A new young lawyer, she thought again, maybe wanting to do the right thing, but still fueled by bravado and not much else. She knew the type, all right. You bet she did.
She nodded to both men, then turned, started off.
“Can I give you a little advice?” She hadn’t heard this voice before, but she knew it belonged to the other man, the man to whom she had not been introduced. Purposely not introduced, she thought, as she turned back to him. Makes things scarier that way. Still, she was surprised that Bed Duval had left them, was already halfway down the street. She and the man faced each other, two worn-up squares of city sidewalk between them. He was the sheriff. She saw his star now. He said, “You’re new down here. Don’t know how things work. Watch your step. And if I was you, I’d pay a call on Tom Raspberry. Like Bed’s daddy told you to.”
His voice wasn’t kind but it wasn’t mean either.
“Thank you,” she said, as she started on her way yet again.
• • •
REGINA WASN’T AWARE just when Willie Willie came up, only that he was suddenly there and right in step beside her, reaching out his hand. Next thing she knew, he was taking all the things she’d been carrying. A relief.
“See those there,” he said, bending close to her and pointing to three solitary orangey-red flowers sprouting up on the manicured perfection of the courthouse lawn.
Regina nodded.
“Know what they are?”
This time she shook her head. She’d never seen anything like them before.
“Why, they’re wild things. Spider lilies,” Willie Willis whispered close to her ear. “They sprout up like that, full blown, overnight. You couldn’t cultivate them if you wanted to, because they’re on a mission. They come out specially to tell us when seasons be changing. When summer’s all over and winter’s nigh here.”
“Really?” said Regina. Flowers, not only with names but with legends. “You know things like that?”
“That,” answered Willie Willie solemnly, “and a whole lot more. For instance, I know you met Miss Peach Mottley. She told me all about it. Thinks you’re smart. Thinks you might be able to do something. She wants me to bring you out to her place, back there in the Magnolia Forest. Wants to have a nice talk with you. That’s what she said. There’s a lot you can learn in the forest, a lot she can teach you. It’s all out there, the whole story, and I’ll take you right to it—that is, if you can be persuaded to go.”
“Maybe,” said Regina, “but this case . . . You know, my work . . .”
Willie Willie cocked his head, regarded her. “I’ll tell her you’ll come. You’re ready. Might learn something useful.” He didn’t exactly whisper, but he looked around and dipped his head when he said this. “Saw you reading Miss Mary Pickett’s book out in public, for all the world to see. I recognized the cover. Saw you go into the Duval law office. Saw you come out.” He fell in step beside her, and they walked beneath an overarch of elm trees that shaded the sidewalk. “Saw Mr. Bed follow you out onto the street, bringing the sheriff with him. Now, that was a wonder.”
“Rand Connelly?”
“The sheriff. Mr. Bed have anything to say for himself?”
“Nothing useful. The sheriff told me I needed to see Tom Raspberry. They all told me that, or at least intimated it.”
Willie Willie nodded. “Those white-folk Duvals—they think they got Tom Raspberry in their pocket. And maybe they do have. Still, it might be worth your while to go on over to Catfish Alley, pay him a visit, hear what he has to say. Him being a lawyer and all.” Willie Willie nodded sagely. Sunlight, filtered through the hanging treetops, fell like lace on his face.
This surprised Regina. “Nobody said anything about him being a lawyer.” She thought for a second and then said, “Well, maybe you did before, but he didn’t say anything about it himself.”
“Well, that’s what he is. At least, that’s what he calls himself to us colored folks. An attorney-at-law. Written bold as brass on that plate-glass window outside his spanky new building. But he wouldn’t want to be seen putting on airs in front of Mr. Forrest. He’d get himself slapped down in a minute. That’s the nature of things. A colored lawyer in Revere got to piece together a living just like an old woman pieces a quilt, a stitch at a time. He can’t just put together a practice out of whole cloth. Lots of Tom Raspberry’s piecing involves the Duvals. He lends them his eyes and his ears when they need them. His mouth, too, saying what white folks think needs to be said.”
Regina’s step picked up. This was the first time she’d been close—physically close—to Willie Willie since she’d gotten to Revere. And he was telling her something, giving her information that might be of some help. Because he believed in her, thought she might actually be able to do something? She sure hoped so. Without thinking, she canted her head toward his, the same angle as Joe Howard’s head in the snapshot she still had in a pocket. She smiled at him, too, just like Joe Howard had done. Willie Willie was tossing something in his hand, catching it again. Up down. Up down. Just like he’d done at the bus depot. Something glittery and tiny, bright as a new dime. It caught at the sun.
Willie Willie said, “I wish my boy could have been here to see you. He would have busted out laughing, just like I did. I was watching that old lady Tutwiler gawping at you out the window while you were reading that Magic book,” he said. “The whole sight of it was so rich. Shook them all up, that much is certain. Not that I think there’s any hope of getting law court justice for Joe Howard in Mississippi . . .”
Regina stopped. Turned to him. “What other kind of justice is there?”
“I don’t know. The homemade kind.” He looked off to the distance, to the forest. “The kind you do for yourself.”
“No!” Regina surprised herself, how strong her voice sounded. “If you don’t get what you want—what you need—under the law, then you really don’t get it at all. It can always be taken from you and then the bad folks can do what they want to, and they can do it again and again.”
“Maybe,” said Willie Willie, “it’ll be like that someday. Or maybe Peach is right. You’re the one to do it now. Time’s gonna show, and we’ll see.”
“Not much time,” said Regina. For a moment, she had the sensation that he might reach over and ruffle the hair on her head. Like she was a child. But she wasn’t a child. She was his lawyer. And she thought maybe she might ask him about Anna Dale Buchanan—had Willie Willie known about her, like Mary Pickett had and even Peach had? And the sheriff and Bed Duval as well? Maybe the awareness of who she was and what she knew and how this might matter came to each of them at different times—after all, Anna Dale had just called on Mary Pickett when she’d read about the grand jury findings in the Times Commercial less than a month ago—but they all knew now. Surely Willie Willie would know as well. Was that why the old Blodgett house had been burned, and was Willie Willie behind that? The timing made sense, but nothing else did. A black man—doing something like that in Mississippi and still alive, walking beside her right here on the street? And the shirt, had he been the one to put it on her pillow, to write Hide Me on that slip of yellowed notepaper? This gentle man, tossing into the air his small bit of glitter—could he have done that?
She thought of him as she’d last seen him on the back veranda with Mary Pickett and Dinetta, Mary Pickett reading from a spread-out newspaper, the two of them shaking their heads, laughing. Surely Mary Pickett had told him something as important as Anna Dale Buchanan’s visit? But Willie Willie had never mentioned her to Regina. In fact, he hadn’t said anything to her about Joe Howard’s actual death, who he thought might have killed him, how he thought it had happened. Strange. She opened her mouth to ask him about it, the words forming as they rounded the corner. But then she saw Calhoun Place. With a blue Buick parked out in front of it. Maybe the same one that had been sitting there the night she arrived. Maybe the same car that Anna Da
le Buchanan had seen. Regina didn’t know, not yet, but the car pulled at her like a magnet.
“Is that . . . ?” She turned back to Willie Willie, who was no longer there. He had just vanished, leaving her briefcase and her basket and her book piled neatly under a privet hedge at the side of the road. She wondered where he’d gone, why he’d disappeared so suddenly—but for only a moment. Because standing right ahead of her, leaning against that blue Buick, was the same man with blond hair who had stared at her from the porch of the bus depot the day she arrived, the same man who had teased Peach on the Courthouse Square. She was certain it was.
He wasn’t looking at her now, though, not like he had that first day. His eyes were searching out something else, something behind her. Something that caused him to frown. She swiveled back and saw nothing, only the spot where Willie Willie had disappeared.
The Secret of Magic. Booker and Daddy Lemon alone at the edge of the forest. Daddy Lemon saying, “You go deep down in there, son—deep enough, past the loblolly and the woody plants and the trumpet vines—you’ll find the place where life turns itself upside down and the dark things are the good things and they win out in the end.”
“Hey, Regina.” The man at the car whispered her name, and she turned to him.
He still wore crisped-out jeans and shirt like he’d worn at the depot. But it was his shoes Regina was most interested in now. She looked down. She noticed. They were boots. Hand-tooled, polished crocodile, they stuck out from the turned-back cuffs of his pants legs like two long, dark tongues.
Good boots. A big blue car. Everything Anna Dale Buchanan had said, but something was missing. A man like this—why would he kill?
He said, “Name’s Wynne Blodgett.”
And she nodded. “I know who you are.” She pieced a little together. “You’re Jackson Blodgett’s son.”
“That’s me, all right,” he said, Chest puffed up. Proud to be who he was. “He’s around back somewhere. Said he’d got something to do, probably for Mary Pickett. But what I’ve got is for you.”
Holding something lacy and white out to her. Her handkerchief, the one she’d left yesterday on the Duval stoop.
She stopped right in front of him, at most three feet away, but she didn’t reach out her hand.
He smiled at her. “I saw you leave it. I thought you might need it again. Sometime.”
“That was nice of you.”
“I’m a nice guy.” Then, “You gonna come get it?”
She stepped forward, and he shifted, brought his hand back a little so she had to move closer, then moved it once more and drew her closer again. She knew the game they were playing, cat and mouse. She reached over, careful not to touch him, but when she took the handkerchief his fingers brushed against hers and every single horror story she’d ever heard about white men and black women flooded immediately to the very tip-top of her mind.
But she said, “Thank you. That was kind of you to pick it up.”
“Hey, there,” Wynne said, lips slashing upward into a clown’s bright grin. “Weren’t you listening? I already told you I’m a nice guy.”
• • •
MARY PICKETT WAS in her back garden, pruning her rosebushes. Chop-chop-chop. Jackson Blodgett, whose son and whose car were so conspicuously present, was nowhere in sight. Mary Pickett had on a heavy tweed skirt and an old straw hat, almost as big as an umbrella, eyes hiding out behind her dark glasses. But she knew Regina was there.
“Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!”
Who talks like that? But she walked toward Mary Pickett anyway. “I saw Jackson Blodgett’s son out front.”
Mary Pickett stopped her clipping. She reached up and pulled her sunglasses down. The eyes above them narrowed, cool as cat’s-eye marbles. “Yes. Wynne.”
“He said his father was back here. With you. I’d like to talk with him if he is.”
Regina met Mary Pickett’s cool gaze with one of her own. Mary Pickett considered. “He’s around.” And then, “He’s got an old home place near here, burned out now. One of those clippings I sent you talked about it. He might probably have gone down to check on things there.”
The Folly. That’s what Willie Willie had called the Blodgett place. He’d waved a hand toward it the night she’d arrived.
“If you see him, would you tell him I’d like to speak with him? Please?”
She started on toward the cottage, but Mary Pickett’s soft voice trailed her down. “You call up north yet? Fill that Thurgood Marshall in on how much progress you made . . .” She paused. “If any?”
Regina hesitated, turned back. “I didn’t see a telephone in the . . .”
“Right there in the kitchen,” said Mary Pickett, motioning with her big Chinese-looking hat. “Go on in.”
“Not right now,” Regina said. This came out a little too quickly.
“What? Not got much to report?” Mary Pickett drawled the words out, each syllable taking up the space of two. “Well, I’m sure you will have. Before your time here runs out. Just go on into the kitchen anytime you want to. I’ll tell Dinetta. Keep in mind, though, it’s a party line. Half Revere’s on it, which means everything you say will be all over town in fifteen minutes. At most. Like you reading my book on the Duval office steps. Believe the whole town knows about that by now.”
“I needed to speak to the district attorney,” said Regina.
“You could have spoken with him yesterday, if you’d asked for my help. One call from me—that’s all it would have taken. You could have gone straight on in.”
“Through the back door?”
“Everybody goes in that way over at Duval’s, didn’t you notice?” said Mary Pickett, eyes now twinkly bright. “The back door for you is just the way things are. But your pride’s not the point, is it? You’re here to help me with Willie Willie. That’s why I called you down.”
“But I came,” said Regina, “to find out who killed Joe Howard Wilson. To get him some justice.”
“It’s the same difference.”
Regina said nothing to this. A bee buzzed through a potted geranium on a pedestal at Mary Pickett’s elbow. She seemed to pay it a great deal of attention. “Did you enjoy it? My book, I mean. I suppose I should ask you that.”
“Yes,” Regina said, then, “Very much.”
“Ah.” Mary Pickett’s word was short, not drawn out with pleasure. She reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a pack of Chesterfield cigarettes, put one in her mouth but didn’t light it. She looked back at Regina instead and said, “Then you know.”
“Know what?” Regina moved closer, drawn like a pin to the magnet of Mary Pickett’s word, know. For the first time she thought Mary Pickett might actually be useful, that she might be more than just a proper Southern woman helping a colored manservant because of some old-timey sense of noblesse oblige. Or of guilt. But then, who wouldn’t feel guilty about slavery, about those separate water fountains, about the Confederate flag standing guard over the courthouse door, about that woman guiding her children into the street? About this house, even, built up on slave labor? And about Lieutenant Joe Howard Wilson taken off a bus and beaten to death.
Mary Pickett struck a match to the cigarette, drew deeply on it, exhaled. Caught in the strong crosswind of her exhalation, a bee changed its mind about the attractiveness of the geranium and took flight. Mary Pickett looked over at Regina, her eyes narrow behind a cloud of smoke.
“About Willie Willie.” Another deep draw on the cigarette as Mary Pickett seemed to consider. “My daddy and Willie Willie grew up together.”
“They were friends? You told me that already.”
Mary Pickett shook her head. The straw hat bobbed. “You’re young, and you’re not from here. My daddy and Willie Willie weren’t friends. They couldn’t be. Friendship is something eye to eye, between equals. Daddy and Willie Willie were friendly. Or, rath
er, Daddy was friendly to Willie Willie—but it was Daddy always in control. Still . . . it’s hard to explain their relationship, one to the other.”
“Not so hard,” shot back Regina. “Your daddy stayed in the big house. Willie Willie lived in the old slave shack out back.”
Mary Pickett folded her arms across her chest. Shut down, that’s what she did. First her eyes, then the whole of her face.
“Well, Regina, why don’t you haul yourself on over to your own shack and wait for Mr. Blodgett there? I’ll ring the quittin’-time bell for you when he gets here.” The words drawled out, slower than ever—if that were possible.
Regina rolled her eyes. Grimaced. Quittin’ time bell, indeed!
Without another word, Regina started off toward Willie Willie’s, her high-heeled shoes clicking like Dorothy’s as she made her way along her own yellow brick road.
9.
Years later, when she thought back to those days in Revere, Regina would always remember Jackson Blodgett as a smile that illuminated Mary Pickett’s face. A presence that seemed to actually slow her down, make her look like she was moving through honey, that softened the lines around her mouth and chiseled light from the cold marble of her eyes. It’s funny, Regina thought, how just a little movement of the mouth could do all that. No matter how much else would happen, what else would change about him in her eyes, Regina would always remember Mary Pickett’s illumination as part of what made up Jackson, too.
Regina was sitting at the desk, staring at them through the lace at Willie Willie’s window. They were standing in Mary Pickett’s late flowering garden, near the veranda, and standing close. As Regina watched, Jackson reached up and touched a wisp of Mary Pickett’s hair.
“Gosh,” whispered Regina to herself, “I thought Willie Willie said all that was over a long time ago.”
The Secret of Magic Page 17
