Earthly Vows

by Patricia Hickman

  “You feeling all right, Miss Coulter?” asked Freda. “I’ll bet you need rest after such a long drive.”

  Fern talked about the hours she and the other teachers spent getting the classrooms ready for Monday. “I’m tired from all that,” she said.

  Jeb gave thanks.

  Freda rushed out from the kitchen and served sausages. The women cooed. Josie passed the eggs down to Jeb and asked Fern about her visit with her mother.

  “Good, good. I saw my sister and my brothers. We lost Angel to Claudia, though. Everyone’s heard the news, I guess,” said Fern. “Not too many secrets in Nazareth.”

  He could hand it to her, she could keep up a good front.

  “I can’t bear it,” said Josie. “What will I do without Ida May?”

  Freda said to Jeb, “I heard you almost up and got hitched.”

  “If Donna Faye had had her way, yes, we would have. But Fern’s mother, Abigail, wants a big church wedding,” said Jeb.

  “Tell us the date, then, I can’t stand it!” said Josie.

  “December, on the tenth,” said Fern.

  “Child, you waited long enough, I’ll give you that!” said Freda.

  Fern fielded the questions about the dress, the Ardmore church. She had dressed plain for the churchwomen, it was obvious. She was brown, head to foot, a wren.

  “But we wanted you to marry here,” said Bernice. “You belong to us, not Oklahoma, no offense to your kin. Reverend, say something.”

  Jeb drank the coffee. He watched Fern for any sign that she might bolt at any minute. She smiled as often as she was asked another question. He told himself that he was imagining things out of school, such as the subtle absence of conviction in her voice when she announced the wedding date. No matter. That was a devil in his head. He cast it down. When she told Josie, “Donna will stand with me. Jeb hasn’t said who will stand with him,” she sounded like a woman delivering bad news about a crop not coming in well. But he knew her better. She was obviously distressed over Angel joining Claudia. The questions from the women were coming at her rapid-fire and she had never been like other women, coy and preening, desperate to win their approval. He knew that. She was not sitting there politely eating her eggs while quietly hating him. He wanted to tell her to stop averting her eyes. The others, who did not know her as well as he, might misinterpret the lackluster manner in which she described their upcoming nuptials. Her hands stayed in her lap, but not so that she wouldn’t accidentally touch him while reaching for her coffee. Her hands in her lap, her eyes not reaching his. It was time to pull out the show card. “I have something to say,” he said.

  Freda looked up all the way from the other end of the table. “Ladies, our minister would like to say a few words.”

  Fern laid down her fork and fixed her eyes on Jeb, no lack of polite acknowledgement there.

  “While we were in Oklahoma, a church invited me into their pulpit. They’ve lost their minister,” he said.

  Bernice and Josie bartered glances.

  “I’m proud to say that they offered me their pulpit, but I am making plans to kindly turn it down,” said Jeb.

  “What a relief! Fern, are you glad?” asked Freda. She played up her part too quickly.

  Fern’s mouth opened slightly.

  Jeb told Fern, “I couldn’t wait to tell you. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “You were right, Freda, right as rain,” said Bernice. “Home cooking can turn a man’s heart back home.”

  A faint gasp issued from the end of the table. Bernice was kindly nudged by Josie. A silent code fell upon the circle of women. Jeb fixed his eyes on Freda.

  Freda held her hands up and said, “Reverend, I swear, I only told Bernice.”

  The churchwomen glanced at one another, one or two biting their lips.

  “Bernice told the rest of us,” said Josie.

  Everyone except Fern was laughing.

  Claudia finally picked up her first pay, enough to stave off Mrs. Abercrombie, buy a sack of meal and a pound of beans. Having found herself in Mrs. Abercrombie’s good graces, Angel borrowed some lard and a chunk of salt pork fat. She pinched an egg from the henhouse after her morning milking. Before evening, the kitchen smelled like fritters crisping. The pork fat she cut up and put in the beans for flavoring.

  “Friday night, finally!” said Claudia.

  Angel lifted the lid on the skillet and flipped the fritters.

  Claudia thought they smelled like Granny’s back in Snow Hill.

  “I learned these from a woman in Nazareth. She poured syrup on top. We got any syrup, Claudia?”

  Claudia rifled through the cabinet. She pulled out a bottle. “Will molasses do? Here’s a dab.”

  “Anything sweet,” said Angel. She remembered how Willie poured syrup over his beans and corn bread, anything to satisfy his sweet tooth. She hoped he tried hard in his arithmetic. He could not, could not quit his studies. She stayed after him enough. Jeb had best not let Willie know that she was not enrolled in school in Norman. He would use any excuse. What was the use, she thought. She wouldn’t tell Jeb. “You get mail here?” she asked. She had not seen a letter carrier.

  “All the mail goes to the Abercrombies. You can write to that preacher, but I’d give him her address. If you get a letter, she ought to give it to you. Me, I never got a piece of mail once, not since I moved in here. But Bo wouldn’t let me post mail, so I figure if anyone had ever sent me any, he would have took it.”

  Angel scooped out the fritters and drained them on a towel. “What made you stay with Bo, Claudia? Were you sorry you left Nazareth?”

  Claudia shooed Thorne away. “Not now, baby. Momma’s too tired to rock you. I don’t know. I wish now I would have stayed behind. But Bo wouldn’t mind taking a swing at me. He wanted me under his thumb. He knew I couldn’t make it without him.”

  “You’re making it, Claudia.”

  “All ’cause of you.” She pulled a cigarette out of her work shirt pocket. She tapped it on the chair arm and then lit it. “Ain’t you ever cared about a boy, Angel?”

  Angel turned off the cookstove. “Beans are done. We can eat.”

  Claudia told John to get in his seat and keep still. The boy had the wiggles. He was keen on supper.

  “Jeb and I fought over boys I liked. There was this one, I took off with him to Hot Springs,” said Angel.

  “I can’t see you doing that.”

  Angel liked how Claudia saw her as one so taken by goodness. “He said he loved me. Jeb put a stop to it, though, came after me.”

  “Sounds like Reverend loved you better.”

  Angel ladled beans onto the plates. She put the fritters on another plate and set them in the table’s center. “I told myself he loved me better than Daddy or Momma.”

  “Maybe he does.”

  “I’m not his own. He’s going to start a family of his own with Miss Coulter. When it all boils down to it, he’s glad to be shed of me.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Miss Coulter too.” Angel poured molasses over John’s fritters and showed him how to sop.

  A shotgun fired outside.

  Thorne shrieked.

  “Hush that! Uncle Edwin’s shooting bottles off the pasture fence, is all,” said Claudia.

  Angel stared blankly. She poured John his milk.

  Claudia savored a bite of fritter, her eyes closed. “Edwin told the kids to call him that. Uncle Edwin.” She dropped a piece of fresh onion onto her beans, but was staring at Angel. “You need to get used to having Edwin around, Angel. He’s good to me. Not like Bo. And you need to know too that he wants to take me out tonight. There’s this dance in town.” Claudia stopped her fork in midair. “You don’t have a thing in the world to do. Stop looking at me like I’m a bad person.”

  “It’s not my care. You do for yourself what you want. But you’re still married to Bo.”

  “Only because I’m saving up for a divorce. Where is my husband, Angel? Do you see him anywhere a
round here? John, you see hide or hair of your daddy? He’s gone, Angel. Do I know where? I don’t.”

  Edwin fired another round toward the back nine.

  “What makes you think Edwin is an ounce better?” asked Angel.

  “He’s good to me.”

  “You said that. But why have a man around at all? Why not wait, give yourself time?”

  “I’m lonely,” said Claudia. “I can’t stand it by myself.”

  “You’ve got me. Soon Willie and Ida May will come. After that, you can go find a better job. Who says we have to stay here?”

  “One of these days, you’ll meet someone, Angel. He’ll turn that pretty head of yours. You’ll see, you’ll see.”

  Claudia traded men like dishes from an oatmeal box. Bo walked out and Edwin walked in. She never said “yea” or “nay” or “kiss my foot.” She was picked, not the other way around. A man with a good set of wheels could give her his name. Good enough. Good enough. She was up for auction again.

  “How late you staying out?” asked Angel.

  “You sound like Momma.”

  “Not Momma. I sound like Jeb.”

  “The coat is a good color on you,” said Fern. They stood out back under Freda’s oaks, away from the churchwomen. She finally relaxed, in a better humor than at the school Wednesday.

  “It’s the time of year for brown,” he said. “Yours is good too.” She always talked better of clothes than he, what with her experience and all in buying better things.

  Jeb offered her his arm. She ought to see Freda’s rock garden, he thought. What with the drought and all, it was the only thing, Freda said, that could live. The trees were already losing leaves. They started shedding in August, what with the lack of water. It was a shady walk, still. Two churchwomen came up from the path, locking arms and giggling. “You two are lucky,” said one. She was Bernice’s neighbor, a Dalton. Effie, was it? No, she was Elizabeth, and as they passed on the path, she said, “Love is a fleeting thing these days.”

  A brass spout cloaked in ivy hung over a graduation of rocks. Jeb twisted the spigot, the water dashing onto the rocks, splattering. They moved their feet. “It’s meant to be a waterfall,” he said.

  Fern turned the handle a quarter turn back. The water slowed, cascading over the top black rock, against the next, and the next, collecting in a circular well in Freda’s stone pool. “You’ve wet your sleeve,” she said, brushing the spots, her cotton handkerchief depositing damp lint on the brown. “I’ve had Willie in my thoughts,” she said. Her voice was composed, as if she read from a list of assignments for her students, taking a breath as each big-eyed kid waited and held on her every word. “He might not try as hard at school, not like he did when Angel kept an eye out for him. Then he’ll have other things on his mind, what’s the use of starting school and then up and leaving for Norman, things like that. Boys like him are hard to keep interested in school. You’ve never said, you know, when he and Ida May might join Claudia and Angel.” She shoved the handkerchief in her pocketbook. “It’s one of the things on my mind.”

  Jeb had not thought of it, but he agreed with her. But he held on to that single word in the middle of her sentence, “one,” as in, there will be a two, three, and possibly a four. “I’ll stay after him.” As to the when of the matter, when would Willie and Ida May leave for Norman, there was the matter of getting Angel’s first letter and that could take weeks. Claudia left one address behind, that of a neighbor who took in her mail. It was hard to know when Willie and Ida May would go. “There’s no hurry, you know. I wasn’t hurrying Angel. It was the situation and all, you know.” She might like the other rock garden, he thought, and the well was most likely low. He flipped off the spigot. Down farther, he kept leading her, walking past Will’s shed, a tractor clutch leaning against a trunk, and a stack of empty clay pots. She stayed alongside him until at last, among a mix of cacti and rocks, they found the garden and stood at its circular wall. Freda’s wicker chair sat to the side. He held out the chair and Fern sat down.

  “I think I liked the other one better,” she said. It was the water, most likely. Women were taken in by water, lakes, the sea.

  “We can go back,” he said.

  “Stay,” she said. “May as well.” She liked the little rock wall, she said, made of stone and broken glass. The sun moved overhead reflecting off the broken glass, or was it refracting? She knew the difference, had always kept those details straight for him so that he could reserve energy for the bigger matters. She touched the glass, the blue pieces in particular. They were cobalt, she said. The Mexican glass was nice too, and did Freda help Will make the wall, she must have, for Will would not see a use for broken pieces. A man like him didn’t have that kind of eye. “You ought to go to Oklahoma City,” she said. “Think of Angel, how she’d like having us close by.”

  Fern said “us.” He was not mistaken. But the heat was baking his mind. Jeb pulled off her hat. Her scalp was damp. He smoothed the blond strands sticking up and kissed her head. He knelt beside the wicker chair and touched the cobalt blue and the Mexican glass. Her fingers touched his. “Was that ‘us’ you said?” he asked. She kissed Jeb. Her skin was damp from the heat. Her lips had the faint taste of cosmetics. He never had known what to call that taste, candle or paint. He dreamed that taste. She came out of the chair and he got up. They kissed again. “We’re us,” she said. “That’s what you said.”

  He liked the perfection of her at that moment. He had not posted the letter yet to Gracie. Also perfect. She closed her eyes, and her mouth lifted, met his. Bernice’s neighbor spoiled the quiet and tittered behind the tree planted by Will’s grandfather. He got the idea all at once to ask her if she was sure about Oklahoma City. But there was no need to ask. He knew her better than anyone.

  11

  MRS. ABERCROMBIE SET THE PAIL OUT, A note attached asking Angel to leave the milk on the porch. A man picked her up. Angel saw the whole thing. He parked to the side of the road and she met him. Mrs. Abercrombie didn’t even casually mention his name. She stole away, still the widow in the black dress, her husband’s brooch pinned to her breast, her face brighter, color on her cheeks as if pinched, but more likely it was rouge. She stopped running with the old biddies from the holiness tent meetings. Wrapped in the note was two bits and please don’t give it to your sister.

  The cow had given good for the last three weeks, her belly engorged as the sun was crowning. A slew of crows burst out of the harvested cornfield, black feathers scattering into the autumn wind. Angel could lie in the barn’s loft now and nap on the hay, not blistering. The day was slow to come, October so full and the hay bristling, the moon and sun sharing the sky. Angel liked walking through the veil between daylight and dark, the milk pail swinging. She whistled loud as a man. She thought, curse Edwin Abercrombie. He, a sorry excuse of a man, not even a man, but a maggot. She spit hard. He had left for work already. Spit twice.

  She got the cat off the porch and set the milk inside, dropping the pail down into Mrs. Abercrombie’s sink. There was the smell of lye. The woman made her soap and cleaned the hard surfaces so much that Claudia said that everything in Mrs. Abercrombie’s house was wearing away.

  Schoolkids laughed outside. Four walked past from down the lane, two big and two small, carrying books in belts slung over their shoulders. Every morning, they walked past the picket fence. Angel set the latch to keep the cat out, ran out and down Mrs. Abercrombie’s steps, yelling to make the oldest girl look her way. Angel offered her name. “I’m Angel.”

  The girl’s hair was in a halo of curls too old for her face. She walked, putting on lipstick. She asked Angel, “What you need?”

  “I just moved in with family,” said Angel. She pointed to Mrs. Abercrombie’s house. No use pointing out the shack out back. “Where do you go to school?”

  “Mount Holly, up a piece,” said the girl. “What’s your age?”

  “Seventeen. I’m nearly done. You got a teacher you like?” asked Angel.<
br />
  The girl cajoled, “Ain’t nobody likes teachers.”

  Angel asked her name.

  “Loretta.”

  John called out for Angel from out back of Mrs. Abercrombie’s house.

  “We got to go,” said the girl.

  A truck rumbled toward them. Claudia came dragging Thorne, buttoning up her work shirt. “Where you been? I can’t get dressed and watch ’ese two at once. Here’s my ride already. Thanks for nothing.” She yanked the cigarette from her mouth. “You got to stop worrying about Abercrombie’s milk cow. What’s she doing anyway, paying you on the side or something? I don’t want to know. Although, if you have extra, I could use it for the dinner wagon. They got these tamales for a dime apiece. You got money or don’t you?”

  Angel stretched out her arms to Thorne, who jumped and grabbed hold of Angel’s neck.

  “John’s standing out on the porch in his drawer tail. Best get back to him before he catches his death.”

  “We need milk, some beans. You need me to write it down?” asked Angel.

  The truck slowed and stopped. One of the men whistled at Claudia as she climbed up into the truckbed. Angel handed her the two bits. “Milk and beans. Don’t forget.”

  Thorne laid her head on Angel’s shoulder. “Let’s go back to bed, Aunt Angel.”

  The truck pulled away. The schoolchildren ran out of the road and climbed over a pasture fence. The entire bunch of them turned down the road marked as Mt. Holly. That oldest was not going to appreciate what was taught that day, she thought.

  Claudia squeezed in between two men holding to the rails. A laborer was making her laugh already. Angel took Thorne’s hand. “Tell Momma good-bye,” she said. Claudia forgot to look back.

  In the first week of October, Gracie arrived on the parsonage doorstep, his three offspring in tow. The oldest girl, Emily, was eighteen, never prettier. Her hair was trimmed short, all the rage back in Cincinnati. Ida May kept holding Emily’s hand, touching her fingertips. She was taken with the older girl. The first order of business, Jeb decided, was to return Ida May to Angel. Willie took Philip out back. Ida May asked Emily to do up her braids. Emily and Agatha took Ida May out to a chair seated under the trees.