Fallen Angels

by Patricia Hickman

  “If you knew all this last week, why are you just now telling us?” Willie, still wrapped in a sheet, allowed his jaw to drop and his mouth to hang open. He did not believe her.

  Angel answered, “I shouldn't be telling you yet anyway. But it's such good news, I figured why wait. May as well tell you now. That's why Jeb's doing up the clothes and wants us to leave the house all spiffed up.”

  “Jeb knows?” asked Ida May.

  Angel let out a sigh. She drew each stocking up to the thigh and then turned her back to Willie. “He knows.”

  “Is Jeb taking us to Claudia's?” Willie asked. He lay on his stomach and rolled his pencil between his hands as though he were trying to build a fire on the cover of his schoolbook.

  “We're through with Jeb. He's moving on now. It's best we don't know where he goes. If he's got business with the police, why should we get in that kind of mess?”

  “I don't want to leave, Angel.” A pearl-sized tear slipped down Ida May's face. “Jeb takes care of us, and Fern, too. I'm telling Fern. She'll let us stay.”

  “No you won't tell Fern. You're staying right here until I get home from school today and if Fern shows up, well, you won't say a word. This is for big people to squabble over, Ida May. She's not our momma. We got a real family, like Claudia. You just can't remember her because you were so young when she ran off and married. After a week or two with your real sister, you won't remember Fern.”

  Ida May wailed.

  “You think she'll be all right here with Jeb, Angel?” Willie asked.

  “Why wouldn't she?” Angel tied her shoes in double bows to hold them on her feet.

  “I mean, he wouldn't go off and leave her today, would he?” Willie ran his thumb through the hole in the toe of his sock.

  “I used to worry he might, Willie. Lately it's hard to say. But he's different, that I know. Ida May, you just stick close and ask Jeb to read to you and stuff like that,” said Angel.

  “Jeb can read,” said Ida May.

  “Big words, too,” said Willie. “I heard him reading to Fern out on the porch the other night. They sure been cozy lately. Reckon they'll run off and marry like Claudia?”

  “Fern's not like Claudia, Willie. Ladies like her get their pictures in the paper when they get married, so they don't dare run off to do it. They don't marry men wanted by the police, neither.” Angel gathered up her books.

  Jeb opened the door. “Time for you all to go. Ida May, get your shoes on. I'm driving Willie and Angel to school. You may as well go, too.”

  Angel did not comment either way. She looked at Jeb as though she did not recognize him anymore.

  19

  The mountains and the foothills smelled of smoking timber, wood crackling in the stoves and smoke billowing from the chimneystacks of whoever had the wherewithal to own a good brick fireplace. Not many in Nazareth. The air that permeated the churchyard was stiff with smoke, a white aroma both fragrant and stifling to Jeb.

  He loaded up the children and drove them down past the lane that led to the impoverished, junk-strewn Wolverton yard, past the neatly manicured entrance to the Mills estate, and on to the school.

  Fern met Jeb out in front of the school. “Let me get a better look at the famous truck.”

  “Not too much to look at but it runs like a racehorse. I thought maybe tonight you'd like to go for a malted at Fidel's. Or, if you're too busy, some other time.” Jeb said “some other time” as though he had another time to give her. He prayed for a long Monday.

  “I should be finished with grading papers by six or so. Malteds will be too cold to get come November. Guess I had better seize the last one of the year.” Fern looked at Jeb until it seemed inappropriate to look any longer. “I'll bet you children are happy to get a ride to school, what with the frost covering every blessed thing in sight.” Fern addressed Angel and Willie. Ida May had taken a blanket and curled up on the front seat for a little more shut-eye.

  “We just barely got here. Them robber boys left it near out of gas,” said Willie.

  “Lots of folks are out of gas these days, Willie,” said Fern.

  “I'm headed for town to get fuel,” said Jeb. Will Honeysack had paid him sixteen dollars on Sunday, well near the salary paid to the Catholic priest between Nazareth and Hot Springs.

  Fern waved the Wolvertons in. They all tramped out of the woods on foot, but it had become less shameful to be out of gas when everybody was in the same boat. The two youngest walked wrapped in a blanket, Siamese twins running for the heat of the schoolhouse as fast as blanket-trussed legs could carry them.

  Fern, careful not to talk over the heads of her students, said, “Angel, I got your paper on President Lincoln graded. You got an A, girl. I think you ought to be really proud of yourself.”

  Angel walked away without comment and met the oldest Wolverton girl at the gate.

  “Angel, you come back here and answer Miss Coulter, like a polite person ought to do!” said Jeb.

  “It's all right,” Fern told him. “Angel's been off in another world lately. At least, I've noticed that about her. I don't think she means anything by it when she doesn't answer, other than. ‘I wish someone would ask me what's bothering me.’ I don't suppose she's mentioned anything to you that's troubling her?”

  Several things that might possibly trouble Angel came to Jeb. “No, nothing that I can think of.”

  “If you don't mind, I can take her aside this afternoon and see if she's up for a little girl talk,” said Fern.

  “Fact is—” The truth bubbled to the top like a well finally uncapped. Jeb blurted out, “Fern, I've had something on my mind and it has something to do with Angel, with all of us. Tonight I need to discuss it with you. I'll pick you up at six if it's all right with you.” He could not sit on it anymore. By tonight, he would have his things packed. He would tell her the truth about him. If she cared about the children, he would ask her to care for them until they could be returned to their family. Then he would drive to Texarkana and turn himself in.

  The sun came up fully now. Fern wore a white blouse and a russet skirt and had tied a sweater around her shoulders, a kitten-soft woolen dappled like a Pinto pony. It made her look fresh off the ranch, with a faint hint of Manhattan. “Sounds important, Philemon.”

  “It's important that we get together tonight and talk, yes.”

  “I look forward to it, then,” she said.

  “Until then.” When he turned he felt Fern clasp his hand, a gentle fondling of fingers against his own.

  “Malteds and something very important.” Naturally she laughed. She did not know of Jeb's plans to ruin them.

  Jeb dropped by Honeysack's and bought a few gallons of gas. Val Rodwyn handed him a big stack of mail. A faint smattering of hope made him dig through the stack in hopes of finding a letter from Gracie telling him that their plans had changed and that they could not come after all. But not one piece of mail was from the minister.

  That was the icing on his flattened cake. It was better, he decided, to let the chips fall. Let everyone know that he was not the man he said he was after all, before Philemon Gracie pranced in and made the announcement for him.

  Either way, he was a miserable man.

  Jeb drove home with the stack of mail, a bundle tied neatly by Val and given to him. Every letter addressed by Angel to her sister Claudia now lay on the passenger seat with various messages scrawled through the addresses indicating: that no such person lived at such-and-such address. Before he met with Fern, he would have to tell Angel that her search for Claudia had come to a disappointing end. She would have to find a way back to Snow Hill with her daddy or to Little Rock with her aunt and insane mother. But he could not take them along to his eventual arrest. To do so meant the Welbys would wind up in a state home. He would promise Angel that would never happen.

  Jeb arrived early at the school. Ida May played hopscotch in the dirt. He waited by the gate in hopes of catching a glimpse of Fern. Angel appeared first. Fi
nally Willie and another boy appeared. “We have to talk some things over, but not here.”

  Angel and Willie bid good-bye to their friends. Angel lingered a little longer, almost as though she could not expect to see them again.

  Jeb took them home.

  “You're awfully quiet,” said Willie.

  “And still here.” Angel toted her books to the front porch and left them on the steps.

  “I've got something to show you, Angel. All of you.” Jeb led them inside. He gave her the stack of letters. “Claudia never got any of your mail. All of those places your aunt thought she might live are no good.”

  Angel went through the envelopes reading her own handwriting. “Claudia didn't get any of them. Daddy just sent us away without knowing anything. He's a liar!” she cried.

  Willie stormed away. Ida May sat down on the floor like she needed someone to translate all that her sister had told her was not true.

  “It doesn't do any good to blame your daddy. Maybe he truly thought he knew where Claudia lived,” said Jeb.

  “He didn't know. We were just too many mouths to feed so he sent us off. It don't matter to him where we are just so we're out of his hair.” Angel dumped the letters into the garbage pail. She ran out of the kitchen, down the back steps, and away from the house.

  Jeb followed her.

  She ran through the small clearing toward the stream. Cattails bobbed in her wake. Bright yellow clusters of tickseed lay flattened next to the dead pods of bee balm and frost bitten chicory. She circled the shrubs where Jeb and Willie had set trotlines and cut across the stones until the frigid water stopped her midstream.

  The lofty shadow of a sweet gum wrapped a cold blanket around Jeb.

  “Ain't you got things to do, Jeb Nubey?” Her sobbing wrenched him in two. “Places to pack up and go to? Leave me alone and just go, will you? I'm not your problem anymore.”

  “You have every reason to be mad,” he said.

  “Go away.” She wept. Her head came back, her slight frame twisted like an emerging larva, and she wailed. Both hands came to her mouth and the tough exterior fashioned from hunger and hopelessness crumbled into the creek.

  Jeb slipped out of his weathered oxfords and with his bare feet waded into the cold water. The stream bit his legs like nails. He imagined her plummeting headlong down the same cliffs where he had lived for so long. Even if it took his own life, he had to pull her back. “Angel, you listen to me!” He plucked her off the rock and carried her back through the stream. She fought him the entire way. “Stop it, now!” He held her next to him and said as quietly as he could, “Listen, baby. You've got to listen.”

  She threw her arms around his neck and cried with her face against him. Jeb stood with one foot on dry land and one in the water and let her cry. He held her crumpled against him until the only sound was a faint sob and the gurgling babble of creek water. “I been your daddy now for these last few months and I want you to listen to what I have to say. No matter what happens, I'm getting you back to your family, Angel. This Depression is eating up everything in sight, but it ain't going to eat you.”

  “Jeb, you can't do nothing for us. You got to get out of here.”

  “In due time. Maybe I never should have left Texarkana in the first place. If I go back, maybe all the trouble I caused since then can be righted.”

  “They'll bang you, Jeb. Don't go back!”

  “Maybe I got to do what's right, Angel Sunday's coming.” That is, if Gracie tarried. “I'm going to tell the truth and then get my troublesome self out of the way. I learned some things about God these past few months, even if I didn't mean to. Amazing what you can do with a little book learning. He don't like it when you get in the way of his work. I been in the way of God's business ever since I came to this place. When I leave, everyone here—Fern, the Honeysacks, even the Wolvertons—will all hate me. But they'll know it wasn't God that sent me here. I won't cast no more shadows on his work. I can live with that.”

  “Maybe God did send you here. What if he sent all of us here? It could be that he did and if so, I know why.”

  “I don't follow you, Angel.”

  “He knew me and Willie and Ida May needed you to help us out of a jam, Jeb. And we needed Fern. Do you have to make me say it, you jerk, you?”

  “Say what?”

  “I love you, Jeb!” She threw her arms around him and cried over her adopted and condemned-to-die daddy “Please don't leave me. I don't want you to go.” She sobbed louder than when she stood holding the rejected mail from Claudia.

  Jeb wiped his eyes and set her down easy in the grass. I love you too, honey. But don't cry over me. I don't deserve anything good. You are full of goodness, heaven knows, you crazy girl. Everybody needs a girl like you around just for the gladness you bring, even when I'd like to pop you one sometimes. Always know that in case you ever question your worth.”

  It came to him why he had never known the life of a good man. He had not sought it. Not until it was too late.

  Jeb left Angel with the other two, the three of them listening to Amos ‘n’ Andy, stomachs packed with salt pork, gravy, and biscuits. Through the truck windshield the moon was bright like the bowl of a silver spoon. A trace of film formed around the perimeters of the window, but nothing as cold as frost. By the time he pulled into Fern's drive he wanted the truck engine to have warmed the cab. The only flowers he could find for a nosegay were the tickseed, a yellow wildflower with the face of a daisy. Angel had tied the flowers with a hair ribbon. Jeb considered the sacrifice worth an inch of growth on her part.

  He rehearsed the things that he should say until he saw his eyes in the rearview mirror, the ones that had looked back at him when he had memorized Bible text for lies. The image punched a hole in any resolve that he had mustered. If any one word that came out of his mouth was possessed of truth, it was equally laced with grief. No explaining would with ease fill in the gap between the falsehood he had invented and reality. It was time for him to spill it out. Only truthful words with mortal wounds.

  He saw an oncoming vehicle. Jeb slowed on the narrow road and drove the right tire onto the slanting roadside. The vehicle slowed and the window came down rapidly. Deputy Maynard pulled chicken from a bone with his teeth. His lips were shiny in the dusk. “Reverend Gracie, I was on my way out to your place to see you.”

  Jeb remained calm, as calm as he had learned to be around the law in the last few months.

  “Tomorrow a state policeman wants to drop by and ask you a few things. I sent a telegram to them Texarkana boys. Told them we had apprehended the crooks that have been on a spree from Texarkana up.” He tossed the leg bone into the dirt. “Somehow I figure this will tie in these two fools down in the jailhouse to that Texarkana murder that never got resolved. State police says a reward may be on its way to you.”

  “George, forget the reward money.”

  “Forget it, nothing: You were right beside me that capture.” He patted the side of his A-Model. “Glad I caught you. Nebula's making cobbler. Come by and have some, why don't you?”

  “I'm meeting Fern for a malted.”

  “Don't say? It's about time somebody wised up and married that little gal. Rich daddy and pretty to boot. You have yourself a fine evening, Reverend.” He drove away

  Sparse green leaves and kudzu wound throughout the trees on Fern's lane around Long's Pond. The leaves not blackened by the cold were drawn and shuddering on the limbs. Vines rose from the earth and draped across the road, a net with a partial view of sky. How soon the feds or the Texarkana cops might want to question him for the sake of releasing the reward money could come within a few days. Jeb prayed for one last Sunday. He could make everything right if God obliged him.

  Fern wore a new dress, or perhaps a dress new to the cooler season—a blue crepey knit. She waved from the window and then answered the door with her grading pencil still stuck behind her ear.

  Jeb pulled it out and handed it to her. “Finish your school p
apers, schoolmarm?”

  “Watch yourself, mister. I look harmless, but many's the poor bum who's fallen under the deadly spell of the schoolmarm. Your children all right?” One foot touched the top step as she peered toward the truck.

  “Listening to Amos ‘n’ Andy. Maybe doing some school work. No, nix that last one. They don't seem to do much unless I'm standing right over them,” he said.

  “Come in, unless … If you want, I'll grab my jacket. We should go.”

  Jeb watched her run for the jacket. He took off his coat and stepped inside. She looked surprised when she saw him.

  “Maybe it's too cold for a malted,” he said.

  “Philemon, it's all right by me. But I can talk as easily here as down at Fidel's, if you prefer.”

  “Here is fine. We'll sit at this table looking outside. Nice and bright.” He touched the tabletop, his shoulders widened as though he framed out the whole quaint scene. “I watched you through this winder from the road one night.” Maybe more than one night, he thought. He pulled the chair out from the table. “I notice you sit right here in this big window and work every single night of your life except Sunday. One day, you reserve for God.”

  “Spying on me?”

  “Admiring.” He held out the chair for her.

  “May as well sit yourself down. I've got to make coffee now,” she said.

  Jeb took her arm. “Coffee can wait. Fern—”

  She did not resist him, but reached for a window pull and let down the shade.

  The talk he had in mind did not coincide with Fern's interpretation of an evening designed for two. “You may want to pull the shade back up.”

  “I like it down.”

  “It's important that I tell you about me. You should know something.”

  “I keep bearing about this important talk, Reverend. But I want you to know something. Freda Honeysack told me what you did for Mr. Wolverton.”