Angel Sister (3 page)

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The sound of Nadine stirring up the fire in the cookstove woke Victor Merritt, but he didn’t open his eyes. Too much light was already pushing against his eyelids and making the hammers pound inside his head. He dreaded opening his head up completely to the morning sun. Nadine set the coffeepot and skillet down on the kitchen stove. The clang of metal on metal was like a gong right against his ears.

He needed coffee desperately, but the sizzling sound of bacon frying made his stomach lurch even before the smell reached his nose. If only he could crawl under the smell of the bacon to get the coffee. Then his head might not blow apart.

Of course what he really needed was a drink. And not coffee or water. Alcohol. The evil potion that was pounding hammers against his brain and driving him down the path to destruction. Or so his father-in-law told him, at least once a week. Victor couldn’t argue the truth of it, but he didn’t know how to stop it.

The drink had hold of him. He could no more free himself from that hold than a spring rabbit could free itself from the jaws of a dog that dug it out of its grassy nest. Preacher Reece told him to give it over to the Lord. To lay it at the Lord’s feet. But Victor hadn’t been able to find that spot to lay it down. He’d think he had. He’d vow to stop drinking in the morning light, and then the day would grow old and the devil would sneak back in his thoughts.

Just one little drink won’t hurt. A little taste to knock out that aching in your shoulder. You can’t make horseshoes without swinging your hammer, and you know nothing else can stop the pain in that old war wound. Nobody will know. Not if you only take one little nip. One little taste so you can keep working.

Lately he hadn’t been able to take just one little nip. Not if there was more than one nip left in the bottle. Nadine didn’t understand. Couldn’t understand. He was glad she didn’t understand. Glad she didn’t have to fight the demons. Glad her sleep wasn’t haunted by faces of men dying in the mud in France.

Everybody thought the memories of the terrible things that had happened in the war should be faded away by now. All that had been years ago. They’d won the war, beat down the Germans, and come home. Life went on. The living had to go with it, and for a while he had. He and Nadine had been blessed with babies and had watched them grow into beautiful girls. Life was good, and the war memories stayed locked in a back corner of his mind.

He hadn’t intended to ever let them out again, but for some reason the bad memories had started slithering out into his dreams. Then the dreams stayed with him even after he woke up in the morning, until any time he shut his eyes he could see the men on the battlefield calling out for help while their blood turned the ground red around them. He watched them die. His friends. Bo.

He’d never seen Bo in France. He’d looked for him, asked others if they’d seen him, but they never crossed paths in the war. He didn’t know Bo had died there in the trenches until he got home. Yet often it was Bo who cried out to him in his dreams. Bo who reached for him. Bo who needed his help. Bo who was dying while Victor was living.

Bo was his best friend when they were young. He couldn’t remember a time when Bo wasn’t there watching out for him. Making sure the dangers lying in wait along the path of life didn’t win over Victor the way they’d won over his brother, Preston Jr.

Victor’s father said a man wasn’t your friend if he was paid to watch over you. He said that man was a servant, not a friend. It was true that Victor’s mother paid Aunt Hattie and Bo. Victor had always known that. It wasn’t a secret. More a matter of pride with Victor’s mother. And a necessity. Juanita Gale Merritt never enjoyed good health after her marriage. She said the Kentucky air weakened her, until by the time Victor came along she spent most of her time sitting in her chair by the window doing needlepoint. Aunt Hattie ran the house.

Juanita’s family, the Gales, were well-to-do landowners in Virginia and, according to Aunt Hattie, not at all pleased when Juanita was swept off her feet and carried away to the uncivilized west by Preston Merritt. The family had insisted Aunt Hattie go along with Juanita. Aunt Hattie could have refused to go. She wasn’t the Gales’ slave even if her mother and father had been.

Slavery had ended when Lee surrendered to Grant the year before Aunt Hattie was born. She was a free woman who could go and do as she pleased, but going west to Kentucky seemed a fine way to sever the ties with those who refused to forget the time when people of her color could be bought and sold. Plus she’d grown up with Juanita Gale and had watched over her for years, much as her son, Bo, grew up with Victor and watched over him. Money changed hands, but that didn’t keep affection from being exchanged in hearts.

Aunt Hattie was more a member of the family than a servant. At least to Victor. And Bo was more brother to him than Preston Jr. Of course Preston Jr. had died when Victor was ten, and Bo had watched over Victor until Bo was eighteen and Victor was fourteen. Then Bo had joined a Negro league baseball team and traveled all over the country to play ball before the war. Victor had gone with Aunt Hattie to see him play once when Bo’s team came to Louisville. He was good. Hit two homers. But then Bo had always been good at everything he did.

It was Victor who could never hit a ball much past second base. It was Victor who tripped over his own feet whenever he tried to run a race. It was Victor who had to have a sheet of paper and a pencil to figure up the right change to give customers at the store. It was Victor who had lived when Preston Jr., a true Merritt who could make any father proud, had died. It was Victor who had lived when Bo, the better, stronger man, had died in the mud in France. Victor who lived while hundreds of better men had died.

And he didn’t know why. Sometimes he wondered if it was the good Lord’s way of laughing at them all. The Lord pulling a joke on them, letting a puny man like Victor live and taking the others on to heaven. Or maybe the Lord just didn’t want Victor.

Nadine got upset whenever he said anything like that out loud. She’d glare at him and tell him in no uncertain words how wrong he was. She could not imagine a God who laughed, and Victor did not want to imagine a God who didn’t. It wasn’t often he saw her father in Nadine, but when she told Victor how he was approaching blasphemy talking about the Lord laughing at him, she had Preacher Reece’s fire in her eyes. It wasn’t a fire he liked seeing there.

He wasn’t going to like seeing the disappointment in her eyes whenever he finally pulled himself off the couch and made his way into the kitchen, either. That’s what he was. Perhaps had always been. A disappointment. To his father. To his country. To his wife. To his children. To his Lord. A failure at everything he’d tried. The only thing he was good at was making the boys laugh when he was drinking with them. He supposed that was better than making the Lord laugh at his puny plans.

He used to be able to make Nadine laugh, but he didn’t think there would be much chance of that this morning. Not from the sound of pans being banged around in the kitchen. He pulled in a slow breath and held it. He still hadn’t opened his eyes, but someone was coming across the floor. Quiet little hesitant steps. Not Nadine. Not Kate. Certainly not Evangeline. His oldest daughter wouldn’t even look toward him when he’d been drinking.

He eased one eye open a slit. Just as he thought. Victoria Gale. His baby. Already ten years old, but still and always his baby. She looked like his mother. Fair of skin with almost black hair. A few freckles spotted her nose and upper cheeks, and her eyes were the green of a cold winter pond.

None of the girls looked a thing alike. Evangeline took after Nadine’s side of the family with red hair like Nadine’s mother and beautiful blue eyes like Nadine. And Kate, well, Kate was Kate. Her hair was an ordinary brown, and her eyes sometimes didn’t seem to know what color they wanted to be, the way they changed from green to blue to gray according to her mood. But there was nothing ordinary about Kate. She practically exploded with life, had run after it with both hands ever since she was a little thing. It brought her hard knocks and falls sometimes, but that hadn’t ever stopped her.

“Daddy?” Victoria’s voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. “Are you awake, Daddy?”

The hint of fear in her voice pierced Victor. What had he become that his baby was afraid to stand beside him? He pushed open his second eye. “I’m awake, puddin’.” His voice came out raspy, but he managed to put a smile in the sound of it. “Are you awake?”

She looked relieved to see that he really was her daddy and not some stinky hobo who had wandered in off the road. “Of course I’m awake,” she said with a giggle. “I’m walking around.”

“You could be sleepwalking. Wandering around in dreamland looking for a way out. Any two-headed horses in there?” Victor sat up. He managed not to groan, but only barely. He was the one wandering around in a vast wasteland without a way to get back.

“No, Daddy.” Victoria rewarded Victor with another giggle. “I’ve never seen a two-headed horse.”

“Oh, but every girl should see a two-headed horse at least once in her life. They are curious beasts.” He leaned back against the couch and breathed in and out slowly. He wanted to close his eyes and pull the couch cushions up over his head, but his baby was watching him.

“Are you sick, Daddy?” Victoria’s smile changed to a worried frown.

“I’m not feeling too pert, but no, puddin’, I’m not sick.” He started to reach out to touch her face, but when he noticed how his hands were shaking, he tucked them down between his legs instead. “Just feeling a little woozy. Not awake enough yet.”

“You want a cup of coffee?”

“You bring me some coffee, I’ll give you a ride to the moon just as soon as I finish building my rocket ship.”

“Oh, Daddy.” Her smile was back. “Nobody could go to the moon.”

“Are you sure about that? They do it all the time in the books I read. Fly up there and land their rockets and go searching for little green men.”

Victoria wrinkled her nose. “Who would want to find green men?”

Victor smiled. “Well, maybe you can go to Venus and find purple girls. But first get me that coffee.”

When she brought him the steaming cup of coffee, Victor took it with both hands to keep from sloshing it out as he brought it up to his lips. Another few sips and he might be back among the living. “Thank you, puddin’. You and your mama are lifesavers.”

“Mama said to ask if you wanted eggs this morning.”

Victor’s stomach rolled at the mention of food. “Not today. Biscuits and honey will be enough for me. Just give me a minute or two to drink my coffee and get cleaned up. The rest of you don’t wait on me. Go on and eat.”

After Victoria skipped back into the kitchen, Victor took another drink of his coffee and leaned back against the couch. The hammers weren’t pounding quite so hard. He might try standing up. He needed to be moving. Sanderson was supposed to bring in his horse this morning to get new shoes. Victor couldn’t afford not to be there. Even if he was the only blacksmith in Rosey Corner, Edgeville wasn’t that far away. Owen Prentice was still doing some horseshoeing there, although last time Victor saw Owen, he was wondering how much longer he was going to be able to hold on to his business with the way automobiles were taking over the roads.

Progress, everybody said, and no man could stop that. His father said no man should want to stop progress. That a man with any gumption would jump on board with the progress and ride it like the opportunity it was. Look at the money he was pulling in off that gas pump he had the forward thinking to put in front of his store.

Victor took another drink of his coffee and massaged his forehead. Thinking about his father made the hammers hit harder.

“Need some help, Dad?” Kate asked from the kitchen doorway.

Victor looked over at her. “Don’t worry about me, Kate. You go ahead and eat your breakfast. I’ll be along in a minute.”

She hesitated a few seconds, as if she wasn’t sure she should believe him, then turned back to the kitchen. Victor reached down to get his shoes that were lined up neatly by the couch. Kate’s doing, he thought as he pulled them on. She must have helped him get bedded down on the couch the night before, even if he had no memory of it. He thought the shame of that should keep him from ever taking another drink, but so far it hadn’t.

He stood up, balanced on his feet for a moment before he tried moving. He went out the front door and around the house to the back porch where they kept the washpans and water in the summertime. It was closer to go through the kitchen, but he wasn’t ready to face the kitchen yet.

He stopped at the well and drew out a bucket of water to pour over his head. That drowned out enough of the hammers that he could go onto the porch and wash up. But it woke up thoughts of his father again. Every day his father went out to the pump on the well behind his house and performed his morning bathing rituals. Winter or summer. No matter the weather. Victor had seen him clear a spot in the snow to stand to bathe. A man didn’t let a little cold water stop him from keeping his body clean.

When Victor had asked him why he didn’t carry the water in the house and heat it on the stove, his father had made a sound of disgust before he said, “That’s for women. Women and boys.”

The water that Victor washed up in on the porch wasn’t heated, but the morning sun was already warm and the cool water felt good. He pulled on the clean shirt somebody—probably Kate—had laid on the chair for him and peered into the small square mirror on the wall over the wash pan to comb down his hair. The mirror was wavy and flecked in places, but it still showed Victor too true an image of how he looked. Eyes bloodshot. Nose red. Mouth weak. He turned his eyes away from the sight of himself.

He tried to wash the bad taste and the smell of the alcohol out of his mouth. Not that it mattered all that much. Nadine wouldn’t be offering him any good-morning kisses. When he finally went into the kitchen and said good morning, she didn’t even look up at him.