The Messenger of Magnolia Street (15 page)

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 defiantly 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.

Kate walks past him and sticks a HELP WANTED sign in the window.

“What's for dinner, Aunt Kate?”

“Well, it looks like you're gonna sit here long enough to find out.”

Butch asks one more time, “Where did Nehemiah go?”

“I told you, he didn't say,” Billy tells him, “Did he say anything to you, Trice?”

Trice looks up at Butch and shakes her head,
no.
Then goes back to her paper.

Strange girl,
thinks Butch.
Well, at least different. This whole place is different. I wonder if the senator has ever been here. Wonder if he really knows Nehemiah is from here. “Wait,” he tells me. “Watch,” he tells me. Well, I'm waiting. And I'm watching.

“Well, Trice, how about you and me mosey on over to Zadok's so I can get a haircut,” Billy says.

“I'll just wait here for you.” Trice is intently preoccupied with the curves and lines on her paper.

“Nope. You can't.” Billy reaches up and pulls the toothpick from his mouth. “Nehemiah said.”

“All right, all right.” She pushes back her chair, rises up from the table, but doesn't make it to the door before Kate has the back of her hand up against Trice's forehead.

“You feverish?”

“No, ma'am.”

“I haven't seen you look so pale, Trice, since you had pneumonia. Billy, you keep an eye on her.” She looks around the diner. “Now where'd your brother get off to?”

“Didn't say.”

“Oh, he's a good one for disappearing without even saying good-bye. That's one thing I know. Might as well keep an eye peeled back on that boy because there is no telling. Matter of fact, I've got a mind to make a phone call or two and round him up.” She stops, hand on hip, thinking. “Matter of fact, I got a mind to get in my car and go round him up, and I can do it, too.” She aims this last statement toward Butch, who recognizes talent when he sees it. Has no doubt this woman can round up anything she wants. “But I guess since you're still sitting here, chances are he's still around.”

“I hope so.” Butch replies. But he decides right then and there, if Nehemiah isn't back within the hour, he's going to offer to take this woman for a ride. And she can drive. A man needs to recognize his resources when he sees them.

Monday, 11:47 A.M.

Nehemiah pulls up at the churchyard. The clouds have run together now so that the very heavens appear blocked, the sky pressing down close and hard to the ground. Nehemiah opens the car door and rubs his throat, remembering the choking, breathless feeling of his first night at the springs. I can see the parched look on his face, and the parched place trying to patch itself into his
spirit. In the time that he has driven from the diner to the church he has indeed, as Trice has seen, been fading away. And he is becoming angrier by the moment. And now, with every mile and moment that he has drawn closer to this meeting, his soul has been moving in the opposite direction. It's a handful of second thoughts and self-direction that reaches for the church door. And it's a fugitive of faith that releases it, and without understanding why, begins to run in the opposite direction of his car, of Trice, and of Shibboleth. Out across the field of tombstones where there is nothing but death in his decision.

Inside Pastor Brown sits in a familiar pew. His sun-spotted hand rubs the worn wood. After all these years he is wondering what it feels like to sit here, year after year, watching him, listening to him. Waiting on him to make a move that is never made. And now he is waiting for his opportunity to be the help he couldn't be, or wouldn't be, so long ago.