Angels Burning

by Tawni O'Dell

  Three old men wearing ballooning shorts with skinny pasty legs sticking out of them ending in black socks pulled halfway up their calves and some sort of orthopedic sandals have formed a peanut gallery for the driving range today. They all have on ball caps and wraparound sunglasses that remind me of the goggles we used to wear in high school chemistry labs and are drinking mugs of coffee that look too large for them to lift. They represent a third of the male population here. Of the forty residents, only nine are men.

  I greet them and the ladies sitting on the front porch.

  “Your grandma’s inside playing gin,” one of them tells me.

  “At eight in the morning?”

  “Playing for buttons.”

  “Ah, serious stuff.”

  The women spending their final days at the Sanctuary with my grandmother are part of a generation and a class of blue-collar and farm families that made their own clothes. Most of them were very accomplished seamstresses in their day and accumulated treasured stores of unmatched buttons over the years. My grandma kept hers in a coffee can. When we were kids, Neely and I would dump them out on the floor in a kaleidoscopic spill of little discs and sort them into piles ranging from the boring white ones to the ones we were convinced were made of actual jewels and precious metals. I can still remember some of my favorites: a navy blue one with a silver anchor on it, a red one carved to look like a rosebud, a glass one that sparkled like a diamond, a coppery one shaped like an owl, a purple Lucite one shaped like a heart, one made from peach-colored taffeta, one from scarlet velvet.

  The residents use them in place of money when they gamble. No one takes these stakes lightly. Everyone is sentimentally bound to their buttons.

  I check in at the front desk. I can see Grandma from here sitting at one of the tables in the common area with her friend Marge, both of their heads bent over their cards, their cottony-white hairdos emanating a tinge of chrome blue underneath the fluorescent lights. Grandma’s coffee can is sitting next to her elbow. Marge keeps her buttons in a shoe box.

  The rest of the tables are sparsely occupied with other ladies having their morning coffee. Some are reading the local newspaper. Someone must have woken up the managing editor last night, because Zane’s shooting made the front page. There’s a picture of Tug being led in handcuffs to one of our cruisers and one of Brie Massey following her son’s gurney to the ambulance. Thank God there isn’t one of me, but I’m sure some of the neighbors got me with their phones. They might have even taken video. I’m probably getting a million hits on YouTube right now stalking across the Massey front yard in my fiesta wear clutching my gun. I’ve probably overtaken Grumpy Cat.

  “Hi, Gram,” I greet her, and lean down to give her soft, powdery cheek a kiss; it’s like brushing my lips against a moth’s wings.

  She grabs my hand resting on her shoulder and gives it a quick squeeze, never taking her eyes from her cards.

  I called and told her I was coming.

  “Aw, don’t bet the turquoise button,” I tell her.

  “It’s fake.”

  “I know, but I love that one. Neely and I used to pretend it came from a real Indian.”

  “Let’s take a break, Marge,” she says, putting her cards facedown on the table. “This one won’t let me bet anything. It will be nothing but, ‘Oh, no. We used to pretend that one came from the moon, and not that one, we used to pretend it was real gold from a pirate’s chest.’ ”

  Marge smiles.

  “Just a bunch of worthless old buttons,” she says, surreptitiously unfolding a napkin and placing it on top of her pile.

  I crane my neck to get a look in her box, and she quickly covers it with the lid.

  “We saw you on the late news last night,” Marge tells me as I take a seat between the two of them.

  Great, I think to myself. There wasn’t time for anyone from the nearest TV news station to get there. Someone did film it with his phone.

  “What were you wearing?” Grandma asks.

  “Ugh.” I throw my head back and close my eyes. “I was almost killed, Grandma. Maybe you should ask me about that.”

  “There’s no such thing as almost killed. You’re either killed or you’re not.”

  I feel her pat my thigh under the table.

  “I’m glad you weren’t killed.”

  I don’t have much time. I should already be at the station. I’m not going to beat around the bush.

  “So you saw Tug Truly was the shooter?”

  “What a terrible, awful thing,” she says, shaking her head.

  Marge clucks her agreement.

  “First the girl is murdered, then the brother murders someone else.”

  “The Massey boy is still alive. He made it through surgery. There’s a chance he’s going to be okay.”

  Grandma doesn’t seem to hear. I’ve cleared center stage for her. All combined there are thousands of years of wisdom living under this roof and everyone is prepared to speak up on just about any topic, but my grandmother is the undisputed authority on murdered family members. Every ear in the room is tuned to our conversation, although everyone is acting like they’re absorbed in something else.

  This is exactly what I want. People sometimes clam up if you ask for information point-blank, but if you have a private conversation with someone loud enough for them to overhear and leave gaps in the story only they can fill, you’ll have your answers in no time.

  “There’s nothing worse than having your child die before you,” Grandma continues. “Cissy was so young and so pretty.”

  “I’m not allowed to talk about an ongoing investigation,” I announce, “but I have to tell you, when I went to talk to the Trulys . . .”

  I pause for a beat to let the wheels start turning.

  “All I can say is they’re a tough bunch of people.”

  Marge snorts but doesn’t say anything else.

  “They’re not tough; they’re mean,” I hear a quavering voice behind me.

  I glance over my shoulder and see a perfectly round little woman, with round glasses and a round knot of gray hair on the top of her head, cutting a piece of jelly toast with a fork and knife.

  She doesn’t look up.

  “I’d never met any of them before, and I was just doing my job,” I continue, “asking questions about Camio, when Miranda Truly comes in the room and starts saying horrible things about Mom. I guess she knew Donny’s mom, Betty.”

  Another snort from Marge.

  “What did she say?” Grandma asks indignantly.

  “The usual, Gram. You know. And she called me slut spit.”

  A communal gasp goes up around the room accompanied by a lot of head shaking.

  “Mean as cat shit,” the round woman mutters.

  “I don’t care. That stuff doesn’t bother me. What I couldn’t get over was how rude she was”—I look back over my shoulder again at the round woman who’s now sipping her coffee and still won’t make eye contact—“for no reason. I don’t know this woman. I’ve never done anything to her. And I was in her son’s house as the chief of police investigating her granddaughter’s murder. Blew my mind.”

  I sit back in my chair and wait.

  “Miranda Truly hates everyone,” a woman in a high-necked yellow blouse covered in a bluebird print says from across the room. All her wrinkles seem to run vertically as if her face has been folded the way Neely and I used to make paper fans.

  “Except for her own family,” I provide.

  “Ha!” the round woman explodes behind me.

  This time I turn completely around and stare at her until she looks at me.

  “She almost got her own sister killed from spreading hateful lies about her,” she supplies.

  “Sweet Jesus,” the woman with the pleated face says with a laugh. “I haven’t thought about Adelaide in years. Is she still alive?”

  “Last I heard, Bev,” Marge joins in the conversation. “She had to move away for her own safety,” she says to me.<
br />
  “What happened?”

  Everyone grows silent. I think I may have asked too bluntly and missed my opportunity when the round woman says, “Ask Mary Jo over there. She was married to one of their cousins. She saw the whole thing with her own eyes.”

  I follow her gaze to a woman who doesn’t appear to be all that much bigger than Mason. She’s wearing a brown velour tracksuit, enormous tortoiseshell glasses, and a reddish-brown wig that I can only describe as a hair hat.

  “I saw Eddie almost take his aunt’s head off with an ax,” Mary Jo says matter-of-factly, “but as far as the whole story behind it, I only know rumors and gossip like everybody else.”

  “Eddie?” I ask. “Miranda’s eldest son Eddie? The one who served in Vietnam?”

  “That’s the one,” Mary Jo says. “It happened not long after he came home. He was a mess back then. A scary, scary man.”

  “Addy was Miranda’s older sister,” Bev explains. “A sweet girl. Pretty. Hardworking. Never complained. The best cook you ever wanted to meet.”

  “She could cook,” the round woman concurs.

  “Miranda hated her. Always did. No one ever knew why.”

  “Jealousy,” the round woman says with a sigh. “Pure and simple.”

  “Miranda went around telling the most ridiculous stories about Addy,” Mary Jo says. “We all knew they weren’t true and we ignored her, but who knows how many people who didn’t know Addy the way we did might have believed them?

  “Long story short, Miranda told her own children the same twisted tales about Addy from the time they were little. And she had some doozies. One of her favorites was Addy locked her in a shed out back for three days and nights trying to starve her to death, and her mother didn’t even notice she was missing ’cause she didn’t care about her.”

  “I heard that one,” a woman sitting in a wheelchair with a book in her lap pipes up.

  “Then there was the time the girls were playing tag in and out of the house,” Mary Jo goes on. “This was back when storm doors had real glass in them. Addy went running outside. Miranda was hot on her heels and reached out to push open the door, but it had swung shut and latched and her hands went through the glass.”

  “Ouch,” I comment.

  I’ve started picking through Grandma’s buttons. She doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Her mother took her straight to the hospital. She got a couple of stiches in the palms of her hands. It wasn’t Addy’s fault, but she felt bad about it anyway. The version Miranda tells is Addy threw her out a second-story window and while she lay on the ground with shards of glass sticking out of her face and neck the rest of the family ate their dinner.”

  I look up from the coffee can of buttons.

  “No way. She told people this?”

  “Like I said, she told her own kids. And she also told them Addy hated them. She said, ‘Aunt Addy may seem nice to your faces, but behind your backs she tells everyone you’re ugly and stupid and not good enough to play with your cousins.’ Of course they believed her. They were her children. She was their mother. Why on earth would she make up terrible things about her own sister?”

  “It’s absolutely diabolical,” I comment, completely fascinated, repulsed, and slightly impressed.

  “She wanted them to hate Addy as much as she did. But it goes deeper than that. She has the same attitude toward the whole world. Before Miranda married into the Trulys, they weren’t a bad family. They weren’t all that good either. But nothing like what they’ve become. She’s created her own little country and everyone in it hates and distrusts anyone who isn’t one of them.”

  I see a glimmer of colors I recognize buried in the button mix. I dig deeper and come up with Neely’s favorite, a deep inky blue one swirled with green glitter. She used to call it the Earth button.

  “So what about Eddie and the ax?” I wonder.

  All eyes are on Mary Jo. No one is pretending not to listen anymore. Even some of the staff have drifted into the room and are spending an unnecessary amount of time wiping and straightening things.

  “Family picnic,” Mary Jo begins. “Too much drinking. I didn’t see what went on between Miranda and Addy, but apparently Miranda was all upset over something Addy said and Eddie went crazy. He picked up an ax and went after her screaming about how she tried to kill his mom when they were kids and how he knew she thought they were all white trash and on and on.

  “The other men kept him from hurting her, and that was the end of that. Addy moved away. She was already a widow by then. Her husband had died in a mine cave-in two years earlier. I think the only one of Miranda’s who kept in touch with her and her kids after she moved was Clark. He was close to her youngest daughter, Layla.”

  “Wasn’t that the one who died in the car wreck?” wheelchair lady asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Where did Addy move to?” I need to know.

  “Up around Altoona.”

  “And that made her feel safe? That’s only a couple hours from here.”

  “Far enough. Eddie could barely get off a barstool back then. He wasn’t going to chase someone over a mountain.”

  My phone rings. It’s the station. I excuse myself and walk away to take it, then return to Grandma.

  “I have to go,” I tell her, “but I have some important stuff I need to talk to you about, so I’ll be back soon.”

  “Let me walk you out,” she says, rising to her feet, and maneuvering expertly into her walker.

  “Thank you, ladies. You’ve been very helpful.”

  I get some smiles, some nods, some waves, and a salute from the round woman.

  “So how reliable was that information?” I ask Grandma as we slowly make our way to the front door.

  “Very. And it’s amazing when you consider none of them can remember what they had for dinner last night.”

  “What about you? Can you remember?”

  She smiles.

  “Dry roast beef, lumpy mashed potatoes, gravy from a can, and succotash.”

  I put my arm around her shoulders.

  “When I come back I’ll bring you a pizza.”

  “Dove,” she says, her tone and expression turning grave. “Lucky came by to see me.”

  “That fu—”

  I stop myself.

  “Did he upset you?”

  “No. He just wanted to tell me that he’s planning to make your life and Neely’s life miserable until you admit you didn’t see him kill your mother.”

  “And that didn’t upset you?”

  “You girls can take care of yourselves.”

  We’ve reached the door. One of the old guys is standing, yelling, and gesticulating wildly at one of the golfers who’s brandishing a golf club from behind the protective netting and yelling back. I don’t know what’s going on, but I want to get out of here before it turns into something I might have to mediate.

  “He says you lied to protect the person who did it,” Grandma reveals.

  I don’t respond to this. She doesn’t press me on the subject. She studies me from behind her glasses. Her eyes are alert and seem almost cunning to me. If they are the windows to our souls, then hers is thriving while its mortal home is rapidly deteriorating.

  I wonder how Grandma would’ve dealt with watching her beautiful daughter grow old if she had been given the chance. I’m sure she believes it would’ve been a crime for a girl that pretty to wrinkle and fade.

  My mother looked beautiful in her casket, she told me after the funeral. I was there, but I wouldn’t go look at Mom’s corpse. Nothing dead can be beautiful, I wanted to tell her, but I knew this would only confuse her, since she believed nothing beautiful could ever be dead.

  Mom’s face had been spared. Considering the rage behind the attack, some people wondered about that.

  “Maybe I can understand that,” Grandma says. “But why punish Lucky?”

  “He hit my sister.”

  “A man should sit in jail for thirty-five years
because he hit your sister?”

  She eyeballs my purse. She knows.

  “No,” I tell her, as I put the button I stole into her outstretched hand, “but I’ll settle for that.”

  chapter sixteen

  LUCKY WAS DOOMED without Neely and me; all we did was save the jury some deliberation time.

  The evidence against him was damning enough to convict him. He had motive and access. His fingerprints were all over the bathroom, although no one could say how long they’d been there. He had a history of violence, including two restraining orders taken out by old girlfriends, and a drunk and disorderly collar that involved punching the arresting officer.

  If I had been Lucky’s public defender, I would’ve put the victim on trial. It wouldn’t have been hard to convince twelve Laurel Countians that Cissy Carnahan had it coming to her in the scarlet letter sense of justice. My mom wasn’t a bad person as far as they knew. She didn’t lie, cheat, or steal. She was friendly. She worked for a living between boyfriends and prior to marrying Gil. She was helpful when she felt like it, generous when it was convenient, and could be knee-buckling charming, but like all attractive women who flaunt their looks, she had a lot of haters—women who were jealous of her, men who wanted her and couldn’t have her. Maybe she didn’t deserve to die because she was an adulteress with a slutty past and three illegitimate children, they could have reasoned, but her lifestyle had certain risks attached to it, and one of them may have been the possibility of being beaten to death with her son’s baseball bat by one of her jilted lovers while taking her nightly bubble bath. Lucky still would’ve been found guilty but maybe of a lesser charge with a lighter sentence.

  Either way he would’ve ended up in jail whether he did it or not, with or without our testimonies.

  I used to use this as an excuse to make me feel better; now the truth behind it is beginning to make me feel sick. Lucky was pushed in front of a bus. By me. It doesn’t matter if he was already stepping into its path.