The Messenger of Magnolia Street

by River Jordan

  “Not even in spring or summer.” Billy looks over in the car, trying to see through the haze and into the windows, searching for any sign of Nehemiah.

  “We better get started,” and Trice opens up the door and puts her foot out in the mist that is strangely growing cold. “What is this stuff?”

  Billy gets out and kicks his leg back and forth, “Something not natural—that’s for sure,” he says, and begins to look through the windows of the Malibu.

  “He’s not in there, Billy,” Trice says and starts walking out to the side of the church and through the graveyard.

  “What about the church?” Billy says walking towards the open door.

  “He’s not in there either.” Trice keeps walking until she reaches Twila’s grave where she stops, crouches down, and lays her hand on top of the cold marble.

  The buzzard circles lower and lower in the sky until it lands on the highest branch of a scrub oak, the one just at the edge of the tombstones. It hops down to the next branch, and the next, until its eyes are in line with Trice’s head as she bends over. The buzzard flaps its wings, arches its neck out. Trice and Billy don’t see him, their minds are elsewhere.

  Billy walks up behind her, his hands in his pocket, his head down, looking at the ground. “You talkin’ to Momma?”

  “No, Billy, I’m remembering.” She stands to her feet, pushes her hair back from her face and the wild strands fall out across her shoulders. Trice walks off across the graveyard and into the edge of the woods, and Billy follows the blond outline of her hair into the inky darkness.

  It’s Nehemiah who sees Trice first. And Trice finding him and him finding himself seem to be interlocking pieces. His teeth stop chattering, and little by little, his shoulders stop shaking. The pastor looks up into Trice’s clear, blue eyes, at Billy’s wrinkled brows and shaggy hair, and he is so very, very thankful. Billy extends an arm and offers his hand, which the pastor receives with great appreciation and stands slowly to his feet.

  Trice kneels down, places her hands on both sides of Nehemiah’s face.

  “I dreamt I was lost,” he says, “and that you were the finder.”

  “Well, finder’s keepers, Nehemiah.” Trice looks into his eyes and he manages a smile, almost a dimpled smile, and says, “Amen.”

  And there, in that one last frozen place, not larger than a human eye, the pain and pleasure of Shibboleth find their way back into the heart of its man. I make notes and watch carefully as Nehemiah stops wresting with his purpose and makes a choice.

  The frozen eye melts into liquid fire. That’s my sign. I release a fresh wind from beneath my feathers. And with it, a renewal of hope, a focus on the business at hand.

  “We need our map, Nehemiah.” Trice says, squeezing Nehemiah’s arm, finding courage in the solid flesh. “We must find our map.” She and Billy help him to his feet but it’s a mere gesture of kindness. His strength is returning by the second. His legs are solid. Pastor Brown looks to the sky as if to speak to God, to confirm something, but the sky doesn’t look familiar.

  “Trice, nobody has seen that map for years. There’s no telling what became of that thing.” Nehemiah pushes a strand of hair back from her face, wants to kiss her but doesn’t. Not here. Not now. Not with Billy standing there with Pastor Brown.

  “Ya’ll never told me you wanted that map.” Billy is suppressing a grin. And then it can’t be contained anymore, and the grin spills over on his face in spite of the surroundings.

  “And what difference would that have made?” Trice asks.

  “Because, I’ve known right where that map has been all of my life.” And now he begins to rock slightly back and forth on his two, big feet. He feels that for the first time, he is the one that has something wonderful and mysterious to offer. And he is absolutely full of himself.

  “And where would that be, Brother?” Nehemiah lets go of Trice’s hand, steps back and crosses his arms.

  “Right where Momma put it.”

  Monday, 1:38 P.M.

  Kate stands absently wiping her hands on her apron. She is looking out the window of the diner, facing toward the oak tree in the center of the square. Right now there should be a late lunch crowd and stragglers with nowhere better to go or nowhere they would rather be than holding court at Kate’s, just waiting for another refill on their coffee. Someone to shoot the breeze with. To talk with about all the important things happening in Shibboleth and across the nation. But right now, there are only Kate and Butch sitting solidly at the table.

  Kate begins to speak to him without turning around. “You know, I think you can go ahead and get in that car and point it back towards Washington.”

  “Why is that?” Butch pushes back his on-the-house lunch plate. Kate had set it down in front of him, declaring, “I can’t stand around with a kitchen full of food that is going to waste and at least one man left on the planet that can eat it.”

  “Look,” Kate says, pointing at the sky that has started to change colors again. “I guess you can see there’s a little something going on that’s a little unusual. Nehemiah can’t go anywhere until it’s fixed.” That is, if he can fix it. If it’s not already too late, she thinks. What she also doesn’t add is the fact that she was watching Nehemiah and the way that he was looking at Trice. From the looks of that look, he won’t be leaving without Trice. And Trice won’t be leaving the city that saved her. This much Kate believes to be true.

  While Butch is trying to reach logical conclusions, Magnus is trying to make some kind of logic out of her situation on the other side of town. Watch her. She is standing by the phone in the living room. She is looking at the phone as if it was a peculiar animal. She picks up the receiver again for the third time, holding it to her ear. There is no dial tone. “Hello?” she says, “Hello?” as if someone trapped on the other end of the line might have erased her connection. She looks over at General, who has splayed himself out on the back of the couch. “This isn’t good,” she says.

  Magnus steps outside and looks at the sky rolling beyond the tree level and out across the open field. She has lived in Shibboleth now for almost sixty-four years (minus one) and she has never seen anything like this. “Have seen the Devil,” she says to General, who she knows can hear her (and he is the only cat that truly listens), “but I ain’t never seen anything like this business.” And for just a moment, Magnus forgets who she is and where she’s standing, as if something had just sucked it right out of her. But then her eyes latch onto her feet, and her feet are wearing her house shoes, and she manages one thought with one purpose, “I’ve got to change my shoes.” And that thought pulls her to the surface, where she can survive.

  “I have a job to do, ma’am.” Butch tries the ma’am word on his tongue. He’s heard it enough to know it’s important, but he originates from Philly and it doesn’t translate.

  “Listen here.” Kate turns around, pulls up a chair and sits down with a sigh. “Let me help you out. Your job description has changed. Senator Honeywell doesn’t know that. He’s not here to see this. And you can call on that little phone back and forth all you want to. He’s still not going to understand anything that’s not black and white at the moment. Even though he’s a son of the South, he ain’t never seen nothing like this.”

  “Don’t underestimate him.” Butch is quick to defend his employer.

  “If I didn’t think he was smart, I wouldn’t have voted for him. So I don’t think you need to tell me that.” She runs her dishrag over the back of her neck. Closes her eyes. And sits there that way. Then she stays that way. It looks as if she has just shut down, like a toy that turned off without warning.

  “Are you okay?” Butch leans forward, touches her arm lightly.

  Kate opens her eyes.

  “You were talking about the senator,” Butch says to prod her memory.

  Kate gets up again. Looks out the window as if she is daydreaming, and then she turns, sees Butch, and steps back a step. “How did you get in here?” she ask
s him as she moves toward the cash register. For the first time since Butch came to town, he’s the one who is suddenly on guard. He stands quickly to his feet.

  “You were telling me about the senator.”

  Kate’s expression remains blank.

  “I’m a friend of Nehemiah’s,” he says, trying to find some common ground, something to trigger the right response. She continues staring at him. “I came to check on him. See if he was all right.”

  “Mister, now I know you are full of lies. Nehemiah hasn’t been here in over ten years.”

  Monday, 3:33 P.M.

  The magnolias of Shibboleth are turning brown. The giant white flowers falling from the trees, most of them huge buds that have never opened. The leaves themselves seem to be crying out for water, curling at the edges. And yet, not so long ago it rained. But when it’s this kind of dry, it takes a lot of rain to sustain life. A lot of water to make the rivers run. And with this kind of dry, the little bit of water that comes is eaten up by the air itself, never gets beneath that first epidermis layer of dirt. What the people of Shibboleth need right now is a good soaking. But the origin and manner of that, if it’s to be at all, is still to be revealed.

  Right now, I believe that particular crucial occurrence is related to the look riding on the three faces looking out over the hood of Old Blue. I believe the end result is riding on the focus in the eyes of those faces. On the origin of its passionate intensity. I’ve seen that look before. But not in this world. I’ve seen it in places that reach beyond green streams and magnolia blossoms. I’ve seen that expression look over suns, reach between planets, beyond black holes, and stretch into what lies beyond eternity. But then, that story is from a different place in time. That story is mine.

  Nehemiah, Trice, and Billy pour out of the doors of the truck like running water. They are dust on the wind, racing ahead of the storm, running with it right on their heels. Carrying, even yet, petals of possibilities. Run, I want to yell. Run while there is at least a split atom of hope. They are already inside the house, down the hall, in the kitchen, when they hear the chiming of the clock. They look above the sink where Twila’s old clock is no more. It is now replaced with the clock without hands. The one that reaches into a different space and time and place. The three of them freeze, look at the clock until the chiming has stopped. Then Nehemiah and Trice look at Billy and say simultaneously, “Hurry.”

  He reaches his hand out and spins the lazy Susan once before he reaches into the center of it and removes an old flower vase that has stood there as long as any of them can remember. He removes a red plastic rose from the vase, then lifts it from the table and turns it over in his large hands, tapping it twice. An old rolled-up sheet falls into the palm of his hand.

  They roll it out gently on the table and look down at the images, the lines and symbols they drew so long ago. The clock begins to chime again and as they look back, Nehemiah looks at the map and back at the clock face. The symbols are the same. He silently points to a triangle on the paper, then to a triangle on the clock. Trice says nothing. She keeps one hand on Nehemiah. On his arm, his shoulder, his back. It doesn’t matter. If I just keep touching him, she thinks, if he starts to disappear again, somehow, maybe I can hold onto him, pull him back. Or if all else fails, follow him into the nothing.

  “Now that I brought you two to the old map…” Billy stops, turns a quizzical look up at the clock and back at the map. “Shouldn’t this thing have turned to dust by now?”

  “Well, if it should’ve, it didn’t,” Nehemiah says.

  “Anyway, now that we have it,” Billy switches his weight back and forth from one foot to the other, “could either one of you tell me what we’re looking for?”

  “We’re looking for our way back, Brother.” Nehemiah lays one hand on Billy’s shoulder, traces a dotted path on the map with his finger. His finger stops at a dark smudged mark. A word that is barely readable, but there it is, still there after all these years. The word TIME printed out in a child’s hand. “A way back to find what is being stolen.”

  “You get the bag, Brother,” Billy says. “I’ll get the batteries.”

  Monday, 4:16 P.M.

  Over at City Hall, Trudy Getty looks up from her desk, where she is paging through the latest People magazine, but she isn’t really interested in the people. Not in their clothes or their eccentricities. Right now, she isn’t interested in anything. She flips the page with one tanned finger. Occasionally, Trudy drives all the way to Troy to get a suntan from a booth. Not too much of a tan, but just enough to make her look like she’s been somewhere.

  Trudy studies the styles and fashions of other places so she’ll be prepared to fit in when the opportunity to leave arrives. She has decided to move to a big city, maybe Birmingham or even Atlanta, and to get a job as a receptionist at a law firm. It has to be a law firm, because that is the way that Trudy has imagined it since she was eight years old and learned all about lawyers from television. She is going to go to night school and become a real paralegal.

  She has lots of plans, and those plans include being in the right place to meet the right husband because she will someday have a big house and throw elegant parties. During the winter they will be inside in the great room with the fireplace, and during the summer they will be out by the pool. For the summertime parties, she will hostess in her not-too-much-but-just-enough tan, wearing pastel colors made out of drapey fabrics. Because she doesn’t know what she will wear in the wintertime, the summer parties are her favorites. She knows that she will serve large platters with cocktail shrimp, but that’s as far as she has gotten with the food. Right now her husband doesn’t have a face or a shape, but sometimes she picks out outfits for him to wear. Things that will coordinate with her dresses.

  Trudy has a lot of well-thought-over and dreamed-about plans. But in the evening light of Shibboleth, in its closing hours, when the phone rings on her desk, she answers “Hello” instead of “Shibboleth City Hall.” This is the most glamorous part of her job, the part that usually gives her the best practice for the time to come. But this afternoon there is no one nearby to notice how out of character this is for Trudy, and the person on the other end of the line simply says, “Wrong number” and hangs up. Trudy is left, phone still in hand, looking out the window, forgetting all about the paper-doll promises that she was hoping for, not even caring if they come to pass. An exodus of sorts is beginning around the edges of Shibboleth. Carloads of Skippers, truckloads of Gettys, even walkers, out on the highways and byways. They don’t know where they’re going. They just know they are leaving. They aren’t packing anything because they aren’t moving away. It’s as if the wind itself is picking them up and tossing them off toward the horizon. Off into the unknown corners of the world.

  Those not wandering away are sitting unmoving on couches or chairs or porch steps. They don’t know why they are sitting, but they can’t think of any reason to get up. They can’t think at all. They’ve lost their reference points. They’re missing their landmarks, the ones in their souls that take them back to where they came from and point them toward tomorrow and the next hour. But now the next hour is lost on the people of Shibboleth. The next hour rests in the plan of three people retracing their steps, finding their way.

  Obie has walked off and left her shop, back door standing wide open, and gotten in her car and started to drive. She is about to get lost trying to find her way home. She has forgotten where home is, and she will drive around and around the emptying town trying to find her way to anything that reminds her where to stop. Finally, she pulls back up to her own shop and, leaving her car running, gets out and walks through the back door without closing it behind her.

  A country mile away, two big feet in two big, flat, ugly boots are walking steadily down Magnolia. One plodding step at a time. At the corner of Magnolia and Main, the boots stop, and Magnus looks to the right and to the left, spits between her fingers. She stands still, frozen solid in her tracks, then she turn
s all the way around and looks back down Magnolia. She begins walking forward, back down the road toward her house. Five steps later, she stops, turns around, spits again, and heads forward toward Main Street.

  The stray dogs in Shibboleth have taken cover. They are hiding alone, or grouped together, under porches. Against back doors. Some dogs are scratching to get in, even the ones that know the answer will be no. The cats have hidden. The birds have roosted early but are deathly quiet. The sky has gone from the brown shade of dirt to an evening red. But it’s not a sunset red. It’s an unnatural red that pulses with a power that is unrelenting. And unholy.

  Blister looks up at the sky. He is trying to think, trying to remember if he has seen this red before. It is knocking around vaguely somewhere inside him. Seen this before, he thinks. But where? Blister has managed to make himself move, to get himself in his truck. It takes a long time before he remembers that the key is in the ignition, that he was going someplace. I am going to see someone, he thinks. But he has forgotten who the someone is. “Maybe if I just keep driving, I will find them. Whoever they are,” he says aloud. And then he slowly pulls away from his trailer.

  Monday, 4:35 P.M.

  Butch is watching Kate. Kate is watching Butch. They are at a standstill. She stands behind the cash register, pulls the phone from the cradle, and dials Dwayne’s number. She has it memorized. If she can’t get the deputy, she thinks, if he’s not already out this way, there will be no point in trying. Maybe I can call Zadok, he’s close by. And to think, all the knives are in the kitchen and this gorilla is between me and the knives. Kate is looking around for something else to use as a weapon when she spies the ballpoint pen and thinks, If he gets close enough I’ll put hiseyes out.

  Monday, 4:55 P.M.

  Magnus is counting her steps down Main Street. One brown boot. Next brown boot. One brown boot. Next brown boot. She has determined to focus her attention toward town. And the image of the Heritage Oak is in her mind. She is concentrating on the trunk, on the branches, on the leaves. The patterns coursing up through the wood. The green pulse of life behind the pattern. She fixes herself on this image so solidly that it draws her forward like the beam of a lighthouse drawing a shipwreck survivor through an empty darkness. There’s one hell of an undertow today, she thinks. And takes another step forward.