The Tongues of Angels

by Reynolds Price

  What the doctor hadn’t said was, Rafe was in pain. The boy had never mentioned it, piggyback with me or in Sam’s car. But once they got him drugged and in bed, he was free to complain. As we walked in his door, he gave a long moan. We must have looked shocked because the nurse turned, took a look at our faces and said “He’s just playing possum. He’s pickled in morphine.”

  Rafe said “The hell you say. That was saline solution—I read the damned label.”

  Sam laughed but said “Young man, hold your tongue. You know Chief and Mrs. Chief will be here tonight, so practice your cleanest company manners.”

  Rafe took it like a tired child, suddenly meek. He searched Sam’s eyes and said “Am I dead?”

  Sam was stunned for a moment and looked back to me.

  I said “You’re alive but with very little brain, just a few odd cells.”

  Rafe turned from me and searched Sam’s face. “I asked you for the truth, Uncle Sam—don’t fail me. What’s old Ray’s chances?”

  It hadn’t dawned on me that Rafe might be scared. But now I realized how hard he’d worked to spare me guilt and the chance of losing my job.

  Sam said “Bridge was kidding. You’re strong as an ox.”

  When he stopped at that, I took a step forward. “You’re home free, Rafe. But the doctor wants you to spend a night, two nights at the most. Sam has asked me to keep you company. You mind?”

  Rafe turned that over slowly. Before he looked back at me, he said “Sam, is that the plan?”

  Sam said “I don’t think it qualifies as a plan. I just thought it sounded like a good idea.”

  Rafe nodded. “All right.” And then he faced me gravely. “You saved my damned life; might as well watch it awhile.”

  I smiled and said “Snakebite’s not the terror it used to be.”

  Rafe wouldn’t leave it there but shook his head slowly. “I’ll let you get bit next time then. Doctor said you got me here just in time.”

  Sam said “That’s not quite what he told us, Ray. But we’ll take any credit you want to hand out.”

  Rafe said “I’m talking to young Bridge Boatner. He got me down off of that mountain like a greased bobsled.”

  I said “I was scared.”

  Rafe said “I was scared—it was my damned bloodstream. You were the one stayed calm as a brick.” His eyelids were heavy and his words were slurring. The morphine, or whatever the nurse had given him, was taking hold.

  Sam said “Anything you need, big boy? Any Santa Claus letter you want me to mail?”

  Rafe said “You been talking to my old man again?”

  Sam said “Not yet but I’ll need to.”

  Rafe said “Christ Jesus, omit that.” Never again, in this world at least, have I heard that young a boy move the English language with that much assurance. Today every preschool child in the country can curse like a stoker. But what I mean is power with words, real bravery with words. Maybe in Rafe it came from the certain fact that he had got very few prayers answered, so he kept turning up the volume. In force, not loudness. I never heard him so much as raise his voice. The stronger he felt, the deeper it plumbed the lower octaves.

  Sam laughed again and gave Rafe a hug that the boy accepted, with nearly full eyes. Then he eased out the door as Rafe drifted back on his pillow to doze.

  I followed Sam into the hall. And all I remember from there is a long look at my eyes again and one question. “You sure you’re up for this?”

  I asked why I wouldn’t be?

  Sam said “I realize I hit you pretty hard with the news of Ray’s past. I assumed you knew. It’s built into all of us old-timers’ hearts.” For an ex-marine to confess to a heart was only the smallest surprise of the day.

  I assured Sam I was fine and that we’d expect the Chiefs tonight. I promised I’d phone him tomorrow when we knew our timing. Then I gave him a few details on my boys—Darryl’s bedtime insulin, Frederick’s calcium, the full-length rosary that Barry’s mother expected from him.

  When I got back to Rafe, he was still asleep and stayed so, right on till supper. He moaned occasionally and sweated a lot. Once when he was still asleep, he scratched at his arm and managed to paw his intravenous glucose out. You recall that was one of my nightmare memories of Father, tearing at himself. But I stayed cool enough and called a nurse.

  She taped it back in and whispered to me “He’s got to be in a world of pain. They always are when a rattler’s involved, but he seems real brave.”

  That helped me notice her. Her voice was local, that high and raw. But she had a strong face, with fine broad bones, though again her green eyes were mountaineer eyes—laid back and cautious. I told her “He’s been through a lot worse than snakebite.”

  She studied me quickly. “You his daddy, are you?”

  I understood mountain boys started life early, but I had to laugh. “Sure, my oldest boy. I had him when I was seven.”

  She blushed a kind of terminal red. It didn’t seem likely her face would ever get back to normal again. Then she said “All right, be sarcastic then. You must be tired.”

  For the first time I knew how right she was. It made her looks and body all the better, her draw all the stronger. I’d had less than four hours’ sleep last night and now all this excitement with Rafe. But here she stood, an obvious godsend. I had no idea what to say, only that I hoped I’d be near her for as much of this night as we could manage. Beyond that, I didn’t think of ways or means. So I finally said “You working all night?”

  At first she frowned as if I’d offended some law of kindness.

  I put my hand up, outward in the air. I said I was sorry. “Please tell me your name.”

  She touched a small nametag I hadn’t noticed and then came two steps closer towards me. It said Tess Vance—the woods up here were swarming with Vances.

  But I didn’t say that. I raised a finger to brush at the name.

  She retracted a step and shook her head gently, just two slight sideways shakes. No, no. When I took her suggestion, she said “Doctor says you want to stay over. You can sleep right here, in that armchair. Or he says you can use the intern’s closet. There’s an army cot in there at least, and the intern’s gone to Statesville tonight for his sweetheart’s funeral.”

  “Lord, what killed her?”

  As if I’d asked the day’s dumbest question, Tess said “Well, love.” Then she narrowed her green eyes and made a fine look of absolute mystery, Now believe what I said.

  So I left it there—one doctor’s girlfriend dead for love. And I said “How about me bringing the cot in here?”

  She hadn’t thought of that, and I saw how hard it was to thread a new thought through her rule-obeying brain. Finally she said “If you were his daddy—”

  “All right. Say I am.”

  “But you’re not. You just told me. You were seven years old when he—”

  I whispered the clincher. “This child watched his mother raped and murdered. Now you’re telling me I can’t lie down here and guard him tonight?” Everything in her face made me want to withdraw my question and try again to love her tonight.

  But she suddenly took both steps back towards me, and her face was lit with a new strong force. “You swear what you just said is the truth?”

  I raised my right palm.

  “You know it’s safe here. We got night watchmen.”

  I said “It was safe at his homeplace too.”

  She said “Come get this old cot then.”

  When I brought it back, Rafe’s eyes were open. The nurse had said I could crank up the head of his bed, and now he asked me to do it. When he was nearly upright, he said “Please shut the damned door a minute.” Once I obeyed he beckoned me close. Then looking past me, he said “Did Sam tell you?”

  “You overheard me talking to the nurse?”

  “I asked if Sam told you?”

  I nodded. “This afternoon, while they worked on you.”

  Rafe said “It’s not all true. Don’
t repeat that story.”

  I told him I was sorry. “I just told the nurse what Sam told me.” At once I suspected the obvious. Rafe had manufactured a three-ring horror show from lesser events.

  But then he went on. “Sam’s got it wrong. Chief and Mrs. Chief are the ones that know.”

  “You want to tell me?”

  Rafe waited, then faced me one more time. “I do not, sir.”

  “All right. I understand.”

  With a sudden credible innocence that was hard to watch, he kept on. “You couldn’t understand if you tried forever. But if you don’t believe me, I’ll just need to go back through everything. And see, I’m busy in here now—in my head—fighting off this timber rattler. Talk about the fantods.”

  I moved towards him fast and reached out to hold him.

  But he waved me back.

  So I said “I believe you, now and for good.”

  That seemed to start easing him. His face slowly cleared and again I moved to show my affection. But in his most courteous voice he said “Bridge, please. I like you all right. I like what you do. You’re a genius of the ages. But what I saw that day at home was a whole lot worse than what Sam told you. So please let’s rest.”

  For the second time in the past ten minutes, I raised my hand to pledge my word. “I’ll shut my mouth.”

  Rafe shut his eyes. “Thank you.” Then his face went white again; his lips clenched down. The pain poured up him from ankle to eyes, plain to see as a rat in milk.

  I said “Can I get you anything?”

  “Not a thing on Earth, thank you very much.” From some storehouse way beyond my reach, Rafe reeled up a grin. Then he dropped his front teeth. “Oh get my damned supper, Bridge. It’s way past time.”

  I knew this child was far past me, in most known ways and some unknown. And I knew it was the last thing he’d ever let me say.

  We watched television till we heard Chiefs voice at the nurses’ desk. Then Rafe gave orders like a four-star general—cut off the TV, fix his hair, fix mine, was his whacker hanging out? I managed to straighten up the room in time. And when Chief walked in, we were combed and cool.

  Rafe said “Where’s the madam?”

  Chief said “I knew it; you’d just want her. Son, she sent her deep regrets. But she’s got a summer cold and didn’t want to share it.”

  Rafe said “You tell her she’s got one last chance—make me a lemon pie when I’m back. Just for me, not you. Or else my good graces are closed.”

  Chief laughed and said he was sure he could promise that much for her and no doubt a good deal more. Then he said two amazing things, unabashed in my presence. He told Rafe “You know how I love you.”

  Rafe said “Yes I do.”

  Next Chief turned to me. “We’re all unspeakably grateful to you, Bridge Boatner.” He used both names, as if he were reading a parchment scroll that preserved my valor for ages to see. He’d also thoughtfully brought my shaving kit from Cabin 16.

  I mumbled a deeply uneasy thanks for the undeserved praise, and I asked him to sit. I thought he might like some time with Rafe, so I said I’d go down and get a breath of air.

  * * *

  There was a flagstone terrace that opened off the back of the lobby, and I sat out there. The long summer sunset was almost finished, and three lightning bugs had already struck up business in the unmown grass. The skyline was nothing too special, no pregnant sentence from the distant rocks but a nice line of trees that looked as ready as me for night and rest. When I first sat down, I was edgy. Wouldn’t loneliness be a bad idea, after a day like this? Wouldn’t I just start in on myself, with my old mental whips? Wouldn’t my father rise again and say something hard?

  To forestall trouble, for the first time in years, I tried to recite all the poems I knew. I was from the last American generation that memorized poems in school, and by now I had dozens. How many could I find? I dived in at random with John Masefield’s “I must go down to the seas again.” I moved on to Rupert Brooke’s sonnet that predicts his own death, then Riley’s “The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat,” Tennyson’s “Tithonus,” Emerson’s “The Rhodora,” extensive selections from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and every line of “Jabberwocky.”

  I thumped the varied rhythms on my thigh; and each one came out effortlessly, as if it was more than ready to serve. Maybe I was calling up the peaceful childhood I learned them in. Maybe it was just the comforting beat of meter and rhyme, like a mother dog’s heartbeat among her blind puppies. But after I’d run through all I could find, I was empty as an upturned pitcher and as calm. And stars were taking over the sky, the mountain stars that shine so bright you think they’re photographing you for your permanent record—Watch it, son. We’re watching you.

  A voice behind me said “Mr. Bridge?”

  I looked and there was Tess Vance, Rafe’s nurse. Her forehead was tense and that much scared me. She said “I think you’ll want to come back.”

  I stood up quickly. “What’s happened?”

  Her face stayed worried but she said “Not nothing.” Then she corrected herself, “Ray’s company’s gone and he’s up there alone. I figure you don’t want to leave him that way.”

  I thanked her and said she was kind to come down.

  Tess nodded. “I know. I could get fired and worse, so I’m going to run. You come when you can.” Then her white stockings moved. And her whole self vanished, like one more burnt-out lightning bug in the harmless evening which somewhere, somehow would see harm done to countless thousands, at home and abroad.

  I’d stayed half an hour. And when I got back, I thought Rafe was sleeping. I couldn’t be sure when the boy was really out.

  But after a while, from what seemed sleep, he said “Try not to” with quiet force. A moment later his eyes were on me, though I seemed a rank stranger for twenty-odd seconds. At last he knew me and said “You don’t have to feel bad, lying for us. We were doing good up there, meeting like we planned to. And this way we got a whole night and day to talk. You can draw me six ways to Sunday and back—angel, demon, dancer or dumbo. Get your pad out, doctor.”

  I told him, whatever he felt like now, I was worn to a frazzle.

  He said “Not me. I mean to stand up.” He threw back the cover and thrust out his legs.

  “Rafe, stay put. Your ticker’s had a full day, like it or not. Your kidneys are filtering poison still. Calm down now and show yourself mercy.”

  “Nobody else has,” he said. “Who am I to start a trend?”

  “For that very reason,” I said. “You can start a whole mass movement here tonight, mercy to Noren. You might even last to be a grown man. It’s fun up here in the manhood zone.”

  Again Rafe studied me with the uncanny attention of a creature dropped in from Arcturus, and not necessarily benevolent. Slowly though he changed his mind and stayed put. He even smoothed the covers with meticulous care.

  Thinking back I can realize that was the moment when Raphael, unarmed as he was, began to seem dangerous to me. Not so much a threat to my health as to overall life in the civilized world, which of course he was not. Maybe I really meant endangered.Like everybody else upright above ground, Rafe was in steady danger. At the same time even with him as weak as he was, I still thought of him as skilled and powerful, way past his years.

  Sam’s story, whether it was accurate or an underestimate, only added to the size of my error. This was a boy who had someway managed to use an event that was dreadful on any scale, and that happened in his home, to build himself a man’s mind and body. I quickly recalled myself at fourteen. I was smothering then in alternate gags of self-love and -hate, sexual claustrophobia and dreams of obscene private power.

  By then it was well past nine P.M. The doctor stopped by to check again. He confirmed a continued improvement in Rafe’s condition. Then he asked me to step out into the hall. There he repeated the fact that things were going nicely. The latest urinalysis had showed a decrease in the broken-down protei
ns from crotalid venom—the timber rattler is aptly called Crotalus horridus.

  The moment I returned Rafe shook me down for every detail.

  I saw that again he was genuinely presuming the worst, and I gave him another fatherly talk. I vowed that nobody was condescending to him by holding back bad news; there just wasn’t any. He was coming along exactly as expected. If anything, better.

  I did keep one thing under my hat—the doctor had said he’d been wrong in hoping Rafe could leave tomorrow. They really should watch him another day. I was going to let the doctor himself break that news when the time came.

  Once I finished, a whole new calm moved over Rafe. Whether he decided to believe me, for some new credibility I’d earned, or whether he just had to fling himself on hope like a net, from then on that night, Rafe was like his best self, the one that danced and drew hard outlines—that steady and clear. We watched a little more dumb television. Then at ten o’clock he said “I wish you’d draw my picture now. That nurse you like, she’ll give you supplies. A hospital’s bound to have pencil and paper.”

  I laughed. ‘That nurse I like?—ah you’re sharp, young Noren, but not sharp enough. We’re engaged in fact. No, I think I’ll postpone the art. You’re no fit subject, tonight at least—a snakebit lad on the edge of exhaustion. Your angelic debut is yet to be. We’re both turning in. Maybe tomorrow it’ll be light enough in here for me to take some photographs.” My camera was still with me, from our miscarried meeting at Juniper.

  Rafe said “I don’t pose for photos.”

  “Fully clothed,” I said.

  “I told you no.”

  I asked if he wanted to say why.

  He seemed to plan it slowly. Then it came out as one of his more characteristic pieces of logic. “Most people in photos, at our house, are dead.”

  I left it there and stepped out to tell Tess Vance that I was ready to unfold my cot. She was nowhere in sight, so I told the head nurse. Did she have any last things to do for Rafe Noren?