“What’re you talking about, Mae? Mourned?” asked Gabe, glancing at me.
“When y’all were taken, of course.”
“What?” It was the first time I’d spoken up.
“Riley,” said Etta Mae looking at me for the first time and appearing quite pleased to see me. “Gabe’s always had good taste.”
“Oh, no, we’re not, I mean…” I stuttered.
“Mae, what did you mean ‘taken’?” interrupted Gabe, saving me.
Etta Mae turned back to him. “When you were taken. Deke too. You telling me you didn’t know you’d both been taken together?”
“But…what do you mean by ‘taken’?” I found my voice again.
“What do you mean what do I mean? The angels, of course, the angels, child.”
“You mean it happened before? I mean before six years ago?”
Etta Mae nodded.
“But…I mean…why doesn’t anyone talk about it? Why didn’t the Church of the Angels happen way before now…why…”
“You’re asking the good questions, and there are answers. Come. Let’s have something to eat.”
26.
Both of us were too stunned to refuse the invitation. And it looked like Gabe would’ve pretty much gone anywhere if Etta Mae had told him to. It was stupid, but I couldn’t help but feel a little jealous of old Etta Mae, in her loose flowered dress and straw hat. Her skin was remarkably smooth for her age. Her eyes were sharp and framed by thick lashes. And even though she moved slowly, it was with an obvious grace. The way Gabe looked at her…I had to wonder what she’d looked like back when he’d first known her.
We followed her out onto the narrow dirt road and walked for probably half a mile before we got to her home. The sun was setting now, touching the roof of her house and giving it a kind of halo. It was similar in size to Gabe’s but lovingly taken care of. Even if Gabe had been around all these years to tend to his property, I think Etta Mae’s would still have looked that much better. She had a small garden out front and a path up to the door was trimmed in bright flowers. The house had obviously received a fresh coat of paint recently.
There were a few small children riding around on a pair of tricycles who I assumed were her grandchildren. They’d probably been told not to go off the property and had to struggle with getting the wheels to move on the thick grass of the front lawn. Passing by, the two on the tricycles stared at us wide-eyed. But the third, a little girl in a yellow dress with braids in her hair waved enthusiastically. I smiled back.
We made our way up the front steps. Sitting on the small porch on a sun-bleached rocking chair was the most ancient man I’d ever seen. He had no hair, his face was carved out with deep lines, and his skin looked raw and tough. He wore a white undershirt and coveralls and held a straw hat in his lap.
“That your Pa?” I asked Etta Mae as we stepped inside.
“That’s Mr. Clayton.” She said it as if that was explanation enough, and I didn’t bother to question her further.
The house was very nearly one room, except for the kitchen, blocked off by a counter, and a small hallway leading to a bedroom and a washroom. We sat down at a round table in the corner, and Etta Mae went into the kitchen and puttered around for a few moments. She returned with some peach cobbler for each of us.
“Don’t you want anything?” I asked as she sat down. She batted away the suggestion like it was plainly ridiculous.
“Dig in,” she said, and we did.
We sat in silence for a bit, us eating, her watching. Finally I figured it was time to say something, and I put down my fork and looked at her.
“So, Etta Mae,” I said, “You said that this happened before.”
“It did.”
“For how long? How many years? Has it been going on all the time? Did it stop? Why has it started again?” I realized that I was kind of overwhelming her with questions. I did that sometimes, and people liked to point that out. So I was pretty aware that I did it. But it was hard for me to control, especially when I was excited.
I was pleasantly surprised when Etta Mae just started to answer them.
“It happened just the one time as far as I can tell,” she replied. “Might have happened other places. Don’t know why it started again.”
“But why don’t we ever talk about it?”
“Why do you think?” asked Gabe, pushing his empty bowl away from him and leaning back in his chair.
“I don’t know. A coverup? It only happened once, maybe no one wanted to talk about it,” I replied.
“And because they were Negroes.”
“Gabe!” I could feel my face heat up. “We don’t say that.”
“We don’t?”
“No. It’s offensive. You can say African-American or black…”
“Riley, give the beautiful boy a break. He doesn’t know better.” Etta Mae took Gabe’s bowl, stood up, and headed to the kitchen to refill it.
“Well, okay, I guess you’re right. Sorry,” I said and turned to him.
“‘Negro’ is offensive?” He looked really upset. “Mae, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.”
“You were the only white boy in the area, your best friend was a ‘negro,’ you liked to spy on his sister when she got changed…You were probably the only white boy at the time who didn’t realize there was supposed to be a difference between our colors. I’ve never been offended by you, Gabe. Well, not in that way. Wished you’d stop stealing my stockings…” replied Etta Mae, placing a new bowl of cobbler in front of him.
Gabe burst out laughing. “Only once, Mae. Wanted something of yours that’d touched your skin.”
“And those stockings were mighty expensive, too!”
They were both laughing again, remembering a time before I even existed. It made me feel stupidly young.
“Anyway, Gabe,” I said, “you said that the reason there wasn’t a fuss was because it was ‘just’ black people. But it wasn’t, it was you too.”
Gabe thought about that for a moment. “Mae, did it happen to any of the town folk, or was it just us, the people who lived out here?”
“It was only us. Only a few. All of ’em dark-skinned. All except you.”
“And we were the only white family in the area.”
“True.”
“So no one cared,” I said. I couldn’t believe it.
“No one even noticed,” replied Etta Mae.
It made sense, as horrible as it was. Then I wondered, “Mae, lately, when it started again, did it…does it happen here too?”
“You ask the right questions.”
“It isn’t happening here anymore, is it?”
“Not since. Not again.”
Something was nagging at me, though I couldn’t place it, but it made me ask: “What did the angels look like?”
I glanced at Gabe, and he looked at me like he was maybe nagged by the same thing.
“Yeah,” he said, “Because you said I was big and had wings and all before you shot me…”
“You shot him?” Mae broke into a wide grin. “Lord, how many times did Pa try to get this boy as he ran away home. He’d have been proud of you.”
“Thanks.”
“But,” continued Gabe with a shake of his head, “I’m no angel.”
“No, you’re not,” said Etta Mae, her grin widening.
“No…exactly…” Suddenly I understood my own train of thought. “You aren’t an angel. You were taken. But you didn’t look like a human when I shot you. Were you made into an angel?”
“Oh my goodness, Riley, don’t you know anything about angels?” Etta Mae was looking at me with an expression of shock.
“I know about the hierarchy…” I remembered back to my conversation with Father Peter.
“Angels aren’t human. Angels are spiritual creatures. They’re not of this earth.”
“You can’t make them out of humans?”
“Well
, child, I’d say my late husband was as close to an angel as you’d get, but even he left his dirty underthings on the bedroom floor.”
“So if angels ain’t human, and I looked however I looked…” Gabe stood up now and began to pace.
“Mae, what did the angels look like, the ones that took Gabe and Deke?” I asked again, this time understanding why I’d asked it before.
Etta Mae’s expression softened, she looked off into the distance. “I can’t answer that question, child.”
“Why not? Didn’t you see? I thought you said you saw.”
“It was bright as if it was the middle of the day. Too bright to look right at it. Too much even for Pa, and he ran after it.”
“I don’t understand.”
Mae turned to me with a sudden movement that made me jump slightly. “It was night when they came. Black as pitch as it gets here. Then there was light, coming down from the sky, like lightning you could say, but slower to come down and leave. And each time the light came down, one was taken. They were taken in light. They disappeared into light.”
“How…how do you know they were angels?”
“We never said they were angels, never then. Didn’t talk about it at all. Just said they’d passed on to anyone who hadn’t seen. But then it happened again, six years ago, happened to the town folks. And then they were saying it was angels, that they’d seen them, and then…”
“You concluded Deke and Gabe and the others, that they were taken by angels too.”
“Made sense.”
“But our angels don’t take them in light. Our angels appear only when they’ve taken someone, with wings and arms grabbing on tight. They looked like Gabe did…”
“But I ain’t no angel.” Gabe leaned against the door and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Yes, I know. You can stop saying that.” I wasn’t really angry with Gabe, but I’d just realized something freaky and it made me inadvertently snap at him.
“Riley, this probably means…” he said.
“Don’t, just don’t. I know what you’re going to say, and I’ve thought it too okay.”
“Thought what, child?”
I turned to Etta Mae, and she took my hands in hers. Her palms were warm and soft.
“Gabe’s no angel,” I said. “And I don’t think any of the rest of them are either.”
27.
It felt as if something had been resolved, discovered, revealed. But the idea that maybe our angels weren’t angels actually didn’t help anything. It didn’t reveal why people were being taken. It didn’t help get Chris back. It only changed our perception of what they were.
Still, that small shift in perception made my blood run cold. And then that made me think of another thing.
“Say, Mae,” I asked, “have you ever encountered a…well, a being I guess, kind of dressed in white, but not really, and its head is covered like it has a thin fabric wrapped around it?”
“What’re you saying, child?” Etta Mae still had my hands in hers, and she looked at me with concern.
“Is that a good way to describe it?” I glanced over at Gabe.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “It’s kind of, it’s like a person, and he just stands there, and, yeah, his face is covered. His head is covered in a white sheet kind of. And he sort of glows a bit too. You seen anything like that, Mae?”
Etta Mae shook her head. “Never seen anything like that before. I can’t quite picture what you’re talking about.”
“We could wait until it gets dark. It might show up,” I said.
“It might?”
“Yeah…” I glanced at Gabe who was giving me a hard look. “It sometimes shows up at night.”
“Since when?” asked Gabe.
“Since….a while.” I wasn’t going to let him make me feel guilty for not telling him.
“Riley…”
“It hasn’t hurt me or anything, just stands there.” Don’t get all protective, not right now, Gabe. I turned back to Etta Mae. “It…it’s pretty creepy. I don’t know what it is, but when it’s around I feel so cold, and I know that it could do things.”
“What kind of things?” asked Etta Mae.
“I don’t know. Powerful things. I thought, though, that maybe you might know about it, or maybe it’d appeared here in the swamplands before and it was another one of those town folks being ignorant things.”
“Like I said, Riley, I’ve never seen anything like what you’re saying. But if you want to stay a little longer for the sun to finish setting, that’d be okay by me. I’ve got to get some dinner ready for the grankids and Mr. Clayton, though.”
“Oh well, we don’t want to get in your way,” I said quickly.
“Not in the way at all.”
So Gabe and I hung out for another hour or so and waited for it to get dark. Mr. Clayton and the kids joined us, though the girl in the yellow dress didn’t seem to care much for the food and just sat in the corner quietly playing by herself. Finally the sun set, and Gabe, Etta Mae, and I went out onto the front porch to look.
Of course, now I worried the thing would decide not to show. I also worried a bit how Gabe was going to react to it. He hadn’t seen the creature since that night in the fall. Somehow, though, I knew it would be there. I wanted it to be there. So that’s where it would be.
And I was right.
First I felt a wave of cold wash over me.
And then.
It was standing out in the yard. It looked in our direction, and I know it didn’t like Etta Mae standing with us.
“You see it?” I said pointing and feeling a little faint.
Etta Mae shook her head. “Where are you looking, child?”
“Right there, right there, right in front of us.” It was standing no more than ten feet away in the middle of her yard. It was pretty hard to miss it.
“On the other side of the road?” she asked squinting.
“Mae, it’s right in front of us. It’s in your yard,” said Gabe staring at her with confusion.
“I can’t see anything.”
“But…it’s right there!” If Gabe hadn’t been able to see it too, I know I’d have thought I was going crazy. And then, before I could say anything else it had vanished. “It’s gone,” I said quietly, defeated and physically exhausted.
I think Etta Mae sensed how I was feeling because she turned to me and smiled. “Maybe it’s just not something I’m supposed to see.”
It frustrated me so much that she hadn’t seen it. Especially as it was clear as day to me. But it was nice she still believed us. There was no reason on earth for her to. It made me feel a bit better.
After a moment we followed her back into the house where the kids and Mr. Clayton were almost done with dessert.
“I guess we’d better go,” I said, realizing it was getting late, and Mother would probably be pretty worried by now about where I was.
“Course, Riley. But y’all come back now. It’s nice to see you again. I don’t wander too much these days,” said Etta Mae taking my hand in hers and giving it a squeeze.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “I miss seeing you around. I always liked your songs.”
“I know you did, child. I remember you, that little blonde creature coming up to me all bouncy and asking about my singing. No other town child had ever done that.”
“Really?”
“You are something else, Riley Carver.”
“Well, so are you, Mae. I’ve never forgotten what you said to me, about your songs. You said, ‘You sing ’em to remember.’”
Etta Mae smiled. “That you do, Riley. That you do.” She pulled me into a soft hug.
“We’ll be back, Mae,” I said when she let me go. “Thanks for everything.”
“You’re welcome.”
Gabe came over, and it was his turn to be hugged. When they parted he said, “I’ll be at the old place a lot from now on. Can I come by, say hi?
”
“Beautiful boy, you’d better not just say hi. I’ve got plans for a gumbo on Friday that’ll knock your socks off.”
“Count me in!”
“Riley, you’ll come too.”
“I’ll see. I hope.”
“Come say goodbye to Mr. Clayton,” she said and we walked over to the table, where Mr. Clayton was sitting with the boys, staring out into nothingness.
The little boys jumped off their chairs to give us hugs. The little girl in the yellow dress stayed in her place in the corner but gave us her little wave again. I waved back and noticed Mr. Clayton shift in his seat slightly.
I looked over at him to find him staring right at me.
“Oh, hi,” I said softly. He didn’t say anything back.
“Mr. Clayton, this is Riley Carver. She’s friends with Gabe McClure. You remember what I said about him,” said Etta Mae, placing a soft hand on his shoulder.
“Yes.” Mr. Clayton’s voice came out low and resonate. It had a power that was so totally opposite from his appearance.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Clayton,” I said. I felt maybe twelve years old.
“Yes.” Mr. Clayton looked at me for a moment longer, then turned to continue staring out into nothing.
I gave one last wave to the kids, and I turned to Etta Mae who was now giving me that same strange look.
“Mae, what is it?” This was starting to make me feel really uncomfortable,
Her gaze changed, softened. “Nothing, child. Nothing at all. Just had a thought. You two had better get going.”
“Okay.”
Etta Mae walked us to the door again, and we stepped outside. I hoped that maybe this time she’d see the creature now, but even I couldn’t. Looked as if it was gone for the night. She escorted us out down the front porch and to the edge of the road where she watched after us until we turned round the bend. Then we were on our own, walking quietly back toward Gabe’s place, the full moon above leading our way. It was always astonishing to me how bright the moon could be when you got away from the lights of the town.
“That was strange,” I finally said breaking the silence, “that conversation with Etta Mae.”
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