The Messenger of Magnolia Street Read Online Free PDF Page A

a shiver up his spine that he cannot explain. And he wants to tell Trice to stop. He wants to tell her to go away. But instead he says again, “What it ?”
    â€œThe it that hit me in pictures.”
    â€œTell it, Trice,” Billy’s arms fly out over his head. “Tell the whole thing and get it over with.”
    â€œThe pockets of Time,” she says. And stands there as if they understand.
    â€œJust tell him, Trice, just get straight to the story.” Billy’s exasperation begins filling up the balloon of the room.
    â€œI woke up trying to remember a dream I had but instead I saw all of Shibboleth at once, like from the air. But from the air all at once at different times. As if there were pockets of time.” She closes her eyes and the times and the timing of Shibboleth open up before her. The what-has-beens and the way things are and the way things will be or the way things will not be at all without…and that’s where she stops speaking, because she doesn’t know what she hasn’t seen.
    â€œI don’t know anything more than what I saw.” Trice tries to continue, stops. It’s difficult to explain a waking dream, a vision of otherworldly things. Trice knows. She’s tried for years. “It’s as if a storm is coming and no one is…”—she stops again, searching for a word—“preparing. No, that’s not it. Expecting. No, not…ready. No one is ready. Like inch by inch, something has been stealing…”
    I see Trice struggling with words. Struggling to paint the right image. I look to God. He nods and I exhale, breathe out inspiration. It is the smell of old worlds, of Trice reading words layered upon words, of cornbread and ladybugs, of stubborn patience and understanding, of the soft, green moss hidden on the morning side of Shibboleth, and the scent of bold, pure light. It is the essence of Trice. It lifts on the air, circles her head and shoulders, and settles in her hair. She takes a deep breath in, becomes lucid and literal.
    â€œThis is the way I saw it.” She stands up and reaches for Nehemiah’s fruit bowl, picks up two apples and an orange. “Look.” She sets the apple on the table. “This is everything and everyone and all of life in Shibboleth before us, back in the old days, in the early days of Kate and Twila and Magnus and the days before them.” She sets another apple on the table. “This is the life weknew. And even in that I saw the smaller pockets. Our times of yesterday when we were kids and all the times of our growing up, including, Nehemiah, the time that we were down at the springs swimming and you kissed me underwater.” Trice pauses, wonders why that memory surfaced. Nehemiah arches one eyebrow, but at this living moment he doesn’t remember such a kiss. “And the smaller pocket that makes up the very now.” She sets down the orange at the end of the line. “Now, this is where it gets interesting. This is the time to come. The future. Get it?” She holds up the orange for both of them to examine the future until they nod their heads and agree they understand. And then she grabs a butcher knife from Nehemiah’s knife rack. “But look now!” She slices the orange in half. “Here’s one future,” she is saying this with one half of a dripping orange held up in her hand then slammed down hard on the table surface, “and this,” she turns the other half inside-out and rips the orange out of its shell until the peel is an empty core, “this is the other future.” “Still the future,” she slams the empty shell down, “but this future is completely empty. Empty, empty, empty. Still time, but time with nothing in it.” She pauses, pinches her brows together and lasers her eyes on both of them. They can think anything about her that they want, but they cannot deny what’s in her eyes. (