Earthly Vows (31 page)

“Deputy, glad to see you,” Jeb said, even though seeing him walking through the back of the church had unnerved him. He asked
his name.

“Deputy Abner Faulk,” he said. He took off his hat.

Rowan brought a pitcher of water into the study and was gone.

Jeb had not noticed during his first visit the red mark on Abner’s bald pink scalp. It was not a wound, but a sort of birthmark.
It was in the shape of the country of Italy.

“I’m here on business, I guess you know, Reverend.” He turned down the water. “I’m working with the deputy up at Yukon. You
read about the bank heist in yesterday’s paper, I guess.”

Jeb let out a sigh. He poured himself some water.

“This is the third bank robbery this month. I don’t have to tell you, the FBI is all over this thing. I had to give them your
daughter’s name.”

Jeb didn’t correct his calling her his daughter. “She would never rob a bank.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s a suspect. At this point, it could be she’s entirely innocent. But this fellow, Nash Foster, he’s
wanted for questioning. If she’s with him, she’ll be questioned too.”

Jeb rubbed his temple. Walt Baer gabbed outside the door and Fern responded. “Angel needs to be brought home. She has a loving
family, her little sister is sick with worry. So am I,” he said. “Deputy Faulk, you’ve got to promise to make sure everyone
on this case knows that she is not a bank robber. Keep this girl safe.”

“I wish I could say that the FBI cares a hill of beans about what I say. I did tell them, but they want this string of robberies
solved. If they tie them to Charley Foster, Nash’s uncle, they’ll be after the whole gang. They get who they’re going after,
starting at the top, and work their way down.”

Faulk’s words seemed distant, as though he were in a different room.

“I did tell them the circumstances surrounding her running away. But they frown on young girls who run with getaway men.”

“What does that mean?”

“One of the witnesses in Yukon got a description of the driver. It matches the description we have of Nash Foster.”

There came a pounding on Jeb’s door. It was Fern. She let herself in. “Deputy, have you found Angel? I’m sorry, Jeb. I saw
you go in with him. I couldn’t wait.”

“Not yet, ma’am,” said Faulk. It was time, he said, to go. He told Fern, “You try not to worry. If I hear that Angel’s been
brought in alongside this Nash fella, I’ll do everything in my power to see she’s returned.” He said to Jeb, “Pray I get to
her first.”

Fern was ashen. Faulk saw himself out.

Jeb did not want to add to the weight. “He’ll do what he can do.”

“I know, I know,” she said. “We’re invited to Sunday dinner. Sam and Anita Baer.”

Jeb saw that she was staring down. “Not today,” he told her. Constantly comporting himself through all of the church circles
had worn him out.

“They assumed we’d come to dinner. You know what that’s like. What am I supposed to say?”

Jeb assumed that Walton would come. “Can’t you get us out of it?”

The door opened. A woman said, “Hello, Reverend, I’m Anita. You’ve met my son, Senator Baer, and my husband, Sam, one of your
deacons.” She was absolutely pink with satisfaction. “You can’t get away without trying some of my chicken-fried steak. No
one cooks it like me, I don’t care what you’ve heard. I told Fern how to find our house.” She closed the door.

Fern looked at him. She didn’t answer his last question.

Angel did not eat that night. The innkeeper closed up her kitchen since only one room was rented out, theirs. She fell asleep
twice. The sky darkened a little more each time she opened her eyes, until finally the room was black except for a wedge of
electric light seeping under the door. The room bill lay on the floor partially under the door.

She put out her hand to brace herself and her fingertips slid across the cold window glass.

Nash had not come back. But his car was still parked in an alley behind the inn.

A food smell was coming from outside the room. They weren’t to cook, the innkeeper said, no cooking at all. She thought it
was beef, onion, green pepper. A guest must have checked in late, or else the innkeeper was fixing her own dinner. There was
no sound of feet, so it must have been the second thing.

She walked across the mattress on her knees, the mattress springs squeaking like an old man’s jaw. The lamp string was gone
when she reached for it. She would open the door, she decided, to let in some light and find the lamp. Also missing were her
socks, and since the rug was undersized, her feet hit cold, hard flooring. She found the doorknob. Like the window glass,
it was cold and an October draft blew under the door, pricking her bare toes. She opened the door. Nash caught her by surprise.
He took one step into the room, but then staggered. She couldn’t say how long he had been standing outside the door. She tried
to hold him up. He muttered something unintelligible. He was heavy, like her brother Willie. He held out one arm and dropped
a bag inside the room onto the cold floor. Angel instructed him to take a step, leaning against her, until finally he dropped
onto the bed. There was the lamp. She got turned around in the dark. It was near the window, not the door. She turned it on.

Checking the hall, no one had seen him like that. She shut the door.

Nash was muttering and holding his side. He kept saying he was fine, even though she was too shocked to ask. He rolled off
his side, bloodying the linens.

“I’m going for help,” said Angel.

“Sweet cakes, you got to come here,” he said.

Angel sat on the side of the bed.

“What I tell you about depending on the kindness of strangers? We got to take care of our own worries.”

“You’re shot, Nash.”

“It’s a scratch. Go down and ask Mrs. What’s-her-name for some liniment and some rags. Tell her I fell hunting.”

“She’ll know, Nash.”

“She won’t ask you a thing. It’s supper time. She won’t want to be bothered.”

Why was he so sure of things? “I’ll be right back then,” she said. The CLOSED sign was hung out on the office door. Angel
knocked lightly. The “in” innkeeper, Mr. Pierce, answered. “Evening,” he said. He was still chewing his supper.

Angel used marriage as a front. “My husband was out deer hunting. He fell and he … he got this gash.”

“Don’t look so worried. We get that all the time. Got just the thing.”

She could not believe that he bought the story. Even she did not think herself believable.

He came back. “Here’s a box of some bandages and some of the wife’s medicinals. If it’s deep, now you know he’ll need a doctor,
don’t you?”

She took the box and thanked him.

Nash was passed out. She kept checking his pulse to be sure he was breathing. Her touch on his side was making him groan.
She was worried he’d draw one of the proprietors up the staircase. She gave him a rag and told him to bite down. “I can feel
something, Nash.” She didn’t know how to tell if she had found a bullet. He was expecting her to take it out. She stood up
and went to the window, where she rested her forehead against the cold glass.

Anita did cook the chicken-fried steak, but left the rest of the meal to her domestic help. The meal stretched into the afternoon,
until the black cook, who had cleared away the noonday dishes, was back setting places again. Fern told her not to set service
for them, but not even Fern could stop Anita, who told her cook, “Sandra, I’ll help out. We can make sandwiches out of the
leftovers.”

Anita wanted Fern to see her new radio. “The music sounds so alive, you’d swear the drummer was here in the living room.”

Henry and Walton got up and headed for the porch out back. Henry stepped back inside. “I’m going for my sweater. You need
a sweater, Reverend?”

Jeb took that to mean he was expecting him out on the porch. “I’ve got a jacket,” he said. Walton stared up at him through
the screen.

The Baers’ backyard was a good two acres back. White wicker furniture was left scattered across the porch, exactly as the
last partiers had left things. The porch ran nearly the width of the house. Jeb sat two chairs away, to leave space for Henry
and to put some distance between him and Walton. Sandra filled his cup again, struck a match, then lit the candles on the
table right in front of Jeb; she went inside complaining it was too cold for the porch.

“I envy you, Reverend,” said Walton.

Jeb didn’t know what to expect, so he sipped his coffee.

“You got what you need, don’t you? Seem content in your work, helping people.”

“Senators help people, don’t they?” Fern wasn’t within earshot, so he didn’t temper his tone. He didn’t feel much like talking
to the man.

Walton finally looked at him. “We might, if we didn’t have to spend so much time helping ourselves. First you think you have
to get in office so you can make a difference. Then once you’re in office, you got to do the things it takes to stay in office.”

Jeb put his hand near the candle and felt the heat.

“The public never stops needing, this I know. The more time I spend fighting all of these government wars, the less my wife
sees of me.”

Jeb closed his eyes. The man needed to talk, it seemed.

“I’d like to know if you, as a minister, ever think a man can find contentment.”

Senator Baer was asking him for counsel. Jeb let out a sigh, and then realized Walton was waiting for an answer. “If by contentment,
you mean will you ever get to the end of your work; no, I don’t.”

“Now why is that?”

“Work is, well, work, and it’s always there. Will be, even after we die. But you have to get to the end of something, that
I know.”

“What else is there to get to the end of ?”

“Yourself,” said Jeb.

“You getting philosophical on me now, Preacher?” Walton’s face was pale, his eyes pensive. Not once had he taken his eyes
from Jeb. He was leaning forward, his hands clasped somberly in his lap.

He didn’t want to help Walton, he wanted him to leave and go home to his wife. But he looked as though he had lost his way
and Jeb knew that lost place and the end of it. “You think you know what you want when you’re a young man. You can name it
and it has work attached to it, so you see that as your purpose,” said Jeb. “Then other things attach to you, like people.
But you don’t mind, because it seems to come with the territory.” Walton had a blank look about him, so Jeb filled in the
blank. “Women.”

“Oh, that, I get that. They’re needy.”

“Like us.”

Walton nodded, a weak attempt to affirm.

“Then we start to lose sight of one or the other, either what we thought was our purpose or else our family. We don’t juggle
as well as women,” said Jeb.

“That’s the honest truth.”

“The truth is, if there’s nothing left but the people who’ve decided for some insane reason to love us, then that is when
we know that we’ve gotten to the end of ourselves.” Jeb sipped some of Sandra’s coffee. “So in spite of what we lose, we still
have a mysterious satisfaction because of who we’ve held near.”

“And if we’ve kept all else, but lose the one we love?”

He seemed to be getting the idea. Still, for a man who went to law school, he was a little slow on the uptake. Jeb wondered
what was keeping Henry.

Anita’s radio was blaring so loud, Walton got up and shut the house door. Instead of taking his chair, he stood his carcass
in front of Jeb. “There’s a chance I may have lost my way,” he said.

This was one for Gracie, not him, for crying out loud! If he stared long enough at the candle burning next to his coffee,
maybe Walton would take his chair. But he kept standing, looking down at him, a big dumb kid. “I know the feeling,” said Jeb.
“Have a seat, Senator.”

“Walt is fine.”

Jeb pushed aside the candle and the coffee. “Anna is sick, Walt. But she’s still here.”

“Fern said that.”

She hadn’t told him that. “There’s no perfect love, except God’s love.”

“What makes Him so special?”

Walt was being serious, not making light, Jeb told himself. “He doesn’t change like us. So we have to work at love, and, as
men, it drives us nuts because we think we have a grip on it, and then the landscape changes.”