With a clatter, her spoon slipped into the bowl. Mrs. Gavin squared her shoulders and looked him in the eye. “Are you a Communist, Mr. Wiley?”
“Me? No, ma'am, I'm an American, but I do believe there's a revolution coming where the poor will rise up against the powerful. Some people see it as a race war, but it is really a conflict between the classes, the oppressed versus the wealthy. And I truly believe that there will be much bloodshed on the streets before there are equal rights for the poor, for women, for people of all colors. The apocalypse is coming, and the new creation first requires the destruction of all that is truly wicked, and a cleansing of our sins. We've got problems in this country. Black men in Watts without jobs, poor people living like dogs, Tricky Dick Nixon in disgrace, gas shortages, and Whip Inflation Now buttons, and all you see is the rich man in the country club, the white-shirt crewcut Baptist, the jelly-doughnut-eating Mormons, the cannibalistic Catholics—”
Nothing but gape-jawed silence answered his outburst, and it seemed for a time that not a word would be spoken ever again. Erica stole glances at Mrs. Gavin, still and wild-eyed as she tried to digest his meaning, and at Wiley, who was reeling in his tongue. The three adults were hemmed in by their private fears of saying the next wrong thing. Only Una remained implacable and went back to her stew with gusto, pausing between bites to ask, “Are you a preacher, Mr. Wiley? A man of God?”
“No,” he said, with a smile. “I am lapsed.”
Erica leaned over to confide in the child. “A few days ago we met a man who told us not to pine after being alone in case you might get lost, and Wiley here, Mr. Wiley, he met a man who said if you take a man's life, you are bound to carry it with you for all eternity. Everyone has some holy message inside, some desire spoken only in their prayers.”
Inching closer, Una asked, “Are you a child of God yourself, Miss Nancy?”
From the head of the table, Mrs. Gavin cleared her throat, and the subject was changed. They talked about the colors of the autumn leaves, what happens to the ducks and other birds when it rains, and how quiet it was so far removed from other houses and the road. An apple pie appeared miraculously from the antique pie safe, a percolator bubbled with fresh coffee, and a game of cards resumed as the night settled into its quietus. When the hour drew late, Una was sent to ready herself for bed, and Mrs. Gavin disappeared soon after, only to return with the child, who handed out two sets of flannel pajamas.
“Goodnight. I'm so glad you found us and decided to stay,” Mrs. Gavin said, and then suddenly stepped forward to Erica and embraced her and the child together. Surprised by the gesture, Erica tightened her grip and pressed against the child's face, inhaling the scent of baby shampoo from her fine blonde hair. Off to bed they went, and from behind the closed door hummed a brief muffled conversation and the rhythm of a prayer, and later still, the melody of a cradle song.
“Who did she think we were?” Erica whispered in the dark.
He rolled to his side to face her. “A couple of ghosts.”
Tucked above the width of the great room was a narrow loft, and Erica and Wiley climbed a short ladder to find twin beds head to head beneath the cantilevered eaves. “It's like we're sleeping under a giant letter A,” Erica said. The rain beat against the shingles, and they crawled into one bed together and fumbled at each other's clothes while trying not to fall from the mattress. He clipped her nose with his elbow. Her left foot got caught between the bed frame and the wall. When they finally calculated the proper positions, they stopped short and breathlessly held each other still when a door opened downstairs and a nightlight snapped on to illuminate a corner of the hallway. Mee-Maw sighed to herself, then shut her door without turning the knob. They tensed and waited to hear the creaking of her bed. “Maybe this isn't such a good idea,” Erica said.
“What do you mean? It's always a good idea, and besides”—he thrust himself inside her—“I'm already there.”
She turned her head away, gritted her teeth, and tried to relax her clenched legs. It was all over within minutes. Working her hands flat against his chest, she pushed him away, gasping for breath. Her flannel top stuck to her skin, warm and moist with perspiration. Sated but clueless, he rose, pulled up the pajama bottoms, and flopped into the other bed. “We'll be gone in the morning,” he said. “And who cares what those people think?” Within minutes, he was fast asleep. Erica listened to his irregular breathing, the whistle in his nose sounding like a siren; she listened to the rain drip and the house groan and tick as the wood cooled in the passing hour. In the unfamiliar space, she lost the persistence of vision and the faith of her own sight. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine again the wedding in a ritzy chapel in Las Vegas, Elvis and his child bride, the rendezvous with all the other Angels in San Francisco. Magical city. Indelible pictures of her childhood. At Una's age, Erica had seen on television images of the Summer of Love, long hair and wild protest signs; the fallen soldiers arriving home box by box; on her father's desk, the Esquire magazine of Kennedy, Kennedy, and King standing among the gravestones; the riots in the streets, and flowers in gun muzzles, the boys and girls who believed they could change the world. She worried that the game would be finished before she and Wiley could get the chance to play the revolution over before it had really begun. Her hero would have no one left to save.
Restless, she rolled out of bed, and feeling with an outstretched palm along the unfamiliar wall, she found her way to the ladder and climbed down. Though she could not see, she felt the glass-eyed stares of the mounted trophies along the walls, the raccoon chittering from the mantel, the weight of the antique globes and heavy furniture scattered about the room pressing in on her. She shut her eyes, pretended to be blind, remembered her daddy on the bright green lawn, a kerchief stretched across his eyes as he stumbled and chased a circle of girls, all screaming with delight, at the birthday party the summer she turned seven. Did he ever catch a soul? At the corner where the kitchen met the hallway, she flicked on the light switch. Standing in front of her was the apparition of Una, stock-still in her white nightgown, the light streaming through the gauzy cotton to silhouette her thin body, nothing more than sticks bound by wire. “Jesus,” Erica said, “you scared me half to death. How long have you been there?”
Without her glasses, Una appeared much younger and more vulnerable, her green eyes blinking in the sudden light, the midnight look of the awakened caught between dreams, her pale skin reddening at the cheeks from leftover warmth of the bed. When she spoke to Erica, her voice cracked in tremolo, her words seemed wounded. “I heard you ascending from the loft and thought you couldn't sleep.”
“Descending. You're right. I'm sorry. A strange house and a strange day.”
“Shall I make you a potion? Hot spiced milk is what Mee-Maw always makes me when my thoughts are running away.”
Erica nodded and went to the fireplace, wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, and sat by the window, listening to the rain spatter against the glass. By and by, the child arrived, walking with measured steps and holding at arm's length a mug, the spoon clinking against the ceramic edge. The milk smelled of cardamom and honey, and at the first sip, Erica felt relaxed and full of sleep. Una sat in the next chair, curled her feet under her, and made a tent of the white nightgown over her knees. They whispered to each other in the dark.
“This is just the thing. I'll be asleep in no time.”
“It's a magic potion. Mee-Maw cackles when she's stirring, calls it her brew, like she's a witch.”
“Your grandma said she was expecting us?”
“She goes off in her own thoughts sometimes. Imagining what ain't here.”
After stifling a yawn, Erica took a long swallow. “You live here just the two of you? Where are your parents?”
“Lest you want to sleep down here in the parlor, you best get on up the ladder. That potion will have you dreaming in a few minutes.”
Fatigue raced through her veins like quicksilver. Her muscles felt like pulled
taffy. Ordering her legs to move, Erica trudged back to bed, and when her head landed on the pillow, she slept like a baby, endlessly rocking, gone from this world of cares.
15
“Here is a riddle I almost forgot to ask you,” Shirley Rinnick said. They had been requested to wait downstairs while Paul and Denny checked Wiley's room. “When is a thought just like the sea? Do you know? Today's Jumble question, do you remember? You helped me with ‘elate.’”
The sea. Maybe they've gone to the sea, Margaret thought. Forget all this crazy talk of revolution, they're just in love. They've eloped and gone to the Jersey shore, maybe, or Maryland, or Virginia even. The tide roaring in on the sand. Funny how after you're there more than a day, the surf gets in your head, your blood, in your legs. Tug of the sea for days after you go home. Remember Jackson running in the morning on the strand.
“I used the A and the T from ‘elate,’ if that helps you. When is a thought just like the sea? When it's … ? Two words, Mrs. Quinn.”
He loved you, that boy. Jackson. Romantic then, but now? Let's go to the ocean, he proposed, and stare all day at the waves.
“Mrs. Quinn. First word is one letter, and that's usually an A, so I'll give you that.”
Middle of fall, like now. All of twenty. Go stare at the waves.
“Second word, six letters. When it's a blank.”
Erica is not like me. She would go, if asked. Yes. That's where Paul went wrong, trying to keep her close, he held on too tightly to Erica. She went not just to be with this boy, but to go. To be free. Margaret looked at the woman across the table. “A notion.”
“Right you are, right you are,” Shirley answered. “How did you get it so fast? I didn't figure it at first, but the sea is the ocean. Not always the same, but still—”
“You think they're just on a getaway? You said they'll be back by Sunday night,” Margaret snapped at her. “He wouldn't have forced her to go? I saw that room of his. Wiley is an angry child.”
“I always do the Jumble, every day. Keeps the mind sharp.”
“What about the stolen car?” Margaret asked. “The guns, the cash from your hidden coffee can? How do you explain that, Mrs. Rinnick?” Kidnapped my daughter, she thought, and ran away, probably to get away from his crazy mother.
“A notion, an ocean.”
Oh be quiet, you stupid fat cow. Erica is missing and your son is to blame and all you can do is rattle on about some puzzle?
“A sharp mind is the key to life. If you have your wits, you have everything. You could lose an arm or a leg—”
She wanted to say: Shut up, you crazy bitch.
“—or even be paralyzed from the neck down, but as long as you have your mind, you're still alive, now aren't you? The mind has a power to solve life's puzzles. You just concentrate long enough and you make up the answer. What's the matter, Mrs. Quinn, still worried about your daughter? They've run away.”
Before she could reach over and strangle the woman, Margaret noticed the red flashing lights through the window. She hurried to open the door, usher in the two policemen to Paul and Denny, upstairs in the younger boy's room. The officers seemed discomfited by the circumstances, unsure of what they sought, and why they had to miss their dinner for a couple of runaways. Columns of teetering books lay all about the floor, books spilling under the bed, hiding between issues of newspapers and magazines, Rolling Stone and National Lampoon. Drugstore paperbacks, political screeds and works of philosophy. Ginsberg's Howl, Ker-ouac's On the Road, Conrad's The Secret Agent. Sandwiched between the mattress and the box spring were a few well-thumbed Playboys and a forgotten manual, How to Make a Bomb in Your Basement. Three of the walls had been painted black, and on the fourth, the painter had stopped midstroke next to the window and abandoned the project. The old white coat looked yellowed by smoke. Posters filled the space above the unmade bed: Lenin under the words “Acid Indigestion,” a white rabbit on a chessboard surrounded by psychedelic shades of blue and pink, a Wanted poster with mugshots of all the people involved with Watergate, and one of Patty Hearst as Tania, wielding a machine gun with a hydra-headed snake in the background.
When the younger policeman opened the closet door, they all saw stenciled in gold spray paint the AOD logo, with wings. Margaret had seen that design before but could not place it, though in truth the kids had so many cryptic symbols that often signified nothing more than the desire for peace, love, or bliss. Signs with no meaning. Still, she could not stop trying to remember where she had seen those wings and could not concentrate on the conversation from the other side of the room. Her husband argued quietly with one of the policemen. Out of his element, she thought. Away from the clinic, he projects nothing of the mastery when playing the doctor. The wise old man gently counseling the smokers and the drinkers who will not quit, the mothers who neglect vaccinations for their children and wonder why they are sick, the boy with the bad heart, the girl who refuses to speak. They look up to him like a good priest, rabbi, magician, miracle man. The truth was he had slowed to complacency, a year past the normal age for retirement, one slip from malpractice.
“Most of the time,” the older policeman said, “runaways like this call their folks in two, three hours, a couple of days, a week, tops. Course, the longer it goes …”
She whispered, “I have been such a bad mother.”
“But I don't believe,” Paul said, “that she would just run away like that—”
“Of course, we'll follow up, Mr. Quinn—”
“I'm a doctor.”
Margaret spoke in a loud voice. “She was in love, love. Love makes you do crazy things. Well, not you… but some people. Erica.” Every head in the room spun round to stare at her. She clapped her hand to her mouth. When is a thought just like the sea?
“Without an actual crime, there's not much to do but send out an alert. And wait to hear if anyone's seen them, but I wouldn't worry, Mrs. Quinn. Most of these kids think the world's going to be one way, turns out the world is something else. If you have any other thoughts about where to look…”
“I have absolutely no idea,” she said. And the voice inside her head kept time with her answer—a notion, a notion, an ocean.
16
When he tried to wake her and she would not get up, Wiley shrugged his shoulders, slipped into the old clothes of the missing man, and shin-nied down the ladder from the loft, following his nose to the source of its enchantment: bacon and eggs and coffee on the stove. The old woman and her strange granddaughter had already risen, dressed, and set the table for a feast: sliced bananas and poached pears ripe and juicy in porcelain bowls, a column of toasted homemade bread next to a perfect stick of butter, brimming jam jars, and a honeypot in the shape of a beehive. His mind wandered back across the room and up the ladder to his sleeping beauty, but let her rest, he decided. She had been through a lot in the past few days and seemed distressed by some malady he could not name. Let her sleep, and maybe she would awaken in a better mood, and besides, he did not want to wait to eat a minute longer. His hostesses did not trouble to ask but invited him instead to have a seat, get comfy, do you take sugar, Sugar?
Breakfasting at the rough pine table with the old woman and her granddaughter, Wiley imagined himself as a hero among the plain people. Mao dining with the proles, Che among the Cuban peasants in hiding from the Batistas, Lenin in his Siberian exile plotting what is to be done over borscht and glasses of strong, hot tea. The Gavins could not take their eyes off him, clearly admired him, and he felt a current pass among them. He was dangerous, valiant, a man of true principles, and these poor people looked upon him as savior, champion, destined for history.
Morning sunlight shone through the windows and altered the aspect of the room. What had been foreboding at night and in the gloom of rain now appeared merely old and forlorn, as tired as the fading year. The stuffed menagerie became a piebald zoo, the animals moth-chewed and dusty, their glass eyes clouded without the dancing reflections from the fire. The great
wooden globe was cracked and fissured, the paper peeling, a bare white patch where Greenland once lay, a curling lip off the coast of Chile. A cherry bureau which doubled as a desk was topped by a silvered mirror, which mangled one's impression in brushstrokes of clouds and obscurity. But the breakfast table shone with wax and groaned with food, which Wiley ate with guiltless pleasure. Erica did not wake all through second helpings, through the casually peeled orange, through the third freshening of the hot black coffee. She slept through scrubbing up; through his indifferent tour of the library, through his perusal of the vibrant color plates in Birds of Appalachia. Tired of the yellow warblers and pileated woodpeckers, tired of waiting for Erica to get out of bed, he found his jacket on a hook by the side door and went out into the late morning to find their car and see what could be done with a new day's patience.
She had been dreaming that the rain had stopped and the sun was shining, that when the shot rang out, she took off with the flock, their wings beating, voices crying in one great rush, and she rose above, could envision Wiley on the banks of the lake, gun in hand, and as he fired again, the cook exploded as the bullet hit his chest, saw him falling and the money erupt from the hole, saw the bills float in the air like oak leaves caught in a swirling breeze against the sun burning above. And then the pop and the flash as he fired again into her father and the money burst into air, burst into flames, and the body—Daddy—drifting in the dead man's float on the water, of no more consequence than a discarded sail, and she could not move from overhead as the birds scattered in panic.
When she could finally summon the strength to lift her eyelids Erica did not know where she was. The wooden beams in the rafters looked like timber from a cross in a church, then the upside-down ribs of a boat above her head. Disoriented, she closed her eyes, tried to remember, and then came the voice of the girl. “Miss Nancy, wake up,” she was saying. Who was Nancy? Wrestling an invisible weight upon her, she turned her head to the side and searched for the child. She wanted someone—her father, her mother—to come rescue her from this strange bed but could not find the words to cry out. Pebbles lined her throat, and paste caked at the corners of her eyes.
Angels of Destruction Page 18