The Secret of Magic (33 page)

“That’s my daddy and my granddaddy and my uncle Vardaman. That’s from a long time ago, after we sharecropped and my granddaddy was overseeing out at the old Mayhew Place. Doing a good job of it, too, from what I hear, enough to have high hopes for fixing up the home place. Of course, after Vardaman was killed . . . well, granddaddy and daddy, they got let go.”

Regina glanced down, because this was obviously expected. The photograph was an old-timey black-and-white photograph with people stiff in front of the camera, looking like they half expected getting their picture taken, being captured like that, might do them some harm. Two lean, handsome leathery-looking men and a young boy, all sitting on the porch of a free-standing log cabin. The Blodgett house was smaller than it had seemed last night, but the coating of the photographer’s paper had turned its dull unpainted board to silver. Black and white, but Regina had been long enough in Mississippi to know that the color was there. Pink in that corner of hanging crepe myrtle, brown spots on a dog; white and more white in that brush of cotton that grew all the way up to the door. But why was he showing her this? What did it mean? She thought it might have something to do with what he’d told her last night, his confession. That maybe—just maybe—he might think he’d said too much, gone too far.

Again, he leaned close, and again the hard bone of his knee touched her thigh. Beneath the warmth of her cashmere cardigan—the beige one, the one just like Mary Pickett’s—she broke out in a cold sweat. And this made her more afraid, that he could see the film of fear on her, could sense it just as Willie Willie would have been able to sense it.

By now great ladders rattled against the side of Calhoun Place. Regina could see them from where she was sitting. She heard the sound of scrapers against wood and men talking in low voices, assessing the damage and, maybe, cleaning it up. She heard distant shots—one, two, three—echoing out at them from the forest. Hunting squirrel. Hunting bird. Hunting deer. Hunting something. Anything. All the time.

Wynne put the picture away now, back in his wallet, and the wallet back in the pocket of snappy pressed jeans. He was still smiling. “But ain’t no niggers ever laughed at us, and I’m not about to let that happen, not now. So you better remind your little friend Willie Willie that his son’s dead. Joe Howard’s not coming back, and there’s not a thing in this world going to be done about it. The grand jury’s ruled. What happened was an ‘unfortunate accident.’ Not an
incident
, an
accident
. Joe Howard’s gone to glory, bit the dust—however you colored folks put it—but Willie Willie’s still alive, and he’s living a nice life here in this nice town of Revere, Mississippi. His murdering friend, Peach . . . why, she’s alive, too. And he needs aim to keep her that way.”

All the nerves in Regina’s body jumped to attention.

“Peach?”

“Yes, your good friend Peach. One lives out in the county. All by herself, last time I checked. If I was you, I’d keep my mouth shut I had any notion of protecting her.”

Wynne stopped. He winked. “Willie Willie comes and goes as he pleases, has a snug little house and all the money he needs. He was the old judge’s pet nigger. Now, like everything else that was part of the family, Mary Pickett’s taken him up. She may be a Calhoun, but she’s got her limits, just like we all have.”

Wynne whistled, looked over at Regina. Repeated, “A nice life. Willie Willie would do well to leave well enough alone, and he might just do that. That is, if he’s got a smart lady lawyer telling him that’s what he
ought
to do. For his own sake.”

Wynne reached over. He grabbed her breast through the thin fine weave of her cashmere sweater. She didn’t see it coming—he was that sharp and that quick. But the wrench was so hard she almost screamed under it.
Almost
screamed—but not quite.

Instead, a hand came up, and it was her hand and the fingers on it were her fingers and they had formed themselves into a tough little fist.

She aimed square for that smart-aleck look on his face, but at the last second he stepped back and so she missed her aim but her fist smashed into him anyway—at his chest, at his heart.

“You filthy coward.” Spitting the words out. “You think you can come here and threaten me? Threaten Peach? You think the way things are now—why, it’s just going to go on like that forever. You can
kill
folks, a man—beat him to death—and the
Gotcha!
,
it’s never gonna get you. But Peach knows you did it. She’s got the shirt to prove it. The one with Joe Howard’s blood on it? The one with the fancy buttons on it—one botton missing? The shirt you thought you’d got rid of way back? Well, she found it, and it
means
something. And what it means is that you’re gonna pay.”

For a second, for an instant, Wynne looked genuinely scared. Regina was sure of it, and her heart thudded in triumph as he lost his balance when she hit him, tottered on his feet, almost fell.
Almost
did. Later, when it would play back through her mind, she would see him. The startled look. The hand groping. The breathless moment. All this—before he caught the sharp edge of Willie Willie’s table and righted himself once again.

“You black bitch . . . I’ll make you sorry for this.”

Now it was her turn to laugh, a loud bark of it that startled the birds in the trees, that hushed the murmur of men talking. That silenced Wynne Blodgett, at least for a minute. She
would
be sorry for this, and she knew it. Was already sorry. Losing her temper like that. And Peach. Telling about Peach. But for a moment none of that mattered, because, right now, the throb of her hand felt so good.

Wynne tucked his picture safely away, straightened his shirt, notched his belt tighter. He started off down the side of the house toward his men, and he was whistling something. His whistling was a little off tune, and the song was something she recognized the melody, she just couldn’t place it.

Regina sat back down, her arms wrapped around herself, shaking slightly as she heard his feet beating against the dead leaves on the side of the house and the sound of his hearty laughter, his calling out to someone, his saying, “Well, hey there, how all y’all doing? How’s the work coming along?”

She held her breath. She waited. She listened to see if Wynne would come back to her and bring those other men with him. But he didn’t come back. He continued to laugh, to call out his greetings. She imagined him shaking men’s hands. Soon enough she heard a car door open and close, and then the sound of an expensive engine first gunned and then purring to moving life. Soon the sound of this died away as well, and Regina was left with the memory of his song.

I’ll be seeing you

In all the old familiar places . . .

There. She had it now, putting words with the melody.

I’ll find you in the morning sun

And when the day is through.

Except Wynne Blodgett wasn’t Frank Sinatra, and when he whistled the tune and the words played in her head they became . . . scary. A promise. Regina shivered. Only then did she realize how much her hand hurt, that it was throbbing, really, and that she should be looking somewhere for some ice. She thought of her own little Willie Willie cottage, but she knew there was nothing there. Then she thought of the kitchen in Mary Pickett’s house, where there would surely be something. Hadn’t she seen the egg man go into the kitchen that very day? Regina pulled herself up from the step and looked up—directly at Mary Pickett, who stood in her window, still as a stone above that stack of loose papers that Regina had thought was a manuscript but probably wasn’t. Not, she thought grimly, unless Willie Willie had come up with a new book.

There was nothing on Mary Pickett’s face, no reading of it. Regina couldn’t tell how long she’d been there, what she’d seen. The only thing she saw was that it was white, whiter than normal, and with the same dead expression on it—Regina saw this after a moment—that had been on Mae Louise Wynne Blodgett’s face when she’d come over to her rival’s house, to her husband’s fancy lady’s house, to
Miss
Mary Pickett’s Calhoun Place house to meet with the ladies of the Revere Garden Club, white hands clutched tight around a sheaf of late roses, and a piece of blue paper fresh from Tom Raspberry’s printing press.

The same tightness around the mouth, around the eyes, that seemed to be seeping from deep inside, shriveling up everything in its wake. Until it drew in the skin of Mary Pickett’s face so that the eyes themselves got smaller and smaller and the vision within them dimmer and dimmer until they were no longer capable of seeing anything she did not want them to see.

A
n offer,” said Rand Connelly, the sheriff. “And this one’s not from the district attorney. It came straight up from Judge Timms himself.”

It was late afternoon, and the day had turned cold enough that Tom Raspberry had switched on the small kerosene stove in the corner of his office. Three of them—Regina, Willie Willie, and Tom—were sitting around it. Only the sheriff stood up.

When Connelly had first come in, Regina held out her hand. After a pause, Rand Connelly reached out his own hand and took hers. One quick up-and-down pump and it was over, but the pumping had knocked the sheriff’s hat off his head. He bent down and picked it up, kept it in his hand.

“I thought he wouldn’t be back until November,” said Regina, but she saw hope flare on Willie Willie’s face, a bright flame of it. The first she’d seen there. This was the sheriff, after all, and the circuit court judge. But the sheriff himself did not seem happy. With his hat off, his blond hair hanging into his eyes. He looked like what he was—the errand boy.

“It’s a good offer,” he repeated, “and not just from Judge Timms but from the businessmen in the White Citizens Council and the ladies in the Revere Garden Club.”

Willie Willie’s smile faltered. “What they got to do with anything? They not in the law courts.”

“Now, Willie Willie, you know we already been
through
that,” Connelly rattled out, blushing a little, impatient. “Justice been done in this case. Poor Joe Howard, bless his heart, he suffered an accidental death. However . . .”

“But Wynne Blodgett did do it.” Regina leaned toward the sheriff. She tried hard to keep her voice from shaking, to sound like the professional woman she was. It was important. “He told me that he killed Joe Howard. Himself. Besides, I’ve got . . .”

“Hmmm . . . And when was that?” Talking about the confession and hearing nothing else. Regina half expected him to add ‘little lady,’ but he didn’t.

She said, “Last night. Down at the Blodgett house. The Folly.” She stopped. For the first time, she wondered if white people called it that, or just Willie Willie.

Connelly’s face tightened for a moment. Then it relaxed.

“Wynne talked to you? Lawyer come down from New York for Willie Willie?” He snorted. “Who’s going to believe that?”

“He told me where it happened. Same place Mr. Willie Willie said it did. Same place where he found Joe Howard’s medal, out there on the state line.”

Willie Willie said, “And I still got it, hanging on the visor out there in my truck.”

“Not that you
got
it. I’m sure you
got
it. It’s where you got it
from
, that’s what’s gonna be the question. You say one thing. Somebody else—we’ll leave names out of it—just gonna deny it. Say it came from someplace else. Folks’ll say, ‘Why, that lying . . .’”

“Mr. Connelly, sir. You ever known me to lie?”

The sheriff blushed. “I wasn’t talking about you in particular, Willie Willie. You know that. I was speaking in general.”

“Miss Regina wouldn’t lie, neither.”

The sheriff let that pass.

Regina made a great show of fishing through the papers in her open briefcase. “But we do have new evidence. Mrs. Anna Dale Buchanan was on that bus, and she would be happy to testify. She—”

“She didn’t actually see a thing,” interrupted the sheriff. “Don’t know nothing . . . anything . . .”

“Well, maybe you should talk to her again. No one called on her to testify, not in front of the grand jury, and she’s free to do it,” said Regina. “Or maybe Mr. Duval could speak with her directly. That is if you don’t want to do it yourself.”

“If Bed Duval did something like that,” said the sheriff, with a sigh perfectly pitched between patience and aggravation, “with folks riled up the way they are now, writing things on the side of Miss Mary Pickett Calhoun’s house and all—a veritable showplace—and flyers flung up all over town, disfiguring the trees . . . why, Bed could find himself not only losing the judgeship but recalled away from what he’s already built up. Those that can vote’ll make quick work of him for the good of the community. You best make up your mind to that cause he sure has. There’s not going to be any more investigating done, and there’s an end to it.”

Regina said, “But there was another white woman on the bus. A widow with twin boys. She was mentioned in the court papers. I think her name was . . .”

“You talking about the new Mrs. Johnny Ray Dean?” The sheriff knew the facts of his case, but they did not seem to make him look happy. “A used-to-be widow. She’s married herself to a bus driver now. From what I hear, he’s cousin to the Blodgett’s on his wife’s side. Now I hear the
new
Mrs. Dean is working herself; she’s a receptionist over at the
Times Commercial
. Moved herself up and her kids up with her; went from staying with her mama in a tiny three-room shotgun in Tupelo to living in a nice brick bungalow with a nice husband near here in New Hope. The sheriff’s sad smile said,
You think she’s gonna be any help?

Connelly shot a quick look at Willie Willie, who was sitting stiffly on one of Tom Raspberry’s wooden visitor’s chairs.

Quietly, Regina said, “And I guess Manasseh Lacey . . .”

“A little colored boy? Barely big enough to see out a bus window . . .” The sheriff let out a snort.

“I’ve got something else.”

A bit more attention, not much.

Regina hurried on, telling him about the shirt Peach had given her, where Peach had found it, the stains around the missing button. She saw Willie Willie stiffen, pay close attention, but none of this mattered to the sheriff. Halfway through, he started shaking his head.

“Means nothing,” he said. “Could be anything on the front of that shirt. And even if it is blood, what’s there connecting it with what happened to Joe Howard? Mr. Wynne—he’s young. Still sowing his wild oats, and—unfortunately—there’s sometimes lots of fighting goes along with that. Now, Regina, you’re a lawyer. You know what you got ain’t gonna work in any courtroom in the nation, let’s not even talk about here. Peach, with her shirt, she knows that, too. And probably a whole lot better than you do.”

“I think we better listen to the offer,” said Tom quietly. It was the first time he’d said a word.

A brief nod his way from the sheriff. “They want to put his name on the War Memorial. Right up there with all the other World War folks who didn’t come back—though actually Joe Howard
did
come back, in a manner of speaking. The White Citizens Council and the ladies . . . They plan to overlook all that. He’ll be the first Nigra writ on it, you know. Alphabetized, along with everybody else.”

Regina shook her head. She couldn’t believe it. She opened her mouth, but it was Willie Willie who spoke.

“But you knew Joe Howard. And you already know Wynne Blodgett killed him. You always known it.” He was looking right at Rand Connelly, this man he’d hunted with, this boy he’d shown through the woods. The others disappeared from the room, and it was just Rand and Willie Willie.

He didn’t shout, didn’t even really raise his voice, but the anger in it rustled through the proofs of the next issue of
The Revere
Fair Dealer
that Tom Raspberry had pinned up on his wall. Rand Connelly turned scarlet, his face and neck alive with the bright flush of anger. Obviously hadn’t expected Willie Willie’s reaction. A black man talking like this to a Mississippi white. Now he glared over at Regina as if this new, no longer docile white-folks-pleasing Willie Willie were all her fault.

“Hold on there now, just one little minute—”

A knock cut Rand Connelly short. Another quick rap, and then a deputy poked his head through Tom’s office door. Once he spotted the sheriff he hurried over, his boots heavy on Tom Raspberry’s new wooden floor. The deputy whispered something to Rand and the sheriff nodded, looked over at the three Negroes, opened his mouth, shut it again.

He turned to the deputy, “Tell Ray. I’ll get right there.”

Only after the door closed again did he turn to the others. “Willie Willie, Tom—there’s a fire started up out there at Peach’s. I guess that old kerosene stove of hers blew like we all been saying it would for years. Jim here says it’s looking bad, threatens a good part of the east side of the forest. We can talk about all the rest of this later. I think we all ought to be getting ourselves on out there to help. Quick.”

The men got up and followed the sheriff. At the door, Willie Willie turned back to Regina.

“You get yourself on home now, Miss Regina. Stay inside. Close the door.”

• • •

REGINA SET OFF
briskly for Calhoun Place and the cottage, but she had no intention of staying inside or closing any door. She was going out to Peach’s with the rest of them. She couldn’t wait here by herself, not knowing what was happening there. Maybe this was her fault. What she’d said to Wynne Blodgett about the shirt, about Peach. My God, a fire!

Regina’s heart started to hammer, before she knew it she was running down the street. The Daimler would surely be at the house and the keys in it. She’d ask Mary Pickett if she could use it. Otherwise . . . well, she’d leave a note.

On Main the street was clogged with traffic, black men and white men in all kinds of trucks and buckboards, in jitneys, and some few cars, all headed out toward that dense rimming of trees. She looked up and there was a truck pulled by two mules. It was almost on top of her before she saw it. A man screamed out from the cabin. She got away just in time.

Fifth Street was where she started smelling wood burning. Regina looked toward the sky, and the first things she saw were the twin chimneys of Mary Pickett’s house, stark against a day sky that was purpling slowly to night. Between them, the moon shone faintly already—pale, full, and fat—like a dollop of cream on a mauve tablecloth. But beyond Calhoun Place she was sure she saw a feather of rising smoke, touching the tops of the tall, distant oaks, pluming around the mistletoe that was starting to bud out in the high, bare branches. That made her think even more of Willie Willie and of Peach, and she ran faster, as behind her a siren started its high keening wail.

There were no cars in the drive that led up to Calhoun Place, none parked at the curb on Mary Pickett’s part of Third Avenue at all, not even the Daimler, which had not moved from its place at the side of the house since they’d got back from Anna Dale Buchanan’s. Regina quickly sketched out a new plan. Instead of driving, she’d change her clothes, go over to Main Street, and start walking. Chances were somebody would stop for her. This was the good part of living in what Mary Pickett called a “nice” town.
Someone
would stop. They’d shout out to her, ask her if she could do with a lift up. And if they didn’t, she’d just keep heading east.

The door to the cottage was slightly ajar. She stopped, listened, remembering the night she’d come back with Willie Willie from Peach’s, the way it had stood open then, the way the blue flyer had fluttered on it. But that had been nothing; this was nothing, too.

Regina stepped in, halted, and for some reason she sniffed. Nothing on the air but the smoldering from outside, and around her the small downstairs room was quiet. She heard the ticking of the heavy Bakelite Westclox on the refrigerator in the kitchen, but no bird sang in the overhang of magnolia branches outside the front door. She thought about checking the shirt again but decided she’d do this on her way out. Maybe take it with her. Just in case.

Regina hurried up the stairs to the bedroom, took off her pumps, pulled on brown-and-white saddle shoes and socks. She grabbed her beige sweater from the hook outside the bathroom door. In less than five minutes she was rocketing back down.

She was on the bottom step when she heard the first growl. It was so low she almost missed it, almost thought that it was part of the general quiet stream of noise that seeped in all the time from outside, a car’s engine, maybe. Except there had been no noise coming in from outside. Regina stopped, listened. When she turned toward the kitchen, she knew exactly what she’d see. Wynne Blodgett’s hunting dog. Devil black. Eyes cold as stone. She had no doubt at all why this animal was here.

“I’ll make you sorry.”

If his dog was here, Wynne could be here with him. Hiding in the kitchen. Or even upstairs, where he could have seen her switch out of her clothes. Wynne could be anywhere. With his cousins. Planning something. Ready—always ready—to sow more wild oats.

But it was the dog she had to think about now. He had somehow edged into the small living room, was halfway into it now. She thought he must have come in from the kitchen. His body looked loose enough, no tension in it, but even city-bred Regina knew he was poised for the spring. And his eyes . . . a wild animal’s eyes, with no remorse in them. Now that he’d gotten her attention, the dog did not growl again. He sat there motionless, just like he’d sat in the front yard of The Folly, but with his mouth slightly ajar so that now, she could not miss the feral baring of his sharp canine teeth.

Very slowly, Regina pulled her eyes away from him, looked around at her options. She was a good four feet from the door, on a landing, at an angle. The dog was less than five feet away now. Again, she hadn’t seen him move, but if
she
moved, he’d be on her. The only thing between them was the wood slats of the stairway. Nothing to him. Something he could bound over in one easy leap.