Earthly Vows

by Patricia Hickman

  “I belong here with my sister, ma’am.”

  Claudia yelled across the backyard at John.

  “That sister of yours ain’t right. She’s got the brains of a rabbit. I hope you know that.”

  Angel thanked her for taking the partial rent payment. “You got a little food we can buy? I got another dollar I can give you.”

  The woman said, “I got stew and apple pie. I can ladle you out some stew in a jar for yourself and those kids and a slice of pie you can share. I wouldn’t do it for that sister of yours.” She went inside and came out with the stew and pie.

  Angel gave her the dollar and she turned it down. She didn’t know what to say to the woman. The stew smelled like something from back in Nazareth that a woman named Josie Hipps would bring by from time to time. She put that thought out of her head. She was done with Nazareth and back with family.

  8

  JEB LET FERN KEEP TO HERSELF THE WHOLE way home. Since Willie and Ida May dozed off and on in the rear car seat, she had to keep a lid on private matters about the past anyway. She did a good job of keeping the chatter on an even keel; how nice to see Donna again and her brothers and how big the Coulter nephews and nieces had grown. Not once did she bring up Walton Baer, and a good thing, because whatever she decided to spill out about him would be at her own discretion, no prompting whatsoever on his part.

  The matter of the Oklahoma City pulpit swam around his head, but he held off beating that dead horse, keeping his promise. He finally figured out the things about her that had been a mystery to him. Patience had to play its course. Once he assured her the matter was settled, they would not marry until December and after that they would settle down in Nazareth like they planned all along, the tension lifted. Her cheeks turned red as berries again, and even her hands talked as she spoke, her long slender index fingers lifting and tapping the air like a person sending a telegraph.

  “Jeb, I see the sign ahead for DeQueen. Let’s stop and stretch our legs, why don’t we, at that downtown café? You remember the one, don’t you?” she asked.

  “You want to wake up Willie and Ida May?”

  Fern turned and wiggled Willie’s big toe. It stuck out of his sock.

  The town sign for DeQueen welcomed them back across the Arkansas border. Fern slipped on her shoes and tucked the strands of hair around her ears up into a blue hat.

  On the side of the road, a faded black car full of children sat broken down. Four children peered out the windows as they drove past. A woman, wearing a dress that may have once been green, leaned against the hood, her face in her hands. The wind was hot, hot like blue blazes. The woman’s skirt flapped around her calves. Jeb pulled aside. When he got out, the woman waved him on, saying in a raspy voice, “My husband hitched a ride to go for gas. We run out two hours ago.”

  “Anything I can do to help, ma’am?” asked Jeb.

  She said no. Jeb said he was sorry and that was when she ran her hand down her thigh, her eyes drinking him up. Jeb wanted to yell at her. What else was she hiding from her old man? Fern stuck her head out the open window and offered a loaf of Abigail’s bread. “May we offer your children a bite to eat?” she asked.

  The woman said, “I’ll take that if you don’t mind.” She averted her eyes.

  Jeb handed the bread through the open car window to the oldest girl seated up front so he wouldn’t have to look the woman in the face again. The kids inside dove for the bread like gulls fishing out of the ocean. He got back in the car and drove until Fern spotted a roadside café outside DeQueen. The café stood out on a stark lot; a load-bearing square, built of masonry blocks, painted white.

  Jeb got out and put on his hat to block the sun.

  Fern led them inside to a table near a window. “It’s as hot out there as Oklahoma,” she said.

  Willie ordered a Coke and a ham sandwich. Ida May wanted the same thing.

  Fern dithered back and forth between the house stew and the Blue Plate Special. The woman serving the counter customers—two besides their clan—had a dog face, hair softly glistening on her upper lip, and big sausage arms that rested against her hips. She kept sighing, a sort of whistling sound that hissed from her nostrils like a baby bird. Fern snickered before her hand could cover her mouth, so unlike her since she got onto Jeb and Willie in the past for laughing at strangers. Ida May glanced curiously from her stool, leaning to see around Willie. Finally she laughed for no reason other than the sight of Fern burying her face in the menu.

  The waitress asked Jeb, “She going to order or not?”

  Fern said apologetically, “I’ll take the stew and crackers. Iced tea.”

  Jeb ordered a hamburger and coffee. He gathered up the menus and handed them to the waitress. She huffed and disappeared back into the kitchen.

  Fern blushed to the point of her ears turning red. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me,” she said. She unbuttoned her top button and fanned her neck.

  “I’m glad you’re happy,” said Jeb. “Glad to the bone, Fern.”

  She tried to compensate for her behavior. She came off the stool when the waitress came out with the tray of soda pops and took each drink off the tray for her and passed them around. Then she excused herself to the only bathroom in the café, maybe the whole highway.

  Willie did not laugh at any of Fern’s shenanigans. Jeb slid Willie’s Coke down the counter and set it in front of him. Willie kept staring down at his boots, his toes tapping the counter.

  “What’s on your mind?” asked Jeb.

  Willie shrugged.

  Jeb blew on his coffee and then set it back in the saucer. Angel said little to Fern on the trip to the bus depot. Willie was giving Fern the silent treatment too. Jeb said, “I shouldn’t have let Angel go.”

  “I know why you did it. So does Angel,” said Willie.

  Jeb turned the stool toward Willie.

  “It was for Miss Coulter.”

  “Fern had nothing to do with it, Willie.”

  Willie hefted the large iced-down drink to his lips and took a long draft.

  “Fern doesn’t deserve the blame. Angel chose to leave.”

  “She told Claudia she wasn’t going. Then she said you and Miss Coulter was into some sort of feud. That was when you decided Angel had to go. After they go up and get things squared away in Norman, then me and Ida May have to foller.”

  Jeb set him straight. “You have it all mixed up, Willie Boy.”

  “Angel was outside your door. She heard the whole thing.”

  “That’s not how it came down at all.”

  Fern came out of the restroom. Her skin was damp, her sleeves and skirt clinging to her limbs. “It’s hot as an oven in there,” she said.

  The waitress pushed out from the back kitchen doors. She carried all four plates on her arms. Ida May clapped. Each order was exactly as it should be.

  “One, two, three, four, and no more,” said Ida May.

  Angel ran after Thorne across the lawn, holding her shoes out front. “You can’t run barefoot, Thorne! There’s nettles in the grass.”

  Thorne ran directly across the pasturelike grass straight into a nettle pile. She howled and jumped on one foot, holding the other foot in the air. Angel scooped her into her arms and carried her to the fence between Claudia’s place and Mrs. Abercrombie’s. She plopped Thorne onto a flat-topped fence post. Thorne bared her teeth while Angel pulled out every tiny nettle from her pink foot. She slid ankle stockings onto her feet and then strapped on the shoes.

  “They’re hot!” said Thorne.

  Angel clasped the buckles on the shoes and then plopped her on the ground. Her wrist slid against the fence post. She picked up a splinter and it stung all the way to the vein. John yelled from the front porch for Angel to come and get him. He was afraid always that Mrs. Abercrombie’s milk cow would jump the fence and trample him to death. His daddy had made him afraid, according to Claudia, to make him obedient. Angel turned her back to John.

  Claudia stored away
the extra milk they bought on the bus ride and the leftover chicken and the bread and then took to her bed, ailing from a sick headache. Angel wanted John to go and climb in bed with his mother. He followed Angel around like a stray. She sat flat on her bottom in the grass and began to work at the splinter. John’s wailing subsided and the screen door slammed hard behind him.

  Mrs. Abercrombie carted out the leftovers from her and her son’s dinner and raked it into a bucket. She yelled for her son, Edwin, to empty the slop bucket.

  The splinter went deep, but left a good dark bit hanging out. Angel dug at the tip until a clear liquid came out of her skin alongside the splinter. The Abercrombies’ back door squeaked open. Angel slumped onto her belly. The grass around the fence post was tall tickle grass, yellowing from the drought. She parted it to look through at the Abercrombies’ son. She thought she saw him before, but decided she didn’t know him. He was grown and not a youth, but not old. Angel snaked backward onto her knees and then turned around to sit back against the fence post. She licked her arm and cleaned up the faint pink trickle from the splinter wound.

  Edwin carried the bucket out to the distant hog pen and then back.

  Angel closed her eyes. Miz Abigail had taken them all to church Sunday morning. She liked the choir best. Miz Abigail sang one of the songs louder than the others, and then all afternoon, Angel could not shake it, as hard as she tried. She pursed her lips and whistled what part she recollected.

  Footsteps on the tickle grass drew near, crackling beneath two large Abercrombie boots.

  Angel whistled again.

  “You bringing omens, girl,” said Edwin Abercrombie.

  Angel leaned away from the fence post to get a look at him. He wore a pair of black riding boots, steel-toed. “I don’t know nothing about no omens,” she said.

  “A whistling woman and a crowing hen always come to no good end.” He laughed, showing off a missing upper tooth in the back of his mouth.

  Nothing about him was funny. She returned to her perch slumped against the fence post. The sun was finally going down behind Mrs. Abercrombie’s house.

  “You Claudia Drake’s sister?”

  Angel tried to think of anything to say that might slightly offend him enough to make him leave. Without Jeb around, she was out of practice. Instead, she sighed. The hot wind kicked up again, blowing dust across the yard. She shielded her eyes with her arms.

  “Maybe you can talk some sense into her,” he said. “I been telling her that man of hers ain’t coming back.”

  Angel roused from her slumped posture and said, “It’s her business.”

  “I been trying to get her to go out for drinks on Saturday night, for laughs is all. You ought to tell her to go. I’ll bet you’re smarter than Claudia. You’re prettier, that’s for sure. I’ll bet she hates that.”

  Claudia came out onto the porch. “Angel, is Ed bothering you?”

  Angel got up and ambled across the yard, meeting Claudia on the porch. She turned and stared down Edwin, feeling the power of her sister close by.

  Edwin dropped the slop bucket and crossed his arms. He never took his eyes off them.

  “You stay away from Edwin Abercrombie,” said Claudia. It was whispered so only Angel heard. “He’s mine. I’ve waited long enough for Bo.”

  Nazareth was quiet and black as coffee. Only the backroom light from Will Honeysack’s grocery interrupted the monotony of darkness down the row of shops and the jailhouse. As they turned into town, the bank window reflected the headlights. Jeb geared down to keep from hitting a stray cat, which had taken up with Faith Bottoms at the Clip and Curl. A paperboy knelt on the walk in front of Honeysack’s, bundling newspapers for the morning sales, six hours away. Ida May roused from Willie’s lap, where she had curled up to doze, to say, “I’ve got a headache,” and then fell back to sleep.

  Fern’s head lay pressed against the glass. She slept a good hour, both her hands curled in her lap. The engagement ring caught a bit of moon, scattering a dusting of light particles inside the car. Jeb passed the library, where he once kissed Fern and gave her the ring out front. He remembered her standing in the snow.

  She blew out a breath, as though she were entering the deepest sleep. The moon had a circle of white. Fern did not so much as flutter a lash. No amount of money would make him wake her yet, not with the ring of the moon casting a light on them both.

  Tomorrow she would go to the Stanton School and do up her classroom for the fall. The principal would respect her and say how he wished he could pay her more. She would blush and say it was enough. The teacher across the hall would split a box of chalk with her and she would act as though it were all she needed. She would wear a pair of practical flats like the other teachers and no one would think of her as one of Francis Coulter’s crazy girls.

  Bringing her home was a wedding gift. He finally figured out the distance between Ardmore and Nazareth. Plenty of miles to rebuild a life. She was more like him now. Nothing wrong with that, a touch of wildness about her. She wasn’t so prim. Why did he think she was? Had he wanted her to be so different from him? Not in the least.

  Nothing wrong with that.

  “Jeb, are we home?” Fern asked in a whisper.

  Jeb stroked her engagement hand and said, “Best you get ready. I’ll drop you off at your door.”

  She leaned across the seat and touched Jeb’s face. “You look tired,” she said. “I should have driven part of the way. I must have gone out like a drunkard.”

  He drove them out of downtown and past Long’s Pond.

  Fern took a gander at the moon. “You’re quiet.”

  The car turned down the snaking drive to her house. He helped her take her suitcases inside, the store sacks full of bric-a-brac and whatnot, all things she and Donna raked up in Oklahoma City. “That’s a big haul,” he said.

  “I buy too much when I’m with Donna.” She wrapped her arms around him, clasping her hands at the back of his neck. Jeb kissed her. She let go of him and said, “You’re not yourself.” He kissed her again, longer, and pulled her close to him. That felt right. “I must be tired,” he said.

  She flipped on the lamp near the window and then looked into his eyes. She invited him to drop by the school after his morning rounds. He said he wanted to. She bought it and he told her good night.

  Behind Stanton School, a few leaves had turned on one of the thick maples. The locals said autumn would not come because of the drought, but that the leaves would most likely brown up and drop off. Autumn needed to come soon. The drought had taken nearly all of the life out of the land. The air would cool. Nothing could stop the cooling down of the land, summer’s passing on, not even a drought. He yearned for winter, to chop wood and fill the potbellied stove. The kindling box stood dry. The drought had done some good. Not all was lost.

  He could not see Fern through the classroom window.

  The truck was cold and slow to start after sitting idle for all of his days away in Oklahoma. Jeb lifted the hood and tinkered with the engine. Fern would sweep out her room. He checked the radiator for water. The teachers would swap stories out in the hall. Jeb cleaned out the floor of the cab. He should have done that before coming to see her. He could not think of why he hurried off to the school before doing his errands. Will Honeysack left a note on his door. He had to go and check on a sick woman in the hollow, Tilly Churchill. Fern was a day behind the other teachers. She needed more time to count books up in the attic, boxes coated with black dust, books moved down in September only to be packed back up when it was time to plant the spring crops.

  He pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time. Willie was home with Ida May now. He had to keep a closer watch with Angel gone. Fern had not glanced out her window yet because she had so much to do; everyone in Stanton School counted on her for so many things. They were allowed to need her and depend on her. He gunned the truck and left for the hollow.

  He passed Ivey Long, who would not give up his horse and buggy. Ive
y whistled long and high and snapped his whip in the air. It annoyed Jeb. Ivey was behind on things. Not even his grown kids could talk sense into him, get him to accept change. He’d bet Ivey had not been out of town in three decades, but that was true of most people of Nazareth.

  Tilly Churchill was wrapped up in a blanket, sweating out a fever in a front-porch rocker. Jeb said, “You’d do better to toss off that blanket.” He took it off her, even though she complained. “I’m going inside, Miz Churchill, to get you a ladle of water.” Before she protested, he slipped inside. He found the water pail full and the ladle on the hook in the kitchen. The tin ladle was cold and he filled it to the brim and took her a drink. He made her sip.

  She said, “You’re awfully bossy today, Reverend. You and that schoolteacher in a feud?”

  He gave her another drink, said a prayer over her, and then headed for his truck. “There’s no one in a feud, Miz Churchill. Fern and I are getting married in December. We’re happy as anybody has a right to be.”

  “You forgot to tell your face then.”

  He headed into town for a newspaper. He could go for a cup of Beulah’s coffee at the diner, a quiet spot where a man could think.

  Claudia had been gone since sunup. Edwin Abercrombie met her out on the porch after promising her a ride into Packingtown. She kept asking him if he knew the man’s name from the slaughterhouse that Jeb gave her. Angel wanted her to leave the cash behind. They could go later and buy food and milk. But Claudia wanted to take advantage of the free ride. She would come home with food and whatever else they needed. Maybe a toy for the baby, she said. She was giddy. Edwin took off his hat in the house and chatted up polite niceties with Angel. He told her a clean joke, not funny, and had buffed his shoes. He had Claudia laughing all the way out to his newly polished car. She wore red pumps and black stockings seamed straight up the back.

  Angel opened the doors in Claudia’s small kitchen. The cabinets were tall and narrow, the doors primitive and rough-hewn, rope pulls for opening and shutting. Claudia had a smattering of dishes, two bowls in one of Momma’s patterns. Large numbers were painted inside the cabinets. Angel kept opening the doors and then shutting them until it came to her that she once had seen such narrow boxes out in her papaw’s shed. The Abercrombies had nailed old ammunition boxes to the kitchen walls, boxes saved from the war. The numbers, her papaw told her, were supply numbers used for infantry inventory. Maybe Edwin put them up. Or else Bo took them after Granny died. It would be like him to take whatever he wanted without asking.