Angels of Destruction (19 page)

15

“H
ere is a riddle I almost forgot to ask you,” Shirley Rinnick said. They had been requested to wait downstairs while Paul and Denny checked Wiley's room. “When is a thought just like the sea? Do you know? Today's Jumble question, do you remember? You helped me with ‘elate.’”

The sea. Maybe they've gone to the sea, Margaret thought. Forget all this crazy talk of revolution, they're just in love. They've eloped and gone to the Jersey shore, maybe, or Maryland, or Virginia even. The tide roaring in on the sand. Funny how after you're there more than a day, the surf gets in your head, your blood, in your legs. Tug of the sea for days after you go home. Remember Jackson running in the morning on the strand.

“I used the A and the T from ‘elate,’ if that helps you. When is a thought just like the sea? When it's … ? Two words, Mrs. Quinn.”

He loved you, that boy. Jackson. Romantic then, but now? Let's go to the ocean, he proposed, and stare all day at the waves.

“Mrs. Quinn. First word is one letter, and that's usually an A, so I'll give you that.”

Middle of fall, like now. All of twenty. Go stare at the waves.

“Second word, six letters. When it's a blank.”

Erica is not like me. She would go, if asked. Yes. That's where Paul went wrong, trying to keep her close, he held on too tightly to Erica. She went not just to be with this boy, but to go. To be free. Margaret looked at the woman across the table. “A notion.”

“Right you are, right you are,” Shirley answered. “How did you get it so fast? I didn't figure it at first, but the sea is the ocean. Not always the same, but still—”

“You think they're just on a getaway? You said they'll be back by Sunday night,” Margaret snapped at her. “He wouldn't have forced her to go? I saw that room of his. Wiley is an angry child.”

“I always do the Jumble, every day. Keeps the mind sharp.”

“What about the stolen car?” Margaret asked. “The guns, the cash from your hidden coffee can? How do you explain that, Mrs. Rinnick?” Kidnapped my daughter, she thought, and ran away, probably to get away from his crazy mother.

“A notion, an ocean.”

Oh be quiet, you stupid fat cow. Erica is missing and your son is to blame and all you can do is rattle on about some puzzle?

“A sharp mind is the key to life. If you have your wits, you have everything. You could lose an arm or a leg—”

She wanted to say:
Shut up, you crazy bitch.

“—or even be paralyzed from the neck down, but as long as you have your mind, you're still alive, now aren't you? The mind has a power to solve life's puzzles. You just concentrate long enough and you make up the answer. What's the matter, Mrs. Quinn, still worried about your daughter? They've run away.”

Before she could reach over and strangle the woman, Margaret noticed the red flashing lights through the window. She hurried to open the door, usher in the two policemen to Paul and Denny, upstairs in the younger boy's room. The officers seemed discomfited by the circumstances, unsure of what they sought, and why they had to miss their dinner for a couple of runaways. Columns of teetering books lay all about the floor, books spilling under the bed, hiding between issues of newspapers and magazines,
Rolling Stone
and
National Lampoon.
Drugstore paperbacks, political screeds and works of philosophy. Ginsberg's
Howl,
Ker-ouac's
On the Road,
Conrad's
The Secret Agent.
Sandwiched between the mattress and the box spring were a few well-thumbed
Playboys
and a forgotten manual,
How to Make a Bomb in Your Basement.
Three of the walls had been painted black, and on the fourth, the painter had stopped midstroke next to the window and abandoned the project. The old white coat looked yellowed by smoke. Posters filled the space above the unmade bed: Lenin under the words “Acid Indigestion,” a white rabbit on a chessboard surrounded by psychedelic shades of blue and pink, a Wanted poster with mugshots of all the people involved with Watergate, and one of Patty Hearst as Tania, wielding a machine gun with a hydra-headed snake in the background.

When the younger policeman opened the closet door, they all saw stenciled in gold spray paint the AOD logo, with wings. Margaret had seen that design before but could not place it, though in truth the kids had so many cryptic symbols that often signified nothing more than the desire for peace, love, or bliss. Signs with no meaning. Still, she could not stop trying to remember where she had seen those wings and could not concentrate on the conversation from the other side of the room. Her husband argued quietly with one of the policemen. Out of his element, she thought. Away from the clinic, he projects nothing of the mastery when playing the doctor. The wise old man gently counseling the smokers and the drinkers who will not quit, the mothers who neglect vaccinations for their children and wonder why they are sick, the boy with the bad heart, the girl who refuses to speak. They look up to him like a good priest, rabbi, magician, miracle man. The truth was he had slowed to complacency, a year past the normal age for retirement, one slip from malpractice.

“Most of the time,” the older policeman said, “runaways like this call their folks in two, three hours, a couple of days, a week, tops. Course, the longer it goes …”

She whispered, “I have been such a bad mother.”

“But I don't believe,” Paul said, “that she would just run away like that—”

“Of course, we'll follow up, Mr. Quinn—”

“I'm a doctor.”

Margaret spoke in a loud voice. “She was in love, love. Love makes you do crazy things. Well, not you… but some people. Erica.” Every head in the room spun round to stare at her. She clapped her hand to her mouth. When is a thought just like the sea?

“Without an actual crime, there's not much to do but send out an alert. And wait to hear if anyone's seen them, but I wouldn't worry, Mrs. Quinn. Most of these kids think the world's going to be one way, turns out the world is something else. If you have any other thoughts about where to look…”

“I have absolutely no idea,” she said. And the voice inside her head kept time with her answer—a notion, a notion, an ocean.

16

W
hen he tried to wake her and she would not get up, Wiley shrugged his shoulders, slipped into the old clothes of the missing man, and shin-nied down the ladder from the loft, following his nose to the source of its enchantment: bacon and eggs and coffee on the stove. The old woman and her strange granddaughter had already risen, dressed, and set the table for a feast: sliced bananas and poached pears ripe and juicy in porcelain bowls, a column of toasted homemade bread next to a perfect stick of butter, brimming jam jars, and a honeypot in the shape of a beehive. His mind wandered back across the room and up the ladder to his sleeping beauty, but let her rest, he decided. She had been through a lot in the past few days and seemed distressed by some malady he could not name. Let her sleep, and maybe she would awaken in a better mood, and besides, he did not want to wait to eat a minute longer. His hostesses did not trouble to ask but invited him instead to have a seat, get comfy, do you take sugar, Sugar?

Breakfasting at the rough pine table with the old woman and her granddaughter, Wiley imagined himself as a hero among the plain people. Mao dining with the proles, Che among the Cuban peasants in hiding from the Batistas, Lenin in his Siberian exile plotting what is to be done over borscht and glasses of strong, hot tea. The Gavins could not take their eyes off him, clearly admired him, and he felt a current pass among them. He was dangerous, valiant, a man of true principles, and these poor people looked upon him as savior, champion, destined for history.

Morning sunlight shone through the windows and altered the aspect of the room. What had been foreboding at night and in the gloom of rain now appeared merely old and forlorn, as tired as the fading year. The stuffed menagerie became a piebald zoo, the animals moth-chewed and dusty, their glass eyes clouded without the dancing reflections from the fire. The great wooden globe was cracked and fissured, the paper peeling, a bare white patch where Greenland once lay, a curling lip off the coast of Chile. A cherry bureau which doubled as a desk was topped by a silvered mirror, which mangled one's impression in brushstrokes of clouds and obscurity. But the breakfast table shone with wax and groaned with food, which Wiley ate with guiltless pleasure. Erica did not wake all through second helpings, through the casually peeled orange, through the third freshening of the hot black coffee. She slept through scrubbing up; through his indifferent tour of the library, through his perusal of the vibrant color plates in
Birds of Appalachia.
Tired of the yellow warblers and pileated woodpeckers, tired of waiting for Erica to get out of bed, he found his jacket on a hook by the side door and went out into the late morning to find their car and see what could be done with a new day's patience.

She had been dreaming that the rain had stopped and the sun was shining, that when the shot rang out, she took off with the flock, their wings beating, voices crying in one great rush, and she rose above, could envision Wiley on the banks of the lake, gun in hand, and as he fired again, the cook exploded as the bullet hit his chest, saw him falling and the money erupt from the hole, saw the bills float in the air like oak leaves caught in a swirling breeze against the sun burning above. And then the pop and the flash as he fired again into her father and the money burst into air, burst into flames, and the body—Daddy—drifting in the dead man's float on the water, of no more consequence than a discarded sail, and she could not move from overhead as the birds scattered in panic.

When she could finally summon the strength to lift her eyelids Erica did not know where she was. The wooden beams in the rafters looked like timber from a cross in a church, then the upside-down ribs of a boat above her head. Disoriented, she closed her eyes, tried to remember, and then came the voice of the girl. “Miss Nancy, wake up,” she was saying. Who was Nancy? Wrestling an invisible weight upon her, she turned her head to the side and searched for the child. She wanted someone—her father, her mother—to come rescue her from this strange bed but could not find the words to cry out. Pebbles lined her throat, and paste caked at the corners of her eyes.

“Wake up, Miss Nancy.” Una stood by the headboard, a full glass in her hand as an offertory. Erica sipped once, then fell back on the pillow and closed her eyes, sighing at the mattress's tender embrace. “You have to get up, Miss Nancy. The morning is well spent, and Mr. Wiley left without you. C'mon, we'll fix you a queen's breakfast. It's past tin.”

Tin,
ten,
Tinnissee,
her memory came back to her, worthless and ragged. “I'm sick,” she said. “The world has fallen on top of me.”

“Try.” Her thin arms strung with exertion, Una lifted her to a sitting position.

The bed pitched wildly on a storm-spun ocean, and Erica fought to right her balance and steady the whirling room. The child clung to her, and after a few deep breaths, Erica could focus and tempt her body to pull back the blankets, lift her knees, and swing her hips. When her feet hit the bare floor, she stopped to rest. “What do you mean?” she asked. “He left without me?”

“Gone to get your car, he says. Told me to tell you he'd be back as soon as he could get her started.” She giggled at the word “her.”

Erica rocked to steady herself and try to stand. “I don't think I can make it down that ladder. Too wobbly. I don't know what's wrong with me.”

“You need some food in you, is all. Come along, and I'll watch over you.”

Caution guided every step till they reached the safety and comfort of the kitchen. At the stove, Mee-Maw concentrated on the frying eggs and did not notice her company until the chairs scraped across the floor, but when she saw how poorly the girl appeared, she set down her spatula and raced to her side. With a cool hand, Mrs. Gavin felt the temperature of Erica's brow, tutted to herself, and fetched a glass of orange juice. “Drink. You're coming down with something.”

“I feel bored-out, empty. One side of my face is so tender it hurts.”

“A flu or pneumonia, considering how long you was out in that cold rain.”

They fed her dry toast and then cosseted her in front of the fireplace, a warm blanket on her lap, a glass of tepid ginger ale on the table-side. Una was charged with making a fire and hurried through her tasks of finding matches and kindling, stoking the flames with her breath, anxious to be not too far removed from Erica's side. Mrs. Gavin hummed at her chores, washing up another skillet and pouring cold coffee down the drain, and every quarter hour, checking in on the mummified girl, punching up a throw pillow for her neck, and straightening the already straight blankets. On her threadbare throne, Erica could not fall asleep, but found herself instead restful and contemplative, watching the dancing fire and thinking of the friends she had left behind in high school—what would Joyce Green think of me now?—and the buzz in her hometown once they realized that she had gone and done it, had the nerve after all, and good for her, she got out and is following her heart. Like a hospital nurse, Mrs. Gavin came and stuck a thermometer under Erica's tongue, and the little girl squatted on a hassock in front of her, staring intently at the glass stick.

“You ever seen,” Una asked, “a cartoon where the sun is shining so hot and the red line on the thermometer goes higher and higher the hotter and hotter it gets till splat! Right through the top? I used to think blood was inside. Mee-Maw likes to say when she is mad it makes her blood boil. But I ain't never seen that red line move in a real thermometer. Fact, you can't hardly see that line at all lest you look just so. Like a lot of things in this world, you might miss seeing what's there at all, lest you are looking the right way.”

Squinting to catch the light in the angled glass, Mee-Maw announced, “A tick over 101 degrees. We should get you back to bed.” From outside, the sound of a distant shot echoed through the mountains, stilling the conversation for a moment. Mrs. Gavin paused, considering the possibilities.

Erica pulled the blanket to her shoulders. “No, I want to wait for Wiley.”

“I'll leave you entertain our company,” Mrs. Gavin said to her granddaughter and wandered back into the depths of the cabin. The girls played cards to help pass the time. Una taught her rummy and gin, taking most of the tricks as her opponent struggled to recall the rules and strategy of the games. As daylight began to fail, Erica grew tired and waved away the deck, and Una boxed the cards and sat quietly. Sleep overshadowed her patient like a cloud. Keeping vigil, Una chose a book to read quietly, the delicate turning of the pages a comforting sound. Awakened by the gasping interruption of her own breath, Erica drew in the sudden darkness of the room. The only illumination came from a short lamp casting a halo, under which Una sat. When the blankets rustled, she rose to Erica's side.

“How long have I been sleeping?”

“An hour or so. You called him Wiley before. Mr. Wiley. I thought his name was Ricky, but before you fell asleep you said you had to wait on
Wiley.
Why wouldn't you call him by his Christian name?”

“Did I? Must be the fever. How long has he been gone? Ricky, I mean.”

“All day.” Una knelt in front of her patient's chair and rested her hands on Erica's knees. “You think he's ever coming back for you?”

An ache spread and flooded her joints and muscles. The stiffness pinched her shoulders when she shrugged. “I don't know,” she said, surprising herself.