Dew Angels

by Melanie Schwapp

  “Yes, Louisa.” She whispered to the loud echo of dial tone. “I always understand.”

  CHAPTER

  42

  The police car was in the plaza again, but this time the officer sat casually on the trunk, speaking to Eric.

  Nola had had to swallow the bile that rose up in her chest when Eric had emerged from his own car earlier. Every cocky jerk of his neck made her wish that she could put her hands around it and squeeze. She gritted her teeth till her head pulsed, watching as he spoke to the plain-clothed policeman. He seemed agitated, pulling the toothpick in and out of his mouth and pointing it every now and again at the man. Nola squinted to see if she could distinguish some of the words, but he was standing sideways, making it difficult to read his lips. What on earth could have upset Eric again? She had to hear what he was saying!

  Surprisingly, the thought of approaching the men brought no fear. She searched her heart for the quiver that always shook it when her thoughts settled on Eric McKenzie. No quiver—just a desperate need to do something—and to do it right away! It must have been the thought of eye-less, tongue-less, finger-less Barry, and the memory of Irene’s naked body flung over the casket—it must have been those memories that made her realize that she would rather be dead than to face someone else’s demise at the hands of the creature.

  Her chest heaved as she watched Eric cross his arms and rock back on his shiny heels. She would go. Right up there and listen to what he was saying! And if it wasn’t about Petra, then at least she would find out what you had to say to get a policeman into your back pocket!

  That morning, Petra had arrived on the bus. Nola had blinked in surprise when she recognized the rail-thin frame walking behind the smoking woman. When Petra lagged behind in the crowded street, the smoking woman grabbed her arm and pulled her forward. Nola had watched from beneath the bougainvillea, each haul of Petra’s rail thin shoulders making her own fingers tighten on the tray of sweets that had replaced the bucket of heliconias. By the time Petra’s feet had skittered into the supermarket, Nola’s knuckles had become the pale grey of dead flesh.

  As she watched Eric making another point to the police officer, his beautiful fingers pointing at the street at nothing in particular, the urgency to save Petra deepened. She picked up her tray of Wrigley’s gum and Icy Mints and limped over to the noisy higglers on the other side of the gate. They didn’t notice her approach.

  Nola coughed loudly as they chortled and slapped each other’s shoulders in mirth. “Imo …” she tapped Imogene’s meaty shoulder. “Sorry, Imo. Beg you watch me tings for me while I go to get a cool drinks up in the plaza.”

  Imogene and Maxine stopped mid-chuckle and looked up at Nola.

  “But dis woman gone mad or what?” Maxine wheezed. “What you think, Imo? Is nuff she nuff, or fool she fool? Woman, you don’t know dat Mr. Mac don’t want the likes of you in him plaza?” Her eyes flew up to the parking lot where Eric was leaning forward to hand something to the policeman.

  Nola quickly racked her brain for a different ploy. She grabbed her belly. “Me have to pee-pee, and me can’t pee-pee on the sidewalk, right?” Nola cringed at the crudeness of her words, but grabbed her crotch in the most brazen stance she could muster.

  The women broke into raucous laughter and slapped each other again.

  “Is what do dis woman though, Lord? See dat sign cross the street?” Imo wagged a finger at the crowded bus stop. “The one dat say, PUBLIC LAVATORY? Well, dat is where you go to pee-pee, not in Mr. Mac nice, nice plaza! Dat bathroom is for patrons only!”

  Nola gave a deep sigh before dropping the tray onto Imo’s lap. “Me can’t hold the pee-pee long enough to reach all the way cross there. Me just have to take my chances with Mr. Mac!”

  She decided to approach from the rear. She dragged her leg dramatically as she walked up from the exit gate. Thankfully, he was in such deep conversation that he did not notice her approach, and by the time she’d gotten to the column from which the large plaza light was mounted, she could hear his voice.

  “… know the date … nuh suspect … keep him far till … .” His words drifted like a sporadic mountain wind, teasing her first with its intensity, then becoming a distant drone. She moved closer, not dragging her leg as much this time lest he hear the sound of her slipper scraping the asphalt. She stopped when the familiar spice of his cologne reached her nostrils.

  “What ‘bout the ones round him?” The policeman was speaking now, his voice as steady as a block of ice. “You sure them will keep cool, or we have to deal with them too?”

  Eric chuckled, and Nola didn’t have to see his face to know that his eyes had remained steely in their squint.

  “What you a chat ‘bout? You think them could work for me and give any trouble? Them is all my people. Them know where them bread butter… just like you.” Another chuckle.

  The policeman grunted. “Yeh, but is cause of me you can even think ‘bout gettin’ the butter, don’t forget that!”

  They laughed together.

  “What you say him name? Patrick?”

  “Peter! Peter Ellis! See, me write it on the paper! Don’t forget. June 23rd, 17 Pine Crest Avenue.”

  Eric’s gaze casually lifted from the policeman and snagged on Nola’s hunched form. His eyes narrowed and his upper lip lifted into a disgusted sneer, jerking the toothpick sharply upward.

  He shouted at Nola, “Get your stinking, old ass out of my plaza before you chase away all my good, good customers.”

  She opened her mouth to speak. She wanted to tell him what an evil, no-good ceature he was; that she couldn’t believe that God had breathed air into such a murdering, lying son-of-a-bitch like himself, but she caught herself just in time. She snapped her jaws shut and quickly turned to limp back through the gate.

  Nola limped towards the cackles of Imogene and Maxine, and as she sat down on that piss-stained sidewalk beneath the prickly bougainvillea bush she felt her own laughter gurgling up within her chest. Before she knew it, she had joined in their boisterous cackling.

  However, as Imo and Maxine guffawed, “What happen to the pee-pee? It run back up in your mad head?” Nola laughed for a different reason. Nola laughed because Eric McKenzie, with all of his cunning and wit, had looked straight at her, and had not recognized her!

  CHAPTER

  43

  Two mornings later, when Nola returned to the sidewalk, she saw both the smoking woman and Eric go into the supermarket, but not Petra. When she returned three mornings after that, Petra was absent again. Nola tried to tell herself that Eric had merely changed his mind about Petra working at the supermarket, but no matter how she tried to convince herself, her heart told her otherwise. A nagging voice within her head kept saying, “Who would know? Who would know if Petra was missin’ like Barry?”

  That evening, as soon as Nola spotted the smoking woman buying her newspaper at the pushcart, she headed to the bus stop. She waited in the crowd, and when she saw the woman heading towards the bus, Nola rushed on to it.

  It must have been her aged appearance and her limp, but Nola noticed with relief that as she tried to push her way towards the back of the bus, some of the passengers tilted aside so that she could pass, with murmurings of, “Easy Mammy.” By the time the smoking woman had boarded, Nola was deep into the crowd. The bus did not leave for another 15 minutes. Nola used the time to study the woman.

  Her face was very thin, making her jaw seem long and never ending. She was not ugly, but the sharp set of her face made her seem stoic and unreal.

  Nola noticed that the woman remained close to the doorway, moving aside at each stop to allow passengers on and off, but venturing no deeper into the crowd. After about 35 minutes, Nola saw that she had positioned herself in front of the conductor’s legs. She was about to come off. Nola discreetly moved forward, and by the time the bus stopped and the woman jumped off, she was close behind.

  They had come off in front of a building with a sign reading, STEELE’S
HARDWARE. Thankfully, there was a crowd milling by the doors of the hardware, so Nola was able to quickly conceal herself within their midst. She watched as the woman tucked the thermos beneath her armpit and lit a cigarette, taking a long draw before expelling the smoke in what seemed to Nola like a deep sigh. Then she began walking up the road. She eventually turned on to a little slip road where she stopped to speak to someone whom Nola could not see, waving her thermos as if to make a point, then she turned on to another side road on the right, and disappeared.

  Nola searched for the name of the road. No name, just a rusty pole with a jagged tip, as if the sign had been sawn off. There was only one building to the left of the van, an abandoned factory or warehouse of some sort. Most of the windows were boarded up, and those that were not boasted the shredded gaps from flung missiles. To the right was fenced off open land, the grass tall and untended like the thick Redding hillside.

  Nola resumed her limp and followed the woman’s path down the slip road. There was an awful stench and she would soon see why. A dead goat kid lay in the grass near the roadside, its legs stuck out grotesquely from a torso swollen with the energy of death. Nola hauled up her hem to pass the animal quickly but a voice stopped her dead in her tracks.

  “You lost you way, Mammy?”

  Nola jumped. She’d been so distracted by the dead goat that she hadn’t seen the man on the right of the road. She pulled the locks over her mouth and turned to face the figure leaning against the wall of the boarded-up building.

  His cap was pulled low over his forehead, so his features were hidden in the shadow of the brim, but the narrowness of his shoulders and the spindly beginning of sinew in his arms told her that he was quite young. Her mind raced for an answer to quell the younster’s suspicious glare.

  Just as she was about to stage another ‘asthma’ attack, the boy jerked off the wall and pointed a thin finger.

  “Hold on … You … you is Hitler auntie?”

  Nola swallowed the ‘cough’ that had been perched on her chest and nodded, a little too eagerly, making the locks teeter dangerously.

  The boy dissolved into childish guffaws. “Him tell us, you know! Him tell us you was goin’ come! Him say you just know when him get little money! What? You smell it? Bumbo! You good, Mammy, you good! The money not even in him pocket good and you reach to beg for it already!” He grinned, gold-decorated teeth shimmering from the shadow of his huge cap.

  “Alright, Mammy, gwaan through. You deserve to get every penny!”

  Nola stared in shock. That easy?

  He flicked his wrist towards the bend. “Gwaan nuh, Mammy! You want the money finish before you reach?”

  Nola turned and quickly limped towards the turn that the smoking lady had gone down.

  “Hold on!”

  She froze. Had the locks given her away? Had they rocked to the side and exposed her own dark braids beneath? She didn’t turn to face the boy, holding her skirt in readiness to tear down the road if he tried to stop her. She was sure she could outrun him, especially with his skinny legs stuck in those ridiculous boots.

  But the boy just screeched, “Make sure that if you squeeze anyting outta Hitler pocket, you squeeze some for me too!”

  Nola hurried away, leaving him to laugh hysterically at his own joke.

  Her heart fell when she saw that the road veered to the left, forming a sharp bend which obscured the smoking woman’s path from her view. She picked up her pace, hoping she hadn’t lost her all over again, but, as she turned to the bend, her feet skidded to a halt.

  What the hell?! A ditch! Two feet deep and right smack across the middle of the road! Enough to crack an ankle or rip the underneath off of any car. It was deeper than any pothole she’d ever seen! A mucky collection of sweetie wrappers, juice boxes and cigarette butts floated in the brown water at the bottom.

  Nola peered anxiously down the street. There she was! She nearly shouted with glee when she spotted the woman, again standing in the middle of the road, again talking to someone out of Nola’s vision. “This must be Lucky Nola Day,” she thought, watching as the woman gave an irritated kick at three dogs who’d run up to sniff her legs.

  Realizing that she was standing in plain view of the woman and the dogs, Nola scurried to the side of the road. Thankfully a guinep tree grew half inside, half outside of the wall that separated the street from the open land. She hid beside the trunk and continued to study the street ahead. Nice houses, some painted in bright colours, lined up closely on either side like a rainbow. Quite a surprise, to see such nice houses on that street!

  The woman waved at the person to whom she’d been speaking and continued down the road, the dogs scampering playfully behind her. She walked about three gates down, then stopped before a grey one on the left side of the road. She stood there for a while, lighting a cigarette and taking a few puffs before flicking it at the dogs. They sniffed the cigarette excitedly as the woman opened the gate and went inside.

  Nola followed, using the little beaten path on the side to pass the ditch. The houses seemed taller than regular homes, some three stories high, and they seemed to be built extremely close.

  “Hey Madda, where you think you ah go?”

  Nola jumped. Not again!

  She turned slowly to face the green house on her right, the one into which the smoking woman had been speaking. To her surprise, the speaker was not in the house as Nola had thought, but leaning against the gate outside, and there was not one person there, but three. This street was proving to be a little more dangerous than she’d anticipated.

  She studied their faces from behind the safety of her locks. They were definitely older than the first boy. One of them had a green rag tied around the top of his head, his afro shooting out at the sides like a coconut broom. The other two had cornrows, but were no less intimidating to look at. It was their eyes—expressionless, even though waiting for Nola’s answer. As lifeless as the goat kid that lay stiff on the corner.

  Nola quickly looked down at her dusty toes, her words snagging in her throat. She shivered inwardly as the coconut broom raised himself off the gate and sauntered towards her. She felt the urge to take a step backward, and she had to dig her heels into the ground to stay put. As he got closer, she saw that he was even more unkempt than he seemed from afar. He was unshaven, but the beard did not grow in a uniform manner but splattered unevenly across the cheeks. A thin roll of spliff was tucked behind his left ear which boasted a diamond so huge that most of the lobe seemed to have disappeared beneath its white gleam.

  “Madda? You deaf? WHERE … YOU … T’INK … YOU … AH … GO?”

  Nola swallowed and tried to keep her voice steady, but only two words squeezed out of her throat. “Hitler … m … money.”

  The eyes frowned slightly, then to her surprise, they became alight with recognition. The man whooped loudly, the stiff lips bursting into a gleam of gold that put the first boy’s gleam to shame. Every one of his teeth, both the top and bottom rows, were magnificently capped in gold. Between that and the earring, he was almost blinding to look at. Like a Christmas tree, this one.

  “Yow!” he called to the pair of cornrows. “Frog! Sasquatch! Hitler auntie … She come for true, my yout!”

  The pair broke into guffaws, grabbing their crotches in the apparently extreme hilarity of the situation.

  “Down deh!” The Christmas tree pointed after he’d grabbed his own crotch a few times. “The house with the pineapple on the gate … HITLER HOUSE!” He bent to shout into her ear, and she had to steal herself not to flinch. “HITLER HOUSE!” he shouted again as her gaze followed his finger jabbing at somewhere down the road.

  Nola hobbled off, but as she went further down the road, her heart fell when she saw that the pineapple gate was past the smoking woman’s grey one.

  Damn! Damn! Damn! They were probably watching her, waiting to see her enter Hitler’s gate. She would have to just head for the pineapple house and hope that the luck of the afternoon was st
ill with her.

  She shuffled to the bright yellow house. The two giant pineapples sat on the gateposts like braggadocios landmarks. As she stood staring at the yellow front door with the pineapples carved into the panels, something tugged at her hem and she jumped in panic.

  The dogs! They were pulling at her cloth, threatening to unravel it right there on the street.

  “Shoo!” she hissed, kicking at them as she’d seen the smoking woman do. “Go away!”

  They gave her a wounded look but ran off, stopping to sniff each other’s rear ends by the grey gate. Nola glanced over her shoulders to check if the men had as yet re-directed their attention, but no such luck. They were still watching, hands poised, ready to grab.

  She sighed and searched the ground resignedly for a stone. There was a chunk of concrete on the sidewalk, so she picked it up and made as if to knock on the gate. Sure enough, the men engaged in another round of guffawing, and when Nola looked back and saw them exchanging high-fives, she ducked behind the huge yellow post.

  She remained there, crouched in that familiar position till her back screamed and her legs tingled with pins and needles. She stayed there till the sky glowed and the pineapples on the posts lit up. She prayed that the dogs wouldn’t come back and sniff her out to the watchmen. She alternated her frantic looks between the windows of the house and the gate on which the men still leaned. One of the times, she saw that the Christmas tree had gone, leaving the other two behind. You see?… she encouraged her stiff legs, just two to go! However, when she heard the hum of a car engine coming from the top of the road, panic shattered her once again. Suppose the car was coming this way … to this gate? Suppose it was that damn Hitler?

  She held her breath and peeped out. Sure enough, a car was at the top of the road, idling in front of the ditch. As she watched, the cornrows sauntered up to the bend, where one of them jumped over the wall and retrieved a long metal grate. He passed one end to his companion, and together they carried it to the ditch and placed it across the hole. The car drove over, the driver tapping the horn and gave a friendly wave through the window.