Earthly Vows

by Patricia Hickman

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “You ever been to a football game?”

  Stanton School never got big enough for a team. “Not ever,” she said. “Cops don’t look in places like that. I’ll take you to your first game.”

  “Are the cops coming after you?”

  “No reason. I’m a lowly chauffeur.”

  17

  FIRST COMMUNITY’S SUNDAY CROWD WAS up in number, according to Henry Oakley. He paced in front of Jeb. They waited in the study for the other deacons to come, as Jeb requested, and pray. “We ought to have been doing this a long time ago,” said Henry. “Reverend Miller, he gently asked these things, but, well, it’s hard to get men to come and pray.”

  Jeb went through his notes once more. The nervous jitters subsided. It was easier preaching to a large crowd. He never knew that until now. Fred Sellers and Joe Gallagher walked in next, laughing and talking about Joe’s son who played ball for his high school. Jeb shook hands with each deacon. Everett Bishop and Sam Baer stood outside the doorway, chatting with people as they passed through the lobby. Henry invited them inside and closed the door.

  Before Jeb could say a word, there was a knock at the door. Henry opened it. “You looking for your daddy?” he asked.

  Sam said, “Morning, son. Anna with you?”

  Walton stopped in the doorway.

  Each of the men greeted Walt, shaking his hand, calling him Senator, even though they all had watched him grow up.

  “Anna stayed home,” said Walton. “Mother’s gone to see about her.”

  Jeb wondered why everyone except Walton Baer looked after his sick wife.

  “I hadn’t had the chance to properly welcome our new preacher, so welcome,” said Walton. He reached toward Jeb. Jeb shook his hand, thanked him. “I wanted you to know what a help your wife was to Anna the other night. Anna must think me useless. But Fern, she comes in and takes over,” he said.

  Jeb stared stoically at the senator.

  Walton looked at his daddy. “Fern gave Anna a bath, washed and fixed her hair. Time I got home, they had her looking like a movie star.”

  “Fern’s going to make quite a preacher’s wife, isn’t she?” Sam put his hand out to his son. “Reverend’s called us in to pray, so I expect we ought to get to it.”

  Jeb thanked him for dropping by.

  The sermon was not exactly as he planned. The opening was better than he practiced, but he got into the sermon and wished he had developed it more deeply. He normally had his Saturdays free, but the day was eaten away running Fern and the kids all over town. Ida May finally got a coat, Willie a pair of socks, and Fern, of course, a hat. She paid for all of it, but he was going to have to get used to Coulter money, she told him. That was awkward. And his private study had not been either private or a study all week, but a revolving door of people, deacons’ wives chattering about committees, orphan funds, widows, and the like. More than anything, he needed to lay eyes on Fern and see her smiling and agreeing as he spoke. Finally he saw her seated next to Sybil and Rodney Bloom. Walton Baer sat on her other side. His arm was up, not exactly behind her, but near her. That wouldn’t do at all. He looked straight at Walton’s husky hand, as if by an invisible thread, he could lift the hairy thing up and away from Fern.

  The second point came to him more smoothly. There was this funny story about Angel he told, and since she was not here, he could get away with telling it. But as he described her to the sea of faces, he saw that none of them could imagine her, not like the neighbors at Church in the Dell, not see her bouncy step, the annoying way that she could get under his skin, and no matter how often she had her sleep interrupted, she always got up pretty as a little bird. “Truth be told, our girl is not with us and we are in need of your prayers to find her.” He didn’t mean to tell his personal business. There was a ripple of muttering, concern he took it, rolling like a morning tide through the members. There was a catch in his throat, not as if he were about to shed a tear, but a woman in the front row took it that way, and let out a sort of woeful moan. Other women were pulling out their handkerchiefs and it was all so godawful emotional. Gracie would accuse him of stirring up sentiment.

  He moved on to point three. Walton’s arm stretched across the pew back. It was behind Fern. He surely knew that she could hardly stand the sight of him, had even tried to talk them out of coming to First Community because of him. He was smug, a bore, and so full of himself he thought that he could move in on Fern before the December “I do’s.” It was that sick wife of his that got him thinking. That she was dying and here was Fern. She was the next in line, pretty enough to be a senator’s wife. How dare he! He could see it all, the way he schemed, the scoundrel! What an idiot! “There is a payday for deceivers!” he said.

  The woman in the front row pulled out a second handkerchief.

  An usher opened the back door and let in the deputy. He did take a seat, but it was the end of the message. Jeb was closing in prayer.

  There was a single church bell ringing, a low booming chime, sounding from across the street, tolling through the windows of the inn where Angel was waking. The bedsprings popped under her every time she moved. The tip of her nose was cold and her feet stuck out of the sheets. She tucked them back under the linens and the thin blanket, wanting to warm up once, as she had been cold most of the night. There was no clock on the nightstand. Nash left a note. She was angry to find him gone and a note left in place of him. She sighed, and when she picked up the note, some bills dropped onto the table. He left her some cash. “I’ll be back soon. Breakfast downstairs.” His handwriting was plain.

  Since it was Sunday, she put on her fancy filling-station dress, as Nash called it, not knowing how the guests of the inn might dress for the morning. She found the inn when they got out from the football game, the roadside sign flashing in the headlights of a passing motorist. She begged Nash to turn around, not wanting to be on the road all night, to chance him growing sleepy and some curious cop pulling him over.

  The morning lady innkeeper was not a happy sort, not as jovial as the man who let them in Saturday night. She may have been his wife, not that Angel knew. Talking to strangers every day, not knowing who she’d meet next, bored Angel.

  “If you’re looking for your boyfriend, he was on the telephone all morning. Took off with some man in a big car not fifteen minutes ago,” said the innkeeper.

  “May I use the telephone?”

  Mrs. Pierce held out her hand. She wanted fifty cents. Angel paid her and she led her to a booth near the inn’s entry. She showed her how to crank the machine, to connect the operator. Angel got the hang of it and thanked her. She told the operator Will Honeysack’s number. The phone rang six or seven times and the operator asked if she’d like to continue ringing. Yes, she did. The operator asked if it was a business and that was when she reminded her that no one was open on Sunday and that was the last straw. Angel hung up.

  “You want breakfast, you got ten minutes,” said the innkeeper.

  The church bell tolled again.

  Angel ate the breakfast: some apple slices, eggs, and grits. The hot bread was good and the butter as good as Abigail’s. Angel paid her for the breakfast and asked, “You ever go across the street to that church?”

  “I got to keep the inn running. It’s a colored church, but anyone can go. I seen all kinds coming and going.”

  There were some cars in the dirt lot, but most of the members were on foot, walking to church up the partly paved streets that crossed the highway near Mt. Zion Church. There weren’t any whites going in, as the innkeeper might have said in a roundabout way. A side door opened. It was a choir, men and women dressed in gray-and-red robes, filing out onto the dirt lot. A woman stepped out and faced them. She led them in a song. They were holding rehearsal, it seemed to Angel, out on the parking lot. The building was nothing more than a square framed by a gabled roof, so they practiced, she guessed, wherever it suited them. What she couldn’t figure out was
what drew her to cross the street.

  When the preacher shook her hand, he seemed glad to see her, like she was a novelty. She sat in the back, same as when she first started going to Church in the Dell. The back row was the place where people who either did not know anyone or were trying to figure out why they came, liked to hide. Whether or not that was true of Mt. Zion, she couldn’t say. Several teen girls filed into the same pew, three older women, one smelling of snuff, and two ushers.

  She had heard one of the songs before. The minister wore a robe the same as the choir, maybe slightly different. His collar was gold. But he stretched out his arms and not once did he have to sing from the hymnal. He knew the words, and when he didn’t, he echoed. Easy enough. Angel put down the hymnal and echoed too. Not hard to do.

  The three women took hands next to her. It was the thing they did each week, obviously, for they only did it on certain songs, like the marching kind. But they all knew when it was time to take hands. It was a mystery. They were wearing gloves and white hats and the songs were their language as much as the white hats and gloves. There was a lot of freedom music. One set free, and I’ll see you in the morning over there, and words that were about leaving the earth behind. She thought, if the whites knew what they were singing about, would they mind?

  She shed a tear. That was not expected. But she had not slept well. Ida May was in church somewhere and, she was pretty certain, had missed the top button of her dress. If she remembered to tie up her braids, well, then, the ribbons most likely didn’t match. It was hard to breathe now. The church was full, more women filing into her row. And where, pray tell, had Jeb gone off to and why had he not written? Ida May and Willie were her responsibility. It was like him to go off and not think through what needed to be thought through, not a care for how she would find him. He had done stupid things in the past, but it was, as her granny once told her, the way of a man. She did not care that the tears dripped onto her new dress.

  The preacher shouted, as he had been shouting, “I see those tears you cry.”

  She accepted a handkerchief from one of the white-hatted women.

  “Is it,” he asked, “because you’ve lost your way?”

  Angel nodded.

  “Are you tired of being a stranger on life’s journey?”

  There were a lot of amens. Angel shrugged.

  “Do you feel as if you have no home?” he asked the flock.

  “I don’t,” Angel whispered.

  “There is a reason you feel this way. I tell you, friend, this world is not your home.”

  A few women came to their feet.

  Angel was sobbing into her handkerchief.

  “That’s it, girl, let it out.” The stranger took hold of her arm. Angel wrapped her arms around her. She let her cry it out.

  “Deputy, glad to see you,” Jeb said, even though seeing him walking through the back of the church had unnerved him. He asked his name.

  “Deputy Abner Faulk,” he said. He took off his hat.

  Rowan brought a pitcher of water into the study and was gone.

  Jeb had not noticed during his first visit the red mark on Abner’s bald pink scalp. It was not a wound, but a sort of birthmark. It was in the shape of the country of Italy.

  “I’m here on business, I guess you know, Reverend.” He turned down the water. “I’m working with the deputy up at Yukon. You read about the bank heist in yesterday’s paper, I guess.”

  Jeb let out a sigh. He poured himself some water.

  “This is the third bank robbery this month. I don’t have to tell you, the FBI is all over this thing. I had to give them your daughter’s name.”

  Jeb didn’t correct his calling her his daughter. “She would never rob a bank.”

  “That doesn’t mean she’s a suspect. At this point, it could be she’s entirely innocent. But this fellow, Nash Foster, he’s wanted for questioning. If she’s with him, she’ll be questioned too.”

  Jeb rubbed his temple. Walt Baer gabbed outside the door and Fern responded. “Angel needs to be brought home. She has a loving family, her little sister is sick with worry. So am I,” he said. “Deputy Faulk, you’ve got to promise to make sure everyone on this case knows that she is not a bank robber. Keep this girl safe.”

  “I wish I could say that the FBI cares a hill of beans about what I say. I did tell them, but they want this string of robberies solved. If they tie them to Charley Foster, Nash’s uncle, they’ll be after the whole gang. They get who they’re going after, starting at the top, and work their way down.”

  Faulk’s words seemed distant, as though he were in a different room.

  “I did tell them the circumstances surrounding her running away. But they frown on young girls who run with getaway men.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “One of the witnesses in Yukon got a description of the driver. It matches the description we have of Nash Foster.”

  There came a pounding on Jeb’s door. It was Fern. She let herself in. “Deputy, have you found Angel? I’m sorry, Jeb. I saw you go in with him. I couldn’t wait.”

  “Not yet, ma’am,” said Faulk. It was time, he said, to go. He told Fern, “You try not to worry. If I hear that Angel’s been brought in alongside this Nash fella, I’ll do everything in my power to see she’s returned.” He said to Jeb, “Pray I get to her first.”

  Fern was ashen. Faulk saw himself out.

  Jeb did not want to add to the weight. “He’ll do what he can do.”

  “I know, I know,” she said. “We’re invited to Sunday dinner. Sam and Anita Baer.”

  Jeb saw that she was staring down. “Not today,” he told her. Constantly comporting himself through all of the church circles had worn him out.

  “They assumed we’d come to dinner. You know what that’s like. What am I supposed to say?”

  Jeb assumed that Walton would come. “Can’t you get us out of it?”

  The door opened. A woman said, “Hello, Reverend, I’m Anita. You’ve met my son, Senator Baer, and my husband, Sam, one of your deacons.” She was absolutely pink with satisfaction. “You can’t get away without trying some of my chicken-fried steak. No one cooks it like me, I don’t care what you’ve heard. I told Fern how to find our house.” She closed the door.

  Fern looked at him. She didn’t answer his last question.

  Angel did not eat that night. The innkeeper closed up her kitchen since only one room was rented out, theirs. She fell asleep twice. The sky darkened a little more each time she opened her eyes, until finally the room was black except for a wedge of electric light seeping under the door. The room bill lay on the floor partially under the door.

  She put out her hand to brace herself and her fingertips slid across the cold window glass.

  Nash had not come back. But his car was still parked in an alley behind the inn.

  A food smell was coming from outside the room. They weren’t to cook, the innkeeper said, no cooking at all. She thought it was beef, onion, green pepper. A guest must have checked in late, or else the innkeeper was fixing her own dinner. There was no sound of feet, so it must have been the second thing.

  She walked across the mattress on her knees, the mattress springs squeaking like an old man’s jaw. The lamp string was gone when she reached for it. She would open the door, she decided, to let in some light and find the lamp. Also missing were her socks, and since the rug was undersized, her feet hit cold, hard flooring. She found the doorknob. Like the window glass, it was cold and an October draft blew under the door, pricking her bare toes. She opened the door. Nash caught her by surprise. He took one step into the room, but then staggered. She couldn’t say how long he had been standing outside the door. She tried to hold him up. He muttered something unintelligible. He was heavy, like her brother Willie. He held out one arm and dropped a bag inside the room onto the cold floor. Angel instructed him to take a step, leaning against her, until finally he dropped onto the bed. There was the lamp. She got turned around in
the dark. It was near the window, not the door. She turned it on.

  Checking the hall, no one had seen him like that. She shut the door.

  Nash was muttering and holding his side. He kept saying he was fine, even though she was too shocked to ask. He rolled off his side, bloodying the linens.

  “I’m going for help,” said Angel.

  “Sweet cakes, you got to come here,” he said.

  Angel sat on the side of the bed.

  “What I tell you about depending on the kindness of strangers? We got to take care of our own worries.”

  “You’re shot, Nash.”

  “It’s a scratch. Go down and ask Mrs. What’s-her-name for some liniment and some rags. Tell her I fell hunting.”

  “She’ll know, Nash.”

  “She won’t ask you a thing. It’s supper time. She won’t want to be bothered.”

  Why was he so sure of things? “I’ll be right back then,” she said. The CLOSED sign was hung out on the office door. Angel knocked lightly. The “in” innkeeper, Mr. Pierce, answered. “Evening,” he said. He was still chewing his supper.

  Angel used marriage as a front. “My husband was out deer hunting. He fell and he … he got this gash.”

  “Don’t look so worried. We get that all the time. Got just the thing.”

  She could not believe that he bought the story. Even she did not think herself believable.

  He came back. “Here’s a box of some bandages and some of the wife’s medicinals. If it’s deep, now you know he’ll need a doctor, don’t you?”

  She took the box and thanked him.

  Nash was passed out. She kept checking his pulse to be sure he was breathing. Her touch on his side was making him groan. She was worried he’d draw one of the proprietors up the staircase. She gave him a rag and told him to bite down. “I can feel something, Nash.” She didn’t know how to tell if she had found a bullet. He was expecting her to take it out. She stood up and went to the window, where she rested her forehead against the cold glass.