Angels of Destruction

by Keith Donohue

  “Three thirty,” Wiley said. “Under an hour, give or take. You don't have to wait.”

  “We'll set awhile. I just like to be off the road afore dark. Can't see as good as I used to. You remember when I first laid eyes on you, thought you was my Cole.”

  “I'm not him.”

  “No.” She shook her head slowly. “No, you ain't. If he comes back to me, he will not leave me like this. The prodigal son returns humbled and is given the fatted calf.”

  The chrome gas pumps reflected shards of light. The day's temperature had reached its apogee, and a cool breeze foretold the chill night ahead. Erica tied a sweater around her shoulders, fighting off the lingering aftershock of her fever. Pressed to her side, Una took short sips from her bottle to make her soda pop last and thus forestall their farewells. “Will you write me a letter? I will write you back.” She slipped her a label with a PO box address.

  “I'll send you a postcard, okay? Next place we go. And when we're all settled, I'll write you again.”

  Hidden in her jacket was the small china cup she had rescued from the sandbox, trimmed in Wedgwood blue, painted with two birds in flight, holding up with their beaks a tiny banner between them. Una pressed it into Erica's palm. “I'd like you to have this to remember me by. You won't forget me?”

  She hugged the child one last time and nodded.

  “Can you tell me your real names? Romeo and Juliet?”

  Erica did not reply, but stared down the road for a long time. When Mrs. Gavin finished her Coke, she stood and signaled to her granddaughter. Goodbyes and thank-yous, an awkward embrace, and then they got into the car and drove away. When the Gavins had disappeared, he checked his wristwatch and announced they had another twenty minutes to wait for the bus.

  “Imagine that little girl, all alone with that old woman, and never knowing what happened to her parents. I feel sorry for her.”

  “Don't,” Wiley said, and then threw his empty bottle into the trash. “She was trying to get you hooked every night. Love junkie. That's how much she wanted to make her own dream come true. They would have kept you forever if they could.” Worse fates were possible, she decided, and better ones. Waiting for the bus, she resolved to rekindle her feelings for Wiley, to choose to be happy, to will herself to give in to his schemes and wild notions. She resolved to be what he wanted her to be, to change as he had changed. A silent laugh flared in her chest and rippled through her throat and echoed in her brain. The idea of forever seemed an impossibility, like love itself, or finding your way ashore from the middle of an ocean, or returning to earth after being abandoned at the top of the sky, blue as the cup resting in her hands.

  23

  Diane nearly bumped into the postman on her way out the door, and after apologies were exchanged, he handed her the mail and tipped his cap goodbye. In her haste to get back home to Washington, she passed the bundle on to Margaret, who laid the mess atop the sideboard by the door. Joe had been calling nightly, missing her, and at her sister's insistence she prepared to make the long drive back. Golden light dressed the morning, and the sisters, glowing white, lingered by the car packed with her suitcases. Reluctant to take her leave, Diane held her in her arms and would not let go. “You call me the minute you hear anything. You call me any time you need to talk, night or day.”

  Crushed by her sister's embrace, Margaret could only nod.

  “She'll be back,” Diane said. “I'll keep you both in my prayers.”

  Though she had her doubts, Margaret thanked her and stood in the street till the car vanished. With a sigh, she walked into the foyer and swept the mail together and laid the lot on the table. Already missing Diane, she fetched a cup of tea and sat to sort the junk from the bills. At the bottom of the stacks lay the postcard. On its face, a photograph of a Victorian funereal statue, a grieving stone angel in the foreground framed by bare branches in the wintry background. Historic Elmwood Cemetery, Memphis, Tennessee ran the caption.

  What kind of person would send such a morbid picture? She flipped over the card and the sight of her daughter's handwriting struck her in the solar plexus: “Do not be blue, for I am finally happy. Goodbye, and do not try to find us.” Without understanding, Margaret managed to read it twice before the first tear hit the saucer's edge.

  • • •

  ANOTHER PICTURE POSTCARD sent from Memphis arrived in the rural post office box but was not retrieved until the week of Thanksgiving, when Mrs. Gavin came into town to buy a small turkey. The photo on the front showed a downtown streetscape at dusk or dawn, a few stragglers talking in doorways, marquees glowing, and a lonesome car parked curbside. Beale Street and a progress of musical notes in the upper left corner, and Home of the Blues centered in the bottom. Una did not know why such a card had been chosen for her, but she kept it many years.

  Dear Una,

  Drat, I messed up with this postcard and meant to send this one to my mother and the one with the angel to you, for you are the true angel and I will always remember you. See, I told you I would write and will write again.

  “Miss Nancy”

  24

  They did not speak a word to each other the entire time in Arkansas. From the moment Wiley and Erica crossed the Mississippi to five hours later when they skirted Fort Smith on the western border, they stared out the windows at the passing pavement and had nothing to say. The day, which had started innocently, sweetly, perfectly, had degenerated into rancor and frustration. He fumed in the driver's seat, strangled the steering wheel, met her eyes only by accident. Cowed by his rage, she resented him, grew bored by his pettiness, found his attitudes and reasoning more than slightly absurd. No hope for peace existed while they were locked into the bucket seats and speeding down the road. She put her bare feet up on the dashboard. He drummed his fingers for an hour. They needed to stop and have it out or seek forgiveness from each other, but the urge for redemption gave way to the desire to put as much road as possible behind them.

  The car, a red Ford Torino, made the journey tolerable, that is, the car was clean, comfortable, handled the road with ease. They had stolen it the night before, their second evening in Memphis, and rejoiced in their good fortune. Behind locked doors, the keys in the ignition sparkled like gold, and all Wiley had to do was jimmy a hanger behind the window while she stood watch. From Beale Street, he drove straight to their hotel and sailed in, had the valet park the car in the garage, bold as you please, pretending they were two newlyweds enjoying an expensive gift from Mom and Dad. The thrill of the crime gave them a sense of invulnerability, and they ordered room service, beer and barbecue, throwing around their money and pretending to be who they were not. After the night's debauch, she woke up first early in the morning, and letting him sleep stretched out in a cruciform, Erica left the hotel to explore the city on her own. Stepping into the sudden light, she was unencumbered by the hovering presence of her familiars. The fatigue which had crept into her soul lifted with each step along the sidewalk. She had been overtired by solicitude and had borne too much the kindness of strangers. An hour or so in her own company, she felt, would refresh her spirit. At the corner, a bus ingested passengers, and she ran to join the line.

  The route wound from the city center up Third Street before turning right onto Walker at Gaston Park and into a leafy neighborhood, and with no particular place to go, she watched the changing housing patterns, the cars below, her fellow passengers. She had never seen so many black people together in one place and drank in the different skin tones from high yellow to burnt coffee, some folk with hair straight as her own, other's cut scalp-close like Wiley's and brittle stiff, still others under halos or helmets of hair, one man's Afro high enough to hide a tall black comb with five long teeth and the hilt shaped like a fist. Despite her stares, no one tried to speak with her, though one or two people looked back, and when their eyes met, she felt they could see inside her soul, so she immediately averted her gaze, ashamed. Two seats in front of her, an older man flinched at what he saw thr
ough the window, removed his fedora, and brought it to rest over his heart. Erica strained to see the object of his reverence and realized that they were passing a cemetery, and on impulse, she pulled the overhead cord to signal the driver to stop.

  Among the stones and statues, she wandered, dallying beneath the spreading elms and blazing myrtles continuing on all the way to the Victorian cottage at the northern end and its small gift shop, where she bought two postcards and stamps, and sitting in the quiet of the Confederates Rest, she wrote her messages. From across the green, a woman in round glasses and beret pretended to be reading from a small book, a woman who reminded her of the radiant angel of her dreams. She looked like the girl from Tennessee whose car they had stolen, and the woman she imagined that first night standing in front of the Friendship School as they raced past. When she finished writing the second postcard, Erica rose to cross the leaf-strewn lawn and speak to the stranger, but the figure had disappeared. After searching the forest of headstones and carved memorials without any luck, she caught another bus back to the hotel. Not gone but two hours.

  Though it was nearly noon, Wiley was still asleep, naked in the bed, a bare foot peeking from the covers, and smeared across the white sheets and pillowcases were crimson streaks the texture of dried blood, evidence of some gory struggle in her absence. Suicide, she thought, and I am the ghost upon the scene to lament the loss of one so young, no chance for the life expected, no revolution, no glory, no retirement to the wilderness, no babies crawling across the bare earthen floor. Romeo, in error. But when she slipped her hand beneath the covers, he stirred and pulled her to him, the spice of last night's barbecued ribs still on his lips. Her trailing arm brushed against his erection, and she smiled at him in the half-light pulsing through the drawn curtains.

  “But we should be quick,” he said as he tugged at her blouse. “We have to get out of this place.”

  Without his mane of curls framing his face, his head appeared like a dish on the stick of his neck, beet red from his exertions, his eyes wide, blank and unblinking, a hint of cruelty in his unchanging visage. His neck corded, a tremor ran the course of his shoulders, and his biceps twitched. She let him rest his weight against her bones, and he shivered, stopped, exhaled like a boiling kettle. As he relaxed, he felt heavier, and the slick of perspiration between them felt clammy against her skin. She patted him on the bottom and he rolled off.

  “How long have you been up?” he asked.

  Using her open palm, she fanned her face. “For hours. I already went out—”

  “Out? By yourself?” He propped himself by his elbow and stared at her.

  “To this cemetery. Historic Elmwood. I took the bus.”

  “You shouldn't go out by yourself.”

  “I needed some time alone. Nothing happened. I just sat there in the quiet with all those gravestones and all those souls underneath. Just sat in the sun to think.”

  “About what?” He licked his lips. “Why do you need to think?”

  “That morning you found me on the floor, I had been dreaming. The whole house was a nightmare, all those creepy things coming to life, coming to get me. I dreamt of my mother and father. And saw Una. Do you know she thought we were angels, real angels, because of this?” She traced the tattoo on his shoulder with her fingernails. “And I dreamt of that girl from Tennessee you wanted, only they were like angels. I saw her before on the night we ran away, and I'm starting to think there are angels everywhere.”

  Wiley groaned and pushed his head deep into the pillow. “You think too much. You let your imagination run away. Don't be going out without me.”

  Leaping off the bed, she found her discarded jeans and hoisted them up her legs. “I wanted to send a letter. I promised her I'd write.”

  “Who?” He was out of bed too, hands at his hips.

  “The little girl, Una.” The full-length mirror on the open bathroom door held her reflected gaze. Her illness had taken some weight from her frame, except for a tiny potbelly. She sucked in the bulge as best she could and studied her profile. “And my mother. I sent a card to my mother so she wouldn't worry—”

  “You what?” He rushed to the chair, flung on his pants and shirt.

  “So she wouldn't worry. I couldn't stand her waiting like Mee-Maw for someone who isn't coming back. Just to let her know, but I didn't say anything, just not to try to find us—”

  “Jesus, Erica. They'll start looking right here once they get your letter. What were you thinking?”

  They fought while packing to leave, fought on the elevator and in the checkout line in the lobby, fought in the car as they tried to find their way out of the maze of Memphis. He swore at her, called her unthinking, stupid, clueless. She absorbed the shocks with scant rebuttal, sniping back until they were high over the Mississippi River and the trestle shadows began skipping across their faces like the beat of a folksong. Halfway across, on the Arkansas side, a slick of algae bloomed in a broad arc in the muddy waters, and caught in the trash and muck, an anhinga, slick as a snake, labored to swim, and watching the water bird's efforts, Erica could no longer bear the sound of Wiley's voice. Or her own. They did not speak again until they reached Oklahoma, where they shot a man.

  25

  “Where are you going with that gun?” Erica wanted to stop him before it was too late, but she did not know how.

  In Garrison's Creek, Oklahoma, they had parked in the lot of a clapboard Mom-and-Pop roadside market with a pair of Esso gas pumps around back and a screendoor entrance that read Open though the place appeared deserted. All still for twenty minutes, no customers in or out, not a bird in the sky. In the front seat of the Torino, Wiley popped out the cylinder and inserted a moonclip with six rounds and tucked the Colt revolver inside his jacket. He reached behind the seat, fumbled with the blanket, and soon produced the shotgun, handing it to her as tenderly as an infant passed between them. “Take this,” he said, “and wait outside as lookout. If you see anyone coming, you stop them, and if you hear any trouble inside, you come in blazing like Patty Hearst.”

  “But Wiley—”

  “Don't but me. We're out of money, spent it all living it up in hotels and room service, and now's your chance to show you're ready. For the revolution. Comes a time in everyone's life where they must act instead of just thinking. This is your opportunity. Don't let it be your only chance.”

  A quartet of houseflies sunning themselves on the wooden columns stirred halfheartedly when Wiley stepped on the porch, and then they lurched back to the same sunlit spots, not even bothering to move when Erica took her post by the door. Wondering why he was taking so long, she stole glances at the scene inside. He pretended to be shopping the meager inventory. A jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, a quandary at the rack of jerky and pemmican. Laying the goods on the counter, he watched the man rise from his stool, put down the notebook he was writing in, and transfer the pen from his right hand to his left to ring up the prices on an old-fashioned cash register, an ordinary man, not particularly pleased or disturbed to have a customer in the heel of the afternoon, merely anxious to return to whatever he had been writing. With a ding, the total appeared and the register drawer sprang open, and the man looked up to announce the sum and found the one eye of the pistol staring back at him.

  “Count it out, mister, all of it, and put the money in a paper bag.”

  The man did not move but fixed his gaze on Wiley, committing the details of his face to memory. Since he had not spoken to a soul in hours, he cleared his throat and licked his dry lips. “You look like you just come out of, or are going into, the service, boy. How old are you anyway? You wanted something all you had to do is ask, so put up that Colt and I'll oblige.”

  Wiley thumbed back the hammer and locked it in place. “I'm not putting down nothing. Just put the money in the bag. Do it.”

  “Son, I'll give you one chance to redeem yourself in this moment. Never point a gun at a man unless you fix to shoot him, and never shoot a man without th
e will to kill him, if need be. Now, I don't believe you have the desire to shoot that Colt in your hands.”

  “Shut up.” He wagged the pistol at him. “Do what I tell you—”

  “There can't be more than seventy, eighty dollars in here. You reckon a man's life is such a paltry sum, you go on ahead. Like I said, had you first asked, I'd a given you what you need, no questions, but you do me a harm, and the price of my life is your soul.”

  “Shut up. You think I won't shoot you over seventy dollars, but that's where you're wrong. And if you are willing to spend your life at such a price, you place little value on it.”

  “You share my disdain for life, son. But do not sell your soul so cheaply.”

  Through the screendoor, Erica could see them arguing, so she fingered the pull trigger and slipped inside, brandishing the shotgun. The man behind the counter heard the door squeal on its hinges, saw the shadow enter the room. He remembered the pen, snug in his hand, and lifted it to make one final point. The shot left a quarter-sized hole in his shirt, hitting the pectoral muscle and passing through his back below the right scapula, twisting his frame like a boxer's jab. Without the noise and flash, he may not have realized the first shot, but the second, coming from the front of the store, felt like the sting of a host of wasps, the birdshot peppering the side of his face and blowing a hole through the hanging display of poker cards beyond his shoulder. The second shot echoed the first, a call and answer, the quake and the aftershock. The man fell to the floor, his face and neck bubbling blood, and Wiley and Erica froze, wondering what had possessed the other, the instant passing back and forth in hard stares, inscribing itself on the memory like a name on a stone. She cast off the wickedness that had leapt into her hands and dropped the shotgun with a clatter.