“Silently now I wait for Thee
Ready my God, Thy will to see,
Open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit divine!”
They finished on a flourish, with Gudren playing behind. Mrs. Pierson clapped enthusiastically at the end. “Oh, please! Sing some more.”
“What was that one you used to sing all the time, Angel?” Isaiah asked.
“Which one?”
“You know,” Isaiah pressed his lips together in concentration, bending his head to hum it quietly. “Can’t remember it all. Something about ‘all creatures.’” He frowned. “You know?”
Angel grinned and sang the Doxology from church. “That one?”
“Yeah. Can you play that, Gudren?”
“Oh, yes.” She did so, smiling. When they began to sing it, she joined in.
Mrs. Pierson moved in closer. “Page 254,” she said. When Gudren turned the pages and began to play, Mrs. Pierson began to sing quietly in her accented voice, Just as I Am. Angel and Isaiah joined her, but Gudren laughed, calling above their song, “What would the rabbi say, Auntie?”
Mrs. Pierson waved her hand, singing happily, her sightless eyes focused far away.
“That was another one your daddy used to sing all the time,” Isaiah said to Angel as they finished.
“Or whistle it.”
Isaiah nodded. “You know what I was thinking about yesterday? How he couldn’t do nothing without using his mouth.”
He pursed his lips and frowned in an exaggerated imitation of Parker, and Angel gave a delight hoot of laughter.
“He was a character,” Angel said.
“He was a good man.”
The now familiar sorrow plucked her belly. “Wish I could have got him to the doctor sooner.”
“It would not have mattered.” Mrs. Pierson patted her hand. “After your mother died, he used to come here and sit in this parlor, holding you in his lap. Many times he said that he wished he would have called the doctor, because then she mightn’t have died.” She paused. “I told him that there is no way of knowing our day or way of dying. God decides.”
Before he even spoke, Angel felt Isaiah’s instant and rippling anger. “God decides,” he repeated in a harsh, old voice. He seemed as if he meant to say more, but halted, swallowing as if to gulp the acid he wished to spit into their midst. His hand curled into fists.
From the bench, Gudren said lightly, “Would you like to learn to play piano, Isaiah?”
For a brief, startled instant, Isaiah stared at her. Then he laughed, opened his mouth and let it roll out, showing his beautiful strong teeth and the dimple in his cheek that he hated.
Angel forgot everything in her wonder at the sound of him laughing at himself, closing her eyes to listen, remembering Jordan High laughing on her daddy’s porch in the warm darkness of Texas nights. She remembered the feeling of God the sound gave her, a God with big black hands that held the world. Now, hearing Isaiah laugh, she felt the vast, infinite wisdom of God within her, spilling, filling, overwhelming. It seemed to last forever.
When she opened her eyes again, Mrs. Pierson was excusing herself. “I am very tired. I do not wish to be rude, but an old woman needs her beauty rest. Thank you for coming,” she said, bending to kiss Angel’s cheek. “And for singing.”
Still tingling with the moment before, Angel stood up and hugged the old woman. “My pleasure. Thank you for supper.”
“Isaiah, you may use my car to take Angel home, if you like. Just bring it back to me when you come tomorrow.”
“Oh, don’t be silly. I’ll walk, just like always,” Angel protested. She couldn’t bear the thought of the drive home with Isaiah brooding in the front seat while she rode in the back. “It’s a pretty night. I’d like to walk.”
“It is not safe for you, Angel,” Mrs. Pierson said. “Not anymore.”
Isaiah stood, “I’ll see she gets home.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Pierson said. Her face was drawn and tired. “Gudren will see you out.”
After she left the room, Angel waved Gudren back to the bench. “I can find my way to the door,” she said. Looking to Isaiah, she added, “And find my way home.”
“I know you can.”
She had somehow expected an argument, perhaps had even anticipated it. Since it didn’t come, she smiled at Gudren. “Thanks for coming to visit. I’ll see you soon. Good night, Isaiah.”
Humming beneath her breath, she let herself out and headed through the woods, as she had a hundred times over the years. The starry dark stretched over the trees and well-worth path. Something rustled beneath her skin, buzzed at the nape of her neck and down her spine. It hummed with the sound of Isaiah’s laughter. What would he and Gudren talk about, alone in Mrs. Pierson’s living room. Or would they talk at all?
A ragged bolt of jealousy shot through her belly. Fierce, painful, and not unfamiliar.
As a teenager, she had seen Isaiah more than once on the road to town with a girl, going to town for a soda or just walking on warm summer days. Women liked his big hands and good humor, his royal bearing and beautiful mouth. Walking through the dark, she thought of them, his girlfriends. There had been Vivian Peters, who left Gideon during the war to find a better place. Grapevine said she taught school someplace in New York and had married a doctor. There had also been for a time, Anna Hyde, who eventually married a preacher from near Fort Worth. But the worst had been Sally Reese, busty and smart and saucy. Isaiah had been with her for a long time, up until the time he had gone off to the Army, just after Christmas in 1940, well before the draft would have whisked him off.
Of course, Angel had always had Solomon. Steady, sweet Solomon who never had a new thought in his mind. Solomon who had doggedly loved her and courted her over ten years until she had finally caved in and married him when he joined the Army.
Always before, she’d blamed her jealousy of the women Isaiah had been with on the fact that those other women could spend time with her best friend. Could listen to his big dreams, while she was stuck with Solomon’s mild plans for a cotton farm. Those other girls got to listen to Isaiah talk about ideas, about the places he wanted to visit and the education he dreamed of achieving, while Angel yawned through conversations about insect prevention and the best way to plow.
Last night, she had dreamed of kissing Isaiah, and even the memory sent such a raft of emotion through her that she could barely sort it. Yearning and shame and embarrassment that he might guess what she was thinking. In the forest, alone, after an ordinary evening in his company, she halted and closed her eyes and let the kiss rise up through her bones. Isaiah’s mouth on her own. His hands on her arms. His breath on her face.
She touched her mouth, traced the shape of her lips, rubbing the pads of her fingers against her own flesh. Overhead, a moon shone down, dappling the ground with pale light. It was very quiet. She walked as if in her dream, imagining Isaiah in a way she had never before dared.
— 27 —
July 30, 1944
Dear Angel,
Here I am, touring a new country on my round the world journey.
Never worked so hard in my life, nor felt so lucky to do it. We could use whatever you can send, dry socks and the like especially. We just got our first shower in five days and a hot meal that’s not out of a tin and enough coffee to fill a belly for the first time. I will have a lot of stories to tell you when I get home. Censors aren’t going to let it by. Gotta go, sorry to be so quick. Keep writing, will you? Just cuz I don’t have much time doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy your letters.
Your friend,
Isaiah
— 28 —
Isaiah let Angel get a head start before he took his leave. Pausing at the door, he said to Gudren. “Better now?”
“Yes, thank you. Mostly, I am always better now, but there are times . . .”
He nodded, willing to listen if she needed to share her demons, but also anxious to follow Angel. She wasn’t safe out there in that forest. �
�I understand,” he said.
Gudren smiled. “Good night.”
Her eyes were full of knowing, the same knowing that had made her offer to teach him to play piano. In this instance, the knowing disturbed him a little. She saw too much.
Now, he simply hurried into the night, nearly running until he caught sight of Angel in her pretty blue dress, ambling like Snow White or somebody through the trees, some fairy tale girl without a lick of sense. As he watched, she reached out to caress the leaves on a cottonwood, ran her fingers over the deeply grooved bark. He shook his head, swearing under his breath. Couldn’t she feel the weight of evil in these dark woods? Didn’t she know how death hung in the branches of these trees? Couldn’t she hear the echo of screams and grunts here? It was a haunted wood, so haunted that he never walked through here at night, only in the full light of day.
He pressed his mouth together, feeling the gulf between them as he had all those years ago when she approached him in the side yard of Corey’s store. Her face had been open, guileless, her pale eyes filled with happiness at seeing him. Without even pausing to put down her washtub, she’d come across the yard, calling his name.
Isaiah had still been aching with the beating he’d taken in these very woods. His eye had not yet healed, and his ribs hurt when he breathed. And here came Angel, sweet as a clover flower, untouched and innocent as ever.
It had made him furious, and only Parker hollering at her at her from the back door had saved her from the tongue lashing that had been gathering in Isaiah’s mouth.
He was mad that she wanted to be friends, wanted to smile at him like they were still children reading storybooks. He’d glared his hardest stare that afternoon so long ago, and in the brief instant before she turned away, he had seen how he’d wounded her. It satisfied something in him, evened things out.
The same fury boiled in him now, had boiled this afternoon. She didn’t walk carefully in these woods and couldn’t hear the ghosts wandering through the trees because it wasn’t her people crying and dying here.
Damn her. She had no right to look at him like . . . that. With all that softness on her mouth, all trembling surprise. Had no right to still be writing him a letter like she gave him last night, every word slicing his belly a little bit and a little bit more.
He had half a mind to teach her a lesson about these woods, teach her to fear them. But as he tried to form a plan, the sound of several voices came through the shadows. He froze, trying to pinpoint the direction. In front of him, Angel did the same thing, her head cocked to listen. A high, whinnying laugh floated through the stillness.
Edwin.
Angel knew it, too. Soundlessly, she melted in to the shadows, leaving the path for the darker shelter of the trees. But even there, moonlight fingered her pale hair as she moved. The idiot-sounding laughter rang out again, closer this time, and Isaiah reacted like the soldier he had so recently been. Moving as silently as possible, he dashed toward her, seeing her freeze at the sound of his steps just before her reached her.
In a single move, he leapt, capturing her from behind and covering her mouth with his hand before she could scream and alert Edwin and his wolves to their presence. She flung herself against him violently, stabbing his gut with her elbows, twisting fiercely. Terror gave her movements ferocious strength. Finally he snagged her arms against her body. “It’s Isaiah,” he said almost soundlessly in her ear. “Be still a minute.”
Her struggles ceased and he let her go, expecting her to sag in relief. Instead, she looked toward the sound of the voices and pointed toward the left, waving for him to follow. Isaiah caught her hand, frowning, and in that instant, a gunshot exploded into the quiet, followed by the hooting calls of drunks. Angel tugged Isaiah’s hand urgently, mouthing now. She turned, yanked him behind her, and let go, melting into the darkness.
It was not difficult to keep her in sight, even though she was darting through the forest like a fox, her white collar and pale hair gleaming in the faint light.
When she paused at the foot of a huge, old oak with gnarled branches, she spared an instant to look back to make sure he had followed, then scrambled up the branches as nimbly as a child. He looked up, but all that could be seen was a drape of leaves and branches. The tree house was as invisible as ever. As he had designed it to be.
Isaiah climbed up behind her, conscious of the voices behind him, the laughter and hooting. By the time he reached the railed platform high in the old tree, Angel had already fallen to her belly to peer over the edge. Isaiah fell flat beside her, and she pointed to a small clearing to their left. Fifteen yards away or so, a fire burned, the orange light showing the figures of six or seven men. They were passing around a bottle. Isaiah saw no evidence of the gun they’d heard.“Drunk as skunks,” Angel said in n a voice so quiet he had to strain to hear it. “All of them. I hear them sometimes late at night. I think they’re hunting possum or something.”
“Why the hell you come through the trees then?” His voice was as quiet as hers. “Ain’t you got one brain in that head of yours?”
“No place to hide on the road.”
He looked away. She was right, but it didn’t shake the knot of fury in his belly. The last thing in the world he wanted was to be up here in the dark alone with Angel Corey, but he couldn’t exactly leave her to wait out Edwin’s crew on her own. Easing away from the edge of the platform, he sat down with his back against the trunk of the tree, and rested his forearms on his upraised knees.
Angel scooted over to him. “How long since you been up here?”
He patted his pocket for cigarettes and took one out, bending his head as if in combat to hide the flame of the match. Cupping the cigarette in his palm to shield the tip from sight, he exhaled. “I followed that collar of yours all the way through the woods. Anybody look up, they’d see it too.”
“They’re drunk, Isaiah. Can’t see two feet in front of them. I’d go now, except I feel safer here than home sometimes.” Still, she turned the collar inside her neckline and spread her hands as if to say, happy now? She still spoke in a soft voice, inaudible two feet away. “Somebody’s always doing their business in the trees, too, and I don’t want to get peed on by accident.” She tucked her feet under her skirt as it to protect them, and he grinned.
It broke some of the tension. He was a grown man; he’d wanted women before and hadn’t died of it. Angel wasn’t some witch armed with magic spells to seduce him against his will or make him do something he didn’t want to. He knew all the folklore, the stories men told each other about women who put menstrual blood in a man’s food, or put their hair in his clothes, but the fact was, resistance was just a matter of mind over flesh.
As if settling in, Angel shifted, crossing her legs Indian-style under her dress, her eyes trained on the flickering fire in the clearing. She seemed content to just sit quietly, so he smoked in silence, admiring his boyhood handiwork. It was still nice, this little tree house. Solid. He’d spent hundreds of afternoons here, winter and summer, sometimes alone, sometimes with Angel and Solomon or even, when they were younger, Angel alone.
The last time had been with Angel. He remembered it very clearly, much more clearly than he thought she would. She’d been in love with Solomon by then, going to church suppers with him, holding hands on the road to town. It had only been by chance that Isaiah had found her in the tree house that day. He sucked on his cigarette, blew out the smoke. “Last time I was here was the day I had to quit school.”
“I remember,” Angel said. Her hands were motionless in her lap. “You gotta admit it’s held up. Can’t believe you built it so well when you were only ten years old.”
“Come on, now. We all built it.”
“Me and Solomon did some nailing and things like that, but you were the one giving orders.”
“Y’all were gonna just put up a little shack in this beautiful tree. I couldn’t let you do that, not when we could make it solid.”
“You always were a bossy child
.”
He flashed a grin. “Look who’s talkin’.”
“I never had a chance between you and Solomon. You’d holler about one thing, he’d holler about something else.” She shook her head and rubbed a palm over the floor of the platform. “Have you thought about going on with your education now, Isaiah?’’
“I know how to build things. Don’t need schooling for that.”
“I don’t mean nailing and hammering—you can do more, and you know it.”
He shook his head. “You never stop dreamin’, do you?”
“You have a gift, Isaiah, as much as a singer or a painter. God gives you something like that for a reason.”
“Girl, I ain’t gonna be no architect. If that’s what God wanted, he oughta have given a little more thought to the external difficulties.” He stubbed the cigarette out on the floorboards. “Just a childish dream.”
“That wasn’t a dream,” she said, leaning forward earnestly. “It was an ambition. There’s a difference.”
He sighed, looking away from her to the sky overhead. As far as he was concerned, those childhood hungers were about as attainable as the starlight glittering up there—he’d just been too dumb to see it then. He was so intent on his thoughts that he missed the warning signs until she leaned forward and started talking in a quiet, fierce sing-song.
“Poor Isaiah. Poor poor boy. Born poor—” She drew the word out like a song, and he glanced at her sharply, realizing too late that she was mad. “—and colored and all alone.”
“C’mon, Angel,” he said. “Don’t start.”
“You think you’re the only one ever had to put something on hold? To suffer or do without?”
The Sleeping Night Page 18