The Secret of Magic

by Johnson, Deborah

  “Mr. Duval won’t be happy. You bringing up things during an election year.”

  “Neither will his son be, Little Bed,” said Tom, and then he shrugged. But his shoulders came down with the weight of the world on them. Regina wondered if he, too, was thinking about that Confederate flag waving in pride of place over the courthouse, because she sure was.

  Think you can best me?

  “Forrest Duval’s got Bed, but I got my son, too,” said Tom. “When Tom Junior gets home from Jackson, he’s got to know his daddy’s going to be right here, standing beside him. And that I’ll continue to be there for him, no matter what comes up.”

  Regina looked around at Tom’s office, its dust so new it still smelled of cut trees, the long row of proud pictures and diplomas black-framed and hung so carefully on the main wall. A dynasty—that was what Tom was building, just like Jackson Blodgett was building his and the Duvals had built theirs and the Calhouns before them, all of them putting a greedy hand to whatever they could to get ahead. She liked the fact that Tom was just like they were, trusted him more for his self-interest than she trusted his change of heart. If he’d printed those flyers, tacked them up, then Regina knew a tide might be shifting. Tom Raspberry’s interests no longer melded perfectly at the edges of Forrest Duval’s interests, at least not anymore.

  From the hallway, she heard footsteps, then a knock at the door.

  Tom got up as it opened. He was smiling again, first at Regina and then at the man and the young boy that came through. Dressed just the same—white shirts, clean but faded blue pants, dark suspenders—they looked alike, too, the boy a miniature version of the thin, dark-skinned man. The child looked at Regina through eyes round as saucers.

  “Reverend Lacey!” Tom was at the door himself now, pumping the older man’s hand. “Good to see you, sir. Thanks for coming in. Thanks for bringing the boy.” Then, to Regina, “Miss Robichard, I’d like to introduce you to Reverend Charles K. Lacey. He saw one of your flyers down there where he lives near Macon. Called me up, first thing this morning. Said his grandson Manasseh’s got something you might want to hear.”

  • • •

  MANASSEH LACEY! She still could barely believe it. It had taken long moments of coaxing—the boy had been holding tight on to his grandfather’s hand the whole time—but eventually, slowly at first and then flooding, the words had come out. About the POWs, the Germans, the bus stopping, about a dark car waiting there, and about the men—men wearing hoods. And Regina was thinking, Nothing new here, nothing I haven’t already heard from Anna Dale Buchanan, when Manasseh said, “I knew one of them.”

  “One of whom?” She leaned closer, took his small hand, thinking at first he might mean one of the Germans—but how could that be?

  “One of the men by the big car.” A quick look at his grandfather. “One of the men waiting for Mr. Joe Howard.”

  Wynne Blodgett? Was this who Manasseh was talking about? Did Manasseh know him? Could he identify him? But she couldn’t say that. Her heart tapped away like thunder, but she couldn’t lead him. “Who was it?”

  “Sonny Taggart” came the child’s prompt response, and he wasn’t looking at his grandfather anymore, he was looking at Regina. “Lives down from us out in the county. He and his mama, out on Short Cut Road. Aunt Eloise does cleanup for them. Sometimes.”

  Manasseh paused, took a deep breath. “Juicy Fruit,” he whispered. “Lieutenant Wilson gave me a stick of it. He was nice to me.”

  Regina had to look away when he said it, toward Tom Raspberry, who was looking away, too.

  • • •

  SONNY TAGGART MIGHT not be Wynne Blodgett, but at least he was something. A lead.

  Rushing home, Regina weighed exactly what to do next—call Thurgood right now with what she had and see what he said? Or take this new information over to Bed Duval and see what, if anything, he would do? Or should she try to see Judge Timms? Was he even back yet?

  She had forgotten about Mary Pickett’s garden party, but when she rounded the corner onto Third Avenue she could hear the chatter and the music from it, violins enthusiastically struggling though an early movement of one of the Brandenburg Concertos. Regina paused at the gate, uncertain. Ahead of her stretched a string of linen-covered round tables threaded like fat white pearls through the green grass. Women in hats and flower-print silk dresses, their dimpled hands holding tightly on to glasses of what looked like iced tea—or possibly sherry or bourbon—all of which, Regina had learned, in Revere, was referred to as sweet tea. All white faces, all dimpled white hands—and of course they would be, milling leisurely about Mary Pickett Calhoun’s bright garden on a workday afternoon.

  Except for Dinetta, of course, though Regina hardly recognized her. She’d been spruced up, her brightness subdued, as it were, into a starched gray uniform, a frilly white apron, and a matching lace cap. Company clothes! But not completely—when Regina looked down she saw Dinetta still wore her normal, everyday, run-down, toe-cut-out oxfords. Company clothes, maybe—but not company shoes.

  Mary Pickett was nowhere to be seen in all the day’s brightness, but Regina imagined she was hiding out in a flower print somewhere herself. One thing for certain, she surely wasn’t there to give Regina direction as to how to get through this party to the cottage. She looked around, and for the first time really noticed the low, lush hedges that bordered Calhoun Place from one end to the other, effectively blocking entrance to the property except from the driveway. Regina decided there was no way around it; this was one party she’d have to crash, at least for a moment.

  She started up the driveway, more aware than she’d been since she got here of where she was and of everything around her. Sloping green lawn, a big white house, white tablecloths, white faces. As Regina drew nearer, conversation faltered, then stopped altogether, as though she’d turned into a brown cork that, popping along, plugged cheerful words back up into people’s throats.

  Somebody called out, “Hey, girl, fill up my drink.” Answered by titters. Not by everybody, at least it didn’t sound that way, but by a few. Regina’s hands tightened on her briefcase, her cheeks flamed, but she willed herself to keep moving. Two steps more and she didn’t have to force herself hard anymore. What was it Ida Jane always told her? “Consider the source. Anybody talking like that—tells you all you need to know about the way they were raised.” Besides, this was a story she could carry to the Fund, something she’d be able to throw into conversation when she got back to her small desk in the office. “Accent so thick, you could have cut through it with a knife. I felt lucky she didn’t call me worse than girl.” It might not be the war story some of the men could tell—no dogs, no guns, no threats of death in it—but at least she had a small tale of battle to tell. The anticipation of this made her feel better.

  Relieved, she made it through the cottage door, but she’d barely closed it, hadn’t had time to put down her hat and her gloves, when the rapping started up. One sharp knock after the other. Regina bent down, peeked through the window, and there was a woman staring back, right at her, straight in the eye. It was the same woman who had called her girl, and she was clutching a recognizable piece of thin blue paper in her hand.

  The flyer.

  “Open up and come on out here.”

  Regina rolled her eyes heavenward, took a deep breath, but really, what could she do? She pulled at the door.

  “I’m Mrs. Blodgett,” said the woman. Regina blinked, kept her face carefully impassive. “Mrs. Jackson Blodgett.”

  Regina nodded. Mrs. Blodgett. Mrs. Jackson Blodgett, quite round, had forced herself or been forced into a dress that was bright yellows and pinks, a flower print meant to stand out from the bouquet with which she had been surrounded on the Calhoun Place south lawn. Everything else about her seemed just as willing to stand out as well, from the piled-high pitch of her blond hair to the way her skin dipped deep into the crevices that sur
rounded her sharp, seen-it-all eyes.

  “Mrs. Jackson Blodgett,” the woman repeated. In case Regina had not understood.

  “Regina Robichard,” she said, and then, for a moment, became Mary Pickett Calhoun, a woman faced with dilemmas. Should she reach out a hand in greeting to this awful woman? Did courtesy demand that she invite her in?

  Mae Louise Blodgett did not appear to have any problem handling good manners as they pertained to race. What might befuddle Regina or even puzzle Mary Pickett Calhoun did not concern her at all. Mae Louise stepped smartly back from the door. No, she would not come inside. She left Regina’s hand straggling outward. No, she should not shake hands.

  “Don’t need to tell me who you are. The whole town knows about you, Missy.”

  Regina remembered where she was—Mississippi—and held on to her temper. No need to make a scene. She came out of the cottage, all the time thinking that never in a million years would she have pictured this woman with Jackson Blodgett, his wife. Uh-uh, thought Regina, suddenly seeing Mary Pickett’s face again as it turned slowly to Jackson. The way it lit up, like a flower taking its life from the sun.

  Maybe that’s why Mrs. Jackson Blodgett had introduced herself twice. Maybe there were other people in Revere who had trouble with the idea of the two of them—her with her husband—together. And yet they should have fit just right. They were about the same height and even resembled each other, with their careless way of dressing, their shared keen eyes and sharp features, and the silver that was starting to show in their hair. Looked alike—but maybe they weren’t alike. Regina remembered how Willie Willie had imitated this woman and made her laugh with the imitation. “My name is Mae Louise Wynne, and my father is a gentleman planter from over Carroll County, Alabama.” And she remembered Willie Willie’s snort of derision, too.

  For a second, she almost felt sorry for this woman, who held tight to Jackson Blodgett’s name because, maybe, she might not feel she had a real place in his heart. But that sympathetic feeling was not destined to last.

  “And I know who you are,” said Regina, stepping out, closing the door behind her. “Wynne Blodgett’s mother.”

  Mae Louise had a carefully defined painted red mouth. She creased it up now. She also had fewer wrinkles than Mary Pickett had but wore a great deal more makeup in an effort to hide the ones she had. Base and powder, rouge and mascara; Regina saw each as a separate, careful delineation upon the geography of Mae Louise’s broad face.

  For a moment, she and Regina stood on the smoothed cement in front of the cottage, both aware they were being covertly watched by the ladies still out on the lawn, all of them calm as the middle of a hurricane’s eye. The scent of Confederate roses and of autumn clematis and sweet olive combined around them, all mixed together, intoxicating and strong.

  Mae Louise came right to her point. “This was found on top that stone nigger boy outside my house, the one with the electric lighted lantern. You’ve seen him?” A small knowing smirk.

  “Yes, Mr. Willie Willie showed me the statue the first day I got here.”

  “I thought he might have. It’s a county landmark. He’d be the one to show it off.” Another twitch of her lips. “Anyhow, this whatever you call it . . .” She waved the paper so close into Regina’s face that it almost, not quite, slapped her. Regina narrowed her eyes, folded her arms over her chest, gratified when Mae Louise took the slightest step back.

  “This flyer,” Wynne’s mother continued, “was glued right top that boy’s nappy head when I got up first thing this morning. You got any idea who put it there?”

  “No, I do not.” And Regina honestly didn’t.

  “Well, I do. We been having some trouble over at the house. Your man Willie Willie, he’s the one did this. At least, that’s what my boy says. My husband means to take measures.”

  Mae Louise spoke quickly, one word flying over the other, fast and high. Regina caught her as she glanced covertly over her shoulder at the others, though by now all the ladies had seen her, had seen where she’d gone and were diligently and earnestly talking to one another or looking down at their tea in a polite attempt not to notice. But Mae Louise Blodgett didn’t seem to mind. She knew she had their attention and that what she said now would very shortly be all over town—just as she intended it should, a sly way to embarrass the woman her husband had married first and get some prick of jealous revenge. Regina wondered if this had been going on for years. If there had been moves and countermoves. Regina looked around for Mary Pickett but still didn’t see her anywhere.

  Making sure her voice carried, Regina said, “Mrs. Blodgett, I have no idea what you mean. But I will say that if you continue to insinuate accusations against my client, we will take appropriate action. In the courts.”

  Little good that would do, but at least she’d answered something back. She hadn’t let herself be rolled over.

  The collective gasp from the lawn was quick and precise. Mae Louise Blodgett’s face flared a stunning vermilion. Behind her, the stirring of spoons against cups died down. Regina looked over and there was a woman eyeing them, her mouth still caught in a shocked, gaping “Oh.”

  And then there, at last, was Mary Pickett at an out-of-the-way table where she must have been all the time, her eyes fixed not on them but on the rough asphalt sidewalk that ran along the front of her house. The place where Jackson had stood, looking up, on that long-ago day when she’d first seen him. The day he’d been facing north. And away from here.

  “Jackson assured me,” his wife now said, “that he means to get us some protection. It’s all just a bunch of mess, since that nigger soldier got himself killed over in Alabama.”

  Regina’s mouth popped indignantly open, but Mae Louise shot her own words out first.

  “I know what people are saying about my Wynne, that he had something to do with this. Insinuating things without proof. People maybe jealous of what we got.”

  “Somebody would accuse your son of murder because they were jealous?” Regina thought of Peach. She thought of Anna Dale Buchanan. “That doesn’t make much sense.”

  “It sure does to a lot of folks living here. That’s why the whole thing got thrown out by the grand jury.”

  “It got dismissed because of lack of evidence, not because he was innocent. And the right evidence might still be forthcoming.” Regina, almost quaking with anger, managed to keep her voice smooth as silk.

  “Really?” said Mae Louise Blodgett, no slouch in the smooth-as-silk department herself. “I imagine it was niggers told you that.”

  “Negroes,” corrected Regina. “And whites.”

  “Niggers.” The word deliberately repeated. “No matter what all y’all call yourself, you better watch out. There’s folks around here knows how to call a spade a spade—and how to lay one out, if you catch my meaning.” She smiled, made sure that Regina knew what she was threatening before she went on. “Oh, we know all about Anna Dale Buchanan, what she says. But she didn’t see anything, and everybody knows she’s sure been strange since her boy got his self killed. Keeps to herself. Doesn’t know what’s going on, what went on. Doesn’t really care, not anymore.”

  The wind picked up, breezing in from the river, scattering leaves off the maple at the entrance to the drive and across the street at Raymond Hall, tearing at the clematis and the last of the roses, whipping the scent of them into the air. It ruffled the blue sheet Mae Louise still clutched, daggerlike, in her hand.

  “And as for that ungrateful rascal Tom Raspberry . . . He’s got his nerve starting up with that nigger group—yes, of course, I already know all about it—what with all old Mr. Forrest Duval did to help him get on and so, and my own Mr. Blodgett owning the mortgage on everything that old coon’s got . . . I do declare, I can’t even begin to cogitate what he’s thinking. But when my husband sees this . . .” Again, she waved the flyer, two inches from Regina’s nose this time. �
��Why, I guess we’ll find out.”

  Mae Louise Blodgett’s voice droned on and on. Regina looked out beyond her and watched as the ladies, Mary Pickett’s supposed-to-be good friends in the Revere Garden Club, put down their napkins and gathered up their plant cuttings. They looked at their watches and made discreet noises about husbands and children and dinner. They walked down Mary Pickett’s cleanly swept driveway, blew kisses to one another, and disappeared from her life.

  13.

  Gotcha!

  Regina was at the end edge of sleep when there she was once again, suddenly, deep, deep within The Secret of Magic, hiding out in its pages, safe from the world. She was on the street in front of Mary Pickett’s house, the one the young Jackie Earle Blodgett had stood on, the one with the gnarled roots of magnolias that glared out through the broken asphalt of the sidewalk. The roots that looked like alligator eyes, poised ready to spot you.

  Ready to call out,

  Gotcha!

  Right there—with their reptile teeth, sharp as stilettos, ready to bite you and eat you and disappear you right out of this world.