The Reapers are the Angels

by Alden Bell

  Well, he says, pouring her a glass of bourbon and raising his own, you can drink with me anytime. It’s an honor.

  Thanks, she says and drinks. Next time I’m through this way I’ll stop in and say hello to the family.

  The estate, no doubt, will be intact.

  To Granny Grierson, she says and raises her glass.

  To Granny Grierson.

  To Richard the gentle piano player!

  To Richard!

  They go on to toast his father and Johns and Maisie and the dummy and each other and anyone else they can think of, and they kiss once, he with an arm like a girder around her waist, and then they laugh and start all over again with the toasts, and by the time they are done she’s not exactly drunk but her thoughts are thick and soupy and once inside her room she feels like she could lie down and get an hour’s sleep, but she knows if she did she might not wake up till it’s too late, so she goes to the bathroom sink and splashes some water on her face and opens the window and walks around the room a few times and waits for time to speed back up to where it should be.

  EXCEPT HALF an hour later when she’s getting ready to make her escape, there’s a knock on her door and it’s James Grierson, leaning against the jamb looking wretched and holding a highball in one hand and a revolver in the other.

  Need a favor, he says, his words slurring together. You know what? I don’t think Sarah Mary Williams is your real name. Am I right? It doesn’t matter. You’ve got secrets—but it doesn’t matter. Will you do me a favor?

  What you doin here, James? You oughta be layin down before the floor flies up and hits you in the face.

  It doesn’t matter, he says again. The road is long. You’ll leave. The Griersons will hold sway over the valley and the mead.

  Come on now, I ain’t feelin so hot myself. What you aiming to do with that gun?

  Gun?

  He looks surprised to find the pistol in his hand. Then it comes back to him.

  Oh, this is for you. I want you to kill my father.

  She looks at him, tottering in the doorway, one hand grasping a glass of bourbon and the other lamely offering her the pistol.

  Come on, she says, taking his arm and leading him back down the hall to the library, where she lets him fall back on the couch. She takes the bourbon and the pistol and sets them both on the end table.

  You gotta get some sleep, she says.

  You’re going to do it, aren’t you? he says. You have to do it. You’re the only one. It’s spite and shamefulness keeping him penned up like that. He was a good man . . . anyway, a decent man. It’s shamefulness. He doesn’t deserve it.

  I don’t reckon he cares much either way, truth be told. But if you want to put him down so bad, why don’t you do it yourself?

  He looks at her, his face contorted, his eyes blasted—they have witnessed the worst kind of ignominy. He tries to raise himself up, but sways and falls backward again.

  He says finally, He’s my father.

  She studies him. He despises the very family he will die to protect. A tattered flag on a gray morning, abject, glorious, inutile and perverse.

  All right, she says. All right, dang you.

  She stands, and he covers his face with his hands.

  Thank you, he says. Thank you, thank you. Keep your secrets, Sarah Mary Williams. You are owed.

  She’s almost out of the room when he stops her.

  Wait, he says and points to the gun on the end table. Don’t forget this.

  Never mind that, she says. I ain’t aimin to wake up the whole goddarn house.

  IN THE basement, she pulls up a stool and sits at the cage door and exchanges a long gaze with Randolph Grierson, who sits slumped against the wall and lacks the energy to pull himself up. His eyes have all the red-rimmed sunkenness of an ancient animal.

  I don’t know, Mr. Grierson, she says. I gotta say it don’t feel exactly right.

  The fingers of his hand grasp weakly at the air, and for a moment he reminds her of another slow-moving, dream-witted man she is fond of.

  It don’t seem right, she continues, the destruction of what a family loves—or even what a family hates for that matter. A household’s got its own spooks, and it ain’t for strangers to come bullying in to exorcise them.

  She puts her fingers through the chicken wire, and he struggles to move a little in her direction.

  Yeah, I know, she says. You don’t care one way or the other, do you? All you want is a little chum in your belly. I guess you’re lucky like that. You got a whole household can’t let go of you—one generation on either side that can’t bear either to look at you or forget you. That’s a lot of passion you got stirred up around here, Mr. Grierson. And you’re off beyond the pursuit of its meaning. I reckon there’s a kind of freedom to it.

  She leans forward now, her elbows on her knees.

  Beyond the pursuit of meaning and beyond good and evil too, she says. See, it’s a daily chore tryin to do the right thing. Not because the right thing is hard to do—it ain’t. It’s just cause the right thing—well, the right thing’s got a way of eluding you. You give me a compass that tells good from bad, and boy I’ll be a soldier of the righteous truth. But them two things are a slippery business, and tellin them apart might as well be a blind man’s guess.

  She stands and undoes the latch on the cage and swings the door open. She advances two steps in and stands over the slow, grasping figure of Mr. Grierson and unsheathes the gurkha knife.

  And sometimes, she says, sometimes you just get tired of pokin at the issue. Those are the times you just do something because you’re tired of thinkin on it. And that’s when the devil better get his pencil ready to tally up a score, cause the time for nuances is gone. And you think, that’s it for me on this world. You think, all right then, hell is my home.

  And she raises the gurkha and brings it down.

  ON THE way back upstairs, she goes into the parlor, where Moses Todd is still tied to the chair.

  You thought better of killin me? he asks.

  Nah. I just want to ask you something.

  Shoot.

  You ever have questions—I mean big questions now—that you can’t find the answers to?

  Sure do.

  I’m talkin about the kind of questions that follow you around for years, she says.

  I know what kind of questions you’re talkin about.

  So what do you do about em?

  He shrugs.

  Not much, he says. Some of em answer themselves after a while. Some of em you just stop thinkin about. Some of em accumulate.

  You ain’t much help.

  Moses Todd smiles, sucks his lips into his mouth, his beard making a sound like a brush against concrete.

  Stop playin around, girl. You know it as good as I do. You step outside under the sky and there’s answers everywhere you look. Why you think you’re roamin in the first place?

  I’m runnin from you.

  No you ain’t—at least not as hard or fast as you could be runnin. You just know that out there is where to look for the answers—even if you ain’t found em yet. It’s more than what most people got.

  Then a change comes over his face, and he looks conspiratorial.

  Hey, if you wanna untie me, we’ll see if any answers come to you when I got my thumbs diggin into your windpipe.

  She stands and considers smacking him one across the face, but she doesn’t want to know the feeling of that beard of his.

  See you later, Mose.

  Count on it, little girl.

  DID YOU do it? James Grierson asks when she enters the library.

  It’s done.

  The look on his face is like a dead tree, drained of all its sap.

  You’re leaving then, he says.

  Yeah. You’ll watch Mose for me while I go? I don’t want him gettin ideas.

  I’ll watch him.

  All right then.

  She turns to go.

  Listen, he says, sitting up on the edge
of the couch. Listen, I have something to say.

  What is it?

  I—the thing I have to say is—I lost my father tonight.

  She looks at him, a tragic figure with dark hair and notions that torture.

  You’re gonna be all right, James. Every house needs a man. You’re it now.

  Right, he chuckles to himself.

  There is nothing else she can say. She opens the door and is almost gone when she remembers something. The slip of paper the dummy had in his pocket. She stops a moment, considering. Part of her says to leave it lie, to stop messing around in what’s none of her business. But there’s another part of her too.

  She goes back to the couch where James Grierson sits.

  One more thing, she says and hands him the slip of paper. Can you read this?

  He looks at it.

  What does it mean? he says.

  Out loud, she says. Can you read it out loud?

  Why?

  Just—a favor, okay?

  He looks at it again and recites:

  Hello! My name is Maury and I wouldn’t hurt a fly. My grandmother loves me and wishes she could take care of me forever, but she’s most likely gone now. I have family out west. If you find me, will you take me to them? God bless you!

  Jeb and Jeanie Duchamp

  442 Hamilton Street

  Point Comfort, TX

  Doggone it, she says.

  And in this way the paths narrow for the tempters of fate. She thinks of Malcolm, of the iron giant, the edifices of lost men, the boiling in her belly more wicked than fiend or meatskin. The voice of God speaking with colors that are not hers.

  She should have left it alone.

  She sighs.

  All right then, she says. You want to read me that address one more time?

  PART II

  8.

  She picks from eight in the morning until ten, stopping sometimes to stand up and straighten out her back and look across the fields to the spot where Maury stands chopping the wood like she taught him to. His large frame hunches over the stump where he places the tree rounds and raises the ax over his head and brings it down steady but not swift, putting the whole gravity of his mineral self into the gesture. She wipes the sweat from her forehead and fans herself with the panama hat and looks at the wide open sky, the biggest sky she’s ever seen—because look how it curls around at the horizon and almost comes back to meet itself.

  When she fills a tub with the berries, she brings it to the shack in the middle of the fenced property and sets it on the porch. Then she goes back out into the fields. Five times she does this, setting the little tubs in a row.

  This is a no-count business, she says to Albert, the freckled man sitting on a wicker chair in the shade of the porch.

  I told you it weren’t gonna be easy.

  He sips something from a plastic tumbler.

  What you drinkin? she says.

  Lemonade. Fresh-squeezed. I might could give you a glass when you’re done.

  She looks at the glass in the man’s dried-up hand.

  Yeah, all right. I’m just takin a breather. Say, what you need all them bingberries for anyway?

  Trade em. You’d be surprised the things people’ll give for fresh-pick berries.

  I guess so. Listen, I been meanin to ask you—what state’re we in?

  Little girl, on your travels you happen to notice some dead people walkin around? What state are you in? I’d say you are in a state of denial.

  His hacking laughs turns into a cough. She takes a deep breath and waits for the man’s fit to pass.

  I’m just kiddin you. We’re in Alabama. Just outside Union Springs.

  Alabama? Dang. I thought we got further.

  Where you coming from?

  We were in Georgia a couple days ago. It’s slow goin—the roads you got here are a mess.

  I’ll write a letter to our congressman.

  Then something occurs to him, and he looks around the side of the house in the direction where Maury continues to chop wood.

  You keepin an eye on that feeb?

  He’s all right. He does what he’s told.

  Albert leans forward.

  Listen up to what I told you before, he says. I don’t know if you quite got it. You come inside with me for a little bit, you can have all the berries you want.

  Yeah, I heard you the first time. I’ll pass.

  He leans back to indicate the conversation is over.

  Suit yourself, he says. You best get back in that field if you wanna be done by noon.

  She didn’t think it would be so difficult, picking the berries, but the plants are thorny and if she pulls at the berries too hard they crush to purple sap in her hands. She picks on, crouching like a toad among the bushes. By noon she is stained sapphire all over and when she sucks the blood from her pricked fingertips, it tastes like iron and bingberry mixed.

  She goes back up to the porch for the last time.

  There, she says. That’s ten tubs.

  Good work, he says. That one’s yours.

  What do you mean that one?

  She looks down and the other nine she lined up before are gone.

  You said for every five tubs I picked I got to keep one. I picked ten tubs. What you tryin to pull? And where’s the eggs you promised for Maury choppin that wood?

  Freckled Albert squints at her.

  I don’t care for the way that feeb chops. I wanted em chopped bigger.

  She brushes the hair back from her forehead and licks her lips.

  Open up your ears now, Albert, she says. You wanna listen to what I’m tellin you—and what I’m tellin you is this: You’re makin a mistake.

  Again Albert laughs until the cough overtakes him and he hunches over, his body cramped and twisted. When he looks up again his eyes are circles of red.

  What you gonna do, girl? You gonna get your feeb to stomp me?

  Without standing, he reaches one arm into the doorway of the shack and pulls out a shotgun that must have been standing just inside and points it at her.

  Now shoo, he says. I ain’t a bad man is why you get one tub of berries at all.

  You ain’t a bad man is why I’m not gonna kill you.

  What?

  He drops his guard momentarily, trying to puzzle through why she isn’t scared of him—and that’s when she grabs the barrel of the shotgun and jerks it forward to pop his finger free of the trigger, then with all her strength she shoves it back, stock-first into his belly. He clenches his stomach and falls out of the chair. Then she turns him over and plants one knee on his chest, jamming the shotgun lengthwise across his throat.

  Now here’s what I’m gonna do, she says. First I’m gonna go inside and get my two tubs of bingberries, like we agreed before. Second I’m gonna go out back to the coop and pluck me a dozen eggs for the work Maury did for you. Third I’m gonna take along a jug of that lemonade you got—to even things out so I don’t have to resent you for the offense you given us. You got that?

  He nods, still choking and gasping. She stands and backs down the steps of the porch.

  Now why don’t you lay there awhile, she says. You’ll get your breath back in a bit.

  Around the side of the shack, the big man continues to chop with thick precision.

  Maury, she calls. Maury! You can stop that chopping. We’re gettin back on the road.

  LATER, IN the car, she puts a tub of the berries on Maury’s lap.

  Eat up. You’ll like em. You can eat that whole tub if you want—it’s for you. I got us each one. Go on.

  She takes one and puts it in her mouth to show him.

  Mmm. I ain’t had bingberries in I don’t know how long. That Albert, he may have been a scoundrel all told, but he knew how to raise himself some crops, didn’t he? Go on, eat one.

  Maury puts one of the berries in his mouth and a sour expression comes into his face. He opens his mouth wide as though hoping the thing will fly away on its own.

  What�
��s the matter, you don’t like it? I swear, you got no feeling for the finer things in life, you big dummy. That’s a project for you to work on. All right, spit it out. Here, here’s a rag. Try not to make such a awful mess everything you do.

  He spits the berry out and scrubs the rag across his tongue, but he’s still cringing afterward and he begins a low moan like crying except without the tears.

  All right, she says. Hush up now.

  The moan goes on long and low.

  Hush up I said. Goddarnit, you would of thought I poisoned you. Here, drink some of that lemonade, I know you like that. But don’t drink it all up or I sure enough will leave you by the side of the road. You got that, Maury?

  He drinks, and the moaning goes away. His gaze goes blank again.

  Lord, Maury, you’re a big slobbery mess of devilment, ain’t you? You better hope Jeb and Jeanie Duchamp know what to do with you—cause they’re your last chance. I’m depositin you there no matter what.

  THEY DRIVE on. She makes sure to keep the setting sun ahead of her and the rising sun behind. On some stretches of freeway, you can really fly—but you can just as easily get caught up in a tangle of crumbling overpasses and massive multicar collisions, ancient burial mounds of metal and exploded upholstery.

  Sometimes it’s better to stay on the side roads, where the opportunities for detour are more plentiful.

  And even though she knows it’s impossible, she keeps expecting to look behind her and see Moses Todd’s black car bloodhounding her trail.

  Mississippi is one of the words she recognizes when she sees it. All those squiggles in a row, separated by vertical lines. She sees a sign that says Mississippi on it, and it doesn’t surprise her. Along the roads the trees have been overpowered by kudzu, like a blanket of green tossed over all the shapes of the earth. Driving through the small towns, she finds canted treehouses with rotted floors, plastic slides toppled over on front lawns, whole communities gone dense with the smells of honeysuckle and verbena. Elsewhere, on rolling stretches of back road, desolate plantation land has long ago gone back to wildflower and weed, grazed over by riderless horses traveling in packs and mewling cows that stand silhouetted on the hilltop horizons.