The Secret of Magic (20 page)

The operator cut in: “Your connection is ready.”

When Lillian, the receptionist at the Fund, answered, Regina asked for Thurgood.

“Now, weren’t you glad about that pillow?” Thurgood enjoyed a good joke, especially when the joke was one of his own. His laughter washed through her, a tonic. “Nothing like a Southern bus to wake up a colored person’s butt. When did they change you over?”

“Richmond.”

“Could have been worse. Sometimes they do it as early as Washington, D.C.” Then, “What’s going on?”

Regina took a deep breath. It was true Thurgood had let her come down here, and alone, but she was thinking now this might have been a snap decision. He’d been tired that day, discouraged. By now he could have changed his mind. He would have had time to go into “Reggie’s Room,” look at the mountain of cases in it, and wonder why on earth he had let Regina out from under them. Was investigating the death of one veteran worth all this?

“You
sure
you don’t need Skip to come down?” Thurgood said, maybe reading this into her hesitation. “Help you out?”

Oh, God. The last thing she wanted!

She let her breath out on a rush of words. “No, I don’t need Skip.”

“Then tell me what you got.”

Not much—even she had to admit this. She didn’t mention the shirt—this was a party line, and she’d save that for later. But she told him everything else—about going over to the Duvals’, told him about reading Mary Pickett’s book on the steps of his law offices in order to get let in. Thurgood laughed. This reassured Regina, at least some. Quickly, she went on to Jackson Blodgett and his offer to get the grand jury proceedings for her.

Thurgood was as curious about this as she had been. “Why would he do that?”

“He said he wants to cooperate in any way he can in finding out who killed
that boy.
” Imitating Blodgett, Regina drawled the words out. “He didn’t quite call Joe Howard a nigra, but he might have.”

“Oh, so he’s Joe Howard now,” said Thurgood. “You be careful about getting personally involved.”

“He’s dead,” said Regina, blushing.

“You know what I mean. You put yourself in it, get emotional, you’re going to miss something. You met his daddy?”

Regina told him about Willie Willie. She caught herself looking through the screen door as she talked, half expecting him to come in.

Thurgood said, “Sounds like a character. Now, what’s
she
like?”

“Prim. Proper. All the things you’d expect in an aging Southern belle.” Regina almost told him that Mary Pickett had once been married to Jackson Blodgett, but then changed her mind. Something like that, the bond, just might intrigue Thurgood. But if Thurgood got intrigued, then Skip could get intrigued, too, and somehow or other finagle a way to come down. Even though Thurgood couldn’t see her, Regina shook her head to that. She’d call him again when she knew more. There would be time enough to bring up that long-ago marriage then.

“Anything else happen?”

“No,” said Regina. Crossing her fingers.

“Good. But you better tell your client . . .”

They heard a cough.

Oh, God. She’d forgotten to warn him.

“Party line,” she said.

Thurgood seemed to consider this. “Anything else?”

She thought about telling him about Wynne Blodgett, but remembered that cough.

Regina looked out the window, saw that it was still light. The words seemed to come out of her mouth before she even thought them. “There’s a colored lawyer. Tom Raspberry. At least, I think he’s a lawyer.
Everybody’s
telling me I should go talk to him.”

“Then do it. Keep in touch.” And with that Thurgood hung up the phone.

• • •

IN REVERE
, Regina found Tom Raspberry’s office the same way she would have found it in New York. She went up to the first colored person she saw on Main Street and asked him where it was. He was an old black man on a rusted bicycle peddling fresh eggs layered from a wicker basket that had been lashed by a rope onto the front handlebars.

“Tom Raspberry’s office? Please.”

The man’s reply was slow and specific. He got off his bicycle, took off his hat. His smile was wide and toothless, almost beatific. “You the lady lawyer come down from New York to help out Willie Willie?”

“Yes, my name is Regina Robichard.” She held out her hand, and he took it. His own hand was hard and work-callused, but it surprised Regina, after days spent introducing herself to wary white folks in Revere, Mississippi, how good it felt to be touching human flesh again.

“And my name’s Ben T.”

Ben T. said he’d be glad to help her. Ride her over there on the back of his bike if she wanted him to. Regina thanked him but said no, she didn’t want to put him to any trouble.

“No trouble at all,” he said. But in the end he nodded, pointed out the way, and then walked her down two blocks, going out of his way to make sure that she understood it.

“Once you get there, you’ll know where you are,” Ben T. told her. “He’s right there on the corner. Tom Raspberry’s building himself up a new place.”

She thought about this, three blocks down, when she turned the corner onto what a bright sign told her was Catfish Alley. And Catfish Alley was definitely a jumping place.

One thing Regina suddenly realized she’d missed in Revere were signs of progress. The war was over; the rest of the nation an active hive of rebuilding, of the old going down and the new strutting up. But not in Revere, not from what Regina had seen. Here the houses appeared to be all old Victorians and staid antebellums. Anna Dale Buchanan’s bungalow had been surrounded by other bungalows, not one of which looked less than fifty years old. Even the shacks she’d seen out of the corner of her eye on that first night, riding into town with Willie Willie, had been unpainted and crumbling, almost falling-down ancient.

But Catfish Alley wasn’t like that at all. It felt like Harlem and smelled like it, too. Good scents of enticing things, fried up and waiting. And it sounded like home. Regina heard Cab Calloway echoing himself, complaining about Minnie the Moocher on two different radios. The stations must have started the same record seconds apart.

Poor Min. Poor Min. Poor Minnie.

People stopped on the street to hum along.

Regina watched and she listened. Just being surrounded by other black folks again was a relief. Her shoulders loosened. Her step lightened. It was a lot of work to become “American,” like everybody else. You always had to be on your guard. Were you doing things right? Were you ever
American
enough? She wondered if others were like this—the Irish, the Italians, the new immigrants from Eastern Europe; if they felt this way, too. Happy to be back among people that were like them. Happy they’d landed someplace where they could relax, at least for a minute, and that bore a resemblance to home.

The window was there, level with her eyes. You couldn’t miss it.

T
HOMAS
B
ANKS
R
ASPBERRY

LAWYER

REAL ESTATE AND PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT

Under that came

The Revere Fair Dealer

Then

T
HE
P
ENNYWISE
B
ANK

Then finally, and most exuberantly of all

EVERYBODY WELCOME! COME RIGHT ON UP!

All of this painted black and outlined in gold, on a window so clean and polished that Regina saw everything she had on, down to the pattern on her tortoiseshell sunglasses, mirrored back perfectly to her in its gleam.

The building itself was new, mortar still sticking through the cheerful red brick like ice cream peeking out of an Eskimo Pie. It was a surprise to her, the first new building she’d seen since she’d got to Revere. And owned by a colored man—who might very well possess a great deal more. Two washtubs of red carnations sat before the yet-to-be-painted front door. A breeze touched them, and they waved at her, bright and cheerful and as well tended as anything in Mary Pickett’s fine garden. All this encouraged Regina. Tom Raspberry hadn’t
seemed
very welcoming when they’d met yesterday, but perhaps she’d been mistaken about him. Back here, on his own turf, so to speak, and among his own kind, he might turn out to be entirely different. When Regina opened the door, it was onto a stairwell filtered in sunlight.

Pine stairs led directly up into a large, open hallway, where the parquet floor was bare, no furniture on it. Four doors lined the right wall. One had Tom Raspberry’s name, this time on pebbled glass; others announced
The
Revere
Fair Dealer
and the Pennywise Bank.
They were all closed. She thought of choosing one and knocking on it. But across from them was a row of long windows. Regina hesitated, her hand already bunched. Maybe her conversation with Tom Raspberry could wait for a moment. She walked to the windows.

They faced east, and gave Regina a clear view down to the river. She realized now that Catfish Alley must be on a rise, though she hadn’t felt the land mounting as she’d walked here. From this far up, the second story, she was able to see the lazy snake of the Tombigbee’s brown waters, could see a trestle bridge spanning it and trees that marched almost to its banks. She splayed her fingers against the windowpane, leaned closer. She wondered if this was the place where they’d found Joe Howard, the very bridge against which his destroyed body had snagged long enough so somebody had finally seen it and been able to drag him up.

A tire hung from a rope that was tied to that trestle, and now there were children—no, maybe not children. Teenagers. All of them white. They were clustered around that place where Joe Howard had lain. Boys and girls both, and they were taking turns on that tire, swinging out, out, out over the muddy water, which must be cold now, this time of year. Holding on to their noses. Jumping into that river. Their mouths wide open. Laughing? Screaming? From this distance, Regina couldn’t tell. But they were having fun. She could see that, all right. And the thought stunned her that this thing that had so completely marked her—this death of Joe Howard—had not seemed at all to touch them.

• • •

TOM RASPBERRY LEANED
expansively back in his chair. “And it’s
known
as Catfish Alley,” he said, “by everybody in Revere and Jefferson-Lee County and on into Noxubee and Oktibbeha and Clay counties, and even all the way down into Rankin and Scott and Hinds counties, as one of the most
syncopated
parts of the state.”

Out from behind Judge Duval’s shadow, Tom Raspberry appeared to become a great deal more syncopated himself. Out had gone the dark tie, the white pocket handkerchief, their places taken by a much livelier set of mixed blues and greens.

“You like?” he said, catching her stare and motioning to his neck with pride. “I got it in New Orleans, a small shop off Canal Street. Last autumn. You ever heard tell the two capitals of Mississippi?”

“Jackson,” answered Regina promptly. She’d done her homework.

“
Two
capitals.” Tom waited a slow beat, then answered his own question: “Memphis and New Orleans.”

He leaned back, exploded a cannonball of laughter aimed squarely at his own joke. Like Thurgood.

Regina took the opportunity to dart a quick look around. They were in his private office, but there had been no outer office, no secretary like Miss Tutwiler over at the Duvals’. Regina imagined that folks knocked on Tom Raspberry’s door and came right in. Just as she’d done.

As Tom chuckled on, his laughter easing off like the slow put-puts of a train chugging into the distance, Regina’s attention shifted to the wall behind him where what looked like the dummy for an upcoming edition of
The Revere Fair Dealer
hung from drying tacks and fluttered against a display of studio portraits.

Quite remarkable photographs, really, and quite precisely composed and just a little bit larger than you’d think a studio portrait should be, as though someone had decided they shouldn’t be missed. The first, the center of everything, was of a much younger Tom Raspberry, his arm holding tight to a determined-looking woman, much lighter-skinned than he was and with serious, wide-awake eyes.
His wife.
No doubt about that. And around them, like roots branching out from a main tree, were photographs of three boys, each staring out as purposefully as their mama and daddy. Each was in cap and gown, with various graduation certificates lined up beneath that progressed them through the Rosenwald Colored Children’s School and the Revere Colored High School and then into and out of Tougaloo College. Regina leaned closer. One—who looked just like Tom Raspberry, only younger—had recently found himself the proud recipient of a fresh JD degree from Howard Law.

She looked over. Tom had stopped laughing; he was watching her. “Mighty proud of my family,” he said. “Fine boys, and none of them married. Sure to have one your age, if you’re interested. And you should be, if you’re smart. One you’re looking at, that’s Thomas Banks Raspberry II. We call him Deuce. He’s my oldest. Studied up at Howard with Charles Hamilton Houston, just like your Thurgood did.” Tom lowered his voice. “Guess where he is now?”

Regina shook her head. She couldn’t imagine.

“Jackson!” Tom exclaimed. “He went down to sit for the
bar
.”

“I thought they didn’t let Negroes into the Mississippi bar.”

“They don’t,” Tom said matter-of-factly.

“Then why’s he down there?” She might be wrong, but Tom certainly didn’t seem like the type to encourage the wasting of time.

“I sent him on down there for the same reason I’m seeing you now—things are changing. Some deep foundations starting to shake. When the dust settles, I want to make sure it’s not covered me over.” Tom stretched out a little, leaned back again in his seat. “It’s the war did it. I graduated Howard Law, too, but there was no chance of me making my living doing lawyering full-time, not if I wanted to come home and live near my people in Mississippi. No way I
could
do it, not with a wife to support and children to educate. If I wanted to go on in the law, I had to find me some way to accommodate myself, and the Duvals have been my accommodation. They’re bound and determined to get this judgeship for Little Bed now. Get themselves some real respectability. But you know how they started out?”