The Messenger of Magnolia Street (13 page)

“It wasn't
that
Nehemiah's destiny to be a cupbearer. It was his destiny to save his city and his people. To fight whatever opposition stood in his way.” The pastor walks back up into the pulpit. He pauses and looks into the eyes of the parishioners, “Whether that opposition was man,” and Pastor Brown leans over, and tries to lock his eyes on Nehemiah's “or beast.” He takes a breath and
steadies himself, hands on both sides of the pulpit's edge, “You're purpose may be to march into the unknown for heaven's purpose, or perhaps,” and here the pastor looks at Kate, “only your neighbor's yard to say ‘I'm sorry,'” He raises an eyebrow her way but Kate just nods and smiles, and looks around because she knows the pastor sure is preaching to a lot of people in here that need to hear this message. “But whatever it is, it's not your purpose that matters. It's God's purpose for your life.” The pastor pauses, thinking of his own life, thinking of cause and effect and the unknown consequence of fear. “Be brave enough to cross that line, whatever it may be that separates you from your destiny.” The pastor wants to add more, he wants to tell his whole story and how his heart feels today. He wants to say everything he wishes he had said thirty odd years ago. But he only drops his head and says a closing prayer and adds a hushed, “Amen.”

And with that they will sing another song. And then Trice and Billy and Nehemiah will be at Kate's table eating Sunday dinner like they used to do with an assortment of odd ends and pieces of people with no full table to go home to. Widows and widowers. Young people drawn to Kate's tough embrace and forceful nature. Every loose Sunday soul with the exception of Magnus. When no one is looking, Kate will make her plates to go with an extra large helping of dessert (because she knows Magnus has a sweet tooth) and pack it off with Trice to take home to her. Kate Ann may have her standards but she is not without heart.

After the service, in the general sudden commotion of people being released from their seats, they try to make their way out. But people have come forward to shake Nehemiah's hand, to slap his back, to give him a wink and say, “You're finally home, boy, where you belong.” And he tries, ever so diplomatically, to smile, to be polite, as he works his way to the door. People joke with Billy
about the fact that, “The roof didn't cave in when you come in so I reckon you can come back next Sunday.” Billy doesn't tell them that actually he likes coming to church (minus the suit). It's the absence of Twila that keeps him away, the empty space in the pew that breaks his heart every time he looks down at it. Even after all these years.

Nehemiah is shaking hands with Pastor Brown when the pastor says, “I need to see you, Nehemiah.”

Nehemiah smiles, shakes his hand, has misunderstood him. Thinks he has said, “Good to see you.”

“I need to see you,” the pastor repeats, “Noon. Tomorrow. Here at the church.”

“Yes, sir,” is his simple answer.

Pastor Brown briefly glances over at Trice and Billy and before he releases Nehemiah's hand, leans in and says, “I prefer you come alone.” Nehemiah gives him a quizzical look but simply nods, and the pastor releases him to reach out to the next person.

The three of them stand awkwardly in their Sunday best (although Nehemiah's
real
Sunday best would have looked like his wedding day to Shibboleth), and Kate Ann is already at the Buick, the door wide open and her yelling, “Trice! You gonna ride with me?”

She looks to Nehemiah and asks, “Are you coming?”

“Yes,” he says, “but first I have to pay a visit.”

Trice nods and turns to go. Billy just says, “You go on, Nehemiah. I'll wait here.” And Billy hangs back saying so-longs to the milieu of southern Sunday worshippers with all their Sunday-dressed children, little recreated carbons of the past. They are running through and around the legs of their mommas, daddies, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. Little cousins and bigger cousins making a noisy mess and having such a good time they forget they are hungry, forget to ask, “When are we going to eat,” because they
know that they will soon enough. And if they ask aloud, that will be the official answer, “Soon enough.” Right now, they are just happy to have cousins and to be free, out in the open, and the sunshine. Running off an hour and a half of sitting pinched between adults on hard wooden pews. (Except for Cassie Getty, who always brings her own seat cushion to church.)

Billy makes small talk while Nehemiah makes his way across the churchyard for a long overdue hello. He steps gingerly through the flowers, the flags, the tiny symbols of the past. Walks past names like Walker and Skipper and Getty until he reaches a spot in the back under a towering magnolia, one resting now in the dappled light beneath the shadow of shade and the light filtering its way between the leaves.

“Hello, Momma,” he says, but that's as far as he gets. Now, mind you, as I write, as I listen, as I follow, I must insert this to inform you: Nehemiah knows his mother's spirit isn't in this spot of earth. That truly she doesn't rest eternally beside their father's marker. But this is his touchable place. The tangible, concrete, earthly place where he can reach out his hand and touch her name, conjure up her face. Nehemiah doesn't know what else to say except, “Hi, Momma” and “I miss you.” He thinks about all the times he has needed her advice, all the times he's thought he'd just reach out and pick up the phone and call her, but then, how silly was that? How many times he'd wanted to call her from Washington and tell her something to make her proud. But she wasn't there and so the proud had nowhere to go. And the thought of not seeing her face again, not until some faraway place like paradise, had choked him until he thought he would die. So he didn't think about that anymore. Or, at least, tried not to.

Wrapped in the folds of today's “I miss you” is the memory of a heartbroken eighteen-year-old boy. One kneeling by a grave in
the rain of midnight, refusing to leave his mother's side. Refusing to leave her alone in the dark. And, behind him, standing in the dark with his own broken heart was a brother refusing to leave Nehemiah alone. A brother who quietly felt the shift of responsibility settle on his shoulders and wondered,
How am I gonna look out for Nehemiah's gift with you gone, Momma. No one's here to tell him how to be. And he's not like me. I taught him to fish, and to hunt, and to fight, but I don't know how to teach him to go on being who he is because you were the only one knowed that.
And so they had spent the night with Billy weeping and Nehemiah wailing over a wet mound of fresh dirt that signified the end of a long, peaceful chapter in their lives. And the beginning of a different one.

One that would carry Nehemiah into the far reaches of a much different city where he was determined to evolve into a different man and never look back to the place where things had come undone. Where all his talents, his gifts, and his stories couldn't bring his momma back to life. Where he decided if he couldn't help her, he wouldn't help anybody. He was mad at himself—or mostly at God—he couldn't decide which. Maybe a lot of both. And, eventually, that anger had spilled over onto the entire town and every soul that dared to still breathe when the goodness of Twila had been ripped off the face of the earth.

If Nehemiah's arms could have reached down through the very earth that night, ripped open that casket, and pulled her out, he would have. Oh, yes, he would have. But then who, in the midst of the terror of grief, the aloneness of grief, wouldn't do the same?

Nehemiah is remembering this night as he stands by her grave. He is remembering his brother pulling him up the next morning saying, “Come on brother, we got to go home.” And Nehemiah looking at him with eyes full of sorrow and shock, as Billy had added, “Momma would want us to go home.”

And so they did, and there they found Kate and Trice and Magnus and Blister and he doesn't remember who else. People just there because being there was all they could do. And Nehemiah had washed his face, and Trice had come through the bathroom door, stood looking at him in the mirror until he'd turned, put his arms around her, and in the sweetest, quietest way, she'd whispered, “It'll be okay.”

Nehemiah had thought all these years that he would be standing here sooner. But, surprisingly what he feels now—is that he is Twila's strength. As if it's rising up from the ground, from her very bones, and pouring into him. As if she is reaching out, telling him to go on with what he has to do. To carefully identify his priorities. “And Nehemiah, the true ones,” she would often say, “are not always the ones that appear the most obvious.” If there had ever been a time that he needed her sage words, he felt that time was now. Her understanding of the presence of things unseen. Her un-shakable, unmovable faith.

Billy is waiting, leaning against the car when Nehemiah picks his way back through the concrete tombstones.

“Momma says,
hi
.” Nehemiah says, as he gets in the car.

“Is that a fact?” Billy closes his door.

“Yep.” Nehemiah cranks the Malibu, revs the engine, and puts it in reverse, “And to tell you that you that you need to get a haircut.”

Sunday Night, 9:33 P.M
.

Nehemiah is pacing the perimeter of the house. Pacing in circles. Around and around.
Treasure maps indeed,
he is thinking. A wind is
blowing from across town, whipping through the tops of the trees, bending them over. Lightning flashes, far away, still in the distance. An out-of-season lightning storm.
This is August weather
, he thinks. Everything is out of season. Everything is out of time. He is still trying, despite his best intentions, to put things together from the perspective of some leftover residual of logic. Just when I was thinking he had come so far, so fast, that there was still a chance.

“You should come inside. It's fixin' to storm.” Billy is hanging over the porch railing.

“I know that,” Nehemiah says, pacing by and passing Billy in front of the house. “That's part of the problem.” Nehemiah points his arm up at the sky, “Does this look like a normal storm to you? Well, does it? Because it's not.” Nehemiah has disappeared again around the back of the house. By the time he clears the corner, Billy is sitting in a rocking chair. “Does making those circles help?”

Nehemiah pauses long enough to say, “You know, it does. But not for long.” He walks up the steps, sits beside Billy. The wind whips the trees, bends the tops over. The sound of it can be heard over into the next county and beyond.

They rock back and forth just as if the weather was still as pretty as it had been this Sunday morning. From one extreme to the next. From all flowers to all fury.

“You know something, Nehemiah?” Billy's drawl sometimes slows to a crawl. “Me and Trice went to Washington to get you for a reason. I guess you been here long enough to figure out the reason ain't bogus. What you ain't been here long enough to figure out is exactly what you're supposed to do, and I imagine that must burn your butt like a mound of fire ants. But you can pace in circles around this house all you want, the fire ants are still biting, and you're no more closer to the answer than when you first started out.”

“Thank you very much, Brother, for that astute observation.”

“You're welcome.”

“What do you think we should be doing?”

Billy shakes his head, rubs his face, and stares off beyond the porch railing. “You know something, I don't know. I really don't. But the funny thing is, I think you do. And that you just don't know it yet.”

“Maybe you're right. Maybe it'll just come to me when I'm not looking so hard.”

“What's down there in the springs, Nehemiah? Do you know that much?”

Nehemiah sighs, or was that a groan that I just heard? “I know it's bad.”

“Even I got that much figured out, and that only took one trip.”

The oak tree shudders. They stop rocking, wait to see if another limb will be ripped away. Satisfied, they resume rocking.

“Here's the thing, Billy, this is what I need to know real bad. Why didn't you know something bad was down there before? Why didn't you get the feeling…Well, how long has it been that the water's been disappearing?”

“For years. Only it was little by little. Not overnight, Nehemiah. You've been gone a long time. You know, you go down to the water, and the water's a little lower, only you don't notice because you go down to the water every day. Maybe it was even disappearing when we were kids and we didn't notice.”

“No it wasn't. Trust me.”

Billy laughs out loud. This is an old joke between them. Their last name had been a school joke and a topic of conversation since the day they were born. Some say their great grandfather chose it on his way to America to make himself sound, well, like a man of
his word. But the only Trust man they ever knew was their father, Joshua, and what they knew was so very, very little.

“I do trust you, Brother. But you got to tell me about the fox, and about the rain. You got to reel me in.”

So, as the brothers rock and talk, Nehemiah goes over once again about seeing the fox for the first time. And about seeing him the last time. Then he talks about the night that he walked into that burning house full of flames and walked out again untouched with Blister in his arms. The wind howls. The trees scream. Sonny Boy comes out from under the porch, leans against Billy's leg, submits to some serious head scratching. After all, they are a family. And when the storm comes upon them, even Sonny Boy figures they are better off if they stick together. Keep one another well within sight.

“Did you know, Nehemiah, when you went into that house, that we thought you'd killed yourself?”

Nehemiah thinks again of Trice's eyes when he walked out. “I did when I looked at Trice.”