River Angel

by A. Manette Ansay

  “I’m going to find out what to do with our visitor,” Daddy said, and he headed down the hall toward the phone. Mum sat the boy at the kitchen counter and made him hold a washcloth of crushed ice against his chin while she fixed a meat loaf sandwich. The boy bowed his head before he took a single bite. Janey fingered her cross; it was still warm, though not the way it had been. God can do anything if you believe. “Tell me,” she begged him. “Why were you out in the field with those boys?”

  The boy shrugged. He seemed quite content now, the half-eaten sandwich in his hand. “They said I could see the river angel there.”

  “Oh, honey,” Mum said.

  “They said that when the water freezes, the angel comes up on land.”

  “But the river angel is a story,” Mum said. “Like the Easter bunny.”

  “How do you know?” Janey said. “What about what happened to that kid last summer? Davey Otto?”

  His picture had run in the Ambient Weekly under the caption “Believe It or Not!” He’d fallen off the Cradle Park footbridge and said that an angel, small and white as a paper plate, had pushed him back to the surface.

  “Some people will say anything to get attention,” Mum said.

  “Some people aren’t afraid to bear witness to the truth.”

  “Don’t get upset,” Mum said, and she gestured at the boy with her chin. “I just don’t think you should encourage him, that’s all.”

  “I’ve seen the angel twice,” the boy said. “Maybe three times. The last time, I wasn’t sure.”

  “You probably saw it,” Janey told him when Mum turned back to the sink. The boy smiled at her gratefully. And Janey dared to believe he was the sign from God she’d longed for.

  Daddy came back into the kitchen then, laid a hand on Janey’s shoulder. “Apparently,” he said, “the police know our visitor pretty well.”

  “Who is he?” Mum said.

  “His real name is Gabriel,” Daddy said. “Shawn Carpenter’s son.” Mum’s face grew soft with sympathy, but Janey blushed hard, first with disappointment, then again with anger at her own stupidity. She stood up and walked over to the kitchen sink and stared out the small, square window at their neighbors’ backyard, where two little girls were making a snowman. Gabriel Carpenter—it was only the child Anna Grey had talked about the first time she came to the Circle.

  “Stan Pranke’s on his way with a squad car,” Daddy said. “I guess this is the fourth or fifth time the kid’s run off.”

  The girls had finished the snowman’s base; now they began his round white abdomen. How easily these might have been her own daughters. Janey could feel their small hands clutching her fingers. She smelled the backs of their necks, heard their squeals as she tickled them. She tasted their skin as she kissed them good night, tucked them into bed. But no, that wasn’t true. What she really tasted was the emptiness of her mouth, the sourness working its way up from her stomach. Mum was right—she was getting too religious. Crazy, even. How could she ever have thought that the boy was anything more than he appeared to be? She pressed her index finger just above her upper lip to keep herself from crying.

  Shawn Carpenter’s son. It was adding insult to injury. She’d been one year behind him in high school and she’d had a terrible crush on him, just like all the girls. Once, he offered her a ride home from school, but he drove her down to Cradle Park instead. He lifted her skirt, put his hand underneath, all the while talking about classes and teachers and everyday things. She was fourteen, and she didn’t understand what was happening. That’s how innocent she’d been. Oddly, she couldn’t remember what had happened next. Did he just take her home? Did she accept another ride from him after that? Maybe there was something wrong with her memory. Maybe she was getting old-timer’s disease. Yet there were some things she remembered in such detail that they seemed more real than anything in the present. Like the time, just after her third and final miscarriage, when she woke up to see a little boy at the foot of her bed. Clearly, he was as curious about her as she was about him. He raised one hand, and she raised one hand back. She tilted her head; he tilted his. She stuck out her tongue and he grinned, mischievous, flicked his like a snake. Then Harper moaned in his sleep; the boy took a step back and disappeared. Janey could still see him in perfect detail—the broad, slightly flattened shape of his nose, so much like Daddy’s; Harp’s high cheekbones; her own soft brown eyes.

  Gabriel had started to sniffle, and Mum said, “There, sweetheart, it’s OK. Tell you what—I’ll make you up a little care package.” Without looking, Janey knew Mum was filling a Baggie with oatmeal cookies from the cookie jar.

  “We shouldn’t reward him for this,” Daddy said, though his voice wasn’t as stern as his words. “Looks like he’s got the system down. You know where they picked him up last time, Mother? Kimmeldorf’s, having a piece of Lucy’s raisin-and-sour-cream pie.”

  There was a heavy knock at the door. Rusty rolled over, gave his single deep woof.

  “Here you go, hon,” Mum said, and she handed Gabriel his cookies. Janey did not turn around to see him go. She went over to the kitchen table, sat down, and stroked Rusty’s smooth, broad forehead. There was something so steadfast and simple about the way Rusty looked at you. Rusty had no doubts about anything. Rusty just knew what he knew.

  “You did a kind thing,” Daddy said, “stopping to help that boy.” He took a six-pack of Miller from the fridge, started collecting bags of pretzels and chips to take along to the Hopes’.

  Janey was too miserable to answer.

  “Imagine,” Mum said, coming back into the kitchen. “Stan says the boy’s been chasing the river angel all over the country.”

  “Poor little guy,” Dad said. “It’ll take more than an angel to solve all his problems.” Then he rattled the chips like tambourines. “All set?” he asked Mum. “Party started at six.”

  Mum sighed. “You sure you won’t come along?” she said to Janey.

  “I’m sure.” Janey tried to keep her voice steady. “I’m just going to watch TV.”

  After they’d gone, she opened the refrigerator and stared at what was in there without really seeing any of it. Her stomach felt funny, and she decided to skip dinner altogether. Instead, she went downstairs to the den and turned on the TV. She settled herself on the couch, closed one hand over her gold Faith cross, and laid the other on her flat, soft belly. Time passed. Her mood blistered into despair. She knelt down beside the couch and imagined three white candles burning. Ruthie had promised her that, someday, all of this would pass, that there would come a time when she’d awaken every morning with her heart singing God’s praises. “Sometimes I miss Tom so terribly,” Ruthie said, “and when I think of taxes coming due, and how hard it’s getting to rent the fields, and the money I’m losing on the sheep, and all the repairs that need to be done, my head gets racing and my heart gets pounding and I lose my way completely. It is then I remember God’s love for me. I remember that when a child asks for bread, the father won’t hand her a stone. I remember that faith the size of a mustard seed is all God asks of me, and from that place of calm I say, Not my will but Thine be done.”

  How long Janey knelt there she did not know, but when she opened her eyes, she felt as if something inside her had eased. Not my will but Thine be done, she whispered, and she realized that, for the first time, she truly meant those words. Slowly, she got to her feet. She finally understood. No matter what happened, she would be OK. Her purpose in the world was to do God’s will, whatever that might be. And if she never had a child of her own, so be it. Thy will be done.

  It was a strange place for a revelation, the TV humming in the background. “God is never dull,” Ruthie liked to say, and it was certainly true. Janey went to the bathroom, splashed her face with cold water. She could barely contain her joy. And it was no more than a few days later when she discovered the blood she’d prayed for, staining her white cotton underwear, beautiful as a rose.

  AUCTION—DAIRY COWS *
MACHINERY * EQUIPMENT * Joe and Edna Skrepenski are retiring—Everything must Go! Folks, there is a lot of fine Merchandise here, with more calls daily. Ten A.M. Saturday, March 1 (Snow date, March 8) with lunch on grounds. LIVESTOCK at 11:00 includes 41 head of Hi Grade Holstein Dairy Cattle. Majority sells just fresh and in their second and third lactation. Avg 41% butterfat test w/3.3% protein. MACHINERY AND EQUIP at 1:30 includes 10 tractors, combines (includes Gleaner #C2 G self-propelled, w/cab), harvesting equip including Vermeer round baler, hay swather w/half cab, forage choppers, green choppers, hi-throw forage throwers, planting and tillage equip PLUS many special items including Gehl #309 Scavenger side slinger manure spreader and MUCH MORE! Household items plus some antiques, including weathervane, mixed in all day. Cash or good check day of sale. Location: Skrepenski Farmstead. Take County O South from the Fair Mile Crossroads, watch for Auction Arrows!

  —From the Ambient Weekly

  March 1991

  five

  It was a cold, clear morning in March, sunlight skating across the sparkling surface of the snow, when Big Roly Schmitt’s ten-year-old daughter turned to him and said, boom, out of nowhere, “Daddy, teach me to drive.” They were on their way to the Fair Mile Crossroads, where Big Roly fetched his rents in person, the first Saturday of every month, going door to door the way his own daddy had done. Big Roly felt it was important to maintain personal contact with his tenants, to check on all properties, business and residential, with his own two eyes. Besides, he genuinely liked to visit with people. He looked forward to hearing the gossip, maybe telling a story or two of his own.

  “Most kids wait on driving till they’re a little older, Scoot.”

  She looked at him, dead serious. Uh-oh, Big Roly thought. She said, “I think it’s a life skill everyone should have.”

  The kid just busted him up.

  “Maybe. If I see a plowed parking lot.”

  “I’ll be a good driver,” Christina said.

  “I know you will.”

  They were coming up on the International Harvester dealership, which had gone belly-up five years earlier. Big Roly had known the family who’d owned it; the parents retired to Florida, bought themselves a trailer right smack on a canal. Now there was talk of Toyota coming in, selling those zippy little cars. The area sure was changing fast, with so many people moving in, drawn by the millpond and the Onion River, the safe public schools, the affordability. For eighty thousand, a person could build a nice ranch house on a two-acre country lot—although that was changing too. It was just twenty miles from Ambient to the I-90/94 split, and from there it was only sixty to Milwaukee, seventy-five to Chicago, take your pick. Commuting was nothing these days for the corporates who worked via modem and fax. Big Roly ran ads in the big city papers: AMBIENT—WISCONSIN’S BEST-KEPT SECRET! The folks who responded were worth a little extra time, and Big Roly personally drove them around in his Lincoln to admire the town and countryside. The River Road shoe factory was said to be haunted; he’d pull into the parking lot to describe the ghostly woman more than one night watchman had seen. “They say she’s dressed in an apron, carrying a roasted turkey on a platter,” Big Roly would say. “I’ve heard you can smell that turkey even after she disappears.” If they liked that bit of local lore, he continued on along the railroad tracks until they reached the J road, cutting back across the highway bridge, where many of the river angel sightings took place. “Of course, I’ve never seen it myself,” Big Roly always said, “but I know a man who did. He’d gone for a dip, caught himself a cramp, and just when he thought he was going under, it carried him to the shore.”

  And then, perhaps, he’d glance in the rearview mirror, catch the couple exchanging a look, and one of them would say, “How on earth do stories like that get started?” or something along those lines. In that case, he’d laugh sheepishly and say, “To be truthful, I didn’t know the man myself—although my daddy did, and he swears it’s true.” But if the couple seemed interested, he’d tell them how the river angel had watched over Ambient since the flash flood of 1898. Those settlers who’d survived reported an angel had led their families to safety.

  “You can look it up at the library,” he’d say; he had heard that this was so. “The museum’s probably got some records too. We have a lovely little museum for a town this size,” and then he’d chauffeur them back into Ambient, past the library and museum and town square, ending the tour in Cradle Park with a walk across the footbridge, and maybe he’d even hand them a penny to toss the angel for luck, just the way he did with Christina.

  “How about right here by the IH?” he asked her now, and he pulled off the highway, followed the plow track around to the back of the building, where they wouldn’t be seen. God only knew why anyone bothered to keep the parking lot cleared; only teenagers used it now. On weekends, they’d hollow caves in the walls of the packed plowed snow, then sit inside drinking beer and making out, and if they got cold, they simply built a bonfire in the parking lot. You could see the blackened circle now, surrounded by beer cans, fast-food wrappers, old tires, and bags of trash. Big Roly parked beside it, got out to switch places with Christina. The plow drifts were taller than he was, boxing them in. It made him uneasy. He hustled around to the passenger’s side of the Lincoln, eased his three-hundred-pound bulk into the seat.

  “Fire her up,” he said, and Christina did, not even grinding the starter. Christ, she could barely see over the dash. He kept a Polaroid in the glove compartment for doing property appraisals, and he wanted so badly to take her picture, but she could be sensitive about stuff like that. “Daddy, stop patronizing me,” she’d say.

  Daddy. She still called him that instead of Dad, even in front of her friends.

  “Now what?” she said, bouncing in the seat. Her ponytail stuck out from under her snug Packers cap. She had Big Roly’s red hair, but less carroty, more of an auburn color—strangers were always exclaiming over it. She had Big Roly’s freckles too, but thank God, not as many. While he was a mass of pinkish-brown pigments, she had only a fine constellation, distinct as chocolate sprinkles across the vanilla bridge of her nose.

  “Put your foot on the brake and hold it there.” Thank God I drive an automatic, he thought. She had to slide down a little to reach. Sweet Jesus, but the worst she could do was run them into the plow drift, and he had a good shovel and plenty of sand in the trunk. He leaned over, helped her shift into drive. “You won’t need any gas,” he said. “Take your foot off the brake and let the Lincoln do the rest.”

  She drove all the way across the parking lot as if she’d been doing it all her life. He turned the Lincoln around so she could take it back the other way, hands at ten and two just like he showed her.

  “OK?” he said. “Enough?”

  And she nodded, batted his hands away, and put it in park herself.

  “Don’t tell your mom about this,” he said, more for the fun of sharing a secret than out of concern for what Suzette would think. Suzette believed in taking risks. Each morning, she put on her snow boots and walked to work at the fertilizer plant, where she’d been the first female to rise past Floor into Management. “Don’t put up with bullshit from anyone,” she’d tell Christina, and Christina nodded because she already knew. From the time she was born, she was wise beyond her years. By six months she was speaking, and real words too, not just ba for bottle, like Big Roly’s sister’s kid. There just wasn’t any comparing her to other kids her age—hell, she figured as well as he did, better than her teachers at school. Just last Saturday, she’d been with him when he dropped in to see Pops Carpenter about some snow-removal work. Pops was baby-sitting his grandson, Gabriel, and while he haggled with Big Roly over his fee, Christina sat down with the boy, who was in her class at school. By the time Big Roly came to get her, she was helping him do his math homework.

  “That was awful nice of you,” Big Roly had said as they walked back out to the Lincoln. Everybody knew how Gabriel’s dad had abandoned him to his uncle and aunt.
Big Roly didn’t think too much of the aunt; a battle-ax if there ever was one. No wonder the boy kept running off. People were always finding him, bringing him back home.

  Christina shrugged. “I have to help him anyway,” she’d said. “Mrs. G. has me tutor kids because I’m so far ahead.”

  “Really?” Big Roly said. Just out of curiosity, he took all the rents they’d collected that day, stacked them in her lap. “How much have we got here, Scoot?” he said, and she’d tallied them up, just like that—no paper, no pen.

  On rent Saturdays, Suzette always slept in. Big Roly rousted Christina out of bed around eight, and the two of them fried a pound of bacon and scrambled a dozen eggs into the grease and ate the whole mess in front of Bugs Bunny. Then, when they’d finished their coffee—he fixed Christina’s special, with sweetened condensed milk—they headed out. Usually they didn’t get back before three: After the Fair Mile Crossroads, there were the duplexes in Ambient to inspect, the weekend houses by the Killsnake Dam to check up on, stops at a couple-three businesses on North County O (the oldest one, the Moonwink Motel, was about to fall to Best Western), and then, back at the Solomon strip, they drove past Big Roly’s apartment complexes, checking for vandalism, trash, graffiti. The graffiti was a recent thing, and Big Roly carried a can of beige paint and a roller to wipe everything clean. He was proud to say each of those units had a waiting list, and unlike his units in Ambient, these rented mostly to locals. The old farmers liked the convenience of the strip; young people worked at the fertilizer plant, or at the Badger State Mall just up the road, or at the various outlets and stores and restaurants scattered along the way.