The Messenger of Magnolia Street

by River Jordan

  “Mike come with you?”

  “Not this time. Told me to check on you. So here I am.” He continues looking down at Nehemiah’s toes, keeping a straight face. “I’m going to tell him that you’re alive but shoeless and I don’t know what that means.”

  Butch is a special employee of Senator Honeywell’s. One that remains on the senator’s private payroll. He is the son of an old army buddy of the senator. A buddy who passed away from complications from heart surgery, and keeping an eye on Butch was the only thing that he had asked Mike Honeywell to do for him. And this long before he was a senator. Now Butch keeps an eye on the senator. And draws a healthy paycheck for doing so. He’s a former marine, although Butch would frown at former. The marines didn’t rub off and it’s obvious that he’s enlisted in something. Obvious in his barrel chest and his steel spine. In his hair cut so short that you can see his scalp.

  Butch surmises enough to see that Nehemiah is well. At least some type of well. Although he can’t exactly tell what type of well that is. He turns, surveying the sky. He looks at the wind in the trees and tells Nehemiah without turning back around, “I thought the weather would be better here.”

  “Tell me, Butch, have you been driving all night?”

  “No. Drove most of the way and stopped. Didn’t want to surprise you at o’dark thirty. Came the last hundred miles this morning.”

  “When did the weather turn bad?”

  Butch considers the weather, but not for long. “About fifty-six miles ago.”

  Nehemiah nods his head but doesn’t comment. “Can I get you some coffee?”

  “No, I’m fine.” He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a cell phone, extends it to Nehemiah. “But you have a phone call to make.”

  “I know, I know, Butch.” Nehemiah waves him back and away. “I had to know what was happening down here, what direction things were going to take, before I called. Otherwise,” he twirls his hand in the air, copying a gesture of the senator’s, “it would all be smoke and mirrors speculation. And you know how much Mike loves smoke and mirrors.”

  “Do you know what direction things are taking now, Nehemiah?”

  “The direction. But not the destination.”

  Butch flips open the cell phone, begins to dial, “Well, at least that will give me something to report.”

  “Butch.” Nehemiah squints against the yellow glare. “I just left a few days ago. Don’t you think your being here is a little, well, premature?”

  “You broke your pattern, Nehemiah.”

  “My pattern?”

  “Senator Honeywell says you broke your pattern. No call. No checking in. Not like you.” Butch begins to dial the number. “It’s time to check in, Nehemiah.”

  “I still think this is just a little excessive.” Nehemiah gets up and walks back into the house, passing Billy in the hall.

  “Work show up?”

  “Yep.”

  “I figured that would happen.” Billy is buttoning his shirt as he walks out of the bedroom. “You cooking breakfast?”

  “There’s not enough food here to feed us and the man that just showed up.”

  Billy lifts the curtain, looks out the window at Butch on the porch.

  “He looks like me.”

  “You know, he sure does. Only harder.”

  “I was gonna skip that part, Nehemiah.”

  Rudy Harris is stocking vegetables in the back of the Piggly Wiggly, but he isn’t teasing Billy Shook’s youngest daughter, Ellen, like he’s done since she started cashiering a year ago. He begins breaking down boxes but doesn’t think to turn on his radio and play it so loud that it blares through the doors and out into the front of the store. Today there will be no one yelling at Rudy, “Turn that fuss down!” Rudy isn’t making a fuss. And the silence is so heavy it feels like Rudy will never make a fuss again. Not in all the remaining moments of Shibboleth. Moments that seem to be waiting to be emptied into an abyss that screams lost and gone and forgotten and buried forever.

  Monday, 9:38 A.M.

  Nehemiah and Billy have invited Butch to breakfast. Nehemiah tells Billy to go ahead without him. Tells Butch to follow Billy. And then Nehemiah goes to pick up his girl. This is what he has decided in the night during the storm. This is what he has decided lying in his room, looking at that picture from the past while listening to the toolshed roof roll across the yard. Trice is his girl. Always has been. It just took him awhile to remember. He is hoping she remembers the same thing.

  He pulls into Magnus’s yard in the Malibu, walks past the cats without shooing them, and knocks on the door. Then he paces, hands in jeans pockets. He looks like a man who has come a long way in a little bit of time. Still I want to whisper, Hurry, hurry.

  Kate looks up and sees Billy and Butch walk in and pull up chairs at a table.

  Hmmm. Not their usual booth, she thinks, and gets ready to take them coffee. Darla has quit on her. Just run off with the Little Debbie Cake delivery man. Some people called it eloping. No decent engagement time. No friends and family at the wedding. No reception. No party and no food. She knew what it was and called it what it was by its real name: running off. “She’ll be running back,” she says under her breath.

  “Company?” Kate turns over the coffee cups, fills them from the pot in her hand without asking.

  “Aunt Kate, this is Nehemiah’s…” Billy doesn’t have a clue what Butch is. “Butch, exactly what are you?”

  “Butch Norris.” He rises from his seat, almost standing at attention. “I work for Senator Honeywell.”

  “Well, Butch, you look like a man that can eat. And I like a man that can eat.”

  Kate turns and walks away.

  “Nehemiah has gone to pick up Trice,” Billy yells at her back.

  The storm in Shibboleth is growing. The yellow sky pressing down, unrelenting. The wind, although not whipping as wickedly as the previous night, never pauses. And as the sky grows darker, Nehemiah paces on the porch where we left him. Trice walks up to other side of the screen door. Then she stands there watching him through the wire, but she doesn’t move any closer.

  “What, Nehemiah?”

  “I think we should take care of…” and business is what he wants to say. He wants to point at the sky that he sees is getting darker. He wants to apologize for leaving and for not calling and to say thank you for being here, for not disappearing or, even worse, being here and not waiting.

  For a man with a wonderful command of the English language, and capable of common phrases of hospitality in six others, “Thank you for waiting” is all he can manage.

  “I always knew you’d come home.” Trice folds her arms, book in hand, finger holding her place. She continues looking at him through the screen.

  “Are you going to come out here?” He’s wearing that dimple again. It’s well defined. Trice finds it a hard thing to say no to. She opens the door and takes a small step forward, and with one short step she is out of the house and into Nehemiah’s life in a new way.

  Nehemiah reaches forward and pulls the book from her hand, looks at the title. The History of Western Art. “Is there anything you don’t read?” He memorizes the marked page number from habit, and closes the cover. Trice fights the urge to walk on her toes.

  “I have to be honest with you, home I’m not sure of.” Nehemiah takes her hand, pulls her toward him, and looks in her eyes. “You, I am.”

  “Maybe I’m just your familiar, Nehemiah.”

  “That you are, Trice.” He smiles her favorite smile. “You’re my familiar.”

  And here Nehemiah kisses Trice. A kiss that seals something. Defines something. Closes a window. Opens a door. Shifts a path forward. I write down, Two single lines of future melt into one path of now. And, it is good.

  By the time that Nehemiah and Trice have gotten in the car, have driven to the diner, the sky has turned from yellow to a shade of sly brown. A brown that has something up its sleeves.

  When they walk through the front doo
r, Kate is just beginning to ladle gravy, pull piping-hot biscuits out of the oven, platter up omelets, something she rarely makes, but she believes that Butch would like an omelet. She is carrying food to at least one table that she knows, or at least hopes, will still appreciate it. The world could come crumbling down around them, and she would be feeding people in the midst of it. She would just think, Well if it’s all gonna end this way, people should at least get one last good meal. And she’d mean it.

  And as she places the food on the table, she takes note that Nehemiah and Trice are holding hands as they come in. ’Bout time, she thinks as she walks behind the register and rings up a few checks and collects money from people who aren’t smiling. Says good-bye to people not talking.

  “Good to see your shoes on, Nehemiah,” Butch says as he methodically butters a biscuit. He seems to study the biscuit itself, squeeze the sides a bit, watch the butter run down the edges of his fingers. “Your aunt appears to love to cook.”

  “Pure magic, Butch,” Nehemiah says as he sits down, introduces Trice, and Butch makes a mental note to add the word woman to his report.

  There is an awkward silence. Butch eats and makes mental notes. Billy eats as if it were his last meal, and of late he has considered the strong possibility that any meal could be his last. He actually slows down a little. Savors his bites. Trice grows paler as she looks around wide-eyed at the remaining morning diners. She looks at Nehemiah and rubs her eyes with both hands, like a child just waking up. Kate refills the coffee and thinks, Even these three are quiet today. And that one over there doesn’t look like he speaks much unless he’s spoken to anyway.

  Trice barely touches her food. She is watching the remaining people. Watching them intently. She is watching them fade away. She sees through their slow bodies as they walk to the cash register. She watches them growing thinner as they get in their cars, as they back out of the parking lot. She is watching their images disappear, and she is still watching long after they seem to melt right into the highway. She squeezes Nehemiah’s hand, but he only takes it as a warm gesture. He squeezes back and smiles, takes another bite.

  Eventually, when Nehemiah has finished eating and Billy has pushed his plate back and reached for his toothpick, she rises from the table. She goes to the window and stands looking out, looking up at the clouds, her arms wrapped around her.

  In a little while, Nehemiah rises, walks up beside her and circles one arm around her shoulders. They have unrolled their agenda. They have nothing to hide. It is the type of open acceptance of public affection found during times of war. When men are going away. When there is no promise of their return. When moments are all that life is made up of anymore. And now, as they stand looking up at the sky, it appears to be growing darker by dimensions.

  Butch seizes the opportunity to look at Billy and say, “Excuse me,” as he retreats to the restroom to use his cell phone. Billy shifts his toothpick to the other side of his mouth, watching Nehemiah and Trice and thinking, Well, now, they’re finally on the same page.

  “Nehemiah, people are fading.” Trice pulls away from the circle of his arm and turns to look at him. “They are fading as I look at them. Like the opposite of a picture coming into focus. Instead of focusing, they are fading away.”

  Nehemiah turns, looks across the diner. “Aunt Kate?”

  “Fuzzy but not fading.” She rubs her eyes again. “Maybe it’s my eyes. Maybe I’ve been reading too much.”

  Nehemiah dismisses her stretch for an explanation. “Billy?”

  “No.” She shakes her head. “And not that man from Washington. Just everyone else.” Trice looks down. When Nehemiah places his fingers beneath her chin, lifts her face to look at him, her eyes are filled with tears.

  “And me?”

  “You’re fading the fastest of them all.”

  The eternal clock begins to chime. Now it is the three of them, Nehemiah, Trice, and Billy who look up.

  “Your clock,” Trice says, staring above the doorway.

  “You can see it, too?”

  “What does it mean, Nehemiah?”

  Nehemiah shakes his head. “The only thing I know, Trice, is the clock showed up when I came back to town. No one saw it before then.” He looks back at her as the chiming continues. “Not even you.”

  I wish I could tell her. I wish I could tell them all about the clock. About the time that they are passing through. Not the surface of time. Not the perimeters of time as man compartmentalizes it. But the essence of time. The heart and soul and embodiment of time. Of all the possibilities wrapped up in, and either reached or lost, in the borders of an atom-splitting moment.

  “I have somewhere to be.” Nehemiah looks back at Trice. “Wait for me?”

  Trice steps up on her toes. “What’s one more day going to matter?”

  “Hey, Billy, tell Butch when he gets out of the bathroom and off that blasted phone to just tell Mike I’ll call him just as soon as I’m able.” And then he calls over his shoulder, “And keep Trice with you. At all times.” And he adds for good measure, “No matter what.”

  Trice sits down at the table, watches through the glass door as Nehemiah backs away. Keeps watching until he disappears out of sight.

  “I see y’all finally got that thing worked out.” Billy shuffles the toothpick to the side of his mouth with his tongue.

  “Sure, now that everything is coming to an end.” Her feet rise up on tiptoes under the table, but they stay locked that way. They don’t dance.

  “Better late than never, Trice.”

  Butch moves from the bathroom to the table in long, forceful strides. He looks pointedly around the diner. Outside the diner door. “Where did Nehemiah go?”

  “He said to tell you that he’d…” he stops midsentence. “What’d he say, Trice?”

  “To tell you that he’d call Mike just as soon as he’s able.”

  Butch sits down. A man trying to formulate a plan. He is out of place, thrust upon strange people he doesn’t know, trying to report that Nehemiah is dressed strange and acting stranger. That he has stopped wearing shoes. Taken up with a woman. Not good signs that he will be back in the office the following day. Or even maybe the day after that.

  The brown in the sky is getting darker. Becoming the color of cracked dirt. And it will stay that way until it pushes toward evening.

  Billy looks out the glass at the sky, at the empty space where Nehemiah used to be. He moves the toothpick from side to side in his mouth. He’s got an itchy feeling. Like bad on top of bad. Billy is pondering his brother leaving just now. Maybe Nehemiah has said his good-bye’s without saying them outright, Billy is thinking. Maybe he has left us all sitting right where we are and turned his back again on everything that belongs to him. And everything he doesn’t want. Like last time. Was he angry? He didn’t seem angry. Not with me. Not with Trice. He glances over at her out of the corner of his eye. But Billy knows about Nehemiah’s anger. And where that anger can take him. Of how it can take him away.

  Billy always knew how to do the things that were important. Like fishing and hunting and even learning to drive a truck when he was only twelve. And this had made him Nehemiah’s idol, and even with the curves giving him direction, he’d look to Billy and wait for his wink or the slight nod of his head that said, “Go on, Brother, it’ll be just fine.” No matter what, Billy’s approval was paramount, and he’d had it at every crossroads. Except for one. And that was when Nehemiah had decided to leave town. Billy thinks now about the fight that day. It was a moment that changed the course of things. It was a crossroads. It was the only fight they had ever had, and it was a loud one. On Billy’s part anyway. Nehemiah had turned white-faced, clenching and unclenching his fists repeatedly as Billy stomped around the house ranting and raving. Billy’s anger was love unleashed. Nehemiah’s was a seething river at flood stage. Backed up. With no outlet. And ready to wipe out everything that dared stand in his way.

  Nehemiah had packed his bags and stood defian
tly in front of Billy, saying, “You can either drive me or I’m hitching over to Birmingham and taking a Greyhound.” And Billy, so lost now at being only a brother, not a mother or a father but only a brother, had simply shrugged his shoulders and gotten his keys. Not because he didn’t care but because of how much he did. Nehemiah had made up his mind. The least he could do was spend the last few hours on the road with him. At least he’d have that much. Because down in his gut he’d known Nehemiah wasn’t coming back. And right then, Billy lost his whole family. His days upon returning were spent wandering around the house, bumping into furniture, sitting at the kitchen table with his head laid down on his crossed arms. Crying.

  Billy’s heartbreak would have cut him wide open if it hadn’t been for Trice. Leave it to that pain in the butt Trice to kick on the screen door one afternoon and yell, “Billy, get on out here. I got something for you and I ain’t waiting all day.” Whereupon Billy had rubbed his eyes, pulled himself up from the table, and gone on out to the porch, where Trice, not giving him time to think, had thrust a warm piece of flesh and fur in his hands.

  “Now, he’s just a little baby so you have to promise to take good care of him.” Then she had shoved her hands in her back jeans pockets and stood there smiling like one of Magnus’s cats.

  The way Billy looks at it now, she had saved his life that day. Not physically, of course, ’cause he’d just gone on and on the way he was. Eating Kate’s “poor, poor Billy” chicken. Looking pitiful everywhere he went. Folks shaking their heads and saying “Bless his heart” constantly behind his back. Nope. If it wasn’t for Sonny Boy showing up that day, he’d have turned to dust inside. Simple as that.

  Billy looks up at Trice’s pale face. He sure doesn’t understand the girl. Loves her like a sister, but doesn’t understand her. Doesn’t really understand why she hangs around Magnus or why she lives there when she could be over at Kate’s without all that dang cat hair flying around. Doesn’t understand why she didn’t take that job in Birmingham teaching school. And for a long time he didn’t understand why she didn’t marry that Skipper boy who had been so crazy about her. But he knows now. Right now she is staring down at her notes that look like their old treasure map, and he doesn’t know what to do with any of this mess. But he sure wishes Nehemiah and Trice would hurry up and figure it out. And he’s wondering if Nehemiah just made a good show of things and then a quick getaway.