The Secret of Magic Read Free

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