Metal Angel

by Nancy Springer

  Metal Angel

  Nancy Springer

  To my angel

  “Holy hell, this guy sings like an angel in heat.”

  —Deejay, WSAY, Cassandra, Alabama

  prologue

  He incarnated on an L.A. rooftop with no onlooker but the ever-galloping Marlboro Man, who watched, indifferent, as he imagined himself into being. It was an act not without discomfort. His first experience of flesh was of panting, of strain, of sprawling on a hard, gritty surface, wet as a newborn with sweat. His first bodily thought was What will be my punishment? A cosmic rebel engaged in an act of blatant self-will, he knew there had to be a price to pay aside from the obvious ones of the temporality, transience, and death. The Supreme Being’s convoluted sense of humor had come up with AIDS, atomic power, poisonous snakes, and illogical hope; what might it have in store for him?

  A seagull flew over with a spoiled-brat cry: “More! More! More salsa, more clams!” The newcomer lying on the rooftop saw first the shadow, then the bird, and smiled, and heaved himself up, struggling to his unaccustomed feet. Standing spraddle-legged, he looked down at himself.

  Jeans. Levi’s 501 blues. He had paid a lot of attention to the jeans, and they were faded and torn and fit long and tight, just as he had wanted them. Quickly he opened his fly and checked—yes. He had taken care to fully imagine his genitals, also, and they appeared complete and very satisfactory. He zipped, noticing the slight, just-right bulge of denim at his crotch, the long slim line below, the urban-cowboy boots with their glint of silver at the toes. Naked chest and belly, arms, hands—all were lean, long, fit, and firm, all as he wanted them. He raised his hands to his face, feeling it, reassuring himself; the essential features seemed to be in place. The face had been the hardest part to envision, and he would not know until he found a mirror whether he had succeeded in being beautiful. But he felt hope, for there were many sorts of mortal beauty.

  He looked at his hands, admiring the sunlit dexterity of them. “Hello, strangers,” he whispered to them, checking his voice. “Do you know how to play a mean ax?”

  They did. He knew to the marrow of his brand-new bones that they did. He could feel it, the wildly physical electric music pumping in them like the beat of his ardent new heart.

  To Volos music was the center of every circle, the locus where crosses joined, the hub of every compass. And the axis on which his adopted world turned, the flame with which it blazed, was called rock and roll. This was the music that glorified the body, that thrust like a cock, enveloped like a cunt, pounded like his strong new pulse. This was the loud music, the renegade music, the music of tight jeans and suggestive lower-body movements, the music that shook its fist and thumbed its nose at its elders. This was the music of decadence, of defiant youth, of rash, rich life with death as its ultimate adventure. It was for this that he had chosen this rash, rich young country, this decadent city, in which to will himself into mortality.

  And just being real was all Volos had believed it would be. The rhythm, the heartbeat, was ecstasy. It lidded his eyes, turned his face toward the sky, parted his lips. He shouted, he drew out the shout into a jolt of barbaric song, startling echoes off the Marlboro billboard, feeling for the first time the hot, vibrant rush of air in his throat, the willing effort and deep resonance of his chest. He flung wide his arms, he felt the cantilevering strength of his shoulders, the lift of his wings—

  Wings.

  Wings! Hell forever, no! His song splintered into a yell of despair. Hands clenched into fists, trembling tight, shaking hard, like the rest of him. With all his renegade strength of ego and in all the old languages of power, in Latin, Hebrew, Sanskrit, he commanded the wings to be gone, demanded the demons of the Unholy Sefiroth to take them from him; he wanted to be all and only human, human, human and damned! He kept up the effort for moments, until even his taut eyelids shook. But it was no use. Fatigue made him go limp. He was flesh now, he was frail, stubborn, defiant, and helpless within his own selfhood. A bird flies, and when death smashes it to the roadway it is reshaped. He could be reshaped only by his own death.

  “Damn it to hell,” he whispered to the rooftop.

  He kicked at some pigeons pecking near his feet. Sullen city birds, they merely walked away, complaining through their beaks. “Who does he think he is?” they remarked to each other. “Bigwing. Flap-happy.”

  “Bigwing freak,” Volos said bitterly, face turned away from the sky. “Damn it all, who said God does not lie? Free will, my eye. He saw what I would do, and he has made a fool of me. I should have known.”

  It was a familiar feeling, the rage. Not that he had considered leaving it behind. Rather, he cherished it, took satisfaction in the way it buzzed and clicked in him, high voltage, ready for him to use. He would wire it into this new world, lick it with his skilled hands into savage, dissolute music.

  “What are you staring at?” he stormed at the billboard where the American hero gazed. “You can sit there and wait for your sunset. You can rot up there, for all I care. There is no halo on me. I came here to live fast and deep, and I will do it. Wings be damned, I am going to dance and learn love and live.”

  Amid sulky, waddling birds, near the sweaty patch of rooftop where he had lain while giving birth to himself, he saw a sprawl of shimmering blue cloth. Though he had never before seen celestial garb in its physical manifestation—for it was not customary for immortal beings to risk incarnation, not at all—he recognized the garment and picked it up: a turbanlike thing, it was his headcovering, the very plain headcovering required of the lowest choir. Its only ornament was a petalon, a four-lobed flowerlike medal made of solid molded gold. This he pulled off and put in his jeans pocket. Pawned, it would give him the guitar he needed. As for the headcovering itself, symbol of respect and humility before the throne of the Almighty: with sudden energy he hurled it down, sending the pigeons flying at last. He trod on it, leaving the marks of his booted feet on the heavenly fabric, as he walked away.

  chapter one

  If you live in an eastern state, when you run away you go to the West Coast. This is one of the unwritten rules, the kind real folks live by, and Bob Balfour “Texas” McCardle at age forty had always lived by that kind of rules. When he ran away from his wife and West Virginia, he headed straight for the City of Angels.

  Not that he had any grudge against his wife. Wyoma was a strong, good woman, held a well-paying job brazing metal in the air-conditioning factory, mothered their two daughters like an Apache, so sensible and tough he felt as if she didn’t need him to speak of, maybe not until her old age. And it wasn’t as if he didn’t figure on going back. He sent her a quick letter when he got there.

  Dear Wy,

  Well as you can see by the postmark I am in L.A. I guess I surprised everybody pretty good taking off that way. You can tell people I’m looking for my father if you want. Truth is I got the shits of everything and had to get out awhile or bust. I don’t know how to explain it any better but I don’t think it’s anything you did. I guess I’ll be back when I get over it. Will keep you posted.

  Bob

  She was the only one who called him Bob. Everybody else in Mingo County had called him Texas since as a teenager he had gotten himself Western boots and a cowboy hat. The nickname was not meant kindly at first, since affection for the trappings of TV westerns was seen as a tacit betrayal of the good things of Persimmon, West Virginia. Who needed far places when home meant friends and family and God’s own mountains? The boy showed signs of being a no-good like his daddy.

  All McCardle’s adult years, when he had tried hard to be as solid as anybody, the epithet had stuck with him. Well, hell, he didn’t mind. He still preferred to dress western style, and knew he looked the part: slim no-hurry body, sandy h
air, the weathered face of a guy who liked to be out on his horse. Though in fact he owned no horse, just wanted one. Went fishing or skeet shooting or woodchuck hunting with friends when he could, but wished sometimes he was a kid again, gunning for trouble all the time. Looked at the stars sometimes and wondered about things. Hated to think of growing fat or old.

  Maybe there was some truth to what people had thought of him. Because here he was, wasn’t he, where he had no business to be? Never content with what he had.

  He had not signed his letter to Wyoma “Love.” They had been together seemed like forever, since he had got her pregnant at age sixteen. There had been no mush at their wedding or since, and he didn’t think she would want or understand it now.

  So if he was out along the one-way street below his cheap hotel at three in the morning it was maybe not because he was looking for his father.

  “Hey, cowboy.” A black whore approached him. She wore a spangled dress that she had probably gotten at a Hollywood secondhand store, might have belonged to a movie star once. And she had shaved her eyebrows entirely. The penciled substitutes halfway up her forehead appeared to have crawled there, millipedes at a standoff. “You look like a guy with an appetite, Slim,” she wheedled.

  “I’m a bed wetter,” Texas informed her. “Also I got a nervous disease makes me drool.” Being a cop most of his life, even just a backwoods West Virginia cop, had turned him off on hookers pretty good.

  “Come on, Stretch. I can tell you’re looking for some action.”

  “No, thanks.” He was looking for something, all right, but he felt pretty sure it wasn’t her.

  “Want to buy some grass? I know where you can get good Colombian.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “And you ain’t interested in me, huh?”

  “Nope.”

  “You looking for boys? They’re down the other end of the block.” She sounded anxious to please. Maybe she worked daytimes at the tourist bureau.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  “Well, if it ain’t that, then what the hell do you want, honey?”

  As she spoke her eyes looked past him. He said, more to himself than to her, “Damned if I know,” and turned to see what she was gawking at.

  Walking down the middle of the street, stopping traffic, was a tall youth, bare-chested, with wings.

  Big wings. Must have been over six foot, and he must have been about the same. Their leading edges, folded, rose above shoulders that looked strong, muscled like he’d been pumping iron. Their tips trailed almost to his booted feet.

  “Some sort of publicity stunt,” Texas said. City of Angels, right? The guy looked like a show biz hopeful, very young, very well hung, very pretty in the face. Some kid from Podunk, new in smog city, getting attention any way he could.

  No, maybe not from Podunk. There was hot blood in this one. Full lips, high cheekbones, something strange, exotic, about his thin face. Skin the color of a dun stallion, not suntanned but earth-toned. Awfully dark for an angel.

  “Where’s he get off, wearing them things?” said the whore, her voice no longer eager to please—it had gone shrill. “He’s gonna get his ass kicked coming here that way.”

  “Probably just heading back to his room,” Texas offered. The kid should have taken off his wings before he came into that neighborhood. Texas wondered how he fastened the things on. The guy had crossed to the other side of the street, too far away for Texas to tell in the shadowy streetlamp light.

  The whore snorted and turned away. Texas kept watching. They were damned impressive, those wings. Not white, though. This guy must think of himself as an angel of a different color. Or maybe it was just the glow off the neon bar signs, but the feathers looked pearly pink.

  Which was the wrong color for the ambience in this particular garbage-filled gash of an asphalt-and-concrete hole where the stars never shone. Texas saw it coming—attention the kid didn’t want. Issuing in gang uniform out of an alley. Jeering.

  “Whassis, a new kind of faggot?”

  “Looks like a no-ball to me.”

  “Cocksucker.”

  “Hey, I used to fuck guys like him in prison!”

  “Guys with pink wings?”

  “Pink all over, motherfuckers.”

  There were three homeboys, and they blocked the kid’s way. Texas stayed where he was. He had left his badge and gun in a dresser drawer in West Virginia, running away from them as well as the rest of his life there. He was on vacation from caring about anything. Anyway, the youngster with wings was half a head taller than any of the street punks and did not seem afraid. It would be a real luxury to stand around and watch what happened and not give a shit.

  In a voice so correct it seemed accented the kid said, “You are strange people. You do fucking with men you do not like?”

  All three at once they hit him, and Texas was halfway across the street within an eyeblink, losing his brand-new hat in his hurry, the luxury of not caring forgotten, because fast as the punches had fallen something had changed. He could see it. Every whore on the street could feel it and scuttled for cover. The air screamed with it. Somebody was gonna get killed.

  After the first blow, no longer were the homeboys fighting out of boredom of territoriality or to score points with girls or each other. As soon as they had touched the winged stranger they virulently hated him. One pulled a knife. They wanted to butcher him.

  And he was no match for them. He stood his ground, tried to connect, but he swung wide and didn’t know how to move, didn’t circle or put his back toward the wall; he let them get behind him, where they savaged his offending wings and the back of his head. Any one of them could have pulped him, and there were three. Already he was beaten down to his knees—

  Texas used the force of his cross-street charge to gut-ram the knife fighter with his head. He stomped a hand as the homeboy sprawled, kicked the weapon into the darkness. After that it was all reflex work. He had broken up enough tavern brawls to know he had to move quickly, and find something to use like a baton, and make a lot of noise. The moves and the weapon were only to survive until the noise took effect. Once enough time and noise had passed the bad guys would run. It was a psychological warfare thing. They would get afraid, even though they knew nobody would really call the cops. All they knew was hit and run. They would run.

  “Cretins!” he bellowed, bruising his knuckles on one of them. “No-neck motor-ass pinheads!” He regretted the upbringing his gentle Methodist mother had given him, which all his life—despite his best efforts—had kept him from cursing really well. But what the hell, it was volume that counted. Texas kept the volume high-decibel enough to buzz his skull as he ducked a flung chunk of concrete, kicked a knee, scooped up a beer bottle to thrust with. The kid with wings learned fast. He was on his feet again, he had picked up his own weapon. “Back up toward the wall!” Texas called to him.

  A few streets away, like a mother shrilling for her children at suppertime, a siren yodeled. The homeboys indulged in one last hard assault. Texas felt a hand clawing his face, fingers digging for his eyes. He kneed the attacker, doubling him so that his two buddies had to support him as they ran, the three of them looking like a six-legged thing, an oversized cockroach scuttling back into the shadows of the alley.

  Texas panted. The siren rolled over to bleep mode, dopplered past at the gay hustlers’ end of the street.

  When he had caught his breath a little, Texas said to the youngster with wings, “You gotta learn to fight if you’re gonna wear that kind of getup, kid.”

  The kid stood shakily on his long legs—being tall is unfair that way; if a tall person gets the least bit shaky everybody sees it. Blood on the young man’s face—just a nosebleed. Scanning him for injuries, Texas saw a shallow knife scratch across his bare chest and some lacerations, some bruises. Nothing to worry about. Also he noticed with muted surprise that he had somehow been mistaken about the color of the wings. They were much darker than he had thought. Brick-red, in
fact.

  “You all right?” he asked, his throat raw from shouting, his face smarting from the mauling it had gotten, his wrists aching. This would be a good time for the kid to thank him. But the kid stood fingering the blood trickling from his nose.

  “Hot,” he murmured. He licked his bloodied lips, and his face grew rapt. “I can taste it. I can taste myself.”

  There was something odd about the way he spoke besides its precision. His voice sounded strangely intense and penetrating, so that even at its quietest it had been vibrant enough to be heard across the street. Yet now that he stood right next to him, Texas found it eerily distant.

  Shadowy eyes turned. The stranger asked, “Will all this blood coming out of me hurt me?”

  Shit, was the kid simpleminded? Texas answered only with a shrug, wishing, now it was over, that he hadn’t gotten involved, suddenly wanting very much to turn his back on everything, get back to his own room, tend to his own wounds … but he couldn’t leave a hurt retard standing on the street. Had to see him home. Dammit. He asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Volos.”

  “Volos what?”

  “Just Volos. I am of low degree. It is not considered necessary for me to have more names than one.” The stranger subjected Texas to a dark-eyed scrutiny from below frowning brows. “You are bleeding also.”

  “I know that.” Texas kept most of the annoyance out of his voice. What bothered him more than this problem youngster or his scratches, anyway, was the spectacle of his new eighty-dollar black Resistol cowboy hat lying flattened in the middle of the street. “Where do you live?”

  “Here. The city.”

  “But where?”

  “Wherever I am standing.” Volos was studying the blood drying on his fingers. “Sticky,” he remarked.

  “Oh, for Chrissake.” Texas grabbed him not very gently by the elbow and urged him across the street, into the Palace Hotel and through its shabby lobby, glaring at the desk attendant to shut her up about blood on the carpet—as if winos enough haven’t puked on the carpet before now, lady. In the elevator Volos stood stiffly, hanging on to the walls, looking pale under his tea-colored skin. Shaken up more than Texas had thought. Texas led him down the third-floor hall, unlocked his room, flicked the light switch, and towed the kid in. Once released, Volos stood looking around him blankly.