Earthly Vows (27 page)

She thought he was too. “What kind of work do you do, I mean, it must be good work. You can afford new shoes.” And he had
offered to buy her clothes.

“I thought I told you. I’m a chauffeur.”

“For who?”

“Different people. I’m getting my name spread all over the place as the best driver around.”

She finally got up the nerve to say, “A car kind of like the Studebaker you were driving back in Ardmore, it was seen during
a bank holdup.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“There wasn’t anything to tell.”

“I knew that about you when I met you, that you weren’t a snitch.”

“So it was you. You held up a bank, Nash.”

“Are you kidding, girlie? I couldn’t shoot a deer at close range. My fingers shake so hard I can’t put in a bullet. I just
do what I’m asked, show up when I’m told, get paid, go find a new town to lay low.”

“What if you got shot?”

“My head’s so low behind the wheel, the cops all think a ghost is driving.” He took a sharp right onto a dark road. There
were tents set up alongside the road, men seated in circles around small fires, coffeepots on the brew. “See those men? They’re
all making do with what they got. Most of them, they left behind their wives and kids. Some of them are so far from home,
they can’t remember their own addresses anymore. When I pass one of those tent cities, I imagine my old man sitting there
in the cold. It’s not for me. Ah! I thought I remembered right.” A sign flashed in a café window, H
OT
C
OFFEE
. “Best tamales
in town. You had a good tamale lately?”

“I’ve never had a tamale,” said Angel.

“We got to get you out of the house more. Good food, good clothes.”

Behind them, the fires from the migrant tents were enveloped by the dark and many miles. Nash got out of the car and opened
her door. He gave her his jacket. Angel followed him inside, glad they had the place to themselves. The waitress said, “All
we have left is tamales and beans.”

Nash gave a war whoop and ordered two. He led them to a booth, one of those red and white shiny vinyl seats, only the white
was dingy.

“Has your daddy always worked the railroads?” she asked.

“Started out, he wanted to be a cop. His pop, my granddad, he was a cop. Lost his badge during the strike of 1919. Still,
it was always in him to go to police school. His old man wouldn’t hear of it. Bad blood between him and the Boston police.
What about your father?”

“Two tamale specials,” said the waitress. Two white plates, two tamales each, and a spoonful of beans. She set their plates
in front of them and left.

“My father took work where he found it,” said Angel. “The coal mine, the cotton field. Now I don’t know where he is. He sent
us to live with our sister Claudia, that was back in ’31. But things went wrong. The woman taking us, her name was Lana, she
ditched us. That’s when we met up with Jeb Nubey.” For the moment, she felt Jeb so far away. She could not recall exactly
how his voice sounded. She could only hear the inflection and the way he cleared his throat before reading from the Scriptures.

“You said your mother was in the hospital, didn’t you, back in Ardmore?”

“I don’t know if she’s still there. Her sister, my aunt Kate, she may have taken her in. Momma didn’t have no money, so she
may have lost her room. You ever heard of a nervous hospital?”

Nash nearly ate a tamale whole. “The loony bin.”

“Don’t call it that.”

“Sorry, sweet cakes. It is what it is,” he said. “For you, I’ll call it a palace if that makes it better.”

“I like these tamales,” she said. “They’re not bad.”

Willie called out the sign for the Oklahoma City border. He rode shotgun, sitting watch for any sign of a two-door, light-colored
sedan.

Jeb stared into the dark, certain he had gone blind. Ida May was falling asleep. Willie’s interest in gawking at every passing
car was waning fast. Ida May took Angel’s coat into the backseat for warmth. He was so certain he would be sitting with Angel
at this hour, listening to how she was sending the boys into a spiral, beating out the other girls in the spelling bee, wrestling
against arithmetic, that the emptiness left him sick at his stomach. He took the letter off the dashboard, the one he mailed
to Angel. He tore it in two.

Willie didn’t say anything, but stared at Jeb like he might.

If Fern had come … he kept thinking, and then he’d dismiss the thought. For if she had come, she would have, like he had,
found Angel run off. But she might not have tolerated the late hour when he took off, might have gotten them all to Norman
sooner. Had he not said that to her, that he managed poorly without her? Angel would have been at Claudia’s still, not having
been attacked, and by whom? Who was Edwin Abercrombie and how did he gain access to her? How badly was she hurt? This woman
at The Diner, she hadn’t asked enough questions, or else he hadn’t. Again, Fern was better at thinking of all the things a
girl might think.

Willie’s belly rumbled.

“Are you hungry?” asked Jeb.

“Of course, ain’t you?” Willie sure sounded surprised.

“You ate your supper,” said Jeb.

Willie laughed. “We ain’t had our supper, Jeb. Ever since leaving Oklahoma City, we been doing nothing but hunting down Angel.”

Supper came and went, with no thought for it. “I’m sorry, Willie.” He was surprised Ida May dozed off rather than worrying
him about a missed meal. “I’ll try and find a place.” He slowed the car. There was a sharp turn right or he could continue
straight ahead. A group of migrant tents were camped up the side road. He could stop and ask one of them to recommend a place
still serving supper.

“What about cake?” asked Willie. He picked it up from the floorboard.

“It’s good enough for me,” said Jeb. He continued up the highway. Willie passed him a handful.

Nash fell quiet on the drive from the café toward Edmond. Angel dug through Claudia’s bag. She left in too big a hurry and
only brought half of what she brought to Claudia’s. But Claudia’s bag was lighter for fast traveling. And, of course, most
of her things hung in a parsonage closet back in Nazareth, so she didn’t need the larger suitcase in the first place.

Nash had called Mrs. Abercrombie’s house, so that meant he had a telephone. By morning, she would be rested and in a better
frame of mind. She would call again, this time for Miss Coulter. The youth at Will Honeysack’s grocery had it wrong. Jeb leaving
Church in the Dell was nonsense. He had his worries, but leaving had not been on his mind. Of course, he and Fern had not
gotten on well in Ardmore, even putting off their wedding date. But that was Abigail’s doing, not Jeb’s. If anything, he wanted
the wedding date moved up, not back. Even though Miss Coulter was nervous on the trip, that was a bride’s privilege.

“We’re not far now,” said Nash.

Worry took over Angel’s thoughts. John and Thorne had it bad all over again. Claudia would find the note on her pillow tonight
when she pulled back the covers. On it would be Aunt Kate’s address in case she had lost it and five dollars for traveling
money, saved from the chores she did for Mrs. Abercrombie. If she wouldn’t smoke it up, and would take that and this week’s
pay, she could make it back to Little Rock. Aunt Kate might help her find work. She could see to Momma. “I need to find work,”
said Angel. “I gave most of my money to my sister to get home on.”

“Nazareth?”

“Home to our mother and aunt Kate. Little Rock.”

“Is that where you plan to go to?”

“No, I’m like you. My family takes all I have, all I make. It’s time for me to do for myself.”

“I’m staying in a house where you might get work for a few days. Would that tide you over? Making beds, washing dishes.”

“I can do that, Nash. Then what?”

“How about a steak dinner at the best little place this side of the Mason-Dixon Line?”

He made her laugh.

R
EPORT PROVES
250,000
HOMELESS YOUTHS
roam the country.
Jeb folded up the
Oklahoman
to take inside and put away. He knew every crack and brick at the top of the church landing. He had paced it since two hours
after sunrise, taking the walk from his study to the landing, back inside, repeat.

The world aged as he waited for the squad car to pull up and park near the church steps, for the deputy to get out, fetch
his pad of paper. From Thursday night until Friday midafternoon gave a girl hours to be lost. “Is there a Reverend Nubey here,
sir?” he asked standing down on the street.

“I’m Nubey,” he said.

“You have a missing child, I hear, Reverend.” He had to move the bulk of his weight from the first step, straining to the
twelfth, but reached it at last. His face was slick and pink.

“Angel Welby.” Jeb helped him spell it.

“Shame. So many kids out on the streets now. You hear of one that has left behind a good home and you shake your head. So
many others got it so much worse. Welby, you say? I thought it was Nubey.”

“Welby. I’m Nubey.”

“Is she yours, Reverend? By that, I mean are you blood related?”

“Angel has lived with me a long time. I’m what you’d call her guardian. Her brother and sister live with me too.”

“Are her parents alive?”

“She was abandoned.”

“But you’re the one looking out for her?”

“Of course. Could we go inside?” A cup of Rowan’s coffee might help calm the waters, he thought. He took the cop to his study,
pulled out a chair. Jeb leaned against his desk. “Angel and her brother and sister, Willie and Ida May, they’ve lived with
me since 1931. We recently found some of Angel’s kin in Norman.”

“Good town.”

“It is, but this sister of hers, she didn’t look after Angel in the right way. Claudia let …she was seeing a man. He might
have hurt Angel. She ran off.”

The deputy wrote each letter block-fashion.

“But I have a name and a car model.”

The deputy lifted his pen. “We don’t normally take down information from a person outside family. It’s not what you call protocol.”

Jeb went around his desk and sat where he could look into his eyes. “Angel is like my own daughter. I never should have let
her go to her sister’s. It was my mistake.” He couldn’t say whether or not the deputy understood him. “I’m worried.”

“How old is she?”

“Seventeen.”

“When does the girl turn eighteen?”

“March fourteenth.”

The officer kept writing.

There was a knock at the study door. Rowan stuck in his head. “Your fiancée, Reverend,” he said.

Jeb was relieved. Rowan opened the door and in walked Fern. “Rowan said we’ve lost Angel,” she said. “I’m sick to death, Jeb.
Is this Claudia’s doing?”

“Officer, my fiancée, Fern Coulter.” Fern said, “I came the second I could get away from the school. What do we do now?” The
deputy scribbled down a few more notes. “Lots of missing children nowadays. You have a telephone?”

“We do, here at the church, but she doesn’t know,” said Jeb. “She never got our letter saying where we moved.” The deputy
stared thoughtfully at the floor. “You say you have a name of who she might be with?”

“Nash Foster, we think,” said Jeb. He gave him the car’s description. The officer flipped his notepad back a few pages. He
pulled out his pen and said, “Mind saying that name one more time?”

“Nash Foster.”

“Where was this automobile last seen?” he asked.

“The Diner, in Norman.”

“The girl’s description.”

Jeb told him. He was glad to see the officer finally taking an interest. He told him what few facts Joe gave him about this
Nash fellow. “Reverend, did he say what direction this driver was headed?”

“North on Highway nine, out of Norman, last night. I drove up and down the highway, looking myself, but I never found the
car,” said Jeb.

“Do you know how Miss Welby came to know this Nash Foster character?” Jeb admitted he didn’t. “What can you tell me?”

“This name came up once before, tied in with a gangster out of Boston name of Bill Foster. They’ve been hitting banks from
here all the way down to Texas. This Nash fellow, he was questioned, though, and let go. He claimed he was related to Bill
Foster, but not tied into his crimes.”