The Secret of Magic (28 page)

Down the path, Willie Willie arched his cigarette out the window. The two women heard his truck door open, heard the rustle of leaves as he ground the cigarette butt carefully into the earth.

Peach said, “He’s always careful about that. ‘Don’t want no fires this deep in the forest.’ That’s what he says.”

He climbed back inside, started up, and they heard the gentle rumble of its engine and the smooth way Willie Willie shifted it into gear.

“Just in case,” Peach repeated. “Keep hold to it. Don’t tell a soul.”

• • •

ONCE SHE AND WILLIE WILLIE
started off, Regina rolled down the window, looked back. Peach stood on tiptoe on the top step of her porch, as though by stretching tall she might be able to make them out a little while longer before they disappeared. At least, that’s what Regina thought. She waved and waved, quick motions, almost urgent in their goodwill, and Regina wanted to tell Willie Willie to stop the truck for a moment. That she needed to run back to Peach and tell her something, or hear something from her. But she realized how silly this sounded.

I still have a week here. I’ll see Miss Peach again soon. There’ll be plenty of time to come back. Why, when I come back I’ll bring my copy of
Magic
and I’ll get her to sign it. Miss Peach writes as fine a hand as Mary Pickett does. Didn’t that invitation she gave me look perfect, and she must have written it out herself. I’ll bet she’ll like it when I ask for her autograph.

A crow cawed. An owl hooted. Willie Willie turned out of the forest, onto the main road. And Peach disappeared.

They drove along in silence, the road a ribbon before them, mile after dark mile. And no sound on it except the rattle of the truck, the call of autumn’s last lonely cicadas, the soft rustle of the wind as it breathed through the trees. Regina’s mind was on what Peach had just told her, on that shirt. She still had no idea what she would do with it. But now that she realized how important it was, she was anxious to get back to the cottage, to check on it, to make sure it had not disappeared.

She was thinking all this when she heard Willie Willie say, “I do believe you might do it.”

Regina turned toward him. “Do what?”

“Set things right for Joe Howard. Peach said you would. Told me that the first time she met you. Repeated herself again when the two of us went out back to the kitchen room after the tea.”

Again, Regina thought to the shirt, to what Peach had just told her, but said, “She thinks I can get us a trial in New York, but I can’t. We got to work here, and things don’t look good. You got a judge out of town bird hunting, and a district attorney who’s washed his hands of the whole thing. Says he’s done what he could. Got a
grand jury
called, didn’t he? And everybody, himself included, acts like he’s some sort of saint.”

“A grand jury
was
something. Nothing like that’s ever been done before, at least not in Revere. Not for a Negro man. Got my hopes up with it. If the law worked, then the order behind it might work, too. That’s what I thought. But nothing came of it, and before you got here, I swore I’d just . . . Well, I guess you don’t need to know what I was planning to do.”

“Did I tell you,” said Regina, brightening some. “Jackson Blodgett did get the sheriff to get me the grand jury docket—not that they helped all that much. He said you were the one first took him out to the forest.”

“Which one said that—Jackie Earle Blodgett or Rand Connelly? They both could have, you know.
All
the boy children came with me, one time or another. Even the ones I didn’t particularly take to, like Rand Connelly. Even the ones came from hardscrabble stock, like Jackie Earle and his wife-stealing brother. We knew each other and I
had
to take them all, me being nothing more than a nigger man and all.”

Regina had never heard him use this word before. The force of it slapped her.

“Don’t call yourself that,” she lashed out without thinking. “Let them do it if they want to, but don’t you give them the satisfaction of knowing they can make you do it to. Besides . . .”

“Besides what?” If Willie Willie were astonished by what she’d just said, he didn’t show it. “Why, Miss Regina, that’s the whole tragedy of it. Lynching’s a terrible thing, that much is for certain, but the judge explained to me once what tragedy
really
is, the literal, old-timey meaning of the word. It’s something that might look good outside but inside it’s evil. Can’t control it. Nothing you can do about it. And, sure enough, Mississippi’s a tragedy. The state of it is. These people who won’t do a thing about Joe Howard . . . why, I’ve known them all my life. They’ve known me. They knew him. A place like Revere—it’s not like Memphis or Jackson or New Orleans. Everybody’s in everybody else’s business here. White ones and black ones, we all played together. Dreamed our little dreams together, concocted our lives. Up until we were ten, that is. After that, we split up. Went our separate ways. White ones going on to school. Black ones mostly out to the fields. White ones sifting themselves into your good folk and your good-for-nothing folks. Sure as black from white, this happened, too. But that didn’t stop us from
knowing
each other, if you understand what I mean.”

After that, they drove back to Revere in silence, Willie Willie’s truck lights tracing out the road ahead. Regina opened her purse and dropped the key into it. She felt it wedge its way in between her lipstick and compact, her handkerchief and change purse and wallet. She felt it brush against the smooth-sided picture of dead Lieutenant Joe Howard. She rolled her window all the way down. There was pine and the wood smoke on the air, autumn scents, and she wondered what springtime would smell like in a place like this. And she thought about the buck. She wondered if she might see it again before she left, if it might wander one last time out of the forest and into Mary Pickett’s garden. She hoped it would.

It was only after they had driven far enough into town that the forest backed off and released them onto a road where light flickered through curtained windows. They were driving down Main Street again, past the big houses Willie Willie had told her about when she’d first come into town, but going by this time he kept his eyes straight ahead. “A nice place, but still . . . it’s best to be careful. Don’t let no wayward thing get hold to you.”

“Who would want
me
,” said Regina, and she laughed.

“Maybe nothing . . . But then again, maybe something.”

She didn’t know what he meant by this, looked over at him, saw nothing on his face. They turned onto Third Avenue, and there was Calhoun Place. The way Mary Pickett’s house was set, close to the street, you could stop at the curb or follow the long brick driveway all the way in and be led right straight through to the rear of the house and the cottage. Since the cottage was near the back door, Regina had always thought the drive was set up this way so that deliveries could be made through the kitchen or that folks could ask questions of the help. But in the time she’d been here, she’d never seen a car pull all the way to the end. Normally, Willie Willie parked at the curb. Mary Pickett kept her Daimler in its own patch of gravel at the side of her house. Dinetta walked wherever she went.

But tonight Willie Willie turned in, drove clear through. Regina peered over at Calhoun Place. There was a light on over the front door and another farther down on the veranda. She saw a silver tray and some glasses. Regina looked around for Jackson Blodgett’s blue Buick.
Regina, you ever been in love?
But the Daimler and the slowly moving Ford truck were the only vehicles there.

Calhoun Place itself was brightly illuminated, more brilliant than Regina had ever seen it before. Light poured out like a stream of fresh lemonade from the glass front door and peeked out through cracks around the draperies on the main floor. Mary Pickett getting ready for her garden fete, thought Regina, remembering what Peach had told her. She wondered about that long portrait in the front hall and what Mary Pickett’s mother, Miss Eulalie, caught forever looking back, would think about what was happening with Willie Willie, what had happened to Joe Howard.

They were almost at the cottage itself when Willie Willie turned off the engine and let his truck die. He didn’t move. That’s what got Regina’s attention, his absolute stillness, a stillness that drew everything into itself. She swiveled around from looking at Mary Pickett’s, speculating about her coming party and her mother’s life, so that she could see what Willie Willie was seeing.

The door to the cottage stood open. Behind it, dark rooms yawned, a black gaping hole—except for a light from the bedroom that splashed brightness onto the bricks.

“You leave that bulb on? You leave that door open?”

She thought back. “It was afternoon when we left. I don’t think so.”

Willie Willie’s voice calm as the weather. “Now, what I want you to do, Miss Regina, is reach under your seat, pass me over that shotgun tucked in there. Gentle. It’s loaded.”

“It could have flown open. The door, that is. Maybe the wind . . .”

“Nope, no wind. Door’s been opened on purpose.”

She didn’t know how he knew this, but she believed, right away, that he did. She handed over the gun, gingerly as she could. It was the first one she’d ever handled, and for a moment she was more scared of it than she was of that gaping front door. This feeling didn’t last long.

“You think I need to call the sheriff? Mary Pickett’s got that phone right there inside the kitchen . . . I know where it is . . . I wouldn’t be trespassing. I mean, she
told
me I could just go on right in . . .” Regina realized she was jabbering, and she forced herself to shut up.

Willie Willie said, “Wait here.”

He left the headlights of the Ford burning and jumped onto the drive. His feet came down so lightly that Regina barely heard them land. She saw him pause at the door, pull something from it. And then watched as he slowly entered his house.

The shirt! Oh, God, I hope nobody found it. I hope Willie Willie doesn’t find it now.

Once inside, he turned a flashlight on. It must have been one he kept near the front door, but she’d never seen it. Regina watched its pinpoint reaching into the downstairs corners, disappearing for a moment as Willie Willie went into the kitchen, then becoming visible again as he traced a path up the stairs. She wondered why he didn’t turn on the electric lights, but he didn’t. Regina had to scoot down a little and wedge herself closer against the windshield in order to see his shadow against the curtain in the bedroom. She heard a door open and then close again. This, she decided, must be the small closet next to the bed. In a minute she saw a faint light seeping out of the bathroom window, a busy piece of brightness, industrious as a firefly. She decided that Willie Willie must be checking behind the shower curtain, looking in the ancient claw-foot bathtub. Making sure everything was safe for her.

After that, one by one, the electric lights flashed to life, first in the bathroom, then in the bedroom, the living room and the kitchen. Willie Willie didn’t stop until the whole cottage was lit up, bright as Mary Pickett’s. Through the little window, Regina watched him walk back downstairs and out through the front door. She realized she’d been holding her breath but now it gushed out. She scrambled out from the truck before he got to her.

“I guess I didn’t close it all the way after all.” She didn’t really know which one of them she was reassuring.

“Nothing but this.” He held a sheet out to her. The paper blue and so porous she could see the lights and the outlines of the cottage right through it.

She looked at him quizzically. “What’s it say?”

But Willie Willie shook his head, looked sheepish. “Can’t quite make out the words myself. Ain’t got my glasses.” He reached the paper over to her, and she took it.

There were just a few words on the flyer. She sped through them and then smiled over at Willie Willie as she read them again, this time out loud.

INFORMATION WANTED IN THE DEATH OF LIEUTENANT JOE HOWARD WILSON

Contact

Thomas Banks Raspberry

NAACP

Revere, Mississippi

Cash Reward

When she looked up, Willie Willie was frowning. “You know anything about this, Miss Regina? These—what did you call them—flyers?”

The look on his face made her own smile falter. “Well, actually, they were my idea. I thought if we put up something around town, we might generate some interest. Not everybody knew about that grand jury. Anna Dale Buchanan didn’t, not ’til she read about it in the paper. There might be other people like her. It’s not that the city went out of its way to let folks know what had happened. I asked Tom Raspberry to help because he’s got that printing press puts out his paper. At first he laughed, said he wasn’t going to do it. I don’t know what made him change his mind, but he must have printed these out and left me one to show what he’d done. Put too much pressure on the door and didn’t see that it opened.” Regina babbling almost, she was that relieved. That yawning door, so frightening when she’d first seen it, now meant nothing after all.

“Could be,” said Willie Willie, busy breaking the shotgun, but then he stopped what he was doing and gave Regina his full and steady attention. “Could be Tom Raspberry’s just bought himself a whole mess of trouble, and that’s his right. Tom’s been in trouble before this, lots of it, and he’s always managed to wiggle himself free. He’s the type attracts fuss like flypaper attracts flies. I just don’t want you getting stuck up there beside him. Might not be so easy for you to get yourself off it as it has been for him.”

• • •

“YEP, PUT ’EM UP
all over town,” said Tom Raspberry, already in his office at eight the next morning when Regina came in. He was sipping coffee, in a good mood. Five other people were crowded in there with him. Four men, a woman—they were sipping coffee, too. Regina recognized the mother from the courthouse square, the one who’d stepped off into the street so that white men could pass. The woman smiled at her. Regina smiled back.