Paper Angels

by Billy Coffey

  It was a valid point, and I knew it. So I ignored his suggestion and said, “Why are you dressed so funny?”

  The Old Man looked down at his clothes. “I like it. It’s kitsch. That’s German.”

  “Does it mean ‘ridiculous’? ’Cause if it does, you nailed it.”

  He smiled at me and said, “I really think you should wait, Andy. God’s watching, you know.”

  Had this not been so soon after the Old Man had first appeared in my bedroom, I would have probably taken his advice. As the years went on he proved himself to be dependable when it came to knowing the right thing, at least until the end. But at the time I saw him more as an imaginary friend than an angel. And everyone knows you can ignore an imaginary friend whenever you want.

  I tied the length of hose around the Y section of the limb and picked up as round a rock I could find from the driveway. Said, “I got this.” Then I drew back on the slingshot.

  “Okay then,” the Old Man said, “as you wish.” He raised his binoculars and looked to the sparrows again. In an awkward English accent, he said, “Two degrees to the right, old chap. Pip-pip and cheerio.”

  I shook my head. “Quiet,” I said. “I’m aimin’.”

  I took a breath and then let go, rocketing the piece of gravel skyward toward the invaders. Halfway there, I knew I had aimed wrong. Three quarters of the way there, I knew the rock would hit the martin house instead. And just as the rock hit, I knew the Old Man was right.

  I should have waited.

  The ensuing crack echoed in every direction, including through the open window of the kitchen and through the door of the tool shed. Both grandparents came running, right past my jungle-prepared angel. Grandma took one look at the slingshot in my hand and let out a pained gasp. Then she seized my earlobe and pulled. Hard. Violence had never been her way—it was anathema to her faith—but I thought at that moment if a little bit of it got into her discipline, that was just fine with her.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing, young man?” she demanded. Her free hand slapped against her leg and searched for something to whip me with, and her lips shook with questions she was too upset to ask. White fear and red rage mixed in her face and gave it a pinkish glow. I realized I was staring into the face of a monster created by my own sin.

  Grandpa provided no protection, choosing instead to ask “What have you done?” over and over.

  I turned to the Old Man for help, but he offered little. His attention was still focused on the martin house and the sparrows who had retaken their posts around it. “I say, that was a smashing shot,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes at him and turned toward my grandparents. “I was trying to kill the sparrows.”

  “You were trying to kill the sparrows?” Grandma asked. She continued to smack her leg, and I was afraid she would soon realize she didn’t need anything more than her hand to whip me with. She looked from me to Grandpa and said, “You didn’t tell him the proper way to do such things?”

  It was Grandpa’s turn to stammer. “Well…yes, Mama. I was just in the middle of it and—”

  “You cannot do this,” she said, cutting him off and turning to me. Her voice was softer now, back to normal. The momentary flash of rage had been replaced by her ever-present calm. “This is not the way, Andy. This hurts you”—she pointed to my heart—“more than them”—she pointed to the sparrows.

  Grandma turned back to her husband. “I expect you will teach him now rather than get lost in your notebooks and plans?” she asked.

  She turned and tromped toward the house. Neither of us moved until the door had closed.

  “Well, Andy,” Grandpa said, still eyeing the door, “I suppose we should have that talk.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Come,” he said. “I need to show you something.”

  We left the Old Man there—“Everything will be jolly good, old chap”—and walked back to the shed. A cage sat on the wooden table by the window. The base was made of the wood Grandpa had gathered, thicker than my index finger and thumb together. Chicken wire had been fastened around the perimeter with nails. Hooks joined the sides to the top, which had also been lined with chicken wire. To the right, about six inches from the base, stood a small platform that extended eight inches or so into the cage. A hinge was fastened beneath. There was a tiny, almost imperceptible space between the platform and another block of wood attached to the base. Nailed to the left side of that block was another with a six-inch hole cut into the center.

  “What’s that?” I asked him.

  “This is how we get rid of the sparrows,” he said. “Come.”

  He lifted the contraption, and together we walked to the picnic table near the martin house, where he set the trap. From his pockets Grandpa produced a handful of birdseed that he poured into a pile near the middle of the platform. Satisfied, he turned to me.

  “Let’s have a seat on the porch,” he said.

  I turned to the Old Man and shrugged. He mimicked me and added a smile.

  Five minutes later a sparrow darted from the martin house to the cage. Its tiny head tilted from one side to the other. Satisfied there was no immediate danger, it hopped onto the platform and toward its dinner.

  Halfway there the hinge tilted downward, leaving the sparrow with no choice but to go through the opening and into the cage. When it did the platform raised up, trapping the bird inside.

  I looked at Grandpa, who gave a satisfied nod.

  “Bloody brilliant,” the Old Man said. Though he was only ten feet away, he’d said it while looking at us through his binoculars.

  “Why are you talkin’ so funny?” I asked him.

  “I didn’t say anything,” said Grandpa.

  The Old Man shrugged and smiled. “Just thought I might try it. No?”

  I shook my head.

  *

  By the time dinner was over all four sparrows had managed to let their appetites get them into trouble, a lesson the Old Man admonished me to remember. Grandpa and I went out to inspect our catch. He placed a blanket over the cage and set it in the back of his truck, then the two of us rode out to the main road through town. The Old Man hitched a ride in the back, dressed now in his more usual garb of jeans and a T-shirt. He spent half the time stooped down talking to the birds through the cage and the other half standing in the bed with his arms outstretched. I thought he was trying to hug the wind.

  The only time he seemed conscious I was there was when he thumped his finger on the back window of the truck. I turned, ready to say I was looking at the sparrows if asked, and looked at him. The Old Man pointed to the area of the seat between my grandfather and me. My slingshot sat there, a victim of the shallow pockets of a homemade pair of pants. He motioned for me to pick it up and put it in my own pocket. I shook my head no. He motioned again. I shook my head harder—NO. Then with his hands he mimicked a square and the motion of a lid being raised. The box, I thought. The Old Man wanted me to take it for the box. He gave me the OK sign with his thumb and forefinger, as if he knew Grandpa would forget about the slingshot altogether. Thankfully, he did. The slingshot was the first thing to ever go in my box.

  “Where we goin’, Grandpa?” I asked him.

  “To a place where birds need to sing.”

  He kept driving. Past the town square, past his gas station, and on into the hills. We finally parked at the edge of an old service road that was guarded by an ancient iron gate. The woods beyond were still and silent and dark.

  I looked at Grandpa and asked, “Happy Hollow?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Let’s not linger.”

  We got out of the truck and he reached into the back for the cage. His hand passed through the Old Man’s leg like it was molecules of air.

  “Bad spot,” the Old Man said. “Bad woods. There’s darkness here, Andy. A shadow.”

  The Old Man and I watched as Grandpa opened the top of the cage and set the birds free.

  “The sparrows will have a new home now
,” he said. “They won’t pester our martins again. They will be happy, and we will be happy. The world is too dreary a place to be without the song of even a thieving bird, and perhaps their songs will bring life to these woods.”

  The Old Man smiled as he watched them fly away. Then he looked at me.

  “I want you to remember this day, Andy,” he said. “People fight too much in this world. You don’t always need a slingshot. It’s always better to do what your grandfather did. Defeat your enemies through love.”

  “Defeat your enemies through love,” I repeated.

  “Yes,” said Grandpa. He looked at me and gave an approving pat on my shoulder. “Yes, indeed. Well done, my boy. Very well done.”

  5

  We’ll Always Be Who We Are

  Elizabeth sat with her leg draped over the chair and the scissors tucked into her hand. She said nothing at first (which wasn’t surprising, given what I’d just said), but she kept her eyes in line with my own. That did surprise me. We cannot keep our secrets deep within ourselves. They will fester outward and manifest in some way, leaving us with a disfigurement that others may not see but is surely felt. I did not doubt that Elizabeth sensed my deformity, yet she did not look away.

  “That’s pretty incredible,” she said. “All of it.”

  I suppose there wasn’t much she could say that would have made me feel better. Even if she had said That’s the most factual story I’ve ever heard! I wouldn’t have believed her. The Old Man had never made me promise to tell no one about him. That secret was mine alone.

  “Incredible like amazing,” I asked, “or incredible like​…​not​…​credible?”

  “Oh, I believe the Old Man is real, Andy,” she said. She spun the scissors in her hand and then stopped. “Real to you, at the very least. The human mind is an amazing creation. It will go to great lengths to try and put order to the chaos life can bring.”

  “The human mind?” I asked. “So you think he is all in my head?”

  “I didn’t say that. I’m saying you went through a great trauma when you were too young to understand it. And between you and me, I don’t discount the possibility that something else is going on here. The world isn’t solid, Andy. There are aspects of existence we simply cannot comprehend. If God decided to give you an angel, then He did. I can accept that. Either way, you two seemed to have a pretty comfortable relationship from the start.”

  I chuckled and said, “It would appear. Like I said, back then he was more of an imaginary friend. I wasn’t convinced it was anything more.”

  “Was he always so carefree?”

  “Wouldn’t you be? Being able to waltz around unseen and unheard by all but one person and knowing things no one else could know? That would make me feel pretty carefree. So yeah, he enjoyed himself. It was like he was experiencing life for the first time. Which I guess maybe he was.”

  “Maybe,” Elizabeth said. She leaned back in her chair and propped her feet on the sides of my bed. At some point she had kicked off her shoes, and now ten red toenails played peek-a-boo with the bed sheets. It was a gesture of ease. Of comfort. And though I yet felt neither toward her, I appreciated the fact that she felt both in my presence. “But I get something else from that story. He wasn’t just along for the ride. I don’t get the sense he was hanging around under that birdhouse just to see you screw up. He was there for a purpose. He was trying to teach you something.”

  I said, “Or he was just trying to keep me from looking like an idiot.”

  “No. He let you fail, Andy. You know that, right? He tried to talk you out of not shooting that rock, but you didn’t listen. He let you choose, even though from what I gather he knew that choice would be wrong. Just to show you that sometimes the reasons you have for your actions don’t mean much, no matter how well-intentioned. In the end, it’s what you do and not what you meant to do that matters.”

  “I never thought of it that way,” I said.

  She leaned forward and slapped me on the hand. “Well see, that’s why I’m here.”

  Elizabeth offered me a wink as a small gesture of faith that she had snuck into my room and convinced me to talk to her for my own good. I wasn’t completely ready to agree with her. But a part of me knew it was just a matter of time before the last bricks in the walls I’d built around myself fell before her, and another part of me knew there wasn’t much I could do about it.

  “So were you always so contrary to your grandparents’ wishes?”

  “Oh, I guess I grew out of that,” I told her. “As much as I could, anyway.”

  Elizabeth lifted her eyebrows. “And what’s that mean?”

  “Nothing. I’m just the kind of person who thinks we all might grow up and learn more, but we’re still always gonna be who we are.”

  “And who are you, Andy?”

  “My father’s son. Not that I’m a drunk or anything—I don’t drink at all. But there are times when I feel like if I took a small slip down a dark hole, I’d come out him on the other side. I guess we’re all like that. We’re all children. From the moment we’re born until the moment we die. We might learn how to talk, but we never quite learn what to say. And we learn how to walk, but we never stop stumbling.”

  “And the Old Man told you that?”

  “Not really.”

  I motioned for the box that sat by my leg. Elizabeth reached over and handed it to me. I picked through the contents with my good hand, shuffling them around until I found it.

  I held the paintbrush up to my nose and sniffed. The paint had dried, of course, along with the scent. A dozen summers had passed since it had last been used, and even then it had been held under the water hose to clean afterward. But I sniffed anyway.

  “It was more Mary’s telling,” I said.

  6

  The Paintbrush

  The good thing about being my own boss was that I got to pick when I went on vacation. It was always when the weather was warm—a week around late April, then another one around August. That’s the way I always did it. The second week was for whatever traveling I wanted to do, whether it was all the way to the beach or just up in the mountains—sort of like my own yearly walkabout. But the first week was usually just to get the house in order, painting and mending and whatnot. I didn’t mind giving Timmy Griffith the extra customers at his Texaco on the other side of town, especially since he did the same for me whenever he got the itch to do some fishing, which was hardly ever. But that’s the way it is in Mattingly. Everybody looks out for everybody.

  That’s true with neighbors, too. Especially when it comes to kids.

  My plan was to spend that week repainting the garage, a task that required much in the way of patience and preparation. You don’t jump right into something like painting a garage. That’s what most folks don’t understand. You have to ease into it, study it, and try to talk yourself out of doing it. Which was why I was sitting on the porch staring at the little girl across the road rather than just getting down to the business at hand.

  Mary Thompson and her parents had moved into the old Phillips place about three months prior. Nice folks, the Thompsons. Especially for city folk. Her father was Stephen—“Stephen-with-a-P-H” is what I called him. The kind of guy who cut his grass in khaki pants and sipped mint juleps in the backyard every Sunday afternoon. You don’t call men like that Steve.

  Stephen-with-a-P-H did something with banking up in the city. He’d tried explaining to me exactly what that something was more than once, but he lost me in his fancy talk, and I ended up nodding like I’d heard that all before. His wife, Barbara, she…well, I didn’t know what she did. But she was nice just the same and often brought me a little supper in the evenings.

  The Thompsons did their level best to fit in, but it hadn’t been easy. They were outsiders, you see. From Away. And while no one in town ever made them feel anything but welcomed, outsiders was what they would be for a good long while. The fact they had yet to visit one of the local churches, much le
ss settled on one, didn’t make things any better. There were whispers that the Thompsons weren’t religious at all. Or even worse, that they were liberals.

  I watched Mary play through the small metal diamonds of their chain-link fence. She was the quintessential preschooler in both action and reaction. I watched as she scooped sand from the sandbox into a bucket and then dumped the bucket over her head. Saw her do things on her jungle gym that would make an Olympic gymnast proud, only to then trip over nothing and run screaming to her mama. She destroyed flowers, tormented her cat, and even managed to get her daddy’s riding mower started. All in the span of fifteen minutes. I was exhausted just watching her.

  I’ll tell you what, it was impressive. It was also enough to make me realize two things. One was that I was glad I wasn’t her father. The other was that the Thompsons’ fence was likely there to keep Mary from the world a whole lot more than the world from Mary.

  *

  Stephen knocked on the door that evening after dinner. The glass of wine in one hand and the can of Coke in the other, coupled with the fact that he couldn’t seem to look me in the eye, told me it was either a problem to share or a favor to ask. Probably both. I offered him the rocking chair on the front porch and he accepted.

  “I hear you’re taking the week off,” he said.

  “Gonna paint the garage and hang out a little.” I took the soda he offered and thanked him. “Might watch The Price Is Right. Always liked that show, but I’m never here to watch it.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, listening but mostly not. “So you’re planning to stick close to home?”

  “That’s the plan,” I said. “Why you ask?”

  Stephen sighed and sipped his wine. Christian or not, liberal or not, most men don’t take to asking for anything, especially from another man. “You know how we like to keep Mary in the backyard?”

  “Because of the traffic,” I said.