A Quiet Belief in Angels (6 page)

FOUR

F
IVE MONTHS HAD PASSED SINCE THE DEATH OF THE STOWELL GIRL, five months and another Christmas.

Christmas had been hard on my mother. She and Mrs. Kruger, whose name I now understood to be Mathilde, had volunteered their services to assist in an influenza epidemic that had broken out amongst the Negro families. For many days she came home late and left early, and I spent much of my time at the Krugers’ house. I was thirteen years old, a few months older than Hans Kruger, a few years younger than Walter. Nevertheless, despite our similarity in ages, there was little we held in common. There were as many opinions as there were words about the war; there were rumors that Adolf Hitler was a madman, that America would be drawn into the fighting. Roosevelt was inaugurated for the third time, and already there was talk of the British using American arms and equipment, the cost of which would not be requested until after the conflict was over. Some—Reilly Hawkins in particular—said that it was the first step on a short road to collaboration.

“They’ll call for us,” he said. “They’ll call for us to go and fight in Europe.”

“And would you go?” my mother asked him.

“No question about it,” Reilly said. “You gotta die for something, right? Seems to me it’d be better to die in a field in Europe fighting for something you believe in than die out here in the swamps from nigra influenza.”

“Reilly,” my mother admonished.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said sheepishly. “Beg your pardon, ma’am.”

“What is it you believe in?” I asked Reilly. “You believe in war?”

Reilly smiled and shook his head. “No, Joseph, I don’t believe in war. I’ll tell you what I believe in—” He stopped suddenly and looked at my mother as if for permission to speak.

“Go ahead, Reilly, I’ll let you know if you’ve gone too far.”

“What I believe in,” Reilly said, “is the freedom to think and believe and say what you feel is right. This man, this Adolf Hitler, well he’s nothing but a Fascist and a dictator. He’s getting those German people all fired up and hateful about the Jews, about traveling people, about people who don’t look the same or talk the same or go to the same churches. He’s forcing his own views on a country, and that country is going mad. That’s the kind of thing that travels like an airborne virus, and if good people, honest people—people like us—if we don’t do what we can to stop it then we’ll find it everywhere. That’s why I’ll go if they ask me.”

The following day I asked Miss Webber about the war, about what Reilly Hawkins had said about the Jews and the traveling people.

For a moment she looked surprised, and then there was something in her face that spoke of grief, of suppressed tears perhaps.

That’s when she spoke of the competition. She changed the subject—suddenly, unexpectedly—and I forgot all about Adolf Hitler and how he was getting folks all fired up and hateful.

“What competition?”

“A story competition, a competition for people to write and submit stories.”

I leaned my head to one side.

“Don’t do that, Joseph Vaughan,” she said. “It makes you look like you have only half a brain and your head’s lopsided.”

I set my head straight.

“So write a story,” she said. “It can be about anything at all, but like we discussed before it is always better to write about something you’re personally interested in, or something you have experienced. It should be no longer than two thousand words, and if you write it neatly enough I will set it correctly on my Underwood typewriter and we will send it all the way to Atlanta.”

I didn’t say a great deal. I don’t remember the moment too well. I think I had my eyes wide and my mouth slightly open.

“What?” Miss Webber asked. “Why are you standing there like that?”

After a moment I shook my head. “No particular reason,” I replied.

“Now you look like the sort of boy who needs his mouth wiped every fifteen minutes . . . go sit down at your desk, Joseph.”

“Yes, Miss Webber.”

“And start working on some ideas. Deadline for your story is a month from today.”

Three days later I came across a word, monkeyshines. I don’t remember now how I came across it, but I did. It was from the late 1800s, and it meant tricks and japes, the kind of things kids do when they’re in a mischief-and-mayhem mood. The word pleased me, made me smile, and so I used it as the title for my story.

I wrote about being a kid, because that’s what I was. I wrote about being thirteen and having no father, about the war in Europe and some of the things that Reilly Hawkins told me. Alongside that, I wrote about the things I did to keep my mind occupied, to make me forget that my mother was tired, that Hitler was a madman, and somewhere some thousands of miles away people were being killed because they thought different or spoke different. I wrote about practical jokes me and the Kruger boys had done. About the time we found a dead raccoon and buried it. We dug up some mountain fly honeysuckle and planted it on the little grave, and we said some words and wished the raccoon would find Alice Ruth and Laverna and keep them company in Heaven. I wrote about these things and signed it neatly at the bottom—Joseph Calvin Vaughan—and I put my age and my date of birth because I figured the story people in Atlanta might want to know such details.

I gave my story to Miss Webber on Friday the eleventh of February. On Monday she told me she’d typed it up and mailed it to Atlanta, and she showed me Atlanta on the map. It seemed an awful long way away. I wondered if my story would have changed at all by the time it got there.

I thought about it a lot for some time, and then I forgot about it. Seemed to me that writing things down was a way of making them go away.

“You could look at it that way,” Miss Webber told me. “Or you could look at it from the viewpoint that writing things down makes them last forever. Like that book I gave you last Christmas. That was written and it’s still here. There’s thousands of copies of that book all over the country, all over the world. Right now there might be someone in England, someone in Paris, France, someone else in Chicago, reading that very same book, and what they read and what they think is going to be very different from what you felt you were reading. A story is like a message that means something different to everyone who receives it.”

I listened to what Miss Webber said because everything she said made sense.

When spring came my mother got sick. She grew pale and anemic. Dr. Thomas Piper visited several times, and each time he looked concerned and important. Dr. Piper wore a dark suit with a vest and a pocket watch with a golden chain, and he carried a leather bag from which he produced tongue depressors and bottles of iodine.

“You are how old?” he asked me.

“Thirteen, sir,” I told him. “Fourteen in October.”

“Well, that makes you a man as far as I’m concerned. Your mother has weak blood. Weak in nutrients, weak in iron, weak in most everything that should be strong. She must have bed rest and quiet, perhaps for as much as a month, and she must have a diet rich in green vegetables and good meat. If she does not do this you will not have a mother for very much longer.”

I walked across to the Krugers’ house after Dr. Piper had left.

“We will take care of her,” Mathilde Kruger said. “I will send Gunther every day with soup and cabbage, and when she is stronger we will feed her sausages and potatoes. Don’t worry, Joseph, you may have lost your father but you will not lose your mother. God is not that cruel.”

Three weeks later, the day that Reilly Hawkins told me President Roosevelt was sending American soldiers to Greenland, Miss Webber had me stay after class.

“I have a letter,” she said, and she reached into her desk and produced an envelope. “It is a letter from Atlanta, Georgia. Come sit here and I will read it to you.”

I walked to the front of the classroom and sat down.

“Dear Miss Webber,” she started. “It is with great pleasure that we write to inform you of our competition results. We were greatly impressed with the standard of material submitted this year, and though the adjudication of such a vast array of different styles and subject matter is never easy we believe that this year it has been harder than ever.”

Miss Webber paused and glanced at me.

“It is with a degree of commiseration that we must tell you that ‘Monkeyshines’ by Joseph Vaughan did not reach the final stage of judging, but nevertheless we wished to communicate to you our collective enjoyment regarding this most excellent piece. ‘Monkeyshines’ raised more than a few tears and a good degree of laughter amongst our readers, and when it was made clear that the piece had been penned by a boy of thirteen there were serious questions regarding the validity of authorial identity. Such a question was immediately refuted as we are, of course, more than aware of your own reputation and credibility as a teacher. Nevertheless, it still came as a surprise that a composition demonstrating such a natural narrative style and so astutely perceptive was the work of someone so young.”

Again Miss Webber paused. All I understood was that I had won nothing. I felt little if any emotion regarding the matter.

“And so, in closing, I would like to heartily commend Mr. Joseph Vaughan for his story, ‘Monkeyshines’: a thoroughly enjoyable reading experience, and evidence that we have in our midst, right here in Georgia, a bright and immensely talented young author who, we trust, will continue to go from strength to strength in his literary ventures. With our best wishes, The Atlanta Young Story Writers Adjudication Board.”

Miss Webber turned to me and smiled. She frowned, then tilted her head to one side. I wanted to tell her she looked like half her brain was missing.

“You are not pleased, Joseph?” she asked.

I said nothing. I wondered what she thought I might be pleased about.

“The Adjudication Board wrote to you, all the way from Atlanta, to tell you that your story had received a special commendation. They say that you are bright and immensely talented. Do you understand that?”

“I understand that we didn’t win, Miss Webber,” I said.

She laughed suddenly, and it was like a wealth of sunshine breaking forth. “Didn’t win? Winning is not the
only
reason to do something. Sometimes you do something for experience, or simply for pleasure; other times you do something to prove to yourself that you
can
do it, irrespective of anyone else’s viewpoint or belief. You wrote a story, only the second complete story you’ve ever written, and the Atlanta Adjudication Board sent you a special commendation and expressed their wish that you go from literary strength to strength. That, my dear Joseph Calvin Vaughan, is something of which to be very proud.”

I nodded and smiled. It was fifteen minutes past the end of lessons and I wanted to get home. When I’d left that morning my mother had seemed particularly frail.

Miss Webber folded the letter carefully and returned it to the envelope. “This is for you,” she said, and handed it to me. “You should keep this letter, and whenever you feel that your ability is in question, whenever you feel that you should do something other than write, you should read it once more and feel your purpose resolve. Writing is something that is a gift, Mr. Vaughan, and to deny its importance, or to do something other than use your ability, would be a grave and significant mistake.” She smiled once more. “Now go . . . home with you!”

I thanked Miss Webber and left the room. I walked quickly, taking the High Road and staying close to the fence. Mr. Kruger had told me that after the rain the ground was too soft to bear the weight of a child, let alone a young man such as myself, and that if I walked along that way I was to stay close to the fence and away from the trees.

When I arrived home I stood in the kitchen for several minutes. In hindsight, always our most astute adviser, I realized I had granted no importance to the letter from Atlanta. It was my first real acknowledgement, and yet it seemed to mean nothing. I took the letter from my pocket and read through it once more. The words were received but they were not absorbed. Later, the letter would mean a great deal, and in some small way it would act as an anchor amidst the storm of critical and trenchant self-doubt that would come, but then—standing in the kitchen—it was merely a message of failure. Miss Webber was not to blame. The letter told me I could do better, and perhaps, in some small way, I had already determined the standard to which I would aspire.

It was then that I heard voices, above me I believed, and I was puzzled. My mother was alone and unwell in the house, and yet the voices sounded like a conversation. Had the disease she suffered driven her to madness?

I tucked the letter into my pocket and backed up to the bottom of the stairwell. I heard nothing. Was I imagining things?

I took the risers one at a time, my ears sharpened and alert. When I reached the upper landing I heard the voices again—my mother, her clear and distinct lilt, even a hint of laughter, and another deeper voice —perhaps accented?

I walked down the hallway to her door. It was firmly closed, but it was undoubtedly from behind that door that the voices came.

I knocked once.

“Mother?” I asked.

There seemed to be a moment of confusion, the sound of rustling, something else, and even as I reached out to turn the door handle she called out, “One moment, Joseph, one moment, please.”

I waited, perplexed and confused.

Thirty seconds, perhaps more, and then the door was opened from within and Gunther Kruger stood there looking at me, smiling widely, his cheeks reddened.

“Joseph!” he exclaimed, pronouncing it Yosef the way all the Krugers did. He seemed more surprised than pleased. “Hullo there. What a surprise!”

I shook my head. Why would it be a surprise? I always came home from school.

I looked around him to see my mother laid up in the bed, the covers pulled tight to her throat. She withdrew one arm and extended her hand toward me.

“Come in, Joseph,” she said. “You are home early.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I always come home at this time.”