A Cry of Angels (35 page)

"All right," I cried, dancing in slopping wet shoes, "just stay here, then!" I tried the window. I jerked and tugged but it was warped and swollen with the rain. "Oh, Lord," I muttered. "Oh, Lord in heaven." I bolted for the door and jerked it open.

There in the darkness sat a subhuman thing. And it was staring at me. The hollowed eyes shone with fury.

"
Eeeeeee
!" The stringy blond hair, half eaten away by a crust of scabs, shook with the arc of the bony fist that buried itself in my stomach.

I doubled over, numb with white-hot pain, and felt a grip in my hair. I was on my knees, trying to pull away, trying to crawl, but it hung to me like a monkey, skittering with demonic glee, nails digging into my scalp, suffocating me in its smell. The knees on the floor made the sounds of bones.

Suddenly there was a shadow bending by me, strong white arms, and struggling, protests and whinings. Phaedra straightened with a figure in her arms, no larger than a child, and hurriedly limped for the door. I heard their voices in the hall, Phaedra's gentle, coaxing, and the other, garrulous, phlegm-chested, stabbing with bitter invective. "Rotten! Leave me to die . . . filthy bitch!"

"It's all right, Mama, it's all right. Come on now, back to bed. I'll get your medicine . . ."

". . . got in there? Hah? Marvin! Marvin . . ."

"Papa's asleep.
Ssssh
, now, Mama, it's all right."

"Let me die . . . oh, sweet Jesus, please let me die!"

Jayell was clawing for his clothes. He bundled them in his arms and we scrambled out the hall, off the porch, and hit the ground running. Well into the cemetery, he danced on the freezing sand and pulled them on. "You
are
crazy," I said shakily, "crazy as everybody says. What is wrong with you, Jayell?"

He was snubbing me, looking around for a shoe. "Leave me alone. Leave me alone." He rounded the tombstones, holding his aching leg, looking for the shoe.

"How could you leave her? She's in love with you, can't you see that?"

He gritted his teeth and made a sound like a wounded cat, a cry of shivering agony over the tombstones. I followed him limping across the stony ground. He was hugging himself, hobbling away from the piercing cries of the house. "I tried," he said in a choking voice, "I begged her! She wouldn't leave, I couldn't get her away from—that
thing
in there! And there was Gwen—straight up, clean, feeling nothing. Oh, Goddamn! Goddamn! Goddamn! Why has it
all
got to be this way?"

We rounded the curve through the sedgefield, Jayell limping and sobbing, absently looking along the roadside for his shoe, moving away from the dismal house, standing quiet now, all dark and gray but for that dim, eternal glow that shone from the living-room shades.

Em sat watching the night. He said nothing as I pulled off my sopping clothes and climbed into bed. He poured another glass of whiskey from the fruit jar he held on his lap and took a long swallow, his eyes fixed on me.

"What you seen tonight?"

"Just ghosts and goblins, Em, ghosts and goblins." I studied the big U.S. on the army blanket.

"What'd you do, fall in the river?"

I turned and looked at him. He wasn't drunk.

"You saw us go through the field, didn't you?"

"It was a matter of time."

I sat up in bed. "You knew they'd been seein' each other while he was laid up, didn't you?"

"I know lots of things," he said, the expression unchanging in his eyes.

"Jayell wanted to marry Phaedra. She turned him down, did you know that? She turned him down because of her mother. Seems like everybody is trapped in one way or another, don't it." I shivered, and lay down and cocooned myself in the blanket lest I catch cold from the wet. "I saw her mother tonight," I said. "You never know what's in the next house, do you, Em?"

Em sat drinking quietly, watching the night. He was sitting that way, his breath singing softly, when I finally drifted off to sleep.

When Tio found out about the motorcycle he was beside himself. "That's an old Harley 80 stroker!" he cried as Em lifted it out of the water. "She'll bust the road wide open!"

"Won't be bustin' nothin' anymore," observed Em, watching the mud and water drip. "Front tire's gone, frame twisted. You got a piece of junk there's what you got."

Tio was all over it, squatting, feeling, testing, pulling. "You don't know what you're talkin' about, man; we take her apart and clean her up, touch up a little here and there, this mama bird'll totally fly!"

We dragged it back to the garage and Tio cleared a space and began overhauling operations immediately. He spread one of Mr. Teague's best bedsheets on the dirt floor, and in no time it was covered with rods, tubes, bearings, pistons, springs, gaskets and metal entrails of every shape and size. I was amazed at how many parts a motorcycle could be broken into, and still Tio was taking parts out of parts. I was surprised when he set the wheels aside without removing the spokes. Then he started removing the spokes.

"I can't stand here and watch this slaughter," said Em, and wandered off to get a beer.

Later that afternoon, when I was in the loft fixing supper, I heard a slight noise, like coals falling in the heater. At first I thought nothing of it, thinking it was Tio down below. Then I heard it again, a scraping, and coming not from below, but from the shed side of the garage, and I turned in time to see a blue-jeaned leg come over the window sill. Phaedra Boggs lifted herself easily through the opening and dropped Jayell's missing shoe on the floor.

"Hi, sport," she said, smiling.

"Well, hello," I said. "You know, there's a door over on the other side."

"Yeah, I know," she said, tugging at her sweatshirt. "I didn't want to be seen from the house. You can't see this side from up there."

"I didn't know you could see
any
side from your place." That was a revelation. I had always thought the garage was completely secluded. She went to the window and pointed. "Up through there, see that little patch of white? That's the corner of my bedroom. You can see the whole place from up there. I used to watch you and the Indian sleeping on the floor in the summer—that looked like fun—and a couple of times I saw you coming up from the shower. Hah! You're blushing!" Her eyes twinkled mischievously. "Aw, don't worry, Early boy, you got nothing big enough to be seen from that distance."

I shoved a pot to the back of the stove and she broke up, doubling over, the laughter coming in deep, rich waves. After a moment, she said, "Seriously, I came to thank you, Earl, boy. You pulled me out of a grand mess last night."

"Yeah, well, I thought I was saving the devil. If I'd known it was you I might have let you drown. Want some coffee?"

"I'd love some. Here, I'll fix it. Sit down."

I lifted myself on the sill. "What were they after you for anyway?"

Phaedra shrugged. "Speeding, the costume—who knows. The highway patrol got in behind me about ten miles out, and I guess they radioed ahead because the city boys had a roadblock waiting at Four Forks. It was close gettin' there for a while."

"Where were you coming from?"

"Fraternity-house party in Athens. Vince Oliver took me over. But the games got childish so Sally grabbed her clothes and came home. The devil suit was the nearest thing handy."

"How did you come by the bike?"

"Some jerk stopped and offered me a lift home, but it turned out it was his home he had in mind, so I unloaded him at a red light and came on."

"It's downstairs, by the way. What you want us to do with it?"

"Keep it, sell it for junk—who cares.

Won't he come looking for it?"

"Nab, the creep never even asked where I lived. He got a couple of free feels, consider it paid for." Phaedra winked, without humor. "You got to hold yourself high."

"Phaedra, why do you treat yourself like a whore?"

Phaedra looked at me, the old hard glint in her eye. "All women are whores, Early boy. Only the prices vary."

There were footsteps on the stairs. Uneven steps. Phaedra lifted her head and looked at me. Neither of us had to guess who it was. Jayell knocked the mud off his boots and opened the door. He saw Phaedra and stopped.

"Don't panic, Jack." Phaedra was amused at his discomfort. "I just came to deliver your shoe. There's lipstick on the toe, but I don't think your wife will notice."

Jayell grinned and pulled up a chair. "Anybody ever tell you you're a smartass?"

She chuckled. "All the time, Jack, all the time."

"Before you two get any notions of starting up where you left off last night," I said, "I want to warn you, me and Em run a Christian loft."

Jayell began pulling cockleburs out of his cuff. "Then, how about some of that coffee?"

"It's Jojohn's," Phaedra warned. "Tastes like hot tar with chicory in it. Got another cup, Earl?"

"You'll have to get a jelly glass."

"Where is Em?" said Jayell. "I got a load of concrete blocks to get off before dark."

"He's due back for supper any minute."

"How are things at Smithbilt?" asked Phaedra.

"Repetitive." Jayell took his coffee and blew on it. He looked around the loft. "Well, how do you like living with Jojohn?"

"Beats sleeping in a ditch," I said, "but not much."

Jayell thumped the thin flooring with his boot and ran his eyes along the studded walls. "Remind me to put you some plywood on these walls—at least keep the wind out." He spied my spider web in the corner and lifted his cap to swipe at it. I caught him just in time to save it.

"That's my project for biology class," I said. "I've got to take him to school next week."

"Growing your own spider, huh? Hell, I'll bet there's enough of 'em around the old shop by now to supply the whole school. I'm in the wrong business." He scraped his chair around and studied it. The black and yellow spider sat at the top of the web, no doubt studying Jayell in return. "What kind is it?"

"Regular old garden spider," I said.

Phaedra leaned down. "
Epeira gemma
."

"Oh, well, yeah, 'course you'd have the proper insect name . . ."

"Spiders aren't insects," she said, sipping her coffee. "Arachnids."

"What's this little lump here?'' Jayell pointed to a silky sac near the center of the web.

"That's a fly he caught. You must have scared him off his dinner."

"Nah, he's canning that one for later—see how he's got it all wrapped up? Couldn't eat it like that."

"They don't eat 'em," I said, "they just suck out the juice. Spiders are on a liquid diet."

"Yeah?"

"Tha—a—at's right," said Phaedra. She put her head down close to his. "Catches him . . . binds him up . . . and sucks-the-poor bastard-dry."

Jayell turned and looked in her eyes. She was watching him closely. He glanced back at the hapless creature in his silken coffin then suddenly shoved back his chair and pulled on his cap. "Well, I can't wait around all day. Tell Em I'll catch him another time."

At that moment there were other footsteps on the stairs. Heavier ones. Em and Jayell almost collided in the door.

"Hyeah, now—I didn't know we had comp'ny."

"Just leavin'," said Jayell, edging by, "talk to you later."

"What about the blocks?" I said.

"Too dark now, I'll load 'em off in the morning." Jayell brushed by Em and went stumping unevenly down the stairs.

"Who bit his tail?" said Em.

"Ah, he's a funny bird," said Phaedra, throwing a leg over the sill. "How you been, Em?"

"Doin' no good a'tall. Hey, you ain't leavin' too!"

"Yeah, runnin' late." She leaned over and flicked a hand through my hair. "Thanks again, Early boy." And she dropped down onto the shed.

"Damn," mused Em, "I show up and they go out the doors and winders. Looks like I'd get used to it sometime." He went to the kitchen shelf and took down his candy jar. "Old Tio still at it down there?"

"Yeah—don't get in that candy now, I'm just about to fix supper. You made us miss a job, you know. Where have you been?"

"Some of us went down't the funeral home to see Ruben Johnson—one Jayell tried to build that house for last summer? Somebody done a job on him with a knife.
Whew
! Wadn't hardly enough left to recognize."

The words went through me like a chill.

Ruben Johnson had disappeared after the incident over the house. The night of the fire his wife and baby were picked up by dog boys and moved into the upper floor of the funeral home. Doc Bobo was "looking after them," it was said, until Ruben came back.

Apparently, Ruben Johnson had finally come back.

I looked at Em. His eyes were flat, unrevealing. He chewed nonchalantly on his candy.

Tio was back at dawn the next morning, and every day thereafter we were awakened at first light by the sounds of banging metal. He worked until school time, then returned in the afternoons as soon as he could get away from the store. The thing became an obsession with him, afternoons became too short, and soon he was working into the night. He barged through the trap door during supper, snatched the oil lamp off the table and descended without a word. "If he ain't done soon," said Em, dragging the table into the moonlight, "I'm going to have to kill him."

Finally the bike was cleaned and ready to be reassembled, and at that point my usefulness, as scant as it had been before, dropped to absolute zero. In my hands, none of the parts fit back together. Tio was building assemblages like clockwork, but for me even obvious pieces wouldn't mate, nuts liked to cross-thread on me. If I reached for a hammer to tap a piece into compliance, he was instantly beside me saying, "Here, let me catch that." Soon he was doing it all, and I was relegated to manning the grease gun and washing parts. Em looked in from time to time, snorted, and went on his way.

At last the bike was reassembled except for the front wheel, which had suffered the most extensive damage. The tire was ripped open and the rim bent beyond repair. An afternoon's search through the weeds of Bledsoe's junk yard turned up a useable replacement, and Bledsoe made us a good deal on a tire with a lingering of tread and only the tiniest cracks of dry rot. The wheel was smaller than the original and gave the bike a slight forward pitch, which presented no real problem until the bike was brought to a stop. Then it had a tendency to throw the rider over the handlebars. When it was finished, gassed, and waxed to a mirror shine, we wheeled it out into the pasture and Tio hollered Em out of his nap.