And If I Die

by John Aubrey Anderson

  The taller figure smiled on the boy. So he has. And in these coming moments, he faces an opportunity to learn about himself.

  The first angel pointed his sword at the people who scurried around the square, most of them under the impression they were on important errands. And some of these will soon be given a wonderful chance to praise God for His bounty.

  The taller angel was somber. And for some, I fear, that time has already passed.

  Too true, old friend, too true.

  The two watched the boy rise from the bench.

  It begins, said Harley’s angel.

  So it does. Let us pray, for the sake of young Mose, that young Harley Crawford chooses to embrace his coming lesson.

  When Harley stepped through the front door, a bell tinkled.

  A wide center aisle separated the dry-goods side of the store from the food and hardware. The pungent smell of coal oil was softened by the fresh scent of linen and perfumed soap.

  The store’s office area was situated in the dim recesses of the store. Nash Henry was perched behind a slightly elevated desk with a napkin stuffed in his collar, eating his dinner. He poked a piece of roll in his mouth and talked around it. “You’ve got no business in here, brat. Get out.”

  Harley walked as far as a table stacked with bolts of flowered material. “I need to talk to you about yesterday, Mr. Henry.”

  In the best of times, Henry’s round face was fixed in an expression of distaste. “I just told you to get out, boy. You’ve got nothing to say that I want to hear.”

  Harley moved to the low railing that enclosed the office area. “It was my fault you got bit, Mr. Henry, an’ I’m sorry. Mose’s dog was just standin’ up for me.”

  “That mutt is as good as dead.” The man pointed at the double-barreled shotgun propped against the railing. “I’m going out there before supper and take care of that myself.”

  When the man spoke, Harley smelled whiskey. “Mr. Henry, that dog is practically Mose’s best friend. If you kill her—”

  Henry put the rest of his roll on the plate and stood up. “Boy, I cuffed you yesterday for interfering in my business. If you came here for a second helping—”

  The little bell over the door interrupted Henry’s threat.

  Harley and the store’s owner watched as a tall man wearing a dark suit made his way down the aisle. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.” An aura of wealth radiated from the customer.

  “Afternoon,” answered Henry. “May I help you, sir?”

  “It happens that I find myself in need of a set of wine goblets. Have you any in stock?”

  Nash Henry almost laughed out loud; he had two dozen crystal goblets that had been taking up storage space in his loft for nearly a decade. Ten years earlier, he let a smooth salesman convince him he and the Purvis Mercantile could lead the state’s retailers into the next century. Southern Mississippi was poised for growth, the man predicted, and a merchant with vision could position himself to ride the crest of the new prosperity. The plan was simple, said the salesman. “You sell one stem of crystal a week and you’ll double your yearly income. People will begin to hear of your reputation and sales will increase.” Henry was left holding twenty-four fancy wine goblets and high expectations for his future—his store was sure to become the flagship of a chain spreading rapidly across the South.

  Within a year of the salesman’s departure, the would-be merchandising giant was forced to take the crystal pieces out of the display case because his wife was using them to point out his gullibility to every customer who came through the doors. For the past ten years, his life had been one letdown after another, and he could trace every disappointment to the goblets. Nowadays, performing the store’s annual inventory always refreshed his wife’s memory, and he had to spend a week listening to the shrew carp about the money he had wasted on “those fancy gewgaws.”

  His hands shook as he pulled the napkin out of his collar and pointed over his shoulder at the back loft. “Well, I believe I still have some up in the warehouse section. How many do you require?”

  “Two dozen would suit me nicely.” The man’s accent did not come from anywhere in the South.

  Henry looked up at the storage area then glanced down at the new shirt he was wearing. Digging through that mess in the loft would be hot work, and his helper wouldn’t be at the store till after two o’clock. “If you can come back in an hour or so, I’ll have my boy pull them down.”

  The man pulled out an ornate gold watch and consulted it. “Mmm. The time is now one forty-five.” He shook his head. “I’m terribly sorry, but an hour from now I will be otherwise engaged.”

  The henpecked storekeeper decided he would rather ruin a drawer full of shirts than subject himself to another round of his wife’s bleating. He pushed through the little wooden gate and limped toward the stairs. “In that case, I’ll have them down here in a jiffy.”

  Henry was at the top of the stairs when the man in the suit said, “Perhaps I could provide some assistance.”

  The storekeeper was disappearing into the stacks of boxes. “You might. Just watch your step on the stairs.”

  “I’ll be right there,” the man answered. He paused to glance at Henry’s shotgun, then looked straight into Harley’s eyes. Seconds later he was mounting the stairs.

  Finding the goblets was harder than Henry expected, but minutes later he stacked two large wooden crates on the floor by the office railing; the store owner’s shirt, socks, and pants were sweat-soaked. Now was the time to open the negotiations for the crystal. “I should have told you sooner . . . these goblets are fairly expensive.”

  “Of course.”

  Henry put one of the crates on his desk and started working at the lid with a small pry bar. “I don’t remember seeing you around here before,” he said.

  “I have been in town on several occasions recently, but you and I have never met.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Henry’s mind was on making money, not friends, and the pry bar needed careful handling. “Quality like this comes priced pretty high, you know.”

  The customer smiled warmly and said, “I am quite confident that price will not be a hindrance to the sale.”

  Henry took time to return the smile and came close to offering the gentleman a drink.

  When the lid came off the first crate, Henry made a choking sound and turned as pale as paste. Harley and the man in the dark suit watched as the distraught merchant fell to his knees by the remaining crate. He worked the pry bar quickly, jerked the top off, and lifted some of the packing material. Small pieces of glass, none larger than a child’s fingernail, caught the light as they sprinkled from the shredded paper. The contents of both boxes, all twenty-four stems of crystal, had been completely pulverized. Nash Henry moaned and doubled over as if someone had kicked him in the stomach. There would be no redemption for him on this day.

  The man in the suit had seen enough. He said something about having other things he needed to do, turned abruptly, and made his way back down the aisle. The little bell tinkled, and he was gone.

  “How could this happen?” the storekeeper whispered at the broken glass. The largest sale in the history of the Purvis Mercantile evaporated before his eyes. All the nails, hammers, stick candy, and milk buckets in the store weren’t worth as much as he’d just lost. He stared at the tiny pieces of sparkling debris and began to weep; he could already hear his wife screeching at him, calling him a foolhardy dimwit. Tears of anger mixed with the sweat on his face and dripped into the box of broken ambitions.

  Crawford watched as Henry lurched to his feet and kicked at the box, missed it, and almost fell. Harley reached to steady him, and the man screamed a string of profanity heard by people out on the square. He turned on the only other person in the room. “Who did this?”

  Harley had never seen a grown man look so desperate. He shook his head sadly and said, “There ain’t no tellin’, Mr. Henry.”

  The troublemaking Crawford boy was standing there shakin
g his head, pretending he was sad, but Nash Henry wasn’t fooled. As soon as he got outside, the boy would be laughing and spreading the word about how he watched a grown man cry over some broken glass.

  Harley thought having the boxes out in the open was making things worse for Mr. Henry. He stooped over and picked up the crate from the floor, saying, “I can move these boxes out back for you, Mr. Henry.”

  Henry drew back his hand and struck the boy full in the face. The unexpected blow spun Harley around, and he collapsed under a shower of shredded paper and broken crystal.

  Henry was taking up his shotgun when the little bell over the front door jingled. A man in a Panama hat was silhouetted against the gray light from the store windows.

  “Is everything all right in here, Henry?”

  Outside the store, the day was growing darker, even as the man spoke.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Gilmer stood with his back to the front door, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim interior of the store. Fast-fading daylight came through the skylights and glinted on the shotgun in Henry’s hands.

  “Where’s the boy, Henry?”

  Harley stood up behind Henry. “I’m right here, Mr. Gilmer.” He was holding a hand to his nose—blood leaked from between his fingers.

  “Step over here by me.” Gilmer was moving down the wide aisle.

  Harley nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “You just hold it right there.” Henry took a step forward—the gloom in the building magnified the sound of the shotgun’s hammers snapping back. “Just because your family left you a lot of money doesn’t mean you can walk in and start giving orders in my store.”

  “That’s true, Nash.”

  Henry was drunk, or insane, or both. Gilmer wanted to get himself and Harley out of the store alive, but Henry could trigger both barrels of the shotgun before he could touch his pistol. He said, “I propose that we send Harley outside while we discuss whatever it is you have in mind.”

  “Well, I propose,” sneered Henry, “that you get out of here and mind your own business. This boy and I will stay here and mind ours.”

  “May I ask what Harley has to do with this?” The odds were weighed heavily against him, but he wasn’t going to leave the boy in the store with a crazy man.

  “No, you may not.” Henry raised the gun to his shoulder and looked at Gilmer over the barrels. “I’ll give you till the count of five to get out of my store. One.”

  In his lifetime, Gilmer had been called on to use a gun in one-on-one gunfights and pitched battles, at close quarters and in wide fields, while knee-deep in water and from the back of a running horse; while Henry might know how to shoot a shotgun, the one-armed man understood about gunfighting. He didn’t have to think—he only had to let his mind and body do what they had trained themselves to do.

  “Two.”

  Harley was almost directly behind Henry. The part of Gilmer that would dictate his moves in the fight was taking over. He took a step to his left so that the boy wouldn’t be in his line of fire. Harley saw this and moved to his right; he was still behind Henry, but now well clear—the hand he’d been holding over his nose went into his pocket.

  “Three.”

  Father, prayed the warrior, I desperately need a miracle. His left foot moved back slightly, and his body turned sideways to present less of a target.

  Harley Crawford’s bloody hand came out of his pocket. He opened it and held it out so that Gilmer could see what he was holding.

  “F-four!” stammered Henry.

  The boy was crying, his head bowed, his hand shaking; a pair of 12-gauge shotgun shells were nestled in his bloody palm.

  Gilmer moved his arms away from his sides. “Don’t shoot. I’ll leave.”

  Henry lowered the shotgun slightly. “Then do it,” he wheezed.

  Gilmer said, “Put your hand in your pocket, Harley, and go wait for me outside.”

  Henry snatched the gun’s stock back to his cheek. “If he takes a step, I’ll cut you in two.”

  Harley hesitated.

  “Go ahead, son.” Gilmer motioned at the door. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  Harley moved slowly at first, keeping an eye on Henry. The store owner gripped the shotgun with trembling hands; his eyes were squeezed shut. A high, pain-filled cry—the sound of an animal in agony— came from somewhere inside him. When the boy got to the door, he looked back in time to see Mr. Henry crumple to the floor by his office gate; scattered around him, a thousand points of light sparkled from tiny pieces of shattered dreams. Mr. Gilmer was walking up the aisle toward the front of the store.

  The little bell over the door sounded its musical note, but Nash Henry didn’t hear it.

  On the sidewalk, Gilmer handed Harley his handkerchief. “Did he break your nose?”

  Harley touched the cloth to his nose then examined it. He had his mind on something else. “We come out alive.”

  “We came out alive.”

  “Ain’t that the gospel truth.” Harley stared at the bloody handkerchief, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger, caught up in his own thoughts.

  Gilmer walked to the corner of the store and looked up at the sky. “Well, you saved some lives in there, son. How’d you manage to get your hands on the shotgun?”

  The boy followed Gilmer to the edge of the walkway without knowing it; the handkerchief was back at his nose. “It was my angel . . . my own personal guardian . . . walked in there big as all outdoors.” He was talking to himself more than to Gilmer. “He came right in that store an’ fixed it so Mr. Henry would get busy doin’ somethin’ else. He even gave me the idea about unloadin’ the gun.” A wide grin showed from behind the handkerchief, and he jerked his head at the bench. “I sat right there an’ prayed for him to go inside with me, an’ he did. He practically broke open that shotgun an’ handed me them shells.” The boy was shaking his head in wonder. The grin stayed, but the tears came; Gilmer was forgotten again. “God, You did it just for me . . . just me.”

  Harley had the man’s full attention. “Can you remember what he looked like?”

  “Who?” asked the distracted boy.

  “The angel, son. Can you remember what he looked like?”

  “To tell the truth, Mr. Gilmer, he looked a whole lot like you.” Harley looked up at the man. “That’s how I knowed he was my angel.”

  “You knew he was your angel.”

  “Yes, sir.” Harley barely heard him. He was remembering his angel. “I knowed it for sure.”

  Gilmer almost smiled.

  The boy got most of the blood off his face, thanks to the water pump at the courthouse. Gilmer was taking a closer look at his nose when Julia and her mother walked up.

  Elise Austin was clearly astounded, but she was learning. “Mr. Crawford, I beg you to tell me that you were injured while performing an heroic act.”

  The two men looked at each other and smiled, then Gilmer laughed. He didn’t laugh often, but when he did he enjoyed it. Harley, who had never even seen Mr. Gilmer smile, joined in because the man was laughing and because he was vastly relieved no one was killed.

  Julia Austin smiled. Her mother crossed her arms and waited.

  Gilmer recovered and said, “Forgive us, ladies, but Mr. Crawford did, in fact, save someone’s life.”

  “And you find humor in this?”

  Gilmer’s smile lost none of its liveliness. “I suppose I have that right, ma’am. The life he most assuredly saved was my own.”

  Both women looked at the boy. There was a courthouse bench nearby and Elise took a seat. “I would like very much to hear about this.”

  A sharp gust of wind blew across the square and Gilmer said, “Perhaps we should retire to the courthouse.”

  Dark gray clouds, black and bulbous on their underside, advanced on the town. Fat raindrops splattered here and there in the dusty street. Elise stood up. “Let’s.”

  Harley thought otherwise. “I better go see Mose. He’ll want to know about this
.”

  “You’re gonna get all wet,” warned Julia.

  Harley was thinking about angels, not thunderstorms. “It’ll just be a sprinkle.” He was turning away when Gilmer said, “Harley?”

  “Sir?”

  “Without those shotgun shells, he couldn’t win. What made you show them to me?”

  A long roll of thunder came from the advancing line of storms. Harley looked up at the darkening sky, then across the street at the Purvis Mercantile. His small audience was learning he would often take a breath and let it out before he spoke. “You needed to know he didn’t have a chance. Mose says, as long as a man’s breathin’, he still has a chance to pray to be a Christian . . . so Mr. Henry still has a chance. I knowed . . . uh, I knew you wouldn’t want to take his last chance.”

  “Of course,” Gilmer nodded. “I thank you for giving me the privilege of sparing his life.”

  “Yes, sir. I gotta go now. I gotta tell Mose Mr. Henry ain’t gonna shoot his dog.”

  Gilmer held up an arresting hand. “Harley?”

  The boy tried to stand still, but his feet wanted to get moving. “Sir?”

  “Mr. Henry hasn’t said he’s not going to shoot Mose’s dog.”

  “Oh.” He considered that for a minute then said, “Well, then me an’ Mose’ll have to pray, I reckon. My angel’s gonna be right by me, an’ Mose’s’ll be right by him. They’ll be standin’ up for us, sure as shootin’.”

  Gilmer and the ladies watched the boy jog off in the direction of the approaching weather.

  The chimes in the courthouse tower told the town it was two o’clock. Mr. Gilmer escorted the ladies up the walk and into the building.

  Harley beat the rain to Mose’s house, but barely. Mose and Lady were standing in the doorway of the lopsided barn, watching the sky turn a greenish color. Lady saw Crawford first and loped across the deserted horse lot to greet him. Mose followed. The three gathered by the old water trough.