A Cry of Angels (21 page)

"
Jaaayell
!" barked Miss Esther.

"Well, I didn't want him for a best man anyway! The groom's supposed to pick the best man, ain't he? And I don't want
him
for my best man. . ." He pointed into the crowd below him. "I want—I want Carlos!" In the moment of stunned silence that followed he leaned down and clapped the startled black boy on the shoulder. "I want Carlos. He's the—best man I know."

There was tension in the air you could taste. The minister began anxiously clearing his throat.

"Jayell," said Miss Esther, "this has been enough for one day."

And to everyone's surprise, especially Em, Carlos and me, Jayell stared right back at her, and his voice was almost sober. "It's the most important day of my life, Miss Esther. I don't want that punk to stand up with me. I want my friends. I want it to be special."

And Miss Esther understood. Through the drunkenness, the disheveled appearance, the childlike petulance, she understood that it was a special day for him, simply more than he could handle.

"Well, this," she said, "is just going too far. You're only half of all this, Jayell. You've got to remember—only half."

He considered, wobbling uncertainly on the step as he looked about. "Em, then. I want Em for my best man."

Miss Esther looked at Gwen's mother. "I don't care!" said the other woman with a quivering shake of her head, "I don't care!"

We had all started into the church when Jayell, primed by that victory, played his last card. Faking a stumble, he cried, "I can't make it! Carlos, come here!" and before anyone could react he reached down and hauled Carlos up the steps. "Em, you keep hold of that side, Carlos, get this one. Hurt my foot!" he called to the others. "Got to have my boy here help me. Hold that door there, son," he told the usher. "Atta boy." And before he could be stopped he was dragging the two of them through the foyer and down the bright blue carpeted aisle.

The service was strained, but beautiful, and if I had thought the boarders were crying before, at the first chord of the wedding march they showed that they had only been priming themselves. Before the ceremony was half over they had used up every Kleenex and pocket handkerchief in the pew. Miss Esther, prepared as usual for all contingencies, sat dry-eyed, one ear cocked to the proceedings, casually tearing off and passing along sheets of toilet paper she had wadded in her pocketbook.

I have to admit, it finally got to me too. Whether it was the decorations, the music and the flowers and the romantic atmosphere, seeing Jayell down there looking as helpless as all grooms look at the altar, or the knowledge that Gwen was moving out of the house, I don't know, but it was all I could do to keep from choking up.

Gwen almost choked too, when she appeared in the aisle and saw the rumpled condition Jayell was in, and Em and Carlos looking sheepishly at her on either side of him. But aside from that initial jerk of surprise, she never showed it; she gritted down and kept coming. Knowing Jayell, I guess she expected that the wedding might be different in some way.

Jayell looked hung out and dried. He stood stolidly through the rites, haltingly murmuring his vows, with the toes of his stockinged foot laid over the one with the shoe.

There was one awkward moment with the ring, a little chicanery I don't think anyone else caught, but which I recognized as pure Jayell, having his wish at last.

Em had stood listening intently for his cue, the ring handed to him by Gwen's brother clutched tightly in his fist, and when the minister called for it to be placed on the prayer book he shoveled it out on his glistening palm. But at that moment Jayell's elbow bumped Em's, and the ring dropped to the floor.

Instantly Jayell bent to retrieve it, and in a moment of apparent confusion, turned and shoved the ring on Carlos. The startled youth returned it to the prayer book with the speed with which he might have hand-fed a moccasin.

The minister took it to the altar for the blessing.

Jayell turned to Carlos and smiled.

As soon as they were pronounced man and wife, Jayell flipped up Gwen's veil and kissed her, and started hauling her down the aisle. Mrs. Burns caught up with them at the door, and amid the confusion of congratulating boarders, Em and Carlos breaking for sunlight and small boys throwing rice, she reminded them about the reception.

"You go right ahead and have it, darling," shouted Jayell.

"It's all right, Mother," said Gwen, catching at her gown as Jayell dragged her down the steps.

But as Jayell reached sunshine and fresh air, all the strain, exhaustion and booze seemed to hit him at once. He wavered unsteadily, recovered, pulled Gwen toward the truck.

"Jayell," cried George Martin, "you're taking my car," which sat all decorated at the curb.

"It's all right, Mother," said Gwen vacantly, and I realized the poor girl was feeling the strain too.

Jayell pulled at her, staggered again, and went down flat on the sidewalk.

Em hurriedly lifted him and stretched him out in the back of the truck, from which he raised himself momentarily in the shower of rice and yelled, "Carlos, get us out of here!" before collapsing again. Poor terrified Carlos obediently jumped behind the wheel and fired the engine.

"Y' ain't got your bride!" screamed Em, and quickly hoisted the girl and dumped her in the battered cab beside Carlos. Fighting her gown and veil with a fist full of flowers, Gwen finally got rid of the bouquet by flinging it in a high backward arc.

Gwen's mother stood on the steps sobbing hysterically, aimlessly shoving her husband's arm back and forth. Mr. Burns, well braced by Burroughs and Rampey, simply stood smiling as his daughter was driven away to her honeymoon in a truck with her groom passed out in the back.

Carlos, a wrung-out case of nerves, with a white girl in a bridal gown beside him, clutched the wheel and drove carefully this time, with such depth of concentration that I don't think he took note of it when he cut too short at the corner and pulled the front fender off of Larry Burns's Thunderbird.

One of the finest things to do on a dull Sunday afternoon was to go inner-tubing on the Little Iron River, and the Sunday following Jayell's wedding seemed perfect. The day had all the markings: the heat, the sluggish stirrings, the musty smell, like yesterday called back for another shift. By midmorning even the clouds seemed to knock off and head home, dragging their shadows over the clothesline. When I went down after breakfast to wake Jojohn, he rubbed his soles on the blanket, scratched the insides of his thighs, opened one eye and hung a string of profanity across a full minute. It was just that kind of a day.

So, with nothing ahead more promising than a snake handler with cottonmouths everybody
knew
were defanged coming to Lamb of God Pentecostal that night, we decided to pick up Tio and have a day's run on the river. It would be good for Tio, too, we figured. Despite his and Em's nagging, Mr. Teague still hadn't come around to the notion of investing his small savings in a complete remodeling job and giving the supermarket a run for its money, and the store had continued to lose business.

There was more in store for us that day than we imagined. Indeed, the world I had known was about to start coming apart at the seams. But at that moment, the only thought in our heads was to try and get around the corner of Sunday.

Starting eight miles up at Shady Point, where an obliging cutter let us off, we shucked our clothes, shoved off in the inner tubes Em had rescued from a construction site, and spent the afternoon drifting home.

That part of the river is gone today, the miles of fertile bottomland engulfed by the backwaters of the great Oconostee dam, and of course the speedboats would make it unsafe for tubing. But that summer of 1953 was a different world, and there was a Little Iron River to go tubing on.

I was trailing a fishing line as usual, though I snagged and lost more books than I ever caught fish. Once I hooked something really big, a catfish, Em said, since nothing else grew that big in the river, and I quickly discovered that a skinny boy in an inner tube is in a poor bargaining position with a fish of any size. We had a circular good time for several minutes until I capsized against a log. Em carried on so he nearly upset his cooler of beer, and Tio, naked except for his hat, laughed so hard he slipped down through his inner tube and nearly drowned.

After we had been on the water about an hour the sky began to darken and it came up a shower, a brief summer spill that hung like a curtain over the river. As the chill set in we slid off the tubes and floated alongside.

"Done this with a girl one time," called Em.

"Done what, Em?" said Tio, kicking closer and holding on tight to his hat.

"Went swimmin' in the rain. Purty little gal that lived down the road from us." He hung his elbows over the side of his inner tube, in a soft mood, a wistful look on his face. "God, she was a fine little gal."

"Were you in love with her?" I asked.

"In a way, I reckon I was. But that was when I was young and didn't know nothin'."

"How come you didn't marry her?" said Tio.

"She was white," he said.

"Somehow, Jojohn," I said, "I can't see that stopping you."

Em paddled along with one hand, the rain draining down his face. "Like I said, I was young, and didn't know nothin'."

"Maybe it ain't too late," said Tio, seizing on it, "I'll bet you—I'll bet you she ain't married to this day. She lives alone, and clerks in a store, and goes home every night and sets by herself. And she's got this big old clawed-up tomcat that reminds her of you, and she just sets and looks at him. Why, I'll bet if you went back there today . . ."

Em said, "Shut up, Tio, I can't hear the rain."

We drifted along for a while in the cold gray splashing, moving slowly, without purpose, flowing where the river took us.

Finally I said, "Are you still in love with her?"

"Sometimes," he answered, "when I need her."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Love is a thing to take out when you need it, then put it away someplace. Nobody could stand it all the time."

"Jayell could, he's
got
to have it all the time."

"Jayell don't understand what it's all about. That's why he's in the shape he's in. Fools let it lead 'em around by the nose, like they do everything else."

"You mean to say you don't wish you'd married that girl, so she could be with you now?"

"If we'd got married, that'd have been one life. This one's another. That's all."

"But what's the use of loving somebody," I said, "if you can't have that somebody with you?"

Em pulled his hair out of his face. "Earl, all that's between a man and a woman is the same that's between two cats, or a couple of them fish down there. It's just nature sayin', 'Get in there and replace yourself, bring on some more of your kind before you die!' Love is a thing in your mind. But," he said, "you get attached to anybody or anything in this world, and you're askin' for trouble. What if the person you love happens to be the wrong color, or you get separated for some reason; what if they marry somebody else, or they die? What are you going to do, let it tear you apart, and lay back and waller and cry!"

He tapped his skull. "This is where you live, where all the things that matter are stored, where nobody can't get at 'em. You keep squared away up here, you're all right, it don't matter what goes on outside.

"So, they come to take away a love you got—they can't do it, any more'n they can take your good times. It's closed off, safe and warm, and whenever you need it, it's there. It's the only place it ever was anyway."

"You make it sound like going to the cupboard for a biscuit," Tio said.

Em rested a cheek on his hand and looked at him. "I wonder what Teague'd give me to drown you."

"That girl, is she with you now, Em, right this minute?"

Em nodded.

"What's it like, Em? What's it like?"

The rain was slackening off, falling to a scattered pelting across the water. Em lowered his chin on the tube.

"
Sssh
. . . look," he said, "listen."

From the shivering cold and chaotic gray splashing we drifted into the first shafts of sunlight breaking through the trees, soft dazzling strokes of warmth, dappling, sparkling on the water, the noise subsiding to the last pitting droplets from the overhanging leaves. And clearing before us again, the old beauty of the earth, comforting, familiar, yet fresh, emerging ever new, as always, from each shower. The trees, washed of their dust to deeper greens, lifted their branches lightly in the afterbreezes. Birds darted out, flicking, fussing at the wet, and slowly the woods revived with its million throbbings of bugs and flies. Under the patching sunshadows the river flowed quietly again.

Coming to the most deserted part of the river, the whine of saws began to reach us. We heaved ourselves into the inner tubes. Em pulled closer his cooler of beer. We would soon be passing Doc Bobo's sawmill. Time for caution.

Bobo ran the mill with black convict labor he bought from the county prison camp. It was not an uncommon practice, the so-called "work-release" programs, in which the most trusted convicts were allowed outside to work for private individuals for a small wage. But Bobo housed and fed his gang in his own enclosures at the mill. He took the worst lot, the hard cases, the troublemakers, and what wages there were went to the camp warden. It was a good arrangement. The county looked the other way.

As we drew nearer the Negro convicts straightened from their work to look. We must have been a peculiar sight to them, free as chips, floating along the river. Heads matted with sawdust, they stood watching with dripping faces until a scowling black guard, a "dog boy" in the characteristic snappy clothes and metal-studded leather belt, lifted his shotgun in the air. A warning to them, and us. They bent again to their work, the logs racked forth, the great saw screaming in the river-bottom heat of the quiet Sunday afternoon. From wire pens on the other side of the mill came the barking of the bulldogs Bobo bred for his fights.