The Messenger of Magnolia Street (22 page)

“Yes, ma'am,” Butch says. And it keeps him out of trouble.

Magnus has her head down in her hands. She is praying for something. I believe it is a miracle. It is a Mighty Magnus Miracle.
A prayer that has determined the end of a thing before it begins. Her first prayer was on the oak tree bench. A prayer of confused desperation. A prayer for the miracle of a plan. And so a plan was fashioned from the clay and breathed out that day. And Kate stepped into place. And her place embraced a life. And that life became a saving grace in Shibboleth.

Now Magnus prays while Kate wraps food in the kitchen. While she opens lids and pots, tries to conjure up food fit for a rescue.
But who is rescuing whom?
she wonders. And wonders if she should pack salt, a tablecloth. “This is not Sunday Dinner on the Ground,” she says out loud. And Magnus yells, “What's that?” from the dining room.

The clouds outside seem to be drawing lower to the ground. They are becoming mist and fog.

“Is it time for dark?” Magnus asks.

“What's that?” Kate steps from the kitchen and looks at her, but both their questions rest on the edge of their lips. They have forgotten them. When they are together, near each other, or even touching hands, it is easier for them to remember.

The three of them, a very silent Butch, Magnus, and Kate, look out the open glass of the diner windows. They have forgotten why the glass is missing. Have forgotten the shock wave that peeled them back against their own skin. A dark ink mist rises to the window ledge, begins to pour into the diner and fall across the diner floor.

Magnus feels her mind tossed about, feels it coming into her and then leaving just as quickly, like a ribbon in the wind. She reaches inside with all her might and snatches her good sense and hangs onto it for dear life. Then she sets her mouth straight and stands up. “Butch, you get your car. Kate, whatever you packed is fine. We'll be going now.” There is only the slightest hesitation as they comprehend and then comply. Kate plucks up a bag in the
kitchen along with a thermos and walks to the front door, where Butch has walked outside and opened the back car door for the two of them. He sits alone in front. Driving forward as Magnus leans over the back seat giving him directions. He turns on the windshield wipers against the fog but it doesn't help. Not a bit. Through that dark, misty mind's eye, the same one that they are sharing, the old gas station PURE sign comes into view and catches both Kate and Magnus's attention. So much so that they turn their heads to stare as Butch drives past. So much so that they turn backwards in the seat and stare at the rusted sign until the encroaching darkness eats the word
PURE
one letter at a time. Then they turn around again. Slowly. They are thinking something and their somethings are the same.

Unknown to the trio cruising through the streets of Shibboleth in the Lincoln Town Car, Cassie Getty is walking just to their left. Through the brambles now tearing at her stockinged legs. Through the oak moss that in Cassie's mind has turned to snakes hanging from the trees. She talks to the snakes as she walks past them.

“You're not gonna bite me, you hear. I got business to tend to. Sure 'nuff end-of-the-world business. So hang all day if you want, but you keep your fangs pointed against the wind. Me and my flesh have decided not to die from a snake bite. Not today.” She stops in her tracks, stares directly at a particular tree. “I'll turn to ashes first if I have to, right before your little forked eyes. Now you just try to take a bite out of that!”

She continues walking. The briars have ripped her hose, left bloody places along her shins. She's a flat-footed stomper, though, and she keeps up her pace, her purse hooked solidly in the crook of her arm.

I am watching the intricacies of an unfolding plan. There is that warrior Cassie Getty in the Garden of Snakes. There is Butch in
his boat of compliance chauffeuring the Queens of the Kingdom safely to their doom. There is Blister, the absurdly brave court jester, partnered with Billy, a trustworthy and valiantly simple man, working to serve the Prince of the City, his brother Nehemiah, as he tries to fulfill his mission. And the fair-haired Trice. She's our weapon in disguise. But no one knows these positions yet. They are walking out the impetuses of their purposes without knowledge of the possibilities. Without the notion that they may not succeed. They have lost the terminology now of win or lose. All or nothing. They are in the deepest recesses of the valley of decision. Every move a significance. Every breath a salute to what will be or what will never be again. They are choosing this day. They are choosing. And the choices they make will have a residual effect that you will feel from where you are sitting. It's just that complicated. It's just that simple.

But look now, it continues. Billy and Blister are clearing the central cavern.

Monday, 8:59 P.M
.

“Which way from here?” Billy has conceded to Blister the choice of the way to go. He will admit, without the map, without the water, without Nehemiah and Trice, he's become as blind as a bat. And missing the radar. This much he knows. What he doesn't know is this: Blister doesn't know, either. And he is thinking of the skeleton that he once encountered in this cave. Many years ago. Dried old bones. Time fried right there and stuck in between those rocks
where some man had fallen, slipped in the dark. Never to get out again. And it was just one tiny footstep. Just an inch, maybe two, to the left when it should have been right, and there he went. Over and down. Hell's Jungle Blister had named it. He had found his way in from another door. A lower level. Had found his way in, found the strange contorted formations that cast grotesque shadows in every direction. Had felt the chill run up his spine as he searched for a way to climb up out of the cavern's bottom. And that's where, between the twisted, grotesque structures, he had found the bones. Still intact. The legs twisted and horribly broken. The face frozen in a grimace of pain. The arms splayed out. And then Blister had screamed. Long, hard, and loud. The strange echo from the cave walls had sounded like the screams of his long-dead companion. The screams of a dead man screaming while he's still alive. And from one who knows it. But for this man there was no rescue. Only a dying wish. One he is still waiting on to come to pass. Wishes never die.

“Don't step on him,” John Robert says.

Billy stops walking. Freezes his feet in mid-step. “Don't step on who?” He has one foot frozen on the ball of his toes.

“Who?” John Robert shakes his head. He is trying to filter out the past but it won't work now. Time has melted, run together now in this spot. Two thousand years, one thousand years, one year, all running together.

“You said, ‘Don't step on him.'” Billy shines the light around his feet, settles his heel to the ground.

“I did?” Blister shines the flashlight all around him. “This ain't Hell's Jungle.” He looks up at Billy, shines the light under his own face so that Billy can see one eye and what's left of the other. “And he ain't here.” He pauses for a moment, then adds, “unless he got up and walked off.”

Billy has never been afraid of John Robert, but he wishes he'd shine that light somewhere else. In the cave, with the light shining up underneath his scarred, stretched skin, Blister looks like a dead man. But Billy doesn't say this. Billy turns around, talks while he keeps walking. “You need to help me think, Blister. We got to find them because they don't know where they are.” And he's partially right. They don't know where they are.

Monday, 9:00 P.M
.

I am watching Trice follow Nehemiah through tunnels. I am watching Nehemiah turn to follow Trice down old stairs carved out by time, down. The four of them are approaching the center from opposite directions. Trice and Nehemiah had entered from the short way, but now the short way is more treacherous. It is more tricky. Without the map, the short way has become the long way.

“Trice…” Nehemiah wants to say, Slow down. He wants to say, Be careful. And as he knows this contradicts their purpose, the ground swells beneath the rock, lets out a groan. A deep, long, lasting hungry groan.

“It's eating us alive,” Trice says.

“What, Trice? What's eating us alive?”

“Don't you know by now, Nehemiah?” She turns to face Nehemiah, or almost face him, her light helmet turned slightly to the side so that her face is to the cavern wall, her eyes toward him. “Actually, I believe we both know what this is.” And she stands with
her eyes not on him but in him. In what's left of him that she can see. “It's that
thing,
the one we heard as kids. The one we convinced ourselves wasn't real.”

“The thing we thought we saw.” Nehemiah looks down into the distance.

“No, the thing we
saw,
Nehemiah. And it
saw us
. And it remembered.”

“None of this was happening.” He waves up and out toward Shibboleth. “All the fading and disappearing. There was water then. Water still for years.”

“As long as we were watching…”

And Nehemiah finishes for her, “All it could do was growl. And try to take away—everything.”

Trice reaches out to touch his face, but she is below him, cannot reach him from where she stands, and lets her hand drop. “Let's go on, Nehemiah. Let's go find what we came for.” And she turns so quickly and retreats that he loses sight of her for a second. Can only see the beam of light ahead of her as she moves forward. The light appearing to grow dimmer with every step. And then the dimness fades to black. For the second time since Nehemiah came home, Trice disappears.

“Trice?” He falters on the steps, catches and rights himself, and calls out again. “Trice, where are you?” Then the whispered voice rises. “Trice! Answer me! Trice!” And the voice becomes a yell. And the yell is heard from a long, long way off.

“I can hear them.” Billy says. “Listen.” He puts his hand back toward Blister, who stands still and listens also. The sound of a voice carries. At first only the noise. The human voice sound. Then the recognition that it is Nehemiah and that he is calling. And then the unfortunate understanding that the call means he has
lost something. Something precious. Something priceless. And from the pressure in the plaintive sound, that it's nowhere to be found.

“Sound don't carry like that down here.”

“Must be a tunnel somewhere.” Billy calls to his brother. Calls long and hard and moves toward the sound like a lighthouse in the dark. “A tunnel we didn't know about. “And even with all the calls, with the twists and turns and crawl spaces, it will be almost an hour before Billy is standing breathless and sweating (even in the air that is cooler than it should be) before Nehemiah, who simply says, “She's gone.”

Monday, 9:05 P.M
.

Butch pulls the Lincoln up behind Billy's truck. As he opens the door and Kate and Magnus step out, the ground buckles beneath their feet, swells and then recedes, pulling at them. Butch has left his cell phone at the diner. And just in case anyone is left, in case anyone finds it, he has written a note. He has known men who went into jungles, into deserts, who knew they might never come out again. Today he has joined their company. He is on a one-way mission. He took a while to recognize it, but now he knows that for him, for all of them, there may be no tomorrow. He is thinking that at least if they die, he will be there to keep them from being afraid. He is marveling in the fact that, in the end, his final mission is one of mercy.

He reaches out to steady Kate with one arm, Magnus with the
other. They are carrying covered dishes, bags with paper plates and spoons and forks. A thermos with coffee and some cups.
What were they thinking
? He thinks of crazy things. His old schoolyard in PA. The boys down the block. His mother and father and three sisters. The nephews and nieces he hasn't seen since last Christmas. Or was it two Christmases ago?
I sure am a long way from home,
he thinks, and for a moment, but only the briefest moment, he thinks about turning and getting in the car, driving to Philly without stopping. Find someone he knows. For just a moment he wants to be with someone at the end who was there at the beginning.

Kate and Magnus try to walk across the rolling earth, stepping on pine needles as they make their way to the hole in the earth. The turkey buzzard is watching them. Has made its way across the dry ground. Has perched outside the cave's open passage and watches with great interest as they approach his tree. He is eyeing Kate specifically. Is so caught up in the flesh of her folds that he doesn't realize until much too late that Butch can reach the lowest limb. Or how unexpectedly fast Butch can be. He snatches the buzzard by the foot as they pass by. Snatches him just as the buzzard is slowly turning around, taking his aim. Butch grabs the huge bird by the foot, pulls him from the tree and swings him full force, slapping him hard against the tree trunk. Without a word he drops him to the ground and keeps walking. The stunned bird lays silent, temporarily breathless.

“Not his day, I reckon,” Magnus says, never turning around. She keeps her boots determinedly moving forward.

I don't bother stifling a laugh, which no one but you and God can hear. Sometimes, in the midst of the darkest of situations, something funny is
still
funny.

Monday, 9:33 P.M
.

Cassie Getty has found an old log and stopped to catch her breath. And to try to get her bearings. “It used to be right here,” she says. “Or maybe,” she looks off to her right, “back over there.” She has been walking for hours now. She is hot and thirsty. And a little hungry. For a little while, she thinks about collard greens and cornbread. And about Kate's biscuits. Then she thinks about Kate some more, and that's what gets her back to her feet. Her bloody shins start off in a new direction. I'm thinking, as the ground lifts up beneath Cassie's feet and sucks them down again, that this may be her last chance to get this part right. I am thinking that it is intrinsically amazing how one life leads to another.