Angel Thieves

by Kathi Appelt

The darkness surprises him, and he blinks to adjust to it. Had the light not been so fractured by the trees’ leaves. Had it not been so thick. Had he not been so intent on what he was doing, he might have paid more attention to the slick ground underfoot, to the way that the black clay of the bayou’s banks was greased from the recent rains.

  But he didn’t, and before he knows it, his feet fly out from underneath him. He reaches out to grab something, anything, but the slippery clay is unforgiving. It teams up with gravity and jerks him sideways.

  All he can see is a dizzy whirl of green. Deep, vibrant, muddy green. All he can smell is the oily dirt, grinding into his face, his hair, his fingernails. All he can hear is the rush of his own blood, pumping into his ears. All he feels is the blinding blow to the back of his head as he pitches backward into the solid gray piling of the bridge. At last, all he remembers is the flash of stars in his eyes before they fade into black.

  That is all.

  And the haints in the bayou spin in their watery bed.

  Cade, they sing. Cade.

  But he can’t hear them.

  Soleil Broussard

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  MONDAY, OCTOBER

  Soleil does not believe that she can go to school today. She starts to tell her mother that she is sick, but then realizes that that would be yet another lie, so instead, she simply announces: “I’m taking the day off.” She will stay home and clean her room. She will scrub the kitchen. Wash windows. Walk the dog if they had one.

  But her mom is not having it. “Perfect,” she says. “I can use your help today.” It seems that the chief administrator of the Church on the Bayou always needs an extra hand, and today, the minister has planned a luncheon for their senior members, and there is plenty to do to get ready.

  “Your choice,” says her mom. “School or church.” And for a moment, Soleil almost regrets the thing about being sick. At least Cade will not be at church, she’s sure of that, and right now, he is the last person in the entire universe she wants to see.

  Church it is.

  Soleil puts tablecloths on the long tables in the community room and sets up the tea and water station. Then she sets a stack of napkins beside the cookies, along with some paper plates. There is another table with sandwiches and chips. She can smell the egg salad and tuna. Why, she wonders, is it always egg salad and tuna? Can’t there ever, just once, be pimento cheese? She stares at the sandwiches, as if staring would magically change them from egg salad and tuna to pimento cheese.

  “Soleil!” says her mom. “Why so cranky?” How can her mom always tell? “Take a walk,” says Mama.

  Fine. She spins on her toes, and all of a sudden, without even realizing it, she finds herself in the front hallway.

  The scene of the lie.

  Her eyes begin to burn, and her immediate impulse is to turn around. Go back to the egg salad and tuna sandwiches, go any place but here. But instead, she slows down. The faces in the photographs seem to be looking at her, as if they are letting her know that there is something here she needs to see. She stops. These photos are familiar to her. She’s seen them a million times. But right now, they all look brand-new.

  There are dozens of them: portraits of men with long, bushy beards and bowler hats; group shots of women in white dresses with striped belts and white shoes; children in their various Sunday school groups. Soleil even finds a photo of herself with her first-grade class. She’s in the first row, right between Channing and Grapes.

  It seems to her that the photos are random. Some are old and some are recent. Some are in black and white. Some are in color. Some are posed and some are just snapshots.

  There doesn’t appear to be any particular chronology, either. They are basically jumbled up, as if the times and places of the members of this old church were all mixed together, as if the ancestors and the new babies all lived at once.

  She pauses in front of the painting of the country church, the one painted in oil by someone named Magnolia Phillips, and dated 1862. More than 150 years ago.

  She steps closer and squints. In the corner opposite the signature are the letters MRCGB. She wonders who Mr. CGB was.

  She stands back and looks at it again, this time without the squint. Why does it seem so familiar? From out of the blue, Mama walks up to her. “It’s sweet, isn’t it?”

  Soleil nods. It is sweet.

  “It’s the original church.”

  “It is?” But of course. How could Soleil not know that?

  “It was built in 1840 or thereabouts,” says Mama. “Can you see something familiar about it?”

  So there is something. Soleil looks harder. And that’s when she sees them. “The doors!” The ones in the painting are the same ones that lead into this building. The ones with the prayer carved into them.

  Soleil has recited it thousands of times. It’s the mission of their church, written by the original pastor.

  Oh Lord, let this beautiful place be a refuge for all who need it.

  Let us be worthy. Let us be brave. Let us be kind.

  Amen

  “The doors were the only things left of the old church after the flood of 1935,” says Mama. Then she points to the news article about the Lost Lady. Soleil reads it. And as she does, she realizes that she is standing in the exact spot in the hallway as she stood last night, holding Cade’s hand.

  “Did anybody ever find her?” asks Soleil.

  Mama just shakes her head. “I don’t know, baby. I never read anything else about her.” She pauses. “But isn’t it wonderful that the old doors were recovered? Just think, they’re almost two hundred years old, the same age as the church.”

  Just then a group of folks drop by for lunch, and Mama has to lead them to the community room.

  Soleil stands in the empty hallway. Where is the Lady now? And what does she have to do with Cade?

  Buffalo Bayou

  HOUSTON

  On a clear blue day, she takes her time, moseys from her underground springs in the prairie reservoir. She and the White Oak play crisscross and together they twist and turn, bump into each other, sidle past the minnows and the turtles, sunning themselves on fallen logs.

  On a clear blue day, she glistens underneath the Texas sun.

  But give her some rain, days and days of rain, which she gobbles up like a drunk with an open tab. Give her water and more water, water from the pouring sky, water from the spilling-over reservoirs and lakes, and she will fill your cup and then some.

  She takes out cars and houses and massive century-old trees. She grabs hold of railroad ties and semitrucks and grain silos. She even sucks up old graves, carries their bones to the sea. It doesn’t matter to her what the color of their skin might have been. Bones are bones.

  She fills up underpasses and low-lying pastures and underground walkways. And once, she even discovered a basement built of brick, built by a former slave. Who knows how many people stayed there, waiting for a ride to Mexico? Dozens at least. Maybe a hundred? There aren’t any records.

  But the bayou? She remembers. She remembers Major Bay. She remembers Miss Celia’s piano. She remembers the statue made of Georgia marble, pink with a vein of red shot through, carved by a tall, thin boy who once knew a girl named Achsah.

  If you can find the basement, all caved in and filled with mud, you might find the Lady. But I will tell you, it’s unlikely. Once the bayou hides something she’s particularly fond of, something she admires, she’s reluctant to give it up.

  Cade Curtis

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  MONDAY

  Cade blinks his eyes. Everything looks blurry. He tries to focus, so he blinks again. For a second, he has no memory of where he is. He rolls onto his back, and when he does, his head pounds. “Ow!” he moans. A flock of tiny, thumb-size kinglets scatter through the brush, startling him. His whole body starts to shake, so he rolls onto his side and pulls his knees into his chest.

  What hit him? What time is it? He pats his front shirt pocket. A
t least he still has his phone, but when he tries to turn it on, he sees that it has run out of juice. Dead.

  He pushes himself up to a sitting position and tries to focus again, shaking his head. The blurriness clears, a little. Next to him, he sees his backpack. He unzips it. When he finds the bottle of water, he feels like he might cry. The water is cool and welcome and it seems to tamp down the pounding in his brain.

  How stupid could he be?

  He starts shaking again, and he can feel the water start to boil in his gut. He swallows hard to keep from throwing up. He clamps his arms around his chest to try to stop the shaking.

  What made him think that he could find an old statue that had been washed away decades ago? Chances are good that it is several feet underneath the bed of the bayou, lost for eternity. Even if he had a backhoe, his chances of ever finding it are minuscule.

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. That’s how he feels. He came out here completely alone, in an attempt to find a statue that could be anywhere, all without telling a single solitary soul where he went.

  He takes another long slug of water and lies back on the ground. The pounding in his head eases a bit more. His stomach calms a little. He looks up at the patches of sky that peep through the leaves. He has no idea what time it is, but he can tell by the deep color of blue that it must be leaning toward evening. By now, Paul is surely starting to wonder where he is.

  Cade needs to gather himself up and go.

  He sits back up, slowly, and looks around again. Despite his throbbing head, he suddenly feels seriously lucky. It could have been so much worse. And if he had died here, in this thick stand of trees, it might be weeks or months or maybe never before his body was found. He swallows the rest of the water and tucks the plastic bottle into his pack. He needs to get out of here.

  He stands up, but he does so too quickly, because as soon as he gets his feet underneath him, he hears a whistling noise in his ears, and like a deflated balloon, down he goes.

  He slides a few more feet before he stops. This time at least he doesn’t pass out, but his vision is all blurry again. He reaches out to his side and feels the sturdy trunk of an old hickory tree. He blinks his eyes some more until he can focus a little better, and when he does, he realizes that he is only a few feet from the edge of the water.

  “Thank you, tree,” he says, patting it as if the tree can understand him. It doesn’t matter. He is grateful to the tree whether it understands him or not. He decides to hold on to it as he tries again to stand up. This time, he takes it slow.

  He rubs his eyes. Focus, he thinks. He looks down at the water, just a couple of feet below him. Then he looks over at the thick roots of his now-favorite tree.

  And that is when he sees it, the wooden cage, caught on the bayou’s bank in the tangled roots that held it like a nest.

  It wasn’t what he was looking for.

  But it was what he found.

  And Cade Curtis, thief of angels and teller of lies, does a very big Something Good.

  Zorra

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  MONDAY

  Zorra. The bayou didn’t forget you.

  Zorra. Bonita gatita.

  Zorra. Wild girl.

  The bayou sent you your very own boy, a boy who didn’t wait, who carried you home, as fast as he could go.

  Cade Curtis

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  MONDAY NIGHT

  There is no hissing, no clawing, no growling. Her eyes are half closed, fur covered in dried muck, so when Cade first pulls her out of the trap, he thinks she is just a large cat. It’s not until he gets her home that he realizes that she’s not. It is Mrs. Walker who says, “It’s definitely not from these parts.” It’s Paul who says she might be an ocelot.

  Whatever she is, she needs help. So the three of them bundle her in a warm towel, and Paul drives the old Oldsmobile like crazy down the freeways to the opposite side of Houston, to a place called Houston Wildlife Center.

  Cade knows that time is not on the ocelot’s side. As he holds her, he can only barely feel her heartbeat under the palm of his hand.

  “Hurry,” he tells his dad.

  When they finally arrive, the vet—Dr. Jo Farrish—puts the cat on an IV to rehydrate her. While the ocelot is so limp and quiet, Dr. Farrish asks her assistant to try to clean her up. Then she asks Cade if he’d like to help, and he wants to, he really does, but just now he feels a little queasy.

  Dr. Farrish insists upon taking a look at the bump on the back of his head. She shines a pin light into his eyes, checks his reflexes, even takes his temperature. Then she tells Paul, “Make sure he doesn’t go to sleep for another few hours.”

  That is easy, because Cade can’t leave the cat just yet anyways.

  So the three of them sit in the waiting room, drinking coffee that seems to have been brewed two weeks ago. So far, no one has actually asked him what in the world he was doing underneath a bridge by himself when he should have been at school, but he can tell by Paul’s expression that that conversation is in the near future.

  “For now, we’re just grateful that you’re all right,” Paul says. And for once, his dad does not call him “Li’l Dude.”

  At that moment, Dr. Farrish walks back in. With his vision becoming a bit clearer, Cade can see how kind she is by the way she rests her hand on Mrs. Walker’s shoulder. Then she says, “You must be so proud of this grandson of yours.” Cade sees Mrs. Walker’s face. She’s beaming.

  “Your boy got her to us just in time,” Dr. Farrish tells Paul. Then she explained about the poachers who dealt in exotic animals, and the enormous amounts of money they made at the animals’ expense. “These guys are almost impossible to catch, and it usually doesn’t end well for the animals.”

  Cade starts to say, Asshats! But he keeps his mouth shut. Still, asshats! He doesn’t think he’s ever seen a sadder animal than the one he bundled into his arms, pressed against his chest. Only a supreme asshat could let that happen.

  In the middle of his thoughts, Dr. Farrish turns to him. She looks directly into his eyes. “You did such a brave thing, Cade Curtis.” And he can tell that she means it. But then, she chides him a bit. “You also have no idea how lucky you are.” Cade looks down because he knows what is coming next. Sure enough, she says, “Never—and I mean it—never try handling a wild animal, especially one who is sick, again.” She goes on. “So many things could go wrong.”

  Cade nods. Then Dr. Farrish tells him that while the cat is still unconscious, he can touch her. So he reaches into the cage and puts his hand on her soft clean fur. Once again, he can feel her faint heartbeat just beneath her protruding ribs.

  Beside him stands his father, whose strong hands cradled him when he didn’t have to. And Mrs. Walker, with her soft hands, hugging him up in the way that grandmothers do. And then there was Soleil’s hand, resting right between his. It was a chain reaction, Cade realized, and at each point, someone ultimately took a chance on love. Ultimate Love. He rubs the ocelot between her silken ears. And because they are the best words he knows, he whispers to her, “There’s love enough.”

  And Zorra, small wild beautiful girl . . . she gets the message.

  Soleil Broussard

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  LATER

  What would Soleil carry? When she sat down to write her essay for Mrs. Franco, she couldn’t help but think about the Byrds. They finally made it to California in their PT Cruiser. There’s a photo of them on the wall of the church, with the Hollywood sign in the background. Soleil remembers how they arrived during the hurricane with a single grocery bag that held a few diapers and a bag of puppy chow. How Tyler cried and cried and wouldn’t stop. How the puppy that matched the puppy chow was finally found, miles away from her ruined home, and only days before the Byrds left town. Kisser. Her name was Kisser.

  And the honey bear jar. Soleil knew that no matter where Tyler went, he would carry his honey bear jar, his trophy.

  Soleil is quite sure that her father wo
uld carry his accordion. Even if he had to walk through a flood, he would carry it over his head to keep it dry. It’s a fine accordion, though it’s not always in tune. “It’s all the mule’s fault,” says her dad.

  She tugs on the tiny gold cross that hangs from her neck. She would miss that if she lost it. And of course, she would definitely carry her Bible. It was a gift from her parents when she was baptized. In fact, it’s her Bible that she writes about in her essay. She had plenty to say about why it mattered to her.

  But the truth is, there is something else that she loves. A marble. It’s a cat’s eye, golden, with flecks of dark brown. If she holds it in the sunlight, it seems to glow. When Cade gave it to her, he pressed it into the palm of her hand, warm and smooth.

  She holds it there, feeling the weight of it, then she slips it into the pocket of her skirt, safe. Tonight, she thinks, she will need to ask the truth about the Lady and why Cade lied to her.

  But right now, it is almost sunset. Cade takes her to the bridge where he found the ocelot. He reaches for her hand, just like he did in the hallway of the Church on the Bayou, holds it between his two hands, and pulls it directly under his chin. She is buzzing from head to toe.

  She starts to speak, but just as she does, a thousand bats pour out from under the bridge and fly directly over their heads, taking all her words with them.

  Cade Curtis

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  LATE NOVEMBER

  It’s early morning, and the air is crisp and cold. There’s a low-lying fog resting on the ground, the kind that swirls around Cade’s feet as he makes his way to the trail beside the bayou. Once he reaches the water, he pauses. The fog shifts and twists above the currents.

  Cade feels his own strong currents coursing through his body.

  The little ocelot—which Dr. Farrish and the staff call Buffalo Girl—is getting stronger by the day. Soon they’ll release her back into her natural habitat. Dr. Farrish told him there’s a refuge in south Texas right along the border where there is a small population of ocelots.