The Secret of Magic (22 page)

“And why’s that?”

Tom’s brows knitted, and he looked very much like he’d looked when he’d asked Regina about her father, like he’d asked a genuine question and was curious to hear the genuine response.

Regina said, “That’s obvious enough, isn’t it? This is Mississippi. And she’s white.”

“Oh,” said Tom, his voice noncommittal. “So you think a Negro—any Negro, you, for instance, come down days ago from New York—would want to help Willie Willie more than Miss Calhoun does?”

“Of course I do!” Regina was moving into a trap, and she knew it—but what kind of trap? And why would Tom Raspberry lay one for her, anyway? He lived here, for God’s sake. He must know how awful it was. “Don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” he echoed. “No need to take offense. I’m just asking.”

His lips canted upward toward unreadable eyes, but there was the drawl of the South lacing his voice, just like it laced, in different ways, Mary Pickett’s voice and Willie Willie’s and Forrest Duval’s and Bed’s and Jackson Blodgett’s and Wynne Blodgett’s and even that man on the bicycle, Ben T.’s—a cadence that strolled through words and that branded Regina as an outsider here.

And she knew it. Could feel it. But maybe what they
needed
was an outsider.

She hadn’t said this aloud, but Tom shook his head, still smiling that sort-of smile. “Missy, I have an idea you’re about to find out life around here’s a lot more complicated than you ever imagined.”

Staring over at his face—his
smug
-looking face—she had never in the whole of her life so clearly understood the term
Uncle Tom
as she did at that moment.

You’ve got yours. Everybody else can just rot in hell.
That’s what she thought, but aloud she said primly, “So I presume that’s a no to the flyers. You’re not going to help.”

Tom threw back his head and laughed again, a very ripe, merry sound. “After all I said, and you’re still asking for me to do this—with my boy down right this very minute in Jackson, sitting for the state bar, and with the Duval blessing so there’s a
chance
he might be the first one of us to pass it. Now, why on earth would I jeopardize that?”

Regina opened her hands wide. “To find out what actually happened?”

“But you already
know
what actually happened.” The look Tom threw her was as shrewd as it was cool. “Somebody’s told you by now or else they’ve hinted all around it, brought you close up to the point. That’s why you come up here, the real reason. You just want me to confirm it, and I will. Wynne Vardaman Blodgett killed Joe Howard Wilson. He
admitted
it. Bragged about it to his friends, and from there, naturally, folks being how they are, it got all over town. Not that this made a scratch worth of difference. In Mississippi, any white man did what he did, they’d still be on the street, too. Don’t even need a rich daddy to get away with that; all you got to be is white. But Wynne, he’s white, and he’s got a rich daddy, too. And that daddy loves him. Gonna look out for him. And Miss Mary Pickett . . . well, she
cares
for Mr. Blodgett. This puts her right in the middle of a mess. You want me to put myself right in the middle of it, too? Think I’m a fool? Things might be changing, but they ain’t changed that much.”

Regina’s eyes narrowed. “If what you say is true, why didn’t Mr. Willie Willie tell me all this?”

Tom chuckled, a deep, rich sound, and seemed to feel that was answer enough. Regina gathered up her gloves, her brand-new briefcase, her purse.

A man admits he killed somebody and he’s still free to walk the streets, to hang out at the bus depot and the town square, to laugh with his friends, to brag about what he did, and nobody is inclined to do a thing about it.
She walked straight to the door.

“I’d watch out for Willie Willie,” said Tom softly from behind her. “He’s a killer, you know.”

Regina turned back. “You mean his son got killed.”

“No, I mean
he
did some killing. Ask him about it sometime. Ask Peach.”

I
t was dark by the time Regina made her way again to Willie Willie’s cottage. Even so, there was enough daylight left for kittens to be still tumbling over one another on Mary Pickett’s lawn, for girls to still be playing one last game of hopscotch before dinner, for boys on bicycles, streaking like fallen stars across the streets of Revere, to call back to friends, like they had in
The Secret of Magic.

“Come on, now, Booker. Catch up! Catch up!”

When she opened the door to the cottage, she smelled cigarette smoke and immediately thought,
Wynne Blodgett.
He was that much on her mind.

But the man in the cottage was not Wynne Blodgett.

She realized this as soon as she flicked on the overhead light. For one thing, he was too big, too fleshy. His massive body dwarfed the big magnolia-print easy chair on which it sat gingerly perched.

“Sheriff.” Regina plastered a smile on her face but stayed near the door. “Good evening.”

“Rand Connelly,” he said. “We saw each other round the corner other day. With Bed Duval.” He ducked his head slightly but didn’t take off his hat or get up.

“Regina Robichard. Nice to meet you.” She inched up her smile, laid her things on the desk by the window, looked over at him. “I guess you don’t need a key to come on in, in Mississippi.”

“No keys,” answered the sheriff, “because there’s no locks.”

She nodded, noticed a brown paper envelope. Small and flimsy, it too had been put on the desk, propped up neatly against the lace curtains at the window. It made her think of the shirt, and she had to fight back a strong urge to check on it, to make sure it was still hidden. She knew the sheriff had caught her looking at the envelope and wondered if he’d also caught her quick, questioning frown before she wiped it off her face. But the sheriff didn’t say anything about that, not yet. Instead, he asked her, “You planning a stay?” which was almost the same thing Willie Willie had said to her at the bus depot when she’d first got here.

“That depends on Miss Calhoun.”

“Miss Mary Pickett?”

“She’s the one brought me here.” Echoing Tom Raspberry almost word for word.

“But you’re the one made up your mind to stay. That’s what I’m hearing.” The sheriff grinned, but Regina couldn’t quite tell what kind of grin it was, just interested or maybe malicious.

She chanced a quick glance over to Mary Pickett’s house, to the bare light over its back screen door, to its still calm. Quick, true, but the sheriff hadn’t missed it. When Regina turned back, he was smiling at her, and she thought that he
could
have been a caricature, the small-town Southern lawman. Mean and menacing. Maybe a bully. But she realized this was a stereotype, and she could almost see Thurgood shaking his head at her, wagging an admonishing finger—“Don’t assume.”

At last, he nodded to the envelope on the desk. “Mr. Blodgett asked me to bring that over to you. To make sure you got it in your hands. I imagine you know what it is.”

She knew. “The grand jury findings.”

Pop! Pop!

Gunshots. Exploding out, one right on top of the other. Rand Connelly didn’t move, didn’t utter a syllable, but Regina thought for sure she saw a slow
Gotcha!
grin starting up on his face as he stared at her. As he waited for her, the little slicker from the city, to cry out, to jump. But she did neither.

“Night hunters.” She nodded to the window, to the darkness beyond it. “Mr. Willie Willie explained to me that the deer around here are just starting to see their way back.”

“They’ve been back some few years,” said Rand Connelly. If he was surprised by her knowledge of animal life in Mississippi, it didn’t show. “Weren’t any around here for the longest, not for sport hunting. Had to eat up everything we got. There wasn’t a buck roaming for a boy to aim at, the whole of the county was hunted clean out. Now everybody and his son and his cousin and his cousin’s cousins think they can shoot anything they want, anytime they want to do it. No respect for the law.”

He heaved himself up from a chair, started toward Regina and the door.

Pop! Pop!

Again. Closer this time. Regina said a silent, quick prayer that the deer got away.

Run, run now! Quick!

“I heard,” she said, moving just slightly enough to block the sheriff’s way out, at least for a moment, “that folks here would have starved for sure if it hadn’t been for what they hunted.”

“You got that from Willie Willie, too, I imagine, and he’s right. During the Depression, we sure would have. Everybody was poor as spent dirt back then. At least down here we all were,” said Rand Connelly.

“Oh, so you’re from here?”

The sheriff nodded. “Near enough. Out on the prairie, close by Miss Mary Pickett’s old plantation place, Magnolia Forest. My daddy sharecropped out there.”

“Not from Carroll County, then.”

“Oh, so you know about Carroll County?”

“I do now,” she said. “Moonshiners. Rowdy folks.” She and the sheriff shared a quick laugh.

But then Regina saw him look over at her, cock his head, turn wary.

He was curious about her, or so Regina thought, and she wondered what it must be like for him to be in this place, in this little cabin/cottage where colored people lived. She didn’t even know if a white sheriff in Mississippi would be called on to go into many Negro houses, to talk to people like he was talking to her. In Harlem, she couldn’t recall one white person who had ever come into the apartment that she shared with her mother.

Another spurt of gunfire.
Rat-tat-tat.
Nearer? Farther away? She couldn’t tell the direction. It could have come from anywhere.

At the door, the sheriff said, “Nice meeting you.” Almost tipped his hat, caught himself just in time.

As soon as she heard the last echoes of his boots on the pea gravel, Regina counted to ten—slowly—and then rushed into the kitchen, checked behind the sink for the shirt. It was still there, right where she’d left it. Still wrapped in brown paper. Still with those strange stains around the missing button on its otherwise perfect white front. Suddenly, the whole thing—the brightness of the shirt in the hanging overhead light, the dull brown of stain around the lost button—reminded Regina less of the random smudges of a child’s finger painting and more like the free form of a Rorschach test. Something that appeared simple enough on the surface but that hid a whole tangle of meanings, any one of which might call out . . .

Gotcha!

. . . if you didn’t understand things just right. And Regina, hunkered down in the bright add-on kitchen of Willie Willie’s cottage, had the sinking sensation that she was failing the test.

• • •

THE FILE JACK RAND CONNELLY
left was thin and so new that the
PROPERTY OF JEFFERSON-LEE COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT
looked like it had been stenciled on maybe five minutes before, as an afterthought. When she touched it, ink smudged off on her fingers. The envelope wasn’t sealed, and she had the feeling that these particular records might not have been in the files at all. That they had been made up only when she’d asked for them and were pieced together out of whole cloth. Still, Regina was grateful, couldn’t help but feel relief that Jackson Blodgett had done what he said he would do and, in turn, given her something
she
could do. But if what Tom Raspberry said was right—that everybody knew Wynne Blodgett had been the one to kill Joe Howard Wilson—then why on earth had his father given her this?

Because there was nothing to it. She found this out soon enough. It was what her mother, Ida Jane, would call a flimflam, something composed of little more than smoke and mirrors. The document contained some names and not much else. The bus driver’s, Johnny Ray Dean; a woman, Mrs. Paula Peavey (widow), who lived on a rural route in Scooba with her twin boys. There was no mention of Anna Dale Buchanan—but then again, Anna Dale Buchanan, with what she had to say, had never been called. More important, there was no mention of Wynne Vardaman Blodgett here, no record of who exactly had been up for indictment at all. This information had disappeared—if, she thought, it had been put in the docket at all.

But there
was
a coroner’s report, signed by one Delray Barnes. He was listed as Mr., not Dr. In his sworn deposition, Mr. Barnes stated what Regina expected he would. Joe Howard’s body had lain long in muddy water. At the time of examination, it was in an advanced state of decomposition and this made it impossible to make a clear determination as to cause of death. No one pressed the point. Three sentences of testimony, and that was that.

Johnny Ray Dean was, if possible, even less forthcoming. He lived just over the state line in Ethelsville, Alabama, and he’d worked driving buses for the Bonnie Blue Line for six years. He hadn’t been away to war, hadn’t been drafted. That particular October day, so he said in his statement, he’d heard a little rattle in his engine. The Bonnie Blues were old buses. They’d been known to fall apart on you in a minute. All the drivers knew that. Mr. Dean had brought his vehicle to a stop on the side of the road, cranked open the door, got out to investigate. Joe Howard had climbed down after him. He said he wanted to smoke him a cigarette. He—Joe Howard—had met up with some friends. He’d gone off with them. And that had been that.

Bob Miller (Foreman): “What about his things?”

Mr. Dean: “Well, he knowed we’d put them down in Revere. That’s where his ticket went to. They’d be there when he turned up to get them.”

This answer seemed to satisfy Bob Miller. At least, after that, no other witnesses were called. On the page was the scrawl of what must be the foreman’s initials. He’d okayed this and the case had been dropped. But Regina wondered what had become of Mrs. Paula Peavey, the widow. Had she actually been in the courtroom? And if so, why hadn’t she been questioned?

Regina caught herself biting on her pencil, staring over at Calhoun Place. A light that had not been on before shone out of an upstairs window. The light and the window and whatever activity was going on behind it surely belonged to Mary Pickett. But what could Mary Pickett possibly be doing up there, in that big house, all by herself so late? She wondered, fleetingly, if Mary Pickett could be working just like she herself was working, and then she turned back to the thin file and reread everything again.

This didn’t take long, and once she’d finished, she opened her briefcase and sifted through the newspapers, the old clippings that Mary Pickett had sent to them in New York. With new information, Regina thought she might come up with a fresh idea. She doubted this, but you never knew.

She laid everything out once again in chronological order. After Joe Howard’s death, after the inquest and the grand jury, the next significant thing that seemed to have happened was the burning of The Folly, Jackson Blodgett’s old family house. His “home place,” as they all called it. Its torching had been written about in both the white newspapers and the colored ones, though for some reason the story was longer in the colored ones—
The Jackson Afro-American
,
The Revere Fair Dealer
—which went into the placement of the house near the river and its history and with a little extra history of the Blodgetts thrown in for good measure. Poor folks, who had managed to carve out a way upward. Respectful, but by now Regina had heard enough about folks coming down from the hills to be able to read between the lines. Both articles were long considering their subject—a full column in the
Afro-American
; the one in the
Fair Dealer
continued on to the next page.
Interesting.
Regina wondered about that, and she remembered that Willie Willie had said The Folly was near not only Calhoun Place but the river where they’d found Joe Howard. Regina decided it might be worth her while to go down and have her own look at it.

She was thinking this when she heard . . .
What was that?
The pencil slipped from her hand, bounced against the linoleum floor.

“Shhhh!” she whispered, then realized she was shushing herself. She looked up, listened. Another sound. It seemed to come from right outside her window. A bump. No, not a bump, really; it was more like a rustle.

Silence. Then that rustle again.
Stealthy,
she thought. And a little closer this time.

Boogeyman coming to get you, Collie! Climbing out of the Stink Tree! Watch out! Watch out!

Then a knocking. A pounding. It took Regina a second before she realized that what was pounding was her heart. She patted her chest, tried to calm down.

She looked down at her watch, found it was just past midnight, then raised her gaze to the window, took up her courage, pushed the curtain away, looked out.

Across from her, Calhoun Place was now dark as death, but the night around it sparkled. She had never seen so many stars in her life, a spangle of them, so thick they looked like snow falling upward onto the sky, so plentiful that they almost completely outshone the fat fullness of a chill harvest moon. Regina moved closer to the windowpane, placed her hand on it and squinted her eyes down the driveway. Looking. But, of course, Jackson Blodgett’s Buick wouldn’t be here so late; he had a family of his own. There was no sign of Willie Willie’s truck, either. And the sheriff—he was long gone. Regina held her breath and listened. All she heard now was silence so thick not even a cicada managed to sing through it. Relieved, she was about to move her hand from the window, to close up downstairs, to hurry on up to her safe, warm bed. She was just about to do all this, could even already feel herself snug within sheets, when again she heard the rustle. And this time accompanied by a stealth of footsteps. She was sure about that.