The Messenger of Magnolia Street

by River Jordan

  “Billy, Trice can’t answer that because she didn’t even know where we found her until just now.” He turns and looks at her. “Did you, Trice?”

  She looks at Nehemiah but doesn’t voice an answer, just shakes her head no.

  “Billy, you are wanting a lot of simple answers that you are not going to get, at least not yet. Look, Trice, it’s okay. Just tell us what you do know.”

  “I told him to let her tell it, but he has never been able to let Trice have her own way with things. Never.” Kate has a tender, sore spot where Trice is concerned. Doesn’t like anybody messing with her. Doesn’t like Billy being short with her, which is just his way, but his way makes no difference to her. Nice is nice.

  “I remember knowing you were carrying me, Nehemiah. I knew that, and when I knew that, I knew everything was going to be all right. Then I woke up in your momma’s bed. And that there had been a long walking dream, and that somewhere in between the dream and the walking, you would be the one to fill in the spaces. I remember a dream, Nehemiah, of you holding a silver thread, and the thread turned into a liquid, and the liquid turned into a fire, but you were never burned.”

  “Well, that helps a lot.” Billy’s barrel chest is breathing heavy. It is a hard thing for him, getting thrust into a world he doesn’t understand. Having to fight an enemy where even his bare hands are worthless.

  “Children, children.” Kate stands up, puts her hands on her lower back and rubs. “Trice, let me see that paper you keep pointing at.” Kate holds the paper out before her at arm’s length, then noses her glasses up and brings it closer to her eyes. “Well, now, ain’t that just something special.” She passes it back to Trice. “Looks just like the one you drew about twenty years ago. Just about identical.” And she is moving herself around the table, picking up dishes and stacking them in the sink. “Trice, you want a ride over to Magnus’s house? Looks to me like you could use a shower.” She is spectacles down again, peering at Trice over the rims. “Or get your clothes and get your butt back over to the house with me where you belong.”

  Trice drapes an arm over Kate’s, leans a head over on her shoulder. “Wish I could, but like I told you, Kate, Magnus is my assignment.”

  “Whatever you say, Trice. Personally, I don’t know why Magnus would be anybody’s assignment. Not unless it was a punishment.”

  “You got that right,” Billy says but that’s from the whole dog feud.

  “Seems if a person was raised in a place, they’d live in that place instead of living somewhere they ought not to that has got to be diseased with all the fur flying…” And this rolling force is making her way out of the kitchen, down the hall, and out the door. Before they can thank her for breakfast (they have been a bit slow on their toes and tongues this morning), she has gotten into the Buick, fired it up, and now already the dirt is trembling, preparing for her takeoff as she revs the engine and backs up faster than most people can move forward. Kate is a force of nature. She was created to be that way.

  Trice is hanging on the porch railing, watching the dust of Kate’s departure fan out like a rooster tail until it eventually trails off into the air. Except for the full stomachs and the rumble in the ground, you’d never know that she had been there.

  Nehemiah has followed Trice out to the porch, where in just a few moments we discover them sitting on the top stair, both facing in the same direction, out past the oak tree and into the open field beyond. If they had had their way about it, they would have still been there when Magnus called screaming for Trice’s whereabouts and when was she going to come home with pockets full of explanations (and get her chores done). They’d still be there later, when Kate called them up and asked them to come down and sit with her after she closed up. They’d sit all day and do much of nothing. Which is an interesting thing, considering that Nehemiah would sit through another business day not taking care of business. It’s interesting the way that he can casually lean over and ask Trice without looking at her, “You remember anything about a fox, a red fox? Did you happen to see one?”

  And Trice will think about it, but she’ll eventually say, “No, seems like I’d remember something like that.” And after she is quiet awhile, she’ll add, “Matter of fact, I’m sure I would. Don’t see many red foxes around here anymore. Matter of fact, closer to never.”

  “Just thought I’d ask.”

  “Yeah. Well, guess I could ask you how’d you find me, specially down there.”

  “We…” and Nehemiah stops. “You know it really doesn’t matter how. Just matters that you’re here. That you’re back.”

  “Do you think I could’ve walked that far?”

  “Could’ve. You grew up walking everywhere. Still walk everywhere. I guess your legs can carry you where you need to go.”

  “You know none of us have been down there in years.”

  And somewhere in the word years Nehemiah will remember how many years they lived at the dark, green springs. Remember all the sunlight filtering through the trees. Remember Trice standing on the bank and then diving in, her full form visible through the green water. And then him diving in after her and kissing her right there under the water, in the middle of the magic of summer, her face rising to the surface, her breathing in the warm air, the sun resting there on their heads as their feet and arms continued treading water. And Nehemiah remembers being mesmerized. Not only by Trice but by the pure, simple goodness of the sun and the water, the reflection of the trees making it look like he and Trice were swimming in green leaves. And this will trigger the knowledge that all of that was a long time ago. And that will trigger the memory of where he has been and the fact that not once has he called his office.

  “What day is it, Trice?”

  Trice looks at him and shrugs her shoulders. She is the last person to be concerned with the day of the week. Particularly now. Right now the day of the week is the last thing on her mind.

  And then Nehemiah doesn’t even get up to check his calendar, check his watch, make a call or attempt to make one. At least not yet. That will come later, when he sits down, determined to decipher exactly how many days he’s been gone and clear his mind to think about what to do next.

  He looks up at Trice, and he is so glad to be sitting on that old porch with her close enough that he could reach out to touch her if he chose to.

  “Why didn’t you ever come see me?”

  Trice looks up at Nehemiah with a slight smile, has been half-expecting, half-hoping for this question. “You never invited me, Nehemiah. It’s just that simple.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “If it helps, I didn’t take it personal.”

  “It helps.” He runs his right hand over the rough hair on his chin. “I didn’t invite anyone. Not even Billy.” Then he reaches out his hand, “Let me see your note paper again, Trice.”

  She passes him the paper, which is getting more worn as the day goes on. “What did you say this looked like?”

  “I didn’t. Kate said something about a map.”

  “No, Kate said, like one from a long time ago or some such thing. You said a map.”

  “Well, when you look at it, it does kind of look like a map.” Trice takes it from him, turns it counterclockwise, holds it at arm’s length. “See, just like a treasure map.”

  Then there is what some people might consider déjà vu, that wonderful sense of repeating, reissuing words and then reliving their immediate results. But this isn’t one of those feelings. It is a true copy of a moment, one slice of time superimposed over another, like laying a traced copy of a photo over the original. They both call Billy’s name, are standing up, calling him to them and simultaneously rising to find him.

  Billy has stayed inside. He has been watching something. He has been wondering if it is an old thing or if it is a new thing. He isn’t certain yet of which one, but he is certain of this: Trice sees into the other side of Nehemiah. It’s a side that Billy is far removed from. And he knows it. He can stand right in fro
nt of the things this brother knows and can’t touch that world. It’s the same as being with him in the capitol building in Washington. Billy might be standing there but he’s not touching down, not touching that particular part of the earth. Nehemiah has spaces that Billy can’t reach. But he sees who can. And there is something that he has silently known about his brother all his life: that there has been a deep, separate aloneness. Like a rock formed from a different world. Something indigenous to another place and indifferent to all of its surroundings, and he has seen him hurt because of it. Has seen him try to force himself to change, to fit a different mold, to erase the parameters of his identity. Now Billy sees that Trice knows Nehemiah’s thoughts before he forms the words. That he can understand. What has surprised him, caused him to pause, is the recognition that Nehemiah feels Trice’s feeling without her stumbling explanations.

  Nehemiah and Trice are communicating with one another in ways that he does not understand, but he understands that it is happening. This is what sets him to contemplating the night of the fire, of Trice’s call, of Nehemiah and Billy getting her and driving out there because who else would bother in the middle of the night on the whim of a dream. But now, looking at that fateful night through the lens of time, he thinks maybe he was just along for the ride. Trice’s dream and Nehemiah’s, what would you call that—faith? A magic moment? The flash of Blister in Nehemiah’s arms. The flash of Trice in Nehemiah’s arms.

  Both times, in the rain.

  With all the occurrences, with all the waves of incredulous things that have come crashing into the small, simple world of Shibboleth, he knows that the line of communication between Nehemiah and Trice is critically important. One big seesaw with one of them on one end, one on the other, and the essence of Shibboleth balanced in-between. It takes a smart man to recognize revelation when it comes. And it just so happens, Billy is a very smart man.

  Now his name is being called, repeatedly, insistently. Billy meets Nehemiah and Trice at the screen door. They stand looking at each other through the screen. “Look, Billy, look,” Trice holds the paper out in front of him, “tell us what you see.”

  “Well, Trice, let me get out there, for goodness sake. What I see is you standing behind the door.” He opens the door as she takes a step backward, still holding the paper arm’s length away from her toward Billy. “I’ll be. It’s our treasure map.”

  “Not exactly, but yes,” Nehemiah says. “Somehow, it’s a copy of our map.”

  And now there are three heads, as Trice sits down in the rocking chair with her head bent forward. Nehemiah and Billy’s faces frame her shoulders, left and right, as they look over the words, angles, and dots. She turns it, ever so slowly, around and around, tightening their focus with every turn.

  For just a moment, we could have been Twila’s eyes from twenty years ago. Looking out from behind the screen door, catching these three involved in some serious business, their heads bent forward in grave consideration, as if the good of the world depended on their calculations. And if we were Twila twenty years ago, we would smile and shake our head, wipe our floured hands on that worn white apron, and go back to work. But we’re not Twila and we’re not smiling.

  That was just for practice. That was the before. This is the now.

  Sunday Night, 11:07 A.M.

  Nehemiah drives up to the little, white wooden church. It sits on a green hill in Shibboleth. Just enough of a hill so that you have to feel gravity as you approach the doors. It is the sun in the planetary existence of Shibboleth. All the revolutions of its communal life travel annually around its calendar year. It is the fabric that makes up an entire town’s collective memory. A memory of ritual that anchors them to the substance of their lives. Birth announcements and calls for prayer. Hugs and hellos. Warm bodies against warm bodies. Same familiar faces and families, year after year, layered upon one another. The same songs sung for every occasion. Same trembling, scratchy voices. Same melodious baritones and sopranos. A cacophony of can-sings and can’t-sings all joined together. Elderly women in flowered polyester with tiny steps, being ushered carefully, slowly, to their pews as if at any moment they might break. Old men dozing off during the sermon, but shaking the pastor’s hand at the end and saying, “Mighty fine, Pastor, mighty fine.” And always the flux of babies growing into children, of children growing into brides and grooms. The perpetual twirl that makes room for the celebration of one more breathing brand new soul. Or the grieving over the loss of the last one. A collective town having dinner on the ground and knowing one another’s histories and heartbreaks.

  Nehemiah, Billy, and Trice had made it to church this morning with not much more than small talk. Trice was in the backseat, having sworn that Billy needed to be up front because he was too big, but the truth was she just needed some distance. She needed a moment to pause, and to catch her breath. To be able to look down at herself in her new dress without feeling self-conscious. But every time she had looked up, Nehemiah was looking at her in the rearview mirror.

  It was Magnus who had picked out Trice’s dress for her. Magnus who had told Nehemiah and Billy to “Sit down on the porch and I’ll fix you some coffee while Trice gets herself dressed.” Then, once they were out of her hair, she’d gone through Trice’s messy closet and pulled that dress out of the back with the tags still hanging on it. It was the one she had ordered from J.C. Penney for Trice’s birthday two whole years ago and the girl telling her all the time she didn’t have any place to wear such a thing.

  Magnus had laid it across the bed and was both thankful and surprised that when Trice walked in her old robe, looking a little tired but scrubbed rosy, she hadn’t even argued about it. Had actually said, “Thanks, Magnus,” like it was the first time she’d laid eyes on the dress. Like it was her birthday all over again.

  Nehemiah and Billy had sat outside rocking and counting cats. “I bet she’s got fifty,” Billy had said. Sitting there in that rocker he had looked odd in his church clothes and tie. His clothes didn’t fit and normally he didn’t dress up so much but this time he’d put on his one good suit. Perhaps to not shame his brother who was, once again, dressed to perfection. Billy’s one good suit was the last suit he’d bought for a funeral twelve years ago and that’s just because no matter how much he sucked in all his body parts, the suit he’d worn to his momma’s funeral just hadn’t fit anymore. He had taken it off, looked at it long and hard, then took it over to Tommy Patchard’s momma for her boy. He knew they didn’t have much of nothing.

  So Billy sat, looking tightly shoved into an outdated suit, and Nehemiah sat looking like the cover of a magazine. The cats didn’t want any part of Billy because he always smelled doggy to them. But Nehemiah, oh yes, Nehemiah they had designs on.

  They had wanted to rub and twirl against those smooth, dry-cleaned pants legs. Smear their multicolored hair along the toes of his polished shoes. They had even offered him a purr but the purr came with furr, and this kept Nehemiah constantly moving, twitching to keep them at bay. Then Trice had stepped through the porch door. She had reminded him of the day in southern regions where a person steps outside and realizes the azaleas and dogwoods have bloomed. All of them. Overnight. Although a part of you knows that isn’t possible. It’s just that one single day you look, really look, and there they are in all the fullness of their glory. And just like that, Nehemiah had been caught off-guard by the glory of Trice. And a little speechless. So much so, so obviously, that it had been Billy who had finally broken the silence by slamming his hands down on the chair arms and saying, “Finally! Let’s go.” Then they had all gotten into Nehemiah’s rented Malibu. The same Malibu that he had forgotten about. Had forgotten it was parked right there on the side of the house.

  Just this morning, Nehemiah had been determined that tomorrow, Monday morning sharp, he would take care of some serious business. That tomorrow he would get to the bottom of this thing, and get back to where he belonged. He had told himself these things in the mirror while shaving, an
d I had laughed when I heard this. I then looked into the pages of history yet to come and saw troubling twists ahead and looked back at the reflection of the man in the mirror, hoping so very much that he would make the right choices. It’s a wonder he could drive at all.

  Going to church had been Trice’s idea. While they were still pouring over their copycat treasure map, she had quietly said, “Maybe we should all be going to church.” And there had been no discussion and no argument. Only Nehemiah saying, “We should get dressed then,” and he and Billy getting up and going to do just that. Just as if Twila had said, “Boys, get ready for church.” The only thing missing was their “Yes, ma’ams” as their footsteps headed in the direction of Sunday.

  Nehemiah, Trice, and Billy enter the church and sit up front next to Kate. They are wearing their Sunday best. They sit in their assigned pew with whispers to their backs, and Kate plumped up with enough pride to bust wide open. This is a regular affair for Trice, a seldom affair for Billy, and, of late, a never affair for Nehemiah. This is almost exactly the way it used to be. Only back then it would have been like this: Twila would have been beaming from one end of the pew, and her sister Kate Ann beaming from the other. They were the spiritual bookends that held Nehemiah, Billy, and Trice firm in their positions.

  Trice’s blond hair would have been curled very carefully with Kate daring the humidity to fuzz it up until after dinnertime. At least, she had figured, the child could look like a lady on Sunday. The rest of the week if Trice wanted to run wild with Nehemiah and Billy, well, that wasn’t Kate’s first choice, but it wasn’t her last either. Her last would have been not having Trice at all. Miracle babies make you believe in magic. Miracle babies get spoiled rotten.