Course the garden means I haven’t had as much time to read as I’d like, but I did check out Brave New World from the library, like you told me. I’m only about halfway through, but by the time you write back, I’ll get it finished, so go ahead and tell me what you thought of it. I’m not sure, yet. Sometimes you like books that are much darker than the ones I like. I still haven’t forgiven you for Down and Out in Paris and London! Nasty, sad people.
What else you been reading lately? Did you get the peanuts and hard candies I sent yet?
Saw your mama yesterday and she’s doing fine, don’t worry. It was just a spring cold, nothing serious, not like the pneumonia she had last winter. I promised I’d keep an eye on her and I am. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. (ha ha)
Well, I reckon I better hurry up and close. Running out of space, even writing this tiny. Your friend, Angel.
V-Mail
April 12, 1944
Dear Isaiah,
I finished Brave New World last night, and I will be thinking about it for a long time, and I think he’s right—that people would do more for pleasure than anything else. Think there’s any chance we can ever get that far, to create a world where people are mainly happy? Not that it was all good in Huxley’s book, naturally (mainly because you can’t take a drug and expect to be happy), but when I look at the world at this very moment, we’re a long way from peace, joy, and happiness.
You know what I’ll say, that it’s God who needs to be our soma. That’s the real peace and joy, and there’s a direction that comes from God, too. We all have something to do, some work, some task, and it makes us happy to do it. What if everybody did that? Did their work, found the thing that gave them joy? What if you got to build things every day for the rest of your life, plan them and build them and admire them when you were done? I bet you’d be happy as a pig in slop.
Out of room. Angel
V-Mail #1
May 4, 1944
Dear Angel,
We are so bored here you can’t even imagine. I wish we could plant a garden, do something besides sit around getting on each other’s nerves, playing cards and dice and getting into fights. Seems like it’s been gray or raining for about 10,000 years and my blood is too thin for the damp cold we’ve been having. Everything’s always just a little bit damp—clothes, socks, books, even this here paper. So believe me when I say I am so grateful for the magazines and books you been sending. I’d go plumb crazy without them, and I pass them around to the other guys. Everybody likes Detective Stories best, and Amazing Stories, next. Me, I like the books. Double Indemnity is my favorite, though I bet you didn’t read that one. I’m sure it was Parker’s book.
Sorry he’s not doing well. My mama would say he should have cod liver oil. Have you tried it? (I’m chuckling to imagine him actually swallowing it!)
Mrs. Wentworth sent some books, too. More poetry, of course, this time some old guys they call the Cavalier poets, (I recommend you read them. Robert Herrick.) and all the Shakespeare sonnets. I imagine you’ve already studied the sonnets in school or something. You were always the big English girl, but I never had read them and specially now, when everything is gearing up, they’re rich, rich. I walk off by myself to read them so I can read them aloud, like Mrs. Wentworth showed me, and the words are powerful, powerful things.
V-Mail #2
The guys already call me The Professor, so I don’t care if they hear me, or if they catch me reading poems or Detective Stories. They don’t have much schooling—not much value in it in they worlds, anyhow. Book smarts might take your mind somewhere, but street smarts are what keep you alive.
Thing is, though, books can teach a body to think for himself. That’s what I think will make the world peaceful and full of joy, like you said God will do. Education! That’s what takes you somewhere. God might plant the seed, but education is what takes you there. Till everybody has a chance to learn to think for himself (and I’m thinking about womens, too), they ain’t gonna be able to do whatever they called to do. You got to be able to think.
This whole war is about people not thinking. That’s what Shirer said in Berlin Dairies, remember, that it was too hard for the Germans to think after all they’d been through, so it was a relief to let the government tell them what to think. That’s what Huxley’s saying, too—think, think, think. Think for yourself. Think about everything, even when it’s hard.
Sometimes, I reckon I’m thinking too much, to tell you the truth. But still, what if
V-Mail #3
more folks had been thinking anywhere, when all this was rolling into power? Could we have stopped it before it came down to practically every man on the earth in one uniform or another, killing each other? Makes no sense atall.
Anyhow, I got up on my soapbox, and that’s what I mean, thinking too much. Let me ask you, though, Miss God Is Everything, if you weren’t a girl and there wasn’t a war and you had all the chances anybody could have to go to school or whatever, what would you do with it?
Your friend,
Isaiah
V-Mail
May 16
Dear Angel,
Collards! Damn, I’d give my little finger for a big plate of greens and ham. Big greasy pork chops, and some pineapple upside down cake for desert. Have mercy.
Thank you for the candy and peanuts. You are the #1 favorite in my unit today. Gotta go now. Big craps game. (Which you needn’t mention to my mama or Parker either one.)
Isaiah
V-Mail
May 14, 1944
Dear Isaiah
I’m hurrying this morning—like a crazy person, I’ve up and lost my ration book, and I have to find it—but I wanted to let you know. Your letters got here so fast! And there’s so much to think about. I did get to the library and checked out a book of Cavalier poets, and . . . well! I’d say I’m blushing, and I reckon I should be, but I’m not. They made me laugh. That’s all I’m saying about that, except my favorite was Robert Herrick.
My daddy’s sending you some fresh socks, so look out for those.
More later,
Your friend,
Angel
V-Mail
May 15, 1944
Dear Isaiah,
I found my ration book under my pillow for no reason I can fathom, but I was all a-flutter with reading the other night and must have just got distracted. It happens. Between the store, the garden, and taking care of my daddy, plus my Sunday school class, sometimes it seems like I’m a chicken with no head! Bawk bawk bawk!
What a big question you asked! I wish I had an answer, Isaiah, about what I’d to if I had all the opportunities you listed, but it’s almost impossible to even imagine. A man, and any college in the world, and enough money to get through—! I don’t even know where I’d start.
Well, maybe I do. I’d just start by studying, and I write that and think, “Study what?” and that’s a little harder to pinpoint. I feel like I need some grounding in thinking, in the ways humans have thought about God and themselves all these centuries. Is that philosophy? Theology? More philosophy, I suspect. The rules and regulations never have been as interesting to me as the place of connection between a person’s spirit and God. That individual connection. I’ve been reading a lot of New Thought publications, from the Divine Scientists and their ilk. Edgar Cayce caught my attention and I just can’t get over it, how he does all those things, so I’m reading and digesting things he’s written, which led to some other reading. (All this much to my daddy’s amusement, I must say—but he says himself he taught me to ask questions, so he can’t be too upset when that’s exactly what I do.)
—more next page—
V-Mail #2
It makes me think more about God, and connection, and I guess, as boring as it must sound to you, that’s what I’d like to spend my life thinking about. If I were a man, maybe I’d be a preacher, but not a Baptist or a Methodist. Something . . . oh, I don’t know . . . .kinder than that, you know?
Seems to me people are mean or evil because they’re scared, mostly, or in pain, or afraid they’re going to lose something. I’d like to be in a position to help them heal so they didn’t have to be mean. What’s Hitler so afraid of that he had to make all this craziness? He must have been really, really afraid.
Anyway, that might be more than you asked for, but I’ve also been reading Vita Sackville-West, All Passion Spent, and it’s about women who need work, a career, something besides just a man and a bunch of kids. We have work to do, too, and I like that idea. You see it all over the country now, women working the same jobs men always did, and doing just fine.
You’re right about one thing, and that’s education. Everybody should have the freedom to learn as much as they can, and it does make you think, think for yourself. What a world it would be if we did that! What if it didn’t matter if you were a female or colored or an Okie, you could just go to school and drink up as much as you wanted, be a doctor or a preacher or whatever. How about that?
Stay safe, my friend. Thanks for so many things to think about all the time. I’ll ship out some more Detective Magazines and all real soon. I like being #1! (ha ha!)
Angel
— 24 —
No one was home, of course, when Isaiah got to his mama’s house. Maylene McCoy, Paul’s grandmother, would sti1l be working, too. Isaiah found the fishing poles in the closet and gave one to the boy. “You old enough to be quiet?”
“Yes, sir. But I ain’t allowed to go to the river, on account of the snakes.”
“Well, there’s snakes, all right, but we’ll be careful and I’ll explain to your grandmama it was time to teach you to get catfish.”
They walked through thick cottonwoods and shrubs, through clouds of lazy gnats, to a semi-circular clearing near a curve in the river. Isaiah sat on the hump of a boulder. “The trick to fishing for cat,” he said to Paul, “is knowing the river you’re fishing. This one here, it’s slow, but it’s got a lot of little pools. See where that big rock is out there? Next to it the water gets darker. That’s a big pool and those cats love it, because all kinds of things get swept up in there.”
His fishing line was weighted about ten inches above the hook, which Isaiah filled with soured cereal mash, automatically holding his nose. Paul coughed at the smell and Isaiah grinned. “Stink bait. Horrible stuff, ain’t it? But they like it.” He cast the line into the water, long practice landing it in the pool. “Here, boy, you take this. Hang on to it, now. You feel a tug, let me know.”
Paul nodded solemnly, big dark eyes full of the ominous responsibility of feeling a fish on the hook. His plump lips turned downward in concentration. It made Isaiah think of Parker, who’d been unable to turn a screwdriver, shovel dirt or ring up cash without some corresponding twitch of the lips. He thought of a day when he’d been no older than Paul, watching Parker dig earth with a small spade. Every time he’d poke the spade down, his lips would thrust out. When he paused to drop a seed in to the ground, his mouth would fall lax. Isaiah hadn’t quite dared to laugh out loud.
Just now, the thought of Parker made him furious, and he focused on fixing his own line, casting it into the water easily. They sat quietly in the long, gold sunlight that fell in bars through the trees, and listened to the swooshing and gurgling of the river. The sound reached under Isaiah’s skin and untied the knots gathered in his shoulders, and the spring sunshine eased away the other tensions in his body.
When he knew he could speak without scaring Paul even more, he said, “That man you saw in the store today.”
Paul looked up. “Yes, sir?”
“You stay away from him. Far away. He comes to the store again, you get out of there, fast as you can. Understand?”
Paul stared out at the water, chewing the inside of his lips “But what about Miss Angel?”
“Miss Angel is grown and big enough to take care of herself.” It was plain Paul didn’t buy it. Isaiah tsked. “I’ll see that Miss Angel can take care herself, okay? Now what you gonna do you see that man coming?”
“Run.” He smiled, showing his tiny white baby teeth. “Run all the way home.”
“That’s it.”
Quietly, Paul added, “Bad things happen when you’re disobedient.”
And even when you ain’t, Isaiah thought.
After supper, as the sky turned pale gray with twilight, Angel went to her garden. Ebenezer rode on her shoulder, his claws gentle against her flesh. When she turned the water on, he sailed from his perch to joyfully flitter and prance in the stream, little noises of satisfaction warbling from his cream-colored throat. He spread his wings. The blue of his feathers was deepened and intensified in the gray light.
Angel smiled. “You’re so pretty, Ebenezer.”
He cocked his head to level one black eye on her, then squawked once loudly in agreement. She laughed and moved the sprinkler back and forth over him to give the impression of rain, “The way you act, you’d think you’d been born a duck, silly bird.”
Ebenezer meant “stone of help,” and he was aptly named. Whenever she was tempted to think God was too far away to care much about little Angel Corey, all she had to do was remember Ebenezer and she knew it wasn’t true.
Almost four years ago now, a man in uniform had delivered and read a telegram to her. Solomon, barely six months into the war, had been killed when a Japanese torpedo hit his ship. He died in the service of his country, ma’am.
Her first, bitter thought had been, What did his country ever do to serve him? Only the shock had kept her from saying it out loud.
The days following had been a dark blur. Nothing Parker, the preacher, or Georgia said helped at all, helped make any sense of that sweet, bright face being blown to bits. The only company Angel could bear was that of Mrs. Pierson, who offered no platitudes or false bits of patriotic cheer. She seemed to know how bitter and hateful Angel felt, and didn’t blame her for it.
One day about a week after the telegram, Angel had been sitting on the back steps at home. In spite of the beautiful day, her thoughts were grim, and she felt as if her nerves were wide open, as if she could hear the bombs exploding a half a world away in both directions, hear the screams of babies terrified by the noise, feel the dying agony of soldiers, like Solomon, who’d had their whole lives ahead of them.
A screech sounded from the wild grass near the river , eerily echoing her thoughts. Heart pounding, Angel went to investigate. At the foot of a tall cottonwood, cushioned by a pile of leaves, was a baby blue jay. His feathers weren’t quite in, and there was a gray fluff around his neck, but the black bands had come in on his bright blue tail and wings.
“Oh, you’re a beauty,” Angel said. She glanced around apprehensively. Any minute now, some parent would come screeching out of the sky to dive-bomb her head—she’d had that experience when she’d happened upon some baby jays just learning to fly.
This one was a tad younger, she thought. And mad. He looked directly at Angel and shrieked bloody murder. “Are you hungry, little one?” She glanced around for something to feed it and saw a shiny beetle crawling out of the leaves. Using a twig to pick it up, she tossed it to the baby bird. He pounced greedily, his beak crunching the beetle’s back. Angel backed away, still wary about the mother jay, “That’ll keep you until she finds you’re missing,” Angel said. She went back to her post on the steps. Blue jays had a special significance to her, or at least their feathers did. Parker said her need to find talismans was the Irish in her. Maybe. Whatever it was, she had a huge collection of blue jay feathers in a jar, tokens of answered prayers.
On that evening four years ago, she had waited for a mother bird to claim her lost offspring, hearing the tiny bird screech and call and beg for assistance. When full dark had fallen, Angel slipped on her gardening gloves and crossed the yard. “Guess your mama is lost,” she said to the baby jay and picked him up. He trembled in her palms, but he stopped squawking. She took him inside to show Parker and they fed him some bacon. It was obviou
s one wing was damaged, but Angel had no doubt that he would live.
That now-grown bird whistled in merry greeting at a figure on the road, indistinct in the twilight. But Angel didn’t need to see his face to know it was Isaiah, partly because Ebenezer wasn’t friendly with that many humans, but mostly because she recognized his rolling, graceful walk.
She looked back at her garden, her mouth setting. He joined her without a word, standing a few feet away. Angel moved the sprinkler slowly, back and forth, back and forth. Neither of them said a word for long moments.
Finally Angel said, “If you came to yell at me some more, you can just turn around and go home.”
“I didn’t come to yell at you,” There was apology in his tone, and from the corner of her eye, she saw him shift. “Came to make sure you’re all right.”
“You know,” she said, “this has always been my favorite time of day. I love to come out here and water and weed. You ever notice how bright the colors are at evenin’-time? Makes me feel calm.”
“Angel,” he said, “I’m sorry about this afternoon. “
She lifted one shoulder in a shrug.
The Sleeping Night Page 15