The Messenger of Magnolia Street

by River Jordan

  Later he will tell Billy about the fox at the kitchen table. He’ll say it in wonderment. “Won’t believe what I saw,” he’ll say.

  And Billy’ll say, “Tell it,” the way he does to Trice.

  “Saw a red fox run right out in front of me, stop and stare at me, if you can believe that, and then take off like lightning across the road.”

  “Ain’t no foxes around here anymore.” Billy will sit down at the table with a hefty sandwich, take a bite, and keep talking with his mouth full. “Ain’t been for years, Nehemiah. You know that.”

  Nehemiah will cross his arms over his chest and say aloud, “I know what I saw.”

  But that will be later, when it comes back to him, when the flash of red hair brushes against the synapses of his cortex.

  Right now, Nehemiah rests his head back against the seat of the rental car, opens up the sunroof, and feels the early evening sun warm on his bones. Bones that he didn’t realize had felt so cold for so long.

  The melt begins, just around the edges, just along the surface. Nehemiah turns on the radio and the refrain from “Southbound” by the Allman Brothers kicks in as he says, “What do you know?” and turns up the volume as the Malibu seems to take to the road of its own accord. And a thousand important, trivial problems masquerading as life fly right out that roof, getting lost in the translation of winter to spring. Our Nehemiah is a glacier moving south. Ahh, sweet impetus.

  Thursday, 6:21 P.M.

  Old, white-frame, paint-peeling, sagging porch of a house. Nehemiah loves it all over again. Instantly. The way one loves any piece of home unchanged and forgotten until you’re standing in the middle of—sinking in the middle of—memory.

  Old Blue is not out front. Nehemiah calls out for Billy anyway. He hasn’t heard so much quiet since he can’t remember when. He stands under the oak tree, shadowed in its reach. The sun is setting, the red undercarriage of clouds a moving mirror that says, One more revolution.

  Nehemiah pulls a piece of moss from a tree branch and holds it up, saying aloud to no one but the tree, “Parasite or poetry, depending on your frame of mind,” which sums up his entire thoughts of Shibboleth in general. But tonight, as the wind picks up, stirs winter leaves around his feet, Nehemiah is remembering poetry. And the words are wrapping around his skin, sinking into his being with every sigh of the earth’s groaning. Every smell, every sight, every sound forming an orchestra that takes him back to the beginning.

  He climbs the porch steps and opens the door. The last of the sunlight, in its final crash, slants across the wood floor at odd angles, the dust particles becoming a living entity of their own. He walks down the hallway and straight back to the heart of the house, the kitchen, which smells like years of layered grease and fatback and white flour. This is what he remembers most, and he almost expects to see his mother, hands covered in flour, greet him as he steps through the door. Almost. As if, if he wills it hard enough, long enough, it might happen. A circumvent of time. The earth turning backwards.

  He turns, walks down the familiar hallway, looks into his mother’s room. No mother. But everything else just the same. He reaches the next bedroom on the left, the smallest one, his room. Billy was the oldest. Billy got the larger one at the end of the hall. His mother got the one with the most light. The door to his room is closed, and he stands with his hand on the knob, starts to go in, then backs away, walks out to the porch and steps outside. The screen door slams behind him. It is a comforting hello and good-bye sound. Then he sits in one of the three old rockers waiting there for a warm body. The cool starts rising up from the ground, and the stars begin appearing high in the sky.

  The moon hasn’t yet risen when Billy pulls up, gets out grinning with Sonny Boy, who howls at the apparition on the porch. “Oh hush, boy,” Billy says, “you can’t even see good. That there’s your brother.”

  Nehemiah doesn’t feel correcting him on this fact is necessary.

  “Why didn’t you call?”

  “I don’t know. Figured I didn’t need to.”

  “Reckon you don’t.” His boots are heavy on the porch steps. “Did you eat yet?”

  “No. Just sitting. Waiting on you, I guess.”

  “Well, let me wash up and we’ll head on over to Kate’s and get a bite.”

  Later That Evening

  Later, sitting at the diner sawing on T-bones, Billy spends his time chewing and watching Nehemiah. Nehemiah watches everything and everybody. (Public awareness has become an ingrained habit.) Sonny Boy watches through the diner door every bite that Billy cuts and puts into his mouth.

  “Trice is gonna be mad that we didn’t ask her to come eat.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Didn’t think about it then. Just thought about it now.”

  “Well, I’ll be doggone! Ed, Ed, look who’s here, will you just look?” Catfish has come in and spotted Nehemiah. “Hey, Billy, look who’s here.” He says this to Billy as if Billy hasn’t been sitting with his brother all along.

  “Hey, Catfish, good to see you.” Nehemiah puts out his hand.

  “Doggone,” Catfish says again, looking at Nehemiah like he’s just been resurrected. “I guess we’re gonna hear it now. Ed, you ready to hear a good one?” Ed is nowhere to be seen as Catfish pulls a chair from a table, turns it around, and straddles it at the booth’s edge, between Nehemiah and Billy. “Tell us a story, Nehemiah.” He looks down at Nehemiah’s plate, at the half-eaten steak, the fork and knife in his hand. “Aww shoot, you’re eatin’. I got so excited, I didn’t even notice. You go ahead and eat, Nehemiah. Get that out of the way, we’ll come back over in a minute.”

  Nehemiah looks down, looks up with an attempt at a smile, trying to find the right words. “Sorry, Catfish, I don’t have any stories.” Catfish stands, disbelieving. “Well, sure you do. You don’t have to tell a new one, just tell us one of the old ones. Hey, tell us the one about John thinking he’d caught a big one when it was Billy under the water holding on to his line.” He whoops with the memory. “Tell that one.”

  Nehemiah looks at him vacantly, and Billy sees what Catfish doesn’t. He sees that his brother doesn’t even remember the story. Not from being there on that funny fifteen-year-old day. Not from telling it over and over again in the years to come and go. Doesn’t remember it at all.

  “Catfish, I tell you what, me and Nehemiah’s got some catchin’ up to do. But he’s gonna be around for a few days, so you drop by before he leaves, and one of us will pull a story out of the bag for you.” Catfish is as docile as a man can be. Not a mean-spirited bone in his body. He doesn’t want to tell Billy that his stories are fine, just fine, but they are not the same. And of course, he doesn’t need to. Billy knows this. He’s just trying to buy Nehemiah some time. He isn’t certain what for. Catfish tries to smile but leaves heavy in the chest, deflated and shaking his head. He is mourning the loss of words that dance. Words that bring life like fire brings warm.

  “Billy,” Nehemiah puts his fork and knife down, “why isn’t Trice married?”

  Billy doesn’t say anything immediately. He takes a swallow of his tea, tries to sort something out in his mind. Something different that has just come to his attention. “Why ain’t you married?”

  “You know something,” Nehemiah pauses, looks at the dog’s eyes through the glass door, “I don’t know. Maybe I haven’t met the right woman.”

  “Ain’t no woman right when you get her.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yep, she’s not right for about,” Billy rolls his eyes up, thinking serious at the ceiling, “’bout nine, ten good years.” And he nods as if that settled it. “Then she is just right.”

  “That’s a long time to get things just right, Billy.”

  “You better get started right away then. Now, I’m a worn-down package, but you, you got some potential.”

  “When did you start using the word potential?”

  “Satellite TV will teach you all kinds of things you don’
t need to know.”

  Darla is yelling out orders to the kitchen. Dishes are rattling. People are eating, chewing, pointing, yet something isn’t quite the same. Nehemiah is trying to pull up files of memory, flip through the cards, tables, and booths, cash register, same smells. But something’s missing. A huge slice of empty.

  People are watching Nehemiah. One or two occasionally nod a head in his direction. But even the ones who know him don’t speak now, after his reception to Catfish, which they find downright peculiar. They are thinking he looks about the same. Richer but about the same. They are waiting to see if the ice will crack and release the man inside. And, as they are waiting, as they are watching, the ice pick appears.

  “You got trouble.” Billy puts his head down, shovels up a forkful of potatoes.

  “How’s that?” But the question answers itself as Kate sits down with a vengeance on Nehemiah’s side of the booth, the bulk of her pushing him toward the corner. “Well now,” she says and pulls her glasses down on her nose, looks him up and down.

  “Well now,” she says again.

  “I know, I know.”

  “Do you now?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I know. Sure is good to see you.” She keeps him captured eyeball to eyeball. “Steak sure is good.”

  “Don’t sweet-talk me tonight. I’m too tired for it. Right now, I’ve laid eyes on you and that’s enough. Now get your butt back in here for breakfast, and you and me’s gonna have a little catching-up talk.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You go home and get in your momma’s bed, you hear, and get some real sleep for a change.”

  Nehemiah gives her a puzzled look. Starts to tell her that he sleeps fine. Really fine. “I still have an old bed in that house.”

  “That’s not what I said, now is it?”

  He starts to add “no, ma’am,” but there isn’t a chance.

  “I said, Go get in your momma’s bed. That’s not too much for you to do, is it? That’s a simple thing, don’t you think?” She has risen, cleared the booth, whipped a dishrag over her shoulder, and is moving away, still talking. “I ain’t asked anything of you in over ten years. Seems to me you oughta be able to do the least little thing I ask before I drop dead. A person never knows when…” and she is still talking as she walks through the kitchen, where the rattle of dishes swarms up to eat her words. She is still talking when she says, “Ed, lock up. I’m going to the house. I have had enough for one day.”

  Kate is still talking to Nehemiah under her breath when she cranks up her big Buick and hits the pedal hard enough to chariot away her heavy body home, where she will take off her shoes, put up her feet, and think about her sister, Twila, who passed on way too soon, and her sister’s baby boy, who has finally brought his raggedy butt home where it belongs. “See here, Twila,” she says to the air, “I done sent him home to get in your bed and that’s the best that I can do. The rest of it is up to you.”

  Presently, though, Kate has barely made it through the kitchen door and the folks in the diner have watched this occurrence with great amusement, seeing how over seventy-five percent of them know Nehemiah and are busy whispering to the other twenty-five percent the whole story to catch them up to speed. They have watched as Ms. Kate has corralled him, and about half of them make a note to change whatever plans might be necessary so that they can drop in for breakfast in the morning, too. Just to see if he shows up. Or to see what happens if he doesn’t. Their lives are far from boring. There is just so much to see and do.

  Back at the table, Nehemiah is trying to remember why he had to come down here in the first place. “Tell me again, why am I here, Billy?”

  “Looks like right now you are here to get chewed out by Kate Ann.”

  “I could’ve come down here and done that any time. I thought there was something going on wrong here according to you and Trice…”

  “Naw, naw, naw,” he holds his hand up in protest, “that was Ms. Trice, and you gonna hafta take that up with her.”

  “Billy, you said…”

  “I ain’t said nothin’.” Billy gets up from the table with his bone (which you will notice he has left a nice amount of meat clinging to) and takes it to the door, passes it out to Sonny Boy, who gives him a wordless but tail-wagging thank you.

  He calls over to the waitress before sitting down, “Darla, could you please find me some of that peach cobbler? Nehemiah, you want some cobbler? It’ll make you feel better.”

  Nehemiah looks at Sonny Boy by the door, passes his bone to Billy for the dog later, and says, “Why not? I’m up to my knees in something. I just wish I knew what it was.”

  “You ain’t up to your knees, boy, you just starting to get wet.”

  And the brothers eat peach cobbler and talk about things that it takes two of them to remember, two of them to get straight. Billy doesn’t try to bring up the fishing story. He is testing Nehemiah’s memory, checking for holes, searching for leaks. And as this is happening, Nehemiah is thinking, just a few days, I’m going to take just a few days, and then I’m heading home. Then the clock on the diner wall begins to chime, and Nehemiah asks, “When did she put that in here?” His eyes are fastened to the clock over the door, listening to the third chime, the fourth chime, thinking how out of place the clock is.

  “What?”

  “That chiming clock? When did she put that in?”

  For the first time since he dropped him off in Washington, Billy looks at his brother with concern in his eyes. “You’re tired, Brother. We need to get you home.”

  “Well, it’s a simple question.”

  Billy doesn’t want to trouble him by actually pointing out there is no chiming clock. That the clock he keeps staring at in a puzzled way runs on batteries. It says Time To Eat on the face of it. And it sure as heck don’t chime. He should know, he thinks. He gave it to Kate for Christmas five or six years ago.

  “Well now, that is the strangest thing I’ve noticed since I’ve been back,” Nehemiah says as he stares up at the sound of the chiming that follows him out the door.

  “I’m sure it is.” Billy says, as he cranks up Old Blue, and Sonny Boy, bone in mouth, jumps in the back. Billy watches his brother out of the corner of his eye on the way home. He doesn’t know exactly what he’s looking for, but he’s sure he’ll know it when he sees it.

  Friday, 8:14 A.M.

  Billy is sitting at the kitchen table the next morning when his brother walks in. He hasn’t dropped his guard, is still watching him based on last night’s performance.

  “Sleep all right?”

  “Good as always.” Nehemiah says this, but he isn’t telling everything. He isn’t telling about the smell that came into the room and woke him up. It smelled like gold. It’s the only word that comes to his mind, but then how silly is that? How could gold actually smell? he is thinking. And a dream of transparent gold, almost a shower but not beginning from a cloud, not ending on the ground, just floating gold dust and in that smell power. He doesn’t think he needs to mention this to Billy. Doesn’t think he needs to tell him how long he’s been awake, remembering what he is certain must have been a dream. Or how long he lay in the comforts of their mother’s bed, basking in the lingering traces of her presence. Her still there in the framed faces of their baby pictures on the dresser where they’d always been. Her wedding picture by the bed. The fading face of the father they had barely known.

  “Slept just fine,” he says again to make it so, give it concrete legs to stand on.

  Then he takes down a coffee cup and touches the ages-old pattern on the cup. The familiar is everywhere. It’s penetrating his skin. A chunk of ice falls off.

  This is when he sits down and sips his coffee and tells Billy about the fox. This is where they have that conversation, such as it is. Then they sit, quiet for as long as you can imagine. Drinking coffee and not saying anything of importance or nonimportance for me to take down. So I must let them sit there in their silent cocoon while I record the othe
r things.

  The wind has picked up significantly today. Strong enough even to shake the branches of the oak tree, at least at the edges, to make the moss sway. The tall grasses try to stand straight but are blown westward. The wind is coming from the east, as if the sun were blowing with its rising, breathing heavily over Shibboleth, as if it were moving things about, clearing all the dead away.

  “I love this place,” Nehemiah says. He looks to his left and right as if the words had come in of their own accord, carrying with them their own agenda.

  “You always will,” Billy says. Then they are quiet again. It is the quiet that gives me more words than you can imagine. It is the quiet that lets me read what’s in their hearts, lets me put my finger on Nehemiah’s fear (and he is not a fearful man). On Billy’s concern.

  “You should paint the house, Billy.”

  “I was waiting on you.” Billy says and spins the lazy Susan in the center of the table for no reason except to watch it turn.

  If we let our eyes wander up and over them, out beyond the back field where the garden is lying fallow ready to be seeded, and through the stand of trees, the scrub oaks and big magnolias and a few firs, they’ll carry us straight down the road where we’ll run right into Main Street. There we can easily travel over to Magnolia to the house of Magnus, and see her feeding and shooing cats, trying to divide their food, making sure the skinny ones get to eat and the fat ones sit and watch for a while. It is a precarious, demanding job.