Angel pressed her fingers together over a knot, smoothing the thread. “We found Claudia. She’s who I was looking for when I met Jeb.”
“Sounds like you had a better deal back in Nazareth.” Mrs. Abercrombie put down her crocheting. “I can’t see any more. These glasses don’t help.”
“I know the stitches you’re doing, ma’am. My granny taught me back in Snow Hill. Want me to finish your row?”
“You are a lamb, aren’t you? Tell you what, I’ve got to run an errand. You finish where I left off, wash down the pork belly. You’ll find it in the icebox. You’ll find some salt and fennel in a dish. Rub it on the pork and let it set. When I get back tonight, we’ll make cracklins.” Her hat was already on the table, so she put it on.
“If John and Thorne wake up from their naps, I may have to bring them over, if that’s all right,” said Angel. Mrs. Abercrombie had taken to calling her over after she got them down for the afternoon. The adult chat was welcome company.
“You make them wipe their feet. Their momma hasn’t taught them any manners.”
“I will.” Angel picked up her needles. “Not my business, ma’am, but can I ask who your gentleman caller is? If you’d rather not say, I understand.”
Mrs. Abercrombie dug through her pocketbook. She pulled out two coins and laid them on the table. “Those are for keeping things to yourself.”
“You don’t have to pay me to shut my mouth.”
“Then take it for the help you give me. You’re smart, I can tell.” She left out the front door. Angel waited until she thought she had crossed the front lawn. She ran to Mrs. Abercrombie’s bedroom window. Sure enough, the man in the black car waited a few yards up the pasture on the side of the road. She got in the car and they drove down Meloncamp Lane.
The pork fat was, as Mrs. Abercrombie said, in the icebox. Angel got the dish out. She rinsed the slab under the sink pump in case that had not yet been done. Mrs. Abercrombie had ground up salt and fennel with a mortar and pestle. Angel scored the pork skin and rubbed the seasoning into it. She washed her hands clean and dried them so she could return to the crochet work in the parlor.
The front door slammed. Mrs. Abercrombie had gone off and forgotten a handkerchief or maybe her brooch. Angel smiled and walked into the parlor, drying her hands.
“Look who’s made herself at home,” said Edwin. His trousers were stained with grease, as if he had been under a half dozen cars.
Angel folded up the towel. “I’m on my way out. Got to take your mother’s crocheting with me, though.” The sofa was between them, Edwin standing in the doorway behind it.
“No hurry, Angel.” He walked around the couch, closed the gap between them. “Was that name a joke? Did your momma know how you’d turn out?”
Angel wound up the spool and tucked it with the needles into the sewing bag.
“Claudia home?” he asked.
She didn’t answer.
“Stay a spell. Make me some coffee, why don’t you. Momma pays you. You may as well earn your keep.”
The telephone rang.
Angel was standing between Edwin and the telephone. After a third ring, she said, “I’ll get it.”
“Stay put,” he said. He walked past her.
It was no matter. She could go out the front door as easily as the back. The sewing bag hung nicely over her shoulder. She nearly made it out the front door when Edwin said, “It’s for you.”
She didn’t believe him for a second.
He returned the receiver to his ear. “Who is this?” he asked. “Nash. He says it’s Nash.”
She thought it best to continue on her way out the front door. But it could send the wrong idea to Nash. He might never call back again. She reached for the telephone. He touched her hand. She jerked away and then put the receiver to her ear. When she said, “Hello,” Nash wanted to know who had answered the telephone. “No one important,” said Angel. Nash thought her voice sounded different. “I have chores,” was all she could think to say. When Nash asked if she could talk, she only said, “Not a good time.” Finally Nash told her, “I’m coming to Norman Friday night. There’s a place in town, The Diner, you know it?” She said she did. “If you’re there, say around eight, we’ll see where it takes us. If not, I’ll take it as a no,” he said.
“Probably not,” said Angel. “There’s things I have to do.” The first time Nash called, she lay awake, imagining Claudia waking up to find her gone, no place to leave John and Thorne.
“I’m only showing up for the enchiladas, Angel. If you’re there, we’ll see. If not, then it’s a no. Easy.”
“Fine, then,” said Angel.
“Are you all right? You don’t sound all right,” said Nash.
Edwin had not backed away, not even a step, from the time she had answered the telephone until now. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’ll be fine. I have to go.” She hung up.
“Boyfriend calling. Does Momma know?” asked Edwin. “Or sister?”
“My family is all,” said Angel.
“I thought Claudia was your only family.”
“You don’t know nothing about me, Edwin.” She pulled out a crochet needle, pointed at him. “I’m leaving now.”
Edwin was upset about that. He took it from her, let it drop. She backed up until her hips pressed against Mrs. Abercrombie’s counter. Edwin blew out a breath. “You irritate, girl, when you ought to be grateful.”
“Claudia likes you, Edwin. She won’t if you touch me,” said Angel.
“How you know she likes me?”
“She said.”
Edwin laughed. “Who says I can’t have you both?”
“She wouldn’t go for that. I know her better than that.” She knelt without taking her eyes off him and picked up the crochet needle. “You ought to know too, your momma listens to me.”
“She’s a lonely old woman. You’re company is all. Don’t mean she’d believe you over me. You go ahead and try, say Edwin is bothering you, see if she don’t throw you out and Claudia too. I’m all she’s got left.”
Angel was to the end of the counter by now. Edwin’s hand reached gently toward her. He stroked her cheek, saying, “Soft as a doe.” She slipped past and ran out the back door. Out front, the squeaking brakes from the laborers’ truck sent Thorne squealing from the back, “Momma’s home!”
Angel ran and scooped her up and met Claudia out by the road. Her dogs were tired, she said, no mood for chitchat. Angel followed her back inside the shack without looking across her shoulder and over the picket fence.
Fern set up the kitchen like a regular kitchen cook, the spatulas in their places, forks, knives, what have you, in a drawer. She lined the insides of the drawers, cutting out newspapers to make a nice smooth fit. The white curtains were yellowed, she said, so she set them to soak, wrung them to death, and put them out to dry. The kitchen smelled like bleach and rising dough. A pot jingled cheerfully on the burner. No surface escaped her sponge. Two framed art pictures of Christ hung slightly cattywampus on the two walls jutting out from the window. They could not stay and wound up in a closet. She washed down the excessively painted white cabinet doors, left them open, airing out the bare shelves. A cockroach retreated. She ended it with a cookbook.
There was a thermometer in a drawer. She hung it outside the kitchen window to be seen on cold mornings, Jeb thought. A man ought to get out of the way of such goings-on, make tracks to a waiting chair until the dinner bell clanged, the butter out, the vegetables tender in the soup. “There’s a book on my desk calling my name,” he said. He took refuge in the living room, retreating into a passage he read thrice.
Willie and Ida May played down the street. He hardly knew what to do about the silence. Two car doors slammed. He took off his glasses, put them on the open book. “I’ll get the door,” he said.
Two women holding covered dishes greeted him. “We’re from the church,” said one. She might have been Fern’s age, if not a bit older. Her complexion was sanguine, her hair light and
cropped. “I’m Sybil and this is Jolene,” she said.
Jeb had them come inside. They brought him dinner, Sybil said. “Smells like someone’s beat us to the punch.”
“My fiancée, Fern Coulter,” said Jeb.
Jolene said, “I hope we get to meet her.”
Jeb yelled for Fern. There was not a lack of interest when she came into the living room. Sybil and Jolene seemed genuinely glad to meet her.
“I’m Fern,” she said. The women made their introductions. “Good, you brought food by. Jeb’s pantry is bare, I’m afraid.”
Fern engaged them in talk about Oklahoma City, the best downtown stores and the like.
“So you’ll marry in December, I heard,” said Sybil. “We’ve not had a big wedding in a while. This Depression has sent so many to the justice of the peace.”
“My mother wants the ceremony in our church back in Ardmore. I’m keeping it modest,” said Fern. “As you say, there is this Depression.”
“Abigail’s sons have married ahead of her girls,” said Jeb. “She’s got wedding fever.”
Fern was holding a mitt. “Want me to take your dishes to the kitchen?” she asked.
Sybil gave her the dish. Jolene offered to follow with hers.
Jeb invited Sybil to sit on the only furniture in the room, the old sofa he brought from Nazareth. “We’ve not had time to fix it up,” he said. He brought his chair over from the desk and sat across from her.
“You don’t have to explain. Lots of families have sold down to the bare necessities. Our last minister and his wife were given some good practical pieces. Not knowing what you-all needed, they were stored outside in the shed. I know there’s a nice bedroom set, a few more chairs for this room.”
He liked that news.
“Is your fiancée staying in town?” she asked.
“In Ardmore, at her mother’s place.”
She seemed to mull that over. “Must be a chore, her driving back and forth. It’s a good piece from Ardmore to here.”
“Truth be told, I wish Abigail would relinquish this whole wedding scheme of hers. I need Fern close by. Just having her here today is a weight off. I’m not much good in the kitchen.”
“Sounds like my husband.”
Fern came back talking to Jolene.
Sybil lit up. “Miss Coulter, I hear you’re driving back and forth from Ardmore. Would you be open to a better offer?”
Fern joined Sybil on the sofa. “I might have, but I’ve taken a teaching position for the next few weeks. It’s not permanent.”
“That’s too bad.”
Jeb wanted Sybil to finish. “Tell us your idea.”
“My husband and I have an extra bedroom. Since we live in the same town as our folks, that room stays empty most of the time. It’s only about a five-minute ride from here.”
“I couldn’t put you out,” said Fern. She shot Jeb a look.
He had known her long enough to know when she had had her say, said her piece. She was good to hold it in when in front of others, only to let it out once the coast was clear, like the tide letting go, until every bit of her case was made. She was being good for now, playing the part so well of the minister’s wife, and her on the cusp of making her vows. But she needed prodding. Sybil’s offer was plainly heaven-sent and she ought not to let it go. “Should we drive to Sybil’s house and give the room a look?” he asked.
“We can go now if you want,” said Sybil.
“She’s sewn new curtains that you’ll have to see, a sight to behold!” said Jolene. “Didn’t know you could sew, actually, did you, Sybil?” The women headed for the door.
Jeb picked up his hat. Fern remained on the sofa. She was biting her lip, staring down at the bare, rugless floor. “You’ve left the soup on the stove, is that it, love?” he asked.
“I have,” said Fern. She got up to head for the kitchen. “I’ll need your help for a moment, Jeb. You will excuse us,” she said to Sybil and Jolene.
Jeb followed her dutifully, but his ire was up already. She ought to have asked him first about the teaching position. Look how things worked out if patience was exercised. Fern was smart as a whip. She would learn.
She turned off the soup. “You ought to ask these things of me privately, Jeb. I can’t take that room.”
“I agree we need to discuss matters first. Like you taking that teaching job without asking me.”
“I won’t be dependent on my mother, Jeb.”
“I need you here, Fern. I’ve been in this house two days, but here you’ve come in and in an hour everything has its place. The whole house smells like hot bread. Ida May and Willie need you.”
“You’re learning to get along without Angel. I understand that. But I can’t be in two places, Jeb. Let’s both go out and tell Sybil I can’t take the room.”
“Why is it that things that seem plain to me are hard for you?”
“You don’t know what you’re asking. Anything forced comes with a price tag, Jeb. I’m not the one that’s blind.” She removed the soup pot lid and stirred the red broth.
Jeb lowered his voice. “At least go and see the room.
Go back and work for a week, two at the most, but then move closer. I can’t stand this distance, Fern. We ought not to have put the wedding date off so far.”
“Maybe we needed that time, Jeb.”
“For what? To argue and squabble when we could be living here together in marital bliss?”
“Or living under the same roof at war?” Her words stunned him. “Let’s drop the whole room business. I’ll go and tell Sybil that you need time to think it over.” He left her standing in the kitchen. The door closed behind him, but there was a gasp and that odd noise she made when she was crying. He wouldn’t want Sybil and Jolene to hear her crying. He went back and found her bent over the sink, a towel to her eyes. “I don’t know what to say, Fern. I try to make life better, it falls apart. Tell me what I’ve done to make you so angry.”
Fern dabbed her eyes. “Why is it I seem to be disappointing you all of the time now?”
“Fern, no.”
“Maybe I’m the last thing you need right now.”
“What are you saying?”
“They say a pearl is made by a little grain of sand irritating the oyster. Maybe this distance between us is making a pearl.”
“Or a boulder.” Her face was red now from staring into the soup pot. “Will you at least look at the room?”
“You want me to stay at Sybil Oakley Bloom’s?” Why did the name sound familiar?
“If you insist, I’ll move up next Friday. I at least want that teacher to have time to find a replacement.”
The Oakley name kept running through his mind. “I think it’s best,” he said.
“There’s no need for me to drive and see the room then. Tell her I’ll take it,” said Fern.
He put his arms around her. The wedding was two months away. They’d get through.
The smell of pork cracklings was all over the house. Angel shook the second batch into Mrs. Abercrombie’s big green bowl and then broke them up with her potato masher. After the sun went down, Mrs. Abercrombie made a fire of logs out back in the same hole where Edwin had smoked a hog. The logs smoldered red as embers. Angel shoved another batch of pork into the oven and then went outside onto the porch. Mrs. Abercrombie lifted a cast-iron skillet and tossed it onto the embers. She took a shovel and covered the pan with the embers. The second pan went in next and she performed the same ritual.
“You burning your skillets, ma’am?”
“Got to. Only way to clean them.” Angel stood by her side, watching the handles turn red as pokers. Thorne and John sat passively on their mother’s porch. Claudia had gone into town with Edwin for a beer. “I’ll have to leave them to cool until morning.”
A light moved slowly across the distant pasture like an ant moving a bread crumb. A figure walked through the pasture, holding a lantern. “You expecting company?” asked Angel.
&nb
sp; “Oh, that’s Loretta, you know, one of those girls that walks past every morning to school. She sneaks out of her daddy’s house to meet boys, thinks I don’t know she uses my barn. They park near the far gate, do some sparking, then head into town for a bite to eat.”
Angel remembered her. She wasn’t interested in school. “How you know it’s her?”
“Edwin got messed up with her. Big mistake. She made all kinds of claims, lies. But everyone in town knew the truth. She got what she asked for.”
The air cooled. Smoke was filtering up from under the pans, white, noxious. There was a cold moon overhead, a drafty wind blowing against the coals, driving the smoke into their faces. Her summer sleeves could not keep her warm. She excused herself to go inside.
13
MRS. ABERCROMBIE’S CURIOSITY ABOUT Jeb grew. If Angel didn’t know better, she’d believe she was asking her over to hear her tell another story about the outlaw turned preacher. She relived the stories and Mrs. Abercrombie asked her to put out the checkerboard on the kitchen table while she poured the coffee. Angel gave her red and she took the black. “Jeb kept that Negro baby a good six months or so,” said Angel. “He couldn’t put her out.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” said Mrs. Abercrombie. “He’s been good to you then, it sounds like.”
“He took us in after Claudia disappeared and has had us ever since.”
“Claudia. Was she living in Nazareth?”
Angel did not mean to spill out yet another reason for Mrs. Abercrombie not to like Claudia. “Bo made her leave.”
“He was a hooligan from the get-go.”
Angel did not remember him so poorly, but she was young when Claudia left. “Granny didn’t care for him. Daddy and Momma liked him.” It was one less mouth to feed when he took her away from Snow Hill. She remembered more about Claudia each day. She shirked her chores. Sewing was her interest, that and cross-stitch and getting into cars with boys easily.
“Claudia, now she’s not one you can count on, is she?”
Angel shrugged.
“If she needs you, that’s a whole ’nother story. I know her type. But once a man enters the picture, she’s done with you. Sorry to say, dear, but that’s why you got left in Nazareth.” She said one thing as easily as another. “Edwin, he’s cut from the same cloth. Claudia’s an amusement, that’s all. Are you hearing what I’m saying?” asked Mrs. Abercrombie.
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