Fallen Angels

by Patricia Hickman

  Jeb had gotten his schooling in the field. Mentored by sky and lake, he'd never thought of preparing for the next decade, or equipping himself with learnedness. He had lived to eat and have a good smoke, and not having the latter was on him like a vengeance. The world continued its turn around the universe while the rest of the country broke its back upon the plow. The plow handles were his future, he thought, Someday he would get himself a piece of land. He had looked at it from every angle. He envisioned how he might turn the soil with the use of a good blade, finish his day with a smoke and satisfaction. But a lesser vision had kept him back in another man's cotton field. It was the crossing over from one life to the next that bewildered him. Getting to the other side with his name on the deed was the hardest piece to unravel.

  Fern had a whole cockeyed view that he could not decipher, either. Whereas he pondered how he might get the next meal ticket, she wondered how she might feed the world.

  Six trout glistened on the line. Their tails waved gently now, soft and agile, but earlier on, each shining fish must have put up a fight. Over the hours the hook had weakened their resolve. One large fish with passionless eyes opened its gaping mouth, slow, slow, fast. Its fins moved only with the current, translucent wings beneath the surface, subservient to another will. One glistening moment the trout hunted the next meal. The next, it became the meal.

  Jeb wanted to ask Fern about the whole idea of a man hooked by his circumstances. But he liked her assumption of him that he had deeper thoughts. But if he asked her, she would see him as plainly ignorant. He could not let that happen. Nor could he give up her image of him even if it meant never obtaining legitimacy. Her respect for him had fed the new image he'd gotten of himself in the mírror. For a moment, he could almost smell his soul rotting.

  He left the stringer of fish in the stream as though to do so might mend his hypocrisy.

  Inside, Angel paraded in an old borrowed dress in the kitchen, dissatisfied with it, but not unhappy enough to change out of it. Mellie Fogarty had loaned a box of clothes to the girls if they promised to return anything they would not use. The idea of returning anything was what caused Angel to find use for every article in the box.

  Ida May walked out of their room in a dress two sizes too big. She flopped the sleeves that fell over her fingertips. “This'd fit you, Angel.”

  “Ida May, you will grow into this in six months. Put it in the closet and you'll be glad you have it later.” She watched over her sister unhappily.

  Ida May stripped out of the dress and left it on the floor.

  “You act like the bless-me bird is going to just fly in here with a box of clothes every other week. It don't work like that.”

  Ida May, enjoying her shirtless folly, made checkers out of Coke bottle tops. “I don't want to try on clothes, Angel. I want to play.”

  “Jeb, tell Ida May she has to do as I say,” said Angel.

  Without a cigarette to his name, Jeb rifled through every kitchen drawer. If he found so much as a butt, he would take a drag on it. “Any of you kids seen the matches?”

  “The preacher can't smoke nor drink, Jeb. If anyone sees you, you may as well take yourself down to the jail and lock yourself inside.” Angel held up one last dress ins front of Ida May.

  “If they'll let me have a smoke in jail, I'll go willingly.” He slammed a drawer shut. “Not a match, not a smoke in the whole joint.” He had stolen a pack from Honeysack's when the clerk wasn't looking and tucked it, he thought, into a drawer. “It's like someone came in and robbed me of my smokes. Now who did it?”

  Angel folded up the last dress and shuffled off the heeled dress shoes, the long shoes too wide for her slender tomboy feet.

  “If you know anything about the sudden disappearance of my personal belongings, you'd do best to speak up,” said Jeb.

  “You'd never catch me touching your old things,” said Angel. “The way you light up one right after the other down by the fish stream, it is no wonder you eventually ran out.”

  “I'd better not find out differently.” Jeb thought he saw a pinch of tobacco in the comer of a drawer but it was nothing but crumbled bread crust.

  “Other people go buy their personal things at the store. If you need something, just go down and buy it. Better'n pacing around me like a cat,” said Angel.

  “You know I can't.”

  “Don't bother me with it, then, like I did it to you. Nobody is out to get you, Jeb Nubey.” Angel had Willie grab the other side of the clothing cast-offs box. “Let's take it to our room, where it's quieter.”

  She and Willie disappeared.

  Ida May gathered the Coke bottle lids into her hands and ran with the load to follow Angel and Willie. Dropped lids made a trail all the way into the children's bedroom.

  Jeb's mother once said that Charlie was given to tantrums, but Jeb was given patience. But the very idea that he could not get a smoke whenever he pleased raised up the soul of Charlie inside of him. For an instant, he felt like him. “Is it too much to ask that I'm allowed a pack of smokes?” During the tirade, his voice rose into the loft and bellowed down into the root cellar. “I think there is a funny joke going on here but it ain't funny to me!”

  Angel hollered at the exact moment she slammed the bedroom door. “Stop yelling!”

  “If I don't get smokes here in the shake of a stick, I'll tear this place apart looking for them!” He picked up a kitchen chair, thought about throwing it, but then just allowed it to fall back, enough to make a nice slamming bang against the wooden floor.

  Angel had stopped yelling.

  “Next thing you know, you'll be hiding my liquor. Then my poker cards. There'll be no end in sight!”

  “Nobody has your pack of cigarettes or your gin! We don't have your poker cards, neither, and who would you ask into a game anyway?”

  “I tell you what you'll do! You take this money in my pocket on down to Honeysack's grocery and you bring me back a new pack of smokest Anything else I want, you get that, too!”

  “Reverend Gracie?”

  The face pressed against the screen door was too dark to render precisely. Jeb only knew the voice to be feminine.

  “I'm sorry if this is a bad time. Miss Coulter said the children might need help with some school things. I have a few extras I keep around if you all could use them.”

  It was Florence Bernard. If she'd heard his ranting diatribe, her polite nature would not allow her to say anything.

  “Mrs. Bernard! Now is fine, just fine,” Jeb lied.

  She waited outside with a shoebox.

  Jeb's feet were frozen to the floor as if she would just leave the box out on the porch if he made no move toward her.

  “I don't have to come inside,” she said.

  “No, no, where are my manners, Mrs. Bernard? I'm sorry as sorry can be! Come insider:” After Jeb opened the door for her, he called out to the children.

  Only Angel emerged. She had a sour face and wore another of Mellie Fogarty's hand-me-downs, a pleated dress the color of pickles and at least one size too large.

  “Don't you look all grown up?” Florence made no comment on the oversized dress, no more than she addressed Jeb's ranting about smokes and liquor.

  “None of them fit. But I have to wear them or give them back to Mrs. Fogarty.” Angel did not address Jeb. Only Florence. “My mother sewed like everything, but I never had the chance to pick up her skills.”

  “I sew, too. You want me to fit that dress to your frame, I'll do it. If you have some other things, I'll alter them for you. It doesn't take long and I have the time before school starts.”

  Angel's body stretched from the toes up to her shoulders. She expelled the elation and said, “I'd really be grateful.”

  Florence told her, “We'll have at least a few of your things ready in time for school. Only two weeks left. Now you take this box of pencils and paper to your brother and divide it with him.”

  “I will. Thank you,” said Angel.

  “Yo
u got some pins; I'll start with this green dress if you like it.”

  “Mrs. Bernard, you've done so much, I hate to impose,” said Jeb.

  Angel said to Florence, “I'll get the pins, ma'am.”

  “Pleats are a specialty of mine. You'll need a good pair of stockings to set that off.” Florence called out to her. “But I don't know what to tell her about shoes”. I'm never clever about picking out children's shoes.” A bit of reticence settled in Florence's voice.

  “The girl has a pair of shoes,” Jeb interjected. “If this isn't a good time, you can do this later. I feel as though I've interrupted your whole day.”

  “Actually, Reverend, it is I who have interrupted you.”

  Jeb could not prove the insinuation in her tone. She kept her back to him the entire time she spoke with Angel. But he felt the heat of what she didn't say.

  He excused himself and wandered out onto the porch. Angel and Florence could be heard exchanging polite girl banter. Florence commented upon how Angel should not allow such a small matter to distress her.

  Angel's reply could have been directed at him or not. “One day I'll be good as you, Mrs. Bernard, at not allowing petty things to get the best of me.”

  Jeb chopped wood even though the night was warm. The very act of aggression against an inert object eased his tobacco jitters. Angel braided Ida May's hair on the front porch and sipped orangeade. She pretended, as she had all day, not to see him.

  “You act like this scam is all me when most of it is you. I been watching how you sit in the middle of the church ladies with your orphaned face.”

  “The things I say about my mother are all true” Angel twisted her sister's shoulders three quarters to the right.

  “But what they believe is a lie. When they find out about me, you're the one they'll hate. Ida May, well, they'll believe she just did as she was told. Willie, he's a boy, and most boys lie. But you've painted yourself as the near-grown motherless orphan they all dote over. Don't think they won't find a punishment for you, too.”

  “I didn't haul off in front of Florence Bernard and throw a fit, foaming at the mouth like a mad dog for a cigarette. If they find out your nasty secret, it won't be me they blame.”

  “This is like waking up and finding out you're someplace you know you wasn't at when you went to bed. Am I hearing you right? Wasn't it you that begged me to go along with your plan? Best as I remember, you even called it that—your plan. Just for the night, Jeb. Then, just one more day. Now look at me, I'm the Big Preacher Boy now!” He made a brazen motion in front of him with the ax, a figure eight. “Charlie, he'd laugh a big one, if he saw me behind that pulpit with my shiny tie. Might even give me credit for the best little hidey-hole this side of Texarkana. But I can't take credit for it You know why? Because I give you every bit of the credit.” He, leaned over the porch railing and pointed at Angel with the ax blade. “You, Biggest.”

  “You just keep flapping that big mouth of yours, Jeb, and let Miss Coulter know who you really are. Here she comes right now in that old car of hers. Maybe she'd like to hear what else you got to say, like what Mrs. Bernard heard this morning.”

  Fern's Chevy Coup motored down the dirty lane toward them.

  Angel continued to rant, “Or-maybe she's already heard from Mrs. Bernard. Maybe the whole town knows. Church in the Dell has itself a tobacco-addicted preacher. Maybe they'll just call you Smoky Joe.”

  “Quiet!” Jeb told her.

  “Fires of hell, Jeb. That's what you smell like!”

  Before Fern could open her door, Jeb met her and helped her out. “Fern glad you could drop by.”

  “Reverend Gracie, I wanted you to know that I'm having trouble locating the children's last teacher. Here's the letter I got today,” said Fern.

  Jeb pretended to read the letter. He thought of coaxing Angel off the porch, pretending he needed glasses. But Angel, he figured, would not cooperate. “Let me know what I can do to help, Fern.”

  “Maybe if you used the phone up at Honeysack's store? He'd let you. Call this number here.” She circled the telephone number at the top of the school's stationary. “Let them know you're the children's father and ask for these three things.” She pointed to three lines of cryptic language. They don't have to have it to start school but it would help me out to know a few things about their schooling.”

  “I'll do my best” he said

  “What are the three things we need, Daddy?” Angel asked.

  Fern turned the paper around. “Your grades mostly. At what level you last tested at. And any letters from your teachers. It helps to track your progress.”

  Jeb blew out a breath.

  “It's like the letter says, they don't remember your children at all.”

  Willie ran around the house, no shirt, just overalls and a streamer of fish trailing behind.

  “Reverend Gracie, I'll bet you can clean those fish, can't you?” Fern asked.

  “Like a thousand before them.”

  “I can't clean them, but I can cook them. Angel, you all have cornmeal and salt?”

  “Last time I checked yes,” Angel answered her.

  Jeb remembered the shoo-fly pie. “You don't have to cook for us again, Fern.”

  “I insist. Ida May, you go get some shoes on. The ground is getting chilly with dew.” Fern disappeared into the house.

  “If I didn't know better, I'd say you aren't wild about Miss Coulter's cooking,” said Angel.

  Jeb knew betted than to answer.

  The biggest trout, too big to be pan fried, had lain tail out of the pan, coated in cornmeal and seasonings but not touching the grease. The other pieces had cut tip nicely. But Fern, in an effort to have at least one whole trout laying wall-eyed on the plate and festive, had left it whole. When Jeb cut into the middle, the insides were still pink and moist. He forked a smaller, crispy piece onto his plate and said, “It sure smells good.”

  While Fern walked around child-to-Child, adding potatoes and cornbread to their plates, he choked down as much as he could, careful for the bones and remembering the simplicity of trout cooked along a streambed Maybe it was the rushing stream, the spray of fresh water in the air that made the trout taste better. Fern's recipe tasted sooty, like the bottom of the skillet. He doused everything in ketchup and drizzled the fish with extra salt. All the while he lamented over the waste of a good trout He wanted to apologize to the largest fish, repent of it having made its way onto his hook. He poured on more ketchup to atone.

  But he liked the cornbread and the way Fern looked when she served it, slender and round and bent over the table, nurturing and faintly smelling of whatever perfume she had sprayed on that morning.

  “Ida May tells me that every night Angel reads the Bible to her daddy,” said Fern.

  Jeb drew in his bottom lip, did not look either at Ida May or Angel, and said “Yes, it's a tradition.”

  “I don't want to interfere in your family customs, but if it's all right I'd like to stay and listen.”

  Angel, with her fingers tugging at her earlobe, prepared to offer up a defense, but Jeb interjected before she made a lame excuse. “Sure, Fern. Please join us.”

  With the front door still open and the screen door the only barrier between the parlor and the outdoors, the crickets started a song that set all of the forest in motion. Owls, katydids, toads, all in a ruckus. Willie sat on the floor cross-legged and listened to the night music while Angel read.

  “This is from the book of John,” she said. “ ‘Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing’ “

  “You have; a nice reading voice,” said Fern. “Willie, you want to tell us what your sister just read about?”

  “Vines and branches. Growing grapes, I figger.”

  Jeb figured on how to get Angel up and Fern seat
ed closer to him.

  “The vine is Christ. We are the branches. We can't bear fruit unless we are attached to him.” Fern explained it but Willie did not get any of it.

  “I wish I could make fruit. I'd make lemons and then make lemonade. We never buy lemons. How much could they be?” Willie asked. “Arnell Ketcherside's mother always has lemonade waiting for him when he gets home from school.”

  “Willie, you're off the track now, son,” said Jeb. When he tapped the back of the sofa, his intention was to make a point with Willie. But his finger touched the back of Fern's hair, soft, blond circular strands. He left his hand on the back of the couch.

  Fern said to Jeb. “Maybe you can explain it better than me, Reverend Gracie. How do you all do this? Read a bit and then explain?”

  Willie piped up, just as though for once he knew the answer. “Angel reads a Bible verse over and over until I'm about ready to scream, then Daddy, here, says it back to her.”

  Jeb took the Bible from Angel and closed it up. “You explained it well, Fern. We probably need you over more often, what with you being a teacher. I'll bet your explanation is more on their level. More for children. I probably talk way over their heads.”

  Angel watched him lift the Bible over her head. She dropped her hands in her lap and sighed.

  Fern said her good nights and walked more slowly toward the Chevy. “Any more news about your truck, Reverend?”

  Jeb pressed his lips together and shook his head.

  “I hate to see you all riding back and forth to town in that wagon. I had to explain to one lady it had nothing to do with your religion. Funny how rumors can spread. If I didn't have to have mine every day for school really soon, I'd just let you drive the Chevy”

  “Please, we're doing fine. You already do so much, Fern. I feel guilty about all you do.” Jeb saw Angel waiting at the screen door. She opened it and came out onto the porch. Her habit was to call out to him if he got as much as six inches from Fern. But this time she just watched. “Good night, and thanks for the fried fish,” said Jeb.