Earthly Vows

by Patricia Hickman

  The August heat sent everyone into the bus depot’s shaded areas, the awnings with their blue paint and signs advertising haircuts and liniment, the sprawling sweet gum leaves flapping like a girl’s hands turned up and responding to laughter. Jeb and the women waited at the depot long enough for the line down the walk to expand from the waiting benches to the ticket terminal and then they moved gratefully into the shade. Fern struck up a talk about Angel’s schooling. Jeb had not bothered to ask Angel about her studies. She was in charge of all of that back in Nazareth, so he figured Claudia and Angel had worked out the particulars.

  “Claudia won’t know her hours until we get to Norman,” Angel told her.

  “But you’ll continue in school no matter.” Fern kept glancing over at Claudia, who had inched into a spot on a shaded depot bench.

  “Of course, what else?” asked Jeb.

  “If you’re looking after John and Thorne while Claudia works, how will that work?” Fern would not let up.

  “Put it off until later?” Angel said it like a question.

  “Jeb, you need to say something,” said Fern.

  Angel swallowed. She kicked a dust puff up from the ground with the toe of her shoe.

  Jeb shook his head and said, “I didn’t agree to that.”

  Angel shifted onto her right foot. Her hip jutted out and she sighed as though she were being grilled. She shaded her eyes with one hand. “How did you think this was going to work, Jeb? I can’t run after Claudia’s two and go to school. I’ll have to wait.”

  “Wait how long?” asked Fern. “You’ll fall behind. Jeb, remember how hard she worked to get caught up with her classmates back in Nazareth?”

  Claudia got up from her perch. She broke off a corner of the bread loaf and gave it to John, who was jumping up and down wanting to feed the pigeons. John promptly disintegrated the bread between his palms and tossed crumbs into the air like he was tossing up sand.

  “That was supposed to be for lunch,” Jeb said to Fern.

  Fern extended her fingers and touched Jeb’s arm.

  Claudia joined the circle and said, “If you don’t mind my two cents, Reverend, I read ever’ bit of the letter you give me on that meatpacking job. There’s a five-to-midnight shift. I’ll go for that and then Angel can still mind her studies.”

  Jeb walked away from the women toward the street to steer Thorne back toward her brother. He hefted her onto the bench, picked up John, hurled him up laughing like a lunatic and then plopped him next to his sister. The boy scraped precious bread from between his fingertips to the waiting flock.

  The skin around Fern’s temple relaxed and she talked to Claudia and Angel as if they would all be back together again soon. She had Angel dig out a slip of paper from her drawstring purse. She scrawled down her telephone number and tucked it back into Angel’s bag. The bus to Norman pulled up. Jeb helped Angel carry her suitcase to the bus. Claudia stepped up into the bus, eyes straight ahead, herding John and Thorne up the steps and into a front-row seat. John stood up and looked out the window, his eyes big as headlights until he spotted his aunt. Angel motioned for him to settle into his seat and mouthed, “I’m coming,” so the boy would stop troubling over her.

  Fern hugged Angel. Angel was not as affected as she had been at the house saying good-bye to Jeb. She had not said much to Fern in the last few hours. There was a final kiss she planted on Fern’s cheek, the same as her good-bye to Abigail. Time was spinning away from them and she let it go without a single complaint. She waved at Jeb from the bus steps. The door closed between them.

  Fern said, “Jeb, where are you going?”

  He kept walking behind the bus to see if Angel might turn and wave wildly for the bus to stop, yelling in that way of hers that she had changed her mind. Other passengers waved from the window as they departed. But the bus swallowed Angel whole. She was not in his sights any longer. He was out of breath in the heat. The sun was eating his brain. The bus turned right. There was a flash of girl in the window, pale and full of quiet craving.

  “She’s gone,” said Fern. “I wasn’t ready.”

  There was a stop five minutes before noon. The sudden jolt on the bus brakes brought Angel out of a thin sleep. Her neck hurt from dozing in a sitting position. Claudia turned completely around in her seat and smiled when Angel’s lids came open. The passenger seated across the aisle from Angel smelled like cigars rolled in bourbon, a cloying smell for a woman dressed so well. Thorne was stretched out across Angel’s lap, limp as a dishrag, her right arm hanging out into the air, her left arm straight up, fingers closed in a relaxed fist. Angel was hungry. Claudia had taken charge of the food. John stuffed his face the whole trip from Ardmore.

  The bus stopped in Pauls Valley. Ten or maybe even a dozen passengers got up and filed out of the bus. The driver held to the grab bar and facing them said, “We’ll be here in Pauls Valley a half hour, folks, so if you want to get out, stretch your legs, or get a bite to eat, feel free.”

  Angel rubbed Thorne’s forehead and kept saying her name until her eyes came slowly open. “Let’s step outside and have us some lunch, Thorne,” she said.

  Claudia and John fled out of the bus and took a seat under a sprawling black walnut tree. Angel carried Thorne and laid her on the grass next to Claudia. The hem of the girl’s dress had come loose. Angel said she would fix it when they got to Claudia’s place.

  “If I still have a place,” said Claudia.

  “Jeb gave you money, Claudia. Landlords don’t turn down cash on the barrelhead.” Angel pulled open the sack. Myrna’s fried chicken had come loose from the cheesecloth. Angel drew out a leg for Thorne and one for herself. One end of the bread loaf looked like mice had been at it, of course. She tore off two nice pieces and handed one to Thorne, who was finally sitting up.

  Two women stopped on the corner to gab, townsfolk out for a walk. They each sipped on a cold Coke. Claudia smiled at them. They raked her over with their eyes and took a few steps back to find shade under a drugstore awning. One of them lit a cigarette.

  Angel finished her chicken and bread. She pulled out a napkin and cleaned Thorne’s greasy fingers and mouth.

  Her skirt rode up around her diaper. A rash ring showed around the legs of the diaper. “She’s wet and needs a change, Claudia.”

  “I’m almost out of clean diapers. We’d best make do with what she’s got on.”

  “She’s eaten up with rash, Claudia.”

  “It’ll clear up.”

  Thorne scratched at her diaper.

  “I thought you did the wash yesterday. You ought to have plenty of diapers,” said Angel.

  “My hands were too full with these two to do it all. Why you think I need you, Angel?”

  The two women under the drugstore awning left and one threw down what remained of her smoldering cigarette. Claudia got up, and when they were out of eyesight, she retrieved the butt and took a drag on it.

  “I thought you had plenty of smokes.” Angel put away the dinner sack and cleaned up the bones.

  “All I had was what Bo left behind. Still got a card of papers. I could buy a tin here in this drugstore.”

  “We need the money for food and rent, though.”

  “Just a tin is all.” She went inside.

  Angel turned her attention back on Thorne. A few of the passengers were eavesdropping, having nothing better to do for the next fifteen minutes. John crawled into Angel’s lap and laid his head against her shoulder. “My belly’s full, Aunt Angel.”

  “I know, John. I’m glad.” She dug through Claudia’s bag and found the last clean diaper. She laid Thorne back in the grass.

  Out of boredom, the passengers went back to their lunches.

  Willie and Ida May accepted the pillows given to them by Abigail for the trip home. They each claimed a corner in the rear car seat.

  Fern kissed Abigail and Donna Faye good-bye.

  Jeb thanked Abigail and Myrna for their hospitality and started the engine. Abigail crie
d liberally as Fern had prophesied. Myrna dallied on the porch picking sprigs from some of Abigail’s plants, not actually watching them pull away, but doing other things as if time had taught her to keep busy when Abigail’s offspring pulled out of the family drive. Jeb turned right onto the road and glanced for the last time at Abigail. Myrna had her arm around her mistress, coaxing her inside.

  “I don’t know why Mother wants to annoy me like that,” said Fern. “She always gets so overwrought.”

  “Shame on Abigail. She ought to give a cheer as we pull away,” said Jeb.

  “I’d like that,” said Fern.

  Jeb wondered how far Angel’s bus had traveled, if Claudia would ration their meals correctly, or if the ride was bumpy or dusty. Angel had taken to Fern’s fostering of womanly needs more than his and had grown spoiled. She would do well to run after Claudia’s children, but then she had not known much else since being put out by her family to look after Willie and Ida May. Of course the women at Church in the Dell and Fern saw to things like helping Angel keep a few dresses done up for church and Saturday night goings-on. Claudia did not strike him as the type of woman who would think about those things. “Angel looks out for herself well enough, doesn’t she?” he asked Fern.

  “Better than most, I’d say.”

  A single drop of rain hit the windshield. Jeb leaned forward and glanced up. There was a cloud cover, a few acres of gray-and-white cumulus stretching over Carter County. But the smattering of storms that came through Oklahoma on this trip only teased them with a brief sprinkling of rain and a barren show of lightning; nothing that promised the end of the drought. “When did your mother say that last dust storm hit?”

  “Last March, wasn’t it?”

  “Miz Abigail says it was like the end of the world,” said Willie. “I wish I coulda seen it. Nothing big ever happens in Nazareth.”

  Ida May opened her mouth and sighed out a yawn and then a big burp. Willie doubled over laughing. Ida May covered her face and laughed too. Fern told her to rest her eyes and take a nap on Abigail’s feather pillow. Ida May smiled at Fern, and after she closed her eyes, she said, “Angel said that you was going to make a good momma. She was right.”

  Fern looked pained by the comment. She pulled her hair up to one side into a comb so that she could rest her head comfortably. “Angel didn’t say much to me today. How about you?”

  “Not a lot. So much on her mind, I guess. Finally after all this time, she gets her wish. I think Claudia needed her worse than she needed Claudia, though. I don’t know.

  I don’t know.”

  “Did you ask Angel if she wanted to go to Norman?”

  “Sure she wanted to go,” said Jeb. “What else has she wanted all this time?”

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “I wouldn’t have let her go otherwise. What makes you say that?”

  “Angel never actually said she wanted to go. But then again, she was always one to let you know if she wanted something.”

  “Of course! She’s not one to be pressured,” said Jeb.

  “I agree with that.”

  There was a quiet that fell between them.

  “Claudia has a lot on her plate, though. I wonder if it’s too much for Angel.” The winding road straightened for a good ten or twenty miles. Jeb lost track of time as he put more and more road behind them. Fern stopped commenting, but as to how much time had passed since her last comment, he couldn’t say. “I never actually asked Angel if she wanted to go. Should I have done that?”

  “It never hurts to ask.”

  A road sign sticking out near the highway advertised fuel and window cleaning. The glass was already dirty from the road dust. Jeb pulled into the filling-station lot. He turned off the engine and sat staring straight ahead. “I may have made a mistake,” he said.

  Fern stared out her window too. Her fingertips slowly massaged her lips. She did not help him one way or another.

  “Aunt Angel, we’re here!” John voiced it so loudly from the center aisle, the passengers seated around him laughed.

  Thorne climbed back into Angel’s lap expecting again to be carried off the bus. Several people shoved past them. Finally a Spanish-looking man seated in the back of the bus stopped and let them out into the aisle. Angel picked up the bag she carried on, along with her purse, and hefted Thorne onto her hip. Claudia and John waited out on the walk. “Welcome to the big city of Norman,” said Claudia.

  A clap of dry thunder made Thorne holler.

  “I wish to goodness the sky’d stop threatening us. Just let us have it!” Claudia spread her arms, but then said, “I wasn’t yelling at God. Just the sky.”

  Angel stared at her impassively.

  “What with you being brought up by a preacher and all, I didn’t want to offend your upbringing,” said Claudia. “Claudia, don’t start.”

  “I’m not funning.”

  “Shut up! Do we hitch a ride or walk to your place?”

  Angel asked. “One or the other. We walk a piece, then rest a piece.

  It’s a good half-hour walk.”

  “Daddy took the truck,” said John. “I hate him.” Claudia smacked John’s mouth. He cried. Angel set down her suitcase, stepped up, and took his hand. She had watched Claudia backhand John more than once at Abigail’s, but was starting to have her fill. She picked up her luggage again and struck up a bit of chatter to busy his mind and to calm him.

  Claudia wanted to maintain control over the boy. “Don’t coddle him. Boys are hard to raise. You got to give it back to them or they grow up wild like Bo. His momma says she’s to blame for him taking off on us.”

  John was already mad as wet bees and shook his head vigorously. “Granny said it was you to blame!”

  Angel stepped between them and then trailed behind Claudia, holding tightly to John’s hand for the first mile. The roads running around the shops and houses in Norman were bricked, but as they left the pretty row houses and a place called The Diner, the bricks gave way to the hard-pounded dirt roads. The occasional motorist left them in a cloud of smothering dust.

  Finally a hay truck pulled to the side. The farmer’s arm came out the window and motioned them aboard. Angel was grateful Claudia traveled so light, but her own bag felt like iron weights. The muscles in her right shoulder ached. She threw the bag onto the bed and helped John scramble onto a hay bale. The farmer drove them two miles. Claudia crawled up to the cab and pounded on the top. The driver slowed to a stop at a crossroads near a country house. “This is our getting-off spot,” she said.

  Angel followed her down a country lane. There was a pretty house encircled with a white picket fence. On the fence hung a small hand-painted sign that said, house for rent. Claudia picked up the sign and carried it under one arm. She opened the gate and allowed John and Thorne to run inside. Thorne immediately took up with a gray cat, which wound around her stubby legs.

  “Claudia, you never told me you had such a house,” said Angel.

  “Oh, this ain’t mine. This is the landlady’s house. Ours is out back.” She walked around the house and then down a stone walk. She pointed to a shack, a slapdash nailed-together job of scrap wood and tin. The picket fence separated the two houses like the good from the bad. She laid the sign on the porch facedown. “Looks like Mrs. Abercrombie is up to her old tricks.” She mounted the concrete steps and yanked on the lock and chain bolted to the front door. “She pulls these shenanigans to bully me about her money.”

  “How much do you owe?” asked Angel.

  “Fifteen, plus two dollars for milk.”

  “That’s almost everything Jeb gave you.”

  “Take her half and see if she’ll buy it,” said Claudia. She handed a roll of bills to Angel.

  “Why on earth would you think she’d take it from me?”

  “You got a nice face. Bo always got around her with a smile. Me, I’m not too good at maneuvering women like Abercrombie.”

  Angel headed across the yard. Before she
could reach Mrs. Abercrombie’s backyard, the woman came out of her house and stopped Angel at the gate. “Who be you?” she asked.

  “I’m Angel Welby, Claudia’s sister. I came to help out my sister.” She handed the woman the money.

  She flipped open the roll. “That’s only half. Not good enough.”

  “Claudia’s getting a good job at Packingtown. She’ll have the other half soon.” Angel was too tired to smile. The heat was making it hard to breathe.

  “I got other boarders that’ll pay twice what the Drakes have been paying me and they say they’ll pay up front. None of this half now, half later business.”

  “She’s lying,” Claudia said from the porch.

  Mrs. Abercrombie kept her words for Angel only, as if Claudia were not looking at her across the yard. “I got bills to pay too.”

  Angel pulled another couple of bills out of her purse, the money Fern had given them for extra food. Mrs. Abercrombie accepted it. She handed Angel a key to the bolt lock. “Bring me back the hardware. I might need it again, knowing that Drake woman.”

  “We’ll see you’re paid on time from now on,” said Angel.

  “You got a believable face, girl. Whether or not it’s true, we’ll see, I reckon.” She kept studying Angel. “I got some corn to bring in tomorrow. Not a lot, mind you, what with the drought and all. You help me shuck and can it, and I’ll pay you for it.”

  “I can do that. I used to help a woman back in Nazareth with the canning. May I have the shucks when they’re finished, ma’am?”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “I’d like to make a doll each for Thorne and John.”

  The woman took a step closer to Angel and asked, “Ain’t you got no other family, girl?”

  “Not with me, no, ma’am. My sister and brother live back in Nazareth, Arkansas.”

  “Nazareth?”

  An apple pie cooled in the kitchen window.

  Angel hesitated.

  “You an orphan?”

  “Not that, no, ma’am.”

  “I remember now. Your sister told me you kids was put out by your folks. Shame you ain’t got nowhere left to belong.”