Earthly Vows

by Patricia Hickman

  “You got away, right, Angel?” asked Loretta. “I mean before he did something bad.”

  “He hurt my arm. My leg is bruised, but I got away. I got someone meeting me in town for a lift.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Away from here.” She thought it best not to say.

  “Where’s your family?”

  “That was my family, my sister Claudia.”

  “She blind or something?”

  The waitress insisted on giving Jeb fresh hot French-cut potatoes. They would at least keep Willie out of the cake. Willie took them gratefully.

  “You think Angel will look different? It’s been so long since I seen her,” said Ida May.

  Jeb turned around in the car seat and said, “Ida May, you need to listen. We’re paying Angel a visit. If she says that it’s time for you and Willie to join her, then we’ll see about getting you down here next week. She thinks you-all ought to be with family now and I have to let her decide those things. Claudia is family.”

  “For a visit. We’re going to come visit Claudia, is that what you mean?” asked Ida May.

  “For good!” said Willie.

  Jeb cut his eyes at Willie.

  Ida May wailed.

  “Not like that,” said Jeb. “You don’t unload on your sister like that!”

  Jeb drove them through the downtown sector past a drugstore, a dry-goods store, and a barbecue joint. “That’s a hopping place,” he said. The parking lot was full. He turned left and headed down the road, away from town.

  The thought of how Fern looked when he insisted she live with Sybil was haunting him. She was coming up Sunday for the church service, she said. He wanted to sit down with her, talk over the matter about the Baers. Tell her he was having second thoughts.

  He followed the directions, drove too far, as she said he might if he came to a sign advertising a dairy farm. He turned the car around, headed back up, finally saw an arrow-shaped sign in the weeds pointing him down Arrowroot Road. He pulled aside at a house painted a dark color. But what color he could not tell by night. The farmer inside was helpful and knew the address. “Go past this next house and you’ll see a white house, a pretty white fence. That ought to be the place,” he said.

  Jeb did as he said. Ida May was clambering over the seat by now, squealing. Jeb told her to watch for Angel’s coat. She spotted the fence and he had to grab her to keep her from opening the door before he pulled to a stop. She ran out of the car, cutting across the dark yard, and beat him to the front porch. Before he could reach her, she was pounding the door.

  A woman answered. She pulled her spectacles up onto her forehead and asked what they wanted.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. We’re looking for Ida May’s sister Angel. She’s a little anxious to see her.”

  The woman did not answer right away. Finally she said, “Is she expecting you?”

  “Ought to be,” said Jeb.

  “I’m Claudia Drake’s landlady. If you’re family, she got a piece of mail today.” She got it from the radio top and gave it to him. “You’ll see she gets it?” she said.

  Jeb accepted the letter. He recognized his own handwriting and the postmark from Nazareth.

  “She lives out back, the house directly behind this one, with her sister.”

  Ida May and Willie raced around the house. A cat streaked in front of them. Willie opened the rear gate.

  Jeb stared at the shack. There was a dim light burning inside. He came up onto the porch. Before he could knock, the door opened. Claudia was surprised to see him. “Preacher Nubey, we was wondering when you might come.” She stretched. “I fell asleep, listening to the radio. John, go and fetch your aunt.”

  John looked up from his trucks on the floor. “She left,” he said.

  Claudia said, “What do you mean, ‘she left’?”

  “I thought she was going to Mrs. Abercrombie’s barn to milk,” he said.

  Claudia told Jeb, “She never milks this late, not after dark.” She pulled on her shoes and a jacket and a promise to return with Angel. Ida May and Willie sat down to play alongside Claudia’s two.

  A half hour passed. Jeb got up and changed the radio dial. Finally he heard footsteps on the porch. Claudia came in, her temple wet from sweat. She panted as if she had been running. She walked past Jeb and into another room. Out she came in a minute. “Her suitcase is here, but mine is gone.”

  Jeb told Ida May to put her shoes back on. “Might she have a friend she’s off visiting?” he asked.

  She shrugged.

  “She was mad at Edwin,” said John.

  “Shut your mouth!” said Claudia.

  “Who is Edwin?” Jeb asked.

  “Momma’s boyfriend,” said John.

  “I said shut up, John!” Claudia plopped down in a chair. She put her head in her hands.

  Jeb kept his voice low, trying not to spook her. “Can I speak with this Edwin?”

  “I don’t know, I really don’t know nothing. Edwin and her got into it. She hates him. Maybe she took off, I don’t know.”

  John eased up beside Jeb. Jeb knelt and put his arms around him. “John, can you remember anything your aunt Angel said?”

  “He don’t know nothing,” said Claudia.

  Jeb kept looking into the boy’s eyes.

  John cupped his hand to Jeb’s ear, ignoring Claudia’s threatening look, and whispered, “She ran away. Edwin hurt her.”

  “Willie, take your sister to the car,” said Jeb.

  “That boy is a liar!” Claudia shrieked.

  Jeb walked Willie and Ida May through the dark and back to the car. He cranked the engine and turned the car around in the road. “Where we going?” Willie asked. “To find your sister,” said Jeb. Ida May sniffed. “Don’t cry, Ida May. Not now,” said Jeb.

  14

  IF WE DON’T EAT HERE, WE DON’T EAT UNTIL morning. Can you make it that long?” asked Nash.

  “That is what I want,” said Angel, for it was the only way to get away from Edwin. Claudia would come looking for her and she would ask him to drive her. He was a thug. His touch was like bumping up against a form in the dark. Nash drove away from The Diner onto the highway.

  “Can we go south?” she asked.

  “I have a job. We can go south in three days.”

  All right, then, she thought. He was giving her a free ride out of Norman. Nazareth could wait. A car passed. The headlights blinded her, made her head hurt. Ida May was in her thoughts, though, and Willie too. Now, because of Claudia, Thorne and John too. They were like Willie and Ida May, in need of a better mother. “Where’s your Studebaker?” she asked.

  “Told you. It wasn’t mine. How south?” he asked.

  “Nazareth, Arkansas. Is that all right?”

  “You scared? You look it, girlie.”

  “How do I?”

  “You haven’t let go of that door handle since you got in the car,” said Nash.

  “Where are we going?”

  “A friend’s place. You look like you need a decent bed and a hot meal.”

  She rested her head, closed her eyes.

  “Who were those two back at the diner? Friends of yours?”

  “A neighbor. I don’t really know her,” said Angel.

  “Did you give out my name?”

  Angel lifted her head off the seat. “Does that matter?”

  “It appears that you are running away, girlie. People you don’t know, they snitch.”

  “She won’t snitch.” She was wrong about everything else, joining Claudia, leaving Nazareth. But she was right about Loretta. Had she said Nash’s name? No use trying to remember. She told Loretta and her boyfriend how she knew that she would mess up Claudia’s position, what with no one to watch Thorne and John. Loretta said, “You got to do for yourself. Who’d blame you, who’d blame you?” The boyfriend, Joe was it? Was that it? He didn’t say much. He kept asking Loretta about Edwin Abercrombie. She didn’t answer, but looked back at Angel, like the
two of them knew more than was being said.

  The moon was out, but the rest of the sky was a black blanket, not a star in sight. But it was early evening. A fire could be seen burning in the woods, migrants keeping warm, most likely. The car smelled faintly like rotting fruit. Angel rubbed her arms. She rifled through Claudia’s few belongings looking for something to keep her warm. She owned so little and she was in a hurry to get out before Edwin came back to argue his defense. Claudia didn’t believe her anyway. Whatever happened, she brought it on, according to her sister. Had she baited Edwin? Was there something about her that invited him to press himself against her, smelling like the insides of a car? Her arms were cold as ice.

  “Don’t they wear coats in Arkansas?” Edwin had asked. When she didn’t answer, he said, “I know a place, they got good women’s things. We got to get you some good clothes, girlie. No one’s taking care of you, and you’re too pretty to be let go like that.”

  “My better things are all back in Nazareth.” She didn’t like that he implied she walked around in rags. “It all happened fast, me moving in with Claudia. Jeb, he was supposed to bring me my things. I don’t know what happened.” The weather had turned cold and still no Jeb.

  “Who is Jeb again? You told me once before, but I forget.”

  “I guess he’s really like my daddy. He’s looked after us, me, my sister Ida May, my brother Willie. It’s a long story.”

  “So he’s back in Nazareth.”

  “He was.”

  “You depend on others too much, girlie.”

  She knew he was right. Here she was headed back to Nazareth to live with whom? Will and Freda Honeysack? Fern Coulter? She needed more time to think things through. “Not south. I was wrong about that. Anywhere but south.” Her bottom lip trembled and that troubled her. She didn’t want to cry in front of him. She would get him talking about himself. Men liked that, she knew. “Tell me about Boston.” She closed her eyes and let go of the door handle.

  There was only one place left open in the whole town. Jeb pulled back into The Diner parking lot. Ida May opened the car door before he could react. “Ida May, get back inside!” he told her, but she didn’t listen. By the time he and Willie walked into The Diner, Ida May was running and stopping, looking over the counter and staring into booths.

  The waitress recognized him and pushed a cup at him. “Fill ’er up?”

  “I’m looking for a girl, she’s seventeen, brown hair,” he told her.

  “What’s she wearing?” the waitress asked.

  Jeb had not asked Claudia, mostly because he wanted to get away from her before he throttled her. “She’s about this high.” He made a knifing motion at his chest.

  Ida May came from the rear of the diner, tears welling, her dam about to break loose for the tenth time all day.

  A youth swiveled around on his bar stool. “How tall?”

  Jeb showed him.

  “Girl seventeen, brown hair. I gave her a ride, not ten minutes ago,” the teen said.

  A girl sitting next to him gave him a punch and told him, “Shut up, Joe!”

  “Can you tell me where she went next?” Jeb asked him.

  “Don’t know. She was meeting a boy, that I do know,” he said.

  “Know his name?” Jeb asked.

  The girl huffed.

  “Please, she might be in trouble,” said Jeb.

  The girl turned her back to them both.

  “She give me a name. Nash Foster. He drove a light-colored car. Two-door Ford sedan. That’s all I know.”

  Jeb wrote down the name on a napkin. “Which way did they head?”

  Joe’s girlfriend sighed. “I’ll show you.” She walked Jeb outside and pointed. “That way. She was good to get out when she did. The Abercrombies, they’re no good.”

  “Who? Claudia’s landlady?” asked Jeb.

  “Edwin and his mother. That woman, she means well, but she’s let that boy go too long. Is Angel your girl?”

  Jeb thought a moment. “Yes, she is.”

  “She was scared, I think. Not a lot of what she said made sense, but I don’t think she knew the fella too well she left with.”

  Jeb and Willie and Ida May climbed back into the automobile and headed back up Highway 9.

  The inside of Nash’s car warmed her. She might have fallen asleep had Nash not talked so much. He told her about the North End of Boston, the Italians who lived there, a place called Paul Revere Mall, which she could not picture, but it sounded like a pleasant place. He said it was pretty in the snow. His uncle owned a shop that made men’s clothes, but it had all but gone belly-up after the stock market crash. After he mentioned the cemetery twice, Angel asked him about it. “My mother was buried there” was all that he said, so she left it at that. “What brought you to Oklahoma?” she asked.

  “My father worked for the railroad and was gone all the time. He didn’t leave me much reason to stay. When my mother was alive, things were different. She loved looking good, told my brother and me that all we needed to succeed was a good suit. Her brother, my uncle Fred, he kept us all looking good. My mother worked for him, so she sewed real good. The rich ladies in town, they’d hire her to make their clothes. They could bring her a picture out of a magazine, and she’d make it right out of the magazine, just like the duds out of Hollywood.” He did not sound as lively as earlier, but it was getting late. “Then the Depression hit. Uncle Fred’s business got into trouble and my mother got sick. After she died, my father started selling off our things. I hated it, maybe I hated him. He sold my brother’s suits and mine. I had nothing left, and Dad was gone all the time. So I hooked up with my poor relations here in Oklahoma. Only I get here, and they’re doing better than the Boston Fosters.”

  “Is that who answered the telephone, your relative?”

  “My uncle,” he said.

  “Where do you live?”

  “Wherever the wind takes me. Tonight it took me to Norman to rescue a pretty girl from, where did you say, Nazareth?”

  “Nazareth. You like moving around? Not staying put in one place?”

  “I get to see a lot of places. My mother used to talk— it was talk, but she wanted my brother and me to see Europe. She talked about the clothes there, how she could rack up the dough in a place like Europe. Maybe it was all talk.” Nash slipped off his shoes and drove in his sock feet.

  “Your shoes look new,” she said. “You like clothes, shoes, talking about nice things.”

  “I’m going to own my own suit shop, like my Boston uncle’s, when this Depression turns around.”

  “Where are we going tonight?”

  “The big city of Edmond. You ever been there?”

  “I’ve been to Oklahoma City.” They passed the Oklahoma City town limits a mile back. “Is it close to here?”

  “It isn’t far. My job doesn’t always keep me in the same place. Edmond is where I’m staying for now. There’s two beds in the room. I’m by myself.” He got quiet. “I hate traveling alone. That’s why I called you. You’re easy to talk to.”

  She thought he was too. “What kind of work do you do, I mean, it must be good work. You can afford new shoes.” And he had offered to buy her clothes.

  “I thought I told you. I’m a chauffeur.”

  “For who?”

  “Different people. I’m getting my name spread all over the place as the best driver around.”

  She finally got up the nerve to say, “A car kind of like the Studebaker you were driving back in Ardmore, it was seen during a bank holdup.”

  “Did you tell anyone?”

  “There wasn’t anything to tell.”

  “I knew that about you when I met you, that you weren’t a snitch.”

  “So it was you. You held up a bank, Nash.”

  “Are you kidding, girlie? I couldn’t shoot a deer at close range. My fingers shake so hard I can’t put in a bullet. I just do what I’m asked, show up when I’m told, get paid, go find a new town to lay low.”
>
  “What if you got shot?”

  “My head’s so low behind the wheel, the cops all think a ghost is driving.” He took a sharp right onto a dark road. There were tents set up alongside the road, men seated in circles around small fires, coffeepots on the brew. “See those men? They’re all making do with what they got. Most of them, they left behind their wives and kids. Some of them are so far from home, they can’t remember their own addresses anymore. When I pass one of those tent cities, I imagine my old man sitting there in the cold. It’s not for me. Ah! I thought I remembered right.” A sign flashed in a café window, HOT COFFEE. “Best tamales in town. You had a good tamale lately?”

  “I’ve never had a tamale,” said Angel.

  “We got to get you out of the house more. Good food, good clothes.”

  Behind them, the fires from the migrant tents were enveloped by the dark and many miles. Nash got out of the car and opened her door. He gave her his jacket. Angel followed him inside, glad they had the place to themselves. The waitress said, “All we have left is tamales and beans.”

  Nash gave a war whoop and ordered two. He led them to a booth, one of those red and white shiny vinyl seats, only the white was dingy.

  “Has your daddy always worked the railroads?” she asked.

  “Started out, he wanted to be a cop. His pop, my granddad, he was a cop. Lost his badge during the strike of 1919. Still, it was always in him to go to police school. His old man wouldn’t hear of it. Bad blood between him and the Boston police. What about your father?”

  “Two tamale specials,” said the waitress. Two white plates, two tamales each, and a spoonful of beans. She set their plates in front of them and left.

  “My father took work where he found it,” said Angel. “The coal mine, the cotton field. Now I don’t know where he is. He sent us to live with our sister Claudia, that was back in ’31. But things went wrong. The woman taking us, her name was Lana, she ditched us. That’s when we met up with Jeb Nubey.” For the moment, she felt Jeb so far away. She could not recall exactly how his voice sounded. She could only hear the inflection and the way he cleared his throat before reading from the Scriptures.