The Messenger of Magnolia Street Read Online Free Page B

politeness and politics aside, Trice is much more interested in the space of Nehemiah’s life than in what he does. About his after-hours and what waits for him (or doesn’t) when he comes home. Exactly who is this man who sits before them? The sound of a saxophone filters out from the living room. Trice doesn’t recognizeJohn Coltrane but she likes the sound. She looks at Nehemiah, studies his hands as he tells Billy something, opening his palms and placing them together. He’s learned some things , she thinks, he’s been some places . She watches him carefully and purposefully turn up his sleeves, first the right, then the left. Then he slowly pushes the cuffs up over his forearms. And for just a moment their eyes lock. This time, it’s Trice who is the first to look away. Her eyes wander over the furnishings and she recognizes the absence of something, a vacancy she cannot identify. She looks for the presence of women but there is none that she can see. Or the presence of the woman. The one who would make her presence known even in her absence. Flowers here, a bottle of perfume accidentally left there. Trice considers how road-weary she must look. Considers the possibility of bugs stuck in her hair. She combs it with her fingers as she surveys the living room from her chair. There is a masculine order present, but a different one than she is accustomed to. No guns. No fishing lines or lures. No visible tools. She is pensively puzzling this with one nail in her mouth, when Billy says, “It’s all on account of Trice that we’re here.”
    Trice responds by pulling her feet up in the chair and wrapping her arms about her knees. She remembers their reason. “We came to talk to you about something,” she says.
    Nehemiah looks over at her, raps his knuckles twice on the table as if knocking on a door. “I know you did.” He gets up to refill his coffee cup, sits back down and leans back in his chair, hands crossed behind his head. “Why don’t you tell me about it.”
    â€œGo on, Trice,” Billy points at her, “tell him about your feeling .”
    â€œDon’t get smart, Billy,” she says with a hard stare of a dare.
    â€œI didn’t say nothing bad. What’d I say bad? You tell me, Nehemiah, did I say something bad?”
    â€œIt was your tone.” Trice is snappy, red-eyed weary, and not to be toyed with.
    â€œYou two have been on the road too long, that’s all. Tell me, Trice,” Nehemiah offers no smiles, no jokes. “Tell me about your feeling.” He says this with the sound of all due patience, moves his arms, crosses them over his chest. He sounds patient but he isn’t. Not really. Not right now. He has a lot of work to do and has a strange feeling of his own that there is an interruption coming. An interruption that will try to pull him away from the world that he has worked so hard to create.
    Trice unfolds, gets to her feet, and paces the floor, looking down, begins taking those ballerina steps again. Toe, toe, toe, heel, toe, heel, toe. “We didn’t see it. Now don’t you think that’s strange?” She appears to be talking to herself. “I do. I really do.” She whips around and faces Nehemiah, “and I’ll tell you the truth right now, if you don’t get it —because I’m thinking you getting it is very, very important—I get the crazy feeling in my gut that we won’t even remember being here.”
    â€œSee what having a feeling will do to someone?” Billy offers this out of the side of his mouth as if he was whispering to his brother but knowing Trice can hear him loud and clear, trying to pull her chain.
    â€œWhat it , Trice, am I supposed to get?” Nehemiah’s patience is already cracking. He feels something sucking at his feet. And it frightens him. The selfsame boy who stood impervious and brave facing the unknown darkness now feels