say anything immediately. He takes a swallow of his tea, tries to sort something out in his mind. Something different that has just come to his attention. “Why ain't you married?”

“You know something,” Nehemiah pauses, looks at the dog's eyes through the glass door, “I don't know. Maybe I haven't met the right woman.”

“Ain't no woman right when you get her.”

“Is that right?”

“Yep, she's not right for about,” Billy rolls his eyes up, thinking serious at the ceiling, “'bout nine, ten good years.” And he nods as if that settled it. “Then she is just right.”

“That's a long time to get things just right, Billy.”

“You better get started right away then. Now, I'm a worn-down package, but you, you got some potential.”