The Secret of Magic Read online

  Instead, the voice he heard was Miss Mary Pickett Calhoun herself shouting, “Hello? Hello? Joe Howard, is that you? Hello?”

  “Miss Mary Pickett?”

  “Joe Howard? Is that you?”

  For just a moment the static eased and she could have been right beside him, strong-voiced as ever, shouting her crystal-clear words right into his ear.

  “It’s me, Miss Mary Pickett,” then, just in case. “Joe Howard.” He said this though she had already called him by name so she knew who he was. “Is my daddy there?”

  “Sweet Jesus! Let me run on back outside and see if I can find him. Oh, Joe Howard, he’s so excited you’re coming home. Are you all right? Did those Germans . . . Did they . . . Did they do anything to you? Did they hurt you? It’d just about tear your daddy up if they did.”

  Germans. Did they do anything to him? Did they hurt him? He wanted to tell her, “Well, of course they have. We have battled. We have been at war.” He wanted to shout these words at her, but he couldn’t do that.

  And it didn’t matter, because Miss Mary Pickett hadn’t waited for his answer. She’d dropped the receiver and it bounced, on its electric cord, against the cream-colored walls of her kitchen. Joe Howard could see it. He was so close now. He was almost there.

  He heard Miss Mary Pickett’s high heels tapping against the black and white tiles of the kitchen floor, heard the back screen door slamming, heard her “Willie Willie! Willie Willie! Come on in here quick!”

  She’d be down the veranda steps now and among the raised flowerbeds in her backyard. She’d run along the path of her prize rosebushes, then around the back of the cottage. Her calls to his father grew fainter and fainter in Joe Howard’s ear.

  He reached into his pocket for a cigarette but discovered he’d left his Camels, like his pistol, somewhere back deep in the bus. The jukebox had switched over from Harry James to Benny Goodman. He recognized the band, but he’d been gone a long time and didn’t recognize the song they were playing. Still, he started humming along. Something caught his eye—a uniform. Not a soldier, though, a policeman. Maybe. Joe Howard wasn’t sure. He’d looked away too quickly. Policemen were like white women. He’d learned a long time ago not to let his eye linger on them, to ease his gaze right on away.

  But Joe Howard was tired tonight. His eyes and his thoughts didn’t skip forward as quickly as they might have. They slowed down. They moved back. Past the war, even, to the nights he’d walk the streets of Atlanta, going from Morehouse College to his job sweeping out the newsroom at The Atlanta Journal and then walk back from The Atlanta Journal to Morehouse College. After dark. Because after-dark work was the only kind of work he could find and still maintain the studies that Judge Calhoun was paying for and that his daddy was paying for and that Joe Howard was trying to keep up himself. The streetcars didn’t run late and he didn’t have a car and he didn’t have any money. So he’d been forced onto the streets. Alone. Every night.

  And every night he’d meet a policeman. Sometimes one, sometimes another. Maybe he’d seen them before; maybe they were strangers. It didn’t matter. They all knew him. They all stopped him. They all said to him: “Where you goin’, nigger, to some whorehouse, out this late?” And he’d say, “No.” And then, “Sir.” It didn’t matter what he said. Nobody was listening. This is just how they got around to saying what they really wanted to say, which was, “Look here, nigger, you take off y’all’s hat when you talk to a white man. Don’t you know that, you ignorant coon?” He’d take it off. Then. Not until they told him to, but once they did tell him he’d do what they said. Every time. Because he had his daddy, his good daddy, who was back there in Revere, working hard and plotting and planning, so that his son could go on, get an education, get out of Mississippi, at least for a moment, and make something of himself in the wide world.

  So Joe Howard would take off his hat to his daddy.

  Once he had it off, the policeman would knock it into the dirt, sometimes with a billy club, sometimes with bare hands, and he’d be forced to bend down and pick it up from the street. He’d be let go then, with a curse and a “nigger,” and he’d be free to continue on. They never really hurt him. They didn’t even intend to hurt him. Joe Howard knew this, but as soon as his face was turned away from them, he’d start to cry. A man, a grown man, walking through the streets of a big city, crying like that, like a damn baby. Secret and shameful. But he couldn’t help it. He hated those big-baby tears, and he hated himself for letting those stupid-ass white men get to him and for crying those rivers of tears.

  Now, waiting for his daddy, Joe Howard cleared his throat, once, then twice. He was less than thirty miles from home and he had made it and his daddy had made it. They were both alive. They would see each other soon, and that was a blessed thing and a great one. In Italy, he was sure he’d never make it home.

  Sometimes, when he was out on patrol, especially in the last months before the war ended, Joe Howard had been scared to death his daddy might die before he got back. He knew soldiers who had lost their mothers, lost their fathers, lost their wives, lost their children, even, while they were gone fighting. You never thought of that, but it happened. In foxholes, behind trees, in the bodies of dead animals and dead men, in the cratered earth, would hide the terrifying thought that he would somehow get back to Revere and that his daddy would be gone, that he’d never see his daddy again.

  But Willie Willie was alive. Joe Howard heard him now, running up the back steps to the telephone, coming in from where he had been working—keeping up the garden, fixing things that broke down, telling his tall tales and his stories, driving Miss Mary Pickett, who couldn’t drive, all over town in the old Calhoun Daimler. His daddy took up the receiver, breathing hard and shouting into it, just like Miss Mary Pickett had done.

  “That you, son? You okay?”

  “I’m well, Daddy.” He put the telephone receiver between his ear and his shoulder and reached, again, for a Camel before he remembered, again, that he didn’t have one. “It’s taking longer than I thought. They got us caught over here in Aliceville.”

  “Aliceville?” Willie Willie was plainly astonished. “Why, son, Aliceville’s not on the way home.”

  “Close, though. Thirty, thirty-five miles. Maybe less. At least that’s what they say.”

  His daddy said, “But it’s an unknown way. Don’t get yourself in any trouble. You know how folks are over in Alabama.”

  Joe Howard laughed. They both laughed. This was their joke, talking about how things were over in Alabama, as though they weren’t the same way in Mississippi, as though Alabama was a whole world away.

  “I should be there in an hour, maybe less.”

  “Just get here quick. Everybody’s excited. They got your picture up all over Revere—at least all over the colored parts of it. Miss Mary Pickett’s got hers laid out, too, up there in her office. She told me so herself. You know that snapshot she took of the two of us—you in your uniform and me right beside you? Well, she kept hold to it.”

  “She did?”

  Joe Howard didn’t know whether he was pleased to hear this or not. Mostly not, he decided, because he knew the picture. Him all fresh in his new uniform and his daddy in old overalls, and they were leaning right into each other, holding on to each other like each was the only thing living that the other had left, which was true enough. And they were grinning, both of them. Hard. Except grinning wasn’t really the right word. Radiant was better. Willie Willie and his son, Joe Howard Wilson, radiating love. Willie Willie looking prouder even than he had looked when Joe Howard had graduated from Morehouse College and the judge had sent him over to Atlanta—his first time in Georgia—on the Greyhound to see that blessed event.

  Miss Mary Pickett had taken the picture and kept it to herself for some reason. She’d been going through a phase back then, still talking about writing a new book after that one about the forest
and the old Mottley sisters, even after all the mischief that first one had caused. She’d told everybody who would listen that she’d soon be putting out another, was working on it, typing away on her old Corona. But Willie Willie said most of the time she was just out with her little Brownie camera snapping pictures, snapshots of the Negroes—in the fields, in their stores, on their porches, out and about wherever Miss Mary Pickett could find them. Nobody knew why. Nobody knew the reason for a lot of things she did, she just did them. And she could get away with doing whatever in the world she damn pleased, just like her daddy had before her, because their last name was Calhoun and that name had stood for something rock solid in Revere, Mississippi, for going on a hundred years.

  “Proud of you,” his daddy said out of nowhere, in case the son somehow hadn’t heard.

  “Not much to be proud of,” said Joe Howard. He knew things that his daddy didn’t. “I only did what they told me to do.”

  His daddy came right back on this. “You did it good, though. Got yourself medalized.” Joe Howard grinned. His daddy was good at making up his own words. “‘Lieutenant Joe Howard Wilson of Revere was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for leading Negro troops to a decisive victory last April at the Battle of Castel Aghinolfi in Italy,’” Willie Willie continued. “That’s what the Afro-American newspaper from down Jackson had to say about you. Miss Mary Pickett read it out to me and I told it out, word for word, to all the folks down at Stanley’s Lookin’ Good Barbershop myself. ‘Lieutenant Wilson demonstrated exceptional bravery in helping to clear Italy from the Fascists and the Nazis when he did not and does not have the right to vote here in Mississippi, his natal state. Lieutenant Wilson is the son of Mr. Willie Willie Wilson of Revere.’ Course, they got my name wrong. Folks don’t know us personally, they always do that.”

  Willie Willie chuckled just like he had when Joe Howard was little and he’d told him story after story about the dark things that, for once, were the good and true things and that hid out in the magic woods and floated at night on the magic river. And, against all odds, somehow managed to triumph before The End.

  So Joe Howard asked him, “You been working out any more tales?” Shouting almost and hoping his daddy would shout, too, so he could hear him. The static was back again in force.

  “Oh, a few. A few,” cried out Willie Willie. “I’ll tell you some once you get here. Real soon. But you watch out for yourself. Come straight home now! Watch out!”

  This admonition was the last thing from his daddy that got through to Joe Howard distinctly before the crackling roiled up and took over the telephone lines.

  “Daddy?”

  Not wanting to hang up, listening hard, Joe Howard thought he heard something about ladybugs taking over the whole place, like usual. Ladybugs were a problem in Mississippi in deep autumn. They pestered on things and could be a complaint. Maybe Willie Willie said something about the winter coming on strong because the squirrels were taking over in the attic in his cottage. Getting ready. And maybe he said something about the cotton crop. Joe Howard thought he must surely have had something to say about the cotton crop. Everybody always had something to say about that. But he couldn’t really hear now, so he couldn’t be certain.

  One last, “I love you, Daddy”—probably useless, but called out just in case.

  Joe Howard hung up the phone.

  • • •

  HE WALKED OUT of the booth, looked around, and still nobody seemed to be paying him any attention. Nobody rushed him for being in the wrong not-for-coloreds place. His mind turned to Manasseh, waiting patiently on the bus, and the thought came that he might get him something, some candy. A few Sugar Daddys, maybe, or Red Hots. But he was still the only Negro inside the depot, and he decided it was probably better not to push his luck.

  Joe Howard kept his eyes straight ahead as he climbed back onto the bus, but out of the corner of the left one he thought he saw somebody he knew. Somebody from Revere. He slowed his pace so he could study her without looking like he was doing it. He was almost sure she was a woman his daddy used to do odd jobs for once the cotton had been got in out at Magnolia Forest plantation and the household moved back into town. She had one child, a boy, about his age. Joe Howard recognized her because she was the only mama he’d ever known, even when he was little, who dyed her hair with Mrs. Field’s blue rinse. It always reminded him of a little piece of clear sky hovering over the cloud of her white face. Her name was Miss Anna Dale Buchanan, if he wasn’t mistaken. But Joe Howard thought he could be mistaken. She was bent over a book, didn’t see him. Her hair wasn’t as bright as he remembered it, either. And she was a white woman. Joe Howard decided it was better not to speak.

  Manasseh was still behind the sign that read COLORED ONLY, still behind the makeshift separating curtain, still there in his seat, still clutching his lard can, still wearing the pinned-on paper sign that gave him a name and a place in this world. He looked relieved when he saw Joe Howard, and the biblical solemnity of his face broke up in a smile.

  Joe Howard smiled back.

  “You know, I been out to Macon,” he said, settling into his seat once again. “Lots of times. It’s a nice place. You gonna like it. My daddy used to take me over there, to the forest. The Magnolia Forest—ever heard about that? It can be dead of winter everyplace else still in Mississippi, there’s always gonna be at least some little speck of green. Grass peeking up through the snow in January. Full-bloomed bushes hiding out behind the skeletons of old oak and pecan trees. Christmas, and my daddy would take me out there, would point to the highest gray branch in the tree and say, ‘See that, son? That’s mistletoe. Breathe on it. Sigh on it. Let it kiss you.’ You know what, Manasseh? I’d do just that. Blow a soft breath straight up and the mistletoe would come down to kiss it. It would float against my cheek and kiss me. Right there in Macon—that’s what would happen.”

  But Manasseh did not look convinced.

  “And ladybugs. Everywhere you look, ladybugs. Did you know there’s magic in a ladybug? One touches you—why, son, it’s good luck.”

  This, at last, was something Manasseh had heard before and remembered. He nodded. He smiled.

  The bus started filling up again. Joe Howard saw the twin boys from before. He waved at them because it was safe to wave at white children, especially little boys. They looked at him shyly. One waved back. Their mother was still laughing with the driver but with a little less animation. Joe Howard wondered when the two of them would stop their flirting so the bus could get going again. He was looking down at his Longines, a little irritated, when he heard the driver say, “Hey, well now. It took you long enough to get them. How all y’all doing?”

  From the front of the bus there came a faint rustle. A movement and a shifting that seemed purposed to draw everyone’s curious attention.

  White men got on. There were a lot of them: five or six, from what Joe Howard could tell, but he couldn’t see much from the back of the bus. Most of them were still in the well, and the courier heaved slightly under their weight. Manasseh perked up, curious now, too. He stopped chewing on his dead gum.

  The first man was in a uniform Joe Howard knew was not military, but the man seemed to know the driver, to be on good terms with him. The two of them chuckled together for a moment. The driver introduced him to the mother of the twins. She said something and the uniformed man pointed to the other men behind him. The woman nodded as the men finished their climb and started down the aisle.

  It was then that Joe Howard realized that the first of them was some part of the law. If not exactly a policeman, then close. Joe Howard started paying attention. The men he’d led into the bus and were now passing right through the white section and coming on into COLORED ONLY were prisoners. There were red PWs on their belts. When one of them turned around to whisper something to the man behind him, something that caused both of them to smile, Joe Howard saw a big P and a big W stenci
led large as life on the back of his cotton-fleck shirt. What looked to be a deputy brought up the rear.

  Germans, thought Joe Howard. Prisoners of war. Maybe about to go home, just like he was going home. Joe Howard settled back into his uncomfortable seat. He didn’t see how these men had a thing in the world to do with him.

  Until they stopped. Until he heard the guard say, “You coloreds get on up. Give over these places to these here men.”

  All around him Joe heard the slow shuffle of people gathering their things to move. A woman groaned to her feet behind him; across the way, an old black man reached for his pine cane. Even Manasseh, who had not budged even to go to the bathroom, started gathering his lard bucket together. Started shuffling. Started to obey.

  Joe Howard could not believe it. He could not believe it.

  “You want us to get up and give our places—that we paid for—to some German prisoners?”

  The guard’s face flared into a mottled map of angry affirmation. Could this be a black man talking back to him?

  Yes, he damned well did want that. “What I want,” he said, talking slow now, and loud, “is for you niggers to get up and give these here places over to white men.”

  When he said them, the words sounded as reasonable and as inevitable as the fact the sun would rise again in the east the next day. It was just simply the way things were, the way they had always been, the way they were always going to be.

  L.C. calling out, “Come on, Joe Howard! Catch up! Catch up!”

  Joe Howard close behind him now. Running straight into the night forest.

  “I’m not getting up,” he said, as he actually jumped to his feet and stood there, blocking the way with his uniform. “And nobody else back here is getting up, either. Not for some Nazis.”

  The other deputy came up from behind fast. He stared at Joe Howard, at his uniform, at his bars and his medals.

  “Well, look-a-hear, Leroy,” he began, “Maybe . . .”