Angels of Destruction (18 page)

12

A
t three in the afternoon, a line of thick gray clouds cruised in on a cold western wind, and Erica and Wiley headed leeward, anxious eyes on the horizon, fearful that they would be caught in the coming rain. Dotting the far shore of the lake, a few toy houses clung to the hills, never appearing to draw closer. After bundling the rifles in the blanket and burying the package beneath a pile of leaves, they donned their backpacks and hiked through the silent woods, hoping to reach shelter before the downpour. She followed the trail he blazed, calling out for him to slow down when he marched out of sight.

At the top of a rise, she found him squatting on his haunches to inspect in the undergrowth hanks of gray fur scattered in random patches, grim reminders of some death on the spot. With a long knobby twig, Wiley stirred through the detritus, overturning matted leaves, attempting to discover the buried squirrel or rabbit, but nothing else remained. No bones, no blood. Whatever had been caught had departed with the predator, a fox or owl perhaps. A day or two and the clues would disappear as well, blown by the wind, washed by the rain, or stolen by some woodland creature to line its bed. Resting her hand upon his arm to steady herself, she bent to join him and felt the electric tremor on his skin just before the first dazzling fissure of lightning.

Drops struck the dry leaves in irregular explosions, a budding threat of what was to come, the rhythm building and flattening out as the rain beat harder and more steadily in a rolling percussion. They moved with quick, earnest strides, trying to keep themselves dry, but the rain fell heavily. Their long hair clung to their scalps and shoulders, their clothes puckered against their limbs, and their feet squelched in their shoes through muddy puddles. The water seeped into their knapsacks, doubling the leaden weight on their backs. By the time they reached the first cabin, they were soaked to the core. Wiley pounded on the wooden door to be heard above the roaring storm.

A young girl, about nine years old, opened the door. She was stick-thin, her face a plane of sharp angles. Her fine, fair hair hung straight to her shoulders, though mussed on one side, as if she had been reading all afternoon and holding up her head with one hand. Fogged with condensation, her glasses obscured the brightness in her eyes. Unrolling her free arm like a wing, she welcomed them inside wordlessly.

They dropped their wet packs on the floor and gathered their bearings. Table lamps had been lit against the gloom and made the curious objects in the room appear yellowed with age. On all four walls, mounted animal heads stared back at them: two deer bristling with antlers, a black bear, a colossal ram with spiral horns. Whole fish glistened with shellac, swimming on wooden plaques. On the mantel, a fox flushed a bobwhite, a raccoon raised one paw forever above the mystery of a box turtle emerging from an acrylic stream. A red, white, and black Indian blanket woven in simple bold geometry had been thrown over the back of the wide sofa. A dressmaker's dummy stood in the corner, wearing nothing but a necklace of feathers; in another corner, an old-fashioned velocipede rested its handlebar against the wall like a loitering dandy. In a globed terrarium, a pale blue skink dozed beneath a blossoming white orchid. On the wall above hung a shadow box containing sixteen different bird feathers pinned in place. Another box showed eight desiccated butterflies, wings pocked with holes and tears. Glass-fronted bookcases were stuffed with old fairy stories, children's tales, the
WPA Guide to Tennessee, A Brief History of the Natchez Trace, Birds of Appalachia,
and an oversized Geneva Bible open to Ecclesiastes, a thick underline at chapter 7, verse 4. Erica and Wiley circled the room, taking it all in, dripping slowly on a corded rug, and when they realized the child had disappeared, they stopped marooned in the center.

“I'm cold,” Erica said, and drew close. Wiley made no move, offered no sign or word of comfort. A chill slithered up her jeans and down her blouse, so she wrapped her wet arms across her chest and shivered.

The girl came back with two thick towels and a pile of folded clothing in her arms and handed Erica a pair of slacks and a black sweater and Wiley a red plaid shirt and dungarees. “You may have to roll those pant legs, mister. He was taller than you,” she said. “You all can take turns in the bathroom, but please be quiet. Mee-Maw's having a lie-down in the bed. She always tires when it rains so.”

Dressed in the strange clothes, Wiley and Erica sat near the hearth to dry by a newly made fire, and the girl brought them bowls of clear broth. She said hardly more than what was necessary and seemed content to make them warm and comfortable. Daylight waned, and the window-panes were steeped in darkness. Complicities of fatigue and stress, the hypnotic fire dancing before him, and the close and musty air in the quiet room caused Wiley to fall asleep against one wing of the easy chair, and as soon as she noticed, the girl crept to his side and laid the Indian blanket across his lap. Erica watched this simple kindness with a waylaid sympathy, and then rose from her chair to study the curiosities in the glass cabinet until she became entranced by its enchantments. Taking down a book of fairy tales, she settled into the facing chair and soon dozed as well, her hands fixed to the pages of dreams. Outside, the rain hastened the fall into night. A door creaked open from the back of the house, then shut with an exclamation. Erica and Wiley awoke just in time to see an older woman, bent slightly at the waist and blinking in the light, enter the room and stop to focus on the strangers by the fire. “You're back,” she said. “We've been expecting you.”

13

T
hree in the afternoon, the hour when Erica usually came through the door on school days, passed without her. Margaret busied herself, checked the impulse to wait by the window, and muttered the same wish over and over as she wandered through the house attending to imaginary dust and scrubbing again the same spotless stovetop. After her strange experience with jumbled Shirley Rinnick, she had come home and dialed Paul at the clinic. He advised to check with the high school whether Erica had shown up for classes, and if they could not locate her, Margaret was to wait for the appointed hour when their daughter was due. “If she's with that boy,” he said, “and cutting class, I'm sure she'll show up like usual to make it seem like she was in school all day.” The hour came and went, and no sign. “Surely she'll be on time for dinner,” Paul told her when she called again. How can you be so calm? she thought, but years of living with him prevented the question from coming out. Instead she walked a mile inside the house, praying like a nun.

At four, a flock of starlings landed in the front yard, paraded like an undertakers’ convention through the dying grass, and through some telepathic signal flew off en masse.

At five in the afternoon, nothing happened.

Paul would be home shortly and would know what to do. She sat beneath the kitchen clock to outwit time and force the hands to move faster. Outside a van door closed, and she saw Pat Delarosa walking up the grade of his lawn, a bouquet of yellow roses in his arms.

Fifteen minutes before six, footsteps clopped across the wooden porch, and then a quick knock. Fear froze her to the chair. But before the visitor could depart, she rose, dreading the possibility of a policeman, hat off in respect, sent to break the news, something awful, an accident, the hospital, please not the morgue. Through the side window, that boy appeared again, the brother, what-was-his-name? Wiley's brother. The older one. Give me a clue, she thought.

“Mrs. Quinn? Sorry if I'm interrupting your dinner.”

“Dennis, come in.” Still dressed in the University of Pittsburgh sweatshirt, he shuffled into the house. “Can I get you something? A cup of tea, perhaps?”

“Never touch the stuff,” he said. “Makes me jumpy.”

“Come in, come in.” She led him to the living room. “Have a seat. Have you heard from them? My husband should be home any minute.”

“The thing is, Mrs. Quinn, I have some sorta bad news. Not really bad, but… I think I know where they are. Not where exactly, but I think I know what happened.”

“Is everything all right? Is she okay?”

He leaned forward in the chair and stared at the floor. “The thing is, Mrs. Quinn, my car is missing. My Pinto.”

You'll have to drive him to the point, she told herself. “And you think Wiley took it?”

“I know he stole it, ‘cause he kept asking me if he could buy it from me, and I kept saying no, and, well, I know about the Angels.”

“Angels?”

He raised his head and looked her in the eyes. “Wiley, he's into some pretty heavy stuff. You know about Patty Hearst?”

“The bank robber they captured a couple weeks ago? The heiress?”

“And the Symbionese Liberation Army.”

A car pulled into the driveway, the headlights sweeping across the front window, and the boy stopped, allowing Mrs. Quinn to decide whether to wait for her husband rather than hearing the tale told twice. They arranged themselves on the edges of their chairs, backs ramrod straight, and cocked their heads to face him full on when Paul entered the living room. At first, his expression failed to register any difference, but gradually he came to realize who the visitor might be and why he was sitting next to his wife, whose eyes were fixed upon the very air, anticipating a story that floated in the space between them. Paul slowed the motions of his ritual, carefully folded his overcoat and balanced it on the top rail of a rocking chair, which pitched backward, then righted itself, and then he smoothed the gray hair at his temples, and thus ready, he moved swiftly, like a predator taking down the prey, to shake the boy's hand and offer an introduction.

Margaret spoke to him in a formal tone reserved to mildly shock his intermittent memory. “Dennis is Wiley's brother. You remember I told you over the phone that I went to see the Rinnicks this morning.” Her husband sat beside her and stared at the boy. “He's come to tell us about Erica.”

“You have some news?”

Denny cleared his throat and began again. “Do you remember when they kidnapped Patty Hearst, then it turns out she's been brainwashed into being one of them?”

“Are you saying Erica's been kidnapped?”

“No, not exactly. Wiley kinda talked her into going with him. To join the Angels. The Angels think that the people need to rise up and start a class war. A revolution.”

She asked, “Why are you kids always talking about a revolution? Against what?”

Ready to pounce directly from the chair, Paul leaned in tense and anxious. “But I thought that was all over. The authorities caught Patty Hearst.”

“It is all over, man. Vietnam is over. SLA. The old days are gone, no more people marching in the streets. All went up in smoke.”

Paul looked at Margaret for an answer. “What are these Angels?”

“Angels of Destruction,” Denny said. “Wiley found out about them through an ad in one of those underground papers, and he wrote to the PO box in the ad, and the guy starts sending him pamphlets and that. Propaganda, literature.”

“So he wants to be an Angel?” Paul asked. “He got Erica into this cult?”

For the first time that evening, Denny laughed. “Well, I wouldn't call it a cult, exactly. Might be some guy in his garage with a mimeo machine he stole from his high school. When he wasn't home, I'd go in his room sometimes and look through his stuff, and it was a trip.” From his pocket, he pulled out a sheet of yellow legal paper. “This is the kind of stuff the head of the Angels says: ‘No doom is ever executed on the world, whether of annihilation or any other chastisement, but the destroying angel is in the midst of the visitation.’ They call themselves the Angels of Destruction, and they are here to start some kind of holy war.”

Paul bent forward and buried his face behind his hands.

“After the news about Patty Hearst, Wiley got a long-distance call from this guy named Crow. And yesterday morning, I wake up and find my car is gone and my daddy's old hunting rifle and shotgun, and all the money stole from the coffee can at the back of the kitchen cupboard. My mum don't want to admit it to herself, but—”

“Where are they going?” Margaret asked.

“I have no clue. He never said. Bound for heaven or bound for hell.”

“She's gone,” Paul said. “He took our baby. Call the police, Margaret, and have them meet us at this boy's house.”

While the Quinns readied themselves, they left Denny alone, small and uneasy in the easy chair. Arrangements made: the dinner taken from the oven to cool, neglected, in the baking dish; Erica's room quickly scoured for further clues; Paul's blood pressure medication best not forgotten; the tangled conversation with the police; coats on, and where did I leave those keys? She had a moment alone with Denny in the foyer while Paul searched his slippery memory. Margaret cleared her throat and asked with a hint of fear, “What did this Crow person say to make them run away?”

Before he spoke, Denny licked his dried lips. “Wiley told me: the time is at hand.”

14

M
rs. Gavin's imagination had tricked her into believing that her prayers had been answered. Earlier, in the muffling warmth beneath her comforter, she heard their voices through the drowse, and some trick of longing conjured them. Before the strangers in the living room, she took off her glasses, pretending to stop a tear, and in that instant, could deny the truth before her and arrest relentless, unforgiving time. No matter. She would improvise her way back to reality.

“No, Mee-Maw, these are the two—”

“You were expecting us?” Erica asked, and chuckled nervously.

Rain tapped against the windowpanes, falling in sighs through the pines surrounding the cabin. It drummed the surface of the lake where they had stopped and fell upon the ducks huddled together on the cold shore, and rain beat on the stolen car, rivulets spilling through the cracked window on the driver's side to soak the blue velour seats and carpets. Through a makeshift hill of fallen leaves, the rising waters soaked the swaddled and buried guns. An absolving, cleansing rain that threatened to fall forever. In the space between the question and the answer, the rain fell, and the four of them listened to a new sound entering the world.

“No,” the woman said. “You're not who you were supposed to be, not who I thought. You'll pardon me.”

Wiley stepped forward to offer his hand. “Our car broke down out by the lake, and we got caught in the storm. Your granddaughter here opened the door and let us borrow these dry clothes. I'm Wiley Ri—” He caught the name before it completely spilled from his mouth. “Ricky. Ricky Wiley, and this is … Nancy Perry.”

“I'm Una, and this here is my grandmother, Mrs. Gavin.” The girl sidled up to the old woman. “Mr. Wiley and Miss Nancy need a place to stay for the night. Can we, Mee-Maw, can we keep them? For the night. It's raining tadpoles.”

Acquiescent, Mrs. Gavin wrapped her arm across Una's shoulders and drew her near, holding her so for just an instant. The overhead light reflected off Una's round glasses, obscuring her eyes, and from across the room, Erica and Wiley could not read any emotion in that temporary opacity. As soon as her grandmother spoke, however, Una could no longer restrain a wide smile. “Of course they can stay, of course. Miss Perry, Mr. Wiley, if you please. I was just fixing to make our supper, but we can stretch a stew to four, and I won't send you out on such a night with the heavens thrashing the earth. You'll stay.”

Mild objections were raised and gracefully rebutted. Mrs. Gavin threw more carrots in her stew, set the covered pot to simmer on the stove, and with the weary patience of the long-suffering cook, she mixed a buttermilk dough, then dropped rough spoonfuls on a cookie sheet. The heat from the oven suffused the kitchen and spilled over into the whole cabin, and when the biscuits began to bake and the stew was uncovered for a stirring, the smell of the dinner triggered a Pavlovian reaction in her guests. They could be heard from the fireside, small exclamations punctuating their concentration. Puffs of flour sifted through the air when she clapped her hands against the apron and went to announce the service. Una and the visitors were in a triangle, knee to knee to knee, huddled over a deck of cards, a game of War afoot, the child clutching the thickest of three stacks, satisfaction shining on her face.

“Come and get it while it's hot,” Mrs. Gavin said. “Cold butter won't melt if you tarry.”

After Una's blessing and amen, they tucked in, grateful for the homemade meal. Ravenous, Wiley speared hunks of lamb and potato and tore them from the fork with his teeth. Between bites, he sopped biscuits in clots of gravy, eating so quickly that it spilled from the corners of his lips. More determined to savor the fare, Erica picked like a bird for the choicest pieces, and as she chewed, the flavors reminded her of winter nights at home with her parents at the dinner table, but she did her best to squelch the thought. In the chair beside her, the little girl watched her every movement, and when Erica's features stiffened, Una reached out to bring her back into the world. “I would've beat you,” she said. “I had all the good cards, and it's my best game. What's yours, Miss Nancy?”

Gathering dust in the attic: Monopoly, Parcheesi, backgammon, Chinese checkers, Mouse Trap, Tip It, Clue, Life. Her father loved the last one best of all. The tokens were tiny plastic cars with six holes for pegs, blue for boys, pink for girls, which you acquired by chance. One time he had a carful of pink pegs and asked with a wink, “Where to, ladies?” and her mother had given him the funniest look, acknowledging some story hidden behind the gag. Erica imagined he had a dark and risqué past, dancing girls and nights afire. “Life,” she told Una. “The game of Life.”

“Hah!” Mrs. Gavin banged the flat of her palm on the table hard enough to lift the flatware. “Game of life, indeed. It is no game, let me tell you, but a jigsaw that you never can finish. Always a couple of pieces missing, or one that fits in nowhere, and the cover to the box is gone, so you've no picture to offer a clue as to what it's supposed to look like.”

Without stopping his chew, Wiley answered her. “I've always thought of life as a struggle. Marx said, ‘Once all struggle is grasped, miracles are possible.’”

“Groucho Marx said that?”

Erica smiled at her confusion. “Groucho Marx said that ‘the secret to life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.’”

“Never mind,” said Wiley. “Marx was wrong. It's from Mao's
Little Red Book.”

With a clatter, her spoon slipped into the bowl. Mrs. Gavin squared her shoulders and looked him in the eye. “Are you a Communist, Mr. Wiley?”

“Me? No, ma'am, I'm an American, but I do believe there's a revolution coming where the poor will rise up against the powerful. Some people see it as a race war, but it is really a conflict between the classes, the oppressed versus the wealthy. And I truly believe that there will be much bloodshed on the streets before there are equal rights for the poor, for women, for people of all colors. The apocalypse is coming, and the new creation first requires the destruction of all that is truly wicked, and a cleansing of our sins. We've got problems in this country. Black men in Watts without jobs, poor people living like dogs, Tricky Dick Nixon in disgrace, gas shortages, and Whip Inflation Now buttons, and all you see is the rich man in the country club, the white-shirt crewcut Baptist, the jelly-doughnut-eating Mormons, the cannibalistic Catholics—”

Nothing but gape-jawed silence answered his outburst, and it seemed for a time that not a word would be spoken ever again. Erica stole glances at Mrs. Gavin, still and wild-eyed as she tried to digest his meaning, and at Wiley, who was reeling in his tongue. The three adults were hemmed in by their private fears of saying the next wrong thing. Only Una remained implacable and went back to her stew with gusto, pausing between bites to ask, “Are you a preacher, Mr. Wiley? A man of God?”

“No,” he said, with a smile. “I am lapsed.”

Erica leaned over to confide in the child. “A few days ago we met a man who told us not to pine after being alone in case you might get lost, and Wiley here, Mr. Wiley, he met a man who said if you take a man's life, you are bound to carry it with you for all eternity. Everyone has some holy message inside, some desire spoken only in their prayers.”

Inching closer, Una asked, “Are you a child of God yourself, Miss Nancy?”

From the head of the table, Mrs. Gavin cleared her throat, and the subject was changed. They talked about the colors of the autumn leaves, what happens to the ducks and other birds when it rains, and how quiet it was so far removed from other houses and the road. An apple pie appeared miraculously from the antique pie safe, a percolator bubbled with fresh coffee, and a game of cards resumed as the night settled into its quietus. When the hour drew late, Una was sent to ready herself for bed, and Mrs. Gavin disappeared soon after, only to return with the child, who handed out two sets of flannel pajamas.

“Goodnight. I'm so glad you found us and decided to stay,” Mrs. Gavin said, and then suddenly stepped forward to Erica and embraced her and the child together. Surprised by the gesture, Erica tightened her grip and pressed against the child's face, inhaling the scent of baby shampoo from her fine blonde hair. Off to bed they went, and from behind the closed door hummed a brief muffled conversation and the rhythm of a prayer, and later still, the melody of a cradle song.

“Who did she think we were?” Erica whispered in the dark.

He rolled to his side to face her. “A couple of ghosts.”

Tucked above the width of the great room was a narrow loft, and Erica and Wiley climbed a short ladder to find twin beds head to head beneath the cantilevered eaves. “It's like we're sleeping under a giant letter A,” Erica said. The rain beat against the shingles, and they crawled into one bed together and fumbled at each other's clothes while trying not to fall from the mattress. He clipped her nose with his elbow. Her left foot got caught between the bed frame and the wall. When they finally calculated the proper positions, they stopped short and breathlessly held each other still when a door opened downstairs and a nightlight snapped on to illuminate a corner of the hallway. Mee-Maw sighed to herself, then shut her door without turning the knob. They tensed and waited to hear the creaking of her bed. “Maybe this isn't such a good idea,” Erica said.

“What do you mean? It's always a good idea, and besides”—he thrust himself inside her—“I'm already there.”

She turned her head away, gritted her teeth, and tried to relax her clenched legs. It was all over within minutes. Working her hands flat against his chest, she pushed him away, gasping for breath. Her flannel top stuck to her skin, warm and moist with perspiration. Sated but clueless, he rose, pulled up the pajama bottoms, and flopped into the other bed. “We'll be gone in the morning,” he said. “And who cares what those people think?” Within minutes, he was fast asleep. Erica listened to his irregular breathing, the whistle in his nose sounding like a siren; she listened to the rain drip and the house groan and tick as the wood cooled in the passing hour. In the unfamiliar space, she lost the persistence of vision and the faith of her own sight. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine again the wedding in a ritzy chapel in Las Vegas, Elvis and his child bride, the rendezvous with all the other Angels in San Francisco. Magical city. Indelible pictures of her childhood. At Una's age, Erica had seen on television images of the Summer of Love, long hair and wild protest signs; the fallen soldiers arriving home box by box; on her father's desk, the
Esquire
magazine of Kennedy, Kennedy, and King standing among the gravestones; the riots in the streets, and flowers in gun muzzles, the boys and girls who believed they could change the world. She worried that the game would be finished before she and Wiley could get the chance to play the revolution over before it had really begun. Her hero would have no one left to save.

Restless, she rolled out of bed, and feeling with an outstretched palm along the unfamiliar wall, she found her way to the ladder and climbed down. Though she could not see, she felt the glass-eyed stares of the mounted trophies along the walls, the raccoon chittering from the mantel, the weight of the antique globes and heavy furniture scattered about the room pressing in on her. She shut her eyes, pretended to be blind, remembered her daddy on the bright green lawn, a kerchief stretched across his eyes as he stumbled and chased a circle of girls, all screaming with delight, at the birthday party the summer she turned seven. Did he ever catch a soul? At the corner where the kitchen met the hallway, she flicked on the light switch. Standing in front of her was the apparition of Una, stock-still in her white nightgown, the light streaming through the gauzy cotton to silhouette her thin body, nothing more than sticks bound by wire. “Jesus,” Erica said, “you scared me half to death. How long have you been there?”

Without her glasses, Una appeared much younger and more vulnerable, her green eyes blinking in the sudden light, the midnight look of the awakened caught between dreams, her pale skin reddening at the cheeks from leftover warmth of the bed. When she spoke to Erica, her voice cracked in tremolo, her words seemed wounded. “I heard you ascending from the loft and thought you couldn't sleep.”

“Descending. You're right. I'm sorry. A strange house and a strange day.”

“Shall I make you a potion? Hot spiced milk is what Mee-Maw always makes me when my thoughts are running away.”

Erica nodded and went to the fireplace, wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, and sat by the window, listening to the rain spatter against the glass. By and by, the child arrived, walking with measured steps and holding at arm's length a mug, the spoon clinking against the ceramic edge. The milk smelled of cardamom and honey, and at the first sip, Erica felt relaxed and full of sleep. Una sat in the next chair, curled her feet under her, and made a tent of the white nightgown over her knees. They whispered to each other in the dark.

“This is just the thing. I'll be asleep in no time.”

“It's a magic potion. Mee-Maw cackles when she's stirring, calls it her brew, like she's a witch.”

“Your grandma said she was expecting us?”

“She goes off in her own thoughts sometimes. Imagining what ain't here.”

After stifling a yawn, Erica took a long swallow. “You live here just the two of you? Where are your parents?”

“Lest you want to sleep down here in the parlor, you best get on up the ladder. That potion will have you dreaming in a few minutes.”

Fatigue raced through her veins like quicksilver. Her muscles felt like pulled taffy. Ordering her legs to move, Erica trudged back to bed, and when her head landed on the pillow, she slept like a baby, endlessly rocking, gone from this world of cares.