The Angel on the Roof

by Russell Banks

  Her mother dressed the child warmly in a dark blue, hooded snow-suit, mittens, and overshoes. It was an overcast Sunday afternoon, the low sky promising snow, when the residents of the trailerpark walked Maureen down to where the land ended and the ice began. Smiling and talking cheerfully together for the first time in weeks, they called advice to their tiny emissary:

  “Don’t forget, ask him about his fishing first! Then ask him about the money.”

  “Just say we all miss him here and wonder when he’s coming back in!”

  “No, no, just ask if we can do anything for him! Can we bring him any supplies, wood for his fire, tools—anything!”

  The child looked about in bewilderment, and when she got to the edge of the ice, she stopped and faced the crowd.

  “All right, honey,” her mother said. “Go ahead. Go on and visit Uncle Merle, honey. He’s out there waiting for you.”

  They could trust the child. Merle, they knew, would tell her the truth, and she in turn would tell them the truth.

  “Go on, sweets,” Doreen coaxed.

  The little girl looked up at the adults.

  “Merle’s probably lonely,” Nancy Hubner said. “He’ll love you for visiting with him.”

  “It’s not very far, you’ll have fun walking on the ice,” Terry assured her.

  “She doesn’t want to go, man,” Bruce said to Terry in a low voice.

  “For Christ’s sake, make the kid go!” Claudel told Doreen. “I’m getting cold standing out here in my shirtsleeves.”

  “Shut up, Claudel, she’s just a little nervous.”

  Marcelle snorted. “First time I’ve seen her nervous about playing on the ice. Usually you can’t get her to come in off it.”

  “Go on,” Doreen said, waving good-bye.

  The child took a backward step and stopped.

  “G’wan, honey, Uncle Merle’s waiting for you,” Carol said with obvious impatience. “Whose idea was this anyway?”

  “You’re the child’s mother,” Captain Knox reminded Doreen. “You tell her what to do, and if she doesn’t do it, punish her. It’s her choice.” He turned and stepped from the group, as if all this fuss had nothing to do with him.

  “If you don’t march out there and visit Merle Ring right now, young lady, I’ll… I’ll … take away TV for a month!”

  The little girl looked angrily at her mother. “No,” she said.

  “I will too! Now get out there! He’s expecting you, dammit!”

  “You come, too,” Maureen said to her mother.

  “I can’t… I … have to do the laundry.”

  “He only likes kids,” Terry said. “Grown-ups like us just bug him. You’ll see. He’ll be real glad to see you come all the way out there to visit him.”

  “He might have some candy for you,” Bruce said.

  The child turned and started waddling away.

  “Don’t forget about the money!” Noni Hubner called.

  The child turned back. “What?”

  “The money!” several of them bellowed at once, and the child, as if frightened, whirled away.

  The adults stood for a moment, watching the blue-hooded figure get smaller and smaller in the distance. The ice was white and smooth and, because of the constant wind, scraped free of snow, so that the blue figure of the child and the red bob-house way beyond stood out sharply. The sky, the color of a dirty sheet, stretched over the lake, and lumpy gray hills lay like a ruÏmpled blanket between the ice and sky. Slowly, the people drifted back to their trailers, until only the child’s mother and her friend Marcelle remained at the shore. Once, the child stopped and turned back, and the mother waved, and the little girl resumed trudging toward the bob-house. Then the mother and her friend Marcelle walked to the mother’s trailer together.

  “Kid’s got a mind of her own,” Marcelle said, lighting a cigarette off Doreen’s gas stove. “Just like my kids used to be.”

  “Why do you think I let her go all the way out there alone?” Doreen asked.

  “You can only protect them so much.”

  “I know,” Doreen said, sighing. “Otherwise you got ’em clinging to you the rest of your life.”

  “Yeah.”

  The child, Maureen Tiede, pushed the door of the bob-house open an inch and peeked inside. The wind had come up sharply, and snow was beginning to fall in hard, dry flecks. Maureen’s face was red and wet from tears. Outside, a rag of smoke trailed from the chimney, but inside the bob-house it was as dark as a hole in the ground and, except for the howl of the wind, silent. The little girl let the door close again and backed away from it. For a few moments she stood outside, looking first across the ice to the trailerpark, then at the closed door of the bob-house. At the trailerpark, the frozen beach was deserted. The trailers, their pastel colors washed to shades of gray in the dim light, sat like two parallel rows of matchboxes. Finally, Maureen moved toward the door and pushed it open once again, wider this time, so that a swatch of light fell into the bob-house and revealed the hooked shape of the old man seated at the end of the bunk. He was squinting out of his darkness at the open door and the child beyond.

  “Come inside,” Merle said.

  The girl stepped carefully over the high threshold and, on closing the door behind her, realized that, while she could no longer make out the old man, the place was not entirely dark, for an eerie green light drifting from circles cut in the ice was bright enough to cast shadows against the ceiling and walls. Immediately, Maureen backed to the bunk, and holding to it with both hands stared down at the holes in the ice, looked through the ice, and saw the fluid, moving world there—tall, slender weeds and broadleaf plants drifting languorously back and forth, schools of minnows and bluegills gathering, swirling skittishly away from one another, then, as if at a prearranged signal, quickly regathering. The little girl was mesmerized by the sight, possibly even reassured or comforted by it, for she seemed to relax. She pulled off her mittens and stuffed them into the pockets of her snowsuit, then untied and pushed back her hood, all the while keeping her gaze fixed on the world beneath the ice, the world that moved beneath the cold, granitic, windblown world here above.

  “All by yourself today?” Merle asked quietly from his corner by the stove.

  Maureen nodded her head and said nothing.

  Merle queried the child for a few moments, discovered that she was not lost, that her momma knew where she was, and that she had never seen anyone fish through the ice before. “Well, you just sit still with me,” he told her, “and before long your momma or somebody else from the park will be out here looking for you. It’s snowing here and ought to be there, too. That’ll bring ’em out to get you.”

  By now she had her snowsuit off and was seated cross-legged on the bunk. She had said very little, answering Merle’s questions with yes or no and nothing more.

  Her silence seemed to please him. “You’re a nice kid,” he said, and for the first time in months, he smiled.

  After a while, Maureen lay back on the bunk against the old man’s blanket roll and fell asleep. Outside, the wind moaned and drove the snow across the ice, piling it in long, soft drifts along the shore. The sky had closed in, and even though it was still early in the afternoon, it seemed like evening. Every now and then, Merle tossed a chunk of wood into the stove, lit his pipe, took a sip of whiskey, and checked his lines.

  It was dark outside and snowing heavily, when the door was suddenly shoved open, and Maureen’s mother, her boyfriend, Claudel, right behind her, stepped into the tiny chamber, filling the crowded space to overflowing, so that Claudel had to retreat quickly. There were others outside, their heads bobbing and craning behind Doreen for a look.

  Merle had lit the kerosene lantern and had prepared a supper of fried bass fillets, boiled greens pulled from the lake bottom, and tea in his only cup for the child, whiskey from the bottle for himself.

  Doreen, in her hooded parka crusted with snow, embraced her child. “Thank God you’re all right!” The
little girl pulled away. “I don’t know what got into me!” Doreen cried. “Letting you out of my sight for a minute on a day like this!”

  Maureen stared down at the holes in the ice, which were dark now.

  “She insisted on coming out here to visit you, Mr. Ring, and I said no, but the second my back was turned so I could do the laundry, she was gone. It never occurred to us that she’d come out here, till later this afternoon, when the snow started building up. I thought she was just playing around the park somewhere.”

  Merle went on eating, quite as if the woman weren’t there.

  “She’s probably been telling you all kinds of stories!”

  Merle said nothing.

  “Did you, honey?” she asked her daughter. “Have you been telling Mr. Ring all kinds of stories about us?”

  The child pouted and shook her head from side to side. “No,” she said. “I just wanted to watch him fish. I fell asleep,” she added, as if to reassure her mother.

  The door swung open, letting in a blast of cold air and blowing snow. It was Terry’s face this time, and he said in a rush, “Listen, we’re freezing out here, we got to get moving or we’re gonna freeze to death. Everything okay?” he asked, peering at Doreen, at the child, and at Merle. “You know,” he said to Doreen, winking. “Everything okay?”

  Behind him, Bruce’s face bobbed up and down as he tried to get a glimpse of the interior, and, behind Bruce, several more figures moved about impatiently.

  “Yes, yes, Terry, for Chrissakes!” Doreen hissed. “Just give me a minute, will ya?” She pushed against the door to close it, but another hand from the other side shoved it back.

  It was Captain Knox. In the gentle light cast by the lantern, his square face, scarlet and angry inside the fur-lined hood of his parka, was clenched like a fist. “Ring,” he barked. “This time you’ve gone too far! Kidnapping! A federal offense, Ring.”

  “Get the hell outa here!” Doreen shouted. Merle, wide-eyed and silent, watched from the far corner. Someone grabbed the Captain from behind and pulled him away, and Doreen slammed the door shut again. The sound of bodies bumping violently against the walls of the bob-house, shouts, cries—all got caught in the steady roar of the wind and borne away.

  “The goddamn old fool!”

  “Let me talk to him, let me!”

  “Get off! Get off my legs, goddamnit!”

  The door was flung open yet again, and this time it was Marcelle who was shouting, her voice high and full of fear and anger. “Doreen, get the kid dressed, and get the hell out of here, so I can talk sense to this crazy old man!” She pushed her way through the doorway, her bulk against the wall. Maureen started to cry, then to shriek, and finally to wail. Leon LaRoche called to her, “Little girl, little girl, don’t cry!” and pushed his way in behind Marcelle, only to have Terry throw an arm around his neck and drag him backward onto the ice.

  “Asshole!” Terry snarled.

  “Get off my legs, young man!” It was the Captain shouting at Bruce.

  Noni Hubner started screeching, “This is insane! You’re all insane!” while her mother, Nancy, pulled Terry away from Leon and cried, “That’s all you people know, violence!”

  “Get your hands off him!” Carol warned. “And what the hell do you mean, ‘you people’?” she said, bringing her face up close to Nancy’s.

  Nancy slapped the woman’s face, then started to bawl and, tears freezing on her cheeks, collapsed to the ice, moaning, “Oh, my God, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

  The door to the bob-house, held back by the press of the people inside, was wide open now, and the light from inside cast a flickering, orange glow over the ice. Claudel, a pint bottle in his hand, clearly drunk, sat a ways from the others with his legs splayed as if he had been thrown there from above. He got himself up on his feet, wobbled for a second, and made for the bob-house, holding his bottle out before him. “Hey! Merle! Lemme talk to him! Let’s have a drink, Merle, an’ we’ll get this whole fuckin’ thing all straightened out! Lemme talk to him. Me an’ Merle understand each other,” he said, pawing at Marcelle’s shoulder.

  Marcelle turned and shoved Claudel back, and he careened into the darkness. “You just want to get on his good side, you leech!” she shrieked. Bruce tried to slide through the doorway and past the woman’s large body, but she bumped him against the jamb with her chest. “Just hold it, pal.”

  “No, man, let me cool things out, give me a few minutes,” he whined.

  “Keep the hippie away from him!” bellowed Captain Knox.

  “…safekeeping…,” came a wail from Nancy Hubner. “Just for safekeeping.”

  “Mother’s right! Listen to my mother!”

  “Get the cigar box!” Leon LaRoche shouted. “It’s in the cigar box!”

  Terry was on his hands and knees, squeezing between Bruce’s and Marcelle’s legs, one long arm snaking behind Doreen, and then he had it, the cigar box, the money.

  Doreen saw him. “Gimme that thing!” She reached for the box.

  “I’ll take it!” Marcelle cried. “I’m the manager, I’m the one who’s responsible for everything!”

  Bruce made a grab at the box, grimly and silently. Behind him, Leon had reached in, and the Captain had his hand extended, palm up, while the others, Nancy, her daughter Noni, the nurse Carol, and poor, drunk Claudel, tugged at people’s shoulders and backs, trying to pull them away from the door. The wind howled, and the people shouted and swore, and the child wept, and Merle watched, wide-eyed and in silence, while the cigar box went from hand to hand, like a sacred relic, until, as it passed through the doorway, it flapped open, and spilled its contents into the wind, scattering the suddenly loose bills into the darkness. People screamed and grabbed at the bills that, in a second, were gone, driven instantly into the darkness by the wind. Scrambling after the money, the people quickly slipped on the ice and fell over one another and cursed one another, and then were suddenly silent. The box lay open and empty in the circle of light outside the door. The people lay all sprawled on the ice in the darkness just beyond. At the door, holding it open, stood Merle and the little girl.

  Here is what happened afterwards. All the residents of the trailerpark, except Merle, went back to their trailers that night. By dawn, they all, except for Merle, were out on the ice again, searching for the money. They worked alone and as far from one another as possible, poking through snowdrifts along the shore, checking among the leafless bushes and old dead weeds, the bits of driftwood frozen into the lake, rocks and other obstructions, all the likely places. No doubt, many or even all the residents of the trailerpark found money that day, and the next and the next, until one morning, as if by prearrangement, no one showed up on the ice. The people who had jobs went back to them; those who ordinarily stayed home did so. No one ever told anyone else whether he or she had been lucky enough to find some of the lost, windblown hundred-dollar bills, so it’s possible that no one, in fact, had been that lucky. More likely, some were and some weren’t, but all were ashamed of having tried to acquire it. Besides, everyone had seen up close what happens when your neighbors find out that you have been luckier, even by a little, than they have been.

  Merle stayed on at the bob-house for the few weeks of winter that remained. In early March, the ice began to soften and turn mushy in places. Gauzy fogs hung over the wet, pearlescent surface of the lake, obscuring the bob-house from the trailerpark and erasing the opposite shore altogether. Before long, V’s of Canada geese were passing northward overhead, and then, at the weirs, a narrow wedge of open water appeared. Long, shallow ponds of water lay resting on top of the ice, swelling and spreading in the sunlight, while, beneath the ice, deep, dark, slowly warming water chewed its way patiently toward the surface, which gradually got blotchy and pale green and then actually broke away from itself in places, making fissures and wide, tipping plates.

  No one knew the exact day when Merle left the bob-house, but one morning there was a sheet of open water where the b
ob-house had been, dark water sparkling under the morning sun, and Merle himself was seen by several people that same day outside his trailer somberly scraping the bottom of his old, dark green rowboat.

  Firewood

  Nelson Painter is a man who is old, but doesn’t know it yet. The dates and names of events he remembers and—though they’re private and not that reliable on their own—his memories themselves all tell him that he’s not an old man, not yet, not this early in the game. Everything but his body tells him it’s impossible to come up only sixty-one and old, and even his body is ambiguous about it, because it’s impossible, for instance, for a truly old man to be out of bed as he is every morning of the year at six, even on a Sunday in midwinter, when it’s still dark as night and snow is lightly falling and the temperature’s stuck at fifteen below as he slides his slippers and bathrobe on in the dark so as not to wake the wife and moves to the bathroom to pee in a hurry and then, hands stuck in the pockets of the robe because the house is so cold, he gets quickly downstairs, with the lights on now, follows his breath down the stairs that creak a familiar tune under his feet as he descends to the living room, crosses to the door of the kitchen, unlatches the low gate, and greets with a nod the dog, stiff between her dysplastic hips, a seven-year-old Great Dane with one yellow and one brown eye.