Fallen Angels (4 page)

The sharecropper's shack was a lesser place even than the old crumbling miners’ row house in Paris. Once they had settled in Snow Hill, Momma had: lost all of her yearning to fix things up. Daddy didn't seem to notice a thing about her—not the way she stared out the window or left supper dishes dirty in the tub until sunup. As far as Thorne Welby was concerned, while Lemuel had stuck more magazine pages to the wall to cover the cracks in the pine, he'd hauled off and turned his back to the cracks in their everyday lives.

Lemuel Welby had stared at Thorne's picture the morning he had packed them all off with Lana. He had said no farewells, only how he wished that Momma had stayed to take on her share of the load. Angel had tried to keep everyone's mind off of Daddy and prattled about movie stars and life in California the morning they all gathered up their few belongings. But she saw the way he leaned against the doorpost with his face toward Little Rock. That was her last memory of Daddy.

Dew, their uncle; had wrapped cornbread wedges in newspapers, one for each of them, and one each for him and Daddy for their lunch that day. Dew had a stingy way of hoarding his money in a woolen sock he shoved into his pocket, even while he slept.

“That Dew, he would not part with a dime,” she told Willie, “but he surprised me big time when he handed me two dollars’ worth of change.” Dew had gripped it in his field-blackened hand above her own hand and then finally released it as though it would be the end of his worries about them. But Dew's guilt had settled along the misty rims of his eyes, pink circles carved out of a dusty, cotton-picker's face. Like Lemuel, Dew had lost all of his childhood brilliance down in the throat of the mines, where little children laid aside notions of playthings and make-believe. The cotton fields had taken whatever was left.

Angel kept Claudia's last letter in a cotton drawstring bag on a string around her neck—the letter that told all of them she and her husband had settled in Nazareth with baby number two on the way. She said, “By now Claudia's baby must be, what, walking around, getting into trouble? That makes me Aunt Angel.” She liked the sound of it.

Ida May did not answer.

Willie watched the drifter boys steal a chicken and disappear into a forest beyond a herd of skinny cattle. A distant train whistle spoke of too many young fellers that now lived, breathed, and traveled the rails.

Angel promised Willie and Ida May that it was a matter of an hour until they reached Claudia's house. But it only proved to be another of her inventions.

The rolling sky dumped rain onto their heads while great strains of thunder pounded from south to north. The sky let out its robes and dropped its liquid children to the earth, hard enough to pound the hollows and the creeks but not enough to lift the drought from the dry lips of the farmland.

Angel ran, yelling at her siblings to keep up. The long hot day had lasted longer than most other days, in her estimation. It would end with this drenching rainfall and cover the rest of the day like night. While she might otherwise have welcomed the wet respite from the summer heat if she had been in the cab of her uncle's truck, a muddy trek through a snaky field left her closer to tears than she dared to admit. Ida May was already full-blown bawling like a calf. If she herself lost it, they'd all end up sitting down and crying their heads off.

“I see a shack ahead. Let's see if it's unlocked.” Angel slowed to allow Ida May to catch up. But Willie kept running until he disappeared entirely into the old one-room hovel.

“We got us a house,” said Ida May. “I like it”.

“It's not our house and it's not a house anyway.” Angel pushed back the tattered curtain from a window to let in what little light remained. “It's a shed or some such. But we can stay here and listen for the next ride. Then we'll hitch it all the way to Nazareth.” She said it like a veteran of the highway.

The rain fell and Angel lost track of the time until night ascended. All three of them peered over the windowsill as a black automobile motored up over the hill with headlights penetrating the curtain of rain. She was about to shout, when Willie gripped her arm.

“Angel, the last person we hitched a ride with took everything we owned.”

Angel watched the hulking vehicle slow, split a muddy hole in the road, and then pass.

“We can't stay here. What will we eat, Willie? If we can just make it to Claudia's before morning, it's bacon and fixings when we get up.”

Ida May, for the third time, described her hunger in pictures like she was a little rabbit soon to be killed and forgotten along the roadway.

It wasn't long until Angel saw another set of headlights. “You two stay inside. I'll flag this next one down. If things look bad, I'll run off and hide in the woods. But don't come after me if that happens. Just wait and I'll be back.”

“Angel Welby, you're just a big nut for doing it!” said Willie.

“I'm goin’ with you.” Ida May watched out the window next to Angel, but pinched Angel's sleeve as though she would not let go.

“Ida May, you stay here with Willie.” Angel lifted the curtain rod and pulled the curtain off to take for a head covering in the rain. She left them behind to gripe to one another.

Lightning flashed and outlined the approaching truck. The cab had a smallish appearance. The lights drew closer to the shack, but Angel stepped behind a cluster of bushes. Willie's worry had unnerved her. But before the truck reached her, it slowed, careened onto an open field, and stopped. She watched the driver inside the cab. He appeared to dig through some items. Then he pulled out a blanket and laid down, apparently to sleep for the night. The truck bed was loaded with supplies and covered with a tarp.

Angel burst back into the shack. “Come with me! While this driver catches some shut-eye, we'll climb under his tarp and sleep. He's got grub, everything we need, I'll bet you a dollar!”

“He'll see us anyway. Why don't we just ask him for a ride and see how he takes to it?” asked Willie.

“If he turns us down it might be the last chance we get all night. We been here all day and seen only two automobiles. You coming or staying?”

Ida May headed for the door.

“I'll come. But if this feller cuts our throats while we sleep, you'll be the blame for it, Angel.” Willie opened the door.

Angel led them down a shadowy path, through brush and trees until they were within a few yards of the truck. The driver had already fallen asleep. She lifted a corner of the tarp and helped Ida May hide beneath it.

“Apples. Oh, my! Apples!” said Ida May.

Angel peered over the crate of apples, the flour and sugar from the store in Camden, and the bed of the Ford truck. It had the same smell as her daddy's dirty wash on laundry day. Rain pelted the tarp, but it was dry underneath. She smiled. “You'll never believe this,” she said. “We found Sweet Eyes. He'll be one surprised gentleman come morning.”

2

T
he storm outside Camden steadied to a vertical shower, a soothing beating against the truck windshield, a hundred fingers drumming on the truck top. Jeb stretched out on the truck seat. He shifted to his right side, still bruised from Hank's lucky left jab, and turned his back to the night. The left side of his jaw was raw, but not from a lucky punch. Charlie had cut his hair away from his face and shaved him clean as a girl.

The storm quieted like a grandma's hum. The truck lurched beneath him. It felt like the wind had blown against the tarp and caused the supplies in the truck bed to tremble. Jeb pushed back the brim of his hat and lifted his eyes to the window. But the sodden field encircled him, empty of life. Not even the mottled patches of Depression-starved cows remained. All creatures safe in the distant barns, all hearts asleep in bed. Only a wanderer dared sleep in the rain. He dozed off.

The rain had taken Jeb's appetite from him. He slid upright, stiff from a night on the truck seat, and started the engine. He'd traveled five miles when he heard the cry of a child. It was a youngen's cry, he knew. It reminded him of his little sister back in Temple, Texas, when, at the age of four, she'd fought her weaning. The subtle wail he heard through the open window grew louder and quivered, like a youngster chased by terror. He slowed the truck, although he had no interest in family entanglements. But children fell into wells or down old mining shafts, he told himself.
I'd be a sorry sort to ignore it.
Jeb slowed some more.

Black-eyed Susans smelled bitter along the dirt road, sloppy-wet with long green necks bent sideways from the all-night deluge of rain. A mongrel puttered past his door, glanced up at him, and then loped ahead at the sound of a boy's whistle on the wing of morning. The tires lumbered slowly over a slick road pimpled by stones. Jeb heard mockingbird and finch and the remote mutter of thunder as the storm moved away from western Arkansas.
But no cries. Musta’ imagined it.
The storm had soaked every stick of kindling so the idea of cooking so much as a piece or two of bacon was out.

The truck shimmied. A thudding sound, louder than a spilled crate of apples, banged from under the track bed tarp.

“Some animal has got into my grub,” Jeb said. The earliest peep of sunlight made his eyes feel like two burned out headlights. He pulled to the side of the road. Behind the seat, Charlie had tucked a rifle. But at close range Big Brother's rabbit blaster would shatter a raccoon to ashes. He slid it out anyway. Untying a corner of the tarp, he lifted the edge with the butt of the gun with the same caution with which he might look into a snake hole.

Three pairs of eyes stared back at him with that trapped fox of a look. The youngest child, a girl about six, small like an understaffed rag doll, had smudges around her red eyes like little boys who play soldier. She jerked away from an older girl who bore a clear look of familiar about her.

“What's this? Kids? Get out of there!”

The boy in the group yelled, “Run, he's got a gun!” while the oldest girl continued biting into one of Jeb's apples.

“You hear what I say?” he said to the oldest.

The boy and the youngest girl scrambled over the back and ran down the road, slowing only when they realized the leader of their brood had lagged behind.

She shrugged. “You won't shoot.”

The folly of a stand-off with an eighty-pound refugee caused Jeb to lift his rifle parallel to the ground and polish the butt with one hand. “Don't think I won't.”

“You won't. I saw you back in Camden. You ain't the shooting type.”

“Oh, that's where I saw you. Don't tell me you kids rode in the back all the way from Camden.” Then he remembered stopping along the way for a dinner of beans and bread out of the truck bed.

“Angel, you lost your mind? Let's go!” the boy called to her.

“Angel. Ain't that a misleading notion?” Jeb said.

“Shut up, Willie! Don't you be giving away my name.” Angel had a hoarse cough. So much of her hair was caked in road silt that the color had lost all sense of description.

“Angel, Willie. And who is the little one?” asked Jeb.

“Ida May. She's my sister. We need a ride only as far as Nazareth.” Angel pushed herself up, her knees two dirty knobs, and hurled the apple core into the field.

“You been eatin’ my grub. Them eats was supposed to last me for a good week or two. You heard of the Depression, I reckon. You think I got money to burn?”

“That woman you hooked us up with, she weren't no teacher. She was a con and she stole every penny we had on us.”

“That nice teacher lady? I don't believe it.” But he wouldn't take the blame for hooking them up.

“How else you think we ended up dumped on the side of the road?”

“That was the way of things. Had nothing to do with me. Now you eat up my stash and got the nerve to ask fer more. Back where I come from, we call people like you a mooch. You just climb out the way you climbed in and go beg at one of these farmhouses. Some fanner's wife, she's your best bet for help. I got places to go. No time for varmints.”

“Where you come from?” Angel leaned over the back of the truck and helped Ida May back in as though she had no intention of leaving.

“Don't you hear anything I say?”

“You got a name, don't you?”

“Fine. I'll just haul your rear ends out myself. You, girl. Get your hands out of that sack of bread loaves!” He yelled at Ida May. She wailed.

Jeb hated the sound of her cry—a wounded girl sound, like a-young one too long away from her mother.

“He didn't look mean at first. Maybe I was wrong about him.” Angel lifted the hem of her dress and wiped her sister's eyes with no care for showing the hem of her drawers.

The boy stood at a safe distance, skipping stones, pacing.

“I never seen a man with so much trouble in his face. You in trouble?” Angel seemed to notice her dirty cuticles all of a sudden.

“I said get but of my truck. I've lost all patience with you, girl!” Jeb ran to the rear of the truck bed.

Angel clambered over the crates but Ida May wasn't fast enough. Jeb grabbed her by the collar.

Willie swore and leaped onto Jeb's right arm. “Let her go, ‘fore I get mad!”

Jeb shook the boy loose and dumped him onto the muddy road.

“You's mean, that's what!” said Angel. “Like I figgered.”

Jeb lifted the smallest girl from the truck bed. Before he could climb in after the oldest child, he saw a vehicle approaching. On the side of the vehicle were Words he could not make out, but it looked to be the law. An idea came to him. “You two get in the cab and don't say a word.”

“Don't, Willie! It's a trick!” Angel shaded her eyes and saw the copper's car, too.

“Go now or I'll leave you all on the side of the road. You said you wanted a lift. You takin’ it or not?” He lifted Ida May over one shoulder and ran with her to the passenger side of the cab. While he tossed her inside, the boy griped at him for touching his sister. “Willie, if ever somebody offers you a handout, it's best you take it. Might be a long time before you get sech a thing again.”

Willie stepped back and watched for his sister's response.