Metal Angel

by Nancy Springer

  Ennis said, “We talked it over, Volos. We want to keep the baby, if you will let us. To me it would be an honor and—and a blessing, like when Mary came to Joseph and told him she was carrying God’s son.”

  That stung Volos into protest. “Ennis, I am not a god!”

  “Could have fooled me.” The young man stood looking at him steadily. “You’re not the only one who felt something when I touched your wing.”

  He still does not quite understand. “Ennis no. If that was in me, then—then it is in all of us.”

  Sometime in the course of the conversation Angela had let herself lean closer, near enough to touch. Or perhaps it was he who, sitting up, intense, had come closer to her. Nevertheless, he startled like a deer when she placed her hand on his.

  She said, “Will you let us keep the child?”

  He knew already that it would be beautiful as only her child could be, with her dark, singing eyes, her quiet heart of a face; how could she think he would take it from her? He said, “Of course. But can—may I be a father also? Can a child have two fathers?”

  “I think we could manage it. But are you sure it will not be too hard on you?”

  “I seem to do things the hard way. Ennis?”

  “Yes,” Ennis said, and for a moment he also touched Volos’s hand, so that the three of them were like a fire with three flames.

  Volos looked up at him. “Listen,” he said, “there was something I was stupid about. I took a song away from you. There is no way I can give it back, but I want to give you—no, shut up.” As Ennis tried to protest. “I know what I’m doing. I have something I want to give both of you.”

  He brought it out of the bedside drawer where Texas had stored it for him: a shining white feather from an angel’s wing.

  Looking at their faces, he knew he had done the love thing not too badly, for an amateur.

  In the downstairs lounge, Gabe played disconsolately with Legos, hating forever Bernice the Monster Nurse or anything that kept him from seeing Birdman. He badly wanted to see Birdman again, because his mother had told him Birdman had lost his wings, and this simply could not be true. When people talked like that, it made Gabe feel afraid Birdman was dead. He had heard the grown-ups saying in the night that someone was dead. And he worried that this must be Birdman, because Birdman could not be Birdman without his wings.

  Sitting on the thinly carpeted floor beside him, Mikey banged plastic dinosaurs together. Mikey was stupid, sitting there playing as if nothing was wrong.

  “Uncle Texas,” Gabe said to the cowboy-booted feet by his side, “is Birdman dead?”

  “No, son!” Texas slapped down his newspaper, grabbed Gabe under the armpits and lifted him to his lap. It was like being lassoed by a helicopter. “What the Sam Hill makes you think that?”

  Gabe could not explain to him how ever since knowing Birdman he just knew things. Like he knew there was a baby inside his mother, and it was a girl, and she would be just like Birdman, like a dark fire angel, like she could fly without wings. And he knew Birdman was her father, but Daddy would be her father too. And he knew which people were really nice and which people, like Grandpa, only acted nice sometimes. And if he got close enough to hear he knew what the wild birds were saying. And even though he could not talk about them he knew Mikey knew these things too.

  But he didn’t know what had happened to Grandpa after the last time he saw him, though he knew something had happened, because there had been a black halo riding around Grandpa’s head. And he didn’t know what had happened to Birdman.

  He said to Uncle Texas, “If Birdman’s not dead, how come they won’t let us see him?”

  “You’re too young, son, that’s all. They don’t let runny-nose kids upstairs. They’re afraid of germs.”

  “But what’s Birdman doing upstairs?”

  “Getting better. He wasn’t feeling too good for a while there.”

  “They cut off his wings?” Clearly impossible, yet the grown-ups kept saying this.

  “Yes.”

  “Who did?”

  He had asked his mother this more than once, but she only looked as if her head hurt and did not answer. And Uncle Texas was of no more use. He looked like he wanted to hide under his hat.

  Gabe had heard Aunt Wyoma talking with his mother about Uncle Texas, fixing supper together and telling stories about men the way women do. Aunt Wyoma had said, “He sure has changed. But it’s all good changes. Everything I always liked best about him is right up front now. For a long time there it was hard, he was trying to be rough and tough, always hiding his heart—”

  Mother had said, “Ennis, too.”

  “That so? You think it was Volos changed both of them?”

  “It’s not—with Volos it’s not change, really. Wasn’t, I mean. It was just a sort of—strengthening, when a person touched his wing.”

  “Honey, I ain’t so sure. The whole bunch of you, there’s a kind of warmth about you, a glow. The children, too. Like you got a golden light inside.” After a little bit, Aunt Wyoma had said, “I wish I’d gone along for the ride. I wish I knew him. Volos, I mean. Before it happened.”

  Then they were both very quiet.

  Uncle Texas might be the way Aunt Wyoma said, and he was an excellent person to ask for ice cream, but he was not being much help concerning Birdman. Gabe gave up on Uncle Texas and slid down from his lap to play again. But before he could grab the dinosaurs away from Mikey, the big doors to the lounge swung open and in came three people: Mommy, and Daddy, and Birdman in between them with his hands on their shoulders.

  Birdman with a bruised face and a hurting walk and no wings.

  Mikey started to cry first, but only because he got his breath first. It took a lot of breath to bellow as was called for. Half a moment later Gabe sent forth his own roar of grief and outrage to resound along with his brother’s. Their father tried to hush them. They would not hush. They squirmed out of then mother’s arms. Life was an affront to be defied with squalls of pain and rage.

  “Got to admit,” Gabe heard Uncle Texas remark to Daddy or somebody, “I know just how they feel.”

  “Michael. Gabriel.” Birdman had wobbled down to sit on the floor with them, cross-legged, like an Indian. He gathered them into his lap, one on each side, and his hug they did not resist. He had the right to calm them. Also, it was good to find that his arms still felt the same, though he had no wings anymore to give them comfort with a touch.

  “Listen, small ones. It is not so bad as you think.”

  “They—hurt—you,” Gabe sobbed.

  “Shhhh. Yes, it hurt, but it is over now. Listen. Do you remember how I told you about the Grigori? The angels who came down a long time ago to teach necessary things to the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve?”

  Gabe remembered. There had been Sariel, who taught people about the changes of the moon, and Kokabel, who taught them about the stars, and Shamshiel, who taught them the signs of the sun.

  “Armaros,” Birdman said, “who taught women enchantments, and Azazel, who taught them the use of coloring tinctures to make themselves even more beautiful than before—almost as beautiful as your mother. And Penemure, who taught both men and women the making and singing of songs. Do you remember?” He rested his cheek against the top of Gabe’s head as he spoke, so that the warmth of his breath stirred Gabe’s hair. “And also Penemure taught children the bitter and the sweet and the secrets of wisdom. I have often thought it would be good to be like Penemure.”

  Gabe had quieted, because there were many things lying hidden in Birdman’s words like faces hidden in a picture, and he wanted to find out what they were. Across Birdman’s lap from him he saw Mikey sucking on his fingers like a baby. He checked on the whereabouts of his own fingers, and pulled them out of his mouth.

  “You remember how the Grigori were supposed to go back to the sky, but they did not? They fell in love with mortal women and stayed on earth and became family with men. So they had to lose their wings,
did they not? Mortals don’t have wings.”

  Gabe began to guess part of it. “You—too?” he managed to say.

  “That’s right. I have become like the Grigori, that is all. Because I love the world and the people on it, and I want to stay here.”

  If what had happened to Birdman’s wings was part of a pattern, a story with sense and a reason, it was after all not so cruel. But Gabe knew there was more, that Grandpa’s black halo was in the story somehow, because his mother had not mentioned his grandfather at all since that strange evening when his father and his grandpa had come to the big fair. There was something she was not saying. Gabe could sense when his mother was not telling him things.

  “Birdman tell me about Grandpa,” he begged.

  “Yes, okay. We think he has gone to be with the other fallen angels.”

  “Black angels?” Mikey put in, his voice sounding muffled and wet around his fingers. So he had seen it too, the black cloud like a smoke ring riding around Grandpa’s head. Unless he just said that because Grandpa wore black suits all the time.

  “Yes. Long, long ago, before there were Adam and Eve, some of the angels rebelled against the Father and went off with a prince named Lucifer to be in their own place.” Birdman added more softly, “You know, that is just what I did, coming here.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes. Rebelled, I mean. Now I have lost my wings, but we think your grandpa has found his. We think he has gone to be with Lucifer and the other fallen angels. So he is a fallen angel now, and I am not an angel at all anymore.”

  Gabe saw clearly that it had been fitting and necessary for Birdman to lose his wings, because Birdman might have been a fallen angel once, but he was not at all like Grandpa. “It’s okay,” Gabe assured him. “You’re still—” But his voice faltered along with his thoughts. This tall person he loved was not really quite Birdman anymore.

  And knew it, for he said gently, “I think you are to call me Uncle Volos now.”

  Late that night, after midnight, Texas got up from the Bradley’s living-room sofa and headed toward the hospital. Angie and Ennis were upstairs, presumably sleeping, in a familiar double bed; they had come back to Jenkins for a few days to pack and do their banking and put their house up for sale before leaving the place behind. Gabe and Mikey were sound asleep in their cribs. But Texas was not getting much sleep, and he had a hunch Volos was not either. That afternoon, after the good-byes in the hospital lounge and after Texas had helped the kid back to his room, Volos had bellied onto his bed and fallen asleep as if he had been knocked on the head. Not a bad idea at the time. A good way to forget for a while. But he couldn’t keep it up forever.

  Outside, the weather had settled into a steady, warm early-autumn rain. In Texas’ headlights the world shone slick as black leather with silver studs. Around the hospital, vacant expanses of parking lot lay wet and gleaming under security lights. The place was pretty quiet for a change. Some of the groupies had given up and gone home after the first day or two, and it looked like the rain had driven the others away. The reporters were mostly not around in the middle of the night, though they would be back at dawn.

  Striding across the parking lot, Texas smiled, because he had just figured out how to sneak Volos past them when it was time for the kid to leave the hospital. Use a wheelchair—but for the kid to lean on, not for him to sit in. If Volos wore blue jeans and the western shirt and snub-toed Dingos Texas had bought him, and tucked his hair up under a Stetson, and pulled the brim down over his face a bit, he would be just another good ol’ boy pushing Pa to the truck. Texas, hatless and blanketed and maybe drooling a little in the wheelchair, would be Pa. The news ghouls would be looking for a rock star in a wheelchair, not an old mountaineer.

  Maybe pretty soon it would get so the kid could go down to the corner and shoot pool like a normal human being. Texas hoped so. He wanted Volos to be able to go see pig races and hill climbs and powder puff baseball. He wanted to take the kid snowmobiling and skeet shooting and coon hunting on muleback. He wanted the kid to raise hell at least once and need to be bailed out of the pokey. He had wishes for Volos.

  Texas ducked past the nurses’ station, walked down the hall as softly as he could in his hard-heeled boots, slipped into Volos’s room without turning on a light just in case the kid really was asleep—

  He wasn’t. Against the sheen of rain outside, Texas could see him standing at the window, staring out, leaning close to the water-streaked glass.

  Texas left the light off—no use bringing a nurse in, and anyway he had a feeling the kid didn’t want a lot of light. Went and stood beside Volos at the window’s other corner. “So you’re up to your old tricks, buddy,” he greeted him softly. “Going around with your shirt off.” The kid stood there naked except for his bandaging and his briefs. “Not sleeping. Hound-dogging in the night.”

  Volos gave a faint smile but did not look at him. In the shadowy light from outside, the kid’s face was as wet as the pavement, streaked like the glass. Silently and without moving he was crying.

  “Oh, shit, son.” Texas gave up on teasing, went into the bathroom and got a washcloth. Came back and tried to wipe Volos’s face with it. “Dammit. Kid, how long you been like this?”

  Volos roused enough to push the washcloth away.

  Texas said, “I wish you would’ve called me.”

  “I am all right.” Volos’s voice sounded steady but desperately tired. “I think it is just that my eyes are practicing.”

  “Give me a break, Volos! You’re so down, down looks like up.” The kid was walking that lonesome valley, all right. If Volos had been playing a guitar, his fingers would have been skating over the frets like chalk on a slate, bending the strings stony-blue.

  Silence. Volos leaned his forehead against the cool glass.

  “Okay, so I am down,” he said after a while. “Is this the way it used to be for you, Texas, at night when you were missing Wyoma?”

  Texas nodded, wishing he could take the kid into his arms, hold him, and hug the pain away. But Volos wasn’t letting himself be babied those days. Trying to get back on his feet, trying to be a man, he was full of his damn suffering pride.

  “And when you wanted to find your father,” he said, still staring out into the rain. “Texas, I wish I had done it for you.”

  “So I could beat him up?”

  “But you would not have done that. You thought it, but—I know you, you would have tried—you would have wanted to love him.”

  It took Texas a moment to admit to himself that the kid was right. Only to himself. He had his pride too.

  “You asked me to help,” Volos was saying, “and I told you no. I cannot believe I did that.”

  “For God’s sake, Volos, forget it! It was a bad idea.”

  Volos seemed hardly to hear him. Wet-cheeked, he was staring, and he said, “I would do it now in a minute, Texas. I would kneel in front of that Throne and say, ‘I have been a wrongheaded fool,’ because it is true, I am an ass. But—now that I could do it—the wings are—gone, and the sky is—so far away—”

  “Whoa.” Texas allowed himself to come a step nearer, and gentled his voice, keeping it very low. “You telling me you want to go talk with your Pa?”

  The question snapped Volos’s head up. “No. I hate him. But—I don’t know. I should tell him—it is not fair that I blame everything on him. The wings—I thought they were his doing, but now I see—”

  At least Volos was looking at him now. Texas nodded at him to go on.

  “When I incarnated, I thought I wanted to be a mortal, but really I wanted everything at once, to be human and yet—not hungry, not weary, not weeping. To be—to be still a star.” The kid’s voice started to shake. “That is why I—had—wings, I gave them to myself, not knowing. And I cursed God, and hated them. But now—they are gone, but I—I keep feeling them hurting on my shoulders, like ghosts—”

  “Whoa. Hush.” No way could Texas let him tough it out any longer. H
e took the necessary two steps to gather him in, but Volos stepped back. Didn’t want to be hugged right now. Wet-faced, but didn’t want to sob on his shoulder. Pride. That was all right. Texas knew a lot about pride. Just now learning, now that he was past forty, when it was time to get past pride.

  “You’re no more a fool than any human,” Texas told him softly. “Volos.” The kid was gazing back at him with dusky-blue eyes, the same color as his. Maybe the God the youngster had always resented so was to thank for that.

  “Son …” Texas felt his voice start to slip, tried again. This was it. Scarier than anything else he’d ever had to ask anybody. “Volos—I’m one of the luckiest people alive, I’ve got a wife and daughters who love me, and when I went looking for trouble I came up with you instead …” His voice went husky. “Kid, you might have noticed how I feel about you, and I wish there was some way I could make it official, but I guess all I can do is just say it: Would you let me take you home? Will you be my son?”

  So there went pride for both of them. The question broke Volos down and wide open. But that was okay. A kid’s entitled to do some messy crying in his daddy’s arms sometimes. Texas held him, gentle, careful of the wounded back, and felt the hands clinging to him—hands that could make the music of an angel—and swallowed hard, and stroked the youngster’s long, coarse hair, and dared to turn his lips to the side of that dark head close to his, dared to kiss. A father’s entitled to kiss his son.

  “But it’s all I—all I ever wanted,” Volos blurted when he could speak. “Just—a father—who loves me.”

  “Son, you got it.”

  Maybe more of it than he reckoned. Maybe more fathers than one. Back home, Texas had squirreled away something he had redeemed once upon a crazy time from an L.A. pawnshop, something he would give to Volos when he figured the kid was ready: a sort of four-petaled flower made of solid gold. Texas had a hunch the sky would not always seem so far away to Volos. Seemed to him he had heard someplace that once in a while even God wept. And outside, warm rain was falling.