Fallen Angels

by Patricia Hickman

  “Maybe we should go find Momma on our own. We made it this far, Angel.” Willie strapped his books into the belt and carted it over his shoulder. He had gained an inch on his sister and now met her eye level.

  “Little Rock, Willie? Why don't we just go to the moon?” Angel leaned into the passenger side of Mrs. Fogarty's automobile to ask her husband for a ride. Mrs. Fogarty touched her cheek and smiled. Angel told Willie, “Get in. They'll give us a ride.”

  It seemed right to Angel that as the lambs of the minister, they had a roof over their heads and a ready, free ride over long, dusty roads any time they wanted. The name Gracie had done her more good than Welby. But if she could just rest her head in her mother's lap again, in the starchy cotton folds that smelled of safety, that might seem right, too.

  The Fogartys motored them back to the parsonage. Nothing seemed right or wrong. Just filled or hungry. Angel preferred filled if she could not have her mother.

  Horace Mills set up a battery-operated Philco radio on the lawn of the church even though Florence thought it might be sacrilegious. But the fact that a gospel singing came across the air waves once a week on Sunday night appeased her and she said she would not be offended.

  Babe Ruth played outfield for the Yankees. Yankees fans collected around the Philco, each man taking turns with turning the radio off and on during the advertisements to save battery power since the replacement batteries cost four dollars at the Woolworth's.

  Jeb had been asked to auction off the box lunches as had been the custom in previous years. But between boxes, he leaned toward the radio with the rest of the men to listen for the scores.

  Single girls and young men from Hope, Camden, and even as far away as Hot Springs, parked all over the church lawn. Some drove their father's automobiles; a few looking too young to do so. Young swells in college sweaters tossed a football into a group of girls just to hear the squeals. Boxes tied with crepe paper in various sizes had been stacked on a table normally used for communion. When the tabletop was jam-packed, the remaining box lunches were stacked underneath on the grass.

  Jeb picked up a bulky box tied with pink crepe paper. “Smells wonderful fellers. Says it was home cooked by Betty LaFevre.” He stared over the heads until he saw a hand, nails chewed to the quick, waving at him. “Here's Betty and she's glad to raise money for the church.”

  The young woman, small as a child, leaned crosslegged against an automobile bumper, her plaid flannel skirt spread out like a flag. She appeared to know some of the college men.

  Several university boys bid on the box until it sold for seventy-five cents.

  Jeb auctioned off six more boxes, the sixth of which was cooked by Angel. It sold to a fourteen-year-old boy who promptly asked Angel to join him. She declined and walked to the church steps to sit alone.

  “Boys, we have a fine box of fried chicken here. It is cooked by … Miss Fern Coulter.”

  The local boys laughed and made comments about the minister running away with the Coulter dinner. The flirtation had spread around town.

  But a man from out of town stepped up and bid a dollar.

  Everyone fell silent.

  Fern came up on her toes to get a look at him.

  He had a slender look about him, with long arms and worsted sweater sleeves pushed up, making rolls around his elbows.

  “We have a bid from an out-of-towner,” said Jeb. “Want to give us your name, young feller?”

  “Oz Mills.”

  Horace Mills did not look up from the radio, not with the Yankees at bat. But his other two sons stood behind their older cousin, Oz, and appeared to watch for a reaction from Jeb.

  “Horace Mills's nephew.” Someone told Jeb quietly. He said, “Home from college, I gather.”

  “No, my father's bank in Hope,” said Oz. “I'm in the banking business same as my Uncle Horace.”

  That would explain his high bid of a dollar, Jeb figured. “Come on, boys. You going to let a Hope feller take this one away from you?”

  “You bid, Reverend!” said a Wolverton boy.

  “All right. Dollar and a nickel,” said Jeb. “Just to make it interesting.”

  A little distress made creases around Fern's eyes. Jeb got the idea that she wanted to stop him, but then figured she was having fun with him.

  “Dollar and one dime,” said Oz. He jangled the coins in his right pocket.

  “Dollar and a quarter.” Jeb wondered why Horace had never mentioned his banker nephew. He bragged about everything else in his life.

  Fern excused her way through the crowd. She whispered something to Oz. He responded by touching the tip of her nose.

  Oz shot back, “Dollar fifty, then. Fern Coulter's worth every penny.”

  “So she is,” said Jeb. “Sold to Mr. Oz Mills for one dollar and fifty cents.” Fern was worth a week's wages, but something existed between the teacher and this banker that had obviously escaped his attention. Oz took Fern's box lunch and led her by the arm to a blanket on the lawn. Jeb watched as they exchanged words, pleasant eye contact, and appeared to catch up on old times.

  Back on the lake in the canoe, Fern had goaded Jeb with the intimation that more than one bull occupied the paddock. He wrote it off as a woman's bluff. Fool that he was.

  Jeb auctioned off the remaining boxes and then helped Will Honeysack take the money inside and count it. He left the money to be deposited with Will and joined the married men around the Philco. He listened to the roar of the crowd whenever the Babe's name was mentioned. He joined the overall-wearing bunch in baseball blather, drivel regarding the cost of a bale of cotton, and the national concern about the sad fate of the Lindbergh baby.

  Fern opened two Coca-Colas; one for herself and the other that she had surely intended for him.

  It was hard to tell.

  Jeb ate his evening meal out on the porch. Angel took the Monday beans, stirred tomatoes into them, and served them with spaghetti noodles and cornbread. He had just put the coffee to his lips when Oz Mills pulled up. He jumped out of a Packard and helped Fern out, complimenting her on her helmet hat.

  Jeb drew in a mouthful of coffee, slightly sugared, but too hot to drink. It scalded his tongue. He sat up, spilled a black, hot droplet onto his lap and had to keep from swearing. When they made it to the porch, he stood, both hands full. “Evenin’,” he said, although he knew it lacked luster.

  Fern sounded formal again. “Reverend Gracie, I want you to meet Oz Mills. I mean, I know you met today. You haven't been formally introduced.”

  “Oz.” Jeb set aside the plate and cup and extended his hand.

  “Reverend, I'm glad to meet you.” Oz had a polished drawl, as though he had spent time in Atlanta. “No hard feelings about the box dinner, I hope. Fern chastens me for competing over every little thing.”

  “No hard feelings. The box lunch is all in fun for you youngsters. It's fun for the rest of us to watch.” Jeb squeezed Oz's hand harder than a normal handshake.

  “Oh, Oz, we've interrupted the reverend's meal,” said Fern.

  “Nothing to it,” said Jeb. “Just a little something Angel whipped up.”

  “I don't think she wanted that boy from town to buy her box dinner.” She filled Oz in on the conversation. “Angel is the reverend's daughter. He has done well with her since her mother's death. Especially hard on girls.”

  “I don't know if it's any easier for a boy. When I lost my mother, I don't think I ever got over it,” said Jeb.

  “My mother passed on when I was only sixteen,” Oz put in. “My stepmother has done as best as she knows how with, my little brothers. Do you have sons?”

  Jeb realized he was addressing him again. “One boy.”

  “You might think all he needs is you. But losing his mother while young, well, it's something he needs to talk about. Get things out in the open with him. You'll be glad you did.” Oz never looked at Jeb, but seemed to make the speech to impress Fern.

  “I see what you mean, Oz. Willie is such a qu
iet boy in school, too easy to overlook.” Fern's sympathy clearly remained on Oz's side of the paddock.

  “Can I offer you all something to eat? Coffee?” Jeb addressed Fern only.

  Oz cut to the chase. “Fern said that you own a canoe. I was hoping we could borrow it. She said the view from Marvelous Grossing is amazing.”

  “That wasn't my canoe, I'm afraid. Matter of fact, it floated under the bridge one day and I sort of borrowed it myself,” said Jeb.

  “What happened to it?” asked Fern.

  “After I took you out in it, I just released it. I was hoping the owner would find it floating around and claim it. Not mine to give.” Jeb hoped Oz would not spot it tied to the rotted oak just beyond Marvelous Crossing Bridge and the lily banks.

  “I guess we'll just have to skip the canoe ride, then,” Fern said to Oz.

  “You're more than welcome to borrow my fishing pole,” Jeb offered, “if you're wanting to wet a line. Right back here in the stream, we got good-sized trout.” He and Oz exchanged awkward gazes.

  “I didn't quite have fishing in mind, Reverend.” Oz brought his hand under Fern's elbow. “Fidel's Drugstore then, Fern. I'll split a malted with you.”

  “Sure, why not?” Fern's arms swung back as though she planned her exit.

  “How did you two meet?” Jeb asked Oz.

  “My aunt had a summer party once and invited my family and a few people from around town. Fern and I met at my aunt's party. About two summers ago. We're both so busy with our lives, it's been difficult to get together.”

  “I'm sorry you have to go back home to Hope. Daddy Mills needs you, I guess.”

  Fern's eyes narrowed.

  ‘Tomorrow I'll travel back to Hope. Tonight, dinner with my aunt and uncle. Fern, you'll join us won't you?” Oz faced Fern and when he did, it was as though Jeb faded completely from the porch.

  “Your mother has already invited me, don't you know? Tempted me with her pork roast. She does with oranges and pork what my mother does with pasta.” Fern touched Jeb's arm. “I'll see you Saturday for … you know what.”

  Jeb, although he would not have wanted Oz to know he was getting help in sermonizing by a grammar schoolteacher, enjoyed the moment of secrecy between Fern and him. “Saturday it is, Fern. And stop calling me Reverend. You know we don't do that anymore.” He returned the touch on her arm.

  Oz made several cagey glances back at him as he escorted Fern across the yard and to the pale-yellow Packard.

  “Ida May sends her love.” Jeb waved good-bye to Fern only.

  The beans and spaghetti had grown cold.

  Jeb went to bed while the sad state of affairs stung his insides like acid. Wherever he had lived, his plans always blew up in his face, like the time he and Charlie found dynamite down by the old railway, south of town in Temple. Charlie wanted to see how high a milk pail would fly if they set a stick off under it. But the wick, too short and dangerously dry, had fizzled—Jeb thought. So when he returned to relight it, the explosion caught him in the face. His mother had shrieked and said he would be a monstrous sight, unable to go out in public. But the healing came and left him with a faint curving scar to the right of his left eye, a crooked finger pointing at his eye to tell first this one and that one the folly of his boyhood. He was not left a monstrosity but he had yet to find a place where he could settle down without feeling the breath of failure steaming straight down his collar. He'd left Texas under the cloak of night with Charlie when a cornfield burned one afternoon and the two of them were blamed for it. They knew who did it—Uncle Festus got drunk and lay smoking in the middle of the field. Gave them each a cigarette, but they did not start the fire. They left town and found work in Texarkana.

  Myrna was really Charlie's problem but somehow she'd become Jeb's trouble.

  Jeb connected stars through the window and thought of the fresh clean feeling of coming in new to a town. People greeted you kindly, tipped their hat. Ladies smiled at the new blood in town. Merchants lighted up at the sight of a new customer. The new boss had no prior notions about you, no biases. It was like being born again. Like going to sleep with the law on your back but waking up in a church and being handed keys, a chicken for your pot, and a warm place to sleep. Respect, admiration, pretty girls stopping you on the sidewalk to have you comment about a new dress.

  Jeb's mother, Geneva, had told him once, “I agree with yore daddy about one thang. You don't know how to go about your business without falling into the fire, Jeb Nubey. Some people like to live in peace among their fellow human beings, but you like to take your hullabaloo stick and stir up trouble. If there is a fight to be had, you land the first blow and bring all the tumult down around your own ears.”

  He listened to Geneva complain about him and to him while he watched the stars. Neither she nor Charlie senior had ever made sense to him. But now, in the quiet of the church parsonage, he wanted to hear her out. The burned cornfield came to him and he tried to imagine ways out of the situation. He could have confessed, told the deputy Uncle Festus started the blaze. Be the family snitch. Charlie could have taken the blow for dating Myrna Hoop, and Jeb's kiss a mere brotherly gesture. Everybody could have taken their own medicine. He relived his past a lot to set straight the things that had gotten away from him.

  But what to tell Fern eluded him. He wanted to sit down with her and explain how the situation had gotten away from him. Out of all of the bad men in the world, he was the least among them. He said it out loud. Didn't have much of a ring to it. He played out the scene in several different situations. Fern would help him prepare a sermon but he would flip-flop to something else entirely; he would preach the truth to her, sit her down, and ask her to stay and hear him out. He practiced several confessions. But every declaration of guilt sent her packing; her look of disappointment deflated his entire scheme.

  In his mind, Charlie senior scolded another of his bad ideas. I don't know how I raised a boy with no character. I don't know how you got so seared in your thinking. Much different was when he sat at his momma's knee as a young feller and she told him he had the sign of an apostle on him. She'd only said that once. It had come to her in a dream. In any case, after the fire, his daddy had said, “It scares me to death to think you'll end up on a rock pile someday.” Scared young Jeb to death, too, like fate hovered over his life sucking him up into its cyclone. Jeb saw the whole picture through his daddy's eyes, as though he looked straight into the theater of his mind — him chained to six other men while an oversized guard poked him in the shoulder blades with a rifle muzzle. Ol’ Charlie's words always had the intended effect—the very word jail scared the wits out of him. Even worse, the threat of being locked up seemed to follow him around as though he had been fatally picked to spend his life pounding rocks, just as Charlie would spend his days married to Selma from Oklahoma.

  Often when they visited a dry goods store in Dallas, Charlie senior had pointed to every law officer that passed in front of the plate glass window. “They will haul you off if ever you steal what don't belong to you.”

  One lazy Saturday he had examined a rubber ball from a whole bin of them, a red bouncing ball just right for stick ball or hurling at Charlie to inflict mortal wounds upon his freckled skin. Without thinking, or maybe seized by the forces of nature, he'd walked past the clerk and out into the sunlight imagining how high into the sky the ball would fly if popped in the sweet center by his hard pine beauty. He'd tipped his hat at the town deputy, Wesley Bishop, given the ball a good bounce and then felt his knees buckle when he realized he had walked out of the store without paying for the ball. Daddy had known he had the thief inside of him. At that moment guilt had swept over him. He'd stumbled back inside with the ball tucked underneath his shirt, past the clerk, and down the aisle to the rubber ball bin. When the clerk had glanced up at him a third time, his eyes, he felt certain, had rolled back in his head. He had dropped the ball at his feet and left it spiraling on the floor. Without stopping, he ran two miles to escap
e his destiny.

  Every time the deputy came sniffing around Nazareth, Jeb thought it a matter of days, maybe just hours, until Charlie's prophecy found fulfillment. He had dreamed of good and evil, men in chains, and stars colliding. He wanted to believe Momma. And believe that divination might have been her lot as much as an early death. But Charlie senior never left his head. Never stopped telling him his fate.

  A cloud came across the moon, dappling the white face that lit the edges of trees and the hills of Nazareth with unearthly silvering. Jeb rolled onto his face. It came to him that he could not remember the past he had invented for Fern's sake.

  He pulled pen and paper from the crate beside the bed and wrote down every pertinent fact he thought he had given to Fern. Making the letters lean, he wrote faster than he had the week before. But even Will Honeysack's handwriting had a shaky line. He had noticed that when he wrote down the offering funds. The lantern flickered and he raised the wick to read what he had written down already. His script read well enough. But compared to Fern's liquid penmanship, his was doddery, like the handwriting belonging to a feeble man. Wife, Verna. Born in Texas. He had said Texas, hadn't he? Moved here from — Tennessee. Or was it Atlanta? Brother, Charlie. He might have mentioned Charlie to her but even if he had not, he was certain to do so. Stories of Charlie and him could fill volumes as well as interjecting homey repartee into the quiet moments of a Sunday afternoon.

  Repartee. He'd read that word from a poem and had decided to try it out on Fern this Saturday. Repartee. It looked false coming from his Woolworth's pen.

  He swapped the pen and paper for a book left tucked into a basket of Fern's bread. She had called it the writings of Pascal and seemed surprised when he did not respond with a comment. Out loud, he practice-read until the rims of his eyes stung as though filled with rubbing alcohol. He practiced sounding fluid. The moon disappeared entirely. The last thing he remembered was laying Pascal across his chest.

  When he awoke, the children had gotten themselves off to school. Ida May rocked on the porch alone. Best of all, he was not in jail.