Metal Angel

by Nancy Springer

  “Stay on your feet!” he yelled in the angel’s ear, aiming the ax at the other rope. And Volos had more guts than anybody had a right to expect of anyone. Ennis could feel him responding, bracing himself, pulling the rope taut so that the ax could sever it.

  The cruel thing gave way. Ennis had his left arm around Volos, felt angel blood soaking his sleeve, hot, felt Volos’s hand clinging to his shoulder. And the night was full of blows and shouting and horror, there were two wings lying like dying swans on the ground and far too many men rushing him—he swung the ax at random to hold them off. Guided Volos toward his car. Wished fervidly that he had not parked so far away. The Yugo squatted well beyond the bonfire, that blaze of hatred which he was just now nearing—

  Someone cuffed him hard on the side of the head. A voice he knew all too well roared, “Ennis Bradley! Heed me now, or hellfire awaits you!”

  Ennis had no more time for murderous fanatics. With the flat of the ax he knocked Crawshaw out of his way and plunged onward, supporting the angel who staggered at his side. Behind him he heard a hoarse, barking scream. The air smelled of cloth burning, then of charring flesh—in his panic Ennis noted these things only vaguely. There was no time for them either.

  For some reason people let him alone as he reached the car. He leaned Volos and the ax against it, then tore off his shirt and tied it around the singer’s wounded torso as tightly as he could.

  Volos said faintly, “Angie …”

  “She’ll be all right. I’ll see to that. I promise you.” Ennis got him into the front seat, leaving the ax on the ground. Started the Yugo, roared out of the dark and bloodied field, and already Volos slumped against the window, unconscious. Frightened for his passenger and frightened for himself, Ennis drove as he had never done in his life, taking the road down the mountain at a speed that several times had him airborne. He checked his rearview mirror often, but nothing except his own fear pursued him.

  Angie awoke with a groan to find herself lying on cold concrete and looking up at darkness. Groggily she struggled to her feet. Alarm bells were ringing in her mind, yet she could not at first think what had happened or where she was—

  God help her. That small, dim window overhead, she knew it, and the shape and damp smell of the room, and the glint of glass jars along the walls. She was in the basement of her parents’ house, in the small stronghold where they kept the home-canned green beans and rhubarb. They had shut her in here sometimes as a punishment when she was a child.

  I am not a child anymore, she told her terror. It helped just enough to keep her from blubbering.

  She tried the door, already knowing what she would find. Locked. She tried the light switch. Nothing. They had taken out the fuse. She looked at the window, finding it barred and chicken-wired against hooliganism, as always. And as dark outside as in. Nighttime. She wondered how late.

  Anger would help. In a hospital one night she had found that anger is a powerful ally. But how to use it? Summon Mashhit or some other spirit? She felt too weak and wretched, too much the Lady of the Basement, to risk dealing with such power. Not yet. Later, maybe, when things got even worse. She felt sure that things would, in fact, get worse.

  She paced, knowing from childhood experience that no one would come if she shouted and slammed things around, that all the noise she could make would scarcely disturb the sleepers in the bedrooms two stories above. She thought of smashing jars against a wall anyway, as a gesture, then decided against it. Why ruin all her mother’s work when nothing was her mother’s fault, really? Her father was to blame, he and that snake Mercedes. Angie remembered the touch of his soft, ladylike hands as he had forced the drug into her, and she shuddered.

  She wondered if Volos had seen them take her. He might not even know where she was.

  “Volos,” she called softly to the night.

  Why did she hesitate to call again? He would be overjoyed to hear from her, frantic with worrying about her. Surely he would not mind her summoning him. Yet something felt different than ever before.

  “Volos. I’m sorry, but I need you.”

  He had read her mind across a continent once, yet now she could feel no sense that he heard. For a black moment she wondered if he was alive, then pushed the thought out of her mind.

  Cold, she hugged herself. “Volos. Please. Who will help me if not you?”

  Because it would make him smile in that sweet way he had, she wanted to tell him that she loved him, but she knew it was not true.

  “Volos?”

  Then she froze, listening. Loud, hurried footsteps thumped down the wooden basement stairs, heading toward her. Without speaking she waited where she was as the old lock rattled. Winced as the door swung open and light stabbed in. For a moment the man in the doorway was only a dark shape to her. Then she knew him.

  “Ennis,” she whispered, and she stepped back.

  “Ange. Please.” He did not move toward her, but she could hear his voice shake with something close to panic. “I know I don’t deserve it, but you’ve got to trust me. We have to get you out of here. Your father could get back any minute.”

  There he stood, the way he had always been before: earnest, awkward, very attractive in his shy way. Yet there he stood utterly different: shirtless, and unaware of it. Something had happened. Something huge had changed.

  In three long strides she was out the door. “The boys,” she said.

  “Upstairs.”

  Because Ennis, a family male, had told her to, Angie’s mother had brought Gabe and Mikey down from their beds. Obedient and unspeaking, she presented them. Angie said, “Mother,” and hugged her, but her mother did not hug back.

  “Ange,” Ennis urged gently.

  They ran to the car. Ennis carried the boys bobbing in his arms, which made them giggle. Once in the back seat they lumped together like puppies and went to sleep. Ennis headed toward the expressway, driving hard.

  Angie waited until he was on the four-lane before asking him, “What has happened?”

  He told her. Ennis was a man of few words and short sentences; he told her the story starkly, without flowers or excuses. His voice did not break until he had to explain how they had tied Volos to the posts. Then Angela looked over at him and saw tears running down his face.

  “Ennis?”

  “It was—when I held his wing—it turned me inside out.”

  She did not yet understand what had happened to Volos, did not yet want to know, but she began to understand what had happened to Ennis. She watched him steadily. Asked, “What did you feel?”

  “I felt—I love you. I don’t care what you did, I love you forever. And I knew—everything I was thinking and doing, everything I thought was right, it was all wrong. I knew I didn’t want to hurt anybody.”

  After a moment she reached over and touched his hand. She said, “What happened then?”

  He told her.

  When she could speak she asked, “Is he—is he …”

  “I don’t know. I got him to the hospital and then I had to leave him there and come get you.”

  He drove fast, with the tears drying on his face. She could see them in the light of headlamps, illumination that sped by like happiness. In that same fleeting light she watched him, seeing as if for the first time the warm farm-boy planes of his face and the muscles moving in his bare shoulders. His body was very beautiful, as she had felt sure it must be. She felt two songs forming in her, one of Volos and terrible sadness, one of Ennis and hope.

  Several miles farther down the highway, she asked, “Ennis, where are we going?”

  “I don’t know. Some motel someplace.” She saw a blush start below his neck and flood his face as he heard his own words hang in the air. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I just mean I’ve got to get you and the boys someplace your father won’t find you.”

  “Yes, I see. Let me think.”

  Her head ached almost as badly as her heart. From whatever poison Mercedes had given her, maybe. God
burn Mercedes. Sitting with her chilly fingers pressed against her hot, lidded eyes, trying to sort things through, she asked, “Can you give me change for a phone call?”

  He felt at his trousers pocket. “Yes. Sure.”

  At the next exit, without her having to request it, he pulled off and found a red-and-white booth at a gas station. Gave her money. Coins in hand, she got out, then looked back and saw how he sat bent over the steering wheel, hiding his face in his arms.

  “Ennis?”

  He looked up, then got out of the car and came with her, leaning against the doorpost of the old-fashioned phone booth. Once she had pressed the buttons for Information she put her arm around him.

  “Persimmon, West Virginia,” she told the nasal-voiced operator. “Robert McCardle.” Her heart pounded. She repeated the number over and over to herself until she had dialed it and fed the phone more than two dollars in quarters.

  It rang ten times, and she let it keep ringing.

  “Hello?” A woman’s faintly Southern-accented voice.

  “Hello—” She almost called her Wyoma, as if she knew her. “Hello, Mrs. McCardle? I know I got you up, I’m sorry, but it’s sort of an emergency.”

  “Who’s this?” The voice was not unpleasant, even though it was four in the morning, just businesslike.

  “Angie Bradley. I’m a friend of Texas’. Is he there, please?” God, please make him be there.

  “Thanks for sendin’ him back to me, Angie.” There was a wry warmth in the woman’s voice now. “Men, they just don’t understand, but we love ’em anyways, don’t we? Bob’s sleepin’ for a change, and I hate to waken him. Can you tell me what it’s about? Somethin’ go wrong with Volos?”

  Because she had not really expected Wyoma to understand or be her friend, Angie found herself hugging Ennis hard, and smiling, yet near tears.

  “He’s hurt,” she said. “Volos is. He’s in the hospital.”

  “How bad hurt?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not with him. I don’t even know if he’s dead or alive.” Her voice quivered. “I’m in kind of a jam.”

  Wyoma said in matter-of-fact tones, “You need some help? You and the little guys need a place to stay?”

  “I sure do and we sure do. Thank you.”

  “Nothin’ to it. C’mon down, honey child.”

  Volos awoke to find himself lying belly-down in a dim room and hurting more than he would have believed possible, body and soul. There were needles in his arm, taped to him, and tubes dripping fluids into him. The place smelled like the one where Mikey had been put in a white bed. Also he had faint, pain-skewed memories of the Emergency Room and the people exclaiming over him. All of which meant he was alive and in a hospital, not in hell after all, which should have made him feel better but did not. He felt wretched.

  Far too much alone. Where was everyone? He would have welcomed even Mercedes’s petulant face at his side … no, perhaps not Mercedes. God scar you forever, Mercy, what did I do to make you turn against me so?

  And what had Mercedes done with Angela? Sweet wounded Jesus, where was she, what might be happening to her?

  I love her.

  It seemed fitting yet very strange, that he truly loved her, that he, Volos, heaven’s dunce, had really wanted to save her. But all such salvation was doomed for mortals, he could see that now. Because even if he had died for her, what was to keep life from lashing at her like Chayyliel’s scourge of fire after he was gone? And without making a cage of his arms, without making himself a prison for her, how could he keep her safe in his embrace forever?

  Could even the fathergod do that?

  Maybe not. Maybe nobody can save the ones they love.

  He closed his eyes. Like firelight, images flickered within his mind: Caged pigeons. A parakeet nesting amid yellow flowers, waiting for frost. A hummingbird on the wing, gone within an eyeblink..

  Gone.

  Wings.

  Gone, cut off. But how could that be? Perhaps Mercedes had been feeding him strange acids again, perhaps he had dreamed it all, the ropes, the fire, the madman with the ax, the ghastly pain—

  No. The pain was still with him. Opening his eyes, trying to move, he nearly fainted from it. All he could do was slide a hand to feel the thick bandaging around his torso, then lay it down again. Where feathers should have been, behind him, there was nothing but hard cotton bedsheet.

  But, without his wings—once he had told himself they were a bad joke, a nuisance, but now he sensed that they had been far more and everything had changed. What was he, who was he, now that they were gone? All he knew about himself was that he was a fool and he hurt.

  Christ, he hurt.

  Pain, partly of heart and partly of body, made him moan. A bosomy nurse sailed in, white ship of mercy in the night.

  “Angie,” he panted at her.

  “I’m Bernice, Mr. Volos.”

  The leadhead. “No. I mean—Angie—is she all right?”

  The nurse was checking his chart, his tubes, his pulse. “You don’t worry about other people, now,” she said in automatic tones. “You just think about getting yourself well.”

  He hated her, but persevered. “She’s married to—the one who brought me here—” He remembered how it had felt, the shock of hope through his pinions when a goodhearted man had taken hold of his wing. He would never feel that surge again, but he remembered Ennis, and he badly wanted someone to tell him that Ennis had gotten to Angie in time.

  “He dumped you here and took off again.” The nurse’s voice was crisp, disapproving. “I’ll get a doctor to okay some more painkiller for you.” She sailed out.

  In a few minutes there were stupid questions and soothing inanities and another needle in his arm. With surprising quickness the world fuzzed over. Volos slept.

  When he awoke, it was daylight, and this time he was not alone. There was someone sitting by his side. Someone with a crease-top Stetson and a string tie, with a kind face and worried eyes.

  “Texas!”

  “Kid, I—whoa!”

  Despite pain, despite needles and tubes, Volos lunged up, reaching for him, nearly falling. At the sight of that familiar weathered face a hot reaction started in his heart and, having no wings to run to, swelled and heaved his chest. The upheaval hurt, yet he could not stop it, and he heard himself making uncouth sounds. He could not see properly, the pressure had reached his eyes and water was stinging its way through them somehow, running down his cheekbones into Texas’ shirt. Volos felt all made of agitated water, wave after wave of salt tide. It was a good thing Texas had jumped up to support him, was sitting on the bed with his arms around him, holding him together.

  So this is weeping.

  Volos did not like it. The spasms made his wounds hurt clear to his heart and got in the way of things he urgently needed to say.

  “They—took—Angie,” he managed between sobs. Texas would go find Angie if Ennis had not.

  “Shhh. She got away, she’s fine. She and the boys are staying at my place.” Texas was holding him very softly, careful of the bandages, stroking his hair. The weeping was perhaps almost worth it for the sake of the holding, the softness.

  “You—sure?”

  “Sure, I’m sure. Woke up this morning and there they all were. Don’t try to talk, son.”

  But there was another thing he had to tell Texas, at once. “Texas—what I said to you, what I did—I am sorry—”

  “Hush. Please.”

  Waters had begun to calm somewhat. Volos left the warm solidness of Texas’s chest and shoulder a moment and sat up to look at his friend, because he had heard an odd distortion in Texas’s voice.

  “You are—weeping also.”

  Texas half smiled, despite the wetness around his eyes. “No kidding.”

  “But—I do not want that for you, Texas. This crying—it hurts.” Volos felt dizzy with pain, and would have toppled if Texas had not still been holding him by the shoulders.

  “I bet it does.” Te
xas’s voice wavered. “After what they did to you, it’s gotta hurt like hell. Volos, you say you’re sorry, I am so goddamn sorry I could spit. I never should have left you like that.”

  “It is all right. You are back home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has Wyoma stopped being angry with you?”

  “Yes. It—it’s going good, Volos. Better than it’s ever been.”

  “Then do not be sorry. They can have my wings.”

  “Oh, Christ, kid …” The words broke like a heart.

  Volos meant what he had said. He wanted to repeat it, with elaboration, but sensed that it would be merciful of him to be silent. Also, his voice sounded thick, and he felt stuff running down his face from his nostrils as well as from his eyes. Letting Texas support him, he explored it with his fingers.

  “This crying—it clogs my nose.”

  Texas reached out one long arm for a Kleenex.

  “It makes me feel sodden all over.”

  Still fumbling for the tissue box, Texas stiffened and gawked at him. “You mean—ain’t you never done this before, buddy?”

  “I—did not—imagine myself …”

  “Kid, you can’t do love without doing this.”

  “I—know that now.”

  Volos felt tears swelling in him again, because love was a two-edged thing. So be it; so let hurting happen. Love was like a sword, but also like a feather from an angel’s wing.

  He closed his eyes, let the tears run quietly, felt Texas dabbing at his nose with a wad of tissue. “Blow,” Texas ordered.

  “Pardon?”

  “Snort air through your nose.”

  Volos complied. “Ick,” Texas said. Volos sat still and let him take care of the cleanup. Then felt himself being gathered into a hug again. Gentle, Texas was being very gentle with him, as if handling a newborn. It was odd that a mortal could feel at the same moment so miserable and so much loved … The tall man with the kind eyes was cradling his head with one large warm hand. Speaking softly into his hair.