A Cry of Angels

by Jeff Fields

  In those days, we attended elementary school through the seventh grade, then moved up to high school as "sub-freshmen" in the eighth. Quarrytown High, the only white high school in town, was an old brick building with white cornerstones that stood crumbling majestically a block from town. On its left were the band-room annex and the gym, and behind, below the little barrackslike shop building, in a natural hollow between the school and the courthouse, was the Granite Bowl, the football stadium with granite seats fitted into the hillsides.

  Gwen tugged me down the long cement-apron walkway, past club initiates in grotesque makeup and inside-out skirts—boys shining shoes and getting paddled, girls sweeping leaves and chanting club creeds—and into the crowded hall to the principal's office to fill out the forms to get me enrolled.

  Back in the hall again, Gwen stood hugging her notebooks, surveying the tumult, her eyes lit with ecstasy.

  "Oh, Earl, it's finally happening! I just can't wait!" And she hurried off to take charge of her own homeroom and left me to find my way through the halls jammed with girls in see-through blouses and rustling crinolines and boys fingering ducktails and greeting each other in jovial obscenities with honking male teenage voices:

  "Blow boy!"

  "Fish mouth!"

  Stiff little middle fingers ranting in the air.

  Overall, it was a uniformly lackluster small-town student population. In Quarrytown the children of the wealthy were sent off to exclusive prep schools in the mountains, or up North. Quarrytown High was made up of middle-class town kids mostly, who fortified themselves in tight little cliques and clubs; a few busloads from the country, most of whom were kin; and a scraggly fringe of lower-class poor, untalented and ugly, who sat in the corners of classrooms and waited for age sixteen to set them free.

  "Earl Whitaker?" My homeroom teacher, Mrs. Barnes, looked up from the stack of registration cards. "Whitaker? Is he here?''

  I raised my hand from the back of the room.

  "Your enrollment card was signed by one of the teachers. Your parents are supposed to sign."

  "I live with my great-aunt," I said.

  She studied the card. "Sunflower Street, where is that? I don't believe I've ever heard of . . ."

  "It's over by the fairgrounds," I said quickly.

  "It's in the Ape Yard," corrected Benny Ford, who actually did live by the fairgrounds. "He lives in niggertown!"

  "My God," roared another boy, "we got a coon in the room!"

  Mrs. Barnes quieted the laughter and went on with the business of checking the roll. I kept my eyes down, making long, slow circles in my Blue Horse tablet. It was going to be grammar school all over again.

  We spent the rest of the day finding our classes and getting acquainted with what our teachers expected of us. Math was going to be plain hell as usual, and General Science, with its physical laws and drawings of plants and engines, didn't promise to be much better, until Joe Breisner, the doctor's son, smuggled in a human anatomy book. While the teacher, Mrs. Claxton, droned on about flower pistils and stamens, we sat in the back trying to get worked up over close-up photographs of female genitals. Few of us found anything sexy in them, and a couple of the boys skipped lunch.

  That afternoon, English and civics, both under Gwen Burns, proved to be the most threatening courses of all. We were going to "immer-r-rse" ourselves in great literature, majestic poetry. We would have playlets, we would have dramatic readings, we were going to make the arts "come a-li-i-ive!" As for civics, there would be none of this rote learning of the levels of government, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We would become the government! We would elect our own mayor and councilmen, set up our own judicial system, and learn the workings of democracy firsthand!

  Afterward we straggled out to the gym for a final P.E. class under Coach "Stumpy" Rayburn, who shouted us through a furious half-hour of calisthenics on the basketball court, then gathered us into a circle for a fatherly talk on the proper care and treatment of the Christian body, complete with charts on balanced diets and exhortations about sleep and exercise. After looking about to see that the girls were out of the gym, Coach also warned us about "abusing." We had to stop it, he said. It was like losing a pint of blood. And, as a Christian athlete, he believed it was a sin against the body, the temple of the soul. He finished by calling on every boy there who had indulged in the practice to be man enough to stand before the class and take an oath never to do it again.

  There were several tense moments—with neck-craning and sidelong glances—but it turned out all of us were pure.

  "Oh, Jayell, it was wonderful," said Gwen that night on the steps after supper, "not anything like I expected."

  "Yeah? What did you expect, love?" said Jayell, fanning out a match and taking a deep drag on his cigarette.

  "Well, you know, half-asleep teachers, a petrified curriculum . . ."

  "And it wasn't like that? Must have changed a lot since I was there."

  "No, really—well, I'll admit the building's falling down and there can't be two books per pupil in the library, but the teachers are really trying, and the principal backs them up all the way."

  "Old man Guest?"

  "Yes, he explained that it was all a lack of funding, like all small school systems they have to operate on a shoestring, but he's wide open to new ideas, improvements of any kind."

  Jayell was incredulous. "Harvey G. Guest?"

  "Yes, honey. He was most receptive to the ideas I have for teaching civics, especially the student court system, he loved that."

  "Well, I had trouble gettin' old Harvey Guest to even listen to a new idea. But I guess a pretty girl who'll work for nothing would make a difference."

  "And there are some marvelous teachers. I met Thelma Martin, and we hit it off right away. She lives in Marble Park, and she was so excited that we may be moving up there."

  "Thelma Martin, is she teaching there now?"

  "Uh-huh, for two years now. Senior English, and she directs the school plays. She said you and she went to grammar school together."

  "Yeah, I remember Thelma. Used to eat peas with her fingers—one at a time—like that."

  "Oh, Jay!" Gwen put her arms around his legs and rested her head on his knees. "You know, I still can't believe it's all really happening. It's still like a crazy dream. Here I am in a strange town, ready to marry a man I hardly know. I suppose I should be scared to death. We really can be happy here, can't we, Jay?"

  Jayell leaned down and kissed the top of her head, cradling her shoulders in his arms. "We can be. We will be."

  They were quiet for a time, watching lightning bugs lifting off the lawn.

  "I got another letter from the folks today, wanting to know if we've set a date yet. I think Mother suspects we're living together."

  "Well, now. I can get her an affidavit with eight solid-gold signatures in no time flat. Wait, tell 'em we just—hold hands occasionally."

  "Don't be snide. You know how old-fashioned they are. This whole thing came as quite a shock to them—and they still don't know what to make of you."

  "Do tell. I didn't think your mother was going to let me in the yard."

  "But I had my way, didn't I?" she said, looking up at him. "I always have my way."

  "Always." He was leaning down to kiss her when she turned away and moved up on the step beside him.

  "Jayell, what was that company you said was trying to hire you, the one that had copied some of your designs?"

  "Smithbilt, out of Miami."

  "Is it a big company?"

  "One of the biggest in the Southeast, I guess. They got started in this area with Marble Park, and now they're throwing up subdivisions in every little town around here. They're one of those quick-build corporate developers."

  "They must really be impressed with you if they're stealing your ideas."

  "Anything other than four walls, a roof and a carport is a radical idea to Smithbilt."

  "What did they offer you?"


  "The moon, the stars, the president's eldest daughter . . ."

  "Now, Jay, be serious."

  "Well, where are you going with this line of questioning?"

  "I was just thinking—if you had a regular job it would help toward our own house, and . . ."

  "What are you talking about? I've got a job! A hell of a job, and I've got the money for our house, enough for the land and a good start on the house anyway."

  "For a start, but you can't start putting scraps and salvage in a house in Marble Park, Jay."

  "You've seen my houses! Do they look like scraps?"

  "Now, calm down, calm down."

  "Look, we've picked out the lot in Marble Park. You decide what you want in a house and I'll start building it tomorrow! That's what's holding me up, not the money. I've got the money. Do you think you're marrying a welfare case?"

  She put her arms around him. "I think I'm marrying a man who heats up a little too fast, that's what I think."

  "Well, you're talking foolish. Foolish talk."

  "It probably is. I just have so much to get accustomed to, Jay. The way you think, the way you live, well, it's just so different from the way I grew up. You see things where I see nothing, like this Ape Yard. It's inconceivable to me why you've lived down here all these years, why you waste your talents building those little architectural gems for people who can't possibly appreciate them, let alone afford them. It's all so completely foreign to me. But I took a chance, didn't I? I gave up my world and came to live with you."

  "And to try to take me out of mine?" he said.

  "That's not fair, Jayell."

  "Listen, I agreed to move to Marble Park, that's all. I have lived down here because I'm free down here. There are no demands, no expectations. I work the way I do for the same reason, and I will not give that up."

  "Well, for heaven's sake, I just thought of it as a temporary thing, until we got on our feet. And it would mean so much to the folks . . ."

  Jayell took her by the shoulders. "I made no promises, you have to remember that, not to you, not to your folks. You knew the way I lived, and to make sure you knew, I brought you down here to see it firsthand. Now you've seen me, not as some fake character in the never-never world of a college campus but as I really am, and if you can't take me as I really am, and the way I live, maybe the best thing for you to do is get on the next Greyhound."

  Gwen shoved his arms away and stood up. Her voice was calm, but hot with anger. "I can do that, Jayell," she said. "Believe me, I can do that."

  He arose and stood facing her. There was a long moment there in the dark, of indecision, of testing.

  And, not surprisingly, it was Jayell who broke. Just as quickly as he had raised the wall, he shattered it, contrite, seizing her in his arms. "No you can't," he said fiercely. "You can never do that, you can't even talk like that!"

  The porchlight flicked on and Miss Esther flung open the screen. "Bedtime, Mr. Whitaker!"

  "My Lord, I'd forgotten he was here," said Gwen turning, as I slid out of the glider.

  Miss Esther peered around the door toward the dark at the end of the porch. "And bring that old gentleman with you."

  Without a word, Mr. Rampey got up out of the swing and shuffled sheepishly down the porch, lifted his derby to Gwen and Jayell, and followed me into the house.

  "Jee-sus," I heard Gwen say.

  8

  From the first, the girl had been striking sparks at the boardinghouse. As we waited for Jayell to build them a house, she made her presence increasingly felt. She wrinkled her nose at most of Farette's meals. She argued politics with the men, who knew nothing about politics, which accomplished nothing and took away the fun. She pointedly asked Mr. Woodall what brand of cigar he was smoking, and he took the hint and clumped to the porch. And she brought Mrs. Cline to the edge of a stroke by calling her favorite faith-healing evangelist a fraud. In a household devoted to the Back to the Bible Broadcast, she played Buddhist chants on her phonograph, and would groan and stalk off to her room the minute anybody turned on the Grand Ole Opry.

  It was the age difference, I supposed at first, but as the days went by, I was sure it was more than that, only I didn't know what. Finally, one day when I caught Jayell in one of his reflective moods, when he might be disposed to talk about and make sense of such matters, I asked him about it.

  "Jayell, what is it with Gwen? I can't figure her out, and nobody else seems able to either. Does she like us or not?"

  We were sitting in his truck at the end of a working day waiting for Skeeter and Carlos to finish gathering up tools from a jobsite. Jayell slid down in the seat and rested his lame leg over the side of the door. He chuckled to himself. "Oh, yeah, Earl, she likes you enough all right, I guess. It's just that the boarders represent what she's trying so hard to get away from. Country folks scare a brass cracker to death."

  "A what?"

  Jayell laughed. "Brass cracker. That's what I call these New South kids, the first-generation-off-the-farm crowd. See, Earl, the South's going industrial now. Since the way the big corporations have been racing each other down here, looking for that crop of cheap nonunion hands, the most precious crop ever produced in the South. Now everybody wants to move to the city and join up with that new middle class, and they're still trying to shake the hick image. That's Gwen, trying so hard, but still so unsure of herself."

  "But I thought she was from Atlanta?"

  "Oh, she is! First-generation city. Her father moved to town and opened a Firestone store! But every Sunday they get in the car and drive out to the country to see Granny and Grandpa, just twenty miles out of town, and still living in another century. That's what eats at Gwen, and the kids who are like her—that reminds her of how close to hicksville they still are. They're ashamed of that farm background and running from it as hard as they can, flooding into the cities: Charlotte, Birmingham, modern Atlanta! When I was in school up there, I used to laugh when I heard the brass crackers telling the Northern kids, 'Atlanta is not Georgia! Atlanta is not Georgia!' Hah! Atlanta is the essence of Georgia . . . the brass cracker capital of the South!" He shook his head. "Atlanta—that overweight 'Southern Princess,' humping her shoulders into the skyline and trying so hard to lift her skirts off Georgia soil."

  "Lord, I almost drowned in it when I was up there, all that strident, nouveau middle-class striving. Ballet from New York and beatniks for the park, sharecroppers' daughters reading Zen and freeing love. Existentialists in Sears underwear. But the sophistication is as fleecy as the dogwood blooms. The roots are still deep in Georgia clay. It's still a race of farmers' sons you see on Peachtree Street."

  "And that's my lovely Gwen: a hard veneer of city brass, but still pure cracker inside. Don't you worry about it, Early boy, she'll settle down. It's just a phase she's going through. Once she gets a mite surer of herself—gets up to Marble Park and established securely in the nouveau middle class, she'll loosen up."

  "You think so?"

  "Oh, sure"—Jayell leaned close and whispered confidentially—"you got to remember—at heart she's a good old country girl," and threw his head back against the seat, his laughter cackling out on the afternoon."

  But if she loosened up in the following weeks, I couldn't tell it, and even without the problem of two classes a day under Miss Burns, it was plain from the start that this was not going to be a blue-ribbon year. The trouble started in my first class, math, with an ominous introduction to algebra, the most treacherous member of the arithmetic family I'd come across yet. Em looked in one night while I was tussling with it, cursing and throwing wads of paper, to ask if I wanted to slip out for a while. There was a marathon poker game under way at Lew Birdsong's, and when Em played poker he liked to have me around to keep an eye on the other players.

  "I can't," I grumbled, "there's an algebra test tomorrow."

  "Algebra?" He peered over my shoulder. "What's that?"

  "Aw, it's a kind of arithmetic, only there's nothin' about it that's got an
ything to do with arithmetic. They use letters instead of numbers so you can't tell what's goin' on!"

  "How can you do arithmetic without numbers?"

  "That's what the hell I'd like to know!"

  "Well, you have a good time with that. I'm goin' down to Birdsong's where they still play with numbers."

  Science class would have been interesting, I suppose, if Mrs. Claxton hadn't turned it into an art class. Every picture in our biology book had to be copied off into our notebooks, and I don't care what I had to draw, from a flower to a frog, somehow it always came out looking like a map of a swamp.

  Physical education was a foregone conclusion. I could never get under a high fly ball. I always seemed to run toward the boy who most wanted to tackle me, and I couldn't have hit a basketball goal if they set it on the floor at my feet. Having noted all this, along with my lopsided pushups, bony shoulders and general skinny condition, Coach Rayburn, a kindly soul at heart, gave up on me from the start, probably consoling himself with the thought that at least I was safe from the draft.

  My one moment of distinction came when we got to the wrestling mat. There, for the first time, having grown up in the Ape Yard proved to be an advantage. Few of the black boys in the hollow had baseball, football or basketball gear, so what we did mostly when we got tired of rolling hoops, kicking cans, and shooting slingshots was wrestle. We wrestled for hours, up and down gullies, on creek banks, singly, in pairs, ganging up on the big ones like Carlos in "bring down the bear," and in mob free-for-alls in the sedgefields. And I learned early that in wrestling, speed, balance and being able to read your opponent were just as important as strength. On the mat I was a mad octopus, and it finally took a senior to calm me enough to pin me. Coach Rayburn was so impressed that I think if the school had had a wrestling team he would have put me on it, and started training me, and turned me into a star athlete, and the school and the world would have taken notice of me. That was a dream I had at the time, anyway. But, of course, it never happened, and Coach and I figuratively shook hands on a passing grade in P.E.