The Secret of Magic

by Johnson, Deborah

  “You let go of me right this minute,” said the mistress of Calhoun Place, cutting the words out, sharp as a scissors. “That’s all I got to say to you. Take your hands off me and don’t you ever touch me again or I will not hesitate to call the sheriff and have you thrown right into the jail. Bury you so deep under it they’ll need every lawyer at that Negro Fund down here working before you’ll have even a hope of seeing daylight again. This is Mississippi, and you don’t understand a thing going on down here. What Wynne said to you—it doesn’t matter. He was amusing himself, just passing the time. But that doesn’t matter because he’s just like you, you two could be peas in a pod—both expert at getting all the facts straight and all they mean wrong.”

  • • •

  CAN’T READ. Can’t write.

  Not that it mattered, really, not in her estimation of Willie Willie, but Mary Pickett . . . Mary Pickett was something else. A thief now. A plagiarist, even. Seeing nothing bad in what she’d done, and able to get away with it, too. People like Mary Pickett, like Wynne . . . nothing to stop them. Talk about being peas in a pod. Anger sputtered through Regina; a current of it, deeply charged.

  Regina tossed and turned the whole night, woke up tired the next morning, her fists clinched tight around the snowy white sheets. She got dressed, drank only the black coffee Dinetta had left in a thermos for her, and stepped out from the cottage. The day was bright and clear, air cool to the touch. She walked to the side of Calhoun Place, to the path where the sidewalk met the street. She saw it again, that NIGGER LUVER, and she marveled that she had passed right by it last night, so angry with Mary Pickett that she’d forgotten to look. But Wynne would come, and the painters with him, just like Jackson Blodgett promised, and they’d scrape it off, cover it over, make sure that it disappeared. And soon everyone would forget what had been written, like they seemed to forget so much else.

  Regina was standing on the sidewalk, her hand shielding her eyes, staring up at the wall, when Wynne Blodgett drove up in his daddy’s blue Buick. An old Ford truck—not Willie Willie’s—turned onto Third Avenue behind him. When Wynne stopped, it stopped, and three men climbed out. They wore everyday clothes—dungarees, wool plaid shirts, heavy mud-spattered lace-up boots—clothes that looked like people actually worked in them. One of them had on an Army jacket, and he resembled Wynne, the same golden hair. They were all of them young. Young and sturdy. Not one of them looked at Regina.

  They followed Wynne around to the side of the house, the notorious side. Even now other cars were easing down Third with their windows open so that folks who hadn’t already seen could take a look-see. There were no policemen keeping order, no one said anything to them, but when they caught sight of Jackson Blodgett’s Buick, the gawkers uniformly quickened their motors and moved on.

  The men who’d come with Wynne reached into the back of the truck. They pulled out paint cans, two ladders, brushes. One of them stared over at Mary Pickett’s poor, stricken wall and started slowly shaking his head. But he was smiling; a slow, calm smirk that Regina could recognize even from where she stood. If she tried to leave, this was a phalanx she’d somehow have to get through. And she just wasn’t up to it. Not today. She decided she’d wait here until they were well into their work, then she’d walk out, up the street. She’d go to Tom Raspberry, tell him what Wynne had told her. Mary Pickett said it didn’t matter, but maybe Mary Pickett was wrong.

  Regina watched Wynne point out the side of Calhoun Place, shake his head. How could this happen? Who’d have done such a thing? Now, looking at his son, Regina could imagine what Mary Pickett had seen in Jackson Blodgett—at least, she could almost imagine it. Good girl meets bad boy. Good girl saves bad boy. Good girl runs off with bad boy. No matter what details the plot promised, the story itself always read out the same. The bad boy won. He won because he was stronger. Not only was that the way in Mississippi, it was the way of the world.

  But Mary Pickett, The Secret of Magic—what good was speculation about any of that now? Wynne Blodgett had confessed. At least, to Regina he had.

  Wynne stopped pointing and talking, and he was moving toward her. The sun was behind him, and Regina lifted her hand, shaded her eyes from it, unconsciously mimicking Mary Pickett. She didn’t have anything to say to Wynne Blodgett, but she did think it better not to turn and run off, not after what he’d said to her. It had taken all the strength she had to ease herself away from him last night, to get up off that porch, not to throw up in his face.

  He didn’t seem to expect her to run now either. Last night she’d sat very near to him, but she hadn’t seen the color of his eyes, hadn’t paid attention if they were dark like his father’s or icy light like his mother’s. Regina wondered why that should suddenly become important to her, but it had. Maybe because you could see the telltale gleam in them a mile off.

  Though Wynne wasn’t a mile away from her now. He was close and getting closer.

  In all her life, Regina had seen only one photograph of her father. It had sat, prominently displayed, on a mahogany table in her mother’s apartment and had followed Ida Jane when she married, to dominate the mantel in Dr. Sam’s house. The photograph had been a studio shot. In it her daddy looked strong and vital, not the kind of man who would be easy to kill. But he had been killed. Which meant the men who lynched him must be enormous—at least, they had always seemed enormous to Regina’s child’s mind. Mythical in their power, these men who had been able to reach out and take her father’s life, and with it her mother’s life and her own not-yet-born life—take them up in their hands, crush them to dust, scatter them to the wind.

  “Want to sit down.” Wynne’s tone was pleasant, but what he said obviously wasn’t a question. Sit down or else. Regina caught herself looking around for Mary Pickett but then stopped. What help had Mary Pickett ever been?

  He said, “I brought that thing I promised to show you. The picture.”

  What picture? She thought he must be talking about something he’d said last night, but he couldn’t possibly think she’d be interested in anything else he had to say. Not after he’d admitted killing Joe Howard.

  But still . . .

  He’d talked to her. He’d told her things he perhaps hadn’t meant to. If she got him talking again, who knows what might come out?

  He was already cutting across the lawn, and she followed him to the rusted white wrought-iron table and chairs that sat in front of Willie Willie’s cottage door.

  Settled, Wynne reached into his back pocket, pulled out a wallet, pulled out a snapshot. Leaned closer.

  “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.

  16.

  An 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 . . .’”