The Messenger of Magnolia Street (8 page)

“You smell it?” Nehemiah thought it was another one of his imaginings. That he was having some sort of home, again, home again, hallucinations.

“Like something burning, maybe? Sometimes I get a whiff of something that doesn't smell like, well, like Shibboleth.”

“Like tar?”

“Like hair burning.”

“Well, now, this may be one of those times where we have to stop thinking and, you know, just walk it on out.”

Billy nods but still wants to turn the truck toward the house. He's thinking tomorrow morning is plenty early enough for walking through whatever is waiting. He's also thinking if they're gonna be
feeling
things out it might be better to have Trice with them. He thinks this so much that he says so. “But we have never
feeled
anything out without Trice. Maybe we should go back and get her.”

“Sure, and wake up Magnus and the cats—I'll pass.”

So Billy concedes to Nehemiah, and they drive east off of Main and farther away from town until they crest a hill, then turn to the right again. The turnoff they are searching for is so overgrown they barely recognize it, pass it by at least ten feet, then Billy slams on the brakes and throws it into reverse. Wild kudzu forms gigantic canopies from treetop to treetop over the small slice of remaining dirt road. It is barely navigable, and the overgrowth tears its way
along the sides of the truck like old claws ripping into flesh. Billy shakes his head, pats the dashboard as if to say, “There, there, Old Blue. Steady, old boy.” They stop where the nearest lagoon used to be. Nehemiah opens his door slowly. Wonders how the light of the moon can be so weak and strangled out.

The other door opens and Billy steps out, large and on guard. Without any enthusiasm, Sonny jumps down out of the truck bed. The dog keeps his nose up, no sniffing around, no interest in the decay.

Billy and Nehemiah walk forward in the sparse moonlight, toward the water that they should have heard by now. Bubbling up and moving softly within its boundaries. But every step is taken with a hard labor of will. They reach the dry ground of what was once their favorite pool. There is a dry, bitter scent in the air, and Nehemiah is trying to place it, identify it, as their walking grows heavy. Sleepwalk-heavy. The ground has become dry, cracked, not even the residue of mud. Nothing but bones, lost rings, bottom things, skeletons of other life forms. Completely lifeless with the exception of scurryings of unseen scavengers. Large webs are strung out between every empty, open space. Nothing appears to remain but the invitation to die.

Nehemiah looks just to his left, stares hard into the darkness, begins to walk forward, begins to take the old path to the Well. Even with the undergrowth tearing at his legs, he continues.

“Where are you going?” Billy is standing where they used to swim, in a natural pool surrounded by low bluffs with shade trees. He searches for an old tire swing, or even a rotting rope, but there is no sign of anything familiar.

“I don't know, Billy, but something important is…over here. It's right this way, or maybe,” he takes two steps to the right, “or maybe over this way.”

“Sonny Boy,” Billy calls out, but his voice is a strained whisper. The dog shuffles silently to his heels. “Just checking on you, boy.” And Nehemiah understands the feeling, because there is a real threat of danger surrounding them. As if he could turn his back and Billy would be gone, eaten up in the suffocating dark. He starts to apologize, to say,
You were right, we shouldn't have come
, but the words are blocked, can't come out.

Nehemiah pulls at his collar, pulls harder, but his collar isn't tight, it's the air that is tight and growing tighter. His neck feels hot. Swollen. “I can't breathe, Billy,” he says finally, but when he looks, Billy is bent over, his hands on his knees, and as Nehemiah tries to reach him, Billy's knees crumble to the ground. Nehemiah hears the scurryings growing louder as he attempts to push through the solid wall that was once air, the smell, the taste of sulfur, dry and bitter. He tries to reach Billy, but the ground itself seems to be rotting out from beneath his feet, opening up to swallow him. Sonny Boy falls down next to Billy's feet, gasping for breath.

I am tracing the truth, but with all my might I am hoping the truth will turn around. I am hoping what I am recording will not be the road truth takes. And as I watch the scene before me, I see a familiar glow in the distance between the trees. It is no larger than Trice's small orange, and I am hoping for Nehemiah and Billy, and Sonny Boy too, to look, to have hope, but they are beyond seeing.

The ball moves toward them, dances over them, between them, then it releases its light and the light surrounds them, throws itself over them like a net, and in that light there is breath. In that light there is life. It's the light of old prayers—long said but not forgotten. The prayers of a mother on her knees from years and ages past. Prayers for protection. Divine protection. All the days of their lives. But they don't know this. They don't know that power.
Not yet. They don't know that every good prayer spoken takes root and substance. They don't know the layers of prayer that Twila has covered them with like quilted blankets as they lay sleeping. Or that her prayers have taken on significance, a manifested presence. All they know is that they can breathe. They slowly stand, Billy scooping Sonny up in one arm in a single move. Wordlessly they back away, toward the truck, keeping their faces toward the menace, staying within the diameter of the light that surrounds them.

Billy has the truck back on the road, out and away from the arid hole, before the last particles of light have dissipated. They are back on Main Street before the edges of the magnitude of what just happened hits them. They are home, all the way home, before they say a word. But now, the words will not stop.

They stay right where they are, in the truck cab, with Sonny parked between them and the windows rolled down, and talk about the light that saved them, wondering where it came from and where it went. They talk about the attack by an unseen but real and formidable enemy. They talk about Trice, about her gifts, and about her strange delivery to Shibboleth. And in the quiet, in the honesty of thankfulness and rescue, Nehemiah confesses to the new comfort that he has discovered in her presence.

Billy says, “It's just that old thing.”

“What old thing?” Nehemiah asks, and Billy looks over at him like he has lost his mind.

“That old
thing
between you two,” he says again and leaves it at that.

They talk about their mother and then scratch, hunt, and peck, yet again, at the memory of their father, and they try their very best to formulate some type of plan. They talk about Blister, about that supernatural night from so long ago. About needing to
have some trusting eyes and ears. About whom they might go to for some type of advice. And they agree that Kate fits the bill first and foremost. They talk until the earliest shades of sunrise lighten up the sky. Then they walk, bone-weary, both chilled and sweating, up the porch steps and into the house, where they fall completely, totally exhausted into their beds. But their sleep will be short, because in only a few hours something will call them up, on their feet and into action. I know this because every variation of tomorrow shows these next hours to be identical. Regardless of the outcome, the immediate future will be the same. And there will be no turning back.

The phone is ringing insistently. It is ringing with the question of Magnus. “Where's Trice at?” she asks. It is Nehemiah who has answered, still trying to remember that he has come to Shibboleth on the dare of a dream, has gone through some strange imaginings. Magnus's voice is trailing acid as she repeats for the third time, “I said, where's Trice at?”

“Home,” Nehemiah says, wondering why she has called to torture him.

“She was with you.”

Nehemiah walks with the phone, cord stretched to its limit, so that he can kick Billy's door.

“Get up, Billy,” he says, holding the phone out. “Have you looked in her room?” he says back into the receiver.

“Well, of course I looked in her room.”

“Did you look around? Maybe outside. She likes to be outside.” Funny how he remembers this now. Remembers in a flash Trice spending most of her life in the water, under a tree, on a porch.

“She was with Billy.” Magnus is not so big now; she is perplexed, getting smaller by the moment.

“I know, Magnus, Billy brought her here. We took her home last night.”

“Well, she's not here.”

“Billy!” he yells again, in the other direction, but there is no response. “She could have gone for a walk. Just admit it. It's possible.”

“No. It's her day to feed the cats, all the cats, before she goes anywhere. But the cats haven't been fed.”

“Let me call you back, Magnus.”

“Somebody needs to call the police.”

“Fine. Call the police.”

“No, you need to call the police.”

“Why me?”

“When did you get home anyway?”

“Hold on, Magnus, now hold on.” Nehemiah is trying, after a very strange night, to comprehend the morning on too little sleep. “Listen, I'll get Billy up, and we'll come over there. Then we'll all decide what to do next.”

Nehemiah hangs up the phone. Opens Billy's door, expecting to be overwhelmed with the snores, the heavy-lidded eyes of the stone-cold sleeper. But the bed is empty. The room is cold, chilled from the night, even with Spring sitting on top of them.

“Hey, Billy.” Nehemiah walks through the house, opens the front door. Old Blue is parked sideways in the front yard. The missing oak limb lies beneath the tree as a not so subtle reminder of last night's realities. “Billy,” he calls again. Then he sees him. Standing off to the side of the house, looking out to the west, his big arms folded like planks across his chest. As Nehemiah approaches, Billy never removes his eyes from what he is staring down.

“What do you see?”

“We got to go back out there.” Billy never turns. “And I don't know exactly what to carry with us. So I'm wondering, what do we take to the fight when we can't see what we're fighting? Don't imagine guns are gonna make much of a difference. That'd be simple. But bare-handed or not, we gotta go back.” He looks at Nehemiah for the first time. “You know that, don't you?”

“Yeah, Billy, I do, but first we've got another problem.”

And Nehemiah explains about the phone call. About the supposed disappearance. Then they both agree that they will find her. That this must be a simple misunderstanding.

This is the way that they will struggle through the first missing moments of Trice. Imagining her out for a walk, absently forgetting to feed the cats. They make very strong coffee, wash faces, forgo showers, and dress quickly to drive over and appease Magnus and to find Trice somewhere obvious. Or so they believe. She'll be curled up with a good book in some crack or cranny where Magnus with her perpetual things-need-to-be-done list will not find her.

Now the amazing thing, quite remarkable really, is that the morning doesn't appear to hold the dust of last night's wanderings into the unexplained. It is one of the most beautiful spring mornings anyone will remember. The temperature is just right. It's the kind of weather that makes people around Shibboleth say, “Oh, if only it would stay this way all year!” and mean it. The magnolia trees are just about to blossom, the huge new heads of buds swearing they'll pop open at any moment. The azalea buds are promising a profusion of color, and even the pecan trees are bringing forth the tiniest of new leaves. How in the midst of so much promise, so much life, can there be darkness? Surely not. Surely, surely not. Just look around and see. All is well, yes? Well, it appears to be. So, on this promising, delightful spring morning, the brothers set off in Old Blue with Sonny Boy to find Trice and formulate some type of understanding of the night's events, and then a plan.

They begin
officially
looking before the twenty-four-hour window has passed because Duane is the county deputy and Blister is his first cousin, says he owes her for his life and that's that. They drive up and down the roads, they search the woods, drive down by
the river. By 2:00
P.M
., when Trice hasn't wandered back home again to eat or check on Magnus or generally be busy with the business of being Trice, Nehemiah and Billy no longer wonder. They know that something bad has happened. What they are hoping for now is that the only bad thing is that they don't know where she is yet

“Good Lord, boys,” Kate is once again shoved up against Nehemiah in a booth, with Billy centered across the table on the other side. She has been listening to their story. All of it. Nehemiah has told her everything (with the exception of a tiny part that he has truly forgotten to mention), including the gold dust, the oak tree, the dry smell of sulfur and them choking, convinced that they both were going to die, and then the light. And now this. “Seems you've been through a lot in twenty-four hours. Reckon you need to eat something.”

“Aunt Kate, we don't need to eat, we need to find Trice.” This comes from Billy, who has never passed up a meal in his life.

“I reckon I know what I know.” She has already leveraged her way to the end of the booth, is in the process of standing. “I reckon I don't need somebody tellin' me what I don't know when I know what I know. And you both need to get over to Zadok's and get shaved and, Billy, you need a haircut. Y'all are starting to look walleyed crazy.” And now she has cleared the booth, is walking to the kitchen.

“Why does she do that? Why is food her answer to everything?” Billy is asking a question that he has never asked before.

“I don't know, but she's got some strange magic in that cooking.” Nehemiah runs his hand over his chin. “And I look good without a shave, but she's right about one thing. You sure do need a haircut.” Nehemiah is turning his coffee cup in complete circles. One circle. Two circles. Three circles. “Besides, maybe we'll eat the
food and suddenly know right where Trice is. Maybe we'll eat and walk right to her, find her sleeping under a tree, then we'll hold one of Kate's biscuits under her nose and she'll wake up.”

Billy starts laughing, which might be from exhaustion or because Nehemiah's story seems plausible.

Then a clock chimes. Nehemiah doesn't appear to hear it. Doesn't even look up. Doesn't even wonder anymore. He has crossed over into a world where the unbelievable can happen, where spring is still indescribably beautiful in the middle of what he now knows to be an encroaching darkness. Trice's eclipse. He is no longer banking on the plausible. Not putting stock in tangible evidence or
logic
or
reason. All well and good,
he thinks,
all well and good but not enough
.
Not good enough to win this fight
. And still he doesn't know what the fight is about. He still doesn't remember. Doesn't remember the Key, or the Treasure, or the Promise. But he is beginning to forget the things that block their remembrance. He is forgetting the word
Cuisinart
. He is forgetting that today the senator is stepping into a meeting about his upcoming reelection. Or that his job in Washington is only a breath between votes.

Because what he is thinking about, what he is toying with at the fringes of memory, is something he heard last night. Something he can barely remember, but it is there and haunting him. Something he heard as the air was being choked from his windpipe and his nose filled with sulfur. As the clock chimes, as Billy looks above the door, as Kate puts dumplings and fried chicken and fried okra and sliced tomatoes and sweet iced tea on the table, he knows without looking that time is running out. That now time is of the essence. That there was something last night that he must remember, and that in it is a catalyst that will carry him back. Farther back than the fire. Farther back than Blister in his arms and Trice's big blue eyes full of tears, full of wonder.

“Now, boys,” Kate sits herself down, “you're going to eat, and I'm going to tell you a story. Something to set your mind at ease.” And once again Nehemiah wasn't hungry until the food was before him, but now the eating of it consumes him as much as he consumes the food. The boys, such as they are in their grown-men states, begin to eat, and Kate begins to tell them a story. The story is the book of Trice. It is of her beginning, of how she came to Shibboleth, of how she was left in a bucket, not a basket as the story has been told by those not paying correct attention to the story. And that she also wasn't left on Kate's porch.

She tells them about going to the Well. It was her “remembering place,” she tells them. And when people died, it was her grieving place. After all the work of burying her mother was done and everyone had gone home, Kate had gone down to the Well to remember that she had to keep believing. And while she sat, she told them (and they have heard this story before but now they are hearing it again), she heard a noise echoing up from the Well. An echoing sound from a long way down. Not a cry, not a whimper, but a sound that spoke,
precious.
A sound that whispered,
soft jewel
. And when Kate pulled the bucket up, very slowly, very carefully, one rotation at a time, turn upon turn, what came up out of the dark, watery depths to the surface of the earth was a baby. And the baby was Trice. Nehemiah and Billy have stopped eating, looking into Kate's clear eyes. When the baby emerges, they always stop. They are compelled.

“Can you imagine me there holding this tiny infant in my arms, naked as the day she was born? Not a mark on her, not a bruise, not a brushstroke.”

“And now she's gone,” Billy says, and his eyes are getting watery. He looks away.

“You'll find her.” Kate says it with such finality, such fearless knowledge that at once they believe her. “A child comes to me in such
a way,” she shakes her head. “No, don't worry, you'll find her. That baby had angels watching over her. And wherever she is, whatever has tried to get ahold of her, she has angels watching over her still.”

Kate pulls herself up, turns, hands on hips. “What I'm trying to tell you is that she's got more of a purpose than feeding Magnus's blame cats, I can tell you that much.” She starts to walk off, turns back, and leans in to the boys, her hands propped on the table. “And let me tell you this much: when you find her, and if you retrace your steps you will, you better listen to her.” She picks up the dishes and she is gone.

The clock is chiming again. Billy is looking over the door, looking at Nehemiah.

“You see it, don't you?” Nehemiah glances up at Billy, who has a peculiar look on his face.

“What's going on, Nehemiah? Can you tell me?”

“No, I can't, Billy. But I have a feeling that we're going to find out. Now.” He turns around, looks at the clock above the door, where
Time To Eat
is nowhere to be found. This clock has no hands. And now that he's looking at it more closely, the face has no numbers at all. He rises slowly and goes to stand under the chiming, staring above the doorway, trying to examine the face of it. The numbers are not numbers. They are dots and dashes. They are triangles and geometric patterns. And somehow, they are vaguely familiar.

“Did we ask Kate what we came to ask her?” Billy is standing by his side, both of them now with arms crossed over their chests, looking above the door.

“What did we come to ask her?” Nehemiah considers climbing up there, taking the clock down, but he already knows it won't be there when he does. His hands won't touch anything tangible. Not in this world anyway.

“What we're supposed to do next.”

“She told us.”

“Remind me.”

“She said to retrace our steps.”

“You know what that means.”

“I think I do, Billy. I think I do.”

They are still frozen in place, staring at the clock, which continues chiming, as if time itself was a slow-motion carousel. One large, eternal revolution.

Saturday, 3:46 P.M
.

Nehemiah and Billy make mention to go round up Blister and Catfish and John Summer with all his hunting dogs but decide against it. Or more so, they decide in favor of Kate's suggestion that they retrace their steps. Decide that's at least the starting place.

Sheriff's Deputy Dewey, with his cousin Blister in the front seat beside him, is already out covering the south side of the county, knocking at doors along the way, riding all the back roads. They're looking for anything unusual when Blister tells him for the fourteenth time that day how he owes Trice his life. Then he'll ride along quiet awhile and then say, “Well, I reckon I owe Nehemiah most or second most, depending on how you look at it.” Then, after some more quiet, he'll add, “And Billy too. I reckon they were a team.” And while all this is going on, news of Trice's disappearance is being passed from mouth to mouth.

Nehemiah and Billy slowly make their way back to Magnus. She is on the front porch when they pull up. She gets to her feet, peers
hard into the truck from the porch railing, hoping for sight of that mop of blond hair.

“What you doing here where she ain't?”