Earthly Vows (30 page)

“I’ll work, get a job. Make my own way. Come March, I’ll be eighteen.”

“How much you figure a schoolteacher makes?”

“Over a thousand a year. More than my daddy ever made,” she said.

“Chicken scratch.”

“How much you make knocking off banks?”

“Hold your tongue, princess, I’m no thug. I’m only a chauffeur. I don’t know nothing about no holdups.” He had an easy smile.

A squad car passed them. Angel watched the cop drive past, turn on his lights, and pull a motorist over. “How do you know
no one is looking for this car?”

“The people I work for, they are, what is the word, resourceful. My car is out of the picture, I drive the boss’s car. Guys
like him, they like the limelight. They’re not looking for me or my car.”

“How much you going to make selling suits then? Not too many people buying suits nowadays.”

“This Depression, it won’t last. Maybe another year. Then I’ll take the money I make off the suit store, buy up shares in
the railroad. Trains, they’re here to stay. Now you take your average railroad executive, young, industrious as I am. I’ll
make five times what you’ll see as a teacher.”

“Where you want to live?”

“Maybe Chicago, not sure I’ve found my city. My feeling is that if you look hard enough, your city will find you.”

He sure liked to talk. “You ever kill anyone? I saw your gun.”

“That’s only window dressing. I didn’t mean for you to see it. My uncle, he gave it to me, was afraid I’d need it. But so
far, nope.”

“I’ve been afraid enough to kill someone. Not hungry enough, though,” she said.

“You want to know the truth?”

“Nothing but.”

“I don’t even know how that thing works. I’ve never loaded it.” He drove onto a country lane off the highway.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“You ever been to a football game?”

Stanton School never got big enough for a team. “Not ever,” she said. “Cops don’t look in places like that. I’ll take you
to your first game.”

“Are the cops coming after you?”

“No reason. I’m a lowly chauffeur.”

F
IRST COMMUNITY’S SUNDAY CROWD WAS
up in number, according to Henry Oakley. He paced in front of Jeb. They waited in the study for the other deacons to come,
as Jeb requested, and pray. “We ought to have been doing this a long time ago,” said Henry. “Reverend Miller, he gently asked
these things, but, well, it’s hard to get men to come and pray.”

Jeb went through his notes once more. The nervous jitters subsided. It was easier preaching to a large crowd. He never knew
that until now. Fred Sellers and Joe Gallagher walked in next, laughing and talking about Joe’s son who played ball for his
high school. Jeb shook hands with each deacon. Everett Bishop and Sam Baer stood outside the doorway, chatting with people
as they passed through the lobby. Henry invited them inside and closed the door.

Before Jeb could say a word, there was a knock at the door. Henry opened it. “You looking for your daddy?” he asked.

Sam said, “Morning, son. Anna with you?”

Walton stopped in the doorway.

Each of the men greeted Walt, shaking his hand, calling him Senator, even though they all had watched him grow up.

“Anna stayed home,” said Walton. “Mother’s gone to see about her.”

Jeb wondered why everyone except Walton Baer looked after his sick wife.

“I hadn’t had the chance to properly welcome our new preacher, so welcome,” said Walton. He reached toward Jeb. Jeb shook
his hand, thanked him. “I wanted you to know what a help your wife was to Anna the other night. Anna must think me useless.
But Fern, she comes in and takes over,” he said.

Jeb stared stoically at the senator.

Walton looked at his daddy. “Fern gave Anna a bath, washed and fixed her hair. Time I got home, they had her looking like
a movie star.”

“Fern’s going to make quite a preacher’s wife, isn’t she?” Sam put his hand out to his son. “Reverend’s called us in to pray,
so I expect we ought to get to it.”

Jeb thanked him for dropping by.

The sermon was not exactly as he planned. The opening was better than he practiced, but he got into the sermon and wished
he had developed it more deeply. He normally had his Saturdays free, but the day was eaten away running Fern and the kids
all over town. Ida May finally got a coat, Willie a pair of socks, and Fern, of course, a hat. She paid for all of it, but
he was going to have to get used to Coulter money, she told him. That was awkward. And his private study had not been either
private or a study all week, but a revolving door of people, deacons’ wives chattering about committees, orphan funds, widows,
and the like. More than anything, he needed to lay eyes on Fern and see her smiling and agreeing as he spoke. Finally he saw
her seated next to Sybil and Rodney Bloom. Walton Baer sat on her other side. His arm was up, not exactly behind her, but
near her. That wouldn’t do at all. He looked straight at Walton’s husky hand, as if by an invisible thread, he could lift
the hairy thing up and away from Fern.

The second point came to him more smoothly. There was this funny story about Angel he told, and since she was not here, he
could get away with telling it. But as he described her to the sea of faces, he saw that none of them could imagine her, not
like the neighbors at Church in the Dell, not see her bouncy step, the annoying way that she could get under his skin, and
no matter how often she had her sleep interrupted, she always got up pretty as a little bird. “Truth be told, our girl is
not with us and we are in need of your prayers to find her.” He didn’t mean to tell his personal business. There was a ripple
of muttering, concern he took it, rolling like a morning tide through the members. There was a catch in his throat, not as
if he were about to shed a tear, but a woman in the front row took it that way, and let out a sort of woeful moan. Other women
were pulling out their handkerchiefs and it was all so godawful emotional. Gracie would accuse him of stirring up sentiment.

He moved on to point three. Walton’s arm stretched across the pew back. It was behind Fern. He surely knew that she could
hardly stand the sight of him, had even tried to talk them out of coming to First Community because of him. He was smug, a
bore, and so full of himself he thought that he could move in on Fern before the December “I do’s.” It was that sick wife
of his that got him thinking. That she was dying and here was Fern. She was the next in line, pretty enough to be a senator’s
wife. How dare he! He could see it all, the way he schemed, the scoundrel! What an idiot! “There is a payday for deceivers!”
he said.

The woman in the front row pulled out a second handkerchief.

An usher opened the back door and let in the deputy. He did take a seat, but it was the end of the message. Jeb was closing
in prayer.

There was a single church bell ringing, a low booming chime, sounding from across the street, tolling through the windows
of the inn where Angel was waking. The bedsprings popped under her every time she moved. The tip of her nose was cold and
her feet stuck out of the sheets. She tucked them back under the linens and the thin blanket, wanting to warm up once, as
she had been cold most of the night. There was no clock on the nightstand. Nash left a note. She was angry to find him gone
and a note left in place of him. She sighed, and when she picked up the note, some bills dropped onto the table. He left her
some cash. “I’ll be back soon. Breakfast downstairs.” His handwriting was plain.

Since it was Sunday, she put on her fancy filling-station dress, as Nash called it, not knowing how the guests of the inn
might dress for the morning. She found the inn when they got out from the football game, the roadside sign flashing in the
headlights of a passing motorist. She begged Nash to turn around, not wanting to be on the road all night, to chance him growing
sleepy and some curious cop pulling him over.

The morning lady innkeeper was not a happy sort, not as jovial as the man who let them in Saturday night. She may have been
his wife, not that Angel knew. Talking to strangers every day, not knowing who she’d meet next, bored Angel.

“If you’re looking for your boyfriend, he was on the telephone all morning. Took off with some man in a big car not fifteen
minutes ago,” said the innkeeper.

“May I use the telephone?”

Mrs. Pierce held out her hand. She wanted fifty cents. Angel paid her and she led her to a booth near the inn’s entry. She
showed her how to crank the machine, to connect the operator. Angel got the hang of it and thanked her. She told the operator
Will Honeysack’s number. The phone rang six or seven times and the operator asked if she’d like to continue ringing. Yes,
she did. The operator asked if it was a business and that was when she reminded her that no one was open on Sunday and that
was the last straw. Angel hung up.

“You want breakfast, you got ten minutes,” said the innkeeper.

The church bell tolled again.

Angel ate the breakfast: some apple slices, eggs, and grits. The hot bread was good and the butter as good as Abigail’s. Angel
paid her for the breakfast and asked, “You ever go across the street to that church?”

“I got to keep the inn running. It’s a colored church, but anyone can go. I seen all kinds coming and going.”

There were some cars in the dirt lot, but most of the members were on foot, walking to church up the partly paved streets
that crossed the highway near Mt. Zion Church. There weren’t any whites going in, as the innkeeper might have said in a roundabout
way. A side door opened. It was a choir, men and women dressed in gray-and-red robes, filing out onto the dirt lot. A woman
stepped out and faced them. She led them in a song. They were holding rehearsal, it seemed to Angel, out on the parking lot.
The building was nothing more than a square framed by a gabled roof, so they practiced, she guessed, wherever it suited them.
What she couldn’t figure out was what drew her to cross the street.

When the preacher shook her hand, he seemed glad to see her, like she was a novelty. She sat in the back, same as when she
first started going to Church in the Dell. The back row was the place where people who either did not know anyone or were
trying to figure out why they came, liked to hide. Whether or not that was true of Mt. Zion, she couldn’t say. Several teen
girls filed into the same pew, three older women, one smelling of snuff, and two ushers.

She had heard one of the songs before. The minister wore a robe the same as the choir, maybe slightly different. His collar
was gold. But he stretched out his arms and not once did he have to sing from the hymnal. He knew the words, and when he didn’t,
he echoed. Easy enough. Angel put down the hymnal and echoed too. Not hard to do.

The three women took hands next to her. It was the thing they did each week, obviously, for they only did it on certain songs,
like the marching kind. But they all knew when it was time to take hands. It was a mystery. They were wearing gloves and white
hats and the songs were their language as much as the white hats and gloves. There was a lot of freedom music. One set free,
and I’ll see you in the morning over there, and words that were about leaving the earth behind. She thought, if the whites
knew what they were singing about, would they mind?

She shed a tear. That was not expected. But she had not slept well. Ida May was in church somewhere and, she was pretty certain,
had missed the top button of her dress. If she remembered to tie up her braids, well, then, the ribbons most likely didn’t
match. It was hard to breathe now. The church was full, more women filing into her row. And where, pray tell, had Jeb gone
off to and why had he not written? Ida May and Willie were her responsibility. It was like him to go off and not think through
what needed to be thought through, not a care for how she would find him. He had done stupid things in the past, but it was,
as her granny once told her, the way of a man. She did not care that the tears dripped onto her new dress.

The preacher shouted, as he had been shouting, “I see those tears you cry.”

She accepted a handkerchief from one of the white-hatted women.

“Is it,” he asked, “because you’ve lost your way?”

Angel nodded.

“Are you tired of being a stranger on life’s journey?”

There were a lot of amens. Angel shrugged.

“Do you feel as if you have no home?” he asked the flock.

“I don’t,” Angel whispered.

“There is a reason you feel this way. I tell you, friend, this world is not your home.”

A few women came to their feet.

Angel was sobbing into her handkerchief.

“That’s it, girl, let it out.” The stranger took hold of her arm. Angel wrapped her arms around her. She let her cry it out.