Tom Haskell swung around, eyes widening. What would have been a blinding faceful of oak turned into something else as the branch stuck fast in the air behind Calvin’s dad. It was the drunk with the golden guardian, gripping the branch from behind and delivering a vicious kick to the attacker’s left ankle. “Son-of-a-bitch!” yowled his dad, wheeling on the wincing man, whose hand appeared to be gashed from the vain attempt to wrest the branch from his father. But Tom Haskell sprang off Mike, who moaned and rolled on the ground, incapacitated, and leaped onto Calvin’s father’s back before he could lay a hand on the drunk guy. A blow to the kidney and his dad went to his knees. This Tom Haskell was riled and riled bad, and he paid no heed to Calvin’s pleading, nor to his own father’s, nor at last to the victim himself for mercy. He drubbed and thumped and pummeled him without let, until the cops dragged him off and Al DeSario lay battered and bruised and bleeding, a long low moan that seemed to rise out of the earth itself. But Calvin by that time had fled past the cars and the patches of people, veering off into the woods to find the special clearing he and Ward had found once and to engage, with the fizzy lady’s help, in some serious thinking about his and his mother’s future: new paths, new places; prod toward counseling, or simply cut loose, bent for destinations unknown but free of torment? His angel’s effervescence carried him on, buoyed him up, showed Calvin DeSario new and sustaining promise that he delighted thereafter to accept and act upon, his own man from that day forth.
*****
When Thea ushered him into the house, the first thing Harold saw was Laura Keeshan arguing with his brother, her angel humped and chubby at her back. “My father is guilty of nothing, Sheriff, and you know it.”
“That’s up to the courts to decide.”
“You ought to be arresting the hooligan who broke our picture window, not to mention those people out there, all of them, trespassing on our property.”
“They’re being dispersed,” said Joe, though it surely didn’t sound that way through the broken window. “Richie Feit has been apprehended. And if you’re not careful, you might find yourself sitting between him and your father on a charge of obstructing justice.”
Laura opened her mouth, but Joy’s hand on her arm and her cherubic angel’s admonition closed it again.
“My things are out there, Sheriff,” Ted Jameson said, gesturing toward the treehouse out back.
“Joe, this is absurd,” Thea broke in. “The man’s no better than a common criminal and you’re treating him like royalty. Cuff him and let’s be on our way.”
“Cool your jets, Madame Mayor,” he countered, leaving Harold’s wife huffing and puffing with the sarcasm he’d so freely used. “This is my bailiwick. We play by my rules. Deputy Bermel?”
“Sir.”
“Secure the house. Keep one eye on us, the other on activities out front.”
Thea ushered Harold out the glass door and down the inclined lawn, muttering her disapproval. Joe walked in front of them, as though he were shepherding Jameson and his daughter and secretary—and two angels he wasn’t even aware of—toward the treehouse. Above, on the platform, behind sturdy wood railing reinforced with chicken wire, stood Ward and June, their companions an odd vivid couple behind them.
Holster. He marveled at how loaded with implication Caroline could make one word. There were his brother’s wide khaki-clad thighs swinging before them, and on his right hip rode—like a saddlebag on the flank of a nag—his .38 service revolver, the safety strap snapped shut over it. Just behind it on his utility belt were a cuff case and a couple of bullet pouches.
“You think so?” he asked his guardian.
Thea yanked his arm and gave him a look.
The crowd-roar swelled. Harold glanced back toward the kitchen. He saw Deputy Bermel turn his head sharply from the window and move off out of sight, annoyed.
Now’s your chance.
He and Thea drew closer to Joe, who was shouting up to June about running away, scolding in stern tones that made even Harold feel guilty. Jameson had a foot on the rope ladder and was poised to begin his ascent. Caroline glided Harold, smooth as a glassy stream, away from Thea and toward his brother. There was protest inside him—an olfactory foretaste of jail, particularly galling because the lovely reporter’s name, Ruth Crashaw, had been brought into conversation on the way over, and Harold had promised himself he would seek her out the first chance he got—but the objections being raised internally in no way hindered or slowed his movement, which was driven by pure informed instinct and which therefore exhibited the balletic grace and fluidity one’s finest moments of unified intent always and inevitably do. Both hands dipped toward his brother’s thigh, the right sliding over the grip as the left deftly unsnapped and lifted aside the safety strap. The butt of the revolver pressed into his palm and his fingers closed around the grip like a lovers’ clench, even as the upward impulse in his arm had already begun to slide it clear of its holster. Joe’s hand whipped down, but by the time he slapped at empty leather, Harold had stepped back and the weapon was raised and pointed.
Well done! Nothing prideful there. Just Caroline’s simple approval, to which he nodded thanks.
“What the Sam Hill—?”
“Okay, okay, now Joey, you just put your hands in the air. You too, Thea.” It felt amazing to be pointing this gun at them: The power of it humbled him; the breaking of umpteen societal, familial, and marital strictures out and out thrilled him; and the angelic rightness of his actions kept his grip unshaken and his mind focused.
Joe’s large hands rose slowly from his sides. “Come on now, big brother. What’s this all about?”
“Harold!” His wife’s voice shook with impatience and fear. “You give that thing to your brother this instant!” Her feet wanted to move toward him, but they seemed to be stuck to the grass. Her eyes were ringed with terror.
Quickly, Harold.
“Shut it, Thea. Mister Jameson, sir.” His Amazonian companion was beaming, and the famous novelist’s own face, startled at first, now brightened into a smile. “Retrieve if you will the handcuffs in that squarish case behind the sheriff’s holster.”
“Jameson,” said Joe, his head feinted partway toward him, “you do, and you’re accessory to whatever tomfoolery my brother thinks he’s up to.”
“Well, Sheriff,” said Jameson, reaching in to unsnap the case and pull free the handcuffs, “since what he’s up to is my escape, I feel obliged to do the charitable thing by your brother and take that risk.”
There was further protest and posturing from Thea and Joe, but Harold cut it short and marched them into the hut with the ornately carved door. Jameson closed the windows while Harold waved his two prisoners to a sitting position on the floor at one corner of the boy’s bed. Harold eased up some on his constricted breathing when the cuffs closed about Joe’s wrists, ratcheting behind him about the honey-oak leg of the bed. Ward, it seemed, didn’t jump rope nor have any great interest in knot-tying or lanyard-making so they made do with the boy’s bathrobe sash, a two-inch wide length of terrycloth that Caroline helped him secure about Thea’s wrists while Jameson held the gun and Joe and Thea, within kissing distance, reasoned with him and chewed him out, neither to any avail. For good measure, they lifted Ward’s desk onto the bed, Harold puffing more at its bulk than Jameson, who was in amazing shape for his age; no way now that his brother was going to shoulder the bed off the floor and slide his hands free the instant they closed the door on him.
Harold thought of running himself, of looking up Dawn Fleischer and begging her to hide him, to love him, to see her way clear to mutual and sustained openness in body and mind and heart and soul throughout all eternity. At least for starters. But his angel calmly and simply stated that he had to face the music, and when she did so, Ted Jameson led him over to Joydrop Heartline near the rope-ladder and said, “As soon as they set it, pay Harold’s bail. Use the special account. Doesn’t matter how much it is.” Then he was on his way up the ladder, a man
with much on his mind and little time to make good his escape.
*****
If it had been him alone, Grampa would have endured the rigmarole of arraignment and trial and public pillory begrudgingly but with grim stoicism, secure in his belief in Esme and knowing that the passions of fallen townsfolk and of their petty-minded officials would eventually cool. But he was not alone in this. There was his daughter to consider, and his grandson, and poor dear June Lockridge, who had suffered and survived a crisis of belief, but who he doubted would long resist a sustained assault. And he sensed, Esme confirming, that the sweet taste of communal joy the town had begun to savor might be mere precursor to something far grander, something world-renewing if it were given a fighting chance. They needed, the three of them, to regroup, to find a haven, a place of refuge where they might refuel their spiritual stores of energy, discover a paradigm of human-angelic interaction, and re-emerge fully charged and ready to seed the world. He thought he knew where that might be—the heavens and blind luck granting them escape and evasion—and he also knew, given Joydrop’s recent lament over Luke Petrakis’s fate, where he wanted their re-emergence to take place.
Esme guided him up the ladder swifter than he’d ever taken it, more anxiety surging through him than he’d felt in years. His foot slipped once, but by then his arms had crested the rim and, despite the bloodsurge in his head at the thought of nearly having fallen, he hauled himself up onto the platform. “Ward,” he said, huddling with the two of them, “go down to the clubhouse and, as quickly as you can, pack your backpack. Three changes of clothing, your toothbrush, and a book. That’s it. And don’t listen or respond to anything the mayor or the sheriff have to say. Just step around them and get out fast.”
“But I—” said Ward, but before Grampa could urge him further, Timothy chimed in with Let’s do it! and that made Ward’s mind up; in fact it was Ward’s mind being made up. The hole in the balcony swallowed the determined boy and his swirl of an angel. Grampa leaned over to watch him scramble down the taut hemp ropeway, shouting, “Slow it down, Ward. Don’t kill yourself.”
“Grampa, what do you want me to do?” June was eager and excited. She and her wise-eyed Jeannie looked almost like mother and daughter, so unified they were, the same dark shine in their pupils.
“Climb down and tell Joydrop to go into the house on some pretext or other. If, as I think likely, there’s nobody there, she’s to throw some skirts or whatever into a small bag for you and hurry back here. You stay behind with Ward’s mother. I’ll be down as fast as I can.”
She nodded, said okay, and was on her way.
Callie Severance.
Grampa brightened. Fumbling in his breast pocket, he found the slip of paper she’d given him on parting. “It’s a longshot. She’s probably still pruning. I’ll give her three rings to answer.”
Go there anyway.
“Right.” He barged into the house, beelining through the sun-drenched front room to the study. He gathered the phone to his ear and punched in her number, taking care to stuff the paper into his pocket. Before it rang the first time, he fired up his PC, watching its memory-check tumble upward toward 8k and its autoexec sequence begin to scroll by, slower than he’d ever known it. One ring. He flipped open his disk holder and grabbed three blank disks. Thank God he’d formatted a bunch Tuesday. The phone rang again. There wasn’t time. This was crazy. He pictured the scene down below, the deputy even now probably on his way up the rope ladder, gun at the ready.
Don’t think about that.
“Don’t think about purple elephants,” he shot back.
Them either, Esme joked. At last a DOS prompt. The third ring. He jumped to the OEDIPUS directory, typed in a copy command, hit Enter. The disk lights blinked. Ring four. “Come on, Callie, please be there.” A list of file names inched up the screen. So damned slow.
One more ring. Then you’ve got to pack.
The fifth ring came and went. As the receiver moved away from his ear, he heard the click. He jammed it back against his head. There she was, the rising inflection of her hello like a hook to salvation.
“Callie, thank God you’re there.”
“That you, Ted? I was just thinking about you.”
“Listen, all hell’s breaking loose here and I need a huge huge favor from you.”
“Name it.” She’d caught the urgency in his voice.
“For starters, I need you to meet me again where you dropped me off.” The copy finished. He buttoned the disk out and inserted a second, up-arrowing to repeat the copy of all the files onto it. “I need you to be there in ten minutes tops. You’ll probably be involved in a felony or two if you help us, so please say no. But yes or no, you have to decide right now.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Bless you, Callie. You’re a savior.”
He hung up. The second disk was still chugging away. He came out of the study and U’d through the front room to his bedroom. He yanked his tattered soft zippery suitcase off the closet shelf and zipped it open on the bed. Socks and underwear went into it in grabbed handfuls, then three shirts snatched from their hangers. Shorts, cords, an old pair of sweatpants.
Switch disks.
“Right.” No time for second guessing. Three copies: one for Joy’s safe, one for him, one for Mindy Rutherford, just in case things really went south. Disk still in mid-chug, but less than a dozen files from the end. “Come on, you son-of-a-bitch! Move those bytes!” The copy finished and in two seconds he’d switched disks, set it on its way, and was headed back to the bedroom. There he threw in his toiletries, a comb, looking frantically about the room for missed necessities. Travel clock. The midnight-idea book by his bed, a felt-tipped pen clipped through its spirals. He tossed them in and zipped the bag shut, yanking it off the bed and heading once more for the study. A quick look around. Past glories, stillborn projects, notes and books and a forty-year-old set of encyclopedias. Let it all go. Nothing mattered but Oedipus Aroused and sequestering Ward and June and himself together in the weeks ahead, a gamble but a damned interesting one, even if it failed.
But screw your courage to the sticking place—
“Right, right, ‘and we’ll not fail.’” But Macbeth or no, if he lingered much longer, that gamble would never be taken. Third disk finished and out. He stuck it with the others into his shirt pocket, the tiny hard cases clacking together like turning poster displays. He shut off the PC and its monitor, not bothering with dust covers. Grabbing up the laptop, he hurried out of the study.
On the platform. No climbing deputy, just Ward below and Laura and June halfway up the lawn meeting Joy running from the house with a light floral-patterned valise in one hand. The crowd noises hadn’t diminished; they’d grown if anything more unruly. He dropped the zippered case to the grass below (Ward’s backpack-shield softened its fall) and descended the rope ladder with the portable PC bandoliered across his chest. Esme descended with him, a comfort in a moment full of more exertion and anxiety than he’d endured in an age.
He hugged Joydrop. “You and Laura look out for each other.”
“We will.”
“And see to Nora’s burial.” He faltered. “I’d like more than anything to be there, but—”
“We’ll take care of it.” Her eyes glistened.
He reached into his pocket. “Lock this disk in your safe. Give this duplicate to Mindy Rutherford. The kids and I are going underground for a few weeks. If we don’t resurface by October, you or Mindy need to send that disk to my agent. Got it?”
Joy nodded. “Yes.”
Laura embraced him. Topsy said, Needs to hurry, and Laura echoed that. “Quickly, Dad.”
“Take care, Laura. If things get vicious, insist on police protection.”
“Don’t worry.”
“And call June’s parents. Tell them she’s all right and that she’s with me of her own free will. They’ll hear from her, last week in September.”
Time to go, Ted.
He
cocked a thumb toward Esme. “Always the nag, but I love her.” Then he took his suitcase from his grandson, asked Ward and June if they were ready, and led them past the blinded clubhouse into the forest, where, before long and far faster than he would have expected, the trees and underbrush lured them away from the clamor into a silence that held seeds of wonder cupped close to its breast.
Ten minutes later, June spied the pickup through the trees and Grampa raised a shout and a waving arm, ready to deliver himself and his charges unto the kindness of a new friend.
Epilogue
Saturday Morning and Beyond
The next morning, soaking in an outdoor spa with Dawn on his left and Ruth on his right in mid-interview, Harold Porter was in heaven. A handsome middle-aged Dutch couple listened in across the way, co-owners of a cozy restaurant-cum-bakery on the edge of town. A woman and a little girl were swimming in the pool behind the contrived outcropping of rocks where Ruth’s mini-recorder was perched, and other folks were inside, milling about the kitchen or sitting in chatty groups on carpet or couch, soft towels beneath them the only textiles in evidence. He had been hustled before Judge Balmer just after five on Friday, Thea determined to have the people arrested, Harold especially, arraigned and out of the public eye as quickly as possible; but he would never have guessed, not in a million years, that the house to which Dawn would drive him and Ruth—its lush, secluded backyard a paradise of controlled greenery—would turn out to belong to that same judge and his wife, Balmer sporting now naught but the broadest of smiles, as if he’d cast off with his robes and his textile undertrappings his judicial solemnity and all remembrance of the stern admonition he’d delivered to Harold in court the day before.
“So T. E. Jameson bailed you out?”
“Yes, my sweet lovely Ruth,” he replied, marveling at how lynx-eyed professional an interviewer she was, and how heart-stoppingly cute—there was no better word for it—at the same time. “His secretary is apparently co-signatory to an account for day-to-day transactions, and she, at his request before he left, posted bail. It was quite steep.”
A Flight of Storks and Angels Page 28
