The Messenger of Magnolia Street (23 page)

Monday, 9:35 P.M
.

Blister leads the way to the steps that he's been both avoiding and searching for. I am watching the truth of this thought as he leans into the cavern wall to avoid falling and begins walking his way down the corridor, straight into Hell's Jungle. The only place in the cave where he'd ever been lost. The only place he'd thought that he'd never escape. A place he swore he'd never venture into again. But he's more than just along for the ride. Blister figures he has a debt to pay. And that his marker for payback has arrived. He shines his flashlight down the corridor into the cavern's bottom. There are the columns, and as he shines the light across them, he swears he sees something move between the twisted shapes. Something man-sized. Something strangely familiar. He stops in his tracks.
Just my eyes,
he thinks.
Just a shadow.

“What is it?” Nehemiah asks before John Robert has time to move forward again.

“Nothing.” He walks on, a little slower. “
Probably
nothing,” he adds, emphasizing the
probably
.

Nehemiah is hoping in all of his flesh and bones that Blister knows exactly what he's doing. And that his doing is going to lead him directly to Trice.
How'd she fade into nothing like that?
he thinks. Then he says it aloud to Billy from behind him. “Billy, how'd Trice just disappear to nothing right in front of me? How could that happen?”

“Are you sure she disappeared?” Billy keeps walking. They are going down, getting lower. The air is getting colder. And colder. There is, oddly, a freezing breeze. Coming up from somewhere below them.

“What do you mean, am I sure? Of course I'm sure. I was looking right at her.” Nehemiah stops, stands still, listens for any sounds of Trice, but all he hears is Blister and Billy's steps below him. His heart beating hard against his chest. His blood rushing through his veins faster and faster at the thought of Trice lost and alone. And then he resumes walking but slower.
I was looking right at her. Wasn't I?

Monday, 9:36 P.M
.

Kate and Magnus reach the cave's entrance with their one plastic flashlight. They are breathless, not accustomed to walking up steep hills in the dark. “We can't go on in there like this,” Kate says, between short gulps of air. “We don't have enough light.” She bends over and puts her hands on her knees.

“I don't reckon going in was ever our business.” Magnus sits down on a rock just inside the cave's entrance. “I guess this is as close as we need to get.”

“Well, need to or not, it's as close as we're going to get today.” Kate carefully sets the plates down on the rock floor. “Whatever day it is anymore.” She pulls up on the corners of her apron and fans herself with it. Then she stops and looks, perplexed, at Magnus. “What are we here for?”

“We're keeping a watch.” Magnus says and spits without apology in the corner of the cave's floor.

“Are we sitting up with the dead?” Kate has lost her bearings, just like that. As if they were snatched out from under her.

“Not yet, Kate.” Magnus says. “Not yet.” And I'm thinking that in the end of days, the Mighty Magnus, as Blister calls her, has been mighty indeed. In the end, she has become fearless.

Monday, 9:38 P.M
.

Nehemiah stops walking on the stone steps.
Something isn't right,
he thinks. There is a shifting beneath their feet. So hard the cave floor shakes. Almost tossing them off the edge. Now they have only fifteen feet to go, but it's a long and ragged fifteen feet.
She's not down here. Trice isn't here.
That's what Nehemiah is thinking as he throws his arms against the cave wall, trying to steady his legs. He is feeling Trice's absence like a vacuum. Feeling her blood grow colder with every step he takes. And without another word, he turns and starts back up the stairway.

Billy is no brother's fool. He immediately knows his brother is
no longer close behind him. He's felt that absence for more than a decade. And now he feels it again. “Nehemiah?” When there is no answer forthcoming, he calls, “Brother?” but there is a hopeless, lost, and plaintive tone to his call. One that if you listen you can even hear from there. His headlamp searches the steps above him, but incredibly there is no sign of Nehemiah. “Momma, send some angels to watch over Brother, will you? He's all I got left.”

“Who you talking to?” Blister turns back toward Billy. He is jumpy. Mighty jumpy. His skin is crawling all over him. Like it will jerk off his body and run off of its own accord. And if it could, it would.

“Talking to my momma.”

“Oh” is all John Robert says. But he doesn't keep walking. He is too afraid. He's afraid of what's down there. And afraid of what isn't.

“Blister, go on.” There is a pause because John Robert doesn't move. “We can't just stand here.” And Billy's words come pouring out like prophecy because the next rumbling of the ground is solid tremor. It cracks the cave steps they were walking on. Shakes the foundation from beneath their feet. Causes what was solid only a moment before to come down. And still six feet from the bottom, Billy and Blister come tumbling down to the ground.

Nehemiah hears the caving in of the steps. The rocking throws him to the floor of the cave, but only for a moment before he is back on his hands and knees. He is on his feet again before the rumbling stops. Running before the ground is steady.

Cassie Getty is thrown to the ground. Her purse slips off her arm. It will take just a little while before she gets up. She stands and looks to the left and right until she spies her pocketbook. She picks it up and dusts it off with her dirty hands, hooks the vinyl
strap back over the crook of her arm, and heads off in the same determined direction she was traveling before. She knows exactly what she has to do.

Butch has grabbed Magnus and Kate and pulled them together, pushing their heads down against his chest, their faces toward him. He has done this so quickly that they have had no room to protest. And they won't tell you so, but they are happy not to see what might be coming next. They both squeeze their eyes shut, tight as mothballs, and stay that way until the shifting and rumbling has completely stopped. Until Butch has gently released them, then resumed his pacing at the opening, as if nothing had happened. They look at his back, wordlessly. Then sit side by side on the cave floor, their backs against the wall. Silently praying for Nehemiah and Billy and Trice. But mostly for Trice. After all, she's their baby girl.

But another silent prayer is rising from the entrance of the cave. From a man on a mission who recognizes a mission when he sees one. Recognizes what weapon is required for that mission to be accomplished. And what he knows right now is that Nehemiah is on the most important mission of his life. And as it turns out, he hasn't been sent to check up on him. Or to bring him back. He's been sent to serve him. And the best he can do now is to guard the door. And pray like he's never prayed. To stretch his faith. To use a weapon he can't touch to aim at a target he cannot see. Because it's come down to this. Only prayer can help Nehemiah succeed on a mission Butch doesn't understand. Only prayer can bring him out alive. And a marine doesn't leave a man behind. Butch drops to his knees in the center of the cave's opening, and with his eyes wide open, looking beyond the space, he prays like a poet. Call it inspired. Call it desperation. Regardless of the source, these are the words that filter up from the cave's entrance and take flight. I write
them down. “In darkness, be his eyes. In weakness, be his strength. In fear, be his faith.”

Butch remains kneeling on those words with Nehemiah's face before him. And he determines that if he has to, he will remain this way until Nehemiah comes walking out. Or until there is nothing to walk out of, or into.

Magnus begins singing a song, first humming it under her breath, then the words come halting out. Magnus doesn't sing well. But she sings loud enough to make up for it. “Won't you come home, Bill Bailey? Won't you come home?” she sings. “I've cried the whole night long. I'll do the cooking, honey. I'll pay the rent. I know I done you wrong.” Her words dissipate into humming.

“That's not a very nice song,” Kate says. “You orta sing something better than that.”

“Just popped up in my mind,” Magnus says. “Ain't that a funny thing? I had forgot all about that song.”

“Well, you orta forget it. It's not a very good one.” Kate picks at her apron. “A woman's not supposed to pay the rent.”

“Well, I guess not. But maybe she was trying to pay him back.” Magnus spits again.

“What for?”

“Well, I don't know, but it says right there, I know I done you wrong. It musta been something.”

“Musta been something bad if she was going to pay the rent,” Kate says. Then she adds, “She musta been pretty desperate, if you ask me.”

Magnus hums the song again for a moment. “It's nothing but a song, Kate. It don't really mean nothing.”

“I guess not.”

“But it's funny how things get stuck inside of you and come out at the strangest times.” And Magnus is quiet for a while. Real
quiet. Because what she is really thinking about,
who
she is really thinking about, is John Robert. About how she did him wrong. And about how, in her book, he did her wrong first. But now, twenty-nine years later, in the dying light of the world, things have taken on a different perspective. “Wrong is just wrong all the way around,” she says.

And Kate adds, “Yeah, it is,” even though she doesn't have a clue what Magnus is talking about.

Monday, 9:40 P.M
.

The last shock wave caused a rupture in the wall between Obie's Salon and Zadok's Barbershop. Obie walks out of her front door and looks at the empty, dusty, dark streets. “It's not proper day or proper night,” she says. Then she looks through Zadok's plate glass window, which, beyond comprehension, is still in place. He is still sitting as he was, in the barber chair, slumped down, staring at the wall. Or, more correctly, he is now staring at the crack running up the wall.

Obie opens the door and hollers at him, “Zadok!” He doesn't even bother turning his head. And Obie thinks he has had a stroke. Or maybe is sure enough sitting up frozen dead. “Zadok!” she yells again, this time louder, with more force. But Zadok doesn't move. She walks inside, approaches him carefully. Bends down and looks up into his face. Then she softly touches his arm and whispers, “Zadok?” with a question on her lips, and for the first time he moves, looks at her with the slightest comprehension.

“Zadok?” Obie talks softly now, like she is talking to a child.

“Get up, sugar,” and she takes him by the hand, “we got to go.” She helps him get up out of the chair and walks with him until they are both standing outside looking up and down the sidewalk. Obie has the compelling urge—to find people and to get them to church. She couldn't tell you anything beyond this right now. She couldn't give you a single recipe or piece of gossip if her life depended on it. She couldn't trim any bangs or comb out a curl. She turns to Zadok and explains the plan. “We are gonna walk around now and see if anybody needs our help.” She pats his arm with her other hand. “And then we are going to church.” Sometimes, in the forward course of humanity, without any explanation, a person just wakes up.

Monday, 9:55 P.M
.

Nehemiah has circled back to the place where he lost Trice. He calls her name but there is no answer. He feels along the cave walls, without understanding, searching for something he knows must be there. A place where rock and reason hold no rhyme.

Then surprisingly a voice whispers, “I'm right here.” But Nehemiah isn't certain whose voice he hears. “Trice?”

“I'm right here,” the voice repeats, but it is a small voice. It is a voice that sounds so near and yet so very far away.

Then it calls him by name. “Nehemiah?” Then there is a long pause—it is a cavernous pause. It is a breath between dimensions. And the voice adds, “Give me your hand.” And Nehemiah obeys what he cannot see. He stretches out his hand toward the voice in the dark. The air becomes colder still. So cold that Nehemiah
begins to shake. He moves his light toward the sound and his light dims. “Not now!” he whispers to himself because goose bumps are rising on his flesh. Hair is standing up on the back of his neck. Something doesn't feel right. Even in the midst of all this madness, in the middle of the darkness and chaos, there is a river of peace that he can follow. But that river is not obvious. That river is not visible to the naked eye. And the light he so much wants right now, the external light to verify his steps, doesn't cooperate. That light grows dimmer and dimmer. He turns his helmet back and forth, searching for the substance of the voice. Searching for Trice. But the light grows dimmer, slowly fading, until it is completely gone. Now there is nothing but darkness. And a voice that continues calmly calling, “This way. Take my hand.” Nehemiah wants so very much for the voice to be Trice. Wants it so much that his arm reaches blindly forward.

(How can I explain to you the chemistry of Nehemiah's
now
? Have you ever desired something so much, with all of your beating heart, that you reach for the wrong thing? Have you ever been deceptively tricked by the imposter into believing the false thing before the true thing appeared? I know you have. I've been watching you. But then, your story isn't over yet. I see time in your hourglass.)

“I'm right here,” the voice repeats. “Right here.” It is determined.

I will not paint the wrong picture. The wrong thing does not come uncloaked. The wrong thing comes with a hypnotic voice. A syrupy, seductive voice. One laced with sugary desire. Nehemiah takes a step forward. And another. But then he stops still in his tracks. And time moves forward as he listens, as he battles inside himself.