The Secret of Magic

by Johnson, Deborah

  But it was plain to see that it wasn’t.

  “Regina! That you peeking out over there? Why don’t you come on over and meet Mr. Blodgett like you wanted?” said Mary Pickett, triumph smooth as a mint julep lacing her voice. You spying, bad-mannered, no-account Yankee—I’m looking right at you!

  Regina jumped, blushed. Caught in the act, but she headed out the door anyway.

  Even from a distance, it was obvious that Jackson Blodgett was no matinee idol. Wynne was the handsome one, and he didn’t look like his father. Jackson’s hair was dark where Wynne’s was light, and his shoes were dusty, unlike his son’s, like he used them to tramp through his small town’s streets. Jackson had on a blue serge suit and held a gray felt hat in his hands. The suit was natty, something Thurgood might have chosen, but the effect wasn’t at all the same. Jackson’s didn’t fit him right. It was a little too wide around his body, a little too short in the sleeves. Something he might have admired on a rack but that needed a tailor. Still, there was something appealing about him—nothing that Regina could put her finger on, not what she’d expected, but there anyway. She thought of Wynne, so beautiful, so sharply and expensively dressed. She wondered just what it might mean to a man like Jackson Blodgett—once poor as dirt, at least that’s what she’d heard—to have a son so Movietone perfect as that.

  Her eyes traveled from Jackson to Mary Pickett. She wondered what the two of them had been like when they were younger, when they’d run off together. She wondered what they’d looked like when they got married and been caught on the steps of that hotel in Gordo, Alabama, in what Willie Willie had called “a nick of time.” The young lovers were older now, settled. It was hard for Regina to imagine either of them doing anything rash. Yet here was Mary Pickett just a wee bit flustered and Jackson Blodgett looking—well, glad to be back.

  “Mr. Jackson Blodgett,” said Mary Pickett primly, but she’d turned rosy. Was this Mary Pickett actually blushing? “May I present to you Regina Mary Robichard. Regina is from New York.”

  A great deal was said in that simple introduction, none of it missed by Regina Mary Robichard of New York. She’d been presented to Jackson Blodgett like he was royalty, rather than the other way around. And Mr. Jackson was Mr. Jackson, but there’d been no courtesy title, no Miss or Mrs., not even a “This here’s our Lady Lawyer,” at least for a colored woman down here in the South.

  “Good to meet you,” said Jackson Blodgett with a hearty nod that somehow or other seemed a cue to Dinetta. She slipped out through the screen door, childlike, skinny as ever, and carrying a silver tray with two cups, two saucers, two crystal glasses, two decanters—one marked SHERRY—two cloth napkins, and one very large piece of cake.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Jackson. How you doin’?” The girl stood there beaming, all teeth, trying hard not to stare over at Regina—this strange black woman from the North—but not quite succeeding. A darted look here, a darted look there, before she disappeared back behind the kitchen door.

  It was Mary Pickett who, after a moment, leaned over and picked up a cup and saucer and poured coffee—nothing else—into it. She reached Jackson a fork and the cake. Through all of this moving, all this shifting and pouring, she said not one word. She also did not look at Jack Blodgett, and he was not looking at her.

  But they didn’t go up to the big rattan table. He and Mary Pickett settled on the porch steps side by side, Jackson propping his shoulder against one of the newel posts. Regina hadn’t noticed before that the paint was peeling on the Calhoun banister, but when Jackson sat next to it, she did. He took a sip of his coffee. Mary Pickett did not touch hers. No one offered anything to Regina, who was left standing on the bright green lawn.

  Jackson said, “This your first time in Mississippi, Regina?”

  She nodded. “My first time.”

  “You enjoyin’ yourself?” And then, before she could answer, “But of course you aren’t. How could you be? You got business here.”

  Mary Pickett reached for the sherry bottle, poured herself a drink.

  Jackson sadly shook his head. “Haven’t had a chance to see much of the town, have you, and Revere is such a lovely place. Not burned down by the Federals. Grant thought it was too pretty to torch. You’ll like it once you get to know it.”

  “Oh?” said Regina politely.

  “Miss Mary Pickett here tells me she called you down here to investigate what happened to Joe Howard.” Jackson sipped his coffee. “And that’s a good thing to do, a noble thing to do—if Joe Howard had been killed. But he wasn’t killed. Now, Willie Willie, he’s simple. He makes up things in his mind, and what he makes up isn’t always the truth. But the law is the truth. You know that, you’re an officer of it. And the law said that Joe Howard Wilson’s death was an accident.”

  He was looking at her now, his face earnest, his eyes shrewd. “Now, I’m not saying Joe Howard wasn’t taken off that bus, ’cause he was. We all know that. But maybe folks—okay, white folks, let’s be honest here—thought they had their reasons. I heard he’d refused to do what he’d been told to do. I heard he cussed in front of the ladies. My own son—Wynne. You met him? Why, he’d sure get a whuppin’ from me for pulling a stunt like that. But”—and here a sigh from Mary Pickett’s once-husband—“who knows what happened to Joe Howard, with the war and all? Sometimes all that hero talk can go to their heads. Soldiers, I mean. They start to believe what they been hearing. Maybe somebody wanted to remind him he was home now, remind him a good Southern boy needs to be minding his manners. So . . . they took him off the bus. They roughed him up. Maybe. A bit. Maybe tried to teach him a lesson for his own good. Once that was done, they would have let him go. They sure would have done that. But . . . What can I say? Joe Howard was disoriented. He got himself lost out there in Magnolia Forest. Fell into the Tombigbee. That makes sense, at least to my way of thinking.”

  So what had happened to Joe Howard was his own fault. If he’d just acted like a good boy in the first place, he’d still be alive, none of this would have happened. That’s what Jackson Blodgett was selling, but Regina wasn’t buying.

  She said, “You seem to know a lot about it.”

  “It’s a small town.” Jackson’s blink was so shallow she almost missed it. “You hear things.”

  “Maybe,” she said, unconsciously echoing his word, “but it would be a help if I could actually see the coroner’s report.”

  Jackson reached over to put his cup and saucer on the tray. It was only half empty. Regina saw his quick look to Mary Pickett, the clear no in the slight shake of his head.

  Nothing to lose, Regina decided to gamble. “And the grand jury docket. They might help me prove what you’re saying. At the very least, it’ll stop any discussion. If I don’t get to see the court papers, there will always be a question. That’s why Miss Calhoun called me down here—to get to the bottom of this matter, to lay it to rest once and for all.”

  Would this be enough? Could she possibly persuade him? She had to get her hands on those grand jury findings. Regina held her breath.

  “So you’re asking me to do something that’s against the law—get you a copy of a document that’s officially sealed?” Jackson Blodgett chuckled. “Few months from now, they’ll open it anyway. Why can’t you just wait?”

  “Because it might be too late.”

  Jackson nodded, seemed to consider. And then . . .

  “I’ll see that you get them,” he said as he slammed both hands on his knees. “Take care of it myself. What’s your plans for tomorrow? You gotta have some—come all this way. Maybe Tom Raspberry? You been at the Duvals, you’ll know all about him. He and Forrest. Bed, too—they’re all three joined at the hip. But I’ll have the reports you want waiting for you in the cabin—the cottage—by noon. That sound good? The sheriff will bring it over himself. You’ll like him. He’s a talker. Folks feel bad about Joe Howard. They want to help.”r />
  Oh, really?

  But what she said was, “Thank you, Mr. Blodgett.”

  Jackson shook his head, a man who needed to tell a hard fact. “Killing a colored man’s not the same down here as killing a white man. It may be in other places . . .”

  “Not always in other places,” interjected Regina.

  “But not here, where we’re dealing with a certain history, with a certain way that things have to be done,” said Wynne Blodgett’s daddy. “I’ll make sure you get what you’re needing. I want this thing cleared up. The town wants to put all this behind us. Right away, too. Before someone gets hurt.”

  Regina thought he’d look over at Mary Pickett; after all, she was the one who had—for whatever reason—gotten in touch with Thurgood. But Jackson Blodgett did not look at Mary Pickett Calhoun.

  “Thanks for your help,” said Regina.

  “Nothing at all. Any man would do all he could for a son that he loves. Willie Willie sure loved Joe Howard.” Jackson got up then, one hand on the newel, leveraging himself. He lifted his hat back onto his head. “Good day to you, Miss Mary Pickett.”

  He started off on the swept gravel that led to the front of the house, but his was a slow progress. One leg moved him forward, one leg limped behind. He’d been standing or sitting all the time Regina had seen him, and so she hadn’t noticed the limp.

  After a moment, Mary Pickett said, “Infantile paralysis. It got him when he was four, but nobody noticed right away that he had changed, that he was dragging his foot, that he couldn’t run anymore. His mama was long dead. His daddy working hard. Not paying attention. The sickness—when it went, it left him like that. I bet that’s something Willie Willie didn’t tell you.”

  No, Willie Willie had not told Regina that. But she wondered as she heard Jackson Blodgett’s halting steps, as she almost unconsciously started to count—one, two, three—the slow progression of them, down the lane, over the sidewalk. As she heard the opening and closing of his big car’s door. Limping like that, how on earth had he managed to run with the other children into Willie Willie’s forest? Or had he done this? Had he even been invited to come along at all?

  • • •

  THE TELEPHONE WAS right where Mary Pickett had said it would be, in the kitchen. A big, black, old-fashioned thing, attached to the wall, just inside the door. There was a worn white stool beneath it, a container of kitchen matches hooked just to the right of it on the wall, an open package of Old Gold cigarettes on the linoleum counter. Regina had seen Mary Pickett smoke Chesterfields. She wondered whose cigarettes these were. Little Dinetta’s? Surely not.

  There didn’t seem to be anybody around, not Mary Pickett, not even Dinetta.

  Across from Regina, on the other side of the room, there was a double door. The top of it opened to the rest of the house. Regina listened hard. There was no sound from beyond the kitchen, no Dinetta humming as she dusted or swept carpets, no sound of Mary Pickett’s typewriter keys. Regina grew curious, or even more curious, since she’d always wondered about this house, what was in here. But the thought that if she peeked through, she might find herself looking straight at Dinetta or, worse, Mary Pickett, kept her firmly in place by the back door. Around her, the kitchen gleamed spotless. The Frigidaire hummed, the clock ticked against its own wall, and the whole place smelled of ammonia. There was no sign of any cooking going on. For the first time she wondered if it was Peach who did the cooking, if she came in, specially, some days to do this. Peach had mentioned she did laundry. Did she do Mary Pickett’s, and did she do it here?

  Regina picked up the telephone receiver, asked politely for New York, and gave the number, two letters, four digits. She listened for a moment to the click and the static, looking out through the back screen at a different view of Mary Pickett’s grounds than what she was used to. From here she could see a few stray carrots, a few leaves of collards, left to decay on the dark earth. She thought these must be the remnants of a Victory Garden, maybe one that was still being nurtured, still going on.

  The operator cut in: “Your connection is ready.”

  When Lillian, the receptionist at the Fund, answered, Regina asked for Thurgood.

  “Now, weren’t you glad about that pillow?” Thurgood enjoyed a good joke, especially when the joke was one of his own. His laughter washed through her, a tonic. “Nothing like a Southern bus to wake up a colored person’s butt. When did they change you over?”

  “Richmond.”

  “Could have been worse. Sometimes they do it as early as Washington, D.C.” Then, “What’s going on?”

  Regina took a deep breath. It was true Thurgood had let her come down here, and alone, but she was thinking now this might have been a snap decision. He’d been tired that day, discouraged. By now he could have changed his mind. He would have had time to go into “Reggie’s Room,” look at the mountain of cases in it, and wonder why on earth he had let Regina out from under them. Was investigating the death of one veteran worth all this?

  “You sure you don’t need Skip to come down?” Thurgood said, maybe reading this into her hesitation. “Help you out?”

  Oh, God. The last thing she wanted!

  She let her breath out on a rush of words. “No, I don’t need Skip.”

  “Then tell me what you got.”

  Not much—even she had to admit this. She didn’t mention the shirt—this was a party line, and she’d save that for later. But she told him everything else—about going over to the Duvals’, told him about reading Mary Pickett’s book on the steps of his law offices in order to get let in. Thurgood laughed. This reassured Regina, at least some. Quickly, she went on to Jackson Blodgett and his offer to get the grand jury proceedings for her.

  Thurgood was as curious about this as she had been. “Why would he do that?”

  “He said he wants to cooperate in any way he can in finding out who killed that boy.” Imitating Blodgett, Regina drawled the words out. “He didn’t quite call Joe Howard a nigra, but he might have.”

  “Oh, so he’s Joe Howard now,” said Thurgood. “You be careful about getting personally involved.”

  “He’s dead,” said Regina, blushing.

  “You know what I mean. You put yourself in it, get emotional, you’re going to miss something. You met his daddy?”

  Regina told him about Willie Willie. She caught herself looking through the screen door as she talked, half expecting him to come in.

  Thurgood said, “Sounds like a character. Now, what’s she like?”

  “Prim. Proper. All the things you’d expect in an aging Southern belle.” Regina almost told him that Mary Pickett had once been married to Jackson Blodgett, but then changed her mind. Something like that, the bond, just might intrigue Thurgood. But if Thurgood got intrigued, then Skip could get intrigued, too, and somehow or other finagle a way to come down. Even though Thurgood couldn’t see her, Regina shook her head to that. She’d call him again when she knew more. There would be time enough to bring up that long-ago marriage then.

  “Anything else happen?”

  “No,” said Regina. Crossing her fingers.

  “Good. But you better tell your client . . .”

  They heard a cough.

  Oh, God. She’d forgotten to warn him.

  “Party line,” she said.

  Thurgood seemed to consider this. “Anything else?”

  She thought about telling him about Wynne Blodgett, but remembered that cough.

  Regina looked out the window, saw that it was still light. The words seemed to come out of her mouth before she even thought them. “There’s a colored lawyer. Tom Raspberry. At least, I think he’s a lawyer. Everybody’s telling me I should go talk to him.”

  “Then do it. Keep in touch.” And with that Thurgood hung up the phone.

  • • •

  IN REVERE, Regina found Tom Raspberry’s o
ffice the same way she would have found it in New York. She went up to the first colored person she saw on Main Street and asked him where it was. He was an old black man on a rusted bicycle peddling fresh eggs layered from a wicker basket that had been lashed by a rope onto the front handlebars.

  “Tom Raspberry’s office? Please.”

  The man’s reply was slow and specific. He got off his bicycle, took off his hat. His smile was wide and toothless, almost beatific. “You the lady lawyer come down from New York to help out Willie Willie?”

  “Yes, my name is Regina Robichard.” She held out her hand, and he took it. His own hand was hard and work-callused, but it surprised Regina, after days spent introducing herself to wary white folks in Revere, Mississippi, how good it felt to be touching human flesh again.

  “And my name’s Ben T.”

  Ben T. said he’d be glad to help her. Ride her over there on the back of his bike if she wanted him to. Regina thanked him but said no, she didn’t want to put him to any trouble.

  “No trouble at all,” he said. But in the end he nodded, pointed out the way, and then walked her down two blocks, going out of his way to make sure that she understood it.

  “Once you get there, you’ll know where you are,” Ben T. told her. “He’s right there on the corner. Tom Raspberry’s building himself up a new place.”

  She thought about this, three blocks down, when she turned the corner onto what a bright sign told her was Catfish Alley. And Catfish Alley was definitely a jumping place.

  One thing Regina suddenly realized she’d missed in Revere were signs of progress. The war was over; the rest of the nation an active hive of rebuilding, of the old going down and the new strutting up. But not in Revere, not from what Regina had seen. Here the houses appeared to be all old Victorians and staid antebellums. Anna Dale Buchanan’s bungalow had been surrounded by other bungalows, not one of which looked less than fifty years old. Even the shacks she’d seen out of the corner of her eye on that first night, riding into town with Willie Willie, had been unpainted and crumbling, almost falling-down ancient.