Earthly Vows

by Patricia Hickman

  Angel opened her mouth to state her piece about Edwin, but changed her mind.

  “Edwin’s good when the liquor and the sex is free. But that isn’t life, is it, girl?”

  “I guess not, ma’am.”

  “Women lose their positions. We get pregnant. Babies get fevers.” She was looking at the photograph on the kitchen counter of her husband and herself. “There’s no luxury of time for us.”

  “How about Mr. Abercrombie, did he stick around when the baby got a fever?”

  “If he’d been around, he’d have stuck. James was as good a man as they make. Edwin was not his boy. But he did best he could by him. Edwin had already taken on too much of his daddy’s ways when I met James.” She rested her hands in her lap and looked straight at her. “You didn’t finish my crocheting night before last.”

  Angel shook her head. Her new habit was staying at Claudia’s mornings until Edwin took off for the shop. If Mrs. Abercrombie left to meet the man in the black car, she left too. Unless she had Thorne or John by the hand, she stayed out of the yard. Edwin kept his distance better with too many little eyes and ears underfoot. Claudia told her she was starting to act as bad-tempered as Granny. There was good reason. She slept on the floor, staring at the front door that had no keyhole because it had no lock. She was tired of losing sleep over Edwin, the way he showed up when she was alone, was always trying to touch her. Mrs. Abercrombie was wise to Edwin, it seemed. Whenever her grandmother nosed around to know things, like how she felt about her momma being taken to the sanitorium, she would fish. It was a kind of game Angel and her grandmother played. She would ask if she was sleeping nights. Angel would say no, she wasn’t. Then Angel could tell Granny things that her daddy had forbidden them to discuss. Maybe Mrs. Abercrombie had seen the way Edwin watched her when she crossed the pasture to milk the cow. She was a smart woman who had birthed a lunatic. It happened to good people, same as bad. Maybe the woman was fishing to find out things. If anyone could head off Edwin before he fell into trouble, it was his own mother. Angel played the next checker. “Your boy ever live off on his own?”

  “He did. But after James passed, it was hard going on without him. It was me asked him to stay on after the funeral.”

  “Where did he live before?”

  “Oklahoma City. They got jobs in that place when no place else does.”

  “He ever been married?”

  “Not even engaged.”

  “He comes around when you’re not here.” It was as casual as jumping Mrs. Abercrombie’s corner checker.

  “It’s his place too. Why wouldn’t he?” It was the first time since she had first walked into the yard with Claudia that Mrs. Abercrombie sounded unsettled. Angel thought she’d want to know what her boy was up to. At times, she had her temperance ways, but others not. Mrs. Abercrombie’s eyes bore the same pale blue color as her son’s. Edwin had said she’d throw her out if she told on him.

  “He’s not perfect, but he is my son.”

  Angel was finished with checkers.

  Ida May ran through the house in nothing but a pair of cotton panties. “We’re going to see Angel tonight, bringing her home, bringing her home!” She hopped on the hardwood floor from the living room into the kitchen.

  Jeb was weary of telling her any differently. “Willie, I’ve got business at the church. You keep an eye on Ida May. We’ll head for Norman this afternoon. There’s food in the icebox.” A pair of churchwomen showed up each day, including this morning. They brought simple food, but better than the tasteless dishes Jeb would cook up. Another reason Willie and Ida May ought to join Angel. She cooked.

  Willie surprised him by asking, “Are we going to start school?”

  “We’ll see what your sister has to say about it. If she feels settled in her school there, we’ll go and see about getting you and Ida May enrolled.”

  “You ever been to Norman?”

  “Don’t expect I ever have, Willie. It’s close by, though. Won’t take more than an hour, and Fern and I will be knocking at your door at all hours, in your business, same as always.”

  “Should I bag up my things then? Is this it?” His voice was tense.

  “It’s only a visit. I want to know first that Claudia is settled in her job and can handle all you varmints.” He wanted Angel to look at him and tell him she was happy under Claudia’s roof.

  Willie stared vacantly at the floor.

  Jeb was annoyed that Fern was not here fielding Willie’s questions. She was better at settling the waters, so to speak. Each day closer to her moving in with Sybil was one less day of feeling frustrated with her. It was fifteen until eight. He had time for one more swallow of coffee before meeting the deacon board.

  “Are you and Miss Coulter all right?” asked Willie.

  “Good as gold. Why wouldn’t we be?”

  “I don’t know nothing about women, Jeb.”

  “Makes two of us.”

  “But she’s not acting the same as usual.”

  “She was happy in her job, Willie. Fern’s given up a lot to come and be with me.”

  “They gave her a big send-off at Stanton School.

  Gave her an award, called her the world’s best teacher.” She hadn’t told him that. “Some of the girls cried. Even Ida May cried until I poked her and told her she was leaving too.” Willie laughed and made Jeb laugh. Jeb downed the last sip of coffee. He asked Willie, “Did Fern cry too?”

  Willie bit his lip, staring at the floor. “You don’t have to answer. Women do those things.”

  “It was more like she was apologizing to all of the teachers for leaving, like she was deserting them.” Ida May ran back through the kitchen, Jeb’s shirt for a hat.

  “Go and get dressed, Ida May!” said Jeb. It was time to go, to get back to the real world. He could not explain it, but this bigger congregation made him feel needed, and as though he could make a difference. He cut his teeth on Nazareth, coddling old ladies and taking chickens for pay. God’s genuine work could now commence.

  The deacon board was easy to find. Jeb followed the men’s laughter into a small room not far from what would be his pastor’s study. Henry Oakley was the first to stand from the wooden table, where the men were gathered. “Welcome, Brother Nubey!”

  The deacons all got up from their chairs to meet Jeb and shake his hand. He recognized most of their faces from the dinner that followed his sermon that Sunday.

  Henry made the introductions. First an elderly man called Everett Bishop shook his hand. Then, “Fred Sellers, Joe Gallagher, and Sam Baer.”

  The names were familiar. All of the men came dressed from their respective places of business. The coats and ties were a nice change from Church in the Dell’s deacon meetings in overalls. Henry gave Jeb the chair at the head of the table.

  A boy poked his head in the door, a youth actually of about sixteen, the same boy who poured him water before his sermon. “Rowan, is it?” asked Jeb.

  “Your water boy.” Rowan grinned.

  “Rowan was Brother Miller’s apprentice,” said Henry. “He’s been useful during our hiatus, so we decided to keep him around.”

  Jeb was glad for Rowan’s enthusiasm. He was wearing a suit cut out of older cloth, borrowed possibly. The arms hung long over his hands. “I’m glad to know you,” said Jeb. “You training for the pulpit?”

  “I hope I am,” said Rowan. He carried in the water tray and left it for the men. He closed the door as he left.

  “First order of business, financial report,” said Henry.

  Jeb smiled. Will Honeysack would have prayed. “May I ask you-all about your families?” asked Jeb.

  “You’ll have to pardon me, Jeb,” said Henry. “I may be a little overzealous, since we’ve gone so long without a preacher.”

  Each of the men told a little about their wives and the number of children they each had.

  “Our daughter-in-law is ill,” said Sam.

  “You remember us talking about her, don’t yo
u, Jeb?” asked Henry. “Over dinner at the Skirvin? Her name is Anna.”

  Jeb recalled dinner at the Skirvin. Fern had been in a foul mood after meeting an old beau, the senator. There was a pause as Henry politely waited for Jeb’s reply. Marion talked about a girl named Anna. He was sure he remembered.

  “Senator Walton Baer, you remember, left our party early to see to his wife. She’s Anna,” said Henry.

  Jeb shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Anna is Sam’s daughter-in-law?”

  “And Walton is my son,” said Sam.

  “My daughter, Sybil, you’ve met. Your fiancée, Fern, is going to stay with her until your nuptials. That’s Syb all over. Anna has been her best friend since college. She has tended to Anna like a mother hen.”

  Perhaps Fern had tried to tell him. But he wasn’t certain of it or if she was trying to tell him that Sybil was Anna’s friend, Anna the wife of Walton Baer. Fern’s old beau. “I may have pushed my fiancée into that matter without meaning to,” said Jeb. “Fern is worried it would be an imposition.”

  “Nonsense, no imposition. She and her husband have never had children and that room sits empty reminding her of that. Sybil will love having Fern around. The three of them will get along so well and make your fiancée the center of attention. I know women like that.”

  The postman came early. Mrs. Abercrombie accepted the mail on the front porch and she was in an unusually optimistic frame of mind, so much so that she hummed to herself. She tucked the mail under her arm. “I’m off for a bit,” she told Angel. “There’s a stew on to boil. After it simmers, turn it down, will you, Angel?”

  Angel already had her hand on the back doorknob. “I was leaving, ma’am. Edwin comes home early of late. He’ll see to it, won’t he?”

  “Dear, don’t balk. Edwin’s never home early and he’s a mess in the kitchen. Am I paying you too little?” she asked.

  “It’s enough,” said Angel. “I have to keep watch for Thorne. She’s young yet and can’t be left alone or she’ll get into the waste bucket.” Thorne and John would sleep another hour, but she needed the alibi.

  “You know those children can play out on my porch, long as they want.”

  “I know.”

  Mrs. Abercrombie laughed and put on a woolen hat, pulling knitted flaps over her ears to keep them warm. “He’s taking me to a cockfight. Ever heard of that?”

  She never said who the mister was, but Angel told her, “Where people place bets on roosters that peck one another to death?”

  That surprised her, as if she really didn’t know. Then she laughed again. “Learn something new every day. You must think I was born yesterday.”

  Angel liked watching her leave through Mrs. Abercrombie’s own bedroom window. Her linens crisp and clean across the bed, not a ripple. This man of hers had never rumpled the sheets. He hadn’t set foot on the lawn, let alone Mrs. Abercrombie’s bedroom. The music box on the vanity closed shut, the lamps all turned out but one on the nightstand, as if waiting for her return. The black car rolled away in a veil of dust.

  She rocked on the back porch, sunning, watching the house in case Thorne or John got up from their nap; also the front door for Edwin. The pot lid commenced to jingling. She ran in and turned down the fire and stirred the bottom of the pot, using a long-handled wooden spoon. She resumed sunning. The days were shorter and colder, so the sun beating down through the screen warmed her bones. She had not planned to drift off. Nothing so gentle and calming as the afternoon nap, the rhythm of the rocker, the lulling away. The tiny screen holes acted as a strainer for the October wind, mingling into the sunny rays, summer and fall reconciling. A clock on the stove chimed, three slipping away, four slipping away, five. The sun moved farther away, a kite let go. Cold seeped in, afternoon fell away. Fingers touched her skin. Her eyes opened. Edwin crouched in front of her watching her sleep.

  Ida May had no coat, and the evening would be cold. Night was falling and the first frost whitened the grass that morning. Jeb told her to put a blanket in the car. Willie’s coat from the previous winter was long in the sleeves. He had grown into it now, had not used it for hunting, saved it for school and church. Angel had a coat too. Fern boxed the things she left behind in Nazareth, one personal item being a pale blue coat. Jeb laid it on the passenger seat.

  The motorists thinned out beyond the city limits. The deacons were a chatty bunch, holding over at least two hours longer than expected. He didn’t mean to get out of town so late. It would be supper time, at least. Angel would have a meal on. Jolene brought by a cake, one he salvaged for Claudia and Angel. It was covered and on the floorboard. Cinnamon, it smelled like, and vanilla.

  He drove through Del City and on into Moore, a highway, mostly, dotted by older houses, laundry on the brew in one front yard, a hunting dog in hot pursuit of a fox squirrel. The road was bumpy in places.

  Henry Oakley’s voice yet rattled around his thoughts. He was long on exposition, but it was smart of him to lay out the figures and facts, a man who kept the books right on the money. Sam Baer was the lawyer in the bunch, first one he ever had the chance to know. He was a ruddy-faced gentleman, a white shock of hair, his face chiseled out like the side of a mountain. He and Henry worked side by side like brothers, or like men who had gone to sea together. But it was a Baer Fern had known, shared a past with. That was all no more, she said. Still, the Baers and all of their acquaintances unconsciously tortured her, not that she said it exactly that way.

  Sam supplied a pencil-drawn map to Norman.

  “Remember to tell Claudia that Angel has to come home. She can’t stay at Claudia’s anymore,” said Ida May.

  Willie asked for cake.

  “When we get there,” said Jeb. Sybil Bloom, he liked. She was a confident young woman, not ever having used her education like Fern, at least not in the traditional sense of female graduates. Pregnancy dodged the Bloom household. So she devoted herself wholly to sick Anna, whom Jeb had not yet met, nor had he met Sybil’s husband, Rodney, only Anna’s husband had he encountered. Walton Baer. Their family ties extended to the state capitol.

  Anna has a tumor, Sam said. Where, Jeb didn’t know, only that she grew weaker by the day. If it had not been for Sybil, she’d have been lost for certain. Little was said about Walton.

  “Norman, straight ahead!” Willie came out of his seat, pointing to the town sign.

  Highway 9 angled straight into downtown. Most of the lights were out on the shops. The Diner on East Main was still lit. Jeb parked, pulling out the address that Claudia scribbled down. A waitress cleaning the counter smiled at him, asked if he’d like a cup of coffee. Jeb showed her the address.

  “Take East Main two more blocks up, make a left.

  Stay on that road until you run out of pavement.” She pointed out to Jeb the twists and turns, landmarks like a big oak, a small grove, and a cornfield picked over.

  Jeb wrote down her directions the best he could and thanked her. The sun was gone entirely.

  Angel lost track of time knowing that with nightfall the only thing illuminating the pasture was the moon. It had not taken long to shove a few clothes into a small bag. The big suitcase she lugged from Ardmore to Claudia’s was too big to haul on foot. Claudia’s small bag was nice and light for traveling in a hurry. If she followed the fence line, eventually she would make it to the road without crossing Mrs. Abercrombie’s yard.

  Claudia fell asleep listening to a news drama. Thorne and John played quietly at her feet.

  A light flickered behind the barn and the back pasture fence. Angel crouched. Edwin could be out looking. A female giggle, the muted thump of running feet made her freeze. Two figures ran in the shadows and hopped inside a sedan. A young male voice spoke. Angel ran for the sedan. The engine cranked. “Wait, wait up!” she yelled.

  “Who’s there?” said the male. “I got a gun.”

  Taking a chance, Angel called, “Loretta, it’s me, Angel. Your neighbor.”

  First silence and then mutter
ing. The boy spoke again. “What do you want?”

  “Is it you, Loretta?” she asked.

  “What’s it to you?” Loretta answered.

  Angel made it to the driver’s side of the sedan. She could not breathe, bending over, clamping her hands on her knees. “I got to get a ride into town. Have to meet someone.”

  “A boy?” asked Loretta. The story seemed the best to tell. “Yes, a boy.” She straightened. “Can’t help you out,” said Loretta’s beau. He put the car in gear. “Please, Loretta, you have to get me out of here!”

  “Let her talk, Joe. What’s wrong?” asked Loretta. “Edwin. He … he came after me.” A tear streamed down Angel’s face. She locked eyes with Loretta. Angel hiked her skirt up past her knee. “He hurt me.”

  “Hurt you, how?” asked Loretta. “Tried to hurt me like he hurt you.”

  “Loretta, what’s she talking about?” asked Joe. “Give her a ride,” said Loretta. She opened her door. Angel ran around to the other side of the car and climbed inside. Loretta pushed her seat back in place, but was turned so she could see Angel. “Gun it into town, Joe. Edwin Abercrombie will burn in hell!”

  Angel wiped her eyes.

  “That momma of his, she’s no help either, is she?” asked Loretta. “She’s mad, like I was the one done something wrong.”

  “What happened?” asked Loretta. “You can tell us.”

  “I fell asleep on Mrs. Abercrombie’s back porch.

  When I woke up, Edwin had me by both arms. I slapped Edwin, kicked at him, and ran hard back through the house. It was Mrs. Abercrombie coming into the house right about then. I ran straight into her. When I told her how Edwin had grabbed my arm, tried to take me down on my knees, she called me ‘liar’ and ‘hussy.’ ”

  Edwin had stared at them both from the front door, gawking, raking his hair out of his face.