Angel Thieves

by Kathi Appelt

  No longer.

  However, if you rambled along the Buffalo Bayou, coursing through the very heart of the city, you’d notice that there are patches of wildness, thick brushy areas along its banks that are too dense to wander through. Most people avoid these wild, wet acres, filled with stinging vines and poisonous snakes.

  Or so it would seem. But make no mistake, there are secret coves inside this wild. In fact, there is one such cover that has been cleared only enough to set a row of makeshift wooden cages along the banks, with only small wire windows in the doors, all painted green and brown so they are impossible to see. And one of those cages holds a small, starving ocelot. She is worth upward of twenty thousand dollars, maybe more to the right person. There are those who would pay to have a pet as exotic as an ocelot; pay a lot. They might pay just as much for her beautiful spotted coat. Either way, she’s the most valuable creature the Caretaker’s caught.

  But over the past few days, the rain has kept him from feeding her. The bayou, normally so serene and quiet, is swollen and hard to navigate. Access has been difficult. Zorra is sleeping the sleep of the hungry.

  If she could see the bayou through the wires of the door, she might notice the wisps of fog hovering over the water. They come and go, rise up and down above the bayou’s surface, keep watch.

  Zorra, motionless in her awful pen. She waits until at last the morning arrives with a clear blue sky, through the snuffling of the creatures nearby, waits for the now-familiar screech of the awful bird, waits like a statue, so still, until at last the air becomes as motionless as she does. Finally she stands on her shaking legs, stretches her sore body. She lifts her nose to the quiet air.

  She smells him first. He reeks of something burnt. Then she hears him, the high-pitched sound he makes, like a bird, but not any bird she knows. There are no footsteps, only the soft sound of oars in the water. The river has risen so high the Caretaker can only get into this cove by boat.

  Zorra pushes herself as hard as she can toward the back of the cage. As he opens the door, the blast of light that streams in momentarily blinds her. She blinks, and wraps her tail tight around her body. Her fur is on end. From the back of her swollen throat, she sends out a low, warning growl.

  The Caretaker, his head even with the door, blows in her face and jabs at her sides with the wooden paddle, pressing into her ribs so that she can’t bolt through the door. She swats at the oar, but he only laughs and presses the paddle harder. She cries out. But the Caretaker just blows in her face again. She recoils from his burnt breath and flattens her ears.

  Then he quickly reaches into the cage and pulls out the metal bowl and the paddle and locks the door. In a moment, he reopens it and sets the bowl back in her pen, filled at last with the rancid food.

  Food.

  Zorra’s body trembles from the hunger that gnaws at her. She resists the urge to pounce on it. Instead, she waits until the Caretaker locks the door again. Waits until she can’t smell his smoky breath or hear his birdlike whistle. Waits until at last she can’t wait anymore.

  Food.

  It isn’t warm. It isn’t solid. There are no bones or skin to chew on. It isn’t the true food of an ocelot, even though it takes away the horrible ache of hunger.

  And just outside her cage, rising atop the water, the foggy spirits call her name, remind her who she is: Zorra, Zorra. Zorra. And once again, the rain begins to fall.

  Buffalo Bayou

  HOUSTON

  A promise here. A promise there. The bayou has heard them all.

  Girl: Promise you’ll drop him off.

  Boy: I will.

  Girl: They won’t ask questions. It’s the law; they won’t ask.

  Boy: I’ll drop him off.

  Girl: If they ask his name . . .

  Boy: Moses. I’ll tell them Baby Moses.

  Girl: It’s the law.

  Boy: I promise.

  One promise: broken.

  One baby: kept.

  James Morgan

  HOUSTON, REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

  1845

  History turns on battles lost and battles won. Mexico lost the war, lost Texas at San Jacinto, in a battle that lasted all of twenty minutes. Santa Anna returned to Mexico in disgrace. Even the Texans could hardly believe that their ragtag army, under the leadership of Sam Houston, had beaten back the highly trained troops of the Mexican general, especially after the devastation at the Alamo.

  Mexico lost and Texas became its own country, and thanks to that twenty minutes on the battlefield, only twenty minutes of warfare, the “peculiar institution” was granted a reprieve. No more interference from Mexico, where slavery was declared illegal. Now that Texas was free of Mexico and its emancipation law, thousands of Negro slaves could be imported into the new republic.

  In 1836, Texas had an estimated slave population of five thousand. The Texas Constitution legalized and preserved slavery. And before it joined the United States in 1846, ten years later, the Republic was home to at least thirty thousand enslaved people.

  In 1845, there was one James Morgan, plantation owner, veteran of the Texian Army, friend of the Captain, and liege of a brand-new home in the brand-new town of Houston, and also several hundred acres near the mouth of the Brazos River. He needed his slaves.

  “Cane doesn’t chop itself,” said Morgan. “Cotton doesn’t git itself to the gin all by its lonesome.” He spat on the ground and rubbed his boot heel in it. He’d been robbed! The girls, Mary Ann and Juba, had been promised to him, willed to his wife, but they had hied away before the Captain’s body was even cold.

  Never mind that they were taken by their mother. They weren’t hers to take, and Morgan had the papers to prove it. He stood at the foot of the Captain’s grave and made a promise. “Achsah,” he said under his breath. “You won’t get away with this. If I have to travel a thousand miles, I’ll find you. Those girls are mine.”

  And he set a slave hunter on her trail, one who had a reputation for finding runaways.

  Juba and Mary Ann. Five and three years old. His until they turned twenty-one.

  His.

  Achsah had her papers. She could have been a free woman. But she was a criminal now. For stealing her very own daughters.

  Morgan kicked the loose dirt on his old friend’s freshly dug grave. “I’ll find her,” he promised. “Make no bones about it.”

  Soleil Broussard

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  THURSDAY NIGHT

  When Soleil’s ancestors walked through the hip-deep water that poured over the banks of the Mississippi, her great-great uncle Armand held the accordion over his head until he couldn’t anymore. He then strapped it to a mule. But the water kept on rising.

  Listen, Soleil, the accordion holds that mule’s bray.

  The rain keeps falling. Soleil stands in the middle of her room and sways from side to side. She takes a step to the left and back. She twirls and twirls and twirls.

  “Jolie blonde, tu croyais il y avait just toi,

  Il y a pas just toi dans le pays pour moi aimer.

  Je peux trouver just une autre jolie blonde,

  Bon Dieu sait, moi, j’ai un tas.”

  Soleil closes her eyes, and she can imagine her great-great uncles and aunts, her great-great grand-père and grand-mère. And all that water. Water sliding over the back of the mule, water grabbing their ankles and toes. She hears the persistent rain falling on the roof.

  Water, she wonders, does it make you a little crazy?

  Does Cade think she’s crazy? Because she feels just a wee bit crazy right now. She had started to run after him right after class, but he had slipped away so fast she couldn’t find him. Then she looked for him after school. Again, no luck.

  She would send him a text if she had his number. She doesn’t. She would fire off an e-mail, too. But does she have his address? Nope. She doesn’t even know where he lives, and even if she did, wouldn’t it be crazy to just show up on his doorstep?

  “And where on
the planet are the Byrds?!” she asks nobody.

  Soleil flops onto her bed, belly-first. Lying there, her face in her pillow, she fully understands why people tear their hair out: because the world keeps going and there is absolutely nothing you can do to go back and fix it.

  Cade Curtis

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  THURSDAY NIGHT

  Ultimate Love. Walker’s Art and Antiques Store always had on hand a variety of paintings of Jesus. Martin called them all “white Jesus,” because they mostly were. Cade has seen plenty of statues of Jesus too. Cemeteries, especially Catholic cemeteries, tend to host them.

  They all look the same. Long hair, head tilted, palms facing up. Serene. So serene. Cade has often wondered whether Jesus really looked like that. He seriously doubted it. Especially the serene part.

  He and Paul have never stolen a statue of Jesus. It’s bad enough, he thinks, that they steal angels, let alone the son of God.

  Soleil Broussard

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  FRIDAY

  So, thanks to a long night of sleeplessness, Soleil came up with a plan. Cade was already seated when she arrived at their classroom, and she waited a full minute before she walked through the door.

  The plan, she said to herself. She had a plan. The lack of sleep was making her a little punchy. But also, she thought, it was making her a little brave. What did she have to lose?

  She turned around and before she could change her mind, she whispered, “Meet me after school at the flagpole.” Then, without letting him answer, she turned her back to him.

  That seemed like a thousand years ago. At last, the final bell rings, and she heads to the courtyard.

  For the first time in several days, there’s a weak sun shining through the clouds, and the rain has paused. It feels like a typical, warm Houston fall afternoon. It’s also typically muggy. As soon as she walks out of the air-conditioned building, she feels a thin layer of sweat condense on her arms.

  She paces around the flagpole and listens as the chain flaps against the metal. She looks up. There is the American flag, and right underneath it, the Lone Star flag of Texas, both of them flagging in the heat. She half smiles at her own pun.

  Other kids race past her, getting on buses or walking out to the parking lot. Some of them wave. “Hey, Soleil,” they say. She’s so nervous all she can do is nod back.

  The newly present sun beats down on her head; she reaches behind and wraps her hair in her hand and twists it away from her neck, an action that normally makes her feel a bit cooler, but not today. Where is he? She leans back against the flagpole and resists the temptation to slide down and just sit there, a human puddle at its base.

  She closes her eyes and starts to pray, but she doesn’t get past “O Lord,” before she feels a tapping on her shoulder. There he is.

  For a moment she can’t say anything, like she is paralyzed, and she can feel embarrassment blazing across her cheeks. But then . . . “Here,” she says, handing him the flyer that Lenny made.

  He looks at it. Frowns. Turns the paper over to the blank side and then back to the printed side. While she’s watching, she notices a thin scratch just underneath his eyebrow. She resists the temptation to reach up and rub it, when—

  “A church party?”

  “Yeah,” she says, followed by, “It’s fun?” She realizes she has said that last part with a rise in her voice, like a question, as if she’s trying to convince herself as much as Cade. And she isn’t entirely sure that fun is the right word for it.

  So, of course, she blurts out, “Pizza!”

  Cade’s face turns from curious to confused. Quickly she adds, “Yes! There’ll be pizza and stuff.” And with that, really, what can she do but stand there, sweat pouring down her back and resting in a pond at the bottom of her spine?

  She wants to tell him everything she knows about the Church on the Bayou, about how it’s been in Houston for more than a century, since almost the start of Houston itself, about how it’s not like most churches, that there used to be a family of Byrds, who have gone to California, taking Tyler with them, and there is a handbell choir too, and how there will be dancing, a disco ball, room to spare.

  And how she knows that she will fit just beneath his chin. Especially that.

  But her mouth is suddenly full of cotton, like she might strangle.

  So instead, there is a long second of silence. Maybe the longest, most silent second ever recorded on terra firma. Soleil holds her breath and sweats some more. Finally she watches as he reaches into his back pocket, pulls out her first note to him, and wraps the flyer around it, kind of like a burrito. “I’ll think about it,” he says.

  Then he rocks forward on his toes, almost as if he is leaning in to whisper something. She leans forward too, but then he quickly rocks back on his heels. And before she can say anything else, he turns around and walks away.

  Soleil feels her cheeks blazing.

  Pizza?!

  Pizza?

  Would Cade even consider coming on Sunday? Why would he? Pizza? She tugs on the tiny gold cross.

  “Dear Lord,” she prays, but she has no idea what to put in the middle, and she is a long way from “Amen.”

  The fastest heart in the world is that of a blue-throated hummingbird, whose heart rate has been measured at more than twelve hundred beats per minute.

  Right then, Soleil’s heart is a hummingbird.

  Pizza

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK

  LITTLE-KNOWN FACT: Over the years Cade and Paul have learned to perfect what Mrs. Walker calls “the Art of Pizza.”

  Once a week, usually on Fridays, but not always, they stand side by side in Mrs. Walker’s kitchen and create a weekly master pizza. From time to time they blow it, like the night Paul insisted on using kale—“Hey, it tasted good in chili.”

  But more often than not, their pizzas are delicious. And in the world of Mrs. Walker, Paul, and Cade—and also Martin—you could call them famous.

  Achsah

  HOUSTON, REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

  1845

  Achsah was born a slave, birthed on a mat woven from reeds in a tiny cabin next to a field, somewhere along the Mississippi River, near Alexandria, Louisiana. Been a slave her entire eighteen years.

  When she left that morning that the Captain died, her two young daughters right beside her, she made sure to run to the river. Even though she knew that there were snakes and alligators hidden in its slow-moving currents, she had to take that risk. In one hand she held the iron kettle, packed with their few provisions. With the other she held on to Juba, who in turn held on to Mary Ann. Unlike the Mississippi that she had grown up on, this river was narrow, and according to the Captain, not that deep. That was small consolation to Achsah, who couldn’t swim, nor could her girls.

  Thankfully the banks were largely hidden by thick forest and undergrowth. A person could slip into that brush and disappear, which was what Achsah did. But she knew that no matter how thick the brush, a good dog would be able to track her, and she was sure that as soon as Morgan discovered her gone, he would set a whole pack after them.

  She had seen what dogs could do to a body, and she couldn’t let that happen to her girls. She pulled them down to the water’s edge, where they stepped into the muddy river. It tugged at the hems of their dresses, dragged at them. Still, they waded in, until the water came to Juba’s waist and Mary Ann’s chest. Fear ran across her younger daughter’s face, and Achsah realized her mistake. She needed to move Mary Ann to the middle so that Juba, who was a head taller than her little sister, could help keep her above the surface.

  “There,” she whispered. The fear on Mary Ann’s face eased a tiny bit. “Be brave,” she said to both of them. And while she pulled them forward, Achsah prayed that there were no sinkholes, no snakes, no quicksand beneath their feet.

  “Snakes aren’t as mean as the dogs,” she told her girls. “They’re scared of us. Not like the dogs, who ain’t.�
�� And then she added, “Mother River, help us,” as she tugged on Mary Ann’s hand, all the while holding the kettle up like she might hold a lantern.

  They pushed through the shallow water, the sun creeping up too fast, and they stayed as near to the shore as they could, to take advantage of the vines that swung down from the overhanging branches of the willow trees like a curtain. But not so close that a hound could detect their presence. Still, Achsah knew that water wasn’t a deterrent for a bloodhound. It might confuse it, but not for long.

  As much as she longed for the morning to stop coming at them, the sun crept higher. With the gathering light, Achsah knew they needed to get out of the water and into the woods. Otherwise someone might spot them from the other bank. Ever since Houston had been established, more and more boats were arriving, bringing their wares in and trading them for goods to ship out. In only a few short years, the wharves of the new city had teemed with barges loaded down with goods, and steamboats full of new arrivals. And now, with talk of Texas joining the Union, there were more arrivals all the time.

  Some of the boats, she knew, carried passengers like her, Negro slaves. Coming in to chop sugarcane and work the cotton fields, coming in to serve masters who would treasure them, night after night, and then trick them. Some might be arriving from the Forks of the Road Slave Market, just like she had. And for a second, she thought about that thin boy she had been chained to. The carving in her pocket bumped against her leg. Didn’t even know his name. And then she realized it didn’t matter. She had missed him anyways. All these six years later, she had missed him.

  She trudged through the water. She couldn’t think about him now. She had to find a place along the banks that would shelter them until dark. She looked over her shoulder at her two girls, their mouths clamped shut so as not to make a sound.

  She wished she had prepared them better, but then again, she hadn’t expected to be tricked. The Captain didn’t tell her that he was giving guardianship of the girls to Mrs. Morgan until days before he died.