The Secret of Magic (34 page)

Another low growl.

She made up her mind. The only way out was the way she’d come in. She must have moved even as the thought registered, because she’d eased down the last step, was reaching for the doorknob—and it was so close, barely two feet away—when he lunged. And he bit.

Regina screamed.

Over and over again, he lifted her forearm in his teeth, shook his head back and forth with it in there like he was playing with a bone, and maybe he was. All on the arm that she’d thrown over her face. Teeth cracking in, pulling slowly out, and worse when they did come out. Because she knew another bite was coming, and another. And another. Pain so deep she couldn’t locate it on her body anymore, just had to let it shriek out from within.

She was screaming so hard that at first she thought the shot was just another thing erupting from her own mouth. Thought the blood flooding over her was her blood. Thought the body slumping over her was her own body, dead.

“Oh, God.” It was Mary Pickett’s voice, breathless and shaky as an old lady’s.

“Oh, God,” said Mary Pickett’s strange new voice again.

But the hands that lifted that dog’s body off her were sure, and they were strong. And the feet that clattered into the kitchen hit hard on the floor.

“He’s dead. I killed him. I heard you when I drove up. In the driveway, I heard it. The dog, and then you . . . I’d been out to the forest. I had my rifle.”

Mary Pickett was babbling, but the cup of water she held out was cool, and it felt good.

“Got to stop the blood. Got to get that sweater off you. Such a pretty sweater it was. I saw it that first day. The one we both had alike. Got to get burdock root for that wound. That’s what Willie Willie would put on it. That, and sage. Must be sage in the kitchen. Got to call Dr. Sherrod. Oh, heavens, he’ll be out in the forest . . . Peach’s already dead, but how will he know? Willie Willie will know, though, and I got to get him.”

Mary Pickett moved quickly. She lifted up her skirt, ripped off a piece of her slip, wrapped it around Regina’s arm, all the time talking.

“Got to . . .”

“Got to . . .”

“Got to . . .”

Got to run, Collie!

Got to fly, Jack!

Got to hide Booker

Way deep in the forest.

Before it’s too late.

I
n the night, when she woke up, Regina thought she saw Mary Pickett still with her. There was a thin patter of rain falling on the tin porch over the cottage columns and the determined sound of squirrels under the roof settling in for the night. But it was Mary Pickett she was most aware of, or thought she was aware of. To the end of her life, Regina would never be able to tell. Because there was Mary Pickett, sitting on the edge of her bed, on the edge of
Willie Willie’s
bed. Mary Pickett right there in the cottage, a place so near but one she’d never actually been in before. Regina lay there, unconscious and conscious, hearing or maybe not hearing, feeling safe again, her eyes closed.

“There, there,” crooned Mary Pickett or the dream Mary Pickett. It didn’t matter. Regina knew whoever was sitting here with her was someone warm, someone safe. Because Willie Willie was sitting there, too.

“She’ll be fine. Doc Sherrod said you did good by her—putting on that burdock right away. Drawing out the poison. She’ll bear watching, and they might have to do the rabies. Wynne Blodgett, though . . . At least he’s the kind would keep his dog clean.”

“You think he did it?” Again, Mary Pickett’s faint whisper.

“I
know
he did it. Dog’s not gonna come up here, let his own self into the house. Mr. Wynne kept that animal under close watch.” There was a pause. Regina heard rain sheeting harder on the roof, but the squirrels in the attic seemed to have quieted. “He’s the one killed Peach, too.”

No argument, no defense. Only silence now from Mary Pickett.

It was Willie Willie who went on.

“I taught all those folks, most of them when they were little more than little. They walked out with me into the forest. Bed Duval and Rand Connelly, sometimes their daddies with them. Your daddy came. And Jackie Earle Blodgett came, too, at least sometimes. Early on. So they all knew what they were seeing. A blind man could have followed Wynne and those no-account friends of his and his cousin kinfolks, and not even Jackie Earle, his own daddy’s that blind. He was right there with us, the whole town was, when we found Peach.

“There was three of them. It was easy tracking three different kinds of boot leather touching the ground. Jackie Earle’s Buick Wynne’s always going around in . . . No other car here’s got wheels that big. Out there—why, they splashed kerosene all around the house and that little out-back kitchen, threw on a match so the whole thing burned up even. No more burn on the kitchen than there was on the house, and there would have been—if it was the kitchen gone up first. Beer bottles everywhere. Pabst Blue Ribbon. And Mason jars full of that hooch they brew. It was like Wynne
wanted
folks to know it was him.
Dared
them to know it and be damned.”

His voice broke. For a moment, there was nothing but silence. Regina didn’t know how long it lasted, then Willie Willie again: “They tied her to one of old Miss Lindleigh’s best chairs. Thing is, Wynne always hated Peach. Never was scared of him. Peach would stand right on up to him, and he knew it. Hated her all his young life. I just don’t know what it was exactly that set him off now. Why he’d come for Peach. Why he’d come for Miss Regina.”

But Regina knew.
The shirt. Wynne thought Peach had the shirt.

She tried to struggle up, but nothing on her moved, she could only listen. She thought Mary Pickett would start in about The Folly, about how Regina had slugged Wynne, how hopelessly silly and stupid she’d been and a failure. But Mary Pickett just sat there. She didn’t say a word.

“They all know who set that fire. I saw them—all of them, starting with that timeworn Forrest Duval, and going right on down to the boys, the little twelve-year-olds come out there with the men to help out—all of them looked over at Jack Blodgett quick like. They’re thinking,
He got to get his boy out of here
or there’s gonna be trouble. Maybe he’s gone too far now, killin’ an old lady like that.
You could read it on their faces, how they wanted to sweep Wynne under a rug someplace, hide him away. Pretend,
We only dealing with Nigras here and we got our ways and our laws, so it’s not really a problem.
But most of these are pretty good people, and inside, down there deep in the dark where they keep things like Wynne Blodgett . . . why, down there what he’s done is eatin’ ’em up.”

“But there must be some proof. You got to get
proof
.” Mary Pickett was herself again, bossy and in charge.

“You can get all the proof you want to, Miss Mary Pickett,” Willie Willie said slowly. “They don’t want to see it . . . proof’s never enough. Not when folks turn scared. And they are scared, frightened what they been hiding from gonna jump out and bite them.”

In the corner of the room, just behind his shadow and Mary Pickett’s, were those three
Magic
children. Even through her shut-tight eyelids, Regina saw them quite clearly. And their eyes were wide open. Their hands clamped tight over their mouths.

They were staring at Willie Willie and shaking their heads.

• • •

BUT WHEN REGINA WOKE UP
the next morning the only person still there was Willie Willie. He was sitting in the barkcloth-covered easy chair that he had drawn up close to her bed and his fingers were playing, again, with that bright spot of silver, just like they had been the first time she’d seen him on the gravel out at the bus depot here in Revere.

“How’s Peach?” She winced and looked over to see her arm a mass of white gauze and adhesive bandages, with, at the end, five swollen fingers barely peeking out.

“Ol’ Peach, she be off now for Glory.”

“Off for Glory? What’s that mean?” But struggling up in the bed, she remembered.

“Peach died, Miss Regina. That fire out there in the forest—she went out with it.”

She looked over at him, then, focused, saw the shirt on his lap. Of course he had found it. He’d know where to look. It was his cottage, after all. And he’d guess that Peach had given it to her, not like Wynne Blodgett, who didn’t know and would think Peach had kept the shirt to herself and—maybe—finally got scared and had killed her to get it. Wynne Blodgett, a man like that, how could you figure out what was going on in his head?

But Willie Willie didn’t say anything about Wynne Blodgett, not to her. For a moment, they just sat there, two black people, one old, one young—and Regina wondered where the anger was, where had it disappeared to? Because surely, she thought, she ought to still be angry. Her mother would be mad as hell. Things running on like they were in Mississippi—Ida Jane would be pitching a fit.

Except this was
her
fault. Regina knew it. If she hadn’t hit Wynne. If she’d just bided her time, kept hold of her temper. If she hadn’t told him about that shirt.

“Mr. Willie Willie . . .”

He shushed her. “Miss Mary Pickett done told me everything. About what you told Wynne. About how you punched him.” A chuckle. “Anything you could tell me and more. Miss Mary Pickett and me . . . Well, we know each other. Been knowing each other for a mighty long time.”

“Then she told you it was my fault. I’m the one . . .”

“What Miss Mary Pickett said to me, Miss Regina, was that you wanted to help me, get me some justice for my son.” He paused. “I’m grateful to you for it. I rightly am.”

Regina wasn’t convinced, but across from her, Willie Willie still played with his hands, strong, ashy fingers brushing together. If it had rained last night, if she hadn’t been dreaming, then the air had been washed clean by it. Sunlight beamed like a searchlight through the open blind, turned the gray in his head into bright molten silver, brightened again the real silver that played in his hand.

“But tell me, now, how you doing?” he said. Now he looked up, and his smile was so quick she almost missed it. Outside, there was the sound of a door slamming, of someone tramping up the back steps over at Mary Pickett’s, and going straight in the back door.

“Fine,” Regina said and smiled, but she ached all over, pain pushing tears into her eyes.

“They cleaned up that dog, took him over to the doc. Don’t look like he got rabies, though. I wouldn’t expect that. You won’t have to have those shots. I guess that’s something.”

He looked up. “And I got something to say to you. Miss Mary Pickett told me what you think about that book.” He didn’t call it his book or her book, Regina noticed; he just kept talking on.

“How old are you, Miss Regina?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Uh-huh.” Willie Willie seemed to take this in, digesting her age, his eyes making her seem younger than she actually felt. “Well,” he continued, “Miss Mary Pickett was twenty when she got called back here. Twenty when she came home at the start up of the Depressing. And to what? To a stroked-out daddy and a house falling down around both of their heads. To a passel of cousins and cousins of cousins, all of them forever needing some help. To the only man she’d ever love—I know that now—married off and father to another woman’s child. But she was still my baby girl, and I could see the world on her shoulders. So I’d go over at night into the kitchen, and I’d take Joe Howard with me. She’d help him out with his little schoolwork, and I’d tell her my stories. But they weren’t all just
my
stories. I’d heard a lot of them myself—from the Choctaw, from somebody claim he was the last conjuring man survived of the Natchez, from the old-timey folks, some came right down from Miss Mary Pickett’s own daddy. People who carried on stories from when the forest began.”

Regina looked past him, out the window, over at a great house that had been built on slave labor.

“So you think what she did—she
stole
from you—you think that was
all right
?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.” Willie Willie seemed to consider. “What I’m saying is, it looked right to her then. You know, Miss Regina, once upon a time there was a man named Luther Mottley. He’s in that
Magic
book. In a way, it’s almost all about him. What he could do. What he could get away with. Now, Luther—he was one right really bad man, and everybody in this town knew it. His daddy, the one built up the house and the shop, had called Luther back from New Orleans to take care of his two sisters. That’s how it was back then, that was the custom. But Luther loved New Orleans and he hated it here, and he hated his sisters. Hated and hated—until the day Sister fell down and she broke that hip. Luther’d stand on the porch. Wouldn’t let nobody near her. Ol’ Doc Sherrod—this Doc Sherrod’s daddy, a white man—went out to help, and there’s Luther politely holding a rifle in his hand. That’s another of the customs. You see, Doc Sherrod was on Luther Mottley’s land. Sister so weak now, pulling herself across the floor to do what Luther ordered her to do, moaning but scared to moan too loud because it might upset Luther. He might turn on her. Scared to death he might hurt her again. Until one day—why, Peach and I killed him.”

Just like that, word following word, with as much expression in them as if he’d been telling Regina he’d bought red apples that morning off a truck passing through. Regina sucked in her breath.

“Killed him,” repeated Willie Willie. “And then disappeared him. Not because of what he’d already done to Sister, not because of revenge—you got to believe that—but because Luther had to be stopped before he did worse. I was a rough young man back then, grown up in a rough young land, a land full of strange stories and customs. Now I ask myself, ‘Would I do it again?’” He paused. “I like to think not.”

He smiled at her then, clapped his hands. She’d seen a magician do this once at the end of his act, almost as though it had come time to break the last spell. When Willie Willie did this, the delicacy of a ladybug spread her wings and floated up from the protection of his old and gnarled hands. He must have been hiding her all along. Regina hadn’t seen, but she watched now as the ladybug spread her wings, fluttered them, and flew straight up. Regina tried following the flight, but she couldn’t. She turned her head in the direction of noise, but this turned out to be the scratching of the magnolia limb against the windowpane. This took her eye away from the ladybug just for an instant, but still she lost it.

Beside her, Willie Willie chuckled.

“What you just witnessed,” he said, “why, that’s nothing but the secret of magic. Ol’ Man Magic always does that. Makes us forget what we started out after. Makes us look where he wants us to look.” He pointed to a spot on the ceiling, far off in the corner. “See, there’s your good-luck ladybug, big as you please.”

He reached down then, lifted the shirt, brought it over to Regina on the bed. Then he took the silver he had played with his hands and laid it on top, where it fit like a puzzle piece, in with the others.

“The button” she said, and she was on fire with what it meant. Proof. Proof that Wynne Blodgett had done this. Despite the pain, she started struggling up.

Beside her, once again, Willie Willie shaking his head. “Don’t mean a thing. Not even this. Didn’t you listen to the sheriff over there at Tom Raspberry’s? Didn’t you hear what he said? Why, Wynne Blodgett could come right on out and say that he killed my boy. He always did it, always admitted it. To his friends, that is, when he was drunk.” A lift of Willie Willie’s shoulders, a smile on his lips that wasn’t quite nice. “Wynne’s always been one to talk more than he should. No, this shirt, what happened—it don’t mean one thing for this town, for those who own it and rule it. But that don’t mean it don’t mean nothing to me.”