Angel Fire (10 page)

“Your mother made me promise to keep it a secret. You see, after you were born, her mother told her a story; and before that, after your grandmother had your mother, your great-grandmother told her. And that’s how it’s been.

“Ellie didn’t believe a word of it, of course. But after your grandmother died, when she was helping clean out your grandparents’ attic, she found an old tattered journal. Your great-grandmother, Beatrice, had written in it since she was a girl.”

“Where is it now?” I asked, barely able to contain my excitement.

“It was in your house
that
night. I’m sorry.”

Destroyed. For a moment, there had been a glimmer of hope that I might get some answers. But with the journal incinerated, I was back to square one.

“After reading it,” Aunt Martha continued, “Ellie realized that the story had been true all along. But by then, you were already born. Your mother showed no signs of the ability, but she was afraid for you. Since we were close, she felt she could confide in me.”

“Confide what?” I was practically jumping out of my skin.

“She called it ‘angel’s fire,’ your great-grandmother did. Very religious woman, Beatrice was. She believed she was being punished by a fallen angel.”

“An angel?” I said in a low voice, watching Aunt Martha’s reaction. I could never tell if she truly believed in hellfire and all that nonsense. I always thought those religious stories were more like morality tales told to children.

Aunt Martha said, “From what your mother told me, if someone in your family line is going to develop the ability, it only happens under very specific circumstances.”

I struggled to absorb all this new information. “What circumstances?”

“In her journal,” she told me, “Beatrice wrote something along the lines of ‘When the bond of blood is broken, a fallen angel will rise to punish the offender.’ I can’t remember it word for word.”

I had a sinking sensation, a flash of vertigo, when my brain made the connection.

Aunt Martha had dropped breadcrumbs one by one, hoping it would lead me to the conclusion. I had never even thought about it before; but the connection was crystal clear.

The bond of blood. Not my parents. They were alive when the power sprang out of me. That bond was broken before the fire…

“Oh, God,” I said.

“I suspected it. It’s true, isn’t it?” she asked me, never taking her eyes off me for a moment.

“Yeah.” My voice was tiny, weak, despairing.

Aunt Martha leaned over and wrapped her thick arms around me, pulled me into her deep bosom. “Oh, child, I’m so sorry.”

But I could not respond through the sudden flood of tears.

Chapter Fourteen

The night air
bit through our clothes, and when my sobs turned to an occasional sniffle, Aunt Martha led me around the motel to the bungalow and into the kitchen.

I left my duffel bag at the door.

Once she had me tucked into a wide-winged sofa, she threw a quilt over me, handed me a cup of herbal tea and listened as I spilled my guts.

* * *

I’ve painted Barry with a very harsh brush, and he had become every bit the caricature of a jealous man there was. But to be fair, he’d had some good qualities that initially attracted me to him. Aside from my youthful rebellion, I wasn’t stupid enough to marry him based solely on what kind of reaction I could get out of my folks.

For example, one night at a house party, I had one too many beers and Barry held my hair back while I puked in the toilet for half an hour. I was very grateful for that.

He’d bought a beat up old Sprint with money from his first summer job when he was sixteen, and since I’d never bothered to get my driver’s license, I made Barry taxi me everywhere. Even when I got him to drive Beth and me to the city once a month to go shopping, he did it, and quietly followed along behind us while we flitted from store to store.

When Mr. Scotts gave me a failing grade on my mid-term biology exam—even though I knew I got most of the answers right—and I cried about showing my results to my parents, Barry let the air out of the old coot’s tires every day for a week. That act might say more about Barry’s skewed sense of justice than his protectiveness toward me, but at the time, I thought it was very chivalrous and romantic.

Barry had had more than a few strikes against him. He grew up under the shadow of an overbearing father, and nothing he did was good enough for his old man. Barry had developed a bad case of low self-esteem and had a major chip on his shoulder. In school, he always squeaked by on his grades, and pretended he didn’t care, but if anyone teased him about it, he would grow dark and sullen.

For Barry, the resentment toward his disapproving dad and his lack of confidence had manifested physically whenever anyone challenged him. I’d even seen him punch out Frank’s lights one time when Barry said he had to go help his uncle put up some ‘bob wire.’ Frank laughed at the mispronunciation, and Barry had turned bright red with embarrassment before laying a sound beating on his friend.

Barry’s mother left in the middle of the night when he was two, and no one had any idea where she’d gone. I made the mistake of feeling sorry for him one time when he told me the story, and he growled that he was better off without her.

Maybe I felt he needed me in his life; that I could somehow save him, and make him a better person. Whatever misguided feelings we had for each other, it inevitably led us to a justice of the peace less than a month after high school graduation.

The first couple of months after I married Barry, we had a blast. We were teenagers pretending to be adults; but we didn’t have a clue about responsibility or commitment or about the harsh realities of life outside of school.

On the outs from his father over the elopement, Barry got a job as a loader at the meat packing plant south of town. That’s where he first started hanging around Frank and Troy. I worked nights at the Fast & Friendly convenience store, and together, we made enough to put down first and last month’s rent on one of Mr. Cromley’s mobile homes in the Verde Vista Trailer Park.

Once a week we’d have Frank, Troy and some of the other guys from Barry’s job over, along with some of our friends from high school, and we’d party until the neighbors complained.

After a couple weeks of this, Mr. Cromley showed up at the door one morning and woke me with his hammering on the door. Fat and balding, he glared at me through his thick glasses and gave me an ultimatum: keep the noise down, or find a new place to live.

Barry didn’t take the news well when he got home that night and tracked Mr. Cromley down at his home. Sheriff Burke showed up after Mrs. Cromley had enough of the shouting, and was worried Barry might hurt her husband.

Barry’s father made him cool his heels overnight in his more than familiar jail cell.

As a result, Barry was late for work—little did I know it wasn’t the first time—and his boss raked him over the coals in front of some of his co-workers. Barry was never one to hold back, and when push came to shove he threw a punch. That was the end of that job.

It was the turning point in our relationship. From then until the end, I don’t think we had one day where we didn’t scream or shout at each other. I hated myself for jumping into a marriage with a boy in a man’s body; and he, I’m sure, resented the fact that I was the sole breadwinner. It probably didn’t help that I rubbed his nose in it every chance I got.

Things only got worse when we had to leave the mobile home. It wasn’t that Mr. Cromley evicted us; it was that we couldn’t afford it on my pitiful income. No one wanted to hire Barry after word got around.

I had to beg my parents to let us stay in their mother-in-law suite until we got back on our feet. Barry hated being there. My parents’ constant disapproval of him—of us—grated on him day after day. His inability to find work emasculated him.

Looking back, I’m sure if we had really wanted to, we could have worked through it and eventually made a life together. I knew some folks who had muscled through the bad times and figured it out. But I didn’t want to. I hated what Barry had become. I was tired from working double shifts at the store, and I didn’t have time for his adolescent antics.

The situation was getting worse every day, and our fights got louder and louder to the point where my father had to come downstairs once to break it up.

Everything that happened that summer and fall was your typical small town sob story. You’ve heard it a million times. We weren’t the first young couple to have problems, and we wouldn’t be the last.

Aunt Martha knew everything that had happened up to this point. Everyone in Middleton knew it, I’m sure. But what she didn’t know, and what no one besides Barry and I knew, was what happened on our last night together.

* * *

The memory is a splinter in my heart.

It was one night late in November. Middleton is closer to Flagstaff than Phoenix, so in winter we got a few days of snow here and there, but the flakes usually melted when they hit the ground. We rarely had to break out the shovel more than a few times a year.

That night, however, it wasn’t just a light sprinkling: a blanket of white smothered the town. If I hadn’t been so exhausted from fourteen hours straight at the Fast & Friendly, I might have appreciated the beauty. Instead, I was dreading the long walk home in the snow. I hadn’t brought any boots, and I knew that by the time I got home, my sneakers would be soaked, and my feet would be frozen.

Barry had been in a foul mood all week, and I wasn’t looking forward to listening to another one of his drunken rants about how everyone in the town was trying to keep him down.

Besides, I had more serious things on my mind: like the fact that I was two weeks late, and I had no idea what I was going to do. First thing, though, was to find out for sure, but money was tight. I hated to shoplift a pregnancy test, but I told myself I would secretly put the money in the till come payday. No one would know the difference.

My fingernails were completely bitten off by the end of my shift.

When Alice Monterey arrived and stopped chewing her gum long enough to flash her pearlies at me, she said, “Evening, hun. You look like you’ve been through World War Three.”

“Uh, yeah, it’s been busy,” I said and forced a smile. “It’s like the snow sent everyone into a panic. They’re all stocking up on the essentials—we had a run on chips and beef jerky.”

“Gawd. That stuff will give you ulcers.” Alice was a health food nut. She called herself a vegan, but most folks in town didn’t know what that was, or if they did, they didn’t care.

“You all right for getting home? It’s nasty out there.”

I said, “I’ll manage.”

“Is Matt here?”

I jerked a thumb toward the back of the store. “Yeah. In his office.”

“Hey, Matt,” she bellowed.

Matt Childers was the assistant manager of the store. Tall and lean, he wore thick glasses that he couldn’t seem to keep perched on his angular nose. He stuck his head out of the office door, one eyebrow raised in question.

Matt was in his mid-thirties, with a wife and two kids. A decent boss, the only sign he ever gave that he was upset with something one of us girls screwed up was a pursing of his lips and a deep sigh.

“Yeah?”

“Can you watch the till?” asked Alice. “I’m going to drive Darcy home, all right.”

“Uh. Actually, I’m almost done here; I can give her a lift on the way.”

Alice winked and turned to me. “There you go, hun.”

I gave her a tentative smile. “Thanks.” Inside, my anxiety kicked into high gear, but I willed myself to calm down. I just had to be a little more careful.

I grabbed my jacket from my locker in the back room and buttoned up the front, my stolen package nestled against my stomach.

When I came out, Matt stood impatiently at the front door. He wore a puffy blue ski jacket I would have ordinarily thought looked ridiculous, but when he opened the door to let me out, the wind bit through my light jacket and I was instantly jealous of his attire. I pulled my collar tighter around my neck and hunched over.

“It’s cold,” I complained.

“The car heats up quick,” he said as he led the way to his station wagon and let me in. I was thankful to get out of the harsh wind.

“Got any plans tonight?” I asked by way of conversation. The least I could do to thank him for the drive was to be friendly.

“Veronica rented a horror movie. I forget the title. I’ll probably fall asleep halfway through anyway.” He let out a dry laugh. “Those movies bore me.”

We turned the corner at my parents’ street a little too sharply and slid into the other lane. Matt slammed on the brakes and, with one arm, reached out to stop me from falling over onto the gearshift. I panicked when his hand brushed against my stomach. But he didn’t notice the extra bulge I had hidden beneath my jacket.

We hadn’t been travelling that fast, and Matt was able to recover and get back on track before an oncoming minivan hit us. He’d noticed my reaction and looked worried.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to grab you like that.”

“Just startled is all.” I shot him a relieved smile.

He drove at a very slow rate the rest of the way.

“We’re here,” I said when we got close to my place. I could barely see out of the foggy windows of the car. The lights from the house were blurred and distorted.

He pulled up to the curb out front of my house.

“Thanks, Matt,” I said. “I really appreciate this.”

“Don’t sweat it. Just remember boots and a winter jacket tomorrow, all right?” he told me in a ‘dad’ voice.

“You got it.” I smiled and tried the door. It wouldn’t open. I flushed, thinking I was on some kind of back luck streak.

“It’s probably just stuck,” Matt guessed. He leaned over me. “Here, let me try.” Grabbing the handle, he pushed against it. I thought for sure his elbow would feel the package under my jacket.

I suggested, “Maybe if you try it from the outside.”

“Just put your shoulder against it,” Matt said. “I’ll push at the same time.”

It worked. The door creaked open with the snap of broken ice, and I quickly jumped out.