The Messenger of Magnolia Street (6 page)

“Well, then, if you don't have anything to say about your work, what about the women?”

And again Nehemiah can't answer. He tries. He tries to conjure up a face of the adjunct professor he had dated for almost but not quite seven months. But instead he bites a link sausage and forks up the home fries. Says something about a “nice girl once. Went to Europe. Didn't come back.”

“She was probably testing you and you failed.”

Nehemiah nods but he doesn't understand what he failed at. Doesn't remember a test. Just a blue dress at the airport when he told her good-bye. And now that is what surfaces, a blue dress. The blue dress is wearing brown hair with sorrowful eyes and the scent of lavender.

“She was wearing blue last time I saw her.”

“See, it was a test.”

“I must've needed you there to sort it out for me.” He gives her a wink.

“You don't need me up there, honey. There'd be trouble in that move. Washington would never be the same.”

While he eats, and butters, and dips, and dives, Kate fills him in on the remember-when's. She paints pictures of his mother, tells stories of Billy and Trice and him running around swearing they had discovered treasure. “Made up a treasure map so you could find your way back. Knocked right there at that back door to the kitchen,” she points through the kitchen in the direction of the door, “and asked me for tools, for
knives
to guard the treasure! Can you just imagine? I gave you spoons, said, ‘Guard it with these.'”

For the slightest second, Nehemiah hears, “Hurry up, Billy. Hurry up!” But it's an echo and it fades before he swallows the next bite. “Then you took off again. Down to the springs. It's a wonder you didn't all drown. Mercy me.”

Nehemiah's cheeks are red, flushed. The warmth is spreading through every region. Even the ends of his fingers feel flushed. But he hears the word
springs
, knows it is important, and tries to lash onto it. Tries with all his might to use the word for leverage to pull himself up from the plate of gravy, pull his face up from the bite he is about to take. And he does, but by the time he focuses on Kate's eyes, he has forgotten the word. He couldn't carry on an intelligent conversation if he had to.

“Guess you'll be ready for a nap soon.”

“I don't nap,” Nehemiah says, suppressing a yawn. “Besides, I just got up.”

“Is that a fact?”

He looks at the clock, the regular diner clock, but the time says 12:04. He prairie-dogs his head up above the booth. The restaurant is almost full of people. The noise carries up where he can hear everything that he was missing. “I've been eating for two and a half
hours?” He looks at the plates, realizing some have been emptied, taken away, others refilled.

Kate gets up from the booth; she does this by pulling on the edge of the table until she has enough leverage to hoist herself up and out. “I couldn't say exactly. Just that right now, you look well fed. And like you need to go to bed.”

Caught in some strange tide, Nehemiah gets up from the booth and makes his way out the front door. He forgets if he said good-bye or not. He forgets if he offered to pay (knowing Kate would say no but offering just the same). And later, when the sun is much lower in the sky, he will forget exactly how he got back to the house, passed Billy on the porch steps, and went straight inside to his mother's bed and lay across the top quilt. If he had been a little more aware, he would have noticed the residue of gold dust pressed between the pattern, but he has placed his face in the middle of the threads and gone deeply, dreamlessly to sleep.

The glacier has met his match. There is the slightest scent of hope in the air, the barest whisper of a whistle on the wind.

Friday, 4:44 P.M
.

When Nehemiah wakes for the first time, he realizes the magnitude of something peculiar enveloping him. He sits on the side of the bed, looks out the window at the low glow in the west, the shadows being cast across the yard. He pats the quilt next to him and raises his hands to run them through his hair, and stops, holds his palms out before him, bends his head down, rises, and walks to the window. He holds both palms up, turns them to the light, and
there, unmistakably, is the glow of gold. He returns to the bed, kneels down, and peers carefully and closely at every thread, every pattern's curve. Then he rises very slowly, his hands still in the air, and moves toward the door. He is calling Billy. He is trying to turn the doorknob with his elbows. He is calling again and again, trying to call out while looking away, to call without breathing on his palms. He is looking for, longing for, validation, proof, confirmation of this incredulous occurrence when the dust begins to dissipate. He watches, no longer calling but quietly watching. The gold appears to shimmer, rises in the air, then falls back into his palms, sinks below the surface. He doesn't need to turn around, doesn't need to examine the bed to know there is nothing there.

 

Billy is driving around thinking about his brother, who passed him hours ago with not much more than a grunt then fell into some sort of unnatural sleep on the their mother's bed. He had watched him long enough to make certain that he wasn't sick or drunk. Nehemiah wasn't a major drinker when he left town, but a lot could happen, obviously had happened, since he'd been gone. No smell of alcohol. No sign of fever. He had quietly pulled the door to and said, “Come on, Sonny Boy, looks like we got some sniffing around to do.”

Billy is looking for pieces of something, but the question he asks himself is,
to what
? He drives over to see Trice. This is one time he's hoping she's seen something, anything out of the ordinary, or had any strange feelings at all, particularly where Nehemiah is concerned. Then he realizes that he hasn't even told her about Nehemiah being home, so he drives on past the house, down to the river, just to think for a while. And maybe, while he's at it, he'll drop a line.

Back on Magnolia, Magnus is sitting in her porch rocker, rocking fast and clippity, her feet touching the floor then pushing off
quick and hard again.
Was that Billy that just drove past too darn fast?
She thinks it was and makes a mental note to tell him he better slow down. Did I mention that Magnus dips snuff? Right now her bottom lip is full, jutting out below her top one. She is rocking and dipping too fast for the cats to ride along in her lap, but they are keeping an eye on her just the same.

Occasionally, her feet come to a solid stop, then she looks hard off into the distance until she nods to herself and takes off again. She is sorting through some business. She is making up her mind.

In the midst of this decision-making, Trice opens the screen door, sits absently on the porch swing. Her swinging is slow, rhythmic, her toe barely touching the porch to push off again. This has an effect on Magnus. Without her realizing, she begins to slow, to rock more comfortably, to keep a steady beat. General jumps up in her lap, stretching his paws out almost to her knees. Magnus spits off the porch, her fingers forming a
V
beside her lips.

“It's gettin' dark,” Trice says.

“Yep.”

“Looks like those dahlias could use some water. I'll get them in the morning.”

“Well, then, while you're at it, check those tomato plants for weevils, Mr. Daffin said the other day his were
ate up
with 'em.”

“All right.”

They are still swinging and rocking when Billy pulls up in the front yard.

“Hey, don't you bring that dog up in here.” Magnus is saying it like she always does, but as usual it's too late. Sonny Boy is out of the truck, down to the ground sniffing around.

“He ain't gonna chase no cats, Magnus.”

General puts out his claws, stiffens his fur, growls low under his breath.

“Tell General that before he claws me to death.”

Magnus spits again through her fingers. She is aiming for the dog but falls an inch short of the target.

“Whatcha up to, Trice?”

“You're lookin' at it.” Trice is running her fingers through her hair; she is thinking about eclipses. She is picturing the one that she saw when she was little. How Kate had told her not to watch it or she would go blind.

“You up for taking a short ride?”

“What for?”

“I got something at the house that I want to show you.”

“Can't it wait till morning?”

Magnus snorts under her breath. “Oh get up and go on. You ain't doing nothin'.”

Trice is hard to get moving, but once she does, it's as if all the lazy energy in the world comes out in one spurt. Then she can't be still. If Magnus let it, this would drive her crazy. She wants Billy to get that hound dog out of here because all the cats have run up the trees and under the house, where he is nosing and sniffing. She can just picture them under there, crouched down, furred-up, shaking, ready to run or to fight to the last breath. She has tried to explain this to Billy to no end. It's not that the dog will hurt the cats, it's that they
think
he will and that's enough for her. They are at home minding their own business. On top of this, she knows in an hour or two Trice will get wound up (for no apparent reason), and she will begin to talk to her about whatever foolish book she is reading and follow her around, try to get her to sit down and listen to her talk about Mr. Einstein like he were still alive as if she doesn't have better things to do with herself with Wheel of Fortune coming on. Trice has been known to wander in and start reading right in the middle of a spin and that's just about a sin. Not quite, but just
about. Magnus starts mulling over what exact types of sins there are that may not be listed in the Bible. She is thinking if she was God, she'd make everybody sit down and be quiet during Wheel of Fortune.

“Trice, I need to get going if you're coming.”

“All right, all right,” Trice says and gets up, releasing a tense ball of orange named Stella to the ground. Magnus names the cats. Trice buries them. Heavy work for her graceful hands, the very same ones that can go shooting off into the clouds and across the horizon when she needs to express her latest passion, but those dancer hands can grasp a shovel and hit the solid dirt with an iron will. Those hands will not back down. When the problem meets Trice, the outcome is really very simple, Trice wins. It is an unsuspecting advantage. One we might just be counting on.

Friday, 5:57 P.M
.

Nehemiah is sitting at the kitchen table, holding a cup of coffee in both hands. He is staring into the cup so intensely that his eyes reflect back in the dark pool. He is still staring when Billy pulls up, still staring when he hears voices spilling up the porch steps. The screen door opens and Billy and Trice make their way into the house as Billy calls out, “Nehemiah?”

Finally he hears “Back here” in response. From the hallway the only thing evident is Billy's bulk on all sides, but when he steps into the kitchen there is Trice behind him in a white T-shirt, a blue jacket, and jeans. The sight of her brings him an unexpected comfort.

“Well now,” she says, puts her hands in her back jeans pockets, leans against the kitchen doorframe.

“Yeah, I seem to have that effect on people.”

“You look like your old self.” Trice says, and I look from Nehemiah to Trice and back to Nehemiah. I write down
electric current squared.

Nehemiah opens his palms, looks at the empty skin. “We need to talk, Trice. We need to go over your dream again.”

Billy walks to the counter, pours a cup of coffee. Gets the milk and sugar out. “Trice, you want coffee?”

“Might as well, I have the feeling it's gonna be a very long night. And it wasn't as much a dream, Nehemiah, as an awakening.”

Now they are where they are meant to be. Circled. Listening. Touching the very fringes of the truth. I want to shout, to encourage them, to say, “Yes, yes, now you're moving. Hurry. Hurry.” But that's not my job. My fingers stay wrapped around the liquid, my eyes focused on the fire.

Nehemiah is contemplating how much to say, which stories to tell and which ones to hold at bay. He decides one piece will connect to the other. There will be no telling without all the details.

Billy figures they need a starting point. Figures he should be good for something, so he offers to break the ice. “Nehemiah, why don't you tell Trice about you knocking me down to get right back in that bed today and sleep like you were a dead man.”

“Trice, have you ever heard a chiming clock down at the diner?” Nehemiah ignores Billy's prompting, tries to assimilate. To figure everything out. And hopes, so very much, that he is not trapped all alone in some strange hallucinogenic psychosis. He thinks if anyone is going to be in the river of strange with him, it will be Trice.

“No.” She narrows her eyes, says in a hushed voice, “but I am hearing one right now.”

Nehemiah and Billy freeze their positions, hold their breath, strain to hear the chimes.

“Guys, I'm just kidding.”

“Look here, Trice, I am serious, and I came down here on the hem of your dream, so the best thing you can do is help me out here.”

Oh, just look at those righteous ruffled feathers. A man holding doing the right thing out before him like a martyr's trophy.

“Look, excuse me if I get a kick out of the possibility, just the slight possibility, that I'm not the only one swimming in the river of strange.”

Nehemiah raises his brows. “Did I just say that?”

“What?” This comes from Billy and Trice both.

“The river of strange, did I just say that aloud?”

“All right, Nehemiah, let's start with the clock then.” Billy is trying to corral their words. “Let's talk about the clock, because I wasn't really gonna bring it up. I guess you figured out that there ain't no chiming clock in the diner. Never has been.”