Angels Burning

by Tawni O'Dell

  “Good-bye, Lucky.”

  “Not good-bye. I’ll be seeing you around. Your sister, too.”

  He stands up and stares down at me. I know he’s trying to rattle me, but he has no idea what he’s up against.

  I’m suddenly struck by the vivid image of my mother as I saw her before I left for school the day she died. She was standing in front of Gil’s big bay window in her shorty emerald green bathrobe sipping a cup of coffee and playing with her mane of Farrah hair. She was studying the neighbors’ trash as the garbage men tilted their cans into the masher at the back of the truck. She said you could tell a lot about people by what they threw away.

  Since she had married Gil and finally attained the respectability of a shared last name and a big house in an upscale part of town, she had begun spying on the neighbors, a pastime she had never indulged in when we were poor. Then, she had been content to be the object of everyone else’s prying eyes. Grandma called her new habit being a nosey parker until Gil taught her the word “voyeurism.” She preferred it, saying it sounded classy.

  Those acquainted with my mom’s past would go on to say that Cissy Carnahan dying on trash day was perfect timing.

  Lucky turns to leave and I begin to let my guard down, but he stops in the doorway.

  “All I want to know is why you and Neely lied and sent me to prison for something I didn’t do.”

  I don’t flinch. I stare him down, saying nothing, until he finally gives up and leaves.

  I will never tell him that I’ve often wondered the same thing.

  chapter three

  MY MOM’S MURDER is something I keep hidden most of the time; when I have to bring it out, I wear it like a crown or a noose, depending on my mood. After talking to Lucky, I’ve slipped it over me like a Kevlar vest.

  Her violent end happened thirty-five years ago, and even though it was the most heinous crime this town has ever seen up until today, it has been largely forgotten except by her children, her mother, and, of course, the man who unfairly paid for it.

  I like to think the man she was married to at the time remembers, too, as he continues to float around Europe on a cloud of family money serving out his self-imposed exile. At the time I wanted Gil as far away from my siblings and me as possible, but now I think I could finally deal with him properly. I wouldn’t mind if he came home again.

  However, I realize I’m not ready to deal with Lucky. I may have seemed tough and detached when I talked to him, but my conscience was wringing its hands inside me. My actions against him seemed inarguably necessary at the time; now I’m not so sure. One of the worst aspects of growing older is the lengthening of hindsight. As it stretches, it becomes thinner and more transparent and we see things more clearly.

  I drive home around noon to change my clothes. I’m still shoeless, and the feel of the gas pedal beneath my bare foot conjures up memories of Lucky giving me driving lessons. It was summer. He’d come roaring up on his motorcycle on a Saturday morning relishing the disapproving scowls on the faces of Gil’s neighbors peering out from behind their fancy drapes the same way Mom watched their garbage. I’d grab Gil’s car keys and run out to meet Lucky, usually forgetting to slip on my Dr. Scholl’s.

  Lucky’s relationship with Mom had ended five years earlier. After they broke up, a parade of men came and went before she finally took the plunge with Gilbert Rankin. I had begun to think that Mom was not only too beautiful for housework but also for marriage. I could imagine Grandma’s reasoning: “It would be a crime for a girl that pretty to only be able to manipulate one man for the rest of her life.”

  Mom had entered her thirties not seeming the least bit interested in a commitment, but I think Gil’s money and availability had been too much to pass up.

  Gil came from one of Buchanan’s wealthiest families. All small towns have a few who no one knows exactly where their money originally came from, but in Pennsylvania it can almost always be traced back to something dark or invisible that’s been dug, blasted, or piped out of the ground. His father had given him a department store and two restaurants to keep him busy. He also appeared to have an active love life, but despite constant rumors about possible potential spouses, he had never married or had any children.

  One day I came home from school to find Lucky lolling on Gil’s avocado-green-and-sunflower-yellow paisley-swirled couch with his steel-toed biker’s boots propped on the Lucite coffee table that looked like a gigantic ice cube made from lemonade. He had a can of beer in one hand and the other hand on Mom, who was laughing at something he’d said. They didn’t try to cover up anything when I walked in. It occurred to me fleetingly that they might be doing something they shouldn’t, but I had learned a long time ago not to judge my mother’s actions, since nothing productive or satisfying ever came of it. Mom was as oblivious to moral censure as Gil’s constantly yapping terrier was to shouts of “Shut up!”

  Lucky happened to drop by one day while I was asking Mom to take me driving. I was going to be able to get my permit soon, but I didn’t have anyone to teach me.

  Lucky volunteered. I don’t know if he did it thinking it might earn him points with Mom or if he wanted to be near my nice ass and already good-size rack, but I think the main reason was that before and after my lessons in the empty high school parking lot he got to drive Gil’s big, shiny, cranberry Buick Riviera, and he drove it way too fast.

  Learning to drive was one of those rare moments where I missed not having a dad. As far as I could tell, no one needed a dad. I didn’t feel this way because Cissy had been one of those impressive single moms who stepped up and admirably performed the roles of both parents; she barely showed up for her own part. It was because my siblings and I had survived without one, and we couldn’t miss what we didn’t have.

  However, society dictated that there were certain milestones in a daughter’s life that required a father. A dad taught you how to ride a bike, took you on your first camping trip, walked you down the aisle, and gave you driving lessons.

  I had never known my father, but at least I knew his name: Donny McMahon. He denied he was my father from the moment Mom informed him she was pregnant. This was back in the days before blood and DNA testing. They weren’t married, and Mom already had a bit of a reputation. There was no way to make him or the rest of his family accept me, although Grandma told me he came to see me when she was babysitting me and we were alone. My mom’s pride prevented her from allowing me to have a relationship with a man who spurned her and, more important, refused to pay up. Grandma insisted my dad loved me as long as no one was looking.

  He died two years after my birth, on a sleety day in March in the first Pontiac Sunbird our town had ever seen. The accident left him too mangled for an open casket. I have two photos of him that were taken before his face would become unrecognizable to his loved ones: a wallet-size senior picture from high school where my resemblance to him is painfully obvious, and a faded Polaroid of him grinning and posing next to the car that would be the instrument of his death a month after its purchase.

  Neely’s father was “passing through.” This is the only information we were ever given about him. We used to come up with all kinds of scenarios for who he was and how he and Mom met. Our favorite was to paint him as a masked hero along the lines of Zorro, or the Lone Ranger, or Batman. He broke into Mom’s bedroom one night, got her pregnant, and continued passing through before she was able to discover his identity.

  Champ’s father, on the other hand, was someone Mom knew well. He was a respectable guy with a wife and kids, or so Mom told us one drunken dateless night when she was stuck at home feeling sorry for herself. She went on to say she could never tell Champ his father’s name because she had promised him his bastard son would never try to contact him.

  Unlike Denial Donny and Passing Through, Champ’s principled father gave Mom a stack of ten-dollar bills once a month. It was hush money and that meant it was more reliable than traditional child support because he would’ve neve
r dreamed of missing a payment. We called him the Envelope.

  I always felt bad that Neely and Champ were saddled with an added burden that I had been spared. Throughout their childhoods they were forced to wonder about their dads and knew they could see them in the street and never know. It could have even happened to Neely. If her dad had passed through once, he could pass through again.

  I didn’t have these lost-father worries. I had a name, two photos, and I knew exactly where mine was at all times: the cemetery behind the Buchanan Methodist Church.

  After I change and make a sandwich, I drive to Neely’s before I head back to work. I don’t know why I feel the urgency. Even if Lucky was ambitious enough to try and find her, he’d never get anywhere near her unless she wanted him to. I don’t think he’d try to physically hurt her, and if he did, it would be bye-bye Lucky or at least good-bye to Lucky’s balls. I’m also not worried about any potential emotional damage he could cause her. Neely put away her feelings about Lucky a long time ago. I envy her that ability.

  I need to tell her now because otherwise I’ll spend the rest of the day thinking how wrong it is for me to know something big that Neely doesn’t know.

  The drive to her place raises my spirits and helps turn my thoughts away momentarily from the dead girl who’s lying on cold stainless steel in the county morgue waiting to be given a name. Neely’s compound is deep in the woods off a gravel road that runs through state park land past Laurel Dam, a lake fed by freezing mountain springs with a sandy beach area populated this time of year with picnicking families, blasé teens stretched out on blankets, and shrieking, blue-lipped children.

  No one would ever be able to find Neely’s place if it weren’t for the totem pole of warning signs at the bottom of her mile-long driveway that leads back through more dense forest to her home and office. She doesn’t advertise her business at all. Starting from the bottom, they read: NO TRESPASSING, NO SOLICITING, NO HUNTING. At the top is a gift from a grateful bichon frise owner who came to her all the way from Pittsburgh with a nippy, piddling, chronic yapper and left with a calm, quiet accessory she can now tuck confidently away in her designer tote; it’s a handcrafted sign that reads: BEWARE OF DOGS BUT BE TERRIFIED OF ME.

  Both of Neely’s pickup trucks are parked in their usual spots along with a car I don’t know. She must be with a client.

  I get out of my car and close the door and wait for the woods to come alive.

  I’m sure the dogs hear any vehicle the moment it turns up the drive, but they wait until it arrives at Neely’s log cabin office, parks, and the occupants get out before they appear. Neely never trained them to do this. It’s something they’ve developed on their own.

  No matter how many times I’ve experienced their greeting ritual, my heart always races and my mouth goes dry partly from an instinctual fear that dates back to our Neanderthal ancestors and partly from the thrill of watching these animals patrol their land.

  One moment, I’m alone. The next, I’m surrounded by five German shepherds. They materialize out of thin air without making a sound and stand evenly spaced around the edges of the tree line.

  When a newcomer notices one, he or she might smile or even call out to it. After all, they wouldn’t be at Neely’s place if they weren’t dog lovers. Then they spy another and another. Their eyes begin to dart nervously. They turn around and check behind them and what do they find? Oh, yes. Another one.

  The dogs don’t bark. They don’t rush forward. They stand perfectly still and watch. There’s Kris and Kross, identical red-and-black littermates with impeccable bloodlines brought over from Germany; the dignified Owen, a retired police dog from the Bronx; Maybe, a coal black shepherd mutt Neely rescued; and her beloved Smoke, an enormous ten-year-old pure white that I’m convinced not only understands the human language but can read our thoughts as well.

  Besides Neely and the boy, Tug, who works for her, I’m the human they know the best. They recognize me instantly but take their time acknowledging my right to be there. Maybe always breaks rank first and trots over with his tail waving happily behind him. Kris and Kross see this as their release cue and come galloping toward me. They’re only three years old, the youngest of the group, and want to play. I keep a couple tennis balls in my glove compartment for this very reason. As they approach, I hold one up in each hand. They both stop at the same instant, their eyes fixated on their quarry. I throw both balls at the same time in opposite directions and they tear off after them.

  Owen arrives next and walks the perimeter of my car before he lets me pet him. Smoke disappears back into the trees.

  Kris and Kross are back already.

  I throw the balls again.

  Neely’s office door opens and she walks out along with a man and a pit bull.

  It’s a hot day but she’s in her usual jeans, work boots, and a plaid flannel shirt over a T-shirt. Her long blond hair, sugared with strands of silver, is pulled back in a ponytail and hidden beneath a state police K-9 unit ball cap.

  Over the years, I’ve come up with the theory that stunningly beautiful women can only deal with their affliction in one of two extreme ways: they can embrace it wholeheartedly at the expense of everything else about them, or they can deny it and try to hide from it.

  Neely has gone the second route. It hasn’t worked in my opinion. She can cover herself up in men’s clothes and shun makeup, jewelry, and blow-dryers all she wants, but unless she were to put on a mask like we used to theorize her dad wore on the fateful night of her conception, her exquisite face is there for all to see.

  Strangely enough, even though she’s the attractive female offspring of an attractive female, she and Mom never bore any resemblance to each other except for sharing the same wide-set, pale blue topaz eyes. I told Neely once in a burst of sisterly ego-boosting that they looked just like the December birthstone ring behind the Woolworth’s jewelry counter she wanted so badly. She told me my eyes looked like melted brown sugar. This is one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever been given.

  Neely’s dogs all start toward the pit bull that begins to bark menacingly and strain on its leash. Neely calls out in a stern voice, “Stop!” She doesn’t repeat the command. She doesn’t deliver it as an angry shout or a wheedling request. All of her dogs do what they’re told. They stand at attention, panting. Smoke reappears, slipping silently out of the trees.

  The pit bull goes nuts.

  Neely tilts her head and gives the man an expectant look.

  He immediately begins yanking upward on his dog’s leash and yelling, “Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!”

  “Make her heel,” Neely says. “In a circle. Like I showed you.”

  “Heel!” the man shouts. “Heel!”

  “Say it; don’t scream it.”

  “Heel,” he says.

  The man starts walking in a tight loop while continuing to yank on the chain. The dog falls into step but doesn’t stop barking and lunging. The man’s arms move up and down like pistons. His neck turns a dangerous shade of red, and patches of sweat form under his arms. I’m beginning to think he might have a stroke when the dog finally begins to obey. By the time Neely releases them and allows them to get into their car, the two of them are walking well together. The dog is focused on the task at hand, not the other dogs.

  “Was that Lucy?” I ask Neely when she joins me.

  She nods.

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Fine.”

  “Did the cat live?”

  “It did.”

  “Free,” she calls out to her dogs, and they head to the spot where Lucy last stood with their noses to the ground.

  “Do you mind taking off that flannel shirt? You’re making me hot.”

  Smoke has silently shown up next to Neely’s side. He watches her closely as she slips off the offending garment without saying a word and ties it around her waist. The T-shirt beneath it is gray.

  “It’s summer, Neely. Lighten up. I’m going to get you a bunch of colo
rful tank tops. Yellow, orange, pink, purple . . .”

  “Great,” she says. “I could use some new rags. I want to wash the trucks this weekend.”

  “You’ll be happy to know my new blouse got ruined this morning.”

  “The drapey floral one that looked like a seat cushion from an old lady’s wicker porch furniture?”

  “It’s a trend.”

  She gives me a small, quick smile. It’s gone almost before I see it. Neely smiles only slightly more often than Mom used to clean.

  “How’d you ruin it?”

  “Climbing into a sinkhole out at Campbell’s Run to retrieve a dead girl’s body.”

  The information doesn’t seem to surprise her. This isn’t because I’m constantly dragging around dead bodies but because not much surprises her.

  “That’s terrible,” she says. “Do you know who she is?”

  “Not yet. You won’t believe who found the body. Buck the dog.”

  “I know about thirty Buck-the-dogs.”

  “I don’t think you know this one. He belongs to Rudy Mayfield.”

  She ponders the name while shooing away Kris and Kross, who’ve shown up for more fetch. She takes the tennis balls from me and returns them to my car.

  “Rudy Mayfield,” she begins. “He had green eyes, and sat next to you in health class, and was always telling you about his latest project in metal shop.”

  “I think it was a form of foreplay for him,” I add to the description. “You have an incredible memory.”

  “How’d he look?”

  “Not good. He’s gained a lot of weight.”

  We’ve started strolling toward her office, where she’s going to grab a can of Coke from her vending machine, the only extravagance in her life.

  Smoke remains at her side. The four other dogs follow behind her in pied piper fashion.

  “You know,” she says, “a lot of people in other depressed areas of Appalachia have turned to crystal meth to help them cope with the destruction of their economy and way of life. Around here our drug of choice seems to be carbohydrates. I suppose that’s the lesser of two evils.”