Street of Angels

by Joe Derkacht

  Stella replaced her glass on the table without taking a sip. “It doesn’t make me feel good because it’s a horrible thing to learn how much hate I have in my heart.”

  She wasn’t finished, and Ioletta knew it. Stella’s chin quivered violently, and for a moment, her entire body heaved with emotion.

  “If I could make them know one-tenth of the torment I’ve known all these years--!”

  She burst into a new storm of tears, and when Ioletta reached out to comfort her, Stella shrank away and instead threw her arms around Angel in a desperate embrace.

  Ioletta rolled her eyes, and Chance shifted uneasily in his chair. Angel, imperturbable as always, squinted over his mother’s shoulder, his humming drowned in her sobs.

  Chance scraped back his chair from the table. “I guess I’ve done enough damage for one night.”

  “I’ll walk you to the door,” Ioletta said.

  The return trip through the house seemed to take forever. Chance looked glummer than usual, as Ioletta pulled the front door open for him. Hands in his suit jacket pockets, he stared at the scarred wooden floor.

  “She’ll be all right,” Ioletta told him. “Don’t you worry none, sooner or later, she bounces back.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “How?” She exclaimed. “The Lord, man, the Lord. Don’t you lissen at all?”

  “It didn’t sound to me like you were too convinced of that a minute ago,” he said, snorting at her abrupt change of attitude.

  “Good Lord!” She cried. “That was just talk. Somebody has to say these things ever’ once in a while. How do you expect to hash things out between you and the Lord, ifn all you’re ever sayin’ is Yes Lord and Yessir? A person has to let it all out, don’t she?”

  “I guess so,” he said dubiously. “I never really thought of it that way, figured it would just be sour grapes.”

  “Sour grapes? Read them psalms sometime, you’ll get the idea of it soon enough, Brother Odoms.”

  There it was again. Brother! “I may just do that, Miz Brown,” he said, not lying intentionally.

  She shook her head and clucked her tongue. “You know what the problem is with people like you?”

  He stiffened, well aware of her reputation for bluntness.

  “You don’t know what it’s like, jus’ havin’ the Lord to depend on and nobody else. If somethin’ really terrible happened to ya, I don’t know what y’all would ever do.”

  He grinned. “Just pray for me I don’t have to find out.”

  “I won’t!” She retorted. “That’s jus’ axin’ for trouble.”

  He shrugged. “She’ll be all right, though?”

  “She’ll be all right.”

  “You should go back. I don’t imagine Angel’s a good conversationalist.”

  “That’s right!” She laughed. “A good ear, if ya want to do all the talkin’, though.”

  He pushed open the screen door and stepped onto the porch, grateful for the balmy evening air.

  “When she wants to know more, just have her call me, will you?”

  “I’ll do that,” she answered. “I suspect it won’t be long before she’ll be axin’.”

  “Good evenin’, then, Miz Brown.”

  “Same to you, Captain Odoms.”

  He descended the stairs and took the beaten pathway to the street. He was nearly at the gate, when she called after him one last time.

  “I’ll be prayin’ for ya!”

  “Thanks again for the iced tea,” he called back. He turned one last time and waved, before he opened the gate to let himself out.

  “If it’s one thing that man needs, Lord, it’s prayer,” she muttered. “Whoo! Do he ever!”

  ****

  Chapter 17

  On a clear October morning that threatened to be the most beautiful day of the year in Calneh, (weeks after Mark John Davies, formerly Duane McIlhenny, had been sentenced to ten years nine months in prison for his crimes), Chance sat with his wife in their back yard, enjoying an inaugural cup of tea in the brand new gazebo. The smell of freshly dried paint was the only drawback, Chance thought, other than the matter of the tea itself and the fact he must leave shortly for work. According to Anna Lee, tea was more cultured, more refined, than coffee, and she had resolved to educate him in its benefits.

  “I’ve read it’s much healthier, Clarence,” she said, while daintily pouring him a second cup from her English tea service though he hadn’t asked for it. “There’s too much caffeine in coffee, you know, and it stains your dentures.”

  “It’s a partial,” he corrected her. Underneath his granite exterior, he was coolly calculating a defense on behalf of his precious coffee habit.

  “Same difference, Clarence,” she said. “Coffee stains it much more quickly.”

  “While you’re on the subject, I would appreciate your picking up a package of that fizzy stuff at the store for me.”

  “Y-your Efferdent?” She stammered. “You know how I detest buying anything to do with your dentures. The clerks are sure to think it’s for me.”

  “How do you think I felt when I had to pick up your boxes of--”

  “Clarence, please don’t use that tone of voice,” she said, shaking her finger at him. “It’s such a pleasant morning, and I don’t wish to have it spoiled with an argument.

  “Besides,” she added, once she saw him clamp his mouth shut in defeat, “I don’t believe I ever asked you to purchase any of my feminine necessaries more than once in my life.”

  The sharp glitter of her eyes warned him off from protest. It was wiser simply to raise the teacup for another drink. He let his gaze wander to the view of the back yard. In contrast to Stella Jo McIlhenny’s property, which was devoted chiefly to Angel’s sculptures and to vegetables during Calneh’s long growing season, Anna Lee had laid out and executed a formal garden tended almost entirely by herself.

  Her slender, firm arms were proof that she did what little mowing was required with a push mower and pruned and clipped her plants to her satisfaction with hand shears. Perhaps a third of the yard, best viewed from the gazebo, was a sinuous knot garden, of barberry and fragrant lavender, extending to the property’s high, surrounding fence, over which she’d trained an attractive cover of ivy and morning glory. Society being what it was in Calneh, she couldn’t very well move in the social circles she’d known as a young girl, and she certainly was not comfortable rubbing shoulders with her neighbors on Flowers Avenue, north or south. The work, Chance knew, was her therapy from being married to the city’s top homicide cop.

  Chance spent very little time in the back yard, whether with Anna Lee or by himself. His job simply did not afford him that particular luxury. The yard he tended was the city of Calneh, especially its seedier sections, where murders seemed to thrive like weeds. Moving from one to the other, from the world of his wife’s formal garden into the world he knew in homicide, was a shock to the system.

  He rested his elbows on the wrought-iron table’s glass top and prepared to spring the trap. “You’ve done beautiful work, Miss Anna Lee.”

  She set her teacup down and smiled coyly. “Whatever could you be referring to, Mr. Odoms?”

  He hesitated.

  “Well?” She asked.

  “But I still prefer my coffee.”

  “Wh-why, you!” She huffed, at a loss for words. She lifted her teacup to her lips and glared at him over its rim.

  He waited, counting off the seconds.

  “Coffee is for the working man,” she said at last.

  “That’s me, twelve cups a day,” he said, unoffended.

  She poured herself more tea. To fortify herself for another sally?

  “Tea elevates the soul,” she declared. “The Japanese practice a beautiful tea ceremony, said to promote peace--”

  “As I recall, Anna Lee, the Japs understand atom bombs better than they do tea,” he said, growing restive. “Have you forgotten I was in
that little fight on Iwo Jima and was in Japan for a year after the war? They aren’t any more peaceful than anyone else. Tea is a just a beverage, and I prefer my coffee. It keeps me awake on the job, especially when I have to wrestle with all that--all that cussed paperwork.”

  She drew back stiffly from the table, her eyelids rimmed with white. In the lengthening silence, he knew he had responded with much more ordnance than necessary. He dropped his head apologetically.

  “You’re a most ungracious conversationalist, Mr. Odoms,” she said, putting her teacup down and raising her chin in defiance. She waited for his response.

  “It’s a good thing you married me for my dashing good looks, Miz Odoms,” he said, hoping for the best.

  She measured the seconds. Finally, her lips curved irresistibly into a smile. “Well, yes, there is that.”

  “I suppose I could drink tea with you here, and coffee on the job,” he said.

  Her look of triumph was interrupted by the doorbell.

  “I’ll see who that is,” Chance said, immediately standing. For Anna Lee’s convenience, he had wired an additional ringer on the back side of the house years ago. It rang a second time before he reached the steps to the porch.

  “Be careful,” Anna Lee called out.

  He went inside, twice patting his shoulder holster for his gun as he made his way to the front door. Cautious for his wife’s benefit more than his own, before opening the door he checked the door’s peephole. It was Stella Jo McIlhenny.

  “Good morning, Miz McIlhenny,” he greeted her cordially.

  “I hope I’m not bothering you, Captain Odoms.”

  “No, not at all,” he said, resisting an impulse to ask her in for tea. He knew instinctively that Stella would love the gazebo. He also knew his wife was a zealous guardian of her privacy, especially that which extended to her back yard. “What may I do for you?”

  She stared self-consciously at the floor. “I’ve made my decision,” she said.

  “Your decision?”

  “Yes, I want to see about visiting my Duane’s kidnappers in those jails you were telling me about.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Of course. I wondered when you would come around to ask me that. Please,” he urged her in. “We’ll talk out back. I’m sure you’ll love Anna Lee’s garden and her new gazebo.”

  “That would be lovely,” she said, smiling up at him in surprise. “You’re sure she won’t mind?”

  “Mind? She seldom has a chance to show off her gardening skills to anyone. It may as well be you.”

  Delighted, she walked in and he closed the door, automatically locking it behind them. He led the way through the house, which was always kept museum-neat under Anna Lee’s hand, to the back door, and drew it open with a flourish, fully anticipating her wide-eyed wonder.

  “It’s a little piece of heaven!” She exclaimed, her eyes drinking in the panorama of shrubs and brightly-colored flowers, before settling on the gazebo, which seemed to float in space as if it were a portal into the celestial city itself.

  Spying them as they came through the door and down the porch steps, the startled Anna Lee gave Stella Jo a wan smile and a fluttery wave of the hand.

  ****

  Chapter 18

  Stella Jo went through torment to visit Mark John Davies, or as everyone now knew, Duane Everett McIlhenny, that first time in county jail. That’s the way it is with many things in life the first time you try them, no matter how good they may ultimately prove to be. Once you’ve passed through the initial fires of trial or temptation, a second go at it may seem like a piece of cake. That’s the way it was with Stella, when it came to visiting Duane’s “mother” in the Federal prison, except that she wasn’t one to take anything for granted. As sheltered of a life as some might think she’d led, she wasn’t willing to depend only on experience, when what she really needed was grace. Visiting an inmate in the “Big House” or the “Big Rock,” as she heard so many people call the pen, wouldn’t be greatly different from the county jail, the real difference being that Duane wasn’t Mertie Davies. She knew plenty about Duane’s early childhood upbringing, if not his later years: Mertie she knew nothing about except for what little information Chance Odoms had been able to supply.

  When it came to the criminal activities for which the woman had been convicted, mostly bunco schemes, check forgery and mail theft, those spoke nothing of a violent nature. Kidnapping was a different story altogether, it seemed to Stella. Mertie and Bert Davies hadn’t kidnapped Duane at gunpoint, but kidnapping was commonly violent, and certainly Duane’s kidnapping had been emotionally violent for her family, not to speak of to the young boy himself. Which all goes to say that she had good reason to believe Mertie Davies was a hardened character. Maybe not an outwardly violent person who would’ve shot you for a few dollars, but certainly someone who was thoroughly dishonest and callous enough to rip the heart out of a family without a second thought.

  That was why Stella Jo (depending on God rather than experience), prayed throughout the 5 1/2 hour train ride to Owaloosa, Georgia, where Mertie was lodged at the Federal Correctional Institution for Women. She would have driven her Galaxie 500 and asked someone along for company, namely Ioletta, but the car was in no shape for long trips. It was enough that it took her back and forth to work on weekdays and to Piggly Wiggly when called upon.

  She would have visited Bert Davies at nearby FCI Jesup, too, except that through Chance Odoms he had refused to meet with her. Bert Davies may have eventually admitted to fraud, mail theft and a slew of other lesser crimes, but he was not about to confess having had anything to do with the kidnap of Duane Everett McIlhenny. As far as he knew, Mark John Davies was an orphaned nephew of his wife, whom he’d never questioned or doubted about the matter. The boy had come to them many years before and taken on the privilege of bearing the Davies name. When? He couldn’t exactly say, but they had raised him as their own, housing, feeding, and clothing him out of their own pockets, without thanks from anyone. If his wife was telling a different story now, it was about time. He wouldn’t want to live with something as terrible as the kidnapping of a child on his conscience. By the way, his wife’s misdeeds in the affair wouldn’t affect his upcoming parole hearings, would they?

  Privately, Chance Odoms revealed to Stella that Alabama authorities were in talks with the Feds about filing kidnapping charges against Bert and Mertie Davies any day now. Mertie Davies might escape justice through a trip to the graveyard, but Bertie, as Chance Odoms called him, hadn’t the good luck of contracting cancer. Not yet.

  Hands folded in her lap over her white patent leather purse, Stella was seated in a visitor’s alcove with glass between her and where Mertie Davies would sit once she was let in with the other inmates. Black phones, minus their dialers, were on either side of the glass, awaiting their use. No one had said, but she wondered if someone would monitor their conversation. Or would they simply record it? She couldn’t imagine someone sitting around all day, listening in on conversations between inmates and their visitors--but considering her experiences with the judicial and prison authorities so far, she wouldn’t have put it past them. Then again, maybe they had to do that sort of thing to prevent the inmates from escaping or doing harm to one another.

  Stella really did not know what to expect, as the female inmates filed in and took their places. She had never seen any pictures of Mertie Davies and no one had provided her with a description of the woman. She imagined a woman not unlike herself--tougher, of course, hardened looking--but now she found herself face-to-face, separated only by glass, with someone no more than half her size. Mertie Davies, in fact, couldn’t tip the scales at 85 pounds. It was difficult to believe, looking at her for the first time, that this frail woman had stolen her son Duane or could have wrestled him into her car without someone else’s assistance. Frail and likely to become much frailer, she was also quite pretty. Her prettiness, though, Stella figured, wou
ld soon fade under the ravages of cancer.

  Mertie, more accustomed to the routine, was the first to pick up the phone. “Hello,” she said, with no question in her voice.

  “You’re Mertie Davies?” Stella asked, unsure, searching the woman’s bruised looking eyes.

  “That’s me, none other. You Stella McIlhenny?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  For a few long moments, the women stared at one another, neither one smiling or frowning, like one might simply stare in the mirror to confirm she has applied the right amount of makeup or penciled her eyebrows on evenly.

  “Duane’s mother,” Stella explained unnecessarily, breaking the silence.

  Mertie stared blankly, for the moment not making the connection between Duane and her own Mark John Davies.

  “Mark John’s real mother,” Stella said. She had wondered whether she might break down with weeping at this point or if she would explode with long-buried rage. Now that the moment had come, she marveled at her sense of calm. Staring at Mertie, looking into her empty, hopeless eyes, she realized she bore no hatred for this woman. The years of mourning over Duane, and her own sense of negligence in seeing him safely home that day, seemed to have melted away. Suddenly, a prickly sensation ran down the back of her neck.

  “What?” Mertie said. Her eyes darted nervously, as if straining to see something or someone more than only Stella.

  “They tell me you have cancer,” Stella said. It wasn’t what she had meant to say, but once the words were out, she knew immediately that they were the words she was supposed to say.

  Big tears formed in Mertie’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “Nobody cares!” She sobbed, covering her face with one hand.

  “That’s not true,” Stella told her. Her heart ached to reach through the glass to somehow comfort Mertie.

  “Nobody--”

  “I care,” Stella said, wishing to say more, but knowing it was not quite time to do so.

  “Wh-why would you, after what I did to you?” She asked, struggling to compose herself.

  “I forgive you, Mertie,” Stella gently said. “In the name of the Lord Jesus, I forgive you.”