A Cry of Angels

by Jeff Fields

  "Now look who's taking up for her," I said.

  "Craziness was all she had to bargain with. She's proud, and folks like that would rather cheat and steal than beg."

  "She didn't have to beg. She could of asked it as a favor."

  "That's the same as beggin' if you got no way of payin' it back. 'Sides, you can't take no pride in somebody doin' you a favor. But now, you trick somebody, outsmart 'em, well, that ain't nothin' but good business. You can take pride in that." He sauntered along shaking his head, chuckling, whipping at milkweeds with a stick.

  With a full afternoon before us and nothing to do, we decided to stop off at Mr. Teague's for a frozen Pepsi and pass a little time with Tio. Through some malfunction, Mr. Teague's drink box had one corner that froze drinks solid. I have never encountered another one with that characteristic, though I still look for it in every box I open. He could have charged double, even triple for those drinks, and got it. I have known boys to sit on his curb for hours waiting for their drinks to freeze.

  Alvah Teague's gray brick wedge of a grocery store had sat on that knoll in the Ape Yard longer than anyone could remember. It had been there, and run by Mr. Teague's grandfather, when it was hardly more than a trading post in the hollow north of what was to become the town. Captain Mcintosh's mule-mounted cotton farmers supplied themselves at the store before they forded the Little Iron and shot up half a regiment of Union regulars at the battle of Social Rose. When Alvah Teague inherited it, people were still riding half a day by wagon to shop there. That was before Roe Mill changed hands, and the infamous quarry was dug, and everyone who could moved out.

  Now supermarkets were climbing the foothills—there was a new one opening in Galaxy Plaza that afternoon—and Teague's place was dying. The half-moon lettering, Teague & Son, had peeled to mere tracings on the window. The floor sloped dangerously under the meat cases, and the pine bench along the outside wall, worn slick and grainy by generations of weather and overalls, was empty of Saturday loafers.

  As we neared the store Em suddenly stopped and pointed to a tennis shoe swinging from under the front awning. Putting his finger to his lips, he crept to the corner of the store, then pounced forward and yelled, "Hyaaah!," simultaneously giving the canvas awning a violent shake.

  There was a startled cry, and a skinny black boy dropped down from the awning, swinging by his knees from the crossbrace. Hanging upside down, he shook a wrench in the Indian's face. "You ain't no funnier'n you ever was, Jojohn. Now, put me back up. I'm just about done."

  "Ain't you gon' say you glad to see me?"

  "I'm 'on hit you where you live with this crescent wrench, you don't put me back up."

  Em sighed and lifted him back on his perch and helped himself to peanuts from the parching machine. "What you makin' now?" he asked.

  "Automatic awning raiser. Raises and lowers the awning without cranking."

  "That mus' be a help," Em said.

  "Ain't no other store got one."

  Tio Grant was my age, though slightly smaller and considerably bonier, with a felt hat with square holes in the crown permanently affixed to his head. He wore the hat with everything—or with nothing, as when we went inner-tubing on the river. It was his trademark, he said.

  Tio had lived with Mr. Teague since his mother died, when he was five years old. She used to do the little hunchbacked grocer's washing and ironing and what other little housekeeping was required in the three rooms over the store, and Mr. Teague gave him an apple or a cracker and let him play in the store while his mother worked upstairs. On slow days he began letting her drop the boy off while she went to work elsewhere, and soon Tio became a familiar sight around the store, scurrying to fetch things from the shelves and scattering sweeping compound before Mr. Teague's broom. Sometimes Mr. Teague let him wear a pinned-up apron with a stub of pencil stuck in the pocket. After the Grant woman died of pneumonia, it came as no real surprise to anyone when Mr. Teague marched down to the neighbor who had taken the boy in, and fetched him and his belongings back to the store. Tio had been there ever since, despite the fact that Mr. Teague threatened to throw him out about every other day.

  Tio and I had started hanging around together shortly after Em came to the Ape Yard, and I suppose, next to Em, we were each other's closest friends. Everybody in the Ape Yard liked Tio, but living with Mr. Teague had made Tio a little too white for the other boys. Mr. Teague dressed him better than most of the black boys at old Pelham Grace School on the river, demanded better grades from him, and brought him up sharp in private if he forgot the difference between politeness and hang-dog cringing when dealing with people uptown. I knew what it was like. My being from the Ape Yard was plenty enough to keep my classmates in Quarrytown at a distance from me. I suppose it was that peculiar position we shared of not really belonging to either community that made Tio and me hit it off so well.

  The only real fistfight we ever had was over the question of race.

  It started when I discovered in geography class that my height was exactly that of the average African pygmy, and the teacher had me stand up and demonstrate it to the class. It was one of the few times I was ever taken notice of in class, and I was pretty excited. So that Sunday when Tio showed up, I was carrying Em's frog gig, dressed in a bath towel with my body coated with mud, all set to play pygmy.

  Tio balked at the idea.

  "Man, you can't be no pygmy. Pygmies are black, everybody knows that."

  "What difference does that make? I'm the right size for it."

  "Never work. Now, I can be the pygmy, but you'll have to be sump'n else."

  "What are you talking about? I'm the only one the right size for it. The exact size for it, whereas, by the book, you are at least two inches too short! It's just as bad to be the wrong size as the wrong color."

  Tio was unmoved. "I'll grow into the right size; you ain't never going to be the right color."

  Neither of us would budge. I thought Tio was being uncommonly stubborn, even for him. We had both been Japanese samurai without any problem. But, of course, that had been his idea.

  Finally he hit on what was to him the perfect solution: "Tell you what," he said, "I'll be the pygmy—you can be a midget."

  "What!"

  "What's wrong with that?"

  "What's wrong with it! A pygmy gets to hunt with a spear and be wild. Whoever heard of a wild midget!"

  But Tio had that look on his face that always gave me a knot in the stomach, the look that said that, as usual, he had found a hole in my argument and was just about to hang it around my neck.

  "Earl, you know as well as I do that stunted black folks are called pygmies. Stunted white folks are called midgets. Now, if my folks choose to hunt dangerous animals and live wild and free, and yours end up in the circus-makin' folks laugh—that ain't no fault of mine."

  I think it was at that point that I proceeded to show him how wild my folks could be.

  The awning raiser was only the latest of Tio's time—or money—saving projects. He was constantly inventing devices or devising methods to improve operations at the store. He had salvaged a paddle-fan, with one paddle missing, from the back of the barber shop, installed it in the ceiling and got it working again. Unevenly, but working. He argued with the wholesaler's driver about the most efficient way to stock the storeroom. He initiated countless new methods for checking the inventory, several of which did save time, but none of which were simple enough for Mr. Teague to understand. He was good, and Mr. Teague depended on him more and more. He could butcher a side of beef, he knew the price of every article in the store, and with Mr. Teague's arthritis getting worse, Tio was doing practically all of the bookkeeping. For the most part, Mr. Teague gave his inventive mind free rein, and sometimes had cause to regret it. When the city installed the new parking meters around the square uptown, Tio was soon caught protecting Mr. Teague's Model-A truck with a homemade jimmy key. The judge let them both off with a warning. "Got a mind like a damned hummingbird," Mr. Tea
gue would say, "flits and spurts around, you never know where it's going to light!"

  Tio dropped to the ground and carefully ordered his toolbox, then stood back admiring the odd structure of angle braces and garage door springs mounted under the awning. "Now, ain't that beautiful?" he said.

  "Takes my breath away," said Em.

  Tio dragged us inside to point out other recent improvements: a rotating display of canned goods, tilted shelves that allowed the next item to slide to the front to replace the one removed, the rebuilt motor in the meat case.

  "You ain't messed with the drink box, I hope," I said.

  Tio grinned. "I know when to leave well enough alone." We opened our Pepsis and covered the spurting ice with our mouths. "Come on out back," he said. He led us to the rear loading dock and pointed out a derrick with a swinging platform operated by a winch and chain. "My automatic freight elevator," he said. "Watch this." He levered a sack of potatoes onto the platform and winched it aloft into the second-floor storeroom. He pulled another lever and dumped it off.

  "Not bad," Em admitted.

  "And that gridwork runs the length of the store. Mr. Teague can't lift like he used to. I got the idea watching 'em move beeves at the packing plant. 'Course, I made a few modifications."

  "Course."

  "Got to know what you're doing, though. The wholesaler's driver tried it, and it threw him out down here." Tio made a wry mouth and dipped a thumb at his crotch. "Hey, I never showed you the awning raiser!" He hopped to the ground and ran up the stairs leading to the two rooms he and Mr. Teague shared over the store. "Y'all go back around front."

  We returned to the front of the store. Tio was leaning out of the upstairs. "Now, here's how she works," he said. "There's a lever mounted up here just inside the window. You pull it down, the counterweights fall, which shifts those rods along that axis and lowers the awning, and at the same time cocks the springs. So then, if you want it raised, all you got to do is flip it . . ."

  "Tioooo!" The front door burst open and Alvah Teague lurched onto the sidewalk, a wispy, thin little man with large ears and watery eyes and his galluses riding high on his rounded back. In his late seventies, Mr. Teague was at an age when the mind sometimes skips a beat, and familiar words began to hide, giving him a tendency toward long stares and vague answers. His hearing was starting to go, too, reducing his voice to a mumble, except when he was shouting, as he was doing now. "Where is he? Where is that scoundrel now?"

  "Got him treed," said Em, pointing.

  "Up here, Mr. Teague," called Tio.

  Mr. Teague backed up until he could see that high. "Where you been? I told you to wake me at two o'clock!"

  "It ain't two o'clock yet."

  "Don't argue with me! Get down here and lock the store!"

  "You want me to lock the store?"

  "If you can spare the time from your other affairs."

  "What for?"

  "We're going to the Grand Opening of that new Valley Farm market everybody's talking about!"

  "Aw," said Tio, "what you want to go there for?"

  "Because, from all accounts it's going to put me in the poorhouse and relieve me of you and my other aggravations, and I'm going to pay my respects! Earl, get in the truck and help me steer. That wheel's gettin' too stiff for me."

  "Tio can drive," I said.

  "I know Tio can drive! It's what converted me to Christianity! Em, get outa them peanuts!"

  Em dropped the lid of the parching machine and squirmed on the tailgate with a double handful. I got under the wheel and Mr. Teague squeezed in beside me, got settled, and turned the engine over.

  "Hey, just a second," yelled Tio, "look at this." He flipped the awning lever. Nothing happened. He flipped it again, and again. Same result. Mr. Teague was worrying the truck into gear. Tio threw his arms in disgust and ran out and down the outside stairs. He made the tailgate just as we were backing away from the curb.

  But as we turned to start up the hill, the old canvas awning suddenly contracted against the wall with such a prodigious, dust-clouding wallop that several passers-by jumped into the street.

  We crossed the railroad and drove into Quarrytown, on streets that still showed patches of brick, into the four blocks of stores that made up the main business district, around the tree-shaded square with its Confederate soldier at attention, and out past the poolroom with its loafers at ease. The Little Holland highway, like most roads leading out of Quarrytown, was strung with corrugated metal granite sheds, their broad doors open to the light and air. Stonecutters, broad-backed men with features as sharp and gray-dusted as the stone they carved, guided the hammers and cable saws to satisfy that peculiar craving of man, who is content to mark his birth with a piece of paper, but wants his death recorded in stone.

  The largest granite firm in town was Blue Light Monuments, owned by William Thurston, president of the Granite Association. The new shopping center was located on open acreage adjoining one of the largest Blue Light sheds, on land leased from Thurston, just inside the city limits.

  With Mr. Teague pumping the bleeding brake and both of us riding the wheel, we managed to guide the old jalopy to a jolting halt in the field next to Galaxy Plaza. The parking area was jammed with milling crowds. A miniature carnival was in operation—kiddie rides, candied apples, a man shooting dogs from a cannon. We moved to the edge of the crowd listening to the mayor's welcoming speech in front of the Valley Farm store. A man gave Tio and me free balloons.

  When the mayor had finished his speech, lauding the new supermarket as "the most modern unit of the fastest growing food chain in the United States," and congratulating the company official, a man in a blue serge suit and buttondown collar, for electing to locate it in Quarrytown, "the crossroads of the Emerging New South," he and Miss Quarrytown High cut the ribbon, then picked it up and pretended to cut it several times more for the Star photographer. Then the mayor led the people inside, he and Miss Quarrytown High pushing a decorated cart on a ceremonial shopping tour with the photographer ranging around them popping flash bulbs like a giant lightning bug on a leash. The crowd fanned out through the aisles, pointing, marveling, leaving the children behind to jump up and down on the magic mats that made the doors pop open. Mr. Teague squeezed through the maelstrom, dodging the doors, nodding to people he knew, and once inside, stopped cold.

  The old man stood blinking in the fluorescent glare, the celestial sweep of music. He was dwarfed in sudden pyramids, shelves of goods higher than his head. The aisle stretching away before him held more foodstuffs than his entire store, and there were others, hills of them under the signs and streamers; bins of hardware, a housewares section, a complete drugstore displayed along the wall.

  Mr. Teague moved down the aisle, fingering, touching labels, ticking off the numbers of different brands. He stopped to wave his hand in the fog of open dairy cases, to peer in the upright freezers. At the end a white enameled meat market ran the entire width of the store. A half-dozen men in paper-boat hats ran up and down filling orders, and behind a glass wall others operated on the blocks. Unbelieving, Mr. Teague moved to the counter, piled high with cellophaned chickens and preweighed slabs of meat. He lifted a package and read the blue-stamped price, tilted his glasses and examined it again. "That's sirloin, mind you," he whispered to Tio, "sirloin going for that price!" A young man in a spotless apron appeared at the counter. "Help you with something, sir?" Mr. Teague looked at him, waved his hand absently, put down the package and moved away.

  At the produce department he stopped to lift bars of packaged tomatoes, nearly the same size as billiard balls, and to examine the okra, pole beans, asparagus, all of a uniform length and all encased in see-through wrap under the slanted mirrors.

  He had to rove every aisle, finger every stacked display. It seemed hours before we finally moved past the weighing station and out past the clacking registers. At the door, the man in the blue suit stepped out of the cubicle office. He looked at Mr. Teague's apron and smiled and
put out his hand.

  "I'm John Ramsey, regional vice-president," he said, "nice of you to drop in." Mr. Teague gave him a vague stare. "Well, now that you've seen us, what do you think of us?" The man folded his arms complacently. He had confronted a lot of small grocers.

  Mr. Teague looked puzzled, trying to place something. He stood looking out over the store. Finally it struck him, his eyes grew wide. "It's the smell!"

  "Beg pardon?"

  He pointed an accusing finger. "Your store's got no smell!"

  "I'm afraid I don't . . ."

  "And how can it have any, when you got everything embalmed in plastic? People like to get to the food, man, sniff a little, pinch a little. Even your meat market's got no smell, it's more like a damned hospital! And your produce, everything portioned out that way, that's the way you feed livestock, not people!"

  "Our methods," said Mr. Ramsey quietly, "are dictated by efficiency in handling volume merchandise. People don't want to take the trouble to punch and poke and feel and weigh. They haven't the time anymore. They want to be fed in the quickest possible way in the least amount of time. That's what we're doing. The little grocer on the corner had his day, Sir, and a fine day it was, but this," he waved his arm, "this is tomorrow."

  "Then all I can say is God help us," said Mr. Teague. "God help us all." He started for the door and jumped back when it sprang open for him, and went out muttering and shaking his head.

  Em put his arm around Mr. Teague's shoulder. "Didn't seem much to me, Alvah . . . All your place needs is dressin' up a little! Here, let me tell you what you oughta do . . ."

  7

  August ended, and with it, the last of summer freedom. The day after Labor Day I dutifully greased down the sprigs of my new haircut, found a pair of socks that would stand exposure on the gymnasium floor for calisthenics in P.E. class, and with Gwen Burns beside me on that first day, walked over to College Avenue to enter the bewildering fracas of high school.