Too Late for Angels

by Mignon F. Ballard

  “Soon, but first I think they want to show us what life was like here a long, long time ago,” Lucy said, resisting the urge to hug him yet again. Twice is enough for one bus trip, Lucy Nan! But oh, his smile is so like Charlie’s!

  “You mean like when you were a little girl?”

  Lucy laughed. “Well, a little before that.”

  The bus soon came to a stop in a spurt of gravel and twenty-four shouting children jumped to their feet and began clamoring to disembark until their teacher, Miss Linda, held up her hand for silence. Immediately the group became quiet and still. Lucy was amazed at such power. How did the woman do it? She stood with the other chaperones at the foot of the bus steps as the children filed past and followed Miss Linda into the small log building which had been erected as a replica of a school of that era. Harboring a fear of misplacing a child in her charge, Lucy counted them as they stepped down from the bus: twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty…Had she counted someone twice? No, another adult she hadn’t noticed before paused to straighten her wide-brimmed straw hat before emerging from the bus. A mother of one of the children, probably. Lucy smiled and started to introduce herself when the woman raised her hand and waggled her fingers in recognition. It was Augusta.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I join you,” she said, wrapping what seemed like an endless plum-colored shawl about her shoulders. “Oh, my! This place does take me back a bit!” Augusta hurried after the children and took her place at the back of the schoolroom. Lucy trailed after and stood beside her, looking about to see if anyone had noticed the angel’s presence.

  They hadn’t. The children sat on rows of crude benches while a docent dressed in a drab brown dress that reached her shoe tops explained to them that this was a living-history plantation where they not only grew their own cotton, but raised sheep for wool and made it into cloth. “The clothing we wear here is all made from natural fibers,” the teacher told them. “Even the dye that colored my dress came from the husks of walnuts, and the buttons are made from bone.”

  Lucy glanced at Augusta, who smiled and nodded as the teacher demonstrated the use of a slate and read from a book students might have used over a hundred years ago, and she knew she must be remembering children in another time.

  “I wonder where Boyd Henry is,” Lucy whispered aside to Augusta as they waited to enter the main house. “Nettie says he’s a regular volunteer. I wish I could get him aside for a few minutes.”

  She was soon to have her chance. Boyd Henry Goodwin, in brown cotton britches held up with suspenders and a white linen shirt with loose floppy sleeves, waited for them in the wide entrance hall. A slight man, he always stood fence-post-straight as if to make up for his small stature. With his patrician nose and trim gray mustache, Boyd Henry didn’t look at all like Lucy’s idea of a nineteenth-century farmer. He welcomed the group heartily, though, and pointed out the room where the family would gather around the hearth at the end of the day. “They didn’t have television, so the women would usually sew until it got too dark to see. Even little girls as young as some of you worked on samplers. You’ll see a few of these in the upstairs hall.”

  He spoke with a smile, but there was something troubling about the expression in his eyes. “I’ll bet he goes home and writes melancholy poetry,” she said aside to Augusta.

  “I’ll beg your pardon. Did you say something?” Miss Linda asked as she steered a straying child back into the group.

  Lucy could feel warmth creeping into her face. “Sorry, no. Just talking to myself.” She lingered behind as the others tramped up the wide oak staircase to the second floor. The treads, Lucy noticed, sagged slightly in the middle and were worn from the footsteps of generations long gone. Although it was cared for on a regular basis, the old house smelled musty. The wide floorboards were dark-stained and drab, and except for a few pieces, the furniture was plain and serviceable. A portrait of Bella Potts, for whom the plantation was named, hung over a large walnut chest in the entrance hall. Her dark hair was parted in the middle and pulled tightly back from a broad face. Small brown eyes made her seem shrewd and exacting. She looked, Lucy thought, as if she were itching to jump up and slug the portrait painter smack in the kisser. Ugly as homemade sin, Charlie would’ve said. Lucy smiled as she followed the children upstairs, letting her hand glide along the smooth old banister. You wouldn’t want to mess with Bella!

  The children crowded into a large bedroom where Boyd Henry let them take turns rocking a hand-carved cradle.

  “How would you like to sleep on that?” Miss Linda asked, pointing to the trundle bed.

  Teddy made a face. “But that’s just ropes. They didn’t sleep on ropes, did they, Mama Lucy?”

  “A tick or mattress filled with straw or feathers went on top of this,” Boyd Henry told them. “They didn’t have springs like we do, and eventually the ropes would loosen and sag, so they would have to tighten them.” He smiled. “That’s where the expression ‘Sleep tight’ comes from.”

  Lucy thought about the children who had played with the lonely-looking china doll who sat in a little rocking chair by the fireplace with the high mantel. From the tall windows on either side she could look out on a green meadow where sheep grazed. In the yard below, a group of older children sang as they circled a large iron pot.

  “What are they doing?” one of the children asked.

  “Making candles,” Boyd Henry said. “They dip the wicks in the melted wax until it builds up enough thickness for a candle. After you see what’s in the kitchen, I believe Miss Linda has planned for you to try your hand at making one.”

  Lucy caught Augusta’s eye as she helped to shepherd the children down the crooked narrow stairs that opened onto a hallway at the back of the house. Boyd Henry had gone ahead of them to alert the docent on duty in the kitchen, which was in a separate building behind the main house. Was she ever going to find a chance to speak with him alone?

  Outside, Boyd Henry waited until the last of the kindergarten class had filed up the three wooden steps into the log cabin where food was being prepared over a large stone fireplace. “Smells good, doesn’t it?” he said to Lucy, who had dropped behind the others. “Several students from the high school are learning how to make chicken stew today.”

  Lucy took a deep breath and wished they’d invite her to eat with them. Even from where she stood, the blend of wood smoke and chicken made her think ahead to lunchtime. “I’ll have to remind my stomach it’s not yet time to eat!” she said as he started back to his post.

  “Thank you for being so patient with the children, Boyd Henry. It’s hard to hold their interest at this age, but you managed very well.”

  “I enjoy it,” he said, pausing only to nod her way.

  Lucy glanced at the kitchen full of small children—her own grandson among them—and hoped they were well in hand. “I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes?” she said.

  Lucy had lived on the same street with Boyd Henry Goodwin for almost twenty years and had known him all her life. A gifted musician, he sometimes played violin solos during appearances with the Fiddlesticks, and he was a tireless gardener, often laboring in his flower beds until it was too dark to see. In the spring his whole yard became the pride of the neighborhood, a festival of bloom with daffodils and tulips, but she had never taken the time to get really acquainted. Conversation, she found, didn’t come easy to Boyd Henry. He gave her a puzzled frown, but at least he didn’t say no.

  She suffered through an awkward silence until he answered. “I have about ten minutes before the next group’s due,” he said finally. “We can sit here on the back steps.”

  “I’m sure you’re aware that the woman they believe is Florence Calhoun came to my house on the day she was killed,” Lucy began. She watched his face for any change of expression, but it was beginning to be apparent that Boyd Henry Goodwin didn’t display a wide range of emotions. He nodded silently, his eyes on a large dog of dubious heritage lapping water from a pan in th
e shade of the smokehouse. It was obvious that the dog had just had puppies and Lucy could hear faint yapping coming from the smokehouse behind her.

  “It seems she was taken by a childless couple,” Lucy told him. “The whole time Florence was growing up, she believed her parents had died in a plane crash.”

  Boyd Henry shook his head and sighed.

  “Nettie tells me you sold snow cones on our street when you were a boy, and I wondered if you might have seen her the day she disappeared. If a stranger had stopped and spoken to her, you would’ve noticed them, wouldn’t you?”

  “You’re talking about something that happened over sixty years ago,” he said. “I can’t even remember what I had for supper last night. Besides, what good would it do her now? Florence is dead and buried.”

  “Nettie says she’s not so sure that was Florence they buried,” Lucy said. “And even if it was, we still don’t know who killed her—or why.”

  Boyd Henry shook his head. “Nettie!” he began. “Why, she wouldn’t—”

  “Excuse me, Boyd Henry, but your next group is waiting!” Patricia Sellers stepped from her small office off the back porch. “Oh, hey, Lucy Nan! I didn’t know you were going through docent training.”

  “I’m only here as a chaperone with Teddy’s kindergarten class,” Lucy explained. “And I guess Miss Linda’s wondering where I am.”

  Patricia, who had graduated from high school with Roger, scheduled and promoted events for the plantation. “Our twins will be in her class next year, so I hope she’s prepared,” she said. Patricia laughed as she patted her round stomach. “Now we’re working on number three.” She gestured toward the mother dog as three fat puppies waddled out to try and suckle while she drank.

  “Poor Shag! I know how she feels. Her babies just won’t leave her alone,” Patricia said. “They’re old enough to be weaned, but there’s eight in the litter and I don’t know where we’re going to find homes for them all.”

  “Does the dog belong to somebody here?”

  Patricia shrugged. “She does now. Took up with us back in the summer, and I like having her around, but we can’t take care of the rest.”

  “I hope Teddy doesn’t see them,” Lucy said. “Jessica’s allergic to animal hair.” She chatted with Patricia a few minutes longer before hurrying to catch up with Teddy’s class as they left the kitchen. Boyd Henry hadn’t been receptive to her questions, but maybe she would find him more approachable before they left for the day.

  Lucy was relieved to learn that the woman in charge of candle-making had removed the warm wax from the fire before allowing the children to dip their wicks into a strange-colored mixture of old candles that had been melted down. She and the other chaperones helped each child tie a piece of string to a stick. As they circled the pot singing “Here we go round the mulberry bush,” each in turn dipped the dangling string into the wax until everyone had a lumpy, misshapen candle which they then plunged into water and set aside to cool.

  After a bathroom break, the children sat in the shade of a huge blackjack oak for a snack of juice and crackers before going to the field to pick cotton. As they rested, Lucy noticed Boyd Henry returning to the house after conducting his last tour. Hoping to finish their conversation, she called after him and followed him into the house, but the docent was nowhere in sight.

  Determined, Lucy stood at the foot of the stairs and hollered, “Mr. Goodwin!” Still no answer, but she was almost certain she heard muted footsteps overhead. Surely he heard me, Lucy thought, and called to him once more.

  “It seems Boyd Henry has given you the slip again,” Augusta said beside her.

  “It looks that way,” Lucy said. “He’s so shy I’ve probably frightened him away. I hope he doesn’t think I’m accusing him of anything, but I guess he’s not going to give me a chance to explain.”

  That was why a few minutes later she was surprised to find him standing almost hidden by sumac at the edge of the cotton field as they picked.

  Teddy, dragging a huge burlap sack twice as big as he was, called to her across the row of brownish stalks, “Mama Lucy, what’s that man doing over there behind that red bush?”

  Lucy helped another child pull cotton from the boll and put it into her sack. “What man, Teddy?”

  “The man who told us about the house. Why is he looking at us like that?”

  “That’s Mr. Goodwin, honey. I guess he’s just taking a break.” Lucy gave the man a friendly wave. The next time she looked, he was gone.

  Chapter Ten

  “I’m hot! Can we quit now?” Karen, the little girl Lucy was helping, let her sack fall to the ground.

  Lucy glanced at Miss Linda. They had only been picking for about fifteen minutes, but the sun was hot and some of the children were complaining of being tired. She thought of all the children who had picked these fields because they had no choice.

  “I want to see the puppies,” another child said.

  “What puppies?” their teacher asked.

  “They were in one of those little buildings back there. I saw them when we went to the bathroom. They’re so cute! Couldn’t we pet them? Please? Please?”

  “I thought you wanted to pick cotton,” their teacher said. She held open her sack. “Let’s see how much we have if we put it all together. Who knows what happens to the cotton after it’s picked?”

  “They make it into cloth,” Teddy said. “My mama doesn’t like to wear anything but cotton. She says that other stuff makes her itch.”

  “But first they have to get the seeds out,” their teacher explained. “Now that’s done at the gin, but they used to have to do it by hand and it took a long, long time—”

  “I gotta pee—real bad!” A small boy wearing an Atlanta Braves shirt that was almost bigger than he was, grabbed himself in a conspicuous place and jumped up and down until one of the other chaperones led him away.

  Miss Linda smiled through gritted teeth. “…and then it was spun into thread before they wove it into cloth,” she continued. She held out the collected cotton for all to see. “What do you think they might make from what we’ve picked today?”

  Lucy heard someone laugh behind her and turned to find Augusta there. “There might be enough for a hankie,” the angel said, “for someone with a very small nose.”

  “Why are you laughing, Mama Lucy?” Teddy wanted to know.

  “I just thought of a funny joke,” Lucy said, frantically searching for something suitable she hadn’t heard from one of The Thursdays. “Why did they throw Cinderella off the baseball team?” she asked.

  “Why?” Teddy wanted to know.

  “Because…she ran away from the ball!”

  In a grassy area behind the house the children tried rolling large hoops by controlling them with a stick while others learned a game called graces which involved catching wooden throwing rings with dowel-like catching wands. Teddy wasn’t interested in either. He wanted to see the puppies.

  “Don’t get too attached,” Lucy warned her grandson as he cuddled a fat black-and-white puppy with a brown patch over one eye. “You know your mother’s allergic.” Teddy laughed as the little dog licked his cheek. The puppy’s feet, Lucy noticed, looked like plump furry pillows. This dog was going to be huge when it was grown. She didn’t envy whoever ended up having to feed it.

  Patricia Sellers, on her way back from another bathroom break, paused to rest on the large stone that served as a doorstep to the smokehouse. Inside the building the mother dog, Shag, rested in the cool shade on the smooth dirt floor that smelled of salted pork and wood smoke. Several hams hung from rafters overhead.

  “Shag won’t mind if the children pet the puppies, will she?” Lucy asked.

  Patricia laughed. “Heavens no; as long as they don’t hurt them, I’m sure she’s glad of a break. We just have to be careful they don’t slip through the gate to the other side of the fence where Ben Maxwell’s repairing furniture. One of the puppies got away from us the other day and turned over
a can of stain.”

  Lucy had met Ben Maxwell briefly the year before when he made a cherry hutch for Ellis’s family room, and thought his furniture so beautiful she wanted to throw out all she owned and let him replace every piece. Unfortunately, she couldn’t afford even one. And it was a good thing he was a talented craftsman, Lucy remembered thinking, as he wasn’t going to reel in customers with his sparkling personality. The whole time she had spent in his shop that day he had barely managed to growl out a sentence or two.

  He became practically loquacious a little later that morning when the puppy wiggled out of Teddy’s arms as Miss Linda shepherded her charges into line prior to boarding the bus for home. Patricia had asked Lucy if she knew anyone who might be interested in assuming her duties at Bellawood when she went on maternity leave, and as the two of them discussed possible applicants, one of the children unlatched the forbidden gate and rode it open.

  “Stop! Come back!” Lucy shouted, chasing after Teddy, who chased after the puppy with the big feet. Now they were joined by three or four more of the puppy’s brothers and sisters, at least half of the kindergarten class, the pregnant event-planner and a panting, red-faced mother who would probably never chaperone again. The woman muttered under her breath as she ran and Lucy was close enough to hear she wasn’t quoting scripture.

  Lucy had heard about people who threw up their hands when overwhelmed, but Ben Maxwell was the first person she saw who actually did it.

  “Lord love a duck!” he shouted, waving his arms at the horde of yelping puppies. “Get these animals out of here!”

  One of the dogs scurried under a bench, followed by at least three children who fought to pick it up. The bench teetered, sending a scattering of nails to the floor. The workshop smelled strongly of sawdust and turpentine and somebody behind her sneezed. Augusta.

  “Here, here! This is no place for little ones!” Ben snatched the disappearing shirttail of one of the small invaders and pulled him from underneath the bench, whereupon the offending child began to wail. The puppies, sensing disaster, joined in.