by Robin Janney
Her face colored. “Oh, I’m sorry…well, you know my mom and dad…” He followed her around the table as she named everyone off. Knowing he’d never remember everyone, he focused on the ones immediately around them. The couple across from them were Angela’s aunt and uncle, Sylvia and Jonathan. Their grandson Bobby was the teenager sitting alongside him, his mother Bonnie and sister Lisa on the ends. He nodded greetings as they were given, now putting turkey on his plate.
“Did you get all that?” Angela asked, taking the platter of turkey from him. She placed some on her plate and passed it along.
Craig smiled. “Enough.”
“Did you stop for food anywhere along the way?” asked Bonnie, Bobby’s mother, from the other side of the boy.
“My last stop was a convenience store in Jordan for coffee and donuts,” he admitted.
Talk died to a minimum as people began to focus on their food. Craig poured gravy over his mashed potatoes, then handed the dish to Angela. Again, she passed it along, causing him to wonder why she had so little on her plate. Turkey and green bean casserole and another green fluffy pile which looked more like a dessert to him. “Not hungry?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I had a bowl of cereal before dinner. But I’ll take one of those rolls when they get here. They’re homemade.”
The silence at the table did not last long. Apparently, he’d run into a family who thrived as much on conversation as they did food. It felt odd to him, unable to remember the last time his family had even been in the same room. Soon he was bombarded with questions from all around the table. Where was his cabin? Which did he like better, Montana or Tyler’s Grove? Were there a lot of other cabins around? The nearest cabin was how far away?
Much amused, Craig answered each of their questions, conscious of Angela listening beside him. She had to be listening, she was the only one not talking.
When the questions finally died down, near the end of the meal, Craig managed to ask a question of his own. “Can anyone tell me how Angela got her nickname? She won’t tell me.”
The reactions were mixed, mostly chuckles and laughter around the room. Maude sniffed in disapproval and Angela covered her face with both hands.
“Oh my God,” she moaned behind her hands.
“How didn’t she get it?” her father replied. A smile played on his face. “Angela’s been taking on anyone bigger than herself since she was about seven. Ha! From Bruno Havens to neighboring farm animals.”
“Don’t forget about the tornado!” one of Angela’s younger cousins volunteered, sounding awed.
“Who could forget that?” said Maude dryly. She cleared her throat. “Would anyone like pie?”
“Coffee is fine for now,” answered Philip, others echoing agreement.
“I’ll get it for you,” Angela volunteered. She stood and disappeared into the kitchen, the swinging door swishing behind her. Craig hadn’t been able to catch her eye before she left.
“Would that be the same tornado she tried warning you about?” Craig asked after she was gone. Was Angela angry with him?
“It was. Oh, the tantrum she threw when we didn’t believe her.” Philip chuckled. “The next day, when the warning came over the TV and Maude called out to me, Angela was nowhere to be found. The sky darkened, and we could see the funnel reaching down. I sent the rest down to the cellar and went in search of her. The tornado had made touchdown along the lower ridge, just out beyond Barry’s back acres and I spotted our old truck driving though the field. Now, I knew she wasn’t going to get far because I never kept much gas in that truck, so I took off in the one I have now and chased her down. By the time I got to her, she had taken off on foot. Thank God her ankle was sprained, and I caught up her. I was too relieved to scold her until the next day.” The older man pointed to his graying auburn hair. “Most of these gray hairs are from Angela.”
“Was she hurt?” asked Craig, catching a small amount of pride in Angela’s father as he told the story.
Philip shrugged. “No more than she already was. A few bruises. She made the sprain in her ankle worse, but that brings up the tightrope.”
“I’ll go see what’s keeping Angela,” said Maude pointedly. Then she too was gone.
“I never did learn where she found the rope,” Philip continued. “It was thick, and at least fifty feet long. Somehow, she and her friend Michelle managed to string it up between the old maple tree and the hayloft window. Michelle refused to follow Angela out, but I know she had a hand in it. Angela had made it about halfway across when the rope slipped and she lost her footing. Maude yelled for me and I got there in time to see my monkey swinging her legs around the rope. She crawled the rest of the way to the tree and managed to fall from the bottom limb. Which is what sprained her ankle.”
“She could have fallen and broken her neck,” commented Maude as she returned with the coffee pot. “Especially if the rope had finished coming undone.”
“But she didn’t.” Philip shared a look with his wife as she filled his mug but continued just the same. “You see, Craig, our daughter didn’t get her nickname so much from the stunts she pulled but for surviving them. With relatively few injuries at that.”
“What else has she done?” Craig held his mug out for Maude to fill. She sniffed disapprovingly as she did so.
“Once, when Angela was visiting us in Dryden, she managed to get into a street fight of some kind with the local bullies.” Sylvia stirred her drink and chuckled. “From all reports, Angela was the one who had set it up as some kind of wager. These were rough characters, older and bigger than she is. We didn’t find out about it until our youngest son Jeff and his friend Keith brought Angela home. A bloody nose and a black eye later, but fifty dollars richer. She must have been close to her first black belt in karate then. She was lucky no one pressed charges, at least one of her opponents had a broken arm. I think the tough guys were embarrassed to have been beaten by a young girl.”
“And those boys didn’t bother anyone in the neighborhood again.” Jonathan chuckled.
“I believe that’s because Angela was teaching some of the kids basic karate moves,” remarked Bonnie dryly.
“I’ve sparred with her,” Craig offered seriously. “If I didn’t know what I was doing, I wouldn’t want to go up against her either. And from what I can tell, she’s good at teaching it.”
“Angela learns quickly when she sets her mind to it,” Philip continued. “When she was fifteen, she and Michelle took off with one of the farm tractors. I didn’t even know she could drive one, but we all found out about it when they drove back in the next morning.”
“She never did say where they’d been or what they’d been up to.” Maude laughed suddenly. “I never knew who was to blame for some of those stunts, her or Michelle. The trouble those two could get into always made me wonder how much we never caught.”
“They’ve never told,” agreed Philip. He was shaking his head in obvious amusement as his wife left the room again. “Angela’s always been a hard worker and a hard player. She’s led us on a merry chase over the years. Thank God for Doc Maynard and Maeve O’Malley. She settled somewhat when Doc started letting her help with the animals.
“Although, one she discovered science, it got to the point where the school banned her from doing projects for their annual science fair. She had a knack for coming up with offbeat experiments.”
“Abnormal,” commented Bobby in awe.
“Weird is more like it,” said another female cousin, with a shudder. “Remember the one with gerbils and the aphrodisiacs?”
“What I remember most were the gerbils escaping in a gym full of spectators.” Philip snorted softly. “There was always some speculation she’d set them loose on purpose, but they could never prove it. That would be our Angela.”
Maude came back into the dining area. “Alright, here’s the plan. We’ll have desserts in about an hour. Cassie, you take the kids and go outside to play. Sylvia could you and the girls help Angel
a with the dishes?” The kids all groaned but did as they were told. “Craig, I will not have you believing the worst of Angela is all there is to her. You’ll come with me to the living room.”
“Now, Maude, I never said anything of the sorts,” protested Philip.
“Oh hush.” Maude kissed her husband’s forehead affectionately. “Why don’t you and the boys go do something manly to burn off your meal?”
“Yes, dear.” Philip returned his wife’s smile. “Well, boys, looks like we’re being kicked out of the house along with the kids.”
“Looks like,” agreed Jonathan with a grin.
As the men dispersed, and the women began to clear the table, Maude led Craig into the living room. She motioned for Craig to sit on the couch while she moved a card table enough to get into the coffee table it straddled. As she sat next to him with what looked like a photo album, Craig couldn’t stop the surge of curiosity. Was she going to show him pictures of Angela?
“Now Craig,” she said opening the book. “It’s true Angela was something of a troublemaker growing up, but there’s more to her than that.”
“I never thought otherwise,” said Craig defensively, even as he was trying to see what was on the pages she was flipping.
“Yes, well.” Maude moved the album so Craig could see. It was a 5 by 7 picture of a young girl with twin braids covered in mud. In her hands was a huge turtle as muddy as she was. The girl was holding the turtle up for the camera and grinning from ear to ear.
“Wow, that’s Angela?” Those twin braids looked familiar, but he couldn’t place them.
“Yes. It was a school trip to a small animal zoo. She got in trouble because she’d climbed over the barrier, but I am so thankful the aide managed to get this picture before they pulled her out. It’s my favorite photo of her.”
“How old was she?” asked Craig. Those blue eyes twinkled even in a photo. And that smile!
“Let’s see, this was the tail end of her first year, so seven. She’s always been good with animals.” Maude turned the page. “Here are some from when we still lived in Kansas City. She’d have been four here. She loved going to the park as much as she hated it; they always complained it wasn’t big enough.”
They. The boy in the photo with Angela had to be her brother. The same auburn hair graced his head though his was dark like Philip’s. Craig cleared his throat and touched the photo. He pointed to the boy and caught Maude’s eye. He spoke low, just above a whisper. “Is this Randy?”
Maude was clearly surprised, but recovered well. “It is, but I’ll have to ask you not to say his name again with Angela in the house. She doesn’t react well to it.”
He nodded. “Like the name Angie?”
The older woman nodded, not asking him how he knew. She turned the page and proceeded to give the background of the next picture. From six months to the previous summer, Maude showed him various pictures of Angela with and without the family. Randy was in a lot of the older ones, but he disappeared virtually overnight. True to her own request, Maude didn’t mention him again.
Craig listened with interest. Maude obviously loved her daughter, and he could clearly hear the same pride in her voice he had heard in Philip’s. Why did Angela think otherwise?
At last, Maude shut the album and leaned back against the back of the couch. “Angela is a complex person, that’s for certain. But she has a heart of gold and is one of the sweetest people to be around.”
“I know. What about her relationship with her siblings?” asked Craig good-naturedly. “She said she wasn’t always nice to them.”
“Do you have any siblings yourself?” she asked.
“I do. I have an older brother.”
“Then you know siblings can be meaner than snot to each other, sometimes quite deliberately, and still love each other.”
Craig laughed at a memory she’d unwittingly provoked. “Yeah. Tim once put a dead snake in my bed and to get even I put a live chipmunk in his.”
“Good Lord! Whatever did your mother say about that?”
“We were out to Grandma Annie’s, and she was laughing even as she scolded us.”
“Grandparents have a way of doing that.” Maude sighed tiredly. “It wasn’t always easy when the kids were younger, especially when Angela was prone to more violent outbursts. She still has PTSD, probably always will, but she’s gotten better at controlling her outbursts.”
There was a sound of approaching footsteps. The two looked up as Angela came into the room. She started gathering the dishes off the cardboard tables.
“Hey,” he said, hoping to get her attention.
Angela looked up and saw them. “Hey.” Then she saw the photo album. “Oh my God, Mom! You’ve been showing him pictures?”
“A few.”
“Un-be-lievable!” She set the dishes back down on the cardboard table. “I’m going for a walk before dessert.”
“Are you sure?” Maude asked, concern evident in her voice. “You didn’t even eat enough to burn off.”
“I’m sure. I promise to eat something when I get back.” The young woman shot a look at Craig, then turned away.
“Don’t be too long, it’s cold out there,” cautioned Maude, as Angela hunted for her coat on the rack next to the door.
“I won’t. I’m just going down the road to Barry’s Bridge.”
“Wait, Angela. I’ll come with you.” He sprang to his feet, seizing the opportunity to be alone with her. She was holding his coat out to him when he reached her. He was still shrugging into it as she opened the door, and he followed her.
Side by side, they walked down the porch steps and driveway. She veered left, away from the sounds of children playing, and away from Simmons Crossroads. He walked in silence beside her. Content to just be with her, he allowed the silence to continue.
“I bet all that snow was pretty,” she said as the farm and its noises faded into the distance.
“It was,” Craig agreed. “It would have been prettier if…” If he’d taken her with him. He swallowed hard. It hadn’t been easy for him to make his decisions, even knowing he’d halfway made his mind up about matters before he’d boarded the jet. And he knew it wasn’t going to be any easier to share them with her. “Are you angry because I asked about your nickname?”
“No. Yes. A little I guess. I’m more embarrassed. I’m not proud of a lot of those things.” She kicked at a stone and sent it flying to the side of the dirt road.
“You were a kid,” he said decidedly. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Yes, it is,” she argued. She shrugged her shoulders as if trying to get warm.
Craig pondered some of his own stunts, especially after he’d gotten his driver’s license. “In a lot of those stories, you were a kid crying out for help. Did your family hear you?”
She looked up at him in shock. “Yes. They didn’t know what to do.”
He nodded. Up ahead, a large wooden bridge came into view. That must be her destination. “I’ve been in those shoes, Angela. I’ve been so full of pain and anger, that I’ve done some pretty outrageous things myself.”
“Did you ever do anything so bad that social workers threatened to take you from your family?” Her gaze fell to her feet.
“If I’d been caught, yes.” Craig wondered how much to tell her. “I see they didn’t take you away.”
“Dad wouldn’t let them,” she replied, anger tinging her voice. She looked up at him, and he saw the trepidation in her eyes. “Does it change whatever it is you decided in Montana?”
“No. Why should it?”
“Craig…”
“I tried to kill myself, Angela. Twice. If Tim had told the truth about how the car crashed, I’m not sure where I’d be today. There were other vehicles involved and some serious injuries, so I probably would have ended up in juvie or maybe adult jail. I was sixteen at the time, so they could have charged me as an adult if they’d known it was deliberate. Tim and I walked away with nothing more than
concussions. The other time…was something more recent. Does that change how you feel about me?”
She stopped in her tracks, and he stopped beside her. Her eyes were wide as she looked at him, her compassion easy for him to see. “No,” she said firmly, her voice a mixture of emotions.
“See?” He gave her a small smile.
She began walking again, hopping up on the raised wooden beam running along the sides of the bridge. “So, are you going to tell me what your decision was?”
He walked by her side, their eyes level. He wished he was brave enough to hold her hand. “I’m here aren’t I?”
“All that tells me is you decided to come to dinner,” she said, her voice slightly teasing. They were in the middle of the bridge now, and she stopped, turning to lean on the ornate wooden railing. She gazed down into the stream below. The sound of the water crashing against rocks made him feel even colder. “For all I know, you heard the rumor that my mom is a good cook and wanted to know if it was true.”
“No, I hadn’t heard any such thing,” he said with a laugh. “It’s true though. The food was good.” He stepped up on the beam beside Angela, leaned beside her. Following her gaze to the water, he saw their reflections rippling and blending together in the water pooling and swirling beneath them. “I’m not sure how to explain it really.”
“Plain simple English.”
Craig looked at her profile and smiled in amusement. “Plain simple English?” He laughed lightly. “Angela, there is nothing simple about how I feel about you. You’re the first real friend I’ve made in this town, and you’re becoming one of the best I’ve ever had. I want…” There was no way he could tell her what he wanted, without some kind of explanation. “I’m afraid, Angela. I want more than just friendship with you, but it scares me. I can’t tell you why yet, and I’m sorry. There are some things that are going to have to happen slowly.”
“I’m okay with that. Slow is good.” Angela looked over at him. She was biting her lower lip, but she was smiling. “I’m glad that’s what you decided, even though…I’m a little afraid too, but I was hoping this would be your decision.”