The Messenger of Magnolia Street (7 page)

I wish I could tell you that they were making sense. That they were finally getting somewhere. That the clock I always hear was on their side, in their favor. But they are struggling so hard to make
sense
of things that they are missing the things that make sense. They are looking in the hard-to-reach places when they should be looking at what's right before them. Right before them at the center of the table. Right where it's always been. But they don't see it.

Nehemiah tries to build logical bricks, tries his very best to lay the skills of Washington, the skills he has worked so long to perfect, on the table. To dissect the problem and develop a program, a plan to get to the other side. He is still trying to do this when Billy gets up and rummages through the refrigerator. (His stomach is always the first to growl.) He pulls bologna, mayonnaise, cheese
from the refrigerator and puts a loaf of white bread on the table. It's a self-serve dinner. Trice picks up potato chips from the kitchen counter, opens them, and walks around with her hand inside the bag. Before the night is over, she will eat them all. Nehemiah will eat nothing.

Billy wants to voice that he's just along for the ride, but what he really wants to say is that he sure is concerned about his brother acting peculiar. He is used to the peculiar antics of Trice. Everything from a cat sleeping on the motor and her
knowing
it before the car cranks to showing up saying, we got to drive over to Troy and pick up somebody from the bus station right
now
. Never mind what he was fixin' to do. Never mind that she doesn't know who or why or what for. But off he goes to satisfy her every whim, again, and lo and behold if Joshua Johnson wasn't standing there fresh out of boot camp and ready to surprise his momma but had forgotten all about how he was gonna get from the bus station in Troy to Shibboleth except to walk it out. (Boot camp had done him some good but in some ways he was still the same old Joshua. Nothing another decade wouldn't fix.) Billy had just looked at Trice (who never rubbed it in when she was right) and shook his head and said, “Hey, boy, you looking for a ride home?”

So all the antics of Trice were buried under his skin until they had become, well, just about normal for
her
. But with Nehemiah, well there was just that one great episode (and even now he can see Nehemiah walking through the flames carrying Blister in his arms). But besides that time, Nehemiah had been as normal as a life can seem to be. He is beginning to wonder if bringing Nehemiah down here was such a good idea.

“About this awakening,” Billy waves a sandwich, his cheese falling out of the edges of the bread, “stop crunching, Trice, and just tell it.”

“Already told it.” She glares at him as she shoves more chips into her mouth.

“Well, tell it
again
.”

Trice tries to recapture the pictures and to put words to the images of what she sees. “Black wings,” she says. And the word
dark ness
. And it occurs to her to use the word
eclipse
. It occurs to her strongly that this is the
right
word. The word she has unknowingly been searching for for days. “People are not expecting the eclipse,” she says. “And it isn't a natural one. Not this one. It is brought in on black wings.” She closes her eyes. “On dark desire.”

“Black wings and dark desire my rear end,” Billy says. “Trice, you been reading too many dang books.”

Now can you imagine the human right-thinking mind trying to fashion sense out of Trice's description? Can you imagine trying to figure out your purpose in a plan that has no boundary lines? No noticeable rule book? But that is exactly what Nehemiah is struggling with. He is trying to figure it out when all he has to do is remember.
Remember
. I want to say the word with all my might. But I am willing what isn't mine to give. I am thinking of the liquid between my fingers, tracing the word
remember
in the air, but they don't see the word any more than they see me. It's not my purpose. I can't reach them. Not that way.

I am contemplating this, watching their blundering attempts, when suddenly there is a crash outside, the sound of something heavy falling, which brings quizzical eyes all around and a howl from Sonny Boy beneath the porch. The three rise from the table, move down the hallway single-file in quick succession. First Nehemiah, then Trice, then Billy in the rear. A childhood band of three, they marched this way together all their lives before Nehemiah left. Now they march that way again. Have taken up the rhythm of their lives in unison.

They step out onto the porch. There is a slight breeze but not a wind strong enough to push that hard. The moon is hanging, almost but not quite full. The moss on the trees is swaying slightly. Billy reaches back inside the door, flips on the porch light with his right hand, his eyes still fastened in front of him. Beyond the porch railing, leaning against Old Blue, lies a branch of the oak. It is a large branch, not a loose limb dangling but a strong arm of the north face of the tree. Billy says, “Hold on,” and goes to retrieve a flashlight. He returns and the three walk toward the limb now lying partially on the ground, partially against the side of the truck, its smaller limbs falling forlornly into the truck bed. Sonny Boy sits at the foot of the limb, howls as if he is voicing its pain. The flashlight beam runs up and down the branch, around the yard, for a sign of a reason. The light is cast up to the tree, where the white, splintered shoulder is visible, raw and naked.

“That tree have dry rot?” Nehemiah asks. He asks this even though the flashlight tells the story. He can still see the green life pumping.

“Nope.”

Billy runs his hands along the tree branch as if in apology, before he lifts it up with a grunt, pulls it over to the foot of the tree, and gently lowers it to the ground.

It's Trice then who says, “Why don't we go back inside and start over?”

And they nod in the solemn darkness as Billy says, “Come on, Sonny, it's all over now.” But what he senses, what I'm privy to know for certain, is the fact that it has just begun.

They return to their chairs, sit in the same seats, but they're wearing different faces. If any of them had any lingering doubts that something peculiar was about that was going to be neatly squared away on Nehemiah's long weekend home, those thoughts are put to
rest. They don't spend time wondering about the tree. They don't try to figure out if it was a freak streak of lightning or an odd break waiting to happen. They don't talk about the tree at all. They're beyond that. They pick up where they left off. At the word
eclipse
.

Trice asks for a piece of paper and a pen. She begins to write down the words they are saying, to take notes. She doesn't write their thoughts down in linear arrangement, as in one-two-three, the way that Nehemiah or Billy would. She simply writes the words in loose arrangement. She draws circles around them. Arrows pointing from one to another or tiny interrupted dotted lines from circle to circle. She writes the word
clock.
The word
eclipse
. The word
path.
She writes down
dreams.
When Nehemiah talks about eating for hours at the diner and how the time had disappeared, she writes the word
TIME
in big, bold letters, and in another, much smaller space the word
memory.
And after Nehemiah has told the hardest part for him to tell, the part about the gold dust on his hands, between his fingers, in the curves of the quilt threads, she writes down
gold
and
dust
and links them together with a heart, and never once questions the validity of Nehemiah's story.

Billy says simply, “Momma would like gold dust on her bed.”

Now if only Kate could see their heads bent and determined, could see Billy's huge hands pawing at the table cloth, pinching it into wrinkles and then flattening it out again. If Twila could see Nehemiah's big brown eyes thinking their hardest. If Magnus could just peek over Trice's shoulders and see the pattern she is making, the weaving and the winding, she would recognize something from a long time ago. They all would. But right now, these grown-up children are on their own. The guiding eyes and voices of the past have all gone to bed, or beyond. And there is no one near to guide them into clear air. At least, not yet.

They alternately sigh under their breath. Nehemiah no longer
wonders if his coming home to Shibboleth was a wild goose chase. He makes a mental note to call the office in the morning. To ask for a few more days and hope the senator understands. Trice is hoping that Magnus isn't waiting up near the door, her housecoat bunched up around her knees; she doesn't want to field the questions. She is too tired. She folds her note paper and slides it into her back pocket.

It's just before midnight when Nehemiah and Billy drop Trice off at the front door and wait for her to go inside. They are both too tired to talk and too wound up not to.

“Do you remember when Trice first showed up?” Billy asks him, as he watches her opening the door, turning around to raise her hand in the headlights, her lips mouthing, “Good-bye.”

“No.”

“I guess not. You were not quite two. Still,” he puts the truck in reverse, reaches across the seat to look behind him, “it's the kind of thing that would stick in your mind. Not every day a baby comes to town, you know, by itself.”

“That's what the stories are for, Billy. To fill in all the unknown spaces.” These are some of the first great words that have come out of Nehemiah's mouth. The first words that are good medicine. I smile as I write them down. Liquid on Fire.

Nehemiah is quiet for moment. “You know, now they have all kinds of tests, and computers, and ways to track things. I guess if somebody tried hard enough, they could get to the truth about it. Track something down. I could ask around in Washington.”

“Trice might not want that. She seems content to be who she is. You know?”

“Yeah, I guess you're right.” Nehemiah squints in the dark, looks into the distance down the road. “Hey, turn right and head down Main, will you?”

“What for?”

“Just want to drive around a little. Check some things out.”

And so they do. Billy drives down Main, circles the Heritage Oak, and they both picture the oak tree at home with the severed limb. He drives around the square twice, passing the oak, the Piggly Wiggly, and Kate's. It's locked up tight, all lights out. They drive on aimlessly, through the emptied streets. Nehemiah cranks the window down, and the sweet smell of spring gets thicker. The promise of wondrous, blooming things, but peculiarly mixed in is the scent of their already dying before they have begun. It is the smell of flowers in a funeral home, overpoweringly sweet, carrying the scent of death in every seed, on every petal. Occasionally, a dog barks over the transom of the small city streets. Sonny Boy is not inclined to answer. Nehemiah thinks about him in the back. “You want to put that dog up here with us?”

“He's got a name.”

“I'm just asking.”

Everything appears to be in order. Every sleeping thing. Then something crawls up Nehemiah's back. Nothing he can put his finger on, but a creeping sensation that climbs up the back of his spine. A low whistle escapes through his teeth.

“What?” Billy asks plain and simple.

“Something's not right here.” Nehemiah leans forward, peers to the left and to the right out the front windshield. “Something's changed.”

“Been a long time, Nehemiah, something's bound to change.”

“Not this kind. This is dark, definitely dark.” Nehemiah has a sudden parched feeling, an I can't swallow, can't get enough water feeling. “And it's coming from somewhere. Actually
coming
from somewhere.” He looks up and down the streets again, rubs his throat. “Let's take a ride down to the springs, Billy.”

“I told you. The springs are gone. Sucked dry.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I told you the first night I saw you. You woke me up asking.” Then he repeats himself for emphasis, “The springs are gone.”

Hot summers. Cold, green waters. Secret caves. Billy and Trice. “Why would that happen?”

“Nobody knows, Nehemiah.”

“Let's go down there and check it out anyway.”

Is it premonition in Billy's heart that makes him hover, pull back? “It's dark,” he says.

“Look, the moon's almost full. We'll be able to see enough to get by.”

“What are you expecting to find this time of night?”

“I don't know. Just searching for some clues, Billy.” He looks over at his big brother and places his hand on his shoulder. Billy turns and looks him in the eyes. “Something strange is going on around here, just like Trice said. It's not anything we can touch, Billy, but we've been through some odd places in this world before. Like the night of Blister's fire. Downright supernatural weirdness.

“You got that right.”

“And some other things that for the life of me I'm having a hard time remembering. It's like they're almost there,” he reaches his hand out, brushes the air, “and then, poof, just as fast as I felt them, they're gone.”

“Like when you wake up and try to remember a dream but it's missing and you can't pull it back.”

“Exactly.”

“Been happening to me some, too.” Billy leans his face out the window and breathes in deep. “But not like you. You've been downright spooky yourself, Brother.”

“Yeah, well…”

“And you didn't even remember the time we tricked John when he was fishing.”

“Billy, I think what happened tonight is more important than a fish.”

“That's just it. There was no fish. It was all a trick you schemed up.” He waits for Nehemiah to respond, to tell him that he remembers now, but he doesn't. “And something smells funny.”