Fallen Angels (29 page)

Fern held his arm like she didn't want to let him go. Then she excused herself for the sake of Jeb's worthy cause.

As Clovis returned home with a bottle of aspirin for his youngest girl's fever and a sack of food from Honeysack's, all of it care of Jeb's pocket change plus a whispered request to Freda Honeysack, Jeb returned home. He gathered the children for a house cleaning, delegating the task of porch sweeping to Ida May. Willie washed windows while Angel complained when asked to scrub the kitchen floor and wipe down the corroding appliances so early and before the start of school. She threw a scrub brush, a cake of Palmolive, and two ragged hand towels into a pail. “If I scrub any harder, there'll be no stove left to clean.”

Jeb pulled the sofa out away from the wall and swept webs and spider egg sacs away from the baseboards. He gathered laundry into a heap for the wash. The wringer washer shook and vibrated while he pulled out a sopping wet shirt from Woolworth's and fed the tail of it to the wringer. Water poured back into the machine as the flattened shirt landed in Jeb's hands, stiff and ready to be shook and hung out to dry.

“You never got us up so early before, not to clean and do up the clothes,” said Angel. “You must've told her.”

Jeb looked at Ida May, who took an interest in the talk. “If you're finished with your chores, then please go and dress, Ida May.” Jeb popped the shirt into the air to tease her with it as she left.

“You're going to leave surely, Jeb. The truck's back. Nothing's making you stay now.”

“I ironed you a dress for school and not a bad job if I say so. But take care to wear stockings. It's a cold morning.” Jeb kept his back to Angel and looked through the window out toward the stream. The leaves had mostly fallen away, making way for a clear view of the water and the rocky slope beyond the banks. Soon the cold would complete the undressing of the summer thickets and leave the hills grayed over, exposed.

“Not that I give a care what she thinks, but how did Miss Coulter take the news?” Angel pulled a pair of white stockings out of the basket of dry clothes.

“Go dress yourself.”

The fact that he answered quietly made her turn and stare at him. “At least tell me if you'll be home when we get back from school today.” She waited.

Jeb fished out a soaked pair of trousers.

Angel padded out of the kitchen, across the floor she had mopped, and disappeared into her room to dress for the day.

“I have good news.” Angel sat upon her bed, already made and fixed up with a doll and pillow.

Ida May dropped the broom onto the floor and climbed back underneath her quilt.

“What good news?” asked Willie.

“We'll be going to live with Claudia soon. I know for a fact she lives in Fort Smith now and I wrote a letter just last week. Any day, she'll write back with the money to send for us,” Angel said. Her stockings pulled tight at the knee, a hint they would soon be too short.

“If you knew all this last week, why are you just now telling us?” Willie, still wrapped in a sheet, allowed his jaw to drop and his mouth to hang open. He did not believe her.

Angel answered, “I shouldn't be telling you yet anyway. But it's such good news, I figured why wait. May as well tell you now. That's why Jeb's doing up the clothes and wants us to leave the house all spiffed up.”

“Jeb knows?” asked Ida May.

Angel let out a sigh. She drew each stocking up to the thigh and then turned her back to Willie. “He knows.”

“Is Jeb taking us to Claudia's?” Willie asked. He lay on his stomach and rolled his pencil between his hands as though he were trying to build a fire on the cover of his schoolbook.

“We're through with Jeb. He's moving on now. It's best we don't know where he goes. If he's got business with the police, why should we get in that kind of mess?”

“I don't want to leave, Angel.” A pearl-sized tear slipped down Ida May's face. “Jeb takes care of us, and Fern, too. I'm telling Fern. She'll let us stay.”

“No you won't tell Fern. You're staying right here until I get home from school today and if Fern shows up, well, you won't say a word. This is for big people to squabble over, Ida May. She's not our momma. We got a real family, like Claudia. You just can't remember her because you were so young when she ran off and married. After a week or two with your real sister, you won't remember Fern.”

Ida May wailed.

“You think she'll be all right here with Jeb, Angel?” Willie asked.

“Why wouldn't she?” Angel tied her shoes in double bows to hold them on her feet.

“I mean, he wouldn't go off and leave her today, would he?” Willie ran his thumb through the hole in the toe of his sock.

“I used to worry he might, Willie. Lately it's hard to say. But he's different, that I know. Ida May, you just stick close and ask Jeb to read to you and stuff like that,” said Angel.

“Jeb can read,” said Ida May.

“Big words, too,” said Willie. “I heard him reading to Fern out on the porch the other night. They sure been cozy lately. Reckon they'll run off and marry like Claudia?”

“Fern's not like Claudia, Willie. Ladies like her get their pictures in the paper when they get married, so they don't dare run off to do it. They don't marry men wanted by the police, neither.” Angel gathered up her books.

Jeb opened the door. “Time for you all to go. Ida May, get your shoes on. I'm driving Willie and Angel to school. You may as well go, too.”

Angel did not comment either way. She looked at Jeb as though she did not recognize him anymore.

19

T
he mountains and the foothills smelled of smoking timber, wood crackling in the stoves and smoke billowing from the chimneystacks of whoever had the wherewithal to own a good brick fireplace. Not many in Nazareth. The air that permeated the churchyard was stiff with smoke, a white aroma both fragrant and stifling to Jeb.

He loaded up the children and drove them down past the lane that led to the impoverished, junk-strewn Wolverton yard, past the neatly manicured entrance to the Mills estate, and on to the school.

Fern met Jeb out in front of the school. “Let me get a better look at the famous truck.”

“Not too much to look at but it runs like a racehorse. I thought maybe tonight you'd like to go for a malted at Fidel's. Or, if you're too busy, some other time.” Jeb said “some other time” as though he had another time to give her. He prayed for a long Monday.

“I should be finished with grading papers by six or so. Malteds will be too cold to get come November. Guess I had better seize the last one of the year.” Fern looked at Jeb until it seemed inappropriate to look any longer. “I'll bet you children are happy to get a ride to school, what with the frost covering every blessed thing in sight.” Fern addressed Angel and Willie. Ida May had taken a blanket and curled up on the front seat for a little more shut-eye.

“We just barely got here. Them robber boys left it near out of gas,” said Willie.

“Lots of folks are out of gas these days, Willie,” said Fern.

“I'm headed for town to get fuel,” said Jeb. Will Honeysack had paid him sixteen dollars on Sunday, well near the salary paid to the Catholic priest between Nazareth and Hot Springs.

Fern waved the Wolvertons in. They all tramped out of the woods on foot, but it had become less shameful to be out of gas when everybody was in the same boat. The two youngest walked wrapped in a blanket, Siamese twins running for the heat of the schoolhouse as fast as blanket-trussed legs could carry them.

Fern, careful not to talk over the heads of her students, said, “Angel, I got your paper on President Lincoln graded. You got an A, girl. I think you ought to be really proud of yourself.”

Angel walked away without comment and met the oldest Wolverton girl at the gate.

“Angel, you come back here and answer Miss Coulter, like a polite person ought to do!” said Jeb.

“It's all right,” Fern told him. “Angel's been off in another world lately. At least, I've noticed that about her. I don't think she means anything by it when she doesn't answer, other than. ‘I wish someone would ask me what's bothering me.’ I don't suppose she's mentioned anything to you that's troubling her?”

Several things that might possibly trouble Angel came to Jeb. “No, nothing that I can think of.”

“If you don't mind, I can take her aside this afternoon and see if she's up for a little girl talk,” said Fern.

“Fact is—” The truth bubbled to the top like a well finally uncapped. Jeb blurted out, “Fern, I've had something on my mind and it has something to do with Angel, with all of us. Tonight I need to discuss it with you. I'll pick you up at six if it's all right with you.” He could not sit on it anymore. By tonight, he would have his things packed. He would tell her the truth about him. If she cared about the children, he would ask her to care for them until they could be returned to their family. Then he would drive to Texarkana and turn himself in.

The sun came up fully now. Fern wore a white blouse and a russet skirt and had tied a sweater around her shoulders, a kitten-soft woolen dappled like a Pinto pony. It made her look fresh off the ranch, with a faint hint of Manhattan. “Sounds important, Philemon.”

“It's important that we get together tonight and talk, yes.”

“I look forward to it, then,” she said.

“Until then.” When he turned he felt Fern clasp his hand, a gentle fondling of fingers against his own.

“Malteds and something very important.” Naturally she laughed. She did not know of Jeb's plans to ruin them.

Jeb dropped by Honeysack's and bought a few gallons of gas. Val Rodwyn handed him a big stack of mail. A faint smattering of hope made him dig through the stack in hopes of finding a letter from Gracie telling him that their plans had changed and that they could not come after all. But not one piece of mail was from the minister.

That was the icing on his flattened cake. It was better, he decided, to let the chips fall. Let everyone know that he was not the man he said he was after all, before Philemon Gracie pranced in and made the announcement for him.

Either way, he was a miserable man.

Jeb drove home with the stack of mail, a bundle tied neatly by Val and given to him. Every letter addressed by Angel to her sister Claudia now lay on the passenger seat with various messages scrawled through the addresses indicating: that no such person lived at such-and-such address. Before he met with Fern, he would have to tell Angel that her search for Claudia had come to a disappointing end. She would have to find a way back to Snow Hill with her daddy or to Little Rock with her aunt and insane mother. But he could not take them along to his eventual arrest. To do so meant the Welbys would wind up in a state home. He would promise Angel that would never happen.

Jeb arrived early at the school. Ida May played hopscotch in the dirt. He waited by the gate in hopes of catching a glimpse of Fern. Angel appeared first. Finally Willie and another boy appeared. “We have to talk some things over, but not here.”

Angel and Willie bid good-bye to their friends. Angel lingered a little longer, almost as though she could not expect to see them again.

Jeb took them home.

“You're awfully quiet,” said Willie.

“And still here.” Angel toted her books to the front porch and left them on the steps.

“I've got something to show you, Angel. All of you.” Jeb led them inside. He gave her the stack of letters. “Claudia never got any of your mail. All of those places your aunt thought she might live are no good.”

Angel went through the envelopes reading her own handwriting. “Claudia didn't get any of them. Daddy just sent us away without knowing anything. He's a liar!” she cried.

Willie stormed away. Ida May sat down on the floor like she needed someone to translate all that her sister had told her was not true.

“It doesn't do any good to blame your daddy. Maybe he truly thought he knew where Claudia lived,” said Jeb.

“He didn't know. We were just too many mouths to feed so he sent us off. It don't matter to him where we are just so we're out of his hair.” Angel dumped the letters into the garbage pail. She ran out of the kitchen, down the back steps, and away from the house.

Jeb followed her.

She ran through the small clearing toward the stream. Cattails bobbed in her wake. Bright yellow clusters of tickseed lay flattened next to the dead pods of bee balm and frost bitten chicory. She circled the shrubs where Jeb and Willie had set trotlines and cut across the stones until the frigid water stopped her midstream.

The lofty shadow of a sweet gum wrapped a cold blanket around Jeb.

“Ain't you got things to do, Jeb Nubey?” Her sobbing wrenched him in two. “Places to pack up and go to? Leave me alone and just go, will you? I'm not your problem anymore.”

“You have every reason to be mad,” he said.

“Go away.” She wept. Her head came back, her slight frame twisted like an emerging larva, and she wailed. Both hands came to her mouth and the tough exterior fashioned from hunger and hopelessness crumbled into the creek.

Jeb slipped out of his weathered oxfords and with his bare feet waded into the cold water. The stream bit his legs like nails. He imagined her plummeting headlong down the same cliffs where he had lived for so long. Even if it took his own life, he had to pull her back. “Angel, you listen to me!” He plucked her off the rock and carried her back through the stream. She fought him the entire way. “Stop it, now!” He held her next to him and said as quietly as he could, “Listen, baby. You've got to listen.”

She threw her arms around his neck and cried with her face against him. Jeb stood with one foot on dry land and one in the water and let her cry. He held her crumpled against him until the only sound was a faint sob and the gurgling babble of creek water. “I been your daddy now for these last few months and I want you to listen to what I have to say. No matter what happens, I'm getting you back to your family, Angel. This Depression is eating up everything in sight, but it ain't going to eat you.”

“Jeb, you can't do nothing for us. You got to get out of here.”