The Secret of Magic Read Free Page B

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