The Secret of Magic (19 page)

“Maybe,” said Willie Willie, “it’ll be like that someday. Or maybe Peach is right. You’re the one to do it now. Time’s gonna show, and we’ll see.”

“Not much time,” said Regina. For a moment, she had the sensation that he might reach over and ruffle the hair on her head. Like she was a child. But she wasn’t a child. She was his lawyer. And she thought maybe she might ask him about Anna Dale Buchanan—had Willie Willie known about her, like Mary Pickett had and even Peach had? And the sheriff and Bed Duval as well? Maybe the awareness of who she was and what she knew and how this might matter came to each of them at different times—after all, Anna Dale had just called on Mary Pickett when she’d read about the grand jury findings in the
Times Commercial
less than a month ago—but they all knew now.
Surely
Willie Willie would know as well. Was that why the old Blodgett house had been burned, and was Willie Willie behind that? The timing made sense, but nothing else did. A black man—doing something like that in Mississippi and still alive, walking beside her right here on the street? And the shirt, had he been the one to put it on her pillow, to write
Hide Me
on that slip of yellowed notepaper? This gentle man, tossing into the air his small bit of glitter—could he have done that?

She thought of him as she’d last seen him on the back veranda with Mary Pickett and Dinetta, Mary Pickett reading from a spread-out newspaper, the two of them shaking their heads, laughing. Surely Mary Pickett had told him something as important as Anna Dale Buchanan’s visit? But Willie Willie had never mentioned her to Regina. In fact, he hadn’t said anything to her about Joe Howard’s actual death, who he thought might have killed him, how he thought it had happened. Strange. She opened her mouth to ask him about it, the words forming as they rounded the corner. But then she saw Calhoun Place. With a blue Buick parked out in front of it. Maybe the same one that had been sitting there the night she arrived. Maybe the same car that Anna Dale Buchanan had seen. Regina didn’t know, not yet, but the car pulled at her like a magnet.

“Is that . . . ?” She turned back to Willie Willie, who was no longer there. He had just vanished, leaving her briefcase and her basket and her book piled neatly under a privet hedge at the side of the road. She wondered where he’d gone,
why
he’d disappeared so suddenly—but for only a moment. Because standing right ahead of her, leaning against that blue Buick, was the same man with blond hair who had stared at her from the porch of the bus depot the day she arrived, the same man who had teased Peach on the Courthouse Square.
She was certain it was.

He wasn’t looking at her now, though, not like he had that first day. His eyes were searching out something else, something behind her. Something that caused him to frown. She swiveled back and saw nothing, only the spot where Willie Willie had disappeared.

The Secret of Magic.
Booker and Daddy Lemon alone at the edge of the forest.
Daddy Lemon saying, “You go deep down in there, son—deep enough, past the loblolly and the woody plants and the trumpet vines—you’ll find the place where life turns itself upside down and the dark things are the good things and they win out in the end.”

“Hey, Regina.” The man at the car whispered her name, and she turned to him.

He still wore crisped-out jeans and shirt like he’d worn at the depot. But it was his shoes Regina was most interested in now. She looked down. She noticed. They were boots. Hand-tooled, polished crocodile, they stuck out from the turned-back cuffs of his pants legs like two long, dark tongues.

Good boots. A big blue car. Everything Anna Dale Buchanan had said, but
something
was missing. A man like this—why would he kill?

He said, “Name’s Wynne Blodgett.”

And she nodded. “I know who you are.” She pieced a little together. “You’re Jackson Blodgett’s son.”

“That’s me, all right,” he said, Chest puffed up. Proud to be who he was. “He’s around back somewhere. Said he’d got something to do, probably for Mary Pickett. But what I’ve got is for
you
.”

Holding something lacy and white out to her. Her handkerchief, the one she’d left yesterday on the Duval stoop.

She stopped right in front of him, at most three feet away, but she didn’t reach out her hand.

He smiled at her. “I saw you leave it. I thought you might need it again. Sometime.”

“That was nice of you.”

“I’m a nice guy.” Then, “You gonna come get it?”

She stepped forward, and he shifted, brought his hand back a little so she had to move closer, then moved it once more and drew her closer again. She knew the game they were playing, cat and mouse. She reached over, careful not to touch him, but when she took the handkerchief his fingers brushed against hers and every single horror story she’d ever heard about white men and black women flooded immediately to the very tip-top of her mind.

But she said, “Thank you. That was kind of you to pick it up.”

“Hey, there,” Wynne said, lips slashing upward into a clown’s bright grin. “Weren’t you listening? I already told you I’m a nice guy.”

• • •

MARY PICKETT WAS
in her back garden, pruning her rosebushes.
Chop-chop-chop.
Jackson Blodgett, whose son and whose car were so conspicuously present, was nowhere in sight. Mary Pickett had on a heavy tweed skirt and an old straw hat, almost as big as an umbrella, eyes hiding out behind her dark glasses. But she knew Regina was there.

“Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!”

Who talks like that?
But she walked toward Mary Pickett anyway. “I saw Jackson Blodgett’s son out front.”

Mary Pickett stopped her clipping. She reached up and pulled her sunglasses down. The eyes above them narrowed, cool as cat’s-eye marbles. “Yes. Wynne.”

“He said his father was back here. With you. I’d like to talk with him if he is.”

Regina met Mary Pickett’s cool gaze with one of her own. Mary Pickett considered. “He’s around.” And then, “He’s got an old home place near here, burned out now. One of those clippings I sent you talked about it. He might probably have gone down to check on things there.”

The Folly. That’s what Willie Willie had called the Blodgett place. He’d waved a hand toward it the night she’d arrived.

“If you see him, would you tell him I’d like to speak with him? Please?”

She started on toward the cottage, but Mary Pickett’s soft voice trailed her down. “You call up north yet? Fill that Thurgood Marshall in on how much progress you made . . .” She paused. “If any?”

Regina hesitated, turned back. “I didn’t see a telephone in the . . .”

“Right there in the kitchen,” said Mary Pickett, motioning with her big Chinese-looking hat. “Go on in.”

“Not right now,” Regina said. This came out a little too quickly.

“What? Not got much to report?” Mary Pickett drawled the words out, each syllable taking up the space of two. “Well, I’m sure you will have. Before your time here runs out. Just go on into the kitchen anytime you want to. I’ll tell Dinetta. Keep in mind, though, it’s a party line. Half Revere’s on it, which means everything you say will be all over town in fifteen minutes. At most. Like you reading my book on the Duval office steps. Believe the
whole
town knows about that by now.”

“I needed to speak to the district attorney,” said Regina.

“You could have spoken with him yesterday, if you’d asked for my help. One call from me—that’s all it would have taken. You could have gone straight on in.”

“Through the back door?”

“
Everybody
goes in that way over at Duval’s, didn’t you notice?” said Mary Pickett, eyes now twinkly bright. “The back door for you is just the way things are. But your pride’s not the point, is it? You’re here to help me with Willie Willie. That’s why I called you down.”

“But I
came
,” said Regina, “to find out who killed Joe Howard Wilson. To get him some justice.”

“It’s the same difference.”

Regina said nothing to this. A bee buzzed through a potted geranium on a pedestal at Mary Pickett’s elbow. She seemed to pay it a great deal of attention. “Did you enjoy it? My book, I mean. I suppose I should ask you that.”

“Yes,” Regina said, then, “Very much.”

“Ah.” Mary Pickett’s word was short, not drawn out with pleasure. She reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a pack of Chesterfield cigarettes, put one in her mouth but didn’t light it. She looked back at Regina instead and said, “Then you know.”

“Know what?” Regina moved closer, drawn like a pin to the magnet of Mary Pickett’s word,
know
. For the first time she thought Mary Pickett might actually be useful, that she might be more than just a proper Southern woman helping a colored manservant because of some old-timey sense of noblesse oblige. Or of guilt. But then, who wouldn’t feel guilty about slavery, about those separate water fountains, about the Confederate flag standing guard over the courthouse door, about that woman guiding her children into the street? About this house, even, built up on slave labor? And about Lieutenant Joe Howard Wilson taken off a bus and beaten to death.

Mary Pickett struck a match to the cigarette, drew deeply on it, exhaled. Caught in the strong crosswind of her exhalation, a bee changed its mind about the attractiveness of the geranium and took flight. Mary Pickett looked over at Regina, her eyes narrow behind a cloud of smoke.

“About Willie Willie.” Another deep draw on the cigarette as Mary Pickett seemed to consider. “My daddy and Willie Willie grew up together.”

“They were friends? You told me that already.”

Mary Pickett shook her head. The straw hat bobbed. “You’re young, and you’re not from here. My daddy and Willie Willie weren’t friends. They couldn’t be. Friendship is something eye to eye, between equals. Daddy and Willie Willie were
friendly
. Or, rather, Daddy was friendly to Willie Willie—but it was Daddy always in control. Still . . . it’s hard to explain their relationship, one to the other.”

“Not so hard,” shot back Regina. “Your daddy stayed in the big house. Willie Willie lived in the old slave shack out back.”

Mary Pickett folded her arms across her chest. Shut down, that’s what she did. First her eyes, then the whole of her face.

“Well, Regina, why don’t you haul yourself on over to your own shack and wait for Mr. Blodgett there? I’ll ring the quittin’-time bell for you when he gets here.” The words drawled out, slower than ever—if that were possible.

Regina rolled her eyes. Grimaced.
Quittin’ time bell, indeed!

Without another word, Regina started off toward Willie Willie’s, her high-heeled shoes clicking like Dorothy’s as she made her way along her own yellow brick road.

Y
ears later, when she thought back to those days in Revere, Regina would always remember Jackson Blodgett as a smile that illuminated Mary Pickett’s face. A presence that seemed to actually slow her down, make her look like she was moving through honey, that softened the lines around her mouth and chiseled light from the cold marble of her eyes. It’s funny, Regina thought, how just a little movement of the mouth could do all that. No matter how much else would happen, what else would change about him in her eyes, Regina would always remember Mary Pickett’s illumination as part of what made up Jackson, too.

Regina was sitting at the desk, staring at them through the lace at Willie Willie’s window. They were standing in Mary Pickett’s late flowering garden, near the veranda, and standing close. As Regina watched, Jackson reached up and touched a wisp of Mary Pickett’s hair.

“Gosh,” whispered Regina to herself, “I thought Willie Willie said all that was over a long time ago.”

But it was plain to see that it wasn’t.

“Regina! That you peeking out over there? Why don’t you come on over and meet Mr. Blodgett like you wanted?” said Mary Pickett, triumph smooth as a mint julep lacing her voice.
You spying, bad-mannered, no-account Yankee—I’m looking right at you!

Regina jumped, blushed.
Caught in the act
, but she headed out the door anyway.

Even from a distance, it was obvious that Jackson Blodgett was no matinee idol. Wynne was the handsome one, and he didn’t look like his father. Jackson’s hair was dark where Wynne’s was light, and his shoes were dusty, unlike his son’s, like he used them to tramp through his small town’s streets. Jackson had on a blue serge suit and held a gray felt hat in his hands. The suit was natty, something Thurgood might have chosen, but the effect wasn’t at all the same. Jackson’s didn’t fit him right. It was a little too wide around his body, a little too short in the sleeves. Something he might have admired on a rack but that needed a tailor. Still, there was something appealing about him—nothing that Regina could put her finger on, not what she’d expected, but there anyway. She thought of Wynne, so beautiful, so sharply and expensively dressed. She wondered just what it might mean to a man like Jackson Blodgett—once poor as dirt, at least that’s what she’d heard—to have a son so Movietone perfect as that.

Her eyes traveled from Jackson to Mary Pickett. She wondered what the two of them had been like when they were younger, when they’d run off together. She wondered what they’d looked like when they got married and been caught on the steps of that hotel in Gordo, Alabama, in what Willie Willie had called “a nick of time.” The young lovers were older now, settled. It was hard for Regina to imagine either of them doing anything rash. Yet here was Mary Pickett just a wee bit flustered and Jackson Blodgett looking—well, glad to be back.

“Mr. Jackson Blodgett,” said Mary Pickett primly, but she’d turned rosy.
Was this Mary Pickett actually blushing?
“May I present to you Regina Mary Robichard. Regina is from New York.”

A great deal was said in that simple introduction, none of it missed by Regina Mary Robichard of New York. She’d been presented to Jackson Blodgett like he was royalty, rather than the other way around. And Mr. Jackson was
Mr.
Jackson, but there’d been no courtesy title, no Miss or Mrs., not even a “This here’s our Lady Lawyer,” at least for a colored woman down here in the South.

“Good to meet you,” said Jackson Blodgett with a hearty nod that somehow or other seemed a cue to Dinetta. She slipped out through the screen door, childlike, skinny as ever, and carrying a silver tray with two cups, two saucers, two crystal glasses, two decanters—one marked
SHERRY
—two cloth napkins, and one very large piece of cake.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Jackson. How you doin’?” The girl stood there beaming, all teeth, trying hard not to stare over at Regina—this strange black woman from the North—but not quite succeeding. A darted look here, a darted look there, before she disappeared back behind the kitchen door.

It was Mary Pickett who, after a moment, leaned over and picked up a cup and saucer and poured coffee—nothing else—into it. She reached Jackson a fork and the cake. Through all of this moving, all this shifting and pouring, she said not one word. She also did not look at Jack Blodgett, and he was not looking at her.

But they didn’t go up to the big rattan table. He and Mary Pickett settled on the porch steps side by side, Jackson propping his shoulder against one of the newel posts. Regina hadn’t noticed before that the paint was peeling on the Calhoun banister, but when Jackson sat next to it, she did. He took a sip of his coffee. Mary Pickett did not touch hers. No one offered anything to Regina, who was left standing on the bright green lawn.

Jackson said, “This your first time in Mississippi, Regina?”

She nodded. “My first time.”

“You enjoyin’ yourself?” And then, before she could answer, “But of course you aren’t. How could you be? You got
business
here.”

Mary Pickett reached for the sherry bottle, poured herself a drink.

Jackson sadly shook his head. “Haven’t had a chance to see much of the town, have you, and Revere is such a lovely place. Not burned down by the Federals. Grant thought it was too pretty to torch. You’ll like it once you get to know it.”

“Oh?” said Regina politely.

“Miss Mary Pickett here tells me she called you down here to investigate what happened to Joe Howard.” Jackson sipped his coffee. “And that’s a good thing to do, a
noble
thing to do—if Joe Howard had been killed. But he
wasn’t
killed. Now, Willie Willie, he’s simple. He makes up things in his mind, and what he makes up isn’t always the truth. But the law
is
the truth. You know that, you’re an officer of it. And the law said that Joe Howard Wilson’s death was an accident.”

He was looking at her now, his face earnest, his eyes shrewd. “Now, I’m not saying Joe Howard wasn’t taken off that bus, ’cause he was. We all know that. But maybe folks—okay,
white
folks, let’s be honest here—thought they had their reasons. I heard he’d refused to do what he’d been told to do. I heard he cussed in front of the ladies. My own son—Wynne. You met him? Why, he’d sure get a whuppin’ from me for pulling a stunt like that. But”—and here a sigh from Mary Pickett’s once-husband—“who knows what happened to Joe Howard, with the war and all? Sometimes all that hero talk can go to their heads. Soldiers, I mean. They start to believe what they been hearing. Maybe somebody wanted to remind him he was home now, remind him a good Southern boy needs to be minding his manners. So . . . they took him off the bus. They roughed him up. Maybe. A bit. Maybe tried to teach him a lesson for his own good. Once that was done, they would have let him go. They sure would have done that. But . . . What can I say? Joe Howard was disoriented. He got himself lost out there in Magnolia Forest. Fell into the Tombigbee. That makes sense, at least to my way of thinking.”

So what had happened to Joe Howard was his own fault. If he’d just acted like a good boy in the first place, he’d still be alive, none of this would have happened. That’s what Jackson Blodgett was selling, but Regina wasn’t buying.

She said, “You seem to know a lot about it.”

“It’s a small town.” Jackson’s blink was so shallow she almost missed it. “You hear things.”

“Maybe,” she said, unconsciously echoing his word, “but it would be a help if I could actually see the coroner’s report.”

Jackson reached over to put his cup and saucer on the tray. It was only half empty. Regina saw his quick look to Mary Pickett, the clear
no
in the slight shake of his head.

Nothing to lose, Regina decided to gamble. “And the grand jury docket. They might help me prove what you’re saying. At the very least, it’ll stop any discussion. If I don’t get to see the court papers, there will always be a question. That’s why Miss Calhoun called me down here—to get to the bottom of this matter, to lay it to rest once and for all.”

Would this be enough? Could she possibly persuade him? She
had
to get her hands on those grand jury findings. Regina held her breath.

“So you’re asking me to do something that’s against the law—get you a copy of a document that’s officially sealed?” Jackson Blodgett chuckled. “Few months from now, they’ll open it anyway. Why can’t you just wait?”

“Because it might be too late.”

Jackson nodded, seemed to consider. And then . . .

“I’ll see that you get them,” he said as he slammed both hands on his knees. “Take care of it myself. What’s your plans for tomorrow? You gotta have some—come all this way. Maybe Tom Raspberry? You been at the Duvals, you’ll know all about him. He and Forrest. Bed, too—they’re all three joined at the hip. But I’ll have the reports you want waiting for you in the cabin—the cottage—by noon. That sound good? The sheriff will bring it over himself. You’ll like him. He’s a talker. Folks feel bad about Joe Howard. They want to help.”

Oh, really
?

But what she said was, “Thank you, Mr. Blodgett.”

Jackson shook his head, a man who needed to tell a hard fact. “Killing a colored man’s not the same down here as killing a white man. It may be in other places . . .”

“Not always in other places,” interjected Regina.

“But not here, where we’re dealing with a certain history, with a certain way that things have to be done,” said Wynne Blodgett’s daddy. “I’ll make sure you get what you’re needing. I want this thing cleared up. The town wants to put all this behind us. Right away, too. Before someone gets hurt.”

Regina thought he’d look over at Mary Pickett; after all, she was the one who had—for whatever reason—gotten in touch with Thurgood. But Jackson Blodgett did not look at Mary Pickett Calhoun.

“Thanks for your help,” said Regina.

“Nothing at all. Any man would do all he could for a son that he loves. Willie Willie sure loved Joe Howard.” Jackson got up then, one hand on the newel, leveraging himself. He lifted his hat back onto his head. “Good day to you, Miss Mary Pickett.”

He started off on the swept gravel that led to the front of the house, but his was a slow progress. One leg moved him forward, one leg limped behind. He’d been standing or sitting all the time Regina had seen him, and so she hadn’t noticed the limp.

After a moment, Mary Pickett said, “Infantile paralysis. It got him when he was four, but nobody noticed right away that he had changed, that he was dragging his foot, that he couldn’t run anymore. His mama was long dead. His daddy working hard. Not paying attention. The sickness—when it went, it left him like that. I bet that’s something Willie Willie didn’t tell you.”

No, Willie Willie had not told Regina that. But she wondered as she heard Jackson Blodgett’s halting steps, as she almost unconsciously started to count—one, two, three—the slow progression of them, down the lane, over the sidewalk. As she heard the opening and closing of his big car’s door. Limping like that, how on earth had he managed to run with the other children into Willie Willie’s forest? Or
had
he done this? Had he even been invited to come along at all?

• • •

THE TELEPHONE WAS
right where Mary Pickett had said it would be, in the kitchen. A big, black, old-fashioned thing, attached to the wall, just inside the door. There was a worn white stool beneath it, a container of kitchen matches hooked just to the right of it on the wall, an open package of Old Gold cigarettes on the linoleum counter. Regina had seen Mary Pickett smoke Chesterfields. She wondered whose cigarettes these were. Little Dinetta’s? Surely not.

There didn’t seem to be anybody around, not Mary Pickett, not even Dinetta.

Across from Regina, on the other side of the room, there was a double door. The top of it opened to the rest of the house. Regina listened hard. There was no sound from beyond the kitchen, no Dinetta humming as she dusted or swept carpets, no sound of Mary Pickett’s typewriter keys. Regina grew curious, or even more curious, since she’d always wondered about this house, what was in here. But the thought that if she peeked through, she might find herself looking straight at Dinetta or, worse, Mary Pickett, kept her firmly in place by the back door. Around her, the kitchen gleamed spotless. The Frigidaire hummed, the clock ticked against its own wall, and the whole place smelled of ammonia. There was no sign of any cooking going on. For the first time she wondered if it was Peach who did the cooking, if she came in, specially, some days to do this. Peach had mentioned she did laundry. Did she do Mary Pickett’s, and did she do it here?

Regina picked up the telephone receiver, asked politely for New York, and gave the number, two letters, four digits. She listened for a moment to the click and the static, looking out through the back screen at a different view of Mary Pickett’s grounds than what she was used to. From here she could see a few stray carrots, a few leaves of collards, left to decay on the dark earth. She thought these must be the remnants of a Victory Garden, maybe one that was still being nurtured, still going on.