* Author : Eden Royce
* Narrator : Laurice White
* Host : Matt Dovey
* Audio Producer : Eric Valdes


PodCastle 914: The Magnolia Returns is a PodCastle original.


Rated PG
The Magnolia Returns
By Eden Royce
 
The Magnolia blooms out of nowhere at any time of year it chooses, bringing its dilapidated wooden slats and rickety front steps to a neighborhood that somehow believes it has always been there. The butcher shop itself is well-worn, looking like it has seen better days: peeling seafoam green paint on salt-blasted boards, the once-vivid red front door now a faded smear like lipstick after an ardent lover’s attention.
Once it arrives, the locals begin to talk about visiting. They have always talked of the things they miss in life, and more often than not, it’s the food, the ingredients. Depending on when and where the Magnolia appears, either the supermarkets don’t stock the items the locals crave — the chicken feet, the pig tails, jowl, and ear — or these once-reviled parts of the animal have become so popular with the wealthy, it’s impossible for the poor to attain them.
Make no mistake, the Magnolia knows it’s the poor that have made these ingredients desirable and popular. It’s the poor who have had to do so much with so little: food, care, recognition. Understandable that the poor wish to have acclaim and thus shared their techniques and recipes with those of means, who only stole and warped and erased, shoving any chance for others to prosper into airless crawlspaces, to be forgotten by all but each other.
But the Magnolia believes in chances.
Even so, it does not deliver. You must go and ask for what you want or need. Then it gives what you request, sometimes a little more. Rarely does it give less.

Fish heads: Old man Johnson made his way to the Magnolia with difficulty. He could deal with the pain of getting out of bed, standing too long, sitting too long, laying down too long. It was losing his entire sight that he preferred not to contend with. He had no real family left, only the married ladies in the neighborhood who checked in on him once their kids went to school, offering to hang his laundry with theirs or bring him some hot food from the pots simmering on their stoves.
Most times, he accepted with a dip of his head and a “Thankya, ma’am”, even though he remembered them married ladies when they was babies around the courtyards, with skinned and ashy knees and hair unraveling from carefully oiled and twisted ponytails. They was grown now and he was old. Still, he gave them what he had: some money from his Army pension check and his words of wisdom when they requested them.
One evening, a neighbor lady asked if she could get him anything from The Magnolia, and he wondered why he hadn’t gone there before. He hadn’t thought of the place in years, since he was a little boy and his father took him when the daily catch hadn’t been enough to feed the family. They didn’t have money, but there always seemed to be enough for plenny meals once they went within those rickety walls.
Johnson shook his peppery head and told her he would go himself, but in the morning when he had his good strength. And go he did, when the sun came up, Johnson was dressing in his not-quite-Sunday suit and hat, leaning on his cane, hoofing it down the asphalt. It was slow going but he would get there in plenny time. He’d see to that. The early morning hours were easy on his eyes, before the sun started glaring, and after the hazy, dim confusion of nighttime. Halfway there,