The Angels' Share

by James Markert

  Still, Carly Charles’s timed visits proved to be working, and believers were moving to and from Asher’s grave in an orderly fashion.

  William spotted Dr. Lewis with a sign of his own, a pro-evolution sign with a picture of a chimpanzee on it. And it appeared the doctor had brought a group of his own, a small cluster of passionate evolutionists. William felt a morsel of pity for him. Across the potter’s field, a family of five deer watched the crowds.

  Samantha called across the lawn, “William, there’s a phone call for you. A woman named Bethany Finn? Says she’s ready to talk.”

  Tanner and Bethany Finn lived in a one-story brick house on the north side of Iroquois Park. Although their garage was large enough to hold ten Ford cars and enough parts for three more, the plainness of their home lent William to believe they were living on the nut like the rest of the country. Under an obvious comb-over, Tanner was a handsome man. His eyes were marked with crow’s feet and he wore a mask of worry. His smile was genuine, though, and he was eager to show William and Barley his collection of coupes and his 1934 Phaeton.

  Bethany was petite and pretty in a white blouse and blue skirt. Her curly auburn hair was cut in a bob. She carried a tray with a pitcher of lemonade and four glasses with ice. The four of them sat at a square table and drank pulpy lemonade. “It was your article today that encouraged me to talk,” she told William. “Thank you for coming.”

  Tanner gripped his wife’s hand. “I think this will be good for her. For both of us.”

  Bethany exhaled deeply. “So you gentlemen would like to know about Asher Keating.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Barley reached into his jacket for his flask. He poured a splash of Old Forester into his lemonade and stirred with his finger.

  William said, “We understand Asher once worked for you, Mr. Finn?”

  “That is correct.”

  “It’s taken years for us to come to grips with what happened,” Bethany told them. “The man you mentioned on the phone. Mr. Oliver Sanscrit. We did meet him the once, after the incident. He claimed to represent Mr. Keating. He was under the presumption that Asher had been fired unjustly.”

  “We told him we’d made a mistake,” Tanner said. “We tried to rehire Asher, but he refused to return.”

  Bethany said, “Mr. Sanscrit was an odd man, polite enough, but . . . his arrival caught us off-guard. We were having tea on our patio, and all of a sudden, there he was, standing beside us. Didn’t phone as you gentlemen did.”

  “Dressed as if he’d just returned from the war. At the time we were not able to rationally talk about it with a stranger.”

  “But now?” William asked.

  Bethany said, “Now we’re eager to add to Asher’s story. We never knew what became of him after he left the assembly line.”

  William removed his notepad and pen. “We appreciate your willingness to talk.”

  Tanner scratched his comb-over. “I believe now that it was the Lord, acting through my employees, who held me back from killing him.”

  Bethany interjected, “He had wild thoughts of an affair running through his mind.”

  “When my employee told me he’d seen my wife kissing another man, I imagined the worst. Who could have known what was really happening?”

  Bethany sipped her lemonade. “Luckily I was able to talk sense into him.”

  “What sense was there to discuss?” asked Barley. “Were you kissing Asher Keating?”

  “I was,” she said softly. “Indeed I was. But my words stopped Tanner cold.”

  “What did you say to him?” asked William.

  Tanner looked down to the tabletop. “All she said was that it wasn’t what it appeared. It was the fact that she spoke at all that got my attention.”

  “Before I met Asher Keating, I was deaf,” said Bethany. “I couldn’t speak at all. I was born deaf. I struggled to talk as a child. The look in my father’s eyes . . . He’d try hard to understand me, but I knew he also wanted me to hush. It pained him to listen to the noises I made. I stopped trying to speak long before I met Tanner.”

  She gripped his hand and they shared a loving smile. “We learned to speak adequately with our hands. Well, there was an evil man who worked at the plant named Kirby Delpho. He often came to work under the influence. Around Tanner he pretended to be upright, which makes my blood boil. I occasionally visited the plant to have lunch with Tanner. One afternoon on my way out to the parking lot, Kirby Delpho grabbed me.” She closed her eyes to strengthen her resolve. Tanner squeezed her hand.

  “We can stop,” William said.

  She opened her eyes. “I’d never liked how he looked at me, like a predator. He’d been eyeing me for months. In hindsight, I hated myself for not taking precautions. Or for not telling Tanner my thoughts on the man. I didn’t hear when he approached me, of course. I kicked and fought to no avail. He raped me.”

  Tanner’s jaw was quivering. Barley looked angry enough to hurl the lemonade pitcher into the wall. Bethany regained her composure. “I am thankful I couldn’t hear him. I thought I would never be able to escape the smells—of him, of the deed itself. My senses of smell and sight were ones I cherished, and he stole them from me that day. Kirby said he’d kill me if I tried to tell Tanner. Turned my face to his so I could read his lips. So I didn’t. And Tanner suffered the brunt of my moods. I was sharp with him, ill-tempered, and I even stopped loving him. No, that’s not right.”

  She gave Tanner a glance before looking back to her guests. “I always loved him. It’s just that there was a part of me that blamed him because he’d failed to protect me. But I also knew that was unfair. I stopped sleeping with him. I just couldn’t bring myself to . . .”

  She took a sip of her lemonade and nodded toward Barley. He handed her his flask. She poured a finger into her lemonade, swirled the glass, and took a deep drink. “Thank you. For months there was a great sadness in our home. But then Asher Keating was hired at the plant. He’d been there a month when I showed up to give Tanner the lunch pail he’d forgotten. I was drawn to Asher with an urgency I could not explain. He smiled at me, and I smiled for the first time in months. Kirby was there, putting back bumpers on a run of coupes. I felt ashamed smiling in his presence. I gave Tanner his lunch pail and I went on my way. Before leaving I looked for the new man, Asher, but he was nowhere to be seen.”

  William scribbled into his notepad. “Mrs. Finn, could you describe Asher for me? What do you think he looked like?”

  “What do I think? He was handsome and tall, but that’s not why I smiled at him. I smiled because for some reason I felt things would get better for me.”

  “I mean . . . ,” William said.

  She shared a glance with Tanner that made William think they’d discussed it before. “You want my opinion on . . . his physical traits?”

  William nodded. “The more I’ve studied his picture, the more mysterious he seems. I’m looking for clarity when there seems to be none.”

  “What are we talking about here?” Barley asked.

  “Your son wants to know if I think Asher was colored.”

  Barley froze his glass in midair and then slowly lowered it back to the table. “Christ was white.”

  Tanner said, “Excuse me?”

  William said, “The protestors at our distillery are chanting it. ‘Christ was white.’”

  It was Tanner’s turn to dump a splash of Barley’s bourbon into his lemonade. “When I first met him and shook his hand, I did a double look. We didn’t have any Negroes on our line. I thought he was colored, but then a minute later, I convinced myself that I was being foolish. I asked one of my employees what he thought, and he said he looked plenty white. I asked another and he said Asher must have Asian blood in him. Or Middle Eastern.” Tanner shook his head. “I don’t know. Another guy asked me if I thought Asher might be Red Indian. Or Mexican or Spanish. I didn’t much care. He was a good, loyal worker.”

  Silence spread across the table. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Finn.
I didn’t mean to interrupt you.” William looked to his notes. “You were saying that when he smiled at you, you felt like things were going to get better?”

  She took a drink of her lemonade. “There was a break room on the way out to the parking lot. On a typical day it was thick with cigarette smoke, but the morning was young and the room was smoke-free and Asher was sitting on the couch, reverently, with his elbows on his knees and his hands folded under his chin. ‘Please, sit,’ he said. He knew me and I knew him, although I can’t say as to how. I’d been afraid to look at any man for months, but I stared deeply into this man’s eyes, this stranger who was really not a stranger at all. He knew what Kirby had done to me.

  “Asher lifted my chin and said, ‘I can take away the pain, Bethany. And the hurt.’ I’d never told him my name. ‘I can remove the guilt,’ he said. ‘The sadness.’ He asked me to close my eyes and I did. He kissed my ears and told me to hear the words, and I did. The first words I’d ever heard in my life were Asher’s. Every noise of the car plant rang true. He kissed the tip of my nose and whispered for me to smell again. His soft breaths had sound. He kissed my forehead and told me my thoughts would be born anew. He kissed my head and said the bad memories would be wiped clean, and they were. I grabbed his hand and moved it down my body. I pressed his palm into the folds of my skirt for no longer than a few seconds. He told me to love again.

  “He leaned me back on the couch, put his hands to my throat, casting his warmth, and then he gently ran his fingers to my mouth, which he kissed. That’s when one of the employees walked in and saw us. Neither of us jumped as if we’d been discovered doing anything unseemly; on the contrary, nothing had ever felt more right. Asher’s lips left mine in his own time. After he’d completed his miracle. Even then I knew that’s what I was a part of. He pulled away from me and told me to speak.” She paused for another sip of her drink. “And I did.”

  Tanner took over. “Asher told me he was quitting the next day. I tried to keep him, but he said while he appreciated the chance to make cars, the poor needed him more.”

  Bethany said, “And Kirby Delpho died that afternoon working on a red Ford Phaeton.”

  “Collapsed right into the open driver’s seat,” said Tanner. “The men thought he’d eaten some bad food at Duke’s Diner the night before. Others believed he’d had a stroke. Doctor said it was a massive heart attack.”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Bethany. “As much as I’d wanted that man to pay, after Asher’s miracle, I no longer had hate in my heart for Kirby Delpho. So don’t think I wished for it and it came true.”

  “And Asher?” Barley asked. “Could he have had anything to do with it?”

  “Couldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “How do you know?”

  She finished her drink. “Because I know.”

  William closed his notepad respectfully. “Thank you for your time and honesty, Mrs. Finn. And I have your permission to publish this?”

  “You do. Tanner and I, we truly believe Asher Keating was a conduit to the Lord. It’s important that people know what happened.”

  Tanner said, “We didn’t feel comfortable talking to the man who stopped by last night.”

  William immediately thought of Bancroft. “Was he from the Post?”

  “No,” said Bethany. “I don’t think he was a reporter at all. We told him nothing of significance. He left disappointed, I’m afraid.”

  Tanner said, “Had a bunch of scars across his cheeks. And he had a woman with him.”

  Bethany playfully slapped Tanner’s arm. “Go ahead and say it, Tanner.”

  Tanner grinned. “Okay, then. She was a doll. A real looker.”

  William took a sharp turn too quickly and the wheels felt as if they’d lifted. The tires squealed. Barley braced himself, digging his shoes into the footwell and his fingers into the dashboard. The exhaust pipe had a loose-bolt rattle by the time they’d finished their trek through the wooded back road. Lantern lights flickered under the whiskey trees as they approached the house; it looked like hundreds had set up camp. William parked the car, and the two of them bounded up the porch steps to the front door as if racing. When they saw their family safe in the living room, they exhaled, but then their attention focused on the couch.

  “William, there you are.” Samantha sat next to Polly, who was lying beneath a blanket on the couch. Johnny and Annie watched silently from across the room. “She got here an hour ago. She was delirious, dehydrated. And what’s with the two of you? Coming in here like your britches are on fire.”

  William approached the couch. Polly’s face was pale, freckled across the nose and cheekbones. Her lashes were long with hints of blonde. There was a pockmark just above her right eyebrow. “Did she say anything?”

  Samantha sighed, looking from Polly to William, then giving him the hinky eye. “No. I got very little out of her. Why?”

  Barley lit a Lucky Strike, played off the fact that he’d been panicked seconds before. “All the girls in the world and he’s stuck on a jingle-brained hobo.”

  “What?” asked Samantha.

  “Boy drove home like the street was on fire. Turns out it was his britches.”

  “Polly,” William said. “Can you hear me? It’s William. William McFee.”

  Her eyes opened. William moved a glass of water to her lips and lifted her head from the pillow. “You need to drink.”

  She took enough to wet her lips and on the second try managed to swallow. “They tried to burn us . . .”

  “Who? Polly, did someone try to hurt you and your friends?” Persecuted. That was the word that came to mind. Religious persecution. “Pauline? Pauline?”

  “Polly. Friends call me Polly.” She whispered, “I returned the book.”

  And then she went back to sleep.

  The woods were quiet. Campfires smoldered under the trees and tents rustled as their occupants sought comfort. William found Barley and Johnny at Asher’s grave, their bodies lit by the glow of an oil lamp one of them had hung on the arm of Asher’s cross.

  “Would you hang a lantern from Christ’s cross?” William joined them.

  “If I recall,” Barley said, “that cross was up pretty high. This one isn’t.”

  “We were praying,” said Johnny. “Among other things. Heard you filled Mr. Bancroft’s doors with holes.”

  Barley lit a Lucky Strike. “If you really want to know, William, I prayed for that man we met by the river. The fisherman and his son. Their bucket was empty.” He exhaled a smoke cloud and waited for it to disperse in the lantern glow. “Hopefully they’ll catch a fish tomorrow.”

  William shared a look with Johnny, one that showed that his younger brother had also noticed some changes in their father, a transformation of sorts that was ongoing. But they’d best not bring it attention and risk spooking him.

  Barley shared the cigarette with his oldest.

  William took a drag on the Lucky and blew smoke from the corner of his mouth. Johnny reached toward William for the next drag, but William wouldn’t give him one. “Too young.”

  Johnny didn’t like it. “I suppose you’re still too young for your first kiss.”

  “Close your head, Johnny.”

  Barley said, “Your mother said your bum can stay in the Glousters’ old cottage after tonight. If she’s gonna hang around.”

  “She’s not my—mine,” William said defensively, unconvincingly, and handed the cigarette back to Barley. “The Glousters’ cottage? That’s the one farthest away from the house.”

  Johnny laughed.

  “Your mother was born during the day, William, but not yesterday.” Barley started to take another drag but froze with it a few inches from his mouth. “Shhhhhh.” He passed the cigarette back to William and slid his Colt .45 from his shoulder harness. Black-Tail had joined them. The squirrel stood on his hind legs no more than ten feet away, watching them over the smooth surface of a nut.

  “You little runt.” Barley slowly coc
ked the pistol.

  “Do it,” Johnny whispered. “Do it.”

  “Bang,” Barley said, reeling the gun back into his holster. Black-Tail gnawed on the nut for another couple of seconds and then took off running.

  Johnny watched, openmouthed and disappointed.

  Barley took the cigarette back from William and finished it off with one long, cheek-sucking drag. “I had my first kiss when I was ten. Your grandfather took me to the races at Churchill. Little sandy-haired girl was there with her parents. Pink dress. Cute white hat with a pink ribbon. While your grandfather was studying the horses, she and I, we snuck behind the barn. We took turns skipping rocks across a rain puddle. Then we started tossing them atop the barn’s pitched roof. Drove the horses crazy. The last thing betters want to see is a skittish horse just before the starting gun. I’d like to think we changed a few odds that day.

  “Well, her parents called for her, and we hid behind a bush. I put my hand over her mouth because she’d started giggling. And she bit it. Bit the middle finger and I nearly screamed. But to quiet me, she put her lips right up against mine until she felt sure I wasn’t going to make a noise. When the coast was clear, you know what she said? ‘The next one will cost you.’ ‘Cost me what?’ I said. ‘One of them root beers. With the ice cream in it.’”

  “And did you get it for her?” William asked.

  “Of course.”

  “So . . . what happened to the girl?”

  Barley looked toward their house. “She’s in there putting your sister to bed.”

  SIXTEEN

  William finished his article at three in the morning with achy eyes. Part of him had hoped his key-clacking would wake Polly, but it didn’t. Barley’s chair was available across the room, but he couldn’t hear Polly breathing from over there. So he scooted the throw rug closer and slept fitfully on the floor next to her.