The Secret of Magic Read online

  Regina barely heard him She was captivated—no, not exactly captivated. Appalled might be better—by the sight in front of her.

  It was a brick confection of a house on the left-hand side of the street, with six fat, wedding-cake white columns standing at attention along its front veranda, a skeleton of new construction attached to both sides, a line of clipped boxwood leading up to its door. Guarding all this, at the curb, was a black-faced stone Negro boy dressed in a bright red stone shirt and with huge red smiling lips, bugged eyes, his white-nailed hands clutched tight an electrified lantern, the light inside it already lit.

  “Oh my God!” she cried. Disgusted.

  “Draws attention to itself, don’t it? I imagine it’s meant to, that black boy. Keeps people planted squarely in their place. Shows what you think of them. Got stuff like that up north?”

  “All over,” said Regina. “All over. You get used to seeing things, but you never get used to the feeling. It—I don’t know—it hurts every time.”

  “It does, don’t it? Makes you mad, too. I can tell.”

  Willie Willie seemed to be sizing her up. Regina didn’t know why she thought this, but she did, and she was embarrassed that she’d allowed herself to be so easily read. She turned to the house again. “Who lives there?”

  “Mayhew sisters used to. Mayhews were one of the best families in these parts. Now the place belongs to Jackson Blodgett.”

  “Mary Pickett’s ex-husband?”

  “One in the same. Though I imagine it’s his wife, Miss Mae Louise, done the place up like that, put that stone pickaninny out front of it along with all the rest of that too-muchness. Once she got her hands on it.” Again, he fluted up his voice, this time obviously imitating the present Mrs. Blodgett. “‘My daddy is a gentleman planter from over Carroll County, Alabama.’ When everybody knows there’s no such thing as a plantation in Carroll County. Land’s way too hilly. Only thing grows over there is moonshine and blood feuds and snake-charming religions. And that’s what she’s related to.”

  Regina had to laugh.

  Willie Willie looked over at her. He waved his hand out once, like a windshield wiper meant to clear away Mae Louise Blodgett and her kinfolk. “But Revere—we built up ourselves a pretty place here. Don’t you think?”

  “It’s pretty.” Said grudgingly, but at least it was said.

  “We look nice because the big war didn’t take us out,” he said. “Federals wanted to burn the whole place down in the winter of ’64, but General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his Sixty-fifth Artillery stopped them cold. That makes him a hero to half the white folks in town. Forrest is the one started the Klan up in Mississippi. That makes him a hero to the other half.”

  “I can imagine,” said Regina. She thought back to the house they’d just passed. She thought to that awful stone black boy at the curb.

  Willie Willie winked. “I just bet you can. They have their history. We have ours. You can’t always tell the difference between the white families and the black. I mean, as far as names go. Same spelling a lot of the time; there’s nothing anybody can do about that. But the pronunciation changes, and sometimes a letter here and there. Black Hairstons are pronounced like it’s spelled. White Hairstons are Har-stons. You’re a Bill-ups if you’re white and a Bill-ups if you’re black. A white one-t Motley or a black two-t Mottley. Black Golsons. White Gholsons. Once you know what you’re listening for, the race is always in how things are said.”

  “Really?”

  Again, Willie Willie nodded. “You’ll soon see that for yourself.”

  She was happy he’d said it, like he wanted her to stay. That might count for something with Mary Pickett. Now that they were getting closer, Regina realized she was still scared she might be sent away. But she’d got this far, got through Thurgood, got through Richmond, survived the Bonnie Blue Line in one piece. Surely, Regina thought, she could get through a little old Southern white lady, too.

  “Riverview’s over there. Mr. Pick Calhoun still owns that, just barely. He’s Miss Mary Pickett’s cousin three times removed. And right beside it, that burned-out place with the seedlings taking over? That’s Stream Run, or it used to be.” Willie Willie pointed out the window, going on with his guided tour, obviously proud of his town, which was a wonder to Regina. It looked nice, all right, like she’d told him, but how could you be pleased with a place like this, built up on slave labor? How could you like living here, feel it was yours? Still, Willie Willie seemed to. He said, “All the other Calhouns lost everything in the Depressing. Picketts, too, and their McGraw cousins. Don’t know what any of them would have done without Miss Mary Pickett. They don’t, either, since she took all them in. She managed to hold on to Calhoun Place, you know, because of her book, so she just filled it up with all kinds of kin. There were cousins in all the bedrooms, folks in the basement. A whole family of Eastman relations appeared out of nowhere and were stuck up in the attic. All their land gone . . . She’d already lost Magnolia Forest herself. You know about that place, now, don’t you?”

  “From The Secret of Magic,” said Regina. “But I thought she made it up.”

  “Oh, it’s real enough, both the forest itself and the plantation named for it. Miss Mary Pickett owned them both, along with Calhoun Place, or she used to. The Depressing took the cotton, and when they lost the cotton the next thing to go was the land. Down here, that’s what they call the natural progression.”

  The truck picked up speed; the houses gave way. They were down to business now, and shops lined both sides of the street. Regina ticked off the Dew Point Flower Shop, a TG&Y, the Silke Shoppe, Eppler’s Downtown Department Store, Robinson’s Shoes, the Make It New Paint Store, a Woolworth’s, a Kresge’s. Shipley Do-Nuts. Thurgood, she thought, would feel right at home. All this enterprise suggested to Regina that Revere might be larger than she’d assumed, in New York, that it would be. Maybe it wasn’t really just another sleepy little Southern town. She was wondering how this might affect things and feeling just a little bit of hope that it might affect them positively—Mary Pickett Calhoun had written to the Fund, after all—when she looked over and there was the courthouse.

  At least Regina thought it was the courthouse because it was surrounded by a square, it had a statue of a young soldier leaning against a bayonet, it had a granite memorial with finely chiseled names she could not read from where she sat, a beautifully tended laurel wreath. It looked like any county courthouse at first. Except for the banner. A blood-red background. Blue bars. A cascade of white stars. Everything that made up the Stars and Stripes she was used to—but arranged nothing like it at all.

  “Is that the Confederate flag?”

  Even as she said it, she couldn’t believe it. She poked her head out the window again, turned back to look.

  “That’s it all right,” said Willie Willie. “Old Glory. The Stars and the Bars. The Battle Flag, at least that’s what it’s called.”

  “Doesn’t matter what you call it. It’s illegal to fly that over any government building.” She bristled, then remembered where she was and said with a bit less conviction, “It must be.”

  Willie Willie looked over at her.

  “Nothing illegal about it. It’s how things are done. That’s the same place I went to get justice for Joe Howard. Now you’re gonna try your hand there.” He pushed a whistle through his teeth, noncommittal. “We’ll see what happens.”

  “We will see,” said Regina. She kept her voice bright, but she turned back to the flag, watched as the breeze lifted it a little, as it seemed to wave her away. Or challenge her. Yes, the challenge was in it.

  Think you’re up to me? That’s what we’ll see.

  “Why didn’t you leave?” she blurted.

  Willie Willie looked straight ahead, past the houses, to the forest. She realized there was love on his face. He could have been looking at Joe Howard. “I stay because thi
s here is my home,” he said. Then his eyes narrowed, a curtain over his feelings. “We’re almost there.”

  Two more short blocks, another hard right. Willie Willie pulled up next to a long brick driveway and a white columned house. Discreet, but a mansion, really, big enough to dominate the street.

  “This here is where Miss Mary Pickett lives. I used to live here, too. Out back.” He motioned with his head into the darkness. “Not in the out-back house, though. We got indoor plumbing. We’re modern here. Miss Mary Pickett even put it in my place. Before I left.”

  “You’ve left here?”

  But Willie Willie didn’t answer. He reached behind the truck’s sun visor and pulled out his pack of Camels, then pointed to a small wrought-iron sign that proclaimed

  CALHOUN PLACE

  A.D. 1835

  “Built way before anything else you’ve seen yet, and built better,” he said. “When I was a boy, my own granddaddy used to take me around the outside. Showed me the columns he’d helped his own daddy work on. Told me you have to gradually grow each one a trifle bit bigger around the middle, then bring it back in again—that is, if you want to make it look just right. A true straight column’s just an illusion. He did the floors in the house, too, carved them out of river oak. Worked cotton fields in summer, worked building Calhoun Place in the winter. All this happened back in slavery times.”

  “Your grandfather was a slave for the Calhouns?” Regina hadn’t really thought of this before. But this house, what Willie Willie said about it and even its beauty, made slavery stark and real to her, not something she’d just read about in a book.

  “Sure he was,” said Willie Willie. “My own granddaddy and the granddaddies of half the other colored folks here in Revere. We, most of us, been here a mighty long time, longer than many of the white folks. This here’s the oldest part of the town, nearer the forest than anywhere else, and nearer the river. Remember that spot I pointed you to? Where they drug Joe Howard out of the water? Well, it’s right down there, at the bottom of that deep decline. The way the road is, it loops you around the trees, gets you confused. Jackie Earle Blodgett’s place is here, too. The Folly, his old home place that burned down.”

  The truck settled in with a rattle and a purr. “Wait here. I’ll just be a minute.” Willie Willie opened his door, put his shiny shoes down on the sidewalk’s broken pavement. “I better go on in the back and prepare Miss Mary Pickett. She’s in there, and looks like Jack Blodgett’s with her.” He nodded to a dark Buick, badly parked, more in the street than to the side of it. Calhoun Place might look like it owned the sidewalk, but this big car gave the impression it owned everything else.

  “Good thing there doesn’t appear to be much traffic,” Regina said, but she wondered what to make of this, what Willie Willie thought about Jackson Blodgett’s car being parked here at Miss Calhoun’s and if it were here often. She thought about the early marriage and the continuing flowers and the Valentine chocolates. Innocent-sounding enough, at least when Willie Willie was the one telling the story. But Regina couldn’t help wondering what Mae Louise Blodgett thought about all this.

  “Why would he . . .” Regina began, but Willie Willie was already strolling away, around toward the back of the house. In another minute, she heard the slamming of a screen door.

  No use waiting in the truck. So Regina climbed out. Her legs were shaking. A surprise, but she decided it was from being cooped up for so long on trains and buses. From what she could tell, the street was deserted; at least there weren’t any people around. It was full dark now, too, with just a few streetlights strung overhead and Calhoun Place itself lit only in fits and starts. She tried stretching a little to see if she could glimpse anything through one of the windows but there were too many lace curtains and heavy draperies for that. A pity. She was more curious than she cared to admit about what might be hiding there. Why, this was M. P. Calhoun’s real house! It might have modeled the gorgeous Collington house in The Secret of Magic. But Regina realized suddenly that even if she managed to sneak a look inside, she had no idea what to expect. Not one thing in the book had really occurred in the house. Collie had run out of it; the others had run past it. On their way to the forest, to the river—the places where things really happened, at least in M. P. Calhoun’s book. Still, Regina couldn’t help herself. She stood on tiptoes, inched a little closer. This might be her only chance to look inside a real antebellum mansion. Tara brought to life . . .

  The squeak made her jump back, set her guilty heart racing.

  Oh, God, they’ve seen me! Somebody’s letting out the dogs!

  She’d heard all about Southerners and their dogs. It seemed every lawyer in the Fund came back north with a story.

  But then there came another squeak. Followed quickly by another. A chattering, really, and something in their spiky repetition made her calm down, let her catch sight of the mailbox.

  At least Regina thought the noise was coming from the mailbox, but there was a lot of it for such a small space. Close now, right up on it, she bent down. And looked squarely into the eyes of a bluebird. At least she thought it was a bluebird—she was from the city, she couldn’t be sure—surrounded by his family of bluebirds, staring at her as she was staring at them, and showing absolutely no signs of fright or intimidation. Instead, they chattered on, angry and insistent, acting like she was the intruder and they were the owners of the mailbox they found themselves in.

  Must be white bluebirds, she thought. But at least they weren’t dogs.

  She wondered how long they’d been there and how the Calhoun household got its mail, since the birds seemed so irritably territorial. Her answer was tied to a string that ran down and ended at a red-painted aluminum lunch bucket that had one word, MAIL, scripted out in bright yellow crayon on its side. Regina recognized the flourish of M. P. Calhoun’s perfect Palmer penmanship hand.

  What must she be like—a woman who would put together something like this, go to this much trouble for a bird? Regina had heard almost as many horror stories about Southern women—how sugary-sweet they could be, and how ornery—as she had heard about mean Southern dogs.

  Willie Willie came from around the back of the house, and he was grinning. Regina wasn’t as reassured by this as she once might have been. She’d already found out Willie Willie could smile for strange reasons. Regina straightened up. And as she did, she caught a movement, and maybe a soft snuffle in the street shadows beyond the blue Buick. Something she’d missed. A donkey? Latched onto a wagon? Here in town?

  She squinted closer but didn’t have time to tell because Willie Willie was saying, “Miss Mary Pickett is as ready to meet you as she’s ever gonna be. She said, ‘Good God! Fetch her on up to the back porch. I imagine I’ll have to figure out something.’” Again, the high lilt of his imitation. “She didn’t look happy.”

  But Willie Willie did look happy, and suddenly his smile exploded into laughter. “You not been here no time, but already you managed to stir up some stuff.”

  5.

  She’d always pictured M. P. Calhoun as an old man, round and kindly. Someone with a lap made for holding children. Someone who would fill them up with story after story.

  The brittle reality: dressed in dark silk and what looked to be heirloom pearls, holding on to a cocktail glass with one hand and a lighted cigarette with the other, her hair turned rosy at its edges from the backlight of her door, and younger than what Regina had visualized. Forty years old. Tops.

  “You are not at all what I expected,” said Mary Pickett Calhoun, “I imagine you already know that.”

  “Yes,” began Regina, “but . . .”

  “A deception. Is this how you all run things at that Negro Fund up there in New York?”

  With the way Mary Pickett spoke, the precisely drawled clip of her words, Regina thought it best to shut up. If she opened her mouth, she could easily make things worse.

/>   “Tomorrow,” snapped out the great author. “I’ll be sending you right back where you came from. First thing.”

  They were standing at the back door, Mary Pickett squarely between Regina and whatever lay within.

  All this was, quite frankly, a shock. But Regina knew it was a shock she’d best quickly get over. Standing on the back veranda steps, she was too far away to make out the color of Mary Pickett’s eyes, but she couldn’t miss the flash in them. If looks could kill, Regina knew she’d be a goner for certain.

  “And I don’t see any sign of Thurgood Marshall.” Mary Pickett looked all around with wide-eyed exaggeration, even though Regina was fairly certain Willie Willie had already informed her that Thurgood was still in New York.

  “He’s not with me. I am here by myself,” answered Regina.

  “So it would appear.”

  Regina had forgotten Willie Willie, but he spoke up from behind her now. “Miss Mary Pickett, I don’t think you been properly introduced. This here’s Miss Regina Mary Robichard. She was the R. M. Robichard in that telegram, just like you was the M. P. Calhoun in your book.”

  They both turned to look at him, Regina with her mouth open, not knowing what to expect. This was Mississippi, after all, where Negroes were supposed to keep their mouths shut if they knew what was good for them. Anything could happen if they didn’t, most of it bad.

  But if Mary Pickett was shocked, she didn’t show it. She swiveled back to Regina again, all business. “Willie Willie has said you may stay in his place. In the cottage. For the night.” She made a vague gesture toward something in the dark behind Regina’s left shoulder. “He pretty much lives out in Magnolia Forest now anyhow, don’t you, Willie Willie? He’s a nimrod, you know, way the best in Jefferson-Lee County. Hunting’s pretty much all he does nowadays.”