The Messenger of Magnolia Street (25 page)

The lumbering bear answers without turning around. “I know I'm not standing still and that suits me fine.”

“That's 'cause you're not the one supposed to die. I am!” The last words come out almost a shriek. Funny, Blister wasn't afraid when he came in. Wasn't afraid when his truck was circling the
square, when he locked eyes with Magnus, and then knew suddenly what he had to do. But now, down in the depths of night, in the presence of the enemy of his past, he has become what he was a long time ago. Cowardly.

Billy turns abruptly, puts his light on Blister and doesn't look away, and then calls him by his name. The real one. “Listen here, John Robert. Sometimes death don't come easy. Sometimes it's full of pain. My daddy done it. And my momma done it. And it makes no never mind to me if I follow right behind them today or any other day.” Billy has never been so growling gruff in all his life. “If you are meant to die today, you will. And if you aren't, you won't. And either way is fine. I have pulled you out of the burning gates of hell before, I reckon I can do it again.”

“That weren't you.” Blister shivers, settles down a bit. “It was your brother.”

“Don't split fried hairs, Blister. Today I'm taking his place. Now get your scarred butt on up here and come face-to-face with whatever it is you're so afraid of.”

Blister pauses for a minute, and he looks up at Billy, having regained some semblance of himself.

“Ain't you afraid of something?” He rocks back on his heels and puts his hands in his front pockets like they were walking next to the creek on a cool spring day. “Anything?”

“Yes, I am, but what, that ain't none of your business.” And the wisdom of Billy prevails because he doesn't discuss his fears. Not here and not now. Not while the very thing, the only thing, that he fears might be taking place. And there doesn't seem to be much of anything he can do about it. Nehemiah might be leaving him to wrestle his years in this world alone. And life without his brother seems like no life at all.

Monday, 11:15 P.M
.

Obie is making her way store by store through the broken glass–covered, empty streets. She has held fast to Zadok like a child. She has picked up Cassie's niece, Trudy, from City Hall, where she found her still sitting behind her desk staring out the window. She is walking now with Trudy locked in one hand and Zadok in the other. They are walking into the Piggly Wiggly and calling out for—she doesn't know the word for it—
survivors,
she thinks.
But survivors of what?
And she's not sure if or when Shibboleth is going down. But she knows it's under attack. She knows it's time to circle the wagons. Then she thinks of John Wayne and Rooster Cogburn, but all she sees is an eye patch and a horse. And the woman.
Who was that woman?
And for a little while she stops dead in her tracks just inside the Piggly Wiggly. Trudy is just as quiet as can be on one hand and Zadok quiet as he can be on the other. She can't remember the woman or what that movie was about.
An eye patch, a rifle, and something that had to be done. A horse and a eye patch. John Wayne was a big man. Katharine Hepburn was a skinny woman. That's it—Katharine Hepburn. Still don't know what they were doing, but it took the two of them. Lord, what am I doing in the tomatoes?
“Hello, anybody here?” She pulls at the hands of her compliant charges. “Come on, we got to go see people.”

In a little while, Obie will find Dwayne in the storeroom and Ellen in the office all by herself, crying. No one else came to work today at the Piggly Wiggly. They have been left alone, and Obie gathers them up with words as smooth, as soothing, as water running over stones. She gathers them and talks to them, makes them link hands. Ellen's hand to Zadok, Zadok's hand to Dwayne, Dwayne's hand to Trudy. And then they are off again. Out the door and down the dark road with no moon or stars to light the way.

Monday, 11:23 P.M
.

Blister is walking ahead of Billy, in between fleeting apparitions. Moving images that take on pictures of past pains. Serve to remind people of their failures. And remind them of their futures. But the futures painted here are all tainted with lies. There is a great web of woven deceit that sticks to men's minds and hearts, leaves them broken. Broken without a single injury to their bodies. Only their souls. Until finally they lay down and die as forgotten as they were told they were or would someday become.

“He's over here,” Blister says. And Billy doesn't ask who. At this point, his mind is on his brother. His thoughts on his hope that Nehemiah will find Trice. That Trice will be alive. And that they will finish this.

“Look.” Blister shines the light down on the cave floor. “Right here.”

And Billy looks down but doesn't make a sound. His skin has toughened these last few days. He's traveled such a long way in such a little while. But his brows knit together and he does say, “Humph.” What he sees is a man-sized skeleton. The clothes have rotted to nothing. Have been mice-eaten.

“He don't look like he died peaceful,” Blister says. Then he adds, “Or happy.”

Billy looks up to the ledge above him, where they had circled down. “He fell.”

“I think he must've gone crazy.” Blister looks around at Hell's Jungle, swears he sees a shadow dart between the rocks, one that is moving
toward
them. “Or maybe something killed him.”

“Ain't nothing down here to kill him.” Billy kneels down, looks closely and more carefully at the skeleton's bones.

“Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that.” Blister is looking over his shoulder. He's not afraid of the dead thing. It's that shadow
that disturbs him. And when he sees it this time, he says, “Billy, something's down here.” Then he pauses for a second, but not long, before he adds, “And it ain't good.”

Nehemiah continues on a path intended to be full of dark despair. But what all the beasts of hell haven't counted on is that his aim is like an arrow. His purpose has been defined. And Nehemiah will not come down, will not rest, will not sleep, until this city, his city, has been rebuilt. Or, if all should crumble, the end of it will find him here, in these last moments, striving against all odds to stop the encroaching destruction, which would erase its people from the very heart of time.

And it is in this precise moment, as the breathing continues on his ear, so heavy and so tangible that a drop of saliva hits his shoulder, trickles down his shirt sleeve, and is absorbed into the cotton, where it slowly burns the threads—it is at this precise moment that Nehemiah first sees a light. Not a headlamp. Not a flashlight. An ethereal glow glimmering from below. He calls, “Trice,” but it's really no more than a whisper. He steadily makes his way forward, toward that most unusual light.

“Trice?” Nehemiah calls again. And the breathing at his ear grows so heavy, so determined, that Nehemiah's eyes are looking through a misty fog. The light below becomes a vague, watery shape. The panting at his arm sleeve, the hideous beast of deception, drools a pool designed to drown. The shape shifts, moves in front of Nehemiah to block his way, but Nehemiah walks right through it. To the other side. The dark entity is surprised. At this bold, impetuous move, it howls to show its disapproval. The howl echoes down the cavern walls. Rocks its way along the interior of those age-worn shapes. Finds its way through cracks and crevices to the ears of those who are rooms of rock away.

Monday, 11:25 P.M
.

Billy and Blister stop studying the skeletal death before them.

“What in the hell was that?” Blister says, his burnt eye screwed up so tight it's completely gone.

“I think,” Billy stands up and looks behind them, wondering where his brother is, “that was hell itself, Blister.” Then he gives Blister's shoulder a pat. “But don't worry.” Billy wishes he could see through solid walls. “That only means that somehow maybe Nehemiah and Trice are winning.” He turns, kneels, and puts his hand on the dead bones. “You know something about this thing you're not telling me?”

“Yeah.” Blister looks back and forth again, dodging bat-like apparitions in the air. “I took his ring.”

“Whose ring?”

“That man lying there. Or what's left of him. A long time ago.” Blister jumps as if something had grabbed his shoulder. “It ain't nothing,” he says aloud to calm himself.

“Long time ago what?”

“After he was dead, I took his ring.”

“You know this man?” Billy tries to listen as another howl goes up. As the ground shakes beneath their feet. Blister's eyes, mostly the right one, search nervously back and forth for what he knows darn well is out there. Or, better still, right here. Right
here.
With a shaking fist he wipes nervous spit from the corner of his mouth.

“Billy, I got to go.” Because all Blister knows right now is,
Go. Quick. Survive.
He takes a leaving step, but he doesn't watch exactly
where
he's going and his step leads him backward into the crouched-down Billy and, tumbling over him, he comes face-to-face with the skeletal remains of a faceless, nameless man. But a robbed man just the same.

Now the howling down the walls, growing more angry, more vehement, pulls the strings of Blister's vocals like a puppet, and his own wailing screams encircle him and Billy. They ride and blend with the howling screams of the damned that wind their way through the cavern. Wind their way to where Kate and Magnus stand, hand-in-hand, remembering days gone by. To where Butch has stationed himself upon his watch.

And beyond the confines of rock and dirt to the ground above. Seeping up through the earth's very core, where the groaning screams of man and manifestation cause Cassie Getty to fall to her knees in the dark and whisper “Almost there” to no one but her own unsteady heart.

The screams reach the ears of Obie's lost band as they climb the small hill seeking sanctuary. They cause Ellen to begin to cry again, and Obie says “Almost there” to comfort her, although sweat begins to pour profusely through her own pores. The church door is standing wide open, but it looks a thousand miles away instead of twenty feet. “Almost there,” she says again. But every step is weighted. Every step a battle.

Monday, 11:33 P.M
.

“Do you reckon,” Kate leans over on Magnus's shoulder, rests her head there, “that they knew it would come to this when they were little?”

“I reckon they did, Kate. I reckon they knew, and then they forgot it all again.”

“Well, I sure hope they remember everything now they're sup
posed to.” Kate looks down the cavern's dark opening, her eyes full of watery worry. “I sure do hope and pray they remember.”

Magnus thinks about it for a minute. “Well, Kate, I'm thinking if Nehemiah hadn't remembered, he wouldn't have come home.”

Kate nods her head yes, as she takes this in. Agrees with it wholeheartedly. “Then it's done,” she says and pulls at her apron front, straightening it as if she's getting ready to serve dinner.

Magnus knows something that Kate seems to have forgotten. That sometimes the done doesn't look the way you expect it to. Sometimes the done requires a sacrifice. But there is no point in reminding her now.
Let the ending be its own story,
she says to herself. Then she thinks of Trice and all her stories, and smiles her sweetest smile. But no one but you and me and God can see.

Monday, 11:34 P.M
.

“Shut up.” Billy wants to cuss with all of his natural backwoods ability. Instead, he pulls Blister's screaming body up off the white bones by the back of his shirt collar. He is still screaming. “Shut up,” Billy says again and stands Blister roughly on his feet. “Hush now. Just hush.”

“Jesus, God Almighty,” Blister says and reaches in his pocket for a cigarette even though he quit smoking over ten years ago. “Jesus, God Almighty,” he says again, still patting his shirt pocket, and then feeling around in both pant pockets as if the apparition of the missing pack might suddenly appear from his desperate desire. He still carries his old Zippo, and he fishes it out of this pocket now, flips it open, strikes it, and watches it spark
a blue flame. It's an old, familiar habit that makes him happy. He holds it up, shaking and grinning like a kid at Christmas. As if he had just discovered a new toy. As if his vocabulary had been diluted down to just one word,
Zippo,
and all his life can be contained in speaking those two syllables.
“Zippo!”
he says aloud to Billy and thrusts it forward, holding it up toward him. But then his screams break out fresh all over again. It's not the flame-flickering look on Billy's face that causes Blister to scream; it's what's standing right behind him.

Monday, 11:40 P.M
.

Obie approaches the church door. With caution. She's never seen it standing wide open. All the normalcy of life, the routines and steady rollings, is missing. She holds tighter to her charges and pulls them, like a flock of geese in V formation, through the door.

Pastor Brown lies across the floor of the altar, at the foot of the cross. She thinks,
Maybe he is dead,
and isn't sure if she should bother calling. She doesn't want to upset Ellen again and make her start crying all over again. Instead, she decides to tell them to “sit down right here. That's right. Side-by-side,” and carefully approaches the prostrate pastor. His head is turned to the right, his arms folded beneath him, his hands tightly clasped out of sight. She looks into his eyes, which are staring blankly beyond her, and thinks about poking them to see if they will blink. But she doesn't do it. Instead, she gets down on her hands and knees and whispers, “Pastor Brown, it's time to get up.” When this
doesn't work, she tries bribery. “Pastor, it's time to get up. It's time for
church.”
She stresses the
church
so that it takes on special meaning. “Look here, if you get up right now I will quit smoking.” Obie pauses, because no part of her wants to quit smoking. But then she reconsiders. She supposes right now they need Pastor Brown alive more than dead.
“I ain't gonna say it again, and at the count of three I'm going outside and lighting up.”
Now, this is a bald-faced lie because Obie is out of cigarettes. But she thinks it might just be an “under-the-carpet-God-don't-mind-much-because-it's-for-a-good-reason lie.”