Angel Thieves

by Kathi Appelt

  He watched as Paul tried to calm her down. “Evie,” he said. “I’m sorry.” And that just seemed to set her off even more.

  “Sorry?” The word seemed to explode in the air. “Sorry?” Boom!

  Sorry sorry sorry flew through the shop, bounced against the walls, the windows, the pinball machines. Ding! Ding! Ding!

  “I trusted you! It was a promise. You promised. . . .” Her voice thinned into a low wail of promise, promise, promise. Over and over, until she wrapped her arms around her own waist and sank onto the floor. While Cade watched, his father knelt down beside her. “I’m sorry, Evie. I’m so, so sorry.” His voice was so soft Cade could only barely hear it. But he could hear Evie. Loud. Shouting. Filling up the universe.

  And then Cade’s head went into overdrive, as if his thoughts were a silver pinball, banging into the sides of his brain. Ding! So many words, spilling out. Ding! Ding! Crazy hard words. Ding! Ding! Ding!

  And the more words he heard, the more scared he felt, until finally he couldn’t breathe. Panic filled his chest, his arms, until whoosh, a warm liquid streamed down his legs and filled his favorite sneakers, the ones with the blinking red lights, the ones that Mrs. Walker had bought for him, the ones he loved beyond compare. Ding! Ding! Ding! And all at once, starting from the very bottom of his gut, a furious high-pitched, “NOOOOOOOO!!!!!” came screaming out of his mouth.

  Dingdingdingdingdingding!!!!!

  Cade took off, leaving a puddly trail behind him. He scrambled through the store, out the door, and all the way to the bachelor pad atop the garage. There he shot into the bathroom and slammed the door. Wham!

  For the next several moments he paced back and forth, two steps forward, two steps back. Forward. Back. Forward. Back. Finally he sat on the edge of the tub and panted. He sucked huge gulps of air in through his mouth, but it didn’t help. The smell of urine filled his nose.

  His cheeks burned. He stood up and stripped his soaking shoes and pants off and threw them into the bathtub. And suddenly he couldn’t help it. Standing there in only his T-shirt, his wet clothes piled in a heap, he burst into tears. Ever since he was born, he had waited for his mom to be ready.

  But as it turned out, he wasn’t ready for her.

  He turned on the shower, then stepped in, stood on top of his soggy clothes, and let the water run down his body. He couldn’t tell where the water began and his tears ended. They were all mushed up together.

  After a long while, he heard his father knock.

  “Cade,” said his dad. “It’s okay, Li’l Dude. She’s gone.”

  But knowing she was no longer there didn’t help. Seeing her in person had made her real, and the reality of Evie changed everything he knew. He heard his dad open the door and stand outside the shower curtain. Cade was thankful that Paul didn’t pull it open, thankful that his dad somehow knew that he needed his privacy. “When you’re done, we’ll make a pizza,” said Paul. “Sound good?”

  Cade nodded. Pizza sounded good, especially Paul’s pizza. Obviously Paul couldn’t hear him nodding, but he seemed to understand anyways, and his father said, “I’ll be right here, kiddo.” And that was followed by the best words Cade had ever heard: “There’s love enough.”

  Cade Curtis

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  EVERY DAY SINCE

  And the reality of Paul is that he has been true to his word. He’s never stopped being right here. It’s a promise he’s kept. Now Cade is sixteen, exactly the same age his father was when Paul broke that other promise, the one to Evie.

  In the history of Paul, there were options. There was one he had promised Evie he would take. But he didn’t. He couldn’t.

  And Cade knows that his father still thinks about Evie. He knows this because he thinks about her too. He can’t help it. Because right before Cade had bolted, he heard Evie tell Paul, “If my husband ever found out, he’d take my kids away from me, and I could never live with that.”

  Even amid the chiming of the silver pinballs in his head, Cade heard those worst words ever. In fact, he’s never stopped hearing those words. But now, when he thinks about them, he also thinks, Fuck you, Evie. Fuck you.

  Achsah

  HOUSTON, REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

  1845

  There had been a boy for Achsah too. Between Juba and Mary Ann. He had curled up low in her belly, tugging on her back, weighing her down. Her feet outgrew her one pair of shoes, he pressed down that hard. From the start, Achsah knew something was wrong. He was too quiet, too low to the ground.

  The Granny Woman confirmed it. “This baby’s scared. He’s not good for this world.” And so he stayed inside her for too long, and each day, he grew quieter and quieter, until at last, the Granny Woman gave her a dark tea of black cohosh and slippery elm, boiled up with ginger root.

  Three days. Three nights. That’s what it took for the scared boy to finally make his way out. Achsah could tell straightaway that he wasn’t going to stay.

  As if they had heard the news, the nighthawks started screeching, their cries ringing the moon like a collar. Achsah felt her knees buckle out from under her, and the Granny Woman lifted her up and helped her back to the sodden bed, where she rolled onto her side and pressed her face into her hands.

  “Night birds feel it,” said the Granny Woman. “They know when sorrow’s about.” And soon as she said it, the Granny Woman wrapped the baby up in a plain cotton cloth and covered his small, wrinkled face, and all Achsah wanted to do was carve out a hole in the black dirt beside the river and bury herself in it.

  “Take me,” she cried. “Take me!”

  It’s the prayer of every parent. Dear God, take me.

  But don’t take her now. Now she held on to her baby girls. Juba. Mary Ann. No one was taking them from her. Especially not sour-faced Mrs. Morgan. Not if she could help it.

  Run, Achsah. Run.

  Find the Lady.

  Cade Curtis

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  THE HISTORY OF ASSHATS

  It was Cade’s best friend, Martin Noriega, who originally dubbed Evie with the nickname “Asshat.” Same for Cade’s grandparents, only plural. “Asshats.”

  Cade never forgot the first time he heard that word. He and Martin were examining the myriad of marbles in the store’s collection.

  It was a Saturday afternoon and Mrs. Walker had told them they could each choose ten to keep for their own, the number ten being symbolic for their ages at the time. So there they were, two ten-year-old boys, sitting on an ancient wool rug with dozens of marbles between them.

  While Cade sorted his marbles into groups by color, Martin held a dark brown marble, with tiny gold flecks running through it, up to the light. It was called a galaxy.

  “Look,” Martin said, holding the marble in front of his right eye. “If I ever lost my eye, I could use this as a replacement.” It was true. The marble was exactly the same dark brown as Martin’s eyes, except that Martin’s eyes didn’t have the gold flecks. Still, Cade thought it’d be cool to have a marble for an eye. It made him want to find a blue one, just in case.

  He turned to his blue group, and just as Cade grabbed a deep blue Neptune, Martin asked, “So, is Mrs. Walker your grandmother?” It caught Cade off guard. He hadn’t meant to keep his family history from Martin, but until that question, it had never come up. Mrs. Walker had always seemed like the quintessential grandmother, even though he had never called her anything except Mrs. Walker.

  No one had ever told Cade not to share the information, had they? So while he continued to separate the blue marbles from the red ones, and the red ones from the agates, and the agates from the cat’s-eyes, and so on, taking care to set each one in its respective group, making sure that he didn’t misplace any, the whole History of Paul and Cade spilled out of him, including the part about Evie and her horrible words. And just as he finished, both the story and the sorting, he stopped and sat back on his heels.

  Martin didn’t look up. He kept right on sorting. A huge wor
ry fell over Cade. What if the truth was too much? What if Martin stopped being his friend? What if, what if, what if? He stared at the marbles, and for a second, they all looked the same. Same color, same size, same everything.

  He watched as Martin picked up a red marble, with white threads running through it, rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. Without taking his eyes off the marble, Martin Noriega, best friend ever, held it up to the light, pushed his black hair away from his face, and said, “Asshats.” Then he stuck the marble into his pocket and continued sorting.

  And five seconds later, maybe ten—who was counting?—both of them fell onto the wool rug, laughing. They laughed so hard that tears rolled down their cheeks.

  Asshats. Exactly the right word.

  Soleil Broussard

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  AT SCHOOL

  Soleil slips into her seat in her junior American literature class, and there is Cade-right-behind-her. They are reading The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, a book about soldiers in the Vietnam War.

  Soleil’s grandfather fought and died in that war, and the book makes her think about him, even though she never met him. It’s a collection of short stories, and the title story is about the things that the soldiers took with them, like one soldier carried his moccasins, another kept his girlfriend’s panty hose in his backpack. “For luck” was his reason.

  Thinking about things being carried reminds her of the Byrds, the way they arrived at the church with only a plastic bag containing diapers and puppy chow, and the way they left with Tyler holding on to his honey bear. When they left they were driving an old car, a 2002 PT Cruiser that had at least two hundred thousand miles, or as Dad called it, a “beater.” It wasn’t the most reliable car on the road. And California was a very long way from Texas.

  Soleil clasps her hands on her desk. Please look after them, she whispers.

  Her prayer is interrupted by Mrs. Franco, their teacher. She has given them an assignment: write an essay about an object that you would carry, and why it matters to you.

  But it is not the unread book, or the unfinished essay, that Soleil concentrates on, because in this moment, in the history of Soleil, Cade-right-behind-her is drumming his fingers on his desk.

  And she can’t figure out what to do about any of it—the breathing, the drumming—except that she knows she wants more of him than just the fifty minutes of class, Monday through Friday. In fact, what she really wants is to dance with him. And this thought is a surprise because she has just now thought it. Just now realized that yes, dancing with him is what she wants. She knows that if they were dancing, she would fit just underneath his chin. So perfect! And thinking this new thought, she can almost feel that Cade chin resting on the top of her head, which makes her feel all buzzy, like she might actually light up from all that buzzing.

  She has gone out with other boys. She has kissed other boys. She even let one boy slip his hand up her shirt while she kissed him, an action that left both her and the boy a little embarrassed, a little like that was weird. But those other boys weren’t Cade-right-behind-her.

  All the drumming and buzzing and hand up her shirt makes her feel a little stupid. So she does the one thing that she knows how to do for sure. Dear Lord, she prays, don’t let me be stupid.

  Amen.

  Buffalo Bayou

  HOUSTON

  If words could sink like stones, there would be millions of them resting in the bayou’s bed. As it is, they hover just above her surface, high-pitched whispers. You could mistake them for mosquitoes.

  Careful.

  A word here. A word there.

  You never know when one might sidle into your ear and tell you something you’ve never heard before. It might be true. It might not be wrong. It could be a bald-faced lie.

  Achsah

  HOUSTON, REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

  1845

  About that baby boy. No one ever told her where they took him. Didn’t say where his body lay. But she gave him a name anyways. Named him True. Because that’s what he was, and don’t go telling her that True wasn’t good for this world.

  The truth was, the world wasn’t good for him.

  So he couldn’t stay.

  And Achsah missed him every single day.

  Mrs. Trudy Walker

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  SOME BACKSTORY

  If it hadn’t been for the price of oil, it’s likely that Mrs. Walker would never have dealt in stolen angels.

  Walker’s Art and Antiques was a family-run outfit that she became part of, having fallen in love with and married the son of the son of the son of the original Walker family. Her true love’s name was Hans. They met back in 1960, when she was seventeen and he was thirty.

  One day, approximately eighty years after the original Walker first opened the shop doors, Trudy walked through those same doors, looking for a piece of jewelry with a single pearl that she could give to her mother for her birthday. Her mother had always wanted pearls, but Trudy didn’t have enough money in her clutch to buy too many pearls, so she was hoping to find something pretty that perhaps had one pearl. She figured that maybe something old would be less expensive than something new.

  Thus, Walker’s Art and Antiques. Instead of a pearl, she found her oyster. Hans.

  Straightaway, they got married and went to Cuba. “That was before the embargo,” she told Cade and Paul. “Cuba! Can you imagine it?”

  Theirs was a marriage of such tenderness and joy. “I loved every minute of our life together,” she told them. And bit by bit, she told them about the many adventures in living that she and Hans had shared. The only sadness was their inability to have a baby.

  “We tried,” she’d said. “But eventually we decided to enjoy what we had, not what we didn’t.” And she almost always followed this up by looking straight at Cade and declaring, “And then here you come! Right out of the blue!” She would pause. “It’s almost as if you and your daddy knew that there was an open space here for you, like you were the baby who was meant to be here.”

  And of course, that was followed by “Hans would have loved you!” She had said it so often that Cade was fairly certain that Hans would have loved him. And from what he had heard about Hans, Cade knew he would have loved him right back.

  Sadly Hans died way before his time. He was only fifty years old, a young age for a seemingly healthy man.

  “It was such a shock,” said Mrs. Walker. “I thought I’d never get over it.” And that was always followed by “we always wanted to go back to Cuba.”

  The other person who couldn’t seem to get over it was Hans’s mother, Mrs. Walker the Elder. She was still alive when Hans passed, and she took it so hard that after her son was buried at the old Mother River Cemetery, she ordered a special monument for his grave, a carved angel made of Italian marble, beautiful Carrara marble, the finest in the world. It was a pale shade of gray and had a vein of dark black swirling through it. She’d never seen anything so beautiful. She had it installed at the head of Hans’s grave.

  Trudy loved the angel. She loved her mother-in-law, too. Both women were glad to have each other, and also glad to have the angel to keep the departed Hans from being lonely in his solitary grave.

  Only a couple of years later, the elder Mrs. Walker passed. But our Mrs. Walker managed to keep the art and antiques store running. And she was a discerning businesswoman, maintaining the shop as a cornerstone of the commercial side of the neighborhood.

  The thing about an art and antiques store, especially one that has been in the same place for a long time, is that it serves as a resource. Not every antique is priceless. So young folks just starting out can sometimes find just the right old chair for the corner of their new living room, one that isn’t too expensive, but has a sheen of living on it. A cozy spot to rest.

  On the other end of life, relatives of the departed can find a repository, a place to take items that no one in the family needs or wants, but that they can’t bear to throw a
way. If you’ve ever bought a whimsical set of salt and pepper shakers from an antique store, maybe in the shape of Dutch windmills, they’ve likely come from either the estate sale of the newly deceased or from some family member just dropping them off in hopes that they will eventually find a new table to sit upon.

  And then there are the wealthier patrons who drop in from time to time to see if there is anything of value to possess, like a set of French crystal champagne glasses for their daughter’s wedding, or a carved cherrywood buffet from Pennsylvania to set in the foyer of their new mansion. These last are the bread and butter of the antique business. No one, after all, can survive by selling salt and pepper shakers in the shape of Dutch windmills.

  That was the way the Walker family had always seen it. Mrs. Walker saw it that way too.

  However, running a business alone is not an easy undertaking, especially in Houston. With all its shiny buildings and its Space Center and its noted universities and medical research facilities, Houston is very dependent upon the oil industry. When oil prices are high, Houstonians spend. When oil prices take a dive, things like French champagne glasses and cherrywood buffets turn out to be not so essential. Retail businesses, even old established ones, tend to suffer. Which is what happened in 1985.

  Mrs. Walker did everything. She lowered prices. She held big sales. She kept the air-conditioning set at seventy-six degrees, which is not very helpful in hot, humid Houston. Nevertheless, it was clear to everyone, including her accountant, that Walker’s Art and Antiques was knee-deep in financial troubles. After a hundred years plus some, it was on the brink of closing its doors.

  And then a miracle happened. Well, Mrs. Walker called it a miracle. A well-dressed man wearing a pair of Tony Lama ostrich-skin cowboy boots, boots that cost in the range of five hundred dollars, walked through those almost-closing doors and strolled up and down the aisles. Of course, Mrs. Walker hoped there was something in the store that he wanted. She stood at the counter, watching his every move. Finally he walked up to her and asked, in a voice almost too quiet to hear, “Do you have any carved angels?”