A Flight of Storks and Angels

by Robert Devereaux

  “We’ll have to scrub plans for any marathon runs, but I’ll survive.”

  “You’re sure you don’t want an ambulance?”

  “I broke some bones when I was a kid. I know what it feels like. And this time everything’s okay. All surface injury. You can’t keep a good Haskell down. So my father claimed anyway.” Her concern was beautiful, if excessive, but the phone call had increased it, had sent it shooting out along new paths. “Now what else is bothering you?”

  “I’ve never heard such anger, or any anger at all for that matter, from Marge Fleischer,” Mindy began. “A roll of stamps once a month. Always a smile. But her daughter is making no secret of her angel and her continuing belief in it, not to her family at least. And Reverend Fleischer has apparently gone all hellfire and brimstone over it.”

  More to this than that.

  “Yeah, what Goldie said.” Carver grimaced, feeling the tight stretch of bandage against skin as he breathed and, beneath it, the trauma of battered flesh regrouping to begin its slow healing. “Something else is upsetting you, more than my bruises and more than Marge Fleischer’s domestic problems. Tell me what it is.”

  Mindy lost more color, looking nearly as white, in an obverse way, as her angel’s sublime white-chocolate white. She looked suddenly like a little girl lost and verging on tears. “I’m afraid for Ted Jameson. I’m afraid for Ward, and for June Lockridge. For the whole household.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re phoning everybody, Carver. They’re forming a lynch mob.”

  The base of his skull tingled suddenly, as though the chill blast of an arctic wind had frosted his neck. “Lyle was at the gazebo,” he said, recalling the man’s shouts of triumph, his raw red face, as Mike DeSario doubled Carver up.

  She nodded. “He called the Fleischers. Now they’re on the phone to everyone they know, and God knows how many others are doing the same.”

  “We’ve got to help them,” he said, the simultaneity of Goldie’s words lending their dyadic sentiment strength and urgency. “Where’s my shirt?” His body protested as he made to rise.

  “Carver, you’re in no condition to—”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He willed his stressed bones out of the chair, battling the protests of his flesh with an irrepressible determination. “I’ll walk there if I have to,” he said, snagging his shirt from where it lay draped over the couch. Every effort cost him dear, as if a suit of wounds were stapled to his skin.

  Mindy had a brief impassioned argument with Angelina but soon gave in to her better side. “Here, let me button that,” she said, her worry for him still alive and kicking as her fingers worked. “I’ll drive, you stubborn man; but promise me you won’t provoke anybody.”

  He headed, wincing, for the phone. “Who can we call? Who do we know who’s on our side?”

  “Come on, Carver. Promise me that much.”

  “Can’t promise what I don’t know for sure. My word’s worth more than that, especially with you. Look, I’ll do my best, okay? Now who?” The headset rested impatiently in his hand, green buttons glowing, its dial tone distant in the earpiece.

  “Um. I don’t know. Calvin DeSario. Sarah.”

  “Who else?”

  She brightened. “Dawn Fleischer.”

  “Right.” He found her in the phone book, punched the numbers in, three rings, then the answering machine kicked in. “She’s not there. Should I leave a message?”

  “I don’t know. Yes. And tell her to call others.”

  He did. He kept it brief, feeling the urgency build, the probable futility of what he was about. They were far greater in number, the disaffected, than those who’d clung to their angels. And the latter were more likely to have closeted themselves like Sarah and Calvin than to proclaim the truth in the face of certain and unnecessary ridicule and humiliation, as Dawn had done at least within her own family. “Done,” he said, hanging up. “Let’s go.”

  The walk to the garage seemed an eternity—a pretense at mere minor discomfort, while inside, his body launched into an odyssey of outrage and protest. But they arrived, and Mindy helped with the seatbelt, and he lulled his body with the lie that, no, he’d never move again, he’d stay in this seat until he was all better, and that seemed to ease his suffering. But nothing could ease his foreboding that the afternoon held terrible torment indeed for Ted Jameson and his family and friends—and that made his foot stiffen and press ineffectually against the floorboard, a phantom accelerator that did nothing to add speed to Mindy’s Audi but everything to raise both Carver’s blood pressure and the gentle ire of his angel.

  *****

  Maybe Dad had dragged him along, despite the debacle at the gazebo, because he’d told him he preferred to stay home with Mom. But he suspected, and his suspicion grew to a certainty as his father railed in the car, that what was about to befall Ted Jameson was to serve as an object lesson to him, that his father fully expected the unnamed ills to come to shock his younger son out of his supposed enthrallment and wake him to his duties as a DeSario. He pulled the station wagon over onto the grass, swearing at the media presence and prematurely slamming the gearshift into P so that they jerked to a stop. “Out,” he ordered, and Calvin obeyed.

  Walking down Mariposite past cars and pickup trucks parked higglety-pigglety helter-skelter, his father said, “Ain’t gonna be pretty, what you see, but it’s gonna stop the madness, that I assure you,” and Calvin’s fizzy lady, mesh of slate-gray bubbles in the overcast afternoon air, said, Only endure, Calvin. Observe. Be ready.

  People were milling uncertainly, clumps and clusters here and there seeking a center. They perked up when, bit by bit and then all at once, they spied his father walking down the road. But there followed an abrupt shift in the mood of the crowd, and neither Calvin nor his father knew why until five squad cars passed them in silent impressive array, the sheriff and the mayor in the lead car with the mayor’s husband riding in the back seat.

  “Trust Sheriff Porter and Madame Screw-Me-in-the-Park to queer the deal. Fucking bunch of buffoons. Well we’ll just see who’s in control here.”

  The crowd had been poised to coalesce around his dad, but now, while some fell back, more glared at the cruisers as they passed and turned their attention again to the man who’d called them there. Calvin saw angels in the air but not many: So close he could almost hear them arguing were Dawn Fleischer and her parents, Dawn’s fleecy young man of an angel confiding at her ear as her apoplectic father did his worst to hide his rage from public ears and her mother clung horrified to her husband’s arm. Near the driveway, Len Frome had an arm around Patti Singer. Len’s head was cocked to pay heed to his pink-faced, shock-blonded wraith of an angel, who knelt in the air like the White-Rock lady and cupped a hand between her mouth and his ear, as if her secrets were too precious to be spoken aloud. There were a scattering of other companions, maybe half a dozen, but Calvin was too shocked at Patti’s clear defection from his brother and at Len’s boldness, particularly since Mike and his friends huddled in front of the house not thirty yards away. But then he saw that Joey Russo was weighing a rock in one hand, that his brother’s hands too held rocks while his killer’s-eyes darkly contemplated the slow approach of the cruisers. Richie Feit, Mike’s rival for the top spot, hefted his rock from hand to hand, said something to which Mike sneered back a reply without his eyes leaving the cop cars, which were almost upon them; and then Richie flipped him the bird and hauled back his impatient arm and let fly like a rookie pitcher. The shatter of glass jagged Calvin to the heart, a perverse if momentary ecstasy overshadowed by wave after wave of horror at the outrage and violation of Richie’s deed. Onlookers were galvanized into approval and hints of dismay. His father, striding forward, raised both fists high and gave a war whoop; faces coming toward them wore looks of elation and hatred. Calvin expected to see Richie Feit turn and flee past the media vans into the forest, but the young tough stood his ground, watched the two deputies leap out of the second car, let
them yank his arms behind his back, cuff him, hustle him toward the car, shove him into the back seat, and slam the door on him.

  Macho defiance. He may just have unseated Mike.

  “Right. Only kids run away.” Calvin said it low but he needn’t have bothered. His father had broken free like a football player returning in triumph from an end run—as if he were the one who had cast the first stone. Smatters of glass lay on the bushes beneath the picture window like cracked glaze. Nearby stood, incredibly, the man whom his father and brother had beat up this afternoon, bruised but determined, his golden guardian with him, and his lady and her guardian, and his son Tom.

  Calvin sensed commotion from the house. Abruptly the door opened, and out walked T. E. Jameson himself onto the front stoop with the white wood railing. His face flaring with anger, his angel towering tall and strong beside him, he ranted against the crowd; but even as Calvin, guided by his guardian, slipped through tightly-packed bodies closer to the house, he could not hear the man for the sustained volley of boos and catcalls that greeted him. Microphones had been duct-taped to the railing, but if they picked up any of Jameson’s words, they fed them into the white vans and out along the airwaves, not into the crowd. Calvin emerged near Carver Haskell, who did his best to smile at him; Calvin gestured apology for the gazebo, to which the poor bruised man replied with not-your-fault hand signals before turning his attention to the vilified author.

  The sheriff and his deputy had worked their way, the mayor and her husband in tow, to the stoop. He carried a bullhorn in one hand. Now, as he climbed the steps toward Mister Jameson, he raised it. “You people go on home. We have the situation under control.”

  Someone near Calvin cupped his hands around his mouth to call out, “GIVE-US-THAT-SON-OF-A-BITCH!” It was a long hooted vowel, whose consonantal breakup was scarcely to be discerned for the solid core of outrage which propelled it over the general roil of sound. Like a drunken lumbering pachyderm, the crowd surged and swelled at Calvin’s back, drawing energy from the shouting man’s hatred.

  “I’m placing Jameson under arrest. He will be taken into custody.” The mayor prodded him from behind, and he angled back from the bullhorn to hear what she had to say. She was gesturing to Mister Jameson, who was paying scant attention to them but stood defiant if shell-shocked before the whetstoned edge of unruliness pressing upon him from below. Nodding, the sheriff brought his face back to the bullhorn, and, looking more toward the crowd than toward the man he was arresting, said, “Ted Jameson, in the name of the good citizens of Auroville, I am placing you under arrest for disturbing the peace and conspiring against the public good.”

  What the sheriff was saying snapped Ward’s grampa out of his shock—or maybe just redirected it, Calvin couldn’t tell. He said something to the sheriff which the bullhorn picked up at quarter-volume. “I’m disturbing the peace? Where do you—?”

  “You have the right to an attorney and the right to remain silent—”

  “Do I have the right to a toothbrush and my shaving kit?” Mister Jameson asked bitterly.

  The sheriff looked over at Mayor Cosgrove, who shook her head. Then he said, “The mayor and I shall escort you into your home for the purpose of retrieving your personal effects, after which you will be driven to the county jail for arraignment tomorrow. Officer Blake,” he said to the nearest cop down below, “come up here and supervise the orderly dispersal of these good folks.”

  The mayor, clearly angered at being countermanded so casually and so openly, snatched the bullhorn from Sheriff Porter’s hand. He shrugged and led Ward’s grampa off into the house, his deputy trailing behind and Mister Jameson’s guardian penetrating the brick facade like shampoo sinking into carpet. Her husband and his beautiful angel reached the stoop as she began to speak. “We’ve got him and we’re going to see that justice is served. Ted Jameson has done this city a disservice—I know it, you know it, and let me tell you he is going to feel the full retribution of—”

  “TAKE-IT-OFF!” that same man hooted. “TAKE-IT-OFF!” Calvin’s dad, over near the garage, took up the chant, and Calvin blushed at the spectacle he made, a dressed baboon stirring up his friends and trying to shape the crowd into the image of his own discontent.

  Not your fault, and not entirely his, she fizzed in refreshment above him, and though he knew she was right he felt shame nonetheless.

  The mayor, looking hurt and lost, huffed at the crowd and shoved the bullhorn at Officer Blake who was pistoning up the stairs. Then she hustled her husband inside Ward’s house and vanished. The deputy began ordering people back to their cars and trucks, and despite his dad’s efforts to keep the crowd riled, Calvin could sense the bloodlust had started to seep out of them at the edges. The presence of the media may have had something to do with that, or maybe the simple fact of Mister Jameson’s arrest, though lots of people, from what he overheard, planned to linger on until they had the satisfaction of seeing him driven away in the sheriff’s car, cuffs on his wrists, jeers and shaken fists at the rolled-up windows as he passed.

  Calvin maneuvered toward his father, but by the time he wormed his way through the crowd, his old man had moved off toward the bend in the road with Lyle and a few others to huddle over strategy. Officer Blake had unintelligible things to say over the bullhorn, well-nigh ignored by most of the crowd; they’d come for blood and they weren’t about to leave without seeing some, even if it turned out to be their own. There was a scuffle off to Calvin’s right, but his attention was drawn toward the driveway where Mike had retreated with his buddies to regroup and where he glanced darkly toward the commotion, stepping back now from their huddle and wheeling toward the house. Mike paused a bare second and then his arm came up and Calvin saw the rock in his hand. Redemption. He’d be damned if Richie Feit came out of this with a crown on his head. He’d at least match his deed and bear the same punishment.

  But angel movement enlightened the air beyond his big brother, a shock of blond hair, a pink face—and Len Frome rushed in from nowhere, stopping the arm at the crook of a leather elbow. Calvin drew closer as they skirmished, his fizzy lady urging it upon him. Mike tried a rock-swipe at Len’s face, but Len ducked under it, diving in low to land Mike on his ass and into a fevered bout of close wrestling on the oil-stained concrete. The gang members held back, oblivious to Len’s vivid guardian, whom Calvin heard relay quick hints to her charge. They circled like dumb cattle, ignored Patti distraught by the garage, concentrating upon their leader’s fortunes instead.

  Russo’s hand.

  The fizz of her voice had hardly died when Calvin saw Joey Russo tug open the silver scar of a slashed zipper in his leather jacket and slip out a wrench, casual, no cop’s eyes beading toward him, most of it kept hidden along his palm and his inner wrist, just the dull-gray head for now beyond his fingers as he circled with the others. Calvin found himself closing on his brother’s second-in-command, shocked at the injury Russo intended to inflict upon Len Frome and stunned too at how much, only days ago, he had admired and looked up to Joey Russo. Calvin shot in and straight-armed Russo in his shiny leather back as his arm rose, hooking a booted ankle out from under him for good measure. The wrench flew; it clattered across concrete. Russo plowed into the fighters, and Calvin saw that Mike had seen what he’d done, his dark bruised face giving him a look from out of the skirmish; and Calvin took off back in the direction he’d come from, Russo fumbling for him an instant too late, his “You little shit!” topped by Mike’s “Leave him to me!” as his big brother scrabbled off Frome and joined Russo’s chase after him.

  This way! He ducked, he dodged, scraping along the concrete facing just below where Officer Blake was trying to keep order. The front door disgorged the deputy who’d followed the sheriff in; he’d apparently seen or heard the outbreak of fistfights from within and had come out now to help quell the disturbances. He yelled at Calvin and his two pursuers to halt, but Calvin ignored him, and guessed, from the whipwhip of leather and the stream of obsceni
ties behind him, that Russo and Mike had done the same. If the press of people hadn’t been so great, if he could have put on a burst of speed, he might have gotten away. But Russo snagged him near the bushes and fell on him, fisting hair tight in his hand and slamming Calvin’s head against hard earth. “I’ll kill you!” he said, his face so close Calvin could see the raging red volcanoes of his zits, the fizzy lady bubbling in anguish just behind him. But then Russo crushed into him from above and was tumbled off, “Get the fuck off my brother!” and there was Mike, who shoved Joey Russo away off into the crowd and then pinned his brother down and harrowed him with fist and open hand. “Fucking shitwad, I oughta roll your face in this glass, cut it to ribbons, reach in and wring the crap out of your brains.” He tried to protect his face from blows, but Mike batted his hands away or held them by the wrists while his free fist draped a new layer of punishment over their father’s efforts of the previous night.

  A wrecking-ball of fists swept without warning into the side of his brother’s head, and he was suddenly free, staring up into glass-laden bushes to his left and a tall assailant—Tom Haskell—coming down on Mike to his right. “You fucking slimeball,” he shouted, striking blow after blow. “You like beating people up? Here’s a fistful of your own medicine. Swallow hard.”

  “Don’t, mister. Please?” Calvin pleaded. But the man’s tie jinged and jerked over Mike’s chest as the rain of knuckles fell like a heavy downpour. His brother was in a bad way and getting worse.

  “Knuckle-punched my dad.” A strand of hair came free over his brow, levering down to the rhythm of his punches. “Almost killed him. Let’s see how you like it.”

  Your father!

  Calvin looked up. Through the fizz, his dad wielded a long thick knobby branch, poised to strike. “Dad, no!”