The Secret of Magic (18 page)

All this said for Regina’s benefit in Forrest Duval’s best better-watch-it-little-lady voice.

Marjorie Tisdale looked over at her brother, both eyebrows knit into one dark slash. She opened her mouth, then shut it again, lips pressed tight. Regina wondered what she had been about to say—this woman who was a lawyer like she herself was, who might understand things, since, without a doubt, she’d been discriminated against herself. What woman lawyer hadn’t been? But Regina never found out what Marjorie Tisdale was thinking, because Forrest Duval started pontificating again.

“My son can’t help you. The grand jury already turned in its findings. Ain’t nothing going to get those folks to change their minds. Tom Raspberry, now . . .” Without turning around, Duval punched a finger toward the black man behind him. “He’s the one handles our colored problems, been handling them for years.” Duval smiled, and his face lit up with mischief. “You got anything else to say, take your tail over to Catfish Alley. See him.”

Take your tail, indeed!
Regina started seething. She was dying to tell Forrest Duval what he could do with his own tail, but how could she?

Instead, she said, “Thank you for your time,” and turned to the door.

When she opened it up, Miss Tutwiler almost tumbled right in. But the receptionist managed to recover her balance quickly enough to step Regina smartly through the reception room and out onto the sidewalk again. This time when the wooden door to the Duval law offices closed behind her, its click was decisive.

Regina looked down. All her things were still on the step where she’d left them—basket, thermos, pink pillow, her briefcase, her purse. And
The Secret of Magic
was there, as well. It lay on top of everything, neatly arranged beneath a brown paper bag. Miss Tutwiler’s work. No doubt about that.

Gathering it all together, Regina started wondering what she ought to do next. Maybe she should go see Tom Raspberry like Forrest Duval had told her. He was a black man, after all; he might help her. Certainly, she wasn’t getting very far with the whites. And he’d been there with the Duvals in their office. Which meant he might know what the Duvals knew.

She crossed the street and was halfway down the block when she heard someone’s, “Hey, there!” But who would be calling her? She kept on going. Then she heard, “Regina! Hold up!” Regina/Vagina again. Would these Southerners ever learn how to pronounce her name right?

But she turned back anyway, and there was Bed Duval, and a stocky white man striding along beside him. She waited. Wary. The memory of that woman stepping children into street traffic so white men could pass still fresh in her mind.

“You’re a mighty fast walker,” Bed said, hurrying up. Words, Regina thought, used to buy himself a little time. But he didn’t seem to need time. He got right to the point.

“I’m sorry about all that back there.”

“Sorry?” She studied him for a second. Fair-haired like his sister, rumble-voiced like his daddy. Maybe trying to be his own man, she decided, but resembling them both.

“Daddy just wanted to save you a whole lot of trouble.”

Oh, God,
she thought, another you-got-to-understand-the-way-things-are-down-here lecture from somebody like Mary Pickett who always acted as though she was from “here” in ways she wanted to be and “not from here” in ways that she didn’t. But Regina had already stopped. Now she might as well listen. He was still the district attorney, after all.

“Nothing in that grand jury file’s gonna help you. The whole thing—the convening—was over in fifteen good minutes. Not a serious witness called except for the coroner. I know. I was there.”

Regina caught that qualifying word
serious
, wondered what it meant.

“Maybe,” she said, “if I could speak to the circuit court judge . . . ? He’s the one holds the grand jury docket.”

“You want to talk to Judge
Timms
?” Bed looked around to the uniformed man beside him, whom he’d not introduced.
The sheriff?
Regina couldn’t tell. Both men shook their heads. Both men chuckled. Bed Duval lowered his voice. “He’s the one I’m running against, and there’s no ornerier man in all Mississippi. You being new here, let me tell you a story. He’s been on the bench thirty years now, and I’m his first major challenge. I’m also fresh back from the war, and he’s not happy about that, either. He thinks I’ve brought in new ways. And he’s got his supporters, people he’s been doing favors for, for a very long time. One day, one of these men—a moonshining owner of one of those little honky-tonks out deep in the county—sidled up to him and said, ‘Judge, a bunch of us been watching over that young Duval. There’s talk he wants to do you out of your Your Honorship.’ Then just like that, ‘Want us to kill him?’ The person who told me this said Judge Timms shook his head. Said, ‘Charlie Bob, now, you know killing’s against the law.’ A significant pause. ‘But if you did happen to shoot him, mind—I mean, if it just happened, an accident maybe—why, you sure can count on getting a fair trial in my court.’”

The only reason Regina laughed was because Bed was laughing and the man beside him was laughing, making it seem like being jolly was the thing to do. Finally, she said, “You make Revere sound lawless as the Wild West.”

Bed quieted down. “In some ways, I imagine it is. Oh, don’t let the softness of our accents fool you. It’s an eye for an eye down here.”

People were staring at them now, and Regina’s load was getting heavier by the minute. Neither man offered to give her a hand, take any of it from her, which didn’t surprise her. She decided to come to the point. “Why’d you do it, then? I mean, if you weren’t going to see it through. Why’d you get Judge Timms to call up a grand jury in the first place? It must not have been easy. Especially when it was pulled back into special session.”

She saw the reaction to her question in his eyes, saw their pupils close in reflex against it. It took him a moment to answer. The other man, his thumbs through his belt loop, said not a word. Then from Bed, “Judge Calhoun and my daddy and Willie Willie all grew up shooting together. Joe Howard and I used to hunt out in Magnolia Forest. With his daddy. My own daddy came out with us, too.” He paused. “At first, I didn’t even recognize him when they drug him up out of that water. Joe Howard. When I saw what they’d done. The
indecency
of it . . .” Bed Duval’s voice trailed off.

Why, he wants me to say it’s okay,
thought Regina.
He wants me to say, “Well, you’re a good person. You did what you could. What more was there to do? It’s not your fault.”

But she had no intention of saying any of that.

“You thought what happened to him might bear investigating . . . Just not right away.”

Now Bed’s eyes snapped with the same better-watch-it-little-lady snap that his daddy had thrown her way.

“Yesterday,” said Regina. “I met with Mrs. Buchanan. You know, the lady we talked about back at your office. She saw Joe Howard taken off that bus, she was on it, and she went right around to tell the sheriff all about it when the bus got into Revere. Now, the sheriff, he wasn’t that interested. She hadn’t seen faces, you see, Mrs. Buchanan. But she had seen a car. A blue Buick. Brand-new, she said. Don’t see many of them in Revere do you, Mr. Duval?”

She saw him glance around, at the hitched mule wagons, the pickups, the few dusty Fords parked on the square. A quick look, but old Forrest Duval wouldn’t have chanced it. He’d never have taken his eyes off Regina. Watching her. Assessing. But this man was young, a young lawyer.
Nothing to be scared of.
That’s what she said to herself.

What she said to Bed Duval was, “Maybe you might want to talk to Mrs. Buchanan. Some afternoon. I can tell you she makes a marvelous date cake. But, of course, you already know that. Since, like you said, you and your daddy and the sheriff and Mr. Willie Willie and Joe Howard . . . the whole darn town it seems like . . . spent so much time together hunting deer in the forest. So bucolic. Makes all northeast Mississippi sound just like one big happy racial family.”

A
new
young lawyer, she thought again, maybe wanting to do the right thing, but still fueled by bravado and not much else. She knew the type, all right. You bet she did.

She nodded to both men, then turned, started off.

“Can I give you a little advice?” She hadn’t heard this voice before, but she knew it belonged to the other man, the man to whom she had not been introduced.
Purposely
not introduced, she thought, as she turned back to him. Makes things scarier that way. Still, she was surprised that Bed Duval had left them, was already halfway down the street. She and the man faced each other, two worn-up squares of city sidewalk between them. He was the sheriff. She saw his star now. He said, “You’re new down here. Don’t know how things work. Watch your step. And if I was you, I’d pay a call on Tom Raspberry. Like Bed’s daddy told you to.”

His voice wasn’t kind but it wasn’t mean either.

“Thank you,” she said, as she started on her way yet again.

• • •

REGINA WASN’T AWARE
just when Willie Willie came up, only that he was suddenly there and right in step beside her, reaching out his hand. Next thing she knew, he was taking all the things she’d been carrying. A relief.

“See those there,” he said, bending close to her and pointing to three solitary orangey-red flowers sprouting up on the manicured perfection of the courthouse lawn.

Regina nodded.

“Know what they are?”

This time she shook her head. She’d never seen anything like them before.

“Why, they’re wild things. Spider lilies,” Willie Willis whispered close to her ear. “They sprout up like that, full blown, overnight. You couldn’t cultivate them if you wanted to, because they’re on a mission. They come out specially to tell us when seasons be changing. When summer’s all over and winter’s nigh here.”

“Really?” said Regina.
Flowers, not only with names but with legends.
“You know things like that?”

“That,” answered Willie Willie solemnly, “and a whole lot more. For instance, I know you met Miss Peach Mottley. She told me all about it. Thinks you’re smart. Thinks you might be able to
do
something. She wants me to bring you out to her place, back there in the Magnolia Forest. Wants to have a nice talk with you. That’s what she said. There’s a lot you can learn in the forest, a lot she can teach you. It’s all out there, the whole story, and I’ll take you right to it—that is, if you can be persuaded to go.”

“Maybe,” said Regina, “but this case . . . You know, my work . . .”

Willie Willie cocked his head, regarded her. “I’ll tell her you’ll come. You’re ready. Might learn something useful.” He didn’t exactly whisper, but he looked around and dipped his head when he said this. “Saw you reading Miss Mary Pickett’s book out in public, for all the world to see. I recognized the cover. Saw you go into the Duval law office. Saw you come out.” He fell in step beside her, and they walked beneath an overarch of elm trees that shaded the sidewalk. “Saw Mr. Bed follow you out onto the street, bringing the sheriff with him. Now,
that
was a wonder.”

“Rand Connelly?”

“The sheriff. Mr. Bed have anything to say for himself?”

“Nothing useful. The sheriff told me I needed to see Tom Raspberry. They
all
told me that, or at least intimated it.”

Willie Willie nodded. “Those white-folk Duvals—they think they got Tom Raspberry in their pocket. And maybe they do have. Still, it might be worth your while to go on over to Catfish Alley, pay him a visit, hear what he has to say. Him being a lawyer and all.” Willie Willie nodded sagely. Sunlight, filtered through the hanging treetops, fell like lace on his face.

This surprised Regina. “Nobody said anything about him being a lawyer.” She thought for a second and then said, “Well, maybe you did before, but he didn’t say anything about it himself.”

“Well, that’s what he is. At least, that’s what he calls himself to us colored folks. An
attorney
-at-law. Written bold as brass on that plate-glass window outside his spanky new building. But he wouldn’t want to be seen putting on airs in front of Mr. Forrest. He’d get himself slapped down in a minute. That’s the nature of things. A colored lawyer in Revere got to piece together a living just like an old woman pieces a quilt, a stitch at a time. He can’t just put together a practice out of whole cloth. Lots of Tom Raspberry’s piecing involves the Duvals. He lends them his eyes and his ears when they need them. His mouth, too, saying what white folks think needs to be said.”

Regina’s step picked up. This was the first time she’d been close—physically close—to Willie Willie since she’d gotten to Revere. And he was telling her something, giving her information that might be of some help. Because he believed in her, thought she might actually be able to do something? She sure hoped so. Without thinking, she canted her head toward his, the same angle as Joe Howard’s head in the snapshot she still had in a pocket. She smiled at him, too, just like Joe Howard had done. Willie Willie was tossing something in his hand, catching it again. Up down. Up down. Just like he’d done at the bus depot. Something glittery and tiny, bright as a new dime. It caught at the sun.

Willie Willie said, “I wish my boy could have been here to see you. He would have busted out laughing, just like I did. I was watching that old lady Tutwiler gawping at you out the window while you were reading that
Magic
book,” he said. “The whole sight of it was so
rich
. Shook them all up, that much is certain. Not that I think there’s any hope of getting law court justice for Joe Howard in Mississippi . . .”

Regina stopped. Turned to him. “What other kind of justice is there?”

“I don’t know. The homemade kind.” He looked off to the distance, to the forest. “The kind you do for yourself.”

“No!” Regina surprised herself, how strong her voice sounded. “If you don’t get what you want—what you need—under the law, then you really don’t get it at all. It can always be taken from you and then the bad folks can do what they want to, and they can do it again and again.”