Metal Angel

by Nancy Springer

  He got up and left the room. She went upstairs and picked up her sleeping children out of their cribs and took them to the rocking chair, where she sat and cuddled them one in each arm for a long time. The feeling of their heedless little bodies warm against her chest helped somewhat. She slept alone again that night.

  The next day she bought batteries for her shocking-pink boogie box and started carrying it with her as a public show of defiance when she took the boys for walks through the fallen leaves.

  On one such walk toward the end of the week, a woman she barely knew, a stiletto-nosed, unctuous neighbor, stopped her and offered high-pitched sympathy. “It’s just too bad,” the nose said. “A pretty young thing like you, and they go and coop you up and make you a nun. Or not a nun, but same as, ain’t? You know what I mean, ain’t?”

  Angie no more than nodded, trying to force some sort of smile. This careless pity of strangers she found as hard to take as the silence of friends.

  Then the woman said, “I hear tell they’re going to take the little ones away from you if you don’t come ’round to their way of thinking. Now I say that’s a crime against nature and a sin and a shame, ain’t?”

  Angie found herself saying stupidly, “Thank you.” Walking away without hearing the rumbling opening notes of “Born to Run” on her radio. Feeling a muted surprise that she was still standing. Her heart was pierced, was it not? There should have been blood spilling down her body, flooding her sensible brown oxfords.

  She did not have to ask herself if what Stiletto Nose had said was true. She knew it was. Taking her babies away was exactly what her father would do. He and his brainless slaves. Ennis, too, just like the rest of them.

  Why was she still there, in this place where they could do such a thing to her? Yesterday was not soon enough for her to be somewhere else.

  As if she had just passed over a mountain ridge, her life suddenly gathered momentum, accelerated. She picked up Mikey so that she could walk faster. Hurrying Gabe along at her side, she made plans quickly, carefully. There was no time for dithering or tears. Since she was a mother she had learned to save those luxuries for after the crisis was over, to react quickly and efficiently in any sort of emergency that threatened her children.

  The savings account passbook was in her purse, because Ennis had always left the handling of money to her. She dropped off the radio at the house, put the boys in the wagon and walked to the bank, where she withdrew what she thought she would need, a few hundred dollars, leaving Ennis the rest. He wanted to start his own business someday, and she did not want to take that away from him.

  Then she stopped at the drugstore, looking at the Greyhound schedule posted in the front window near the park bench that constituted the bus depot. It was a good thing Ennis worked late. There was still time to be gone before he got home.

  Once back at the house she packed a diaper bag and a tote full of things for the boys, but almost nothing for herself. Toothbrush, writing tablet, pen, panties, that was all. Most of her clothes she wanted never to wear again. She would take no skirt and prim white blouse but those she had on. The moment she had a chance she would buy herself a pair of jeans, her first. To think of it. Real clothes, soon. In a small indulgence of feeling (not enough to shatter control; she needed to keep everything under control), she wrenched off her prayer bonnet, crumpled the stiff white mesh thing, and flung it in the trash. Pulling the hairpins from her bun, she let her long, soft-brown hair ripple down her back.

  From the linen closet she retrieved an envelope containing twenty-some pieces of tablet paper folded very small: her songs. She looked at it distantly a moment before she shoved it into the tote, then sat down on the children’s rocking chair and wrote another song, this one for Ennis.

  What you call heaven I call hell

  It’s all shame and blame

  So how can I tell

  If I love you?

  If I ever did?

  If what I do is so hard on you

  Then maybe we were wrong from the start

  A marriage made in a citadel

  Instead of in our hearts.

  Let it go.

  We need a saving angel

  And we don’t have even

  One feather from an angel’s wing.

  She left it and the bank passbook on the kitchen table where he would find them when he came home expecting dinner to be ready for him.

  The walk to the Greyhound stop was hard. Gabe and Michael were cranky after being awakened from their late naps, hot in their winter jackets, hungry for their supper. The bags hung heavy from Angie’s shoulders, the whining children pulled at her hands, dragging their feet no matter how she tried to hurry them, and even her radio seemed heavy, like her heart. When she reached the drugstore the bus had already come. She had to get on and buy her tickets from the driver—there was no time to get the children overpriced hot dogs at the lunch counter or even cheese crackers to eat. Once under way, as soon as the novelty of the bus ride had worn off, Mikey and Gabe turned up their volume, progressing from whining to wailing, then crying for miles until finally the drone of the Greyhound put them to sleep.

  Angie felt as if she should cry also, but did not. She sat numbly, staring out windows that ought, according to her mood, to have been streaked with rain, but were in fact glowing cloudy gold in the late-day light, filth and all.

  The bus bumbled westward, stopping at every small town. It would take days to reach California.

  But maybe she would not have to go all the way to L.A. before she contacted the one who was going to help her. Angie took out her tablet of cheap lined newsprint and her Bic pen and began to write.

  Volos

  Volos

  I need you.

  Volos

  Volos

  Come to me.

  Despite all the ingenious speculations she had read in her magazines, there was not a doubt in her mind that Volos was an angel. She had felt sure of that for some time, and lately she had begun to be able to feel his spirit’s light-fingered touch as he robbed her of her songs. Therefore she knew him: He was a willful sinner, like her. He was one who had fallen from grace. And it was not for the sake of a feather of his wing that she was calling him.

  “I’m glad you like your new toy, son,” Texas remarked.

  It was a Guild one-off, glossy black, shaped rather like the old Gibson Flying V; with its long neck and backswept body, it resembled a swan in flight. With it Volos had ordered a full range of pedals and effects, and now he was running it through fuzz, sustain, tremolo, echo, reverb, and something that made it sound like the Concorde coming in for a landing. His wings had gone rainbow with pleasure. Texas sat back on the sofa, tilted his new Stetson (camel-tan, pinch top) over his wincing eyes and longed for the gentler sounds of Kenny Rogers.

  “I am going to get new toys for the band also,” Volos said.

  With the onset of his first major earnings, the ex-angel had finally begun to explore the joys of materialism. In Westwood (Brett had wanted him to locate someplace more fashionable, like Bel Air, but he did not always do what his manager said) he had rented a Spanish-style house. The Hokey Hacienda, Mercedes scornfully called it. Volos did not care. He had little feeling for the house itself, but thought of it as a convenience, a place to rehearse his band and store things he wanted. He had turned its once-trendy South California living room, all blond wood and white walls and picture window, into a rock-and-roll inferno of amps and keyboards and drum stands and blacksnaking wires. But if anyone asked him where he lived, he still said what he had told Texas that first day: Here, wherever I am standing. Westwood’s disreputable streets, the UCLA campus, the roller rinks, Mercedes’s bed, the skateboard tubes, dance clubs, massage parlors were home to him. No one would touch him in the massage parlors, but he liked to watch. And parking lots, museum steps, playgrounds—he liked the playgrounds, because the children did not hesitate to talk with him. And recording studios, and the bars where musicians gathered.


  To Texas, Volos’s house was a home of sorts. He lived there, cleaning the john occasionally and keeping the fridge stocked with beer. Most of the time, though, he spent tomcatting. He had quit his Keller’s Kleaner’s job and felt thin and rootless and sere, like a winter thistle. And prickly. These days his pride was rubbing against his hurt feelings all the time. Maybe he should have gone back to Wyoma really, maybe when she had said what she did she just wanted him to shit or get off the pot. But how could he humble himself and go home after the way she had talked to him?

  So he sat in his angel’s rock and roll hell, and Volos made the new guitar wail like a fox in the chilly dawn, sob like a graveyard ghost, scream, a bird with an arrow in its breast. Just as Texas considered that he was ready to scream as well, the kid silenced his weapon and called across the room, “Mercy wants me to get rid of this band I have and get a different one.”

  Mercedes was Volos’s so-called artistic director. Texas could not scoff at that arrangement, because he himself was Volos’s highly informal head of security. But he felt his jaw tighten at the mention of Mercedes. The word “prick” presented itself to his mind, but he said merely, “Why?”

  “He says they are small-time, just ordinary-looking people. He wants me to find band players who are more performers, sharper-looking.”

  Texas liked the people in Volos’s band, who appreciated good beer. He said, “Those people dropped everything and came through for you when Brett asked them to. They were there for you when you needed them, and they’ve been there for you since. Mercedes has no respect for loyalty.”

  Everything about Texas ached: his clenched jaw, his head, his ribs, the bruised skin around his eyes. He had gotten into a brawl again the night before, over a barfly he had been bringing home to hump on the sofa. Lately he got into fights even more regularly than he found women to justify them. Just about the only person in California he did not sometimes want to fight was Volos, but speaking of Mercedes he had not been able to keep an edge out of his voice. Volos looked at him, then hung his new guitar in its stainless-steel stand and came closer, spreading his wings to sit on the floor at McCardle’s feet. He looked some more. He asked, “Why don’t you like Mercy?”

  The kid was getting better at reading people than he used to be. Starting to talk more like a human too. Texas said quietly, “You’re right, I don’t like him.”

  “But why? Is it because he is gay with me?”

  “No, that don’t bother me.” It honestly did not. A few times in his life as a cop Texas had come up against pure evil, enough times to know that real malignance had nothing to do with sex. Anyway, he had a feeling the kid hadn’t really decided which ear to pierce yet. He said, “Anybody that’s been around cows or dogs or whatever knows it’s natural all ways. It ain’t him being gay gets to me. It’s just him.”

  “What about him?”

  It was one of those questions a person should never answer. But Volos had helped Texas through some hard times those first few days after Wyoma had told him to take a hike. More than once Texas had needed the touch of a wing. He owed the kid, and he, Texas, knew the meaning of loyalty. Quietly he said, “It’s just a feeling I got, that he’s going to hurt you someday.”

  “Hurt me?” Volos considered, then smiled and shook his head, tossing his dark, curling hair. “How?”

  Entirely too many possible ways. To Texas the world was full of things that could hurt Volos. But one likelihood seemed foremost. “Are you in love with him?”

  “I don’t know. How can I tell for sure?”

  “You don’t know what love is?” But why should that surprise me? Texas thought. He had looked into Volos’s eyes. Trying to see into them was like trying to tell what lay under deep water. He had seen the kid sing in the studio, eyes closed, earphones on, shut off from everything but his own music, utterly self-involved.

  “How should I? What is it like?”

  “You’re asking the wrong cowboy, son.” But Texas tried anyway. “Love is a one-on-one sort of thing. If Mercedes got mad at you, stopped seeing you, started doing it with somebody else instead, would any of that hurt you?”

  “The way Wyoma has hurt you?”

  “Leave Wyoma out of it.” She had hurt him. Maybe he had hurt her first. Maybe not. What was the use of talking about it? Texas did not feel sure, had never felt that she really needed him. He said, “What I mean is, if you love somebody that don’t love you, it leaves you wide open. Could he hurt you that way?”

  It took Volos a while to answer. His long, tawny hands practiced air guitar in his lap, and he looked down at them. “Perhaps,” he admitted. “Mostly because he’s the only one … it seems like everybody else always wants me to take my wings off first.”

  Texas did not pay attention, for a frightening thought had just occurred to him. He had been counting on Mercedes’s experience, was why he hadn’t thought of it before, but if Mercedes was as much of a prick as he thought he was—

  “Kid.” He tried to keep the panic out of his voice. “You two—when you do it—you been using condoms?”

  “No.”

  “JESUS, Volos!” Texas lurched to his feet. “Why don’t you just go stick yourself with a dirty needle and be done with it! You—”

  “Why are you shouting? It is all right. I did not imagine myself to get AIDS. That or any kind of sickness.”

  Staring, Texas sank back onto the sofa again. When the kid talked like that he sounded as far away as another planet. But the words made sense. Sure, a newcomer to this dirty world ought to be easy meat for all kinds of bugs. Volos ought to be always getting the flu or something. But except for those first few days, Texas hadn’t known Volos to be sick with so much as a head cold.

  Except.

  “What about the fever you had that time?”

  “What about it?”

  “That was sickness.”

  Volos said, “That was my ridiculous wings.”

  “So?”

  “So if you want to save me from harm, guard my back.” Volos gave a dismissive gesture, got lithely to his feet, and turned toward his new guitar.

  “Yo! Hold on, buddy. What are you telling me about your wings?”

  Volos did not face him, but stood still and said, “I am telling you I don’t know about them. I did not imagine them.”

  “I don’t get you, son.”

  “Listen. I had it all held in my mind before I came, like a bird in my hand. I will die someday, yes. My body will age and then die. Or I can be killed. A knife, a gun, a car. But I will not sicken or starve. I decided against that.” God, the ego of the young brute. And the anger hardening his voice. “These wings, though, I did not imagine. They are a trick played on me. They have made everything uncertain.”

  Texas said, “Welcome to the real world, kid.”

  Volos shot him a dark look over his shoulder. “So yes, I can be hurt through my wings. I think. So now you are sure Mercy will do it. For a good man you think too much of evil, Texas.”

  “It’s my job.”

  “I think—you are as likely to hurt me as he.”

  It took Texas a moment to get his breath. Then he said in a strangled voice, “I ought to deck you for that, Volos.”

  The youngster’s mood had changed suddenly. “Do not be angry. Please.” Lifting the new guitar, Volos faced him with a stark look. “I am just trying to find truth. Do not these things happen?”

  Texas thought of Wyoma and felt his anger puddle into despair. He said, “Yes, dammit, shit happens. But I would never do anything to hurt you on purpose, son.”

  “Does it hurt less if it is not on purpose?”

  “Volos, would you for Chrissake shut up? You’re hurting me right this fucking minute.”

  Wide-eyed, the kid looked at him, then without a word sat down on a tall stool and began to play. But this time what came out of the black guitar was the music of a white angel of mercy. Volos made the thing sing like bells, like a sweet human voice, a choir of treble v
oices in golden-hued harmony. Joy, Peace, Love—from its first chord, the melody took Texas into its embrace, cradled him, flooded him in a warm baptism of sound to wash away his aches. He felt easy tears brightening his bruised eyes. “God,” he whispered. It was magical music, heaven’s gift. And, he knew, Volos’s gift of atonement to him.

  Touched to his soul, he looked at the giver, and saw that Volos’s face was lowered over the guitar and his wings had gone tar-dark.

  Texas got up, went to him and stopped him with a hand on the strings. “All right,” he said, “okay. I hear you. How in God’s name can you make that kind of music and still feel the way you feel?”

  Without looking up Volos said, “For a long time I had to.”

  “You don’t have to give me no peace offering if it’s that hard on you.”

  “I wish—I wish I could be good for you. But nothing’s simple, is it? Nothing’s pure.”

  Texas said gently, “Not in this life, son.”

  By the time his band arrived for rehearsal, Volos had his wings back to quiet gray. He watched without saying much as his musicians set up and warmed up and chatted with each other.

  It was as Mercedes had said: They were very ordinary-looking people. The keyboard player was going bald above habitual button-down oxford-weave shirts. The drummer was a middle-aged man shaped like a tomtom. The bass guitarist was a stick of a woman who always wore straight skirts and thick glasses; she looked like Buddy Holly in drag. Even the lead guitarist, Red, was no more than a freckled young man who loved music.

  Even before he had heard what Texas had to say about loyalty, Volos had mostly made up his mind to go with this nameless band a while longer. Because of musical considerations, he would tell Mercedes, because there was no time to audition and rehearse new people with his busy recording and nightclub schedule. Which was true. But the deeper truth was that he had begun to intuit what a real rock band could be like, what it meant when the backup vocals came and sang at the same mike as the front man, when the singer stood back to arched back with his lead guitarist, so close their heads touched. He had started to want that closeness, like the oneness of music itself, and knew he wasn’t going to get it. Brett had explained to him that most music people had worked their way up together, paid dues together, got to be like family, whereas he had come out of nowhere (more literally than Brett knew) and started at the top. His band had a right to resent him. It was enough that they were respectful to him as a professional.