Angel Thieves

by Kathi Appelt

  Of course, he doesn’t sleep in his stroller anymore, and over time he and his dad fixed the place up so it isn’t so ratty. His dad hung old posters of baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan, one in his Houston Astros uniform and another with his Texas Rangers uniform, on the walls, along with a red-and-blue neon Budweiser Beer sign that features a cart being pulled by the Budweiser Clydesdales. Paul doesn’t drink Budweiser, but he loves Nolan Ryan and the Clydesdales and so does Cade, and they both like the way the legs of the horses run and how the wheels of the carriage turn whenever the sign is turned on.

  “Just look at us,” Paul said. “We’ve got us a bachelor pad.” Cade didn’t care what his dad called it. To him, the only name that mattered was home.

  And Mrs. Walker? She has loved him all his life—his father, too—loved them both, in the fierce way that fairy godmothers, related or not, tend to do. Paul and Cade would do anything for her. They’d even go out in the driving rain in old cemeteries in the darkest dark of night.

  Paul Curtis

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  SIXTEEN YEARS AGO

  Dear Evie,

  I hope this letter gets to you. It’s the only one I’ll ever write. You made me promise not to ever return. I won’t. But in case you want to find me, I’ll be at Walker’s Art and Antiques Store. When you’re ready, that’s where I’ll be.

  Love,

  Paul

  The Marble Fields

  LONG SWAMP, GEORGIA

  CHEROKEE NATION

  1837

  Count the years in millions. Count the tiny sea creatures in billions or more. Count the massive weight of water and sand and heat and fold it together in layers, press it down, down, and down, and fuse it into calcareous beds that grow and grow. Then let the ocean rock itself back and forth, to and fro, over millennia until at last she finally pulls herself back, exposing mountains so white they make the moon look pale, showing off the ridges of pink and gray and blue.

  Let those mountains and ridges catch the sparks from falling stars, let them sing back to the howling wind, and sink down, farther and farther toward the center of the Earth.

  Then cover it all with clay and sand and watch the grasses grow and the trees rise tall and thick, hiding the moonlit, star-struck stone.

  Count the breezes that blow, and the rains that fall, exposing an outcropping here and there. Count the Etowah, who turned the stone into statues and buried them in their mounds taller than trees, mounds that they built over hundreds of years.

  Count the Creek and Cherokee who carved the stone into bowls, and chimneys, and sturdy steps for their cabins. Carved it into animals and figures small enough for a pocket or a pouch. Smooth, translucent, warm to the touch, holding moonlight, holding stardust.

  Pink, gray, blue, white marble. As beautiful as the marble of Tuscany and Greece and Macedonia.

  Count the people between 1838 and 1839. Creek. Cherokee. Chickasaw. Choctaw. Seminole. Houses burned. Crops destroyed. Families ripped from homes.

  Count the ghosts, count them in thousands, numbers impossible to reckon, who died along the trail. Elders and children were the first to go. But not the last.

  Go ahead.

  Count them.

  First, they were coralled into stockades. Then they were forced to march away, away from their homelands. Count the army troops, atop their horses and mules. Count the betrayals, the broken treaties. Count the fevers, the frostbite, the broken hearts, the starving bellies. Don’t stop counting.

  Not until you count a tall, thin boy who carried the marble with him.

  Until he didn’t.

  Buffalo Bayou

  HOUSTON

  If it’s marbles you want, the bayou has them. She loves their different names: aggie, tom, bonker, clam, hogger, toe breaker, onion skin, bumblebee, jasper, tiger eye.

  Made of glass, made of clay, made of alabaster.

  Made of marble.

  Yes, some marbles are made of marble.

  You could make a bet. You could have a tournament.

  The bayou doesn’t need any games. She’s happy with the marbles just the way they are, the way they capture the light as they fall through the water, the way it splits into thousands of shards.

  Soleil Broussard

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  LATELY

  Cade. He sits behind her in Mrs. Franco’s American literature class at Henrik Brenner High School, and it’s as if he’s brand-new, this Cade-right-behind-her. This Cade-who-smells-like-wintergreen. The Cade-who-is-living-and-breathing-in-the-same-world-as-her.

  What is she supposed to do with all of this Cade? Maybe she could tell Channing and Grapes? Maybe she should ask her mom? Or dad? But how? How is she supposed to say all the things she wants to say, especially if she doesn’t really know what those things are?

  Major Bay

  HOUSTON, REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

  1845

  Major Bay, he kept his ear to the ground, he knew the schedules of the steamboats that came up and down the river from Galveston. He knew the hiding places where a body could wait for a passing barge.

  He knew how to get the word out, when it needed to get out. Someone want to cross that river into Mexico? He knew how to get them there.

  Don’t call him Moses. He’d never stand for that. Don’t call him friend. He doesn’t have time. Don’t call him at all.

  He’ll find you when you’re ready.

  Just before the Captain died, he knew. . . . Achsah was ready.

  Achsah

  HOUSTON, REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

  1845

  Her name meant “locket,” from the Hebrew Bible. “Something to be treasured,” said the Captain, slamming the Bible shut. And he had “treasured” her over and over, her first baby arriving barely a year later, followed soon by another who didn’t live, and one more who did. A pair of daughters, the only sweetness she had known since she left Happiness in Alexandria and the thin boy at the Forks of the Road. Now here she was, a free woman, with the papers to prove it. That should taste sweet, shouldn’t it?

  But then the Captain went and tricked her. He signed away their daughters, her little girls, to the wife of his old friend James Morgan. Five and three years old. Just signed them away. Like that.

  “Only till they’re twenty-one,” he had told her. Twenty-one! That was too long. Achsah knew that by the time her girls turned twenty-one, no one in the Republic of Texas would remember that they should be freed, no one would remind them, not one person would vouch for them, especially not James Morgan.

  Achsah clenched the thin fabric of her nightdress in both of her fists and tugged hard until the collar of it dug into the back of her neck. She felt the burn of it. In the other room, her daughters slept. Just down the road, she knew that Mrs. Morgan waited.

  “What’s she need with two little girls?” asked Achsah to no one at all. “What’s Mrs. Morgan need with my girls?”

  From the window, she could hear the quiet water of the river, the sun still hours away. Mother River. Some called it Buffalo River. Why, she didn’t know. She hadn’t seen a real buffalo, though she had seen the skins stacked up on the docks waiting to be loaded onto ships and headed for the markets. Those weren’t the only skins. Cowhides. Wolves. Beaver. Bobcats. Plenty of wildlife in Texas. Plenty of hunters to bring their skins to the docks.

  There were other kinds of hunters too, the kind that tracked a person down with dogs and ropes and long rifles.

  What else? Achsah had seen the slaves who were arriving by the hundreds, by the thousands, from the southern states to the east and the islands of the Caribbean. Unlike the skins, they weren’t being shipped out. They were being shipped in.

  For a second she thought she heard the raspy rattle of the Captain’s breath, but when she looked toward him, there was nothing, nothing but his body, which had once seemed so enormous, but now looked so small. Like a shell, she thought, and she was reminded of the empty shell of a crab, cracked open and fragile, so thin that sunlight could see
p through if you held it to the sky. She listened again, but all she heard was the lap of the cool, muddy water as it beat against the banks, just below her window. A thin wisp of fog floated over the river’s glassy surface, a haint, barely visible in the thin glow of stars.

  Achsah, it seemed to say, run while you can. Achsah crossed her hands over her chest. The haint hovered over the water. Find the Lady, it whispered.

  How easy it would be now, to just take her papers and go. To Mexico. Or California. Or any place except here. Since Texas was severed from Mexico, nothing could keep the Texans, along with the Americans who were pouring into the republic daily, from owning slaves. They even named the settlement after the general, Sam Houston, the man who defeated Santa Anna. The man who signed the deal. Unlike Mexico, slavery was the official law in Texas. Texas won the war. Slaves were the prize.

  She should get herself on the Captain’s ship while she could, the ship that carried cotton from the turning basin in Harrisburg, down the dark brown river into the Gulf of Mexico and off to sea. She knew exactly where it was docked in Galveston, knew the port there, the same port she’d arrived in six years earlier. She and the Captain had lived on the old island before he moved them to Harrisburg, just south of the new city of Houston. Both of the girls had been born on that narrow strip of sand between the mainland and the sea. She knew that the ship sailed to Mexico from time to time, loaded with cotton for sale in the Mexican market.

  “Mexico,” Achsah said aloud. If she could get to Galveston, she could get to Mexico. She had gotten word, one whispered word to another, that Major Bay had made arrangements.

  Run, the haint on the river whispered as it floated above the water. And she should, she should run like the river, run to the sea, run to the boat that she arrived on.

  And then in her mind’s eye she saw Mrs. Morgan’s sour eyes, her mouth a straight line that cut across her pale face, as if she had a constant toothache. Achsah rubbed the side of her own face. If she could, she’d rub Mrs. Morgan’s face until she couldn’t see it anymore. Just rub it away.

  Free. The Captain had promised, and he had kept his promise. But how could Achsah be free without her daughters? Instead of heading south, she would go north, against the river’s currents, to Houston. That’s what Major Bay instructed. It was her only chance to keep her girls away from Morgan.

  The cock crowed, the Captain died, she had to go. As fast as she could, because she knew that the Morgans could walk through the front door anytime—maybe as soon as the sun rose, maybe in a day or even two. No matter. Whenever they arrived, it would be too soon. They wouldn’t knock. They wouldn’t wait. They’d take her baby girls.

  Achsah hurried to their room, nudged them right out of their bed, all sleepy eyed and dreamy, pulled them onto their feet, their hair like soft brown clouds around their little girl faces, stunned into waking.

  Who could be free with all that trickery swirling over her? Not Achsah. And not her girls. Mary Ann and Juba. Quickly they all three changed into their day clothes. Achsah reached into the pantry and grabbed some potatoes and biscuits and dried ham. Then she picked up a cast-iron kettle, the one she had boiled water in for the Captain’s tea, maybe a thousand cups of tea, maybe more, tea imported from South Carolina. He wouldn’t be drinking any more cups of tea, would he? She put the provisions inside the kettle and slid the lid over it.

  Finally she patted the pocket of her skirt to make sure that the tiny figurine was still there, a chunk of pink marble, carved in the shape of a woman, a round circle for her mouth wide open as if it were breathing in the entire world, given to her at the Forks of the Road by the thin boy whose name she never knew. It was the only thing she had ever owned, including her very own self.

  No more. She was free. Almost.

  Only a few days earlier, Reverend Phillips had visited the dying Captain, to pray for healing and salvation. Achsah had stood in the dark corner of the room, in the shadow. Seen, but not. She listened. “I’ve brought you the Word of the Lord, brother,” said the minister. But the word that came to Achsah wasn’t from the Lord. It arrived the next day, and it came from Major Bay, instructions passed to her from one slave to the next, whispered in brief exchanges at the fruit stand, spoken in quick passings at the stable, sung while walking between rows of corn on a hot summer morning. She had memorized them. She knew where she had to go.

  Then, with steps as quiet as a fox, Achsah and her daughters disappeared.

  And the haint on the river slid into the glassy water, whispering. Run, Achsah. Find the Lady and run.

  Juba and Mary Ann

  HOUSTON, REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

  1845

  Juba held on to her mother’s cotton skirt with one hand and on to her little sister’s hand with the other. She was in the middle, and that was not where she wanted to be. She was more used to being on the edges, where she could watch and listen.

  It was so early, the sun was still tucked away, but it felt as if she had been up for hours. In fact, it felt as if she had been awake since before she was even born. Every nerve ending, every cell, was on watch, and Juba was good at that, watching. She had watched as the Captain had grown weaker and weaker, while his once-booming voice waned to a raspy whisper, crowded out by the hideous, hacking cough.

  It had scared her, to see the Captain, such a large man, become so small in such a short time. It scared her to be caught in the middle like this, between her mama and little sister.

  Mary Ann was scared too. So scared. She wanted to cry so bad her face hurt from holding it in.

  Achsah had told them, “Got to be quiet.” She said it underneath her voice, so low only the three of them could have possibly heard her. And she said it especially to Mary Ann. Juba had no problem being quiet. But Mary Ann, every bit of her wanted to make noise. Noise was her bailiwick.

  Even the Captain, stern as he was, always let her sing. Sometimes he even clapped while she sang, especially to “The Starry Crown.” It was her favorite, and she knew every verse by heart. Maybe, she thought, if she could sing about the starry crown, she wouldn’t need to cry. She started to open her mouth, but Achsah looked at her hard, the hardest way she’d ever seen her mama look at her.

  “Not now,” said Achsah. “Not now.” So Mary Ann gripped her big sister’s hand as hard as she could. She held on. She was quiet.

  Soleil Broussard

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  WHAT MATTERS

  Prayers. For a long time, Soleil didn’t know that she was allowed to make up her own. Instead, she thought that the only people who could make them up were preachers and nuns and the Bible figures, like King David with all his psalms. People who had credentials.

  Then one day her mother told her, “Lay-Lay, all a prayer needs is a ‘Dear Lord’ at the beginning and an ‘Amen’ at the end. What you put in the middle depends on you.” Then she added, “Just make sure the middle matters.”

  Right now, there is so much that matters. There is Tyler and his family, hoping to find their way in California. There is the persistent rain that never seems to stop. And now there is Cade. Cade-right-behind-her.

  Pray, Soleil. Pray.

  Cade Curtis

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  JULY 18, TEN YEARS BACK

  Cade didn’t meet his mother, Evie, until he was six years old. Actually he was six years, five months, and twelve days. It was a moment carved into Cade’s psyche, a moment not to be forgotten no matter how hard he tried. Until then, Evie was just a kind of shadow that Cade could once in a while see out of the corner of his eye, a sort of mental cricket that created a low-frequency hum in his head. She was always there, but not really.

  Whenever he asked Paul about her, the response was always “She’ll show up when she’s ready.” And all Cade could do in the face of that statement was wait.

  And then the day came when she was. Ready.

  One afternoon, at the back of the store, in the midst of a furious pinball frenzy between Cade and his dad, Cade ha
ppened to look over his shoulder. Normally he didn’t take his eyes off the silver ball, bouncing from one chiming bumper to another, only barely looking to see the score numbers add up, but for some reason, he stepped back and took a quick glance, and that was when he noticed the woman standing behind them. She was looking from Paul to him, him to Paul, and all of a sudden she became a crying woman, with short, spiky blond hair, a color not too different from his own. He also noticed that her fingernails were painted a pale, pale blue color that reminded him of Easter eggs.

  And the next thing Cade knew, Paul had his arms wrapped around her, holding on to her, like if he let her go, she might fly apart. The silver pinball rolled right down the center of the machine and into the gutter. Ding, ding, ding. Game over!

  They stood like that for a long time, wrapped tightly together, the woman and Paul. Cade watched in stunned silence. Here was someone he’d never seen before, and his dad was hugging her as if he’d known her forever.

  And all at once, she pushed Paul away and rubbed both of her eyes with the backs of her hands. Her face was a hot mess of tears.

  Then she pushed Paul again, shoved him back on his heels. “You promised!” she said, at first only barely audible.

  “Evie,” said Paul.

  Evie. A name carved into Cade’s memory. And it seems like he might have laughed or cried or something, but actually he was bewildered, especially when she stepped forward, both fists raised, and shoved Paul yet again, her face knotted with anger. “You promised me! It was a promise!” she cried. Which just added to Cade’s bewilderment.

  Here he had wondered and waited for his whole life, all six years of it, and Evie had finally shown up, just like his dad said she would. She was apparently ready. After all this time of not being ready. But she was also furious.