Fallen Angels

by Patricia Hickman

  “I have been redeemed. Halleluyer, Reverend!” said Clovis.

  Jeb extended his hands. “Maynard, do your worst. I am a ready prisoner.”

  Mills stepped aside to let the deputy cuff Jeb.

  “Mr. Nubey, I will see you again. We've much to discuss,” said Reverend Gracie.

  Doris Jolly cried and followed behind Jeb all the way to the church door. “I'll pray for you, Reverend. Don't you give up now. God don't shine to no quitter.”

  “I'm not a reverend, Doris. Just a man who has to get back up.”

  Once out in the churchyard, Maynard pulled manacles and chains from the back of his automobile. Horace Mills assisted with shackling Jeb Nubey, the murderer.

  The space normally filled by Fern's Chevy Coup was nothing but a tacky set of tire tracks on the grass.

  Will Honeysack lingered three yards away in the shade of the tree where Jeb had shared pie with Fern. He turned his back when Jeb was driven from the church. He placed his head against the tree trunk, forehead against the back of his hand. Then the head deacon cried.

  Carl and Rabbit called out to Jeb from the cell next to him. The sun descended and from the darkening cell they mimicked him. “Beloved children, come unto me and I will give you lies from the bottom of my dirty old heart,” said Carl.

  Rabbit laughed and cried out, “Amen, y'all”

  Carl pressed his face through the bars. “I believe it was you, Parson, who had it in mind to let a certain couple of honorable gentlemen take the rap for your little homicidal blunder, up in yon Texarkana. Memory serves me correctly, that is.”

  “I confessed, boys, You want more than that, get a lawyer.”

  “Confessed after the gen-awin preacher come rollin’ into town,” said Carl.

  “You better thank God you didn't get put in our cell, Nubey. Maybe you would-a woke up behind the pearlys you been preachin’ about,” said Rabbit. He slammed the ball of his hand against the bars.

  “Mercy sakes, Brother Rabbit. Forgiveness is in order. After all, it was the good parson here who accommodated our modest venture with the use of his fine automobile.”

  Rabbit fell onto the cot and laughed.

  Through the bars to the outside, Jeb watched head-lights here and then gone move across the jailhouse wall as vehicles turned the corner on Front Street. Maynard clipped across the parking lot, the heels of his shoes popping. The jailhouse keys jangled from his belt.

  “Deputy Maynard, please, you've got to help Angel and the other two find their daddy.”

  “Don't you have enough to worry with, Nubey?” The sun disappeared right behind the deputy's head.

  “I'm not what's important, George.”

  “Look, Nubey. I had Evelene Whittington do what you asked. She tried to call some of the neighbors in Show Hill. She finally got a fillin’ station attendant to answer the phone. The only number she could dig up in Snow Hill.”

  “It's a small place. Filling station will do,” said Jeb.

  “Lemuel Welby, he packed up and left town months ago when the itinerants all headed west. Took his brother with him and never left trace of where they headed off to.” Maynard checked his watch. “Ain't no place left for those three kids to go but to a home. I don't know much about them, but the sheriff up in Hope, he said he knows of a place.”

  “I promised the kids they wouldn't go to an orphanage, Maynard.”

  “A guarantee from a jail ain't no kind of assurance. Evelene Whittington took them in for the night. She'll see they get took care of until we find permanent quarters. Get some sleep. State police want to see you first thing in the morning.” He left, his A-Model gone in a cloud of dust.

  “Nice con, Nubey,” said Carl. “Play up the waifs and strays. Make them believe you got heart.”

  Jeb bowed in front of the window. “Please, God don't punish those kids on my account. Let me hang but find them a good daddy, a real accountable man like Preacher Gracie.”

  “Reverend, it's me, Clovis.”

  Jeb lifted his face to the window. “Clovis? I'm ashamed for you to see me here.”

  “Don't give that a thought. You just back away. Me and the boys are going to break you out of here.” He pulled a rope through the bars and made a knot.

  Jeb untied the rope. “Not a good idea.”

  “You kept me out of jail. My turn to help you.”

  “Clovis, I thought I taught you some things. Now here you go—back to the hog pen,” said Jeb.

  “They've no right to do this to you.” Clovis slipped the rope back around the bars. His boys waved from the driver's seat and gunned the truck motor.

  “I brought this on myself. Don't you see? That's what I have been trying to teach you, Clovis. Bad moves land you in me pokey. Ain't possible to climb out of this one. You bust me out of here and then I'll just turn myself in again. I have more peace in this little block room than I ever did out there.”

  “Bust you out?” Rabbit yelled. “Hey, buddy, we're his friends. Bring your little rope on over here.”

  “Reverend, let me help you,” said Clovis.

  “You can pray, Clovis, but not for my old dirty soul. Pray the Lord finds a good place for Angel, Willie, and Ida May.”

  “Me and Alma, we can take those kids in.”

  Jeb hung his head.

  Rabbit yelled, “Take me in. I'm up for adoption!”

  “Clovis, your quiver is full to running over. But you could do one thing for me.”

  “I'll do whatever you ask.”

  “Find out if Fern is doing all right. I'm worried about her.” Jeb held to the bars, his head still hung down between both arms.

  “I think that Miss Coulter always does well for herself, but I'll ask around.”

  Jeb settled back onto the cot. “That I know. Fern always rises to meet the next summit.” That was what he loved about Fern, but also what distressed him. That she could rise with or without him.

  The sun was gone and with it, the sky and everything pleasant.

  21

  Time to wake up, Mr. Nubey.”

  Jeb had dreamed wild boars ate him alive, so when the voice came to him in the hushed prelight of Monday, he thought he had awakened in heaven. His stiff back and the flimsy wood frame of the cot boring into his shoulder roused him into reality. He sat up. His head dropped back and hit the hard stone jailhouse wall.

  Philemon Gracie sat upon a bench. “I hope you don't mind. My family slept in the parsonage last night. The girls are being careful of you and your charges’ things.”

  His obliging ways made Jeb feel more ashamed.

  “I could not find your shaving soap. Mine lies packed in the back of our sedan.”

  “Welcome to anything I have. I get a shave down at the barber on Waddle.” Jeb ran his fingers through his hair. It stood on end at the front of his scalp.

  “Might I recommend my brand, Barclay Crocker? Softens the beard nicely and doesn't chafe.” With the tips of his fingers the minister stroked his Chin.

  Jeb's eyes felt like circles of fire.

  Gracie told him, “The good Mrs. Florence Bernard had a crisis of the conscience, it seems. She brought us by a tray of her baked goods. I told her we should offer them to you. If I were you, I'd indulge a little charity.”

  Jeb reached through the bars and accepted three slices of pumpkin bread. “Couldn't be Florence Bernard. She hates me.”

  “That genteel woman couldn't hate anyone, Mr. Nubey.”

  “Where are your children?” Jeb asked.

  “Now there we have something: again. It is those things you say—’Where are your children’ or ‘Handcuff me, Deputy Maynard’—that tell me something about you: You are not the same man who walked into this town with the Texarkana lawmen nipping at your heels, are you?”

  “You joking me?” Jeb chewed the second piece of sweet bread.

  “My daughter, Constance, is supervising her two siblings in their morning devotions. Thank you for asking. She tutors them. We have moved a gr
eat deal in the last year or two so her teaching skills are invaluable. As she is invaluable.”

  “Angel is a bright girl, too. I'd like to see her placed in a family tike yours.”

  “You've relied so long on manipulation, you would try your skills oh me?” asked Gracie, but he did laugh.

  “Desperation, Reverend. It's my only motive.”

  Gracie breathed a shallow breath and gentled his eyes. “I know that. I'm not a well-equipped man, Mr. Nubey. My training in theology ill equipped me for life as a widower. Six children might push me completely over the edge. Since my dear Ellen left me, I have been only half a man. To bring on a bigger load would be the same as laying more on the shoulders of my fourteen-year-old daughter. If you wish, I'd do my best to try and inquire about town.”

  “The children have been labeled bad blood because they've been with me. You won't find a family here to take them in.”

  “Charity is not in such short supply, surely. Even in these hard times.”

  “Even shorter supply, I'm afraid.”

  “This Mrs. Wellington, she's a good woman?”

  “Evelene Whittington. She and Floyd brag of six grandchildren scattered about town. They own the Woolworth's to boot. I'm fairly sure she hates me, too.”

  “For whatever your foibles, Mr. Nubey, don't think the families here are against you. Somehow, out of your ignorance came a heart. You touched at least a handful of souls.”

  Jeb finished the last piece of Florence Bernard's baked bread.

  “Do you care about any of them?”

  “It was coming to me that I did,” said Jeb.

  “Your words on legitimacy stirred me. You're sort of God's little paradox, aren't you; the illiterate man assimilating a premise on legitimacy? I stood outside the door and listened. You moved me.”

  “I'm well practiced. What you heard came from the mouth of a bona fide fraud. Can't get no more authentic than that, Reverend. Nothing like experience to put silver on a man's tongue.”

  Rabbit rolled onto his back, sucked in three nasal gasps, and then fed still again.

  “So would you say that you know more about God than when you first began your brief career as minister ofChurch in the Dell?” Gracie helped himself to Florence's bread too.

  “I would say yes to that.”

  A bit of dawn entered the eastern sky.

  “Mr. Nubey, can you say you know him? You've moved beyond the formal overture. You find ways to converse with the One who bore your sin?”

  Jeb pinched his bottom lip into a bow. “That would be a yes, too. I don't say it as good as you do, though.”

  Gracie brushed the moist crumbs from his lap. “Excellent.”

  “You forgot something, Mr. Nubey. Reverend Gracie thought it would be appropriate if we brought it by.” Evelene Whittington held the Bible she had once picked out of a stack on the Woolworth's sales floor out to him. “It certainly looks worn.”

  Jeb waited as though either one of them might break into a rage.

  “Angel says you learned to read on it.” Florence Bernard carried a plate of something covered with a napkin.

  “Are, the kids with you, Evelene?” Jeb asked.

  “I can bring them by.” Evelene's mouth kept twitching as though she wasn't sure what to say.

  “Maybe it's better you don't. I don't want them to see me in here.”

  “I had more ham biscuits than I needed, what with living alone.” She examined the bars between them. “I'll slide them through.”

  “Maynard says the state police are on the way. That isn't good, is it?” asked Evelene.

  Jeb read the worry on her face. “Thank you for the Bible. I'd like to keep it.”

  She turned it sideways and handed it to him.

  Rabbit and Carl moved to the front of the cell to watch and snoop.

  “I don't know why they have to bring the state policemen. Aren't they all just interfering in our town business, anyway?” Florence poked a ham biscuit through the bars like she was feeding rabbits.

  “We ought to have a talk with Maynard. I practically give the man his shoelaces every few months.” Evelene carried on the conversation with Florence as though Jeb were absent altogether.

  “I don't suppose either of you ladies have seen Fern?” Jeb covered up the plate of mash that Maynard had given him with a napkin.

  Evelene and Florence-connected gazes. Then Evelene said, “You're not who you said you was, Mr. Nubey. Thing like that effects a girl.”

  “I wanted to tell her before everyone else, before the Sunday message.” Before he had decided he liked who they had become too much to change things.

  Florence poked the rest of the ham biscuits through the bars. “All of this explains why I kept noticing things about your messages.”

  “Now Florence, you never said such a thing,” said Evelene. “I was deaf as Job's turkey myself, truth be told.”

  “The thing is, Reverend Gracie says we have to forgive you and he is right as rain, you know.” Florence slid him the plate too.

  “They can hang me three times, Florence, Evelene, but I have to know you both forgive me. That everyone here in Nazareth might some day forgive me.”

  Maynard opened the pale-green door. “Mr. Nubey has more visitors if you two ladies are finished.”

  Florence and Evelene touched Jeb's cold fingers and left.

  “Hey, Nubey, you ain't going to keep them biscuits to yourself, are ya?” asked Carl.

  The way that Maynard marched in, an official sort of stalk into the jail commons, Jeb expected to see the state badges or the feds. Instead, it was Charlie. His brother.

  Jeb reached through the bars. “Charlie, Charlie! I never expected to see you.”

  Maynard opened Jeb's cell door. Charlie threw his arms around Jeb. “I bring good tidings, brother.”

  “You look fit, like they been feeding you. Does Daddy know? About me?” asked Jeb.

  “I thought it best not to tell him. Daddy's had pneumonia. Don't worry, he's some better.” Charlie held up his finger. A welded silver spoon handle formed a ring. “Me and Selma got married. That's why I'm starting to look so round. Little Oklahoma gals, they can cook, don't let nobody tell you no different.”

  Jeb could not stop patting his brother's back. He invited Charlie to take a bench. “I want you to know, brother, I got redemption.”

  “Do tell.”

  “I am not the same Jeb who left Texarkana.”

  “You can read. That I know.”

  “I'm redeemed, Charlie. Consecrated to the Lord is my old ragged soul.”

  “When I saw you, I said to myself, he's got hisself a glow about him.” Charlie helped himself to a Bernard ham biscuit.

  “Gin is not my friend anymore.”

  “Selma tries to get me to church,” said Charlie

  “You ought to go.”

  “The thing is, I'm about to be a daddy. Selma's with child.”

  “Her daddy must have come after you for that one,” said Jeb.

  “I don't mean like that You have been away a good while, brother. Of late, she's with child.” Charlie turned his back to the two boys staring through the cell at them.

  Jeb lifted the plate. He handed Carl and Rabbit each a biscuit.

  “Here I've gone and forgot myself,” said Charlie. He came to his feet. “I'll be right back.” He rushed out into the commons.

  A man with his hat in his hands waited in the doorway. When he stepped out, his head was lowered a bit, near to respectable.

  Jeb said, “Leon Hampton?” He braced himself for the punch that Hank's daddy would give him. But Leon waited outside the jail cell. His eyes cast down, he said, “I'm here to make amends for my boy.”

  “Don't it beat anything, Jeb? Anything you've ever seen?” Charlie ushered Leon two steps closer to Jeb.

  “Here I have prayed for the chance to tell you what I should have stayed to tell you,” Jeb said, “and I'm just dumbstruck as an old mule.” Jeb could not account for H
ampton's modesty. “Mr. Hampton, if there is anyway you could forgive me … I am sorry as can be about Hank. I'd give my life for his right about now.”

  “I'm sorry, too. That's why I came to you. It were my idea. Charlie was good enough to bring me. I finally got the truth about Hank. He provoked you over that silly Myrna, like he cared two cents for the poor little gal.”

  “I shouldn't have hit him back,” said Jeb.

  Charlie told Leon, “Hank did land the first blow.”

  Leon nodded. “At least a dozen men saw it. Then When Hank got well, didn't he just turn around and pick a fight with my field boss, Lem?” He and Charlie exchanged facts about the matter.

  “Hank got well? I don't believe I follow you.” Jeb felt strength coming into his limbs and neck as though revived by Florence's cooking.

  “Sure he got well. Then he hauled off and got drunk and plowed into my best field boss. Fell down a hill. Broke his neck.”

  “Funeral was filled with all those boys from the bunkhouse. Myrna was just sloppy sad,” said Charlie. “You think she had any sincerity in her?” he asked Leon.

  “I didn't kill Hank?” Jeb had trouble digesting the news. “Charlie?”

  “When I finally got that letter and spilled it to Mr. Hampton, he made me swear not to tell you, Brother. He wanted to tell you hisself.”

  “Looks of things, I liked to have waited too long,” said Hampton.

  Maynard entered with a letter. I finally got through to them Texarkana cops, Mr. Hampton. Your letter is legitimate. Mr. Nubey, all murder charges have been dropped against you. Sorry about the mix-up.” He opened the cell door, then turned to Leon Hampton. “You think your field man will get sentenced?”