Angel Thieves

by Kathi Appelt

  If she had been able to walk alone on the road from the Captain’s house—south of the city, near Harrisburg—to the church, it might have taken a full day, and part of a night; maybe a bit more. But she wasn’t on the dry road. She was trudging along the banks of the river, with all its twists and turns, with her small daughters in tow. As well, whenever the banks got too steep, she had to walk in the water itself. She was going north, against the current.

  The instructions sent by Major Bay had said to look for a set of wooden steps embedded into the banks. They were used for taking congregants down to the water for baptisms. She had been looking for them, willing them to appear, but so far there were no steps—only the water and the night, and the exhaustion sunk all the way to her bones.

  To make matters worse, she thought she heard the far-off bay of a hound. She couldn’t be sure, it was so faint. Maybe, she thought, it was something else—the cry of a fox, or the wail of a coyote. She tipped her ear in the direction it seemed to come from, but there was nothing. On this Earth, there was no other sound like that of a bloodhound, at once urgent and sad. As well, she knew that Morgan had probably put a bounty on her head by now, so it was not only the tracker, but anyone who needed some cash who was likely on her trail.

  With the rising sun, they were forced to stop. She managed to help the girls climb into the branches of a sturdy magnolia tree, one laden with blossoms. They’d have to wait out the day there.

  Achsah hoped the fragrance of the flowers would make a mask, throw off their scent. Her girls were so weary they could hardly move. Their faces, and the tops of their hands, every place where their skin was exposed, were swollen from the sting of mosquitoes.

  She gave them the last of the provisions from the kettle and bade them to wrap their arms around the tree’s trunk. And the tree, as if it understood its holy task, held on to them, as if its branches were arms, were cradles. Achsah silently thanked the gentle tree, then straddled the lower branch, leaned against the trunk, and closed her eyes.

  She was too tired to sleep, but not too tired to dream. With the palm of her hand, she felt the tiny figurine in her skirt pocket. Somewhere, she knew, there was a thin boy who knew her name. She wondered if he missed her the same.

  Probably not. But the dream of him felt so soft that she took a deep breath and let herself drift off to sleep. And the wispy haints of the river gathered in a group and made a thick circle of fog, fog so deep no hound, no tracker, no bounty hunter could find them, not then anyway, that’s how thick their circle was.

  Achsah, they whispered. Find the Lady.

  Juba and Mary Ann

  HOUSTON, REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

  1845

  Juba felt the heat in her little sister. Despite the cool morning air, Mary Ann’s hand was like a warm biscuit straight out of the pan. And something else: Mary Ann was quiet. Too quiet.

  Mary Ann. She leaned against the trunk of the friendly tree, all of her so very, very sleepy. All of her singing, with no sound at all: you shall wear de starry crown, oh Lord. . . .

  Mrs. Walker

  HOUSTON

  SATURDAY, OCTOBER

  Who can put a value on an angel? Is one worth more than another? It depends on the realms in which they reside. As it turns out, hand carved angels here on planet Earth can fetch a handsome sum. The sale of Hans’s angel, made of the finest Carrara marble, marble that came from the same quarry as Michelangelo’s famous Pieta, set Mrs. Walker up for quite a while. It gave her enough to weather the downturn in oil prices and gave her the capital she was able to operate on for a good long time when Paul and Cade showed up a few years later, as well as keep Cade in sneakers, which he seemed to outgrow, faster than a speeding train.

  It’s funny about love, isn’t it? She didn’t think that she could ever love anyone more fully or wholeheartedly than Hans. And for a long time after he died, she figured that love was done with her, at least in the earthly sense. The idea that it would show up in any other form seemed as remote to her as Cuba.

  And then, there they were, Paul and Cade. They were the last two people she expected to find on her doorstep.

  Having them in her life made her feel enormously lucky, not to mention a little sorry for the families who chose not to keep them, a fact she could never understand. Watching both of them grow up, well, she saw that as a rare gift. She would do anything for them. It was especially important to her to keep the store running so that when she left, it would be there for Paul.

  Yes, she planned to leave it to him, with the caveat that he would not have to keep it if he didn’t want to.

  And that was the thing. The day when she would do that leaving was coming. She had known it for a while now, could tell that each day was bringing her closer to reuniting with Hans. She wasn’t sorry, or even sad to be leaving. She had been here a very long time, after all, longer than most.

  But she wanted to be sure that Paul would have enough for him and Cade to settle the estate and to get by for a little while. Maybe they would both go to college. Or travel. Or start some other business. Whatever it was they wanted, she wanted for them. And she knew that the property all by itself, once sold, would be enough to give them a good start.

  And while angels weren’t the hot commodity they had been twenty years earlier, they were still highly prized.

  If the well-heeled didn’t have an angel in their garden, particularly one carved of granite or marble, well, they were missing out. Mrs. Walker knew that. The man from Galveston who wore the Tony Lama ostrich-skin boots knew that too. Whenever she needed a few extra bucks, all she had to do was call. And since he was what would be known as “off the grid of legitimacy,” he never divulged his real name, so Trudy Walker just called him the Cowboy, and let it go at that.

  And as it turned out, the Cowboy was happy to see the weeping angel. “I have a client in Dublin who will love her,” he said. But as they bundled her up in packing quilts, Mrs. Walker couldn’t help but think that Dublin was a long way for an angel from Texas to fly.

  Zorra

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  SATURDAY

  For a long fifteen seconds, maybe more, the bayou pulled Zorra’s toppled cage down, down, down into the circling eddy. Once, twice, three times around. She held her breath. She was a strong swimmer, but inside the cage, she had nowhere to go, no way to get out. She kicked her legs against the current, pawed at the walls, twisted and twisted against the murderous water.

  And just when she thought her lungs would burst, like that, the bayou let her go. With a strong push it heaved the wooden cage to the surface, where it bobbed like a boat. Zorra couldn’t get her bearings. Inside the cage, the water came to her belly, it pressed her head against the top of the enclosure so that she was mostly submerged.

  The cage-boat bounced against debris that flowed from upstream, pushed her downstream, away from the hidden cove, floated several more yards, then drifted into a raft of broken tree limbs and lumber and a pair of lawn chairs, their aluminum frames twisted and bent.

  Zorra pressed herself to the back of the cage, making the small opening of the pen face upward, so all she could see from inside her watery craft were the gray sky and clouds, and the underneath of a concrete-and-steel structure, that, had she been a denizen of the city, she would have called a bridge.

  Thousands of cars, with thousands of passengers, drive over those bridges every day and every night, but did anyone notice Zorra, caught in her awful boat? With only a metal bowl for company. We can say that thousands missed her.

  But the bayou didn’t. The bayou loves ocelots. Once they had been as familiar along her waterway as the alligators, roaming the magnolia forests along her muddy banks. She didn’t want to lose another, so as soon as she could, she pushed the tiny craft against the opposite shore, lodged it against the trunk of a century-old hickory tree, its leaves turning red in the cooling fall air. And just beside it, the bridge, one that housed a few thousand bats, Mexican free-tails.

  Zorra,
exhausted, feels the water drain from her leaky cage, and shivering, she sinks onto its rotten wooden floor. Every inch of her aches. Every muscle screams. Her coat is covered in mud and the residue that has settled in the bayou over decades and longer—oil and kerosene and sewage—all the stuff that churns up after a heavy rain. She is alive, but not very.

  She lowers her head onto her front paws, but for some reason, just before she falls asleep, she looks up through the cage-door window, through the tree’s leaves, and there, just beside the noisy bridge, is a face she knows—the friendly moon.

  She listens as hard as she can, but there is no coyote’s song in her ears. Nothing warm or soft. Not even the crickets pipe up. And no one in those thousands of cars spots her, trapped in a water-soaked cage, watching the moon float by. No one.

  Cade Curtis

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  A HISTORY

  In the Old Testament, there is the story of Moses, how his mother, Jochebed—a slave—wrapped him in a blanket when he was a baby and tucked him into a basket woven of reeds. Then she set him atop the water of the Nile and quickly turned away. It was the only thing she could do to save her newborn son from the wrath of the Pharaoh. And while we can’t know how much her heart broke that day, we do know that the current on the river carried the baby Moses straight into the arms of the Pharaoh’s daughter. Bithiah, that was her name; she loved him as hard as any mother could.

  In the great state of Texas, there is a law named for baby Moses. Read the pamphlet, and it’ll tell you that if you can’t keep your baby, you can surrender him or her, no questions asked. Take that baby to a hospital or a fire station or a twenty-four-hour emergency medical clinic.

  You do not have to give a reason. You do not have to give your name. There is no penalty. There is no judgment.

  It’s a decent law. It saves babies from being abandoned in dumpsters, or being left on the sides of roads, or falling victim to abuse. It saves mothers, too. Mothers who can’t support their babies. Mothers who might be addicted or sick. Mothers from abusive homes . . .

  In the history of Cade, there was a promise. Paul promised Evie that he would take their baby to a hospital or a fire station or a twenty-four-hour emergency medical clinic and leave him there.

  It was an option.

  “She loved you so much,” Paul told Cade. “She had to let you go.

  “But I loved you so much too,” he added. And he pulled Cade into one of his famous dad hugs. “I couldn’t let you go.”

  But Cade also knows that he is not Evie’s only child. There are others, and unlike him, Evie couldn’t let them go.

  Evie Nelson

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  It was all because of a good-bye–not-given, the one Evie meant for Paul, that she found herself in Walker’s Art and Antique Store.

  How could she have known that Paul had broken his promise? How could she?

  Then again, how could anyone know that there isn’t a day goes by when she doesn’t think about her boy, when she doesn’t whisper, “Cade.”

  Yes, she knows his name. And every single day she hides the tears that she can’t keep from falling.

  Achsah

  HOUSTON, REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

  1845

  Achsah didn’t have time to cry. She only needed to find the Lady and make her way to Mexico. And she had to do it soon. Maybe she was imagining it, but she now felt certain that she heard the dogs. A bloodhound’s bay can carry for miles. She and the girls had time, but it was shorter by the hour. Moreover, the kettle she had filled with potatoes and dried meat and biscuits was empty, and she knew that her little ones’ stomachs were empty too. For herself, she had not eaten but a few bites of biscuit since the morning the Captain had died and given her daughters to James Morgan. Where was the justice in that?

  No, Achsah would not find justice in Texas.

  She had heard about los cimarrones and how they settled in a region called Costa Chica, somewhere near Acapulco in southwestern Mexico. She and her girls would be free there.

  It was dark, a blue-gray kind of dark that happens just as the sun creeps below the horizon, when the world becomes as still as stone, so still the crickets had stopped chirping, and the only sounds were the merciless mosquitoes, which rose out of the low-lying marsh grass in clouds. Achsah brushed them away as much as she could. She knew her girls were suffering too. Neither of them complained, neither of them cried out. Though she was grateful, their stoic silence felt just as painful as the welts that covered their faces.

  She tugged on the hems of her daughters’ skirts. Under the cover of the darkness, she held her arms open as the girls lowered themselves out of the sturdy magnolia and into the thick underbrush that surrounded them. “Hurry,” she whispered. She knew that soon, Morgan’s tracker would have his dogs out again. Their bites would be far worse than the stings of the relentless mosquitoes.

  And she also knew that by now, the entire town of Houston would be informed of her escape. She was counting on that.

  What she wasn’t counting on was the heat in Mary Ann’s hand, burning against the skin of her own.

  Mother River Church of God’s Blessings

  HOUSTON, REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

  1845

  The Reverend Phillips knelt in the corner of a pew next to a window inside the church building. Anyone passing by would simply see a man of the Book engaged in prayer, his face lit by a kerosene lantern. They would probably not notice that every few minutes, despite the morning’s darkness, he looked out the open window in the direction of the river. It was already hot, despite the early hour, and he could feel a thin bead of sweat trickle down his sides underneath his black woolen coat.

  The coat was one of the only things he disliked about being a minister, and if it hadn’t been for Celia, who admonished him to wear it for the authority it bestowed upon him, he might have flung it off and gone about in his white cotton shirt. But he understood her reasoning. Plus, he had to admit, a hot coat was a small discomfort considering the many blessings that went with his profession, even though some blessings were greater than others.

  He paused in his prayer and looked out the window again. News traveled quickly through the slave community. Thanks to Major Bay, Reverend Phillips had been privy to the escape almost as soon as it had happened, and he had been waiting. He also knew that Morgan had not discovered the death of the Captain until the following day, giving Achsah a lead. Nevertheless, two full days and two full nights was a long time to evade the dogs, not to mention the trackers who would surely be on her trail. Also, she was traveling with children. That would make her run more complicated. A woman with two little girls could not have gotten very far very fast.

  He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, but it gave him little relief. According to Major Bay, no one had seen her yet, which meant that she was probably nearby, maybe right under their noses.

  Someone would eventually smoke them out. Or she’d give up out of hunger and thirst. He’d seen it happen more than once. For every successful escape, there were ten that weren’t. If she was going to get out, she needed to make a move. Soon.

  He’d seen the printed posters that Morgan had distributed around town. There was a substantial reward for the return of the little girls. As well, the sheriff had posted notices for the mother, whose name was Achsah. If she were captured, she’d be treated as a criminal.

  James Morgan was present when the constitution for the new republic was written. Its intent was clear: stealing a slave was considered an act of piracy.

  No matter that she was the girls’ mother. No matter that she was a free woman, freed by the father of her children. No matter. In the eyes of the law, those girls were stolen property. Piracy was a hanging offense. Reverend Phillips closed his eyes, but quickly opened them. The image of a woman dangling at the end of a rope sent a shiver down his back despite his heavy coat.

  He knew that Morgan could afford to pay a handsome sum for their return, whic
h meant that every man with a dog and a gun was likely on their trail. Three days and no sign yet. It couldn’t be much longer. As if the sun agreed, it crept over the edge of the bayou and sent a long stream of light right into the church window, momentarily blinding him.

  Dear God! He clasped his hands together and pressed them against his forehead. “Hurry,” he prayed. “Hurry!”

  Buffalo Bayou

  HOUSTON

  Pirates. She’s seen them travel on steamboats, paddles churning up her brackish water. They cheated at poker and blackjack. They smuggled an array of goods into the brand-new city. Silk for the fine ladies. Tobacco for the soldiers. Slave labor for the sugar barons.

  In they came, pirates, from New Orleans, from Barbados and the China Sea, past the Keys in Florida and across the Gulf of Mexico, they sailed in through the port of Galveston and traveled upstream. A new life. In a new place. In a new country.

  Keep your eyes open. They come and go. They sail upon the old channels of this wandering bayou, they hide along her wild, wild banks.

  Zorra

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  SATURDAY

  Exhausted from her trip downstream, Zorra slept through the night and most of the day, and now evening is approaching. But there is no food, nor any water in her metal bowl. She paws at it until it flips over, making a ringing noise in her ears.

  She looks up, back out at the sky through the wires of the small window, which is all she can see. And then, miracle of miracles, a bright green lizard, an anole, slips through the wires. Zorra watches as it pauses just inside her cage and looks around. Quicker than light, she strikes it with her paw and pops it into her mouth.