Regina said, “I’m sorry about your uncle.” But what she was thinking, though, was how his voice changed when he told this story. How his grammar switched, how he started dropping his g’s, started subtly rearranging his words. As though this wasn’t his story at all but something he had maybe heard repeated by his daddy, by his mother—rehearsed to him by his family and just taken up.
Wynne said, “Don’t have it on me now, but next time I see you, I’ll show you his picture. Think you’d like that?”
Regina said that she would.
“You know the one brought us the news? Told my daddy—nine years old, he was—to come, haul off his big brother’s body?”
“No.”
“Willie Willie!” Wynne’s voice rose triumphant. “That uppity nigger always thought he was better than everyone else, and sure thought he was better than we were. Curled his fat lips right on up in the air whenever he saw us. Arrogant coon, always doing what the rich white folks wanted him to do. Anybody kin to Judge Calhoun. Anybody who’d help his little nigger kid, Joe Howard, go on.”
Gotcha!
Rising to the surface.
Regina could almost hear Peach whisper the words.
Regina had to force herself to breathe, but still she said nothing. They sat side by side on that porch, the night gathering around them in that magic hour that quieted the day birds and welcomed those that sang in the night. Wynne reached below the porch steps, pulled out a clear jug where something dark and liquid danced. He took a swig, then offered it to Regina. She shook her head no.
And then immediately realized she had made a mistake, because Wynne snapped, “It’s not nice to always say no. Didn’t your mama teach you good manners?” Breaking the calm, taking him out of the rhythm of his story, which was where he belonged. Regina jumped, automatically held out her hand, but he laughed. “Naw. You don’t want it. You’re not the fun-loving type. But then again”—a thoughtful silence—“neither was Joe Howard.”
And it became that easy. Peach had been right. Wynne didn’t see a reason in the world he should hide what he’d done. Who’d come after him—the judges, the jury, for killing an uppity black man? That had already been tried and Wynne had won. Now he thought he could say anything he wanted to. He was white. He was rich, and he ruled this land because of what his born-poor daddy had become.
The moment now. The point of his story.
No longer afraid, Regina leaned close.
Whispered, “Mr. Blodgett, did you kill Joe Howard Wilson?”
“Yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes!” White lightning flaming out of his mouth. A dragon’s breath. And his eyes full on her, searing right through her. “They all call him a hero—but Regina, honey, you should have heard that nigger scream.”
a MOMENT in the MAGIC FOREST
OCTOBER 1945
Gotcha!
He gets off the bus, Joe Howard, counting. One, two, three steps, all down onto dirt and the dry heave of mulch. Onto the dying crunch of an unfortunate bug. Into a familiar scent of forest that’s released by the touch of his Army dress shoes. And for an instant he feels safe, is safe. He is home. His feet settled on his earth now, but his mind counting again. Six, seven, eight—a good ten white men.
Because home is also “Get moving, nigger. Cussing in front of white women. Keeping an officer of the law waiting. You got yourself some manner learning to do.”
Joe Howard, an officer freshly discharged from his nation’s army, wants to say, “Call me sir, you goddamn cracker.” He wants to add, “And if you want something from me, you better tack on a please.” He wants to say these things and swagger out more. But of course he doesn’t. He’s home, after all. He lost his temper on the bus, and look where it got him.
Gone so many years; so much happened to change him: school, a war, foreign lands. But nothing had changed him. A white man tells him to do something, and he does it. His feet are touching Mississippi again before he thinks, Why, I didn’t have to get off that bus. Who compelled me to do that? I didn’t have to do what a white man told me to do. But by then . . . Well, the bus is starting up again. The child Manasseh at the window, his hands splayed like a prayer against its cracked glass. Eyes big as saucers, tears flowing from them. Manasseh, he’s looking at something he’ll never forget. And from another window there’s Miss Anna Dale. She’s shaking her head. Maybe she’s crying, too.
Can he really see them, Joe Howard, through all the dark and the gloom? Maybe. And maybe that is the best he can do, because there’s the bright Bonnie Blue pulling off now. Rumbling away. Going. Going. Gone. Taking the light, leaving the darkness.
Leaving Joe Howard and those men . . . those men, their faces shrouded behind white flour sacks.
Again, that word, nigger. Again, that word, lesson. And through it all the purposeful rustle of small animals, of little critters, because they know what happens when men show up this late in the forest. Not everything in it is gonna live through it. The animals realize this. They skitter off.
Joe Howard thinks about skittering off, too. After all, this is his forest. He knows every inch of it, its toothache trees, its dancing rabbits, its healing plants. He knows secret river bluffs old as Jesus himself. Where to find arrowheads the Natchez Indians left behind, where the caves are, where to hide—he knows all that.
Trouble is, these white men, the ones hiding out in the white dragon hoods, they grew up here, too. Maybe they grew up with him here. Who can tell? So trouble is, this is their forest as well. No hiding away. No thinking you’re safe here. Not when his daddy was the one who taught it to them, and now they know every inch of it, too.
Years gone, boys now covered up by the white sheets of dragon men, but still Joe Howard recognizes some things. A cough, particular in the way it rattles upward, goes on and on, doesn’t want to stop. He wants to say, “That you, Sonny?” But they’re not boys any longer. He’d have to call him Mr. Sonny. But with school behind him and a war and foreign lands, Joe Howard is damned if he’ll do that now.
“Damn officer. He needs to learn how to take him some orders.”
Take him some orders? What kind of no-account talking is that?
The first blow. Didn’t see it coming. He staggers. Another one, harder this time. Joe Howard still standing. Refusing to let himself go down into the dust from someone close up to him. Someone who’s taken off his hood. Someone who knows it doesn’t matter one bit if Joe Howard can see his face because who’s gonna care? Joe Howard squints closer. Young. Clean-looking. Light hair—but those eyes. Doesn’t Joe Howard know those eyes? Isn’t this someone his daddy warned him about, told him about, told him to keep clear of? Specially warned. That’s what Joe Howard remembers.
“Y’all ain’t nothing but a bunch of poor whites.”
His mouth again. Joe Howard finds himself flying. No way now he’s not gonna eat him some dust.
Joe Howard. That you? Hurry up! Catch up!
He’s flown so far that . . . Why, he’s in Italy. Taking that hill again, killing those Germans, his best friend, L.C., only a little ahead of him now.
“Come on, Joe Howard! Close now. You can catch up. No doubt about it!”
“L.C.,” he whispers in wonder. “It’s good to see you man but . . . aren’t you dead?”
“Shut that nigger’s mouth up!”
Joe Howard soaring again, and now the Germans are everyplace, speaking their English with Southern accents.
“Did you see that coon crawl? Crawl, coon, crawl.” Kicks raining like bullets on him. Joe Howard counting them all. But he picks himself up . . . God, what an effort. Reaches up. Touches himself. Makes sure there’s no exploded L.C. on any part of him. Touching himself. Making sure he’s all here. He hears laughter. That’s how Joe Howard first knows he’s still alive, through his hands first and then through his ears. Still alive.
“Come on, catch up! Catch up!” L.C.
calling to him—or was it that magic child, Booker?
Teach him a lesson. Well, then, better get on with it now.
He gets up. Daylight in the forest now, sun shining all around him. It takes him a minute to realize what he’s looking at is headlights from a car. A big car, not black but blue. He sees this in torchlight. Who in hard-up Revere could afford a new car like that, flashy and bad?
“Aren’t you Jackie Earle Blodgett’s boy?” Words broken up by broken teeth. Thackie Earle Throckett. Pain that he’s in, Joe Howard has to stop himself from laughing. Jackie Earle Blodgett’s boy doing all this?
“Mr. Blodgett to you.”
Joe Howard down again, struggling up.
“You’d been a man, you’d have fought a man’s war. Not let your mama get you exempted.” This time, every single syllable ringing out of his mouth, clear as a bell. Joe Howard knows the whole story; his daddy has told him. Told him all about silk purses and sow’s ears, too.
This boy, this Wynne Blodgett boy, reaches over, pulling at him, yanking him up—with his free hand because he has a tire iron in the other.
“Hey, nigger soldier, what’s that you got on your chest?”
Joe Howard looks down in the bright light, in the sunlight from the car, and he sees his own medal. The one he got and that L.C. got, too—once he was dead. And this white boy’s got the nerve to be grabbing at it.
“Hey, Wynne, don’t you think . . . Man, this here’s Willie Willie’s boy . . .”
Caution in this voice and maybe a tremor of fear. Yes, fear. Joe Howard recognizes it, because he knows it, has always known it, really. Home like he is now, in this dark, dark forest that is his South.
Skittering again. This time men sneaking off. Like the critters before them, they know what’s coming next, too.
Now just Joe Howard. Just Wynne. Still reaching for that medal.
And Joe Howard’s reaching up to his own medal. Gets his hand around it. Jerks it off. Holds on tight. And now it’s more than a lesson. One. Two. Three. Four. His head. His arms. Crack. Splatter. He swallows, and something catches in his throat. He doesn’t know if it’s soft tears or hard teeth. Oh, yes, this is a very great lesson. Maybe the greatest lesson of all.
Hands okay, though, and that’s very important. Fingers still able to slip his medal off. Joe Howard struggles up. Lunges at that white boy, snatches him a button off that once-perfect now blood-splattered white boy’s white shirt. Holds it in his hand. Next to his medal. Already braced for what’s coming next when it comes.
Somebody’s chopping at a tree, bringing it down. Joe Howard hears the dull thudding, feels it too from where he is, his head once again in the dirt, his ear hearing the heartbeat of the forest.
All the time, catching up with L.C. And there—why, it’s his daddy off in the woods, coming on, running toward him, shouting, “Watch out, son. You be careful. It’s a strange place you headed for now.”
Joe Howard trying hard to hear him, trying hard not to count what was happening to him anymore and thinking, I’m done for. Thinking, I’m a dead man, but smiling, too, as he eases the medal and the bright button near to the Gotcha! roots of an old burdock tree. His daddy is coming, and he knows his daddy will track it. Won’t rest ’til he finds it.
And he wants his daddy to know who did this to him.
15.
Once away from The Folly, Regina ran to Calhoun Place, her heart hitching, looking back once or twice for the dog, for the man, but not stopping. Scared, oh, so scared—but also triumphant. Wynne had done it. He’d confessed.
She barely stopped, charged right through the big gate. Someone had switched on the single bulb over the front porch of the cottage, and there was light flooding out in greeting from Mary Pickett’s house. Even though it was chilly, the small electric oscillating fan on Mary Pickett’s front veranda blew a breeze through the bare azalea bushes that surrounded the wide porch. Regina rushed by, but not before she saw the silver tray perched on the railing with a decanter on it, two glasses, a small silver dish of what looked to be nuts. Regina thought immediately to Jackson Blodgett and looked around, but his big Buick was nowhere in sight. Neither was Willie Willie’s green truck parked there—it rarely was, lately—but she realized she’d been hoping to see it. She wanted to talk to Willie Willie first.
Instead, there was Mary Pickett, bent deep into the bushes, but she looked up and smiled at Regina and waved too, her face radiant, her hand filled with the shards of a broken glass.
She said, “I was worried. Dinetta said you hadn’t come home from downtown. I called myself setting out to find you, but then Mr. Blodgett came round. He said Wynne was out in the forest all day, but he’ll be here tomorrow, to fix up that wall. Make it like before, like nothing has happened.”
The air shimmered between them. Regina looked around at the house—the words on the side of it more vivid than ever in the dusk—at the gardens, at the gracious way one part of Calhoun Place flowed to another.
Mary Pickett was still smiling as Regina walked up to her.
“He did it,” she said. “Wynne did. He confessed.”
No question about what “it” was. Instantly, Mary Pickett’s face closed down. Not again. She sighed, brought out a little exasperated smile, like she didn’t understand why they never could move on, always ended up in the same place—a sweet entitled Calhoun place.
“To whom did he confess?”
“To me.”
“That so?”
Mary Pickett’s drawl slowed even more. But Regina saw change flare, bright as a comet, across her face, blazing away all its life and its color, leaving nothing behind but a mask of dead white. Paling her skin and lips, etching out the fine line of her nose until the only thing left of the Mary Pickett Regina knew were two fierce eyes. Sparking.
“But you knew that, didn’t you?” And as Regina said the words, she realized they were true. “Maybe you’ve always known. Still you had to assuage Willie Willie. Isn’t that what you said? Assuage him. So he would keep working for you.”
“He doesn’t work for me anymore. Or hadn’t you noticed?”
Each word drawn out, each syllable changed into two, but clean, easily recognizable. The way a well-brought-up Southern lady, Regina thought, might talk to the help. And she, Regina, was the help. Brought down, paid for, housed, fed. Maneuvered. Miss Calhoun pulling the strings all the time.
Something was dawning on Regina, and it was a dark something. “Then why?” she said, her words now just as drawn out as Mary Pickett’s had been. Buying time.
“I already told you why. I owed him.”
“Owed him for what?”
And suddenly of course Regina knew. How had she missed it? Willie Willie telling stories. Willie Willie knowing all the tales that made this place tick.
“For The Secret of Magic, of course.” Mary Pickett looked right at her. “It was his, all of it. He’s the one made everything up.”
Regina shook her head—No. No. No. In that short instant before she started to hate her, she realized now how much she’d started to like Mary Pickett, had thought, maybe, she’d met a good white person at last.
“But you made sure you put your name on it? Made sure you got the credit for what he thought up.” It was said so low she didn’t know if Mary Pickett had heard her.
But she had. She blushed scarlet. “I didn’t say it was his book. I said it was his story.”
“You mean you stole it from him?”
“There wasn’t any stealing to it. Willie Willie can’t . . .” But Mary Pickett’s mouth clamped down tight as a trap, biting off whatever else she might have said. Regina stood in front of her, almost breathless to hear what it was. Whether it would be an excuse or a defiance. She didn’t mind. She could argue with either. And she wanted to argue. She was dying to put an arrogant white woman like Mary Pickett Calhoun in her
place. Pretending to be so good, so interested in Willie Willie and his welfare, in Joe Howard, and all the time keeping the real money and the fame and the power. Fashioning herself the famous M. P. Calhoun, the great storyteller. Using Willie Willie to keep up what her ancestors had used his ancestors to build.
“Steal,” Regina repeated. “His ideas. From Willie Willie. After all he did for you.”
She snapped the words out and was gratified to see Mary Pickett flinch away from them.
Down but not out, Mary Pickett lifted her chin, turned toward the sanctuary of her house. “They were good stories. But what on earth could Willie Willie ever have done with them? You tell me that?” She flung the words back over her shoulder.
It wasn’t going to be that easy. Regina had no intention of letting it be that easy. Before she knew what she was doing, she had reached out and pulled Mary Pickett around.
“Is that it? Is that all you’ve got to say for yourself? Are you some kind of monster? Aren’t you even sorry for how you robbed him?”
Mary Pickett turned, wrenched her arm away, and smacked Regina with the lightning from her fierce eyes.
“Robbed him of what? What good would those stories ever have done him?” She paused for a moment, squared her shoulders. “Don’t you pay attention to anything? Willie Willie—he can’t read. He can’t write.”
The words, rushed out on a deep breath, seemed to deflate Mary Pickett. For a minute, something flickered across her face—entreaty, maybe—but then she stared pointedly down at Regina’s dark hand on her light arm, and whatever it had been, the look flashed away.
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