The Secret of Magic (13 page)

She paused. Considered. “Of course, now I think about it, Willie Willie probably already knew this. He’s quick as all get out, so he’s the one made sure
Daddy
knew just how smart Joe Howard was. I wouldn’t put it past him. In sly ways, that’s how he’d do it. He always could read Daddy like a book. He had to, in order to make a way. And he, too, was always ambitious, not for himself but for Joe Howard. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Wanting your son to go on, to be better than you were? I imagine, though, it could be a weight. Especially if you were like Joe Howard. Gentle, like he was. Loving his daddy like he did. Now, my own daddy was . . .”

Regina thought she’d say “a dreamer.”

“. . . a drinker.” Mary Pickett clipped the word out. “A bitter man. Just like Willie Willie’s got bitter . . .” She let her voice trail off.

“You think Mr. Willie Willie’s got no reason to be bitter?”

Mary Pickett fielded a brief, significant glance toward the cottage. “You think he’s got reason?”

“Miss Calhoun, the
world
thinks Mr. Willie’s got reason—even without what happened to his son.”

Something flashed behind Mary Pickett’s eyes and then died there. Its movement made Regina think to the way the pigeons on the ledge outside her bedroom window in Harlem fluttered early in the morning, almost in slow motion, when first they began to stir.

Mary Pickett said, “Well, maybe.”

Well, maybe. Indeed!

Regina wanted to reach both hands right across that carefully laid table and shake this woman until she woke her right up.

“You know,” said Mary Pickett, “when I was a child, I worshipped Willie Willie. He didn’t have to do that much—just spend some time with me. My mama was always sick. My daddy was busy. Willie Willie taught me things, taught all of us things. With him, there was always something new to learn. Something secret and magic. It made me feel special to think that Willie Willie belonged to
me
. I can remember being five years old and telling everybody who would listen that he was my natural daddy. Feeble as she was, you can sure bet my mama put a quick end to talk like that.” Mary Pickett narrowed her already thin lips. “Did he tell you how he changed Joe Howard’s name to Wilson?”

“He told me he did it.”

“But did he tell you
how
?”

Regina shook her head as Mary Pickett nodded hers. “I imagine he didn’t. Too busy gossiping about me.” She sidled a quick glance over to Regina, who blushed. Mary Pickett continued, triumphant, “I knew it! Talking about when I got married. That would be Willie Willie. Wanting you to look someplace other than at him. It’s the secret of magic, known by the great Houdini himself. That’s what Willie Willie always told me. Distract folks. Get them to look where you want them to look.

“Welllll”—Mary Pickett dragged the word out—“like I said, Daddy was the circuit judge here. He had his office at the courthouse, right where Judge Timms is now. Daddy had known Willie Willie since—I don’t know—forever. Willie Willie was born on our place out at Magnolia Forest. His own granddaddy had been a sl—” She stopped, darted a quick glance over at Regina. “He’d worked out there for my great granddaddy. Calhouns have been in Jefferson-Lee County a long time, and the Willies have been here just as long. They came, all of them, down from Pickett County, Carolina, together. Negro and white.”

Mary Pickett looked down, then quickly up again. She said, “I think things began to change that summer when Joe Howard turned eight. Something happened . . . Willie Willie decided a boy like his boy—with potential, with the interest of my daddy, who was going to help him—a boy like that needed a proper patronymic. At least, that’s what Willie Willie called it. I was twelve years older than Joe Howard and had what you might call a fine education, but I didn’t know what that word
patronymic
meant myself. Had to look it up. Daddy knew, though, and I thought he’d bust open the way he got so tickled by Willie Willie saying that. But he made sure that Willie Willie got what he wanted. Took him over to the courthouse himself, walked him right in—a black man there to get some legal rights that didn’t have a thing to do with jail time. It was odd. Folks talked. And that was the whole point of it—folks talking. To this day, I still haven’t figured out what it was my daddy wanted more—to help Joe Howard or just stir things up. Because if Daddy stirred things up enough, he could keep people looking at where he wanted them to look—which was at race—and keep them from seeing what was actually going on . . .”

Mary Pickett hesitated. Maybe it was dawning on her, Regina thought, that she might be saying too much. She half expected her to stop, but Mary Pickett went right on. She was obviously not a woman who listened to reason, even her own. “Which was that he was drinking and my mama was dead and Picketts and Calhouns were steadily losing their land hand over fist to the Mississippi Commerce and Agriculture Bank. All the old families . . . fading out fast.”

Regina leaned closer, drawn into the rich, strong scent of Mary Pickett’s perfume and the smell of the roses from the silver loving cup on the breakfast table and this piece of the story of Willie Willie and Joe Howard, a story that she was eager to learn.

Mary Pickett drew a wide arc with her hand, bright red nails flashing sunlight. “Everything going, going, gone—or at least most of it. How can I phrase it . . . Daddy
willing
people to think, ‘Well, will you look at that Charles Calhoun. What a hoot! What a card!’ Dressing Willie Willie up. Taking him over to the courthouse. Protecting him, in a manner of speaking, and doing just enough for him that folks here might be slightly scandalized . . .”

“But not enough that they would feel threatened.”

“No, Daddy couldn’t have that. He needed the judgeship, the little money it paid him, and it was elected. Willie Willie knew this. He was also smart enough to know he was being used by my daddy, but he would have done anything that would help Joe Howard to get out of this place, move on, get going, make something of himself.”

At first, as she listened, Regina could not figure out why Mary Pickett was doing all this talking and confiding, until finally it struck her that maybe the whole thing was, for Mary Pickett, like being on a long-distance bus. Because on a long-distance bus you could pour out to the stranger next to you things you wouldn’t tell your own mother. Folks sitting next to you on something like that—they’re not real people.
Just like I’m not a real person to her.
The next time the bus stops, she thinks I’ll be gone. Regina rooted herself a little deeper into her Chippendale chair. She had not the least intention of going anywhere.

Mary Pickett had a pack of Chesterfields on the table, and she lit one up now. It must finally have struck her what she was saying and to whom.

“My daddy was a
good
man,” she said. Her words came out on a plume of smoke. “Just like all of us here in Revere are good people—at least up to a point.”

Her voice lost some of its trilling languor. Regina wondered if a little bit of it had been put on for her benefit—“This is how all y’all think we all talk down here”—and if the great author wasn’t, perhaps, laughing at her some, underneath. But she couldn’t tell, not from what Mary Pickett was saying.

“A good man. He had influence, and he used it. All these years and the Klan never marched in Revere, never got a foothold here. It marched in the north, though, all through it. It marched in Nebraska, where your daddy was killed.” She looked dead at Regina. “Daddy protected our people.”

Just exactly who Mary Pickett meant by “our people,” Regina could not tell. Just like she hadn’t been able to tell what she’d meant by that “mine.” They were mysterious words, perhaps even offensive. Regina put her napkin down, pushed back in her fine-wood indoor chair from the rattan table and got up.

“Miss Calhoun,” she said. “I believe it’s time I got going. Will Mr. Duval be at the courthouse? I need to get started with the investigation.”

“Ah—Nancy Drew.”

No, Collie Collington. In your book.

That’s what Regina wanted to say. She had thought about telling Mary Pickett that she’d read
The Secret of Magic
, that she actually had her old, worn copy with her, that she had searched for it and found it and brought it down from New York and that it lay on the nightstand by her bed in the cottage. She decided against this, even though she had the feeling that it would be a pleasure, after all this time, for Mary Pickett to hear that her novel was still read, that it held its place in a life and that it was loved. Willie Willie had told Regina so himself.

No, she couldn’t say all this. So she clamped her jaw shut and said nothing.

Mary Pickett stubbed her cigarette into a crystal ashtray. Light danced on her face when she looked up. “Bed Duval won’t be at the courthouse. Not this time of day. Not in Revere. Serving justice isn’t a full-time occupation here. He’ll be in his office, though, the one he shares with his daddy. It’s at Sixth Street and Second Avenue. On the corner. Wait a minute. I’ll point it out.”

She disappeared into her house, the screen door slamming behind her. When she came out she had on a felt-and-feather hat and she was pulling on her gloves. She’d been gone only a minute, but that had been enough time for her to change her sweater. This new one was the dark color of a storm cloud. The buttons on it were muted as well, and Mary Pickett had obscured her eyes behind a pair of sunglasses framed in yellow tortoiseshell.

“The thing you got to know about Revere,” she trilled out, as they set out along the side of the house, her voice a perfect imitation of Willie Willie imitating her, “is that the whole town is laid out on a grid—north to south avenues, east to west streets. All numbered, except for Main Street, which should be First Street, but isn’t. And, of course, what should be Second Avenue is actually College Street. If you remember all this and keep people placed where they belong, you won’t get lost and you’ll keep yourself out of trouble.”

She walked along with calm deliberation as she said all this, brushing against a bush whose flowers were, perhaps, a little past their prime. Petals rained onto Mary Pickett’s shoulders and onto the smoothly clipped perfection of the lawn. The air around them was so still and so thick that Regina was able to catch their petal fragrance as they tumbled past her, hear them as they touched the grass.

“What
are
they?” Regina thought she’d never seen a flower so fat and ripe, so beautiful.

Mary Pickett smiled. “That, my dear,” she said, drawling out the words, slow, wicked, and delicious, “is the
Confederate
rose.”

R
egina started off, alone, toward the courthouse. The sidewalk she traveled along was rutted from one end to the other. And of course they’d all been this way in the book.
Magnolia roots glaring up through the rugged pavement, looking for all the world like eyes on top of a scary ol’ alligator head. An alligator head that was just waiting there, quiet as Sunday, to trip you up, to bite you hard, and to call out “Gotcha!”

But nobody or nothing was going to get Regina. She was determined. She’d watch her step, all right.

“Turn right. You can’t miss the Duval place. It’s in front of the courthouse. Mind what I said about that grid.” That’s what Mary Pickett had told her as she passed her through the gate and then left her. Regina had to shake her head. She thought,
All that—Mary Pickett’s changed sweater, her hat, her gloves, her dark glasses—put on for a two-minute appearance on a deserted mid-morning street.
Everything so different from
The Secret of Magic
, and M. P. Calhoun, too, so unlike the kindly old man Regina had pictured.

But at least the courthouse was right where Mary Pickett had said it would be—a two-story red brick building with white-painted trim. Regina saw it loom up straight in front of her, plain as day in the morning light. And with a soldier standing guard right beside it. A
granite
soldier, clutching a stone rifle and with stone eyes that seemed to pick out Regina and follow her down the street. The War Memorial. Beneath his feet a plaque, its bright brass turned verdigris by humid air and time. She was too far away to read it. She didn’t know if she’d want to even if she could. There’d be no black name on it, of that she was certain. Not with that Confederate flag flapping overhead.

This wasn’t a flag you came upon often in New York, and if you did usually it was buried deep someplace in a book. Or else, once in a while, you’d see it on the front page of some daily, grimly sinister in a black-and-white photograph, surrounded by men who thought it best to hide who they were behind pointed hats and long, plain sheets. But no matter where she saw it, the Confederate flag remained an object of caution. Certainly not something Thurgood or the other lawyers at the Fund would think to bring back as a sweet Southern memento. Yet here, in Revere, Mississippi, the Stars and the Bars reigned supreme.

“And not just anywhere,” whispered Regina, “but over the damn courthouse.”

Perhaps not the best of omens as it fluttered over a square that was filling up with white people, going into the courthouse or coming out again, folks who stopped to chat with one another on its broad steps. It waved over a black man, busily snapping his shining rag over the shoes of a portly white man, both of them deep in conversation, over what looked to Regina from this distance like a one-page racing form. The white man shook his head, stabbed the air with a forefinger. The black man, shook his head, mumbled, “Uhm. Uhm. Uhm.”

But they looked helpful enough, at least the black one did, and Regina was heading in their direction, her perkiest smile at the ready, a polite, “Excuse me, sir, is the Duval law office near here?” rising to her lips. When she noticed the woman. Or rather, being Ida Jane Robichard’s daughter, when she noticed the woman’s jaunty felt hat. A cloche that looked for all the world like a chipper red sailboat; feathered, veiled, facing optimistically forward, and bobbing along on a carefully straightened, darkly perfect, wave of marceled hair.

That’s a really nice hat,
thought Regina, surprised a little by the fact that the woman who wore it was Negro.

And she looked serene, too, looked sprightly, as she made her slow way down the main street. It didn’t seem to be easy going. One hand steered a white wicker baby buggy while the other clutched what looked to be a three-year-old boy.

His mother—because surely she was the mother—had to wheel around the uneven sidewalk paving and dodge tree roots that poked up through the asphalt, just like they did on Mary Pickett’s street. And her little boy was a handful. Lively. He clamped his arms to his sides, told his mother, and anybody else within earshot, that he was too old now to hold hands. He and the woman looked just alike. Same big eyes. Same high cheekbones and coffee coloring. Not a white child. And Regina wondered what this woman’s husband must do for a living that she was able to dress smartly and walk about with her own children on the sidewalks of Revere, Mississippi, in the middle of a fine, bright day.

The carriage lost its balance, nicked against the curb, shifted. Inside it, a baby started to cry. The woman looked like she might need some help. Regina started toward her. But then she stopped. Men were coming down the street, straight toward the woman, and they were closer than she was.

White men, dressed in shirt sleeves and ties, their suit coats slung over their shoulders. They had hats on their heads and they were talking, busy with what they were saying, and they didn’t appear to notice the woman and her children on the sidewalk. Even though she was coming straight toward them. Even though the child still loudly protested that he was way too old to hold hands. And the baby crying . . . How could they miss all that?

But they sure seemed to.

The woman kept her eyes studiously down; kept them on the buggy, on her recalcitrant three-year-old son, on the pavement, on her shoes. But she must have seen the men, must have been paying attention to them all along. Because as Regina watched, she deftly maneuvered her baby carriage and herself and her boy, all together, off and into the street, leaving the white men to own the sidewalk. Only after they’d passed did she climb back up where she’d been and go on like before—except for one difference. Her little boy stopped protesting. He followed his mother’s example and lowered his eyes to the ground.

Regina could not believe it. She
could not believe it
—except, of course, she could. It’s why she was here, wasn’t it? Bad behavior taken for granted, ending in murder and who knew what else. What she didn’t understand, though, was the scintilla of her anger—a sharp, bright shard of it—that splintered off from the rage she felt toward those men and trailed that Negro mother.

She thought of Ida Jane, all the hard work, all the fiery speeches.

“You don’t stand up for yourself first, ain’t nobody in this world going to stand up for you.”

• • •

BED DUVAL’S OFFICE,
too, turned out to be exactly where Mary Pickett had said it would be, catty-corner and across from the courthouse. It was in a one-story brick building hugged up between the Moffett’s Dry Goods Store (
COFFINS
$5
, MADE WHILE U WAIT
) and another squat structure with a simple
LAWYERS CHEAP (LAND ISSUES),
green paint on a white sandwich-board sign. The Duval office was different from both these. More impressive. You couldn’t miss it if you tried. Twin windows glared out onto the sidewalk. One read
NATHAN BEDFORD FORREST DUVAL V, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW
in gold-edged black letters, the other said
NATHAN BEDFORD FORREST DUVAL V, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW AND DISTRICT ATTORNEY
.
The two windows were separated by a worn red door.

Regina opened it. Stepped inside, where everything was dusty and dim. It took a few seconds of real concentration before her eyes were able to focus. When they did, she found herself in a cramped, unadorned room, staring at a good-sized wooden partner’s desk stuck like a sentry post right in its middle. Behind which sat a precise little white woman, her back pulled up to attention, ramrod straight.

“What you want?” Said in a husky voice that seemed redolent of some deep, strong substance, either good liquor or bad cigarettes.

Regina took a deep breath, plastered a smile on her face, strode over, her hand held out.

“I am Regina Mary Robichard,” she said. “And I would like to speak with the district attorney for a moment. I’m sorry I don’t have an appointment.”

“About what?” said the woman. Maybe more curious than actively hostile, but with nothing about her that indicated
May I help you?
either. Regina drew her hand back.

The woman had on a blue linen suit with a piece of white lace pinned, corsage-like, to its shoulder, hair gray as gunmetal, lipstick bright as fire. Sixty years old if she was a day. A gold sign perched on her desk proclaimed her as Miss Tutwiler. Which was a relief to Regina. Not a full day in town yet and already she’d noticed a subtle social distinction between somebody you called Miss Mary Pickett or someone you addressed as Miss Calhoun.
Miss Tutwiler
,
spelled out, left no room for equivocation. This was further emphasized by a crisp
THE RECEPTIONIST
written beneath.

A model of secretarial perfection but . . . It was early. And Miss Tutwiler, maybe, a trifle inattentive. She’d passed over a pin curl. Smack in the middle of her forehead, the steel bobby pin in it winked out from surrounding corkscrew curls like a third eye. Regina wondered if she should point this out, if that would be the polite thing to do. But Miss Tutwiler’s scowling face did not seem to welcome a warning.

So Regina repeated, “Mr. Duval. I’d like to see him, if you don’t mind.”

“Well, I certainly
do
mind, and I’m sure he would, too,” said Miss Tutwiler. “If he were in, but he isn’t. Nobody here now but me.”

Just then the telephone jingled. Without taking her eyes off Regina, Miss Tutwiler reached down and picked it right up. “Well, good morning to you, too, Mr. Blodgett,” she sang out bright as a bird into the Bakelite receiver. “He sure is. I’ll get him right on.” She punched a button on her desk. Regina heard the echo of a buzzer behind a closed door.

“What you want?” This from a man’s voice, a deep rumble that sounded decidedly like Miss Tutwiler’s did—same accent, same brine.

“Mr. Jackson Blodgett on the horn for you, Forrest.” Then she turned back to Regina, her small eyes narrow, a decided smirk on her tight little lips. “What, you still here?”

Laughter echoed out from behind the closed door.
Two
men there. Right behind it. Obviously “Forrest” was one; she wondered about the other. Could it be Bed Duval?

Regina drew herself up, ready for battle. But then she remembered the Confederate flag. She could almost hear it snapping just outside the office window. This was not the place, nor the moment, to get righteous, not if she wanted to help Mr. Willie Willie.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll wait.”

“Outside,” Miss Tutwiler said matter-of-factly. “No place for your kind to lollygag around in here.”

Regina glanced pointedly over at six empty straight-back chairs that were lined up like lemmings around the walls, old
Saturday Evening Post
s sprinkled on tables beside them.

Miss Tutwiler saw where she was looking, shook her head. “You gonna wait outside or I’m gonna call the police. Those are your options. Choice is up to you.”

Well, wasn’t this what Regina had expected? She headed toward the door but paused with her hand on the knob and turned around to face the righteous Miss Tutwiler.

Should she or shouldn’t she?

She decided she should.

“Oh, by the way,” said Regina Mary Robichard, Esquire, all innocence. “I thought you might like to know, you missed a bobby pin. Unfortunately, it’s sticking right out in the front of your head. Normally I wouldn’t think to mention it, but—it just
ruins
your appearance.” She drawled the words out, slow and easy, and hoped she sounded Southern. Like this was said by a Negro who
belonged
here
.

Miss Tutwiler’s hand flew up. It had a life of its own, she couldn’t stop it. The surprised “Oh!” of her mouth almost exactly matching the metal errant “Oh” of the bobby-pinned curl on her head. Regina turned away quickly. She didn’t want Miss Tutwiler to see the twitch of her own wicked smile.

But outside, in the sunlight, her triumph lasted all of thirty seconds. That was the amount of time it took her to realize she was, again, back on the street. She blinked into the bright sunlight and turned back to the door she was certain closed her off from Bed Duval. In there with his father . . . Well, the both of them would have to come out sooner or later. She’d just sit down and wait.

Trouble was, she didn’t know where to sit, or even if she
could
sit. Sitting didn’t seem to be racially designated, unlike the drinking fountains in front of the courthouse, which she could easily see from the Duval office steps.
WHITES ONLY
read the sign over clean, snowy porcelain;
COLORED
over the rusting spigot right next to it. But the wrought-iron benches that lined the square—who got to sit on them and where? They didn’t have anything written on them, no signs. Maybe they didn’t need to. They were already filled with old white men deep in animated conversation, with hatted and gloved ladies batting at the still air with palm-leaf fans. There were no Negroes sitting anywhere.

But, sitting or not, everybody—black and white—turned to look at her. Regina saw what she now thought of as the Tutwiler “O” distorting the features of many a face. Fans ceased fanning; men stopped their talking on the bench. The only person not staring at her was the shoeshine man.
He
was looking down, paying strict attention to every pair of scuffed boots that shuffled past. Regina felt almost as sorry for him as she did for herself. She’d become a spectacle, something she didn’t like and wasn’t used to being. Who, in New York, stood out on the street? But there was no help for it here, not that Regina could see. She was never going to get into a courtroom with this case unless she found out what had happened with it in a courtroom already. She opened up her purse, pulled out a clean white lace handkerchief—glad she’d brought a few of them with her; they might come in handy—laid it out on the step, and sat herself down. Behind her, the Duval law office remained silent, shut up tight as a tick. Nobody went into it. Nobody came out.