Street of Angels

by Joe Derkacht

  He chuckled. “Naw, I guess I was drunk or something. Things happen, especially when you’re boozin’ it.”

  He raised his right arm and flexed his wrist. “I guess it was at your house some friend of yours busted my arm. Healed pretty well, didn’t it?

  “They sent me out on a road gang, cast and all,” he said, chuckling again. “Yup, the jails down here are pretty tough.”

  “Things happen,” Stella Jo repeated, not believing her ears, wondering what the boy found so amusing that he kept laughing to himself. At the same time the sight of his upraised arm, of tattoos spilling from his sleeve, disturbed her deeply. Her beloved Leonard had sported a couple of tattoos, one a ship’s anchor with U.S. Navy inscribed upon it, but this was different. She had definitely seen snakes writhing around his wrist, with red tongues darting like the tongue of the devil himself.

  “Is that what your parents taught you, young man, ‘Things happen’?”

  “My parents?” He turned and crossed his arms, then raised one hand to rest his stubbled chin in his open palm. The snakes licked at his stubble. The prisoner next to him scowled, turning him back to Stella. “I can’t say they taught me much, being on the road most of the time. I reckon they’re why I’m here, when it comes down to it.”

  Quite frankly, Stella wasn’t impressed. She had heard all sorts of these kinds of stories in her house on Flowers Avenue or on the street itself. It was the liquor or the drugs. If it wasn’t liquor or drugs, it was something else, say a father who beat his son or maybe one who neglected the son, was never around to lay his hand on him when he most needed correction. Money was sometimes the answer, though on Flowers it was more likely the lack thereof. Or maybe it was plain bad luck or living under an evil star. It was never the fault of the person who found himself in trouble.

  “Tell me what your parents did teach you,” she said.

  “Well, they did teach me to introduce myself properly, ma’am,” he replied, smiling quickly. “‘Hello, my name is Mark John Davies. I’m pleased to meet you. What’s yours, sir, or ma’am?’ Yup, I bet they told me that a thousand times.”

  He grinned at her, obviously waiting for an answer. Her cheeks flamed red at having forgotten her manners. Maybe it was the unfamiliarity of what she was doing and where she was, or the displeasure of the guard and her set-to with the woman sitting next to her. Or maybe she had been afraid to reveal her name, had been afraid of his reaction, even before she began her third degree of him.

  “Stella Jo, my name is Stella Jo, Mark John--you prefer to be called Mark John?” She asked, purposely omitting her last name and his. He answered with a vigorous nod. She looked closely for any sign of recognition in his face, but saw none. “That name doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  “Stella Jo,” he said, rubbing at his forehead. “Seems like I had an aunt somewhere up in Montana by that name. Or no, maybe that was the lady who ran the General Store, I dunno. That was a long time ago.”

  He winked slyly. “Could be she was my connection in Missoula. You know, for weed, stuff like that.”

  If he had meant to make her laugh, he did not succeed.

  “It sounds as though liquor and drugs are all you care about.”

  “My misspent youth,” he replied with a grin. “The Army straightened me out though--that’s why I went in. I was forced to go in at the age of seventeen. Did they tell you that?”

  She shook her head, steeling her heart against tears.

  He leaned close to the chicken-wire barrier. More quietly, he said, “Nam is where they turned me on to some really good stuff.”

  “It’s time, folks,” the guard announced from his desk. “Visit’s over, say your good-byes.”

  On the other side of the room, his counterpart opened the door for the prisoners to leave. There were groans from both prisoners and visitors.

  Mark John gestured for Stella Jo to come closer, and she automatically leaned forward, one ear toward the chicken wire.

  “But the best place I ever found for, you know, the stuff, is right here in jail, lady.”

  “Ma’am,” the guard said. “Ma’am! There’re lots of other folks waiting to visit, you know.”

  Stella Jo looked at the wall clock, startled that 30 minutes could have passed by so quickly. When she glanced back at Mark John, he was being hustled from the room.

  “Your purse, ma’am,” the guard said. He gestured her toward the door and began writing on his clipboard.

  “Thanks,” she said gratefully, knowing she would have otherwise forgotten it.

  #

  Stella fished her hairbrush out of her purse even as she stumbled into the ladies bathroom. One small tear escaped as she brushed vigorously at her shoulder-length brown hair. She paused, staring at herself in the mirror. Years ago, before she put on weight, she could have seen something of herself in Mark John Davies’ face. He looked enough like Angel to be his twin, except that a soul seemed to peep out from Angel’s washed out eyes. She wasn’t sure of Mark John Davies. In his eyes there was more husk than anything else.

  A toilet flushed, and in the mirror Stella was startled to see who emerged from the stall. It was the same black woman she’d had a set-to with in the visitation area. Her impulse was to bolt for it before the woman could look up from tucking her blouse back into the elastic waistband of her fuschia-colored skirt. But Stella felt a sudden, all-too-familiar tug at her heartstrings.

  “Would you like to use my hairbrush?” Stella asked. Once she felt the promptin’, as some folks call it, she wasn’t one to hold back or to be shy.

  The woman looked up with a glare. “Somethin’ wrong with my hair?”

  “I-I thought you might--” she began, suddenly unsure of herself. “I have to ask your forgiveness.”

  “Nothin’ wrong with my hair,” the woman said, grabbing the hairbrush from Stella’s hand. She squinted at the mirror, at the two parts of her hair that leaned away from each other as if they didn’t care to be seen together on the same head.

  Fumbling about in her purse, which was the size of a small suitcase, she pulled out a pair of thick glasses and pushed them onto the bridge of her nose.

  “I didn’t mean to offend you back there,” Stella began again.

  “Back there?” The woman said, turning on her.

  Her eyes, behind the curvature of her glasses, were large black pools, so black that Stella found the pupils to be undetectable.

  “In the visitin’ room,” Stella said.

  The woman grasped the two parts of her hair in one hand and began teasing them with the brush.

  “Was that you, messin’ in my business?”

  She had not actually said business, and Stella, harking back to her years as a school secretary, sorely wanted to ask how she spelled it. Bi’ness? Or maybe bidness?

  Resisting temptation, she said, “I just thought you wanted to look pretty.”

  “Huh!” The woman shot back. She threw the brush onto the bathroom counter and began rummaging in her purse for far more suitable implements. She cussed, not finding them, wondering aloud how she could have overlooked transferring her brushes and combs when she changed bags that morning.

  Stella Jo waited.

  “Where are things when you need ’em?” The woman muttered.

  “My name is Stella Jo McIlhenny,” Stella offered quietly.

  “So?” She said, turning her bespectacled gaze on Stella again.

  “I didn’t mean to offend, and I would like to make amends.”

  “Amends? You?”

  “Yes, I’d very much appreciate your coming to Sunday dinner, Miss--” Stella said, hoping the woman would catch the hint and supply her with her name.

  “Sunday dinner?” She said, her face screwing up in suspicion. “Whereabouts do you live, Stella Jo McIlninny?”

  “McIlhenny,” she gently corrected her. “Flowers Avenue, right next to the Baptist church.”

  “H
mmh. Flowers Ave,” she muttered, softening a little. She didn’t need to say anything about it being the Baptist church right next door for white folks.

  “You wouldn’t be the mother of that cripple boy, would you, the boy who carves all them beautiful angels?”

  “Why, yes I am,” Stella replied, startled that she was in the county courthouse in downtown Calneh and somebody could know her from her son’s statues.

  “My name is Hermione, Hermione Tharpewood,” she said. She reached for Stella’s hairbrush and handed it back to her. “I accept your apology, and I will be at your house for Sunday dinner, Miz McIlhenny.”

  “Please, call me Stella Jo.”

  “Stella Jo it is,” she said, curtseying with her head. She left Stella at the sink and smiled from beside the door. “I’ll be there, Stella Jo, don’t you worry none.”

  Unworried, Stella gave the mirror a grateful look and swiped at her hair with her hairbrush. She felt much better, like a burden had been lifted from her heart, for having asked Hermione Tharpewood’s forgiveness and inviting her to Sunday dinner. She would have to remember to buy another chicken at Piggly Wiggly on Saturday.

  By the time she reached the parking lot, tears were flowing. As much as she had been appalled by Mark John Davies, who looked so much like her Angel, she could not forget the color of his eyes. They were the same dark, sapphire blue as her own.

  ****

  Chapter 12

  To those who don’t know Calneh in the summertime or a lot of other places in the South, especially those around the Gulf, it’s difficult to explain what 100° Fahrenheit and 100% humidity can feel like. I don’t mean 100° and 100% humidity outside while you’re sitting inside watching TV and having your favorite drink over ice, the air conditioner blasting down on the back of your neck like a gale force wind out of the Arctic, either. Most homes on Flowers didn’t have air conditioners back then and many of them still don’t. Quite frankly, you would just have to be there to experience it to know what I’m talking about.

  Rivulets of sweat ran like fat tears down the back of Stella Jo’s neck and disappeared into the collar of her white blouse, and you would have been sweating just as badly, or likely worse, if you had been in her kitchen that Sunday afternoon. Ioletta Brown’s hair had lost its spring and lay in wilted coils across her forehead and the back of her neck. Futilely, the two women fanned themselves limp-handedly as they worked, and gasped for each breath of air like their lungs were straining for oxygen through a wet sponge. It was hot outside, but inside was like a blast furnace, with the gas oven running full bore and the four stovetop burners blazing under boiling pots. Elephants reared in sub-Saharan Africa would have fainted dead away in that kitchen, but Stella Jo and Ioletta pressed on with their work.

  Even before Stella climbed out of bed that morning, she knew the day would be hot. She just didn’t know how hot, which prompted her to start on Sunday dinner early. Instead of her usual, famous fried chicken cooked on the stovetop, she decided to use the oven. She had a recipe for a brown-sugar barbecue sauce that called for a secret ingredient, a shot of whiskey, actually, so she rummaged around in the back of her pantry cupboard, a largely disorganized affair like most every other cupboard, drawer, or cabinet in the rest of the house, until she found a pint flask.

  She screwed off the metal cap and took a whiff. Strictly for medicinal purposes, like rubbing on swollen joints or pouring a little in a toddy to relieve a cough, she hadn’t touched the evil stuff in several years. She wondered if whiskey could go bad? But it smelled like whiskey always did, at least the few times she had ever let it come near her nose. In any case, the flask was over a third full, enough for this last batch of barbecue sauce. She hated using it but loved the way people raved over her secret recipe, on the rare occasions she chose to bake the chicken instead of frying it in bacon grease on the stove top.

  Using the whiskey made her feel guilty. She couldn’t buy it herself; it wouldn’t look right for a good Christian woman to enter a liquor store. It would give people the wrong idea. Since Leonard, like most men, had had no qualms about liquor stores and what people thought, she’d always been able to have him procure it for her secret recipes, culinary and otherwise. But since his death, she had turned for her rare supply to the husbands of friends, not any in the Baptist church, either.

  It was ridiculous, the way the men would snicker and wink, as they handed the bottle over in a brown paper sack. She always made them promise not to tell anyone what she used it for, but she was sure they probably went right home and told the wife and all their friends. It wasn’t a very good witness. As she whisked the liquor into brown sugar and other secret ingredients, which included tomato juice, fresh lime juice, crushed garlic and a healthy dose of jalapeno, seeds intact, she told the Lord that this was the last time. Mind you, she didn’t exactly promise, but knowing the scripture as she did, she knew her ‘yea should be yea and her nay should be nay.’ Usually, her word was as good as anyone else’s sworn testimony. Better, come to think of it, the way people lie under oath nowadays, whether petty thieves or pathetic presidents.

  Where was she to dispose of the bottle? She would have to cram it into a sack with a few other things and hide it in the middle of other garbage. She sure didn’t want Abnethy Clemon, her garbage man and Ioletta’s unbelieving neighbor, thinking wrong things about her or starting rumors. Making someone stumble, as the scripture said, was serious business. Who knows? Ab Clemon might be just the tip of the iceberg--it could affect him and every one of his co-workers in the garbagemen’s union.

  Pride, wanting someone to rave about your chicken recipe, was serious business, too, she admitted to herself, as she brushed sauce over the chicken pieces and then poured the remainder over both trays of chicken. But most people didn’t think about things like that, anymore, she thought, sliding the trays into the oven, having set the racks at their proper heights. Things often seemed worse and worse in the world. One of Leonard’s favorite sayings, which she had always disapproved of, was that the country was goin’ to hell in a handbasket. Come to think of it, it had been the favorite saying of a lot of folks. And that was in the good ol’ days.

  Between Sunday School and church that morning there was just time enough to sneak over to the house to switch the trays of chicken, putting the one on the higher rack at the lower position and the lower one at the higher position, to make sure everything cooked evenly. The outside air was not yet 100°, but it was certainly over that in the kitchen. It didn’t help that the place smelled like a booze factory, or at least what she assumed a booze factory smelled like. By the time she fled the kitchen, she was feeling positively woozy.

  She couldn’t have the place smelling like booze. People were coming over for Sunday dinner as usual, including the young woman she’d met at the county jail earlier in the week, which meant she must cook something else to cover the smell. A chocolate cake would do the trick, especially her double-fudge recipe.

  Oh Lord, she moaned. The house would be hot! Why hadn’t she thought to let someone else cook the whole mess on their outdoor barbecue?

  Ioletta was kind enough not to ask that same question, but then it wasn’t her house that would still be boiling hot at midnight, when she was trying to sleep. As she walked into the kitchen, her nose wrinkled up at the oddly lingering smell. Unable to immediately place it (since whiskey was something she always associated with her childhood and not with good Christians), she launched into bitter complaint about all the folks who brought their raw vegetables to be cooked instead of doin’ it in their own kitchens. Of course it was terrible convenient for them, when they could pull up or chop down or break off their vegetables from the community garden outside Stella Jo’s front door and leave them on the porch.

  Stella and Ioletta finally retreated to the living room to finish preparing dinner. The heat and the humidity were simply not conducive to fellowship. Ioletta spread a cloth over Stella’s co
ffee table and began chopping up cooked potatoes and raw onions and sweet pickles for potato salad. Stella looked askance at her, but it wasn’t because she was chopping food on her one and only coffee table. Lord knows, the coffee table was every bit as scarred as the cutting board in her kitchen, serving as it did for Angel’s project surface when the weather was too bad for him to work outside. She didn’t care for cold potato salad to be hot potato salad, and Ioletta had just drained the boiling water from the potatoes in the kitchen sink.

  “Don’t be lookin’ at me like that,” Ioletta told her. “I know what you’re thinkin’. I’ll shove the whole mess into the freezer for a bit before we commence to eatin’.”

  “Have you looked in the freezer?” Stella retorted.

  “Good day to thaw the whole thang out,” she shot back, shaking her head. “Your housekeepin’, girl. I bet you ain’t defrosted it in two years.”

  Stella frowned, not answering, and Ioletta nodded to herself, another victory won. She glanced over at Angel, who had come home from church and crawled straightaway into Leonard’s old recliner chair and gone to sleep. This kind of weather always did in the poor boy. Every once in a while, a humming sound came from his direction. Even in his sleep, the music was in him.

  Stella left for the kitchen and came back with a pot and spoon in hand, preferring to stir her cooked-chocolate frosting in the living room instead of in the kitchen.

  “Took the sheet cakes out,” she announced quietly.

  Ioletta gathered up the potato salad, which she’d heaped into an outsized stainless steel bowl, and made another foray into the kitchen. She turned the flame off beneath a dozen boiling eggs, before emptying what contents she could from the freezer into the refrigerator to make room for the salad.

  Looking dour, Stella came in and wedged the pot of chocolate frosting into the refrigerator, before fetching the last of the items from the stove, while Ioletta ran water over the eggs and cracked their shells. The water from the tap was warm. There was no cold water to be coaxed from Calneh’s water lines on this day.

  Stella didn’t even glance up from her labors to complain about the smell, as Ioletta settled down at the coffee table and began peeling the eggs to top off the potato salad.