A Cry of Angels

by Jeff Fields

  Finally we got under way. The car rolled north through the scrub pine and rabbit country, swaying heavily in the dips and turns, the U-Haul tugging on the bumper. Vance cursed under his breath as his push-button settings failed to turn up any country music stations. He fiddled with the dial. Lucille sat tense and silent, one hand covering her eyes, cringing as far as she could from the blaring speaker.

  The air in the back was stifling. The twins twisted the knobs of the window handles and eyed me maliciously, the sweat standing out on their fat faces. It was as if they could see their odors attacking me.

  I knew they were sizing me up, resenting this intrusion into their family, and unsure yet as to how to turn it to their own advantage. As we rode I stopped feeling sorry for poor Spider cramped in the overloaded U-Haul. He had by far the better deal.

  We crossed Broad River into South Carolina. Vance, having found his bluegrass, now puffed his cigar contentedly, his wrist hung over the wheel, snapping his fingers to Flatt and Scruggs.

  Presently the disc jockey, an energetic teenager, segued a chattering teletype over his music and fearlessly attempted a news cast, forcing his voice down an octave for the occasion.

  "Repeating an earlier news bulletin—the Supreme Court ruled to day that the states of the nation do not have the right to separate Negro and white pupils in different public schools. By a unanimous 9 to 0 vote, the High Court held that such segregation of the races is unconstitutional."

  "What! Good God-a-mighty!" Vance lunged forward and whipped up the volume. "Quiet, everybody!"

  "The most violent reaction came from Georgia Governor Herman Talmadge, who has repeatedly vowed that there will never be mixed schools while he is governor. In a prepared statement the governor said, and I quote, 'The United States Supreme Court by its decision today has reduced our Constitution to a mere scrap of paper. It (the court) has blatantly ignored all law and precedent and usurped from the Congress and the people the power to amend the Constitution and from the Congress the authority to make the laws of the land.' Governor James F. Byrnes of South Carolina, a former Supreme Court justice, said because it has been held many times the separate-but-equal doctrine, and I quote again, 'was not violative of the Constitution, I am shocked to learn that the Court has reversed itself.' For further developments, stay tuned to—" The announcer gave the station's call letters, the time, and played a jingle that launched the next half-hour of his show.

  "By damn, did you hear that?" Vance was purple. "Have they gone slap crazy? Did he say all the schools, or when they had to be mixed? Did you hear him say when?" Lucille shook her head, or perhaps she only trembled.

  "I'm gonna stop and call that station," said Vance. "That kid didn't give enough to tell what the hell's going on!"

  "Oh, Van," whined Lucille, "let's please don't stop. We'll find out when we get home. I want to get on home."

  "No, sir!" bellowed Vance, rising to the hint of opposition, "I'm gonna get the straight dope, and while I'm at it I might just give 'em a little hell for lettin' a damn kid give out such an important item as that." Vance hooked an elbow over the back of the seat and addressed himself to me, glancing only occasionally at the road. "You take, I don't care who it is, when they get on the radio or the TV they got a responsibility to the public, and when they screw up I for one let 'em know about it! I call up the stations around home all the time. There was one last week, had a preacher on that didn't know as much about the Bible as that kid there"—indicating Vanessa, who, looking faint, had her nose pressed to a private half-inch crack in the glass—"and there he was spoutin' off about the Garden of Eden bein' a symbol, and all that stuff. You know, college preacher. Well, I got the station manager on the phone and didn't I tell him a thing! He was real nice about it. Damn, there oughta be a gas station around here somewhere. You seen one, honey?"

  Lucille shook her head, or trembled, again.

  Vance grinned in the mirror. "You can't fool me about my Bible," he continued. "I keep up with my preaching. I've heard the best of 'em. I used to like Billy Graham till he got surrounded by all them sharkskin suits. I still like Oral Roberts, though, he's all right. I seen him in person once," Vance bragged, "he healed a pregnant woman."

  Lucille raised her head and looked at him. "She had a crippled laig," she explained.

  "Yeah. Well, when old Oral got done with her she didn't have it. She just throwed down her crutches and danced up and down that aisle. They had to carry her out of there."

  "On account of she was so happy," appended Lucille.

  "Right. Hey, look, there's a station just over that next rise. Anybody got to go?"

  Vance pulled in to the side of the station and went in to the pay phone. Victor and Vanessa grabbed the paddle-key from the attendant and raced around the corner to the ladies' room, their mother tottering along behind with a bottle of Lysol, calling for them to wait.

  I pushed open the door and jumped out and stood leaning on the burning car in the clean, fresh air. Vance's back was to me. He gestured wildly to the party on the phone.

  There was no time for reasoning. Sometimes desperation relieves us of that civilized faculty and throws us directly on our instincts, where things get done. And in that moment I acted on instinct as surely, as unhesitatingly as if Jojohn had been shouting in my ear. I clawed my suitcase out of the luggage carrier and broke for the nearby woods as hard as my feet could run.

  At the edge of the trees I threw my bag over a barbed-wire fence and dived after it and rolled in the grass like a dog. Families, like houses, sometimes have a distinctive smell, and theirs was clinging to me like pond scum.

  After a while they reassembled at the car and noticed my absence.

  Vance went to the men's room and came back shaking his head. They held a conference. Vance honked the horn a few times, then circled the station calling me and looked into the men's room again. Then Victor noticed my suitcase missing. He and Vanessa ran out and looked up and down the highway and Vance went back to question the station attendant. There was an anxious moment when it occurred to me that he might call the police, but presently he came stomping back to the car, ordered them all in, and a moment later the station wagon was bumping out onto the highway.

  I stood up from behind the fence and watched it grow small in the distance, the white moon faces of Victor and Vanessa still looking out the back window. A cool breeze washed through the pasture, bringing the sweet smell of the grass and trees. The sun burned cleanly through the sweep of the land. I stood at the edge of the trees and said goodbye to the last remnants of that strange institution: my family. I supposed it would be the last I would see of Miss Esther, and I would miss her. I knew for a fact it was the last I would see of the Vance Cahills.

  And, as it turned out later, it was the last I was to see of my bone handled hunting knife that cousin Victor had seen me packing, and so admired.

  I spent the rest of the day and part of the night hitchhiking my way back home, finally catching a ride the last leg from Little Holland with a man who worked a coffee route. It was against company rules to pick up hitchhikers, he said, but I had an honest face. He was so friendly it flashed through my mind that I might have found myself another sharpshooter. But I was wrong, and later felt ashamed about it. He was just a nice man who wanted to do me a favor. We chatted along and he told me about his hobby, which was making piggy banks out of discarded coffee cans. He let me have one for half price.

  Coming across the railroad trestle by moonlight, shaking a pebble in the coffee-can bank, and catching sight of the boardinghouse with its hall light burning, it was as though I had been away a thousand years.

  I ran through the front door and climbed through the house, shouting everyone awake. "Mr. Rampey! Mr. Burroughs! Mrs. Bell! I'm home . . . Mrs. Cline!" They piled into the hall in their night clothes, shouting, grabbing me, calling to wake the others. It was a carrying on sufficient to rouse the neighborhood. They were all asking questions at once, interrupting each other, re-as
king things I'd just answered, Mr. Rampey loudly echoing every word for Mr. Woodall. "To the dinin' room!" shouted Farette, elbowing her way through, "I swear to goodness!"

  When we were finally settled in the dining room, I had to start all over. Farette got her stove fired up and put the coffee pot on, dashing to the door every two minutes to catch what she could.

  When I was all done, and every minor point covered to everyone's satisfaction, they all sat quietly, mulling over this new turn of events. "Well," said Mrs. Porter, patting my hand, "we'll write Esther and tell her not to worry about a thing. We'll take good care of you. You're our little boy now."

  I put down my cup. "I've been thinking about that," I said. "I thought about it all the way home. I just turned fourteen. I'm not anybody's little boy anymore. And I sure can't ask you to keep me."

  "What?" she said.

  "Why that's nonsense," said Mrs. Metcalf.

  "Hey, sport," said Mr. Rampey, "you don't have to worry . . ."

  "No, I mean it." I cleared my throat and tried to sound as mature, as deliberate as I could. "I appreciate everything you've done for me, you and Miss Esther. But it's time I was on my own. It's going to be hard enough on you as it is, and now that they've upped your rent . . ."

  "By God!" snorted Mr. Burroughs, "first we're disabled—now we're paupers!"

  "Mr. Burroughs, I mean no disrespect, but I can't be a burden any longer, not to you or anybody. Let's face it, we're all on our own now. Can I do less than you're doing?"

  "But where will you stay?" asked Mrs. Bell.

  "I'll move out in the garage loft with Em, if he comes back, that is."

  Farette spoke from the door. "You'll get a fever in that place!"

  The others started in with their protests. I got up and walked to the door. "Please understand, my mind's made up. I've got to do it. I've got to try."

  They were silent for a while. They looked at each other anxiously, each waiting for the other to speak.

  Finally Mrs. Metcalf said, "You would come to us if you needed anything . . . ?"

  "If I need you. I promise. And please don't tell Miss Esther, it would only worry her more." I started out.

  "Boy . . . !" Mr. Burroughs got up and came to the door, his long fingers closing tightly on my arm. "You do what you've got to do," he said, "but you get in trouble, you need anything, and you don't come to us—I'll take a stick to you."

  "Yes, sir."

  In dead seriousness, he leaned close and confided, "You can trust us. We're not family."

  "Yes, Mr. Burroughs."

  As I passed by Farette at the stove, her cordy little hand reached out and snagged my belt. "You still comin' for yo' meals, I expect."

  "No, Farette, don't you see, it would be pointless if I did that."

  She turned back to the stove. "Do what you want, then. Make no difference to me."

  I started to leave, then stopped, and reached over and kissed her quickly on the cheek. She stiffened, but quickly busied herself again at the stove. I picked up my suitcase and walked out of the kitchen, stepping carefully over the roses.

  19

  I awoke the next morning in a new world. It was raining, and water leaked through a crack beside the window and splattered on the sill. It took several moments to realize where I was, and then I lay on Em's cot listening to the rain drumming and fighting the empty feeling inside me. I pulled the footlocker up to the window and sat looking up through the trees toward the boardinghouse. It sat still and gray in the rain, the warmth, the look of life still lingering. It wouldn't be for long, I thought, without Miss Esther. I stood up and shoved the footlocker back in place. Enough, she would have said. There wasn't time for that. There were too many things to sort out. Too much to be done. One step at a time, Mr. Whitaker. Just one single step at a time.

  When the rain let up I bounded out of the loft and went looking for Tio. And once out again and moving, I felt better. I broke into a run, skimming along the familiar ridges. At last I spotted him struggling along Cabbage Alley, his basket loaded and a kerosene can on the handlebars with an Irish potato plugging the spout.

  With a shout and a running dive off a high yard I caught him around the neck and we, the bike and the groceries went piling into the gutter. The hollering and wrestling brought out the neighborhood dogs, and they danced around the mud puddles rejoicing with us until one of them found a broken package of bologna and led the others away.

  Finally Tio shoved me away. "Hey man! What's the matter with you? Help me get this stuff!" and he scrambled to replug the pouring kerosene. I tried to help him, but I couldn't. All I could do was sit in the mud and laugh. A woman came around the corner leading a little girl in pigtails and stopped and stared at my condition. That was even funnier. I jumped up and started grabbing canned goods and shoving them in her arms. She hurriedly dragged the child away. I couldn't stop laughing. I was drunk, and could not be responsible.

  "All right," Tio said firmly, "now get a hold of yourself. What you doin' back here?''

  I told him, as best I could, about the break from the Cahills, about leaving the boardinghouse.

  "I'm a man," I said.

  "Yeah. Right. Now get your head about you. You hungry? You had anything to eat?" I shook my head and Tio unwound a can of Vienna sausage. I wolfed it down, along with a wedge of cheese. "Where you gon' live now?"

  "In the loft, I guess. Where's Jojohn, have you seen him?"

  "Some of 'em said he was hittin' the joints down river toward Cedar Crossing. Said they seen him in Birdsong's the other night, tyin' on a drunk that'd put all his others in the shade."

  "Birdsong's? I heard the sheriff had closed him down."

  "The sheriff's always closin' him down. But somehow he gets open again. You goin' after Jojohn?"

  "No, I don't think so," I said.

  Tio looked at me. "How come?"

  "I don't know. I've just got this feeling . . . No, if he's still around, and he wants to come home, let him. If not, well, that's okay too."

  Tio shrugged. "Suit yourself." He kicked up the stand and got on his bike.

  "Hey," I said, "let's go take a dip in the river."

  "What? I got work to do, I ain't got no time to go swimmin'!"

  "Aw, come on, Tio, just one . . ."

  "And you ain't neither! You got to start figurin' how you gon' live now your aunt's gone! Where you gon' eat? You thought about that?"

  "Aw, Tio . . ."

  "Naw, man, you got to think about them things. You're on your own now, you got responsibilities."

  "Tomorrow!—I'll work it all out tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow! You don't even know where you gon' eat tonight! You talkin' 'bout bein' a man—you're more like a newborn baby! Now you get that playin' out your head and start tendin' to business."

  "Well, I don't know how to—I don't know where to start!"

  "That's what I figured. All right, you start with Jayell. He just back from his honeymoon, maybe he's got some work you can do. And school! Tomorrow mornin' you get yourself up there and get checked back in that school 'fore you lose a whole year."

  "Oh! Yeah, hey, guess what I heard on the radio . . . !"

  "Tonight I'll bring you sump'n to eat," he continued, "enough to last you a couple of days anyway, in case Jojohn ain't back before then. And if he's gone for good, well, we'll just have to work sump'n out. But right now you get down to Jayell's and see about that job." He shoved off and pedaled down the street. "It's close to dinnertime, he ought to be around the shop now. Get goin', man. You're grown now. No more good times."

  "The school," I yelled after him, "didn't you hear? We may be goin' together. They've passed a law!"

  Tio threw up a hand, but I knew he didn't hear me. He was pushing away hard, his whole body pumping on the strokes.

  I found Jayell sitting in his truck behind the shop, lunching on a can of tomatoes. "Where the hell did you come from?" he said.

  I explained that I couldn't be a burden on the Cahil
ls anymore and had decided to come back, and wondered if he had any work for me.

  Jayell rummaged in his pocket. "Hell, I'll spot you some money, Early boy."

  "I didn't come begging," I said. "I come looking for work."

  Jayell looked at me. "Well, things are about as bad for me as they can get right now, Earl. That damned house of Gwen's has just about put me under; drained off most everything I had in the bank, I'm behind on two loans now, and business is about as bad as I've ever seen it. I've got one house under way right now, and after that—I don't know what we'll do." Jayell shook his head. "And to have to take time off for a honeymoon!"

  "Well, look, I don't want to put you out. I know I'm not too good at building, and if you don't need any help right now . . ."

  "Help, sure I need help," he said quickly. "I need all the help I can get! You feel like doing some painting?"

  I was confused, as I usually ended up when I tried to follow Jayell's thinking. "But I thought you said . . ."

  "Kid, you want to talk or you want to work? I asked you about the painting."

  "Sure, I like to paint . . ."

  "Okay, then, get in. You can free up Skeeter so he can get back to the shop. He hates a paintbrush anyway. You're slow but you're careful, and that's what counts." Jayell tossed away the empty tomato can and cranked the truck. "Come on—you going? Get in, get in!"

  The house was for a young black quarry worker named Ruben Johnson who had just moved down from Salisbury. Jayell was building him a drum-shaped two-bedroom on telephone poles sunk in the marsh of Fletcher Bottom. The house stood about twelve feet from the ground with a walkway running to the bank of the street. Skeeter gladly turned over his paintbrush and I took his place on the ladder.

  How fast things had settled back down, I thought. Here I was an orphan one day, with no place to go, and a working man the next, with a full-time job and a place to live. Who needed more than that? Maybe a painter was what I was cut out to be. Certainly I was no good at carpentry, and the thought of a quarry gave me the shivers. Even Jayell said I was a good painter. Well, he came as close to saying that as Jayell could get to a compliment. Maybe I'd have my own van truck some day—and hire a couple of helpers! The only drawback I could see was I hadn't any experience with liquor. Well, I'd just have to learn the trade a step at a time.