A Cry of Angels

by Jeff Fields

  Jayell released her and stalked around the table watching her, his sleepless eyes glistening deep in their darkened sockets. "My God, look at her . . ." He bent over Mr. Rampey's shoulder. "Ain't she sump'n, Ramp? What'd I tell you, huh?" He turned his head and whispered something in Mr. Rampey's ear, and the old man burst into laughter.

  "Jayell!" Gwen was furious. "Why didn't you write, why didn't you call? Do you realize it's been over a week . . ."

  "A thousand reasons, princess." He limped toward her and stopped, resting his weight on the slightly shorter left leg that cocked his hips at an angle, and looked her up and down. "And not one of them good enough." And suddenly he was kissing her again.

  "Not here," she said, pulling away, "come . . ."

  "No time."

  "Let's go to my room where we can at least . . ."

  "I missed you," he said, squeezing her shoulders as if to reassure himself that she was real, "missed you awful bad."

  She tried to calm her voice. "I missed you too, Jayell." She glanced at the others, who sat watching contentedly as though they'd paid to see the show. "Please, let's get out of here."

  "Ain't she fantastic!" Jayell cried.

  "Jayell, will you please stop displaying me like a side of beef! For heaven's sake will you come . . ."

  "Sorry, honey, I just can't. I've got boys waiting in the truck."

  "What!"

  Jayell turned and picked up a sausage patty and bit into it." Critical. Got to get a roof dried in before the rain starts up again or I'm going to have a house full of water."

  "Well, at least sit down and rest a minute. You look like you haven't slept for days. It's a miracle you're not dead of pneumonia! Look at your shoes, they're soaked!"

  Jayell winked at Mr. Rampey. "How quick they start giving you hell, huh, Ramp. Oh, God!" Suddenly remembering, he lifted a mudcaked brogan and looked at it and stuck his head into the kitchen. "Sorry, Farette, I'm sorry, darlin'." There was an angry rattle of pans in the kitchen. "I better get out of here."

  "Jayell, it's Sunday . . . I've just arrived . . ."

  "I know, honey, and I'm sorry, but believe me, this just can't wait. I'll make it up to you, I promise." He kissed her quickly. "Pick you up at seven o'clock. Wear something pretty, now." He was halfway out the door.

  "Wait! At least tell me how to dress . . . where are we going?"

  Jayell looked at her, puzzled by the question. "You said yourself—it's Sunday. To church, of course." And he was gone.

  The girl looked down at the benevolently smiling faces, back at the empty door. Tears of frustration welled in her eyes. She touched a hand to her forehead and turned to leave—and bumped headlong into Mr. Burroughs, groping in on his nickel-mounted cane.

  "Careful, miss!" he cried. "Don't hurt me! I'm going to see my children and I need my strength!" Gwen drew back from the towering figure, then tried to squeeze by. He seized her arm and demanded, "Have you children, young woman?" She bit her lip and shook her head, edging. "Good! Have none, then! What good is a family? Bloodsucking kin? You can have mine at a good price, I'll tell you! When I was slaving at that farm for them from dawn to dark it was 'papa' this and 'papa' that. Couldn't slam a door without knocking three of 'em down! But let me get a few years on me and they sell my home place from under me and start diggin' up the shrubs and killin' one another over the dishes!"

  With a wrench the girl pulled free and backed into the hall, sobbing. She kept it up all the way to her room.

  Mr. Burroughs stood blinking after her, slowly resettling his teeth.

  "Mighty high-strung, ain't she?" ventured Mr. Rampey.

  "I know what's wrong with that one," said Miss Esther, and she threw back her head and bawled, "Far-rette! Where's the Cardui?"

  After breakfast I filled a lard can with leftovers from the table and made my way down to the ramshackle garage and climbed the stairs to the loft. Em Jojohn was still asleep, the flimsy iron cot bowed under his weight. I got a fire going in the trash burner and put the coffee on to heat. After Miss Esther's dining room, the loft was balm for the soul.

  The garage sat in the woods between the boardinghouse and Teague's grocery on the next dirt street down. Nearby was the well and the ruins of a burned-out house, the chimney and crumbled foundation barely visible through the devouring undergrowth. The garage had been unused for years until the Indian stumbled on it, sulphured out the rats and moved into the loft. We furnished it with a cot, a secondhand trash burner, an army footlocker and a lady's dressing table with the mirror gone, plus one of Miss Esther's lawn chairs. I brought him a Coca-Cola calendar and a Lone Ranger bread poster to decorate the walls.

  I suppose I liked it best because it was alive, almost at one with the wind and the trees. Aunt Esther's was a heavy, solidly constructed old house, so insulated you couldn't even hear the rain. But in the loft there were insects buzzing, birds lighting on the tin, creatures ticking in the walls, the worry of wind and the sounds of old timbers stretching themselves in the afternoon heat, the startling bang of a pecan hitting the roof.

  Instead of the sterile odors of furniture polish and sachet, the loft had a warm, animal smell, mixed with the scent of khakis overdue for the wash, a ham hanging overhead from a wire, the musty creekwater smell of fishing gear, the clay smell of his canvas traveling bag, and banana somewhere, getting too ripe. And on winter mornings, after spending the night there, as I sometimes did, to wake to the sound of snow spitting at the roof and the smell of strong chicoried coffee and fatback sizzling in the skillet was something not soon forgotten.

  It was always good being in the loft. I would go there sometimes, even when Em was on the road, to dodge chores or get out from underfoot at the house, which I was ordered to do often, or just to be alone. I suppose everyone, at some time, has a Place, or dreams of one. The loft was mine.

  Em Jojohn yawned and turned on the groaning cot. I got up and stood out of the way. Those first few mornings after a trip on the road, Em asleep was an uncertain animal. He opened his eyes and looked at me.

  "Am I in hell, or Georgia?" he rumbled.

  "Georgia," I said, playing the game.

  Em shook his head. "That devil done tricked me again."

  While Em ate I plied him with questions about where he had gone this time, most of which he answered with a simple headshake. "Florida? Did you go down to Florida this time? Worked a fishing boat maybe."

  Negative.

  "Up North then, bet you went up to New York or someplace."

  Em made a face. "Sheeee! New York. Went to New York once, that'uz enough. Worst hell hole you ever see. Never comes a morning in that place—just gets light and dark, with people hanging around from the night before. Street maggots. Deliver me from that place."

  Em opened up some then. He had just rambled up through the Carolinas, he said. Unloaded trucks at a warehouse in Greensboro for a while, cropped some tobacco on the coast, tied some reinforcing steel in a bridge in Virginia.

  "Did you have any trouble?" I would have known the answer even if I hadn't noticed the fresh raw scar on his neck. Em always had trouble. It dogged him like his shadow.

  "Nothing to speak of."

  "Where'd you get that?"

  "Ah—" Em rubbed the scar. "Outside of Richmond one morning. I was walking along minding my business and the blue boys stopped me. Wanted to lock me up for a check-out. You know how it is."

  I knew. Em the drunk, the brawler, the heckler had spent time in "crossbar hotels" from Washington to Pascagoula. Violence was simply part of his abrasive nature, as natural as his breath. Sometimes he instigated it himself as a sociable attempt to relieve boredom, but most often it just came at him, by some strange attraction I never understood. People moved away from him almost instinctively. A sleeping dog would lift his head at his scent, lay back his ears, and the next moment be standing at the end of his chain, salivating, gnawing the air. That, added to his enormous size and dubious color, made him suspicious to police everywhere. He ha
d been in so many conflicts with small-town deputies that the mere sight of a badge started him backing and bristling.

  "What happened?" I asked. "Did they lock you up?"

  He shook his head, reflecting. "I don't like to be locked up." His mood was darkening. I knew the limit and asked no more questions. He ate in silence.

  Em was from an obscure tribe in eastern North Carolina. Hadn't any name, he claimed at first. When I pressed, he said they'd been called several names; the last he heard, they were petitioning to be called Lumbees. Asked to teach me some Indian words, he said they hadn't any language either. And that was about all he would ever say about being an Indian.

  Em had just turned up at the boardinghouse one day about seven years ago asking if there was work he could do for something to eat. Standing in the doorway, he was so large he blotted out the sun. I hid under the table. Miss Esther said if he didn't go away she'd call the police, and slammed the door in his face.

  She busied herself in the kitchen until she was calm again, then looked out the window and made a little sound in her throat. She jerked the door open again and there he stood. This time she used language I hadn't heard her use since Wash Fuller's dog came to hide in her kitchen. The Indian stood resting his weight on one foot and took the abuse like he was used to it, and waited for her to expend herself. When she did, her humor returned. "Aside from scaring people to death, just what kind of work do you do?"

  He was an ironworker before he got too heavy to climb the iron, he told her. Now he took whatever he came across. Lately he had been killing rats.

  "Well, we've got the rats," Miss Esther said. Indeed, most of the houses in the Ape Yard were infested with them, big ones, that turned and sized you up before they scuttled away. She would feed him until he cleared the place.

  She brought him a plate of leftover catfish, but the Indian backed away and shook his head. "Can't eat fried food," he said, "bad stomach." Miss Esther snorted and offered him what was left of the ham hock. Another headshake. "Too much fat. What you got in the way of greens?"

  Miss Esther was aghast. "Well, this is my first encounter with a bum on a diet. Next thing, you scoundrels will want menus posted on the blessed door!" But she rummaged in the safe again, and this time brought him a bowl of beans and boiled potatoes. The Indian's cheeks parted in a broad, uneven smile. He stepped off the porch and settled himself under one of the fig bushes. But before eating he held up his fork, inspected it carefully, jabbed it in the ground a few times and wiped it on his shirt. The back door closed with an emphasis that rattled the china.

  He became a familiar sight around the place with his traps and poisons, and after the rats were gone he began a cleaning operation. When the yards and garden shed were spotless, he invaded the house. He took on the attic, a mass of mildew, cobwebs, and all the indescribable junk attics accumulate, and in two days it was immaculate. He cleaned every room in the house, moving furniture and clearing closet shelves, scouring and dusting and stacking back exactly as it was. He even scoured the black off of Farette's seasoned skillets, which put him on slim rations for a while.

  But for being such a stickler for neatness, he never gave a thought to himself. His shirt cuffs were buttonless and flapping, his pants always wrinkled, and his belt buckle continually working toward one hipbone or the other. The single exception was his army-surplus paratrooper boots, which he kept polished to a mirror shine. Every night he carefully washed away all traces of mud or rat's blood and worked in another coat of wax. When we went frog gigging or scrounging in the dump for scrap iron, he protected them from getting scratched by tying them around his neck. When he gashed his big toe to the bone on a piece of broken glass one day I said I supposed then he would put them on. He shook his head and wound the bleeding toe in a rag. "Toe'll cure up. Boots won't."

  The business about the bad stomach, I discovered, was a fraud. It was simply one of the repertoire of tricks he used to get his way, to make people deal with him on his terms. Em never gave an inch on anything. He did exactly as he pleased, when it suited him to do it, and he could be depended on for nothing more. He would be responsible to no one but himself. "To do anything you don't want to do or be anyplace you don't want to be is a sign of low character," he said, "in fact, it's a downright sin agin' nature."

  He dealt with people as little as possible, and only then when it was unavoidable, or when he wanted something from them. Anything smacking of officialdom turned him cold. He refused to be listed, numbered, or have his name appear in anyone's files, even to the point of not applying for a driver's license, a temptation he avoided simply by not learning to drive. Faced with the absolute necessity of having a Social Security card for construction work, he at last relented, and applied, under the name of George Washington. Once, while doing my homework, I absently scribbled his name on the edge of the page. When he saw it he grew restless, kept looking at it, and as soon as my back was turned he tore it off and stuffed it in his pocket. It was his name, part of him. Because I accepted Jojohn as he was, and expected nothing of him, he and I got along.

  He liked the Ape Yard, and the black people there liked him, but he seldom ventured uptown. Before long he had beaten down a path to the garage from the street below, turning off by Teague's grocery and coming up the deep gulley from the rear, thus avoiding the house. This route he used mostly when drunk, or when coming home in bloody rags from one of the river joints, or when he just didn't feel like being seen from the house. He did chores around the place and came to the house occasionally for meals, but kept mostly beyond the wild grown hedges. Then, if he didn't show up for a few days and no bursts of country music from his portable radio came over the trees, you could assume Em was on one of his trips, and look for him when you saw him coming.

  The only trouble was, those trips seemed to do something awful to him, and for two or three nights after his return he went through a special kind of agony. To endure it, or release it, I never knew which, he always got drunk, bitter, vicious, roaring drunk, during which time he would lash out like an animal suffering in a trap, at me or anybody else. In the daytime he seemed all right, his old self, but at sundown it would come on him again, and he would change from the Em I knew to some frightening creature in torment, hurting so bad he was dangerous to be near. When he'd gotten himself tanked up and stumbled off into the woods, there was nothing I could do, despite my deep hatred of the woods at night, but follow him along the darkened riverbank until the frenzy abated, and, when it was safe enough, try and lead him home.

  When he had finished eating, Em rolled a smoke from his Prince Albert can and worried out a belch. "Well, now that you've pumped me dry, what's been happenin' around here?''

  "Nothin' much," I said, "except for the schoolteacher."

  "Schoolteacher?"

  "Yeah, guess what—she's come here to marry Jayell Crooms!"

  Em put down his cup. "Where'd that big a fool come from?"

  "Atlanta, he met her while he was at the college this summer."

  "College! Jayell? And ain't much goin' on, he says!"

  "Yeah, the college hired Jayell to design this little art center for them. It was written up in the Star and everything. And while he was up there he met this girl and they fell in love. She's at the boardinghouse now."

  "How's old Phaedra Boggs takin' all that?"

  "They say she didn't take it too good."

  "Well, yer teacher must be sump'n else to pull him away from that Boggs gal. She's rough as a cob, but there ain't no finer lookin' woman nowhere. Boy, that's some gal!"

  "Well, the teacher ain't all that bad lookin' neither. Kinda pinchy about the eyes, but she's got good legs."

  "Legs! Listen to him. What you know about legs, boy?"

  "I know more'n you give me credit for."

  "Oooooh, man." Em stretched himself out on the cot. "Talkin' 'bout legs, mine's still achin'. Had to walk that last stretch from Little Holland, yestiddy. How 'bout you breakin' along and lettin' me rest 'em a
little."

  I got up to leave. "Oh, by the way, Jayell's been asking about you. He sure needs some help gettin' Lilly Waugh's house finished up."

  "Lilly Waugh's house? Y'all ain't done with that one yet?"

  "Well, he lost three months bein' up at the college, just runnin' back to do what he could on the weekends, and on her house it's been mostly just me and him since she won't let his black boys set foot on the place."

  Em's eyes were closed. "Don't know's I want to set foot on Lilly Waugh's place agin, neither. That woman gives me the fan-tods."

  "Well, anyhow it's all done now but the trim work. If you change your mind you can let him know tonight—" I stopped, remembering Miss Esther's admonition to keep him away a few days. But then, I thought of the girl in the hall, and looked at Em, and I couldn't resist it. Besides, church might be good for Em that night, with him just back off the road. "He's coming to take her to church tonight. To church, Em." I took the cigarette from his dangling fingers and stubbed it out. "Sure would be good to go to church again, wouldn't it, Em? Bet you haven't been the whole summer."

  "Church." Em smiled sleepily. "Some peculiar things happen in church. You know, some years back I went in this little backwoods church in Tennessee—just passin' by one Sunday e'nin' and thought I'd drop in for services. Well, I noticed one of the front pews was missing, and I seen that when folks had to walk around that place they'd kind of shy away from it, wouldn't even steps on the nail holes in the floor . . ."

  I started cleaning up the breakfast things. It was one of his long rambling stories I had heard a dozen times before. I emptied the coffee cup and rinsed it out and repacked Farette's lard can.

  ". . . so I ast somebody, 'Why's that pew been took out, and them folks actin' so skittish around that place?' Well, they didn't want to talk to me about it right off, me bein' a stranger, I guess. You know how mountain folks are . . ."

  I closed the screen door and tiptoed down the stairs, his voice trailing.