Banished

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  When he looked over at Jody he saw he'd fallen asleep, his head against the half-lowered window, the wind ruffling the hair back from his smooth forehead.

  How was it, he wondered, that he had already met two people who recognized him as different? Was he losing his ability to hide what he really was or were Marva and Jody put into his path for reasons he couldn't yet comprehend? It seemed to him there were no coincidences. Each life was set on a road leading exactly where it was supposed to go. If that was so then he and Jody had always been meant to intersect, just as he and Marva had been destined to meet.

  He knew, though, that something terrible had happened to Marva and it had happened because of him, because of Angelique. He couldn't let the same thing happen to Jody. There had to be some fairness to things and Jody dying just because he could see into Nick and wanted to stick near the big Not-Quite-Man wasn't fair in any measure.

  I'll protect you, little buddy, he thought, watching Jody sleep. I won't let her get you. I won't be responsible for your death no matter how close I have to be or how long I have to keep you safe.

  Having made his vow and feeling it was the way it had to be, Nick rested his head against the back of the bus seat and closed his eyes for a nap.

  The bus rumbled like a mastodon, the hot, breathless wind blew through the open windows, and the sunlight chased shadow in a game of hide and seek.

  CHAPTER 26

  GAMBLING IN NEVADA

  Nick and Jody disembarked in Reno. For a minute Nick stood quietly, gathering to him the feeling of the mountainous town that just this year, 1931, allowed legalized gambling casinos. The small town sat in a high desert valley at the foot of the Sierra Nevada. The Truckee River rushed through it out of the mountain passes so that there were stream-side meadows of high mountain wild flowers. The Truckee made its way from Lake Tahoe in the north to Pyramid Lake.

  Reno was not gray and confused like Salt Lake City and it was not dry and empty of dreams like Elko. There was a lot of life here striving toward something the people needed, even if it was a grand illusion.

  “I like it, too,” Jody said, standing by patiently. “It's got a constant wind. I've always liked the wind.”

  Crowds thinned as passengers left the bus station or arrived to take a bus out. Nick began to walk, hands in his pockets. “I've got a little money saved,” he said. “I can get us a room and then we'll find somewhere to eat.”

  Jody grinned as he hurried along the sidewalk to keep up. “I knew you'd let me stay. Am I the only one who knows about you?”

  Nick thought about Mary, Marva, and Angelique. “No, there's a couple of others.”

  “But no one like you?”

  “One other like me, the one you have to be afraid of.”

  “Then he's not like you.”

  “She.”

  “A woman? Who is Not-Quite-Woman?”

  “A girl. She's a ten year old girl—ten going on ten thousand.”

  Jody whistled. “Well, if that doesn't beat all. A little girl. No taller than me, huh?”

  Nick glanced down and smiled. “Let's eat first,” he said. “The room can wait.”

  The streets of Reno were straight and along them new buildings were being erected to hold great neon signs. There was an anthill of activity. Carpenters and brick-layers scurried amid ladies dressed in the latest fashion and gentlemen wearing bowlers, waistcoats, and carrying canes. Even the children looked prosperous, their clothes tidy, shoes shined, with hair braided on the girls, and slicked down on the boys.

  They found a hotel featuring a restaurant where Nick ordered a slab of roast beef and Jody asked for a very large bowl of a macaroni, cheese, and mystery meat dish. For being such a small person, Jody could put away the tack. He smeared thick pats of butter on buttermilk biscuits, drank two glasses of milk, and finished up with a dish of peach cobbler floating under vanilla sauce. When done he smacked his lips, sat back and placed his hands over a small, protruding belly.

  “I have a little money, too,” he said. “I can pay for my own meals.”

  “As you wish.” Nick hadn't yet finished his roast beef and mashed potatoes swimming under brown gravy. The side dish of green peas was already empty and most of a pot of hot tea.

  “I tend to sleep after eating,” Jody said. “It's my metabolism or something because I can't control it. Or maybe I'm just lazy.”

  “I'm almost done,” Nick said, stabbing his fork into the roast beef and stuffing it into his mouth.

  “No hurry. I have about ten minutes yet.”

  True to his word, ten minutes later while Nick was standing in a rooming house parlor speaking with the elderly female proprietor, Jody, who had taken to the red velvet settee, began to snore.

  The lady looked over at him. “I can have a small trundle bed moved into your room for him.” She inclined her head toward Jody.

  “That would be kind. He's my brother,” Nick added. He withdrew a worn wallet and extracted some bills.

  Nick carried the sleeping man up the stairs and put him on the single bed until a smaller bed could be installed in the room. There was a chiffonier painted white, a spindle-legged table and straight back chair at the one window looking out on the street, and a chest of drawers of dark wood holding a water pitcher and a large ceramic bowl on top for washing up.

  Nick sat at the window calculating how long he could remain in Reno. Long enough to get a temporary job of some sort, he expected. They would need money. Maybe he could work on the casinos, helping to build the new ones. He could wield a hammer and nails. He didn't know if anyone would hire Jody for anything, but that didn't matter. He could care for him if it came to that and he knew he would, he had to. He didn't yet know the reason he was now teamed up with Jody, but there it was and no denying it.

  A wagon drawn by two horses pulled up down the street, long raw hardwood boards sticking out from the back. It looked incongruous alongside the motor cars and bicycles moving in a stream past it. This part of the world was just turning from the old west to the industrial age. The air smelled of dust, car exhaust, new copper, raw wood, and horse manure. The constant wind blew the curtains, turning them into lacy sails. Nick sat swatting the curtains aside as he watched the street and waited for Jody to awak

  CHAPTER 27

  OVER THE MOON-DAPPLED LAND

  Entering the state of Arizona Angelique walked down the side of the two-lane highway. She peered into the distance, the sun at her back. Her clothes had become dirty and ragged; she would need to stop in a town somewhere and buy more. The shoulder bag she carried was heavy with the last of her cash and coins. It was all she had with her.

  Not far over the state line she paused along the road, squinting ahead. Nisroc had come this way but he went north somewhere, she felt it, as if his vibration was a line of bright light leading her on, but in the distance it angled to the right. She was confident she'd know when to head north. According to the map in her head there were a few cities in north Arizona—Kingman, Flagstaff, Phoenix. A bird rising from ashes formed in her mind and she smiled. He had gone to Phoenix.

  Why he thought he could vanish and evade her she could not imagine. He knew she had powers of perception that were vastly more sensitive than what he could ever employ. If it were turned around and he hoped to track her, he just wouldn't be able to do it. Though he might know when she got near... The thought niggled at her brain, causing her to chew on her bottom lip. He might know, but he would never be able to hide. She stopped worrying and moved on down the highway.

  This part of the country was alien. It was nothing like the mountains and forests of the Carolinas or the piney woods and long, white beaches of the Gulf Coast states. This land was a moonscape. A scraped-clean-sunburned desert. The light was relentless, scouring the land mercilessly. Barrel and sequaro cacti dotted the landscape like menacing sentinels. She could see no sign of wildlife, not even a bird in the blue vault of sky. Very few vehicles drove this long stretch of highway so that she felt very
alone and exposed, like a cow's skull picked clean by vultures.

  If she did not need Nisroc so desperately, she would never put herself through such a rigorous trip cross country. And besides, damn it, he owed her. She was his superior, his savior. It was unconscionable he had left her high and dry the way he'd done. Just turned his back in that insulting way and walked out of town...

  Ahead she saw a small settlement sprawling across the desert floor like a little series of houses and buildings set there by a child's hand. She might find a clothing store and manipulate the mind of a hotel clerk to let her rent a room for the night. She could use some sleep in a bed. But what she'd love more would be a big tub of hot bath water and a real bar of soap. Her hair felt like a bird's nest and her skin was coated with dust all the way down into the creases between her fingers and toes.

  She trudged forward, the sun now overhead and scorching. In that town tomorrow she might hire someone to drive her to Phoenix. There had to be someone there in this time of financial turmoil who would gladly take a fifty-dollar bill in return for a couple hundred mile trip north...

  CHAPTER 28

  TOGETHER, FOREVER

  Jody woke late in the afternoon to find his new friend sitting at the window, his arms on the sill.

  “Busy little place, isn't it?” he asked. He swung his chubby legs over the side of the bed and slipped to the floor. He went to the wash basin to clean his face and hands, but he couldn't reach it. When he looked over, Nick was rising from the chair and coming to his aid.

  “I thought I'd stay a little while, find a job as a carpenter on one of the hotels or casinos going up.”

  “They got a circus here?” Nick had put the wash basin full of water on the table by the window. Jody cupped water and splashed his face.

  Nick smiled. “I don't see one.”

  “I can sweep floors then.” Jody dried his face and stood quietly beside Nick.

  “Did you read minds in the circus?” Nick asked, not altogether serious.

  “No, but I guess I could have. I was the littlest clown. The crowd loved me.”

  “I imagine they did.”

  “I don't always pick up what you're thinking, you know.” Jody stared into the street below.

  “I know.”

  “You want to tell me what you really are so I can stop thinking of you as Not-Quite-Man?”

  “I'm an angel.”

  Jody stiffened, but did not look at Nick. “An angel,” he repeated. “Like from heaven.”

  “No, more like from out of the deepest, loneliest dark.”

  “You're one of the Fallen. What's your real name, your angel name?”

  Now Nick turned to look at him. “I keep being surprised at how discerning you are. My name is Nisroc. I use Nick to make it easy for people.”

  “Can you tell me why you're here?” Jody asked.

  “The only answer I have for that is that the void is enough to erode my sanity.”

  “And because you love human beings.”

  Nick blinked with more surprise. He hesitated and then said, “I guess you're right. I love the living. I love living.”

  “Don't we all,” Jody stated. He turned from the window for the door. “I'm going out on the street, you coming?”

  Nick rose from the chair and followed Jody out. The city was a siren calling to them. The clamor and clang of hammers and saws, wagons carrying supplies, trucks hooting, cars grinding gears, hawkers calling to strangers to “Come on in, see the show!” filled the air with quadraphonic sound. Before night fell both men found work as a builder and store sweeper.

  Back in their room there had been a small fold-out bed installed against the far wall. They fell into their beds and slept to the music of the night city, the city's lights casting long shadows, blinking over the room.

  #

  Jody had not only been born small, but gifted with an insight incomparable to what “normal” people possessed. He saw through others to their inner cores, knowing which ones to avoid and which to befriend. This gift kept him safe at school when he was a child and it saw him through a strange adulthood performing in a traveling circus. This night he dreamed, dreams being another way his psyche performed feats of near magic.

  He dreamed of angels, angels that did not come down from heaven, but instead from a dark place where no sentient being wanted to be. Specifically, he dreamed of Nisroc and his companion, the angel who resided in the body of a little girl. His attention was immediately taken by the girl—raven haired, petite, her skin the color of old gold. But in her eyes he saw fire, he saw death, he saw destruction. Together the two angels stood side by side in a beautifully appointed house with marble floors. Just the aura he saw around the figures told him that one was not like the other. Nisroc had a soft, violet glow surrounding him. The girl walked in a cloud of darkness, like the sky before a terrible storm.

  She was sleeping now, just as he was, but he knew earlier in the day she had purchased a new black and white checked dress, a sunhat of straw circled with red, shiny ribbon, and a pair of black shoes. These items lay on a divan in the room, waiting for her to don them in the morning. Even as she slept he feared approaching her in the dream. Had he met this being in the real world he knew he would be racing the opposite direction. She was as terrorizing as a box of dynamite with a lit fuse. Looking over at her reclining on the bed, he felt he was staring down into a deep abyss. He experienced vertigo and fled the dream room only to enter a clearing in a wooded area and there again was the girl, standing before a bonfire. It was night and there was no moon or stars in the sky. She was alone.

  “So we meet,” she said in a silky voice that made him quake.

  “What is your purpose, Black Wing?” For he knew when she raised the wings from her small back they would be inky black and monstrous. They would increase her power and make her a creature less human than demon.

  She smiled a little and stepped closer to the fire so that he could see her face. He stood across the flames from her and tried not to show the fear he felt. If he let that fear rule him, his bones would melt and he'd puddle down onto the forest floor like ice beneath a blow torch, his entire body liquifying. He straightened his shoulders and placed his hands on his hips. He knew he could not represent power, but at least he could let her know he was not the pipsqueak she thought him.

  “Do you think you can protect him?” she asked, inclining her head to the side.

  He laughed at her question. “I doubt it, but I can be his friend.”

  She laughed now and it was as if the forest erupted with thunder. Jody clasped his hands over his ears to shut out the sound. This action was entirely involuntary. He glanced up at her from where he'd lowered his gaze to the ground.

  Her laughter stopped and now she looked angry enough to eat him alive. His heart did a flip-flop so awesome that he dropped his hands from his ears and clutched his chest.

  “He doesn't need you, little man. You're just in my way.”

  “Had he not needed me, Black Wing, I wouldn't have dropped into his life.” Jody knew it was chancy to engage with her and especially to refute what she said, but he always acted spontaneously; it was just the way he was made and he could not stop himself despite the danger it put him in.

  Now she stepped back, sweeping her hand across the fire so that the flames lessened and the bonfire turned to a pile of red hot coals gleaming in the darkness. “Really, I don't care what you do, but if you try to spy on me again, I promise you a hearty death when finally I catch up to you.”

  Now what he feared most occurred. She stood with her feet apart and raised her hands. From her back sprouted the wings, the black wings he knew these angels possessed. Unholy appendages grew and grew until they dwarfed the child, rising like swords and spreading out like an unfathomable darkness to each side.

  He turned aside, wrenching his gaze from her and once again he fled this particular dream world. He sat on a dry mountainside, panting, shivering all over with dread. He was al
one, thank God. He had escaped her this time and swore not to go to her, even in sleep, again. She did not make idle threats. She had shown him a series of violent deaths in his mind, playing them like movies one death after another and another, and in all of them he suffered greatly before expiring.

  As he shook, trying to calm himself, he looked up to the sky wondering if there was any help for him there.

  Still, he knew he would not leave Nisroc unless the angel asked him to go. He did not end up in places and with people—or angels!--without reason. There was no coincidence in Jody's life, never had been. He was exactly where he was supposed to be, even in dream. If that meant his ultimate demise, then so be it.

  He had never been a coward. He was not so afraid for his own survival that he would abandon a being who needed him. And evidently Nick needed someone...

  CHAPTER 29

  FOOTPRINTS OF THE DAMNED

  On waking, Angelique knew about Nisroc's traveling companion, Jody. The little man. The circus freak. The tiny speck of humanity that believed he could help protect an angel. Dressing in new clothes, Angelique laughed. The Jody man amused her. He was as full of fear as anyone she'd ever met, but that did not seem to deter him. Well, if she couldn't scare him, she'd simply dispose of him whenever she found him. And she would find him.

  On the street she found a cart selling hard fried eggs and onions wrapped in flat bread. She ate while sitting on a store bench watching people move about the little town just as if their lives mattered.

  She waited for someone to park near the store. It was more than an hour later, while she patiently sat waiting, nursing a bottle of cola. The woman was middle-aged, gray, and weak-minded. She had little in her head beyond the bolt of gay cloth she meant to buy in the store so that she could make a new Sunday dress. As she exited her car and walked by Angelique, she stopped, turning her head to look at the child.