A Cry of Angels

by Jeff Fields

  But mostly we left them alone.

  It was more than a month before Gwen returned. She had written several times, but I doubt that she ever received a reply. I was slingblading the early crop of weeds off of the creek bank the afternoon her car screeched to a stop in front of the shop.

  Phaedra met her at the door.

  "He's not here," she said. "Why don't you just go away somewhere."

  "So, this is his new arrangement! They told me Thoreau had returned to Walden, but it seems they left out something."

  "Don't try to talk over my head, you overeducated, ill-tempered bitch. Just get the hell away from here."

  Gwen folded her arms. "Oh, yes, I think I see it all quite clearly now. The realization is somewhat late in coming, but blinding in its clarity. Enter the little blond gutter slut, Rebecca of the Ape Yard, and new light shines on our troubled hearth."

  "Aw, flush it," said Phaedra. "If you had any real sense you wouldn't have to spout that bookish doubletalk all the time. But I'll tell you something we can both understand: you don't deserve Jayell Crooms and I'm taking him away from you. It's as simple as that."

  "Oh, really? Can you be that sure of yourself—an ignorant, back-lot brat with nothing going for you but a good body?"

  Phaedra put her hands on her hips. "A girl with a good body's always sure of herself. It's your big-brained broads with the butterbean asses that's got to worry. Maybe that don't make book sense, but as you get old, you look around and see who's havin' the best time."

  "I learned long ago not to try and argue with stupidity," said Gwen. She started to turn away, and Phaedra suddenly stepped out the door and grabbed her arm and spun her around.

  "I hate your guts," she said evenly, " so I'm gonna tell you something. You didn't lose Jayell. You never had him. You're no different than those ladies who bring Christmas baskets to the Ape Yard so they can get a peek inside the shacks. Jayell was a novelty to you, a wild thing you had to prune, cultivate, put in a hothouse and make it grow your way. Well, Jayell Crooms sucks his beauty from want, from barrenness, from need. Ape Yard mud nourished him. Struggle makes him grow. You and Marble Park were smothering him."

  Gwen looked at her. She started to say something, but couldn't—the thoughts changing. Perplexed, she drew herself up. "I've had about enough of this. Tell my husband that if he has anything further to say to me, I can be reached at my father's."

  "I'll tell him nothing," said Phaedra. "You got anything to say to Jayell, write him a note. And you better be sure and sign it. Another night with me and he may not remember your name."

  Gwen shouldered her bag and surveyed the scene around her, the girl, the weathered shop, the wind picking leaves in the yard. Squirrels darted among the creek trees, making question marks with their tails. She turned on her heel and walked back to the car. One of Quarrytown's better days, I told myself, watching her go.

  36

  The straggling exodus continued from the little tin-roofed houses on the sloping acreage surrounding Teague's store. Once, sometimes twice a week one of the poor black families could be seen loading their belongings into a pickup or one of the trucks from Bobo's mill and descending the winding dirt road to the raw, hastily constructed little shacks on the south side of the hollow, many of them merely shells, still unfinished on the inside when their occupants moved in.

  "I don't like it," said Em, as we stopped to watch Speck Turner, the black plumber, loading his household goods into the back of his van. His girlfriend came down the steps lugging a trunk. "I don't like what's brewin' down there."

  "From what I hear, them that's got to move don't like it much either," I said.

  It was no secret that many of them, especially those who had spent years scraping money from their subsistence-level wages at Bobo's mill to pay off their little clapboard homes, were bitter about being moved to the baking, treeless red ridges of the opposite slope, to become renters again. Bobo was selling no more Ape Yard property. There were grumblings. But in the end they sold and moved. No one said no to Doc Bobo.

  "What you movin' away for, Byrd?" Mr. Teague asked a retired mill foreman who had lived down the road from him for more than twenty years.

  The elderly black man bit off a plug of Brown Mule and looked away. "Doc Bobo made me a good price." He hesitated. There was something else. Finally he fumbled out his stringy wallet. "Better pay up my bill while I'm here."

  "In the middle of the month? Hellfire, you ain't movin' out of the state, you know. Come on back over when you get your pension check."

  The other man looked at the floor. "I don't 'spect I be comin' back," he said. "You unnerstan'."

  Mr. Teague understood. And as the days went by, he became aware with growing alarm that it was to be the same with the others. Business slowed to a trickle.

  There was one other white man with a vested interest, and that was Paulie Mangum, who lived in the decrepit mill shanty next door. And, of course, he was champing at the bit to sell. "Damnit all, Alvah, I got fifty by a hunerd foot on that rock. Wasn't worth a tinker's damn before, but you know what he's offered me for it?"

  "Probably a lot more'n he's offered the others," said Mr. Teague.

  "But he says it ain't worthwhile to buy ours unless you sell, too. Now, you know I can't pass up the chance to get out of here! Tell you what, you match his offer and I'll sell to you. Druther, in fact, than to that nigger."

  "I wouldn't want your property even if I had the money, which I don't. And I sure couldn't match his offer 'cause bein' the only other white man, naturally you'd get a blowed-up figure to help put the pressure on me. So you make a few dollars on the sale—at the same time everybody else stands to lose—includin' me. Bring me one witness to say you're worth it, you drunken lint head, and I'll make the deal!"

  "That's spite talk," said Paulie, "'cause you and me's had words from time to time; I'm talkin' business here, Alvah."

  "I'm talkin' business! My business! One I've spent fifty years buildin' up. The question is whether I'm to give up my business so another man can make a profit. His is big business, mine is small, does that mean I have less rights? The chains ain't done it, neither is Bobo and the tombstone people—nobody's going to eat me up!" Mr. Teague pulled a bill off the spike. "Now, unless you want to catch a little sump'n on your account, we got no further business to talk about."

  One afternoon when Em and I arrived at the shop on a supper invitation from Phaedra, who had turned out to be a surprisingly good cook (by our standards anyway), we watched Jayell maneuver his truck past an overloaded jalopy on the Twig Creek bridge.

  "Jesus," he said, alighting in the yard, "have you been up to see those rat traps they're moving into? The damn lumber's so green the studs are already warping! And you know what they're getting for those things? Hear this now—a two-bedroom, unfinished on the inside. . ." Jayell stopped and swung around at the sound of a car turning off the main road and pulling up before the shop building.

  Mr. J. J. Bearden of Bearden Real Estate smiled and bowed his way to the steps. "Lord, I never saw so much activity down here, thought I'd never get through that traffic. Evenin', Jayell, evenin'—evenin'."

  "Well, goddam, J. J., what brings you to niggertown?"

  "Oh, I'm telling you I've been so busy! Never been run so in my life. Textile people—been showing houses till my legs are run off! Two more mills opening up over in Lennox County, and we're just gettin' the spillover; they're goin' crazy over there! Twelve hundred new families in the next six months, can you believe that? You can get twenty thousand dollars for a chicken coop these days!"

  "That's what I hear," said Jayell, his eye wandering along the distant ridge.

  "Well, to business, to business. Oh! Good evenin', ma'am!" He whipped off his hat as Phaedra appeared in the door with a basket of wet clothes under her arm. She nodded and walked on by to the clothesline. "Well, Jayell, I—uh, thought this was your shop—uh, I didn't know you had this—well, what I mean . . ."

  "
J. J., what the hell's on your mind?"

  Mr. Bearden popped a mint into his mouth and twitched his nose nervously. "Yes, ah, well the fact is, Jayell—I'm afraid you're going to have to move out of here."

  "What?" Jayell jumped to his feet.

  Mr. Bearden fumbled in his pocket for a paper. "No later than the first of the month. As you know, Harley Bobo wants to clear this side of the . . ."

  "What the hell are you talking about? I rent this place from Luther Pierce!"

  "That's right . . . until yesterday, but you see, Bobo bought the place from Luther yesterday."

  "For Christ's sake! This is half a mile from where he wants to start that quarry!"

  "I know, Jayell, but that's what he wants. Now look, this is a delicate situation, that's why he hired me to handle it instead of coming himself. Bobo doesn't want any trouble, no hard feelings, that's important—most important, he said. If a month wouldn't be enough time . . ."

  "Bearden, what the hell's goin' on around here?"

  The realtor crunched his mint. He stuck his hands in his pockets. He took them out again. "I don't know, Jayell, I just don't know. I'm not involved in it, understand, my agency's not, I mean; my fee just calls for me to clear this place, settle up with Mangum up here, and—uh"—his nervousness compounded as he swung a look at Em and me—"to-ah, order demolition on the Cahill house. You two will have to move out of that garage, of course; he wants that pulled down too."

  I was thunderstruck. "But why? You told us. . ."

  Mr. Bearden shrugged. "For some reason he wants all white people moved out of the hollow."

  Now Em stood up, his head crowding under the eave. "Is that son of a bitch calling me white!"

  "Oh, no! Not—it's just that, well, you're—not—black, I suppose . . . listen—" Mr. Bearden was backing toward his car. "I've got to be going. If you'd care to take it up with him, I'd say you have a point, a very good point, but . . . well"—he fumbled his key in the switch and cranked the car—"I'm sure I've done what's required on my part. White—black—I'm in the real estate business, for goodness' sake!" He curled his fingers at Phaedra and drove away.

  Nobody spoke. The sun was sliding beyond the west rim of the hollow. A truck had blown a tire down on the road, and the black family was patiently pulling their shabby belongings off the rear. Traffic was backing up in the narrow dirt street.

  37

  The boarders sat in the yellow light of parlor lamps as Mr. Bearden talked, motionless, like waxen figures, staring at the floor.

  Mr. Bearden took his hat from the hatrack. "You may have all the time you need and, of course, I stand ready to help with arrangements in any way I can. My card is on the mantle. Please do feel free to call."

  Finally, after he had gone, Mrs. Metcalf sighed and leaned forward. "Well, that's it, then, isn't it? That's the end of the boardinghouse."

  "By God," mumbled Mr. Burroughs, "throwed out of one house, now throwed out of the other."

  Mrs. Cline was close to tears. "I ain't going to live with my daughter, that's all I can say."

  "Well," snapped Mr. Jurgen, "it don't seem like you got much choice in the matter."

  "I have too! I just won't go, that's all!"

  Mrs. Porter's fingers trembled as she twisted her handkerchief. "The Lord will provide. If we'll only just put our trust in the Lord . . ."

  "Well, He ain't done much providin' so far!" said Mr. Rampey.

  "Lester Rampey, there's no call to blaspheme . . ."

  "Now, let's don't start bickering!" cried Mr. Burroughs, "we'll be back in that quick enough!"

  "Yes, please," said Mrs. Bell, "let's please not do that now . . ."

  They fell silent again. I looked at Em, who sat straddling a chair in the corner, slowly twisting a beer in his hands. He blinked uncertainly at me for a moment, and looked away.

  We sat in the yellow silence.

  I don't know how long, maybe five minutes, perhaps ten—it could have been half an hour. But somewhere in the ringing silence another noise came intruding, the climbing roar of a tethered muffler, intermingled with distant cries.

  Lights flashed across the window shades, a door slammed, there were footsteps on the porch, and in a moment Jayell burst in from the hallway with Phaedra by the hand. He stood surveying the startled boarders, his eyes blazing.

  "Get up from there, you damned old corncobs, we're gonna build us a house!"

  They sat staring at him. Mr. Burroughs leaned forward on his cane, as if he hadn't heard right.

  "Jayell," said Mrs. Porter, "what's come over you?"

  Jayell pounced on her and dragged her out of her chair and whirled her around the room. "Good sense, finally, old sweetheart," he shouted. "Hoo—hoooo! If you were only a drinkin' woman . . "

  "He's drunk," sniffed Mrs. Cline. "Don't pay any attention to him."

  "Miss Boggs," said Mrs. Metcalf, "what do you mean lettin' him. . ."

  "Honey, he ain't had a drop," said Phaedra.

  Jayell stopped and clapped his hands. "Listen to me, listen now. I got ten acres of Waugh land right over yonder on Wolf Mountain, and there's a mountain of salvage lumber in the weeds around my shop, enough to build three or four houses! Let 'em take this place, and the garage, and my shop. Let 'em take apart every piece, nail 'em end to end, and shove 'em up old Bobo's . . ."

  "The Lord sakes!" Mrs. Porter cried. "You ain't serious."

  "Boy, are you sure?" said Mr. Rampey excitedly. "Are you sure there's enough . . ."

  Jayell whirled and grabbed Phaedra by the shoulders. "Gonna build this girl a castle, a thing that'll float in the air!"

  Phaedra nodded, laughing her deep throaty laugh. "A castle out of scrap, Jack, a castle out of scrap."

  Jayell turned to Em and me. "And even a loft for the rate!"

  "Now, wait a minute," said Mr. Jurgen, squirming forward on the sofa, "you mean to tell us you can build houses, enough to hold this bunch, out of nothing but the piles of scrap under them rotted tarpaulins down on the creek? I ain't no builder, and even I can see the foolishness of that."

  Jayell stopped. The others turned to stare.

  "You got plumbing fixtures, wiring, lighting fixtures? You got paint, you got trim work and hardware, you got window glass, you got masonry for the foundations? You got all that stuff down at your place? I mean, it's one thing to put up one of them little places on the hillsides and out in the woods for a family of three or four, but this is a pretty big crowd you got here. Now, I ain't the one to throw cold water, but I say we got to look careful at every aspect of this . . . 'cause you're a fine boy, Jayell, and I know you mean well, but as everybody here knows, you do tend to get carried away sometimes."

  Jayell leaned over him. "Mr. Jurgen," he said softly, "you got a head on your shoulders."

  Mr. Jurgen smiled.

  "And it's pure granite!" shouted Jayell. "Do you think I don't know my business! Of course it's going to take money"—he pulled a piece of paper from his shirt pocket—"but with the materials I've already got, I figure I can do the whole job for less than six thousand dollars."

  "Oh," Mr. Jurgen said laughing, bitterly triumphant, "is that all? Why don't you say six million!"

  "Jayell, we haven't got that kind of money," said Mr. Rampey.

  "Then, you'll have to get it up."

  "And how do you propose we do that?" said Mrs. Porter.

  "It's simple, pool what you got and raise the rest among your children."

  Mr. Rampey exhaled slowly. "If you think for one minute they'd give us. . ."

  "Give, hell! I ain't talking about giving! I'm talking about a hard business transaction. I'm saying sell your obligations, and buy your freedom!" Jayell looked at the faces hardening around him, turning to disappointment. "Now, wait a minute," he said, "I know you're thinking this is just another lunatic notion, but don't shut me out, listen to me." He went to each of them, pleading, fighting for their attention.

  "Look at it this way: say a young couple gets married.
Mama and Papa want to be free of them, so they break their backs to set 'em up in their own house. They'll give their last dollar, strip their own house of furniture to do it. They want to be rid of 'em, but they feel guilty about it. All right, same with you. Your young'uns want to be rid of you, so they pay money to keep you here. But they treat you like dirt. Never come to visit, and when they do it's like pullin' teeth till they can get away again. Why? They feel guilty. Anybody who wants freedom feels guilty about it. Now, when they hear this place is closing, they're gonna flat-out panic. They're all worried about you becomin' a burden on 'em in one way or another. As long as they can call this a 'boardinghouse,' it ain't like Mama or Papa is in a nursing home. Now, they either got to put you away, which would make 'em feel guilty, or take you in. You got 'em between the guilt and the freedom. So, you make your move. You put a cash value on that guilt. Make a settlement and turn 'em loose."

  "I don't understand it," said Mrs. Metcalf, shaking her head. "I don't understand it at all. But, say, even if they somehow gave us the money to build the house, or they agreed to make the payments for us, what would we live on?"

  "Same as old folks always live on! Whatever they can scratch and scrape together. Pool your pensions, your social security, raise you a garden, make your quilts, babysit for people, cash in your burial insurance—what do you care for fancy funerals—it's the life you got left that counts! Die in starvation, maybe, but die independent. Else hush this chatter and go live with your young'uns! Pack for the county home!"

  Again the parlor was quiet.

  Suddenly Mr. Burroughs was on his feet, choking with laughter. "By God!" he chortled, slapping his hands. "By the living God above!"

  "It's crazy," said Mrs. Porter. "I never heard such a crazy thing."

  "Crazy is he!" cried Mr. Burroughs, bolting for the hall telephone. "I'll show you how crazy he is when I get through to my loves!" He snatched up the receiver and his long, hammer-blunt fingers fumbled with the dial. "Oh, damn, the man that designed this thing was dreaming of virgins! Missus Bell, be so kind to come twist me out a number!"