Fallen Angels (13 page)

Jeb looked down at the pages that were peopled with a farmer, his wife, and a cat.

“Daddy can read better stuff than that.” Angel slid across the linoleum. She laid the Bible on top of the picture book. “Go on, Daddy. Read to Willie.”

Jeb felt for sure his tongue needed to be pried off the roof of his mouth. He wet his lips and said, “The Lord planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.”

“Supper's on the table and everyone come now while it's piping hot.” Josie opened wide the kitchen door. “Fern, if you don't mind. I got to be shoving off. My four children will be bringing down the roof if I stay gone too long.”

Fern lifted the Bible out of Jeb's lap, slid the picture book out and handed it to Willie. “You keep trying.”

Jeb smelled her hair when she retrieved the book and it smelled like canned peaches.

Fern said to him, “Enjoy your dinner, Reverend.”

“You can stay, can't you? Eat with us?” Jeb touched her arm when he said it. Her skin was warm.

“I brought Josie out here. I should go back now.” She pulled a pale brown sweater around her shoulders.

I could give you a ride back.” Too late he remembered Bell, his transportation. “Well, if I had my truck back, I could give you a ride back.” He made her laugh. “I guess Josie doesn't drive, what with Bill to drive her around town. Thanks for coming by, Miss Coulter. Josie, you too. I'll see that Willie sticks with his reading.” He ignored the way Willie lifted his wide nostrils, doubtful.

Jeb followed the women outside. The moon had waned to a thin crescent, sharp and shining like a woman's earring. “Kind of dark out here. I'll walk you both to your car.” He lit the lantern he left on the porch every evening when he sipped his gin. With his right arm up, he led them back to Fern's old Ford. “You got a nice set of wheels, Miss Coulter.”

“I didn't want to say anything in front of your children, Reverend, but most of the adults, they call me Fern. I wouldn't be offended if you did, too.” Fern stepped back while Jeb opened her door.

“Fern.” He closed her door.

Her engine turned over, rattling like something in a cage, and then settled into a purr. “Oh, I guess I'll ask. You all have so much to think about on Sunday morning. Maybe it would be best if I came early to the parsonage and made breakfast for your children, helped them on with their outfits. Unless you think it's a bad idea. I don't want to offend Angel. She seems kind of territorial.”

“Don't mind Biggest. She gets over things fast,” said Jeb. He couldn't tell if the faint hint of emotion in her eyes was attraction or just the moon giving off benign airs.

“Sunday morning, then?” Fern drew back into the automobile. Her eyes dimmed in the shadow of her father's old car.

Jeb could no longer read her mind. He nodded.

She drove away and he waited for a long time under the pines and calculated how far away he could have been if he had left with Bell this morning. It seemed like a dream.

7

I
never liked standing up in front of the other kids talking in school unless I made them laugh. Wonder if church people like it when you crack off a good joke?” Jeb retied the necktie, bothered by the faint pattern of yellow that trailed in and out of the blue checks like a kite tail.

“Our preacher wore a bow tie. Maybe you should, too,” Angel pulled up the end of the tie. “I heard you talking way in the night. Sounded like you was preaching at the owls from the porch.”

“Many times as I slept in on Sunday, I never figured I'd ever wake up with knots in my stomach. Sunday was the day you always eased into. I'd sit up and look out the window from the men's house—the place they put us ol’ Texas boys who came in to pick cotton. The sun would just be coming up and I'd see a whole line of women. Young, pert little gals, walking over the hill in they best clothes.” Jeb remembered the colors of the dresses and how the women had looked like butterflies chasing after field daisies. “Every Sunday I'd get up just to see the parade. Over the hill they walked in those black lace-up shoes, the only day they wore those tight-fitting shoes. By Monday, those feet would be back in ragged-heeled shoes that barely covered a girl's foot. But Sunday, they all looked like Hollywood gals.”

“Now they're parading to hear you,” said Angel, humorless to the point that her lips pursed together, scarcely pink at all.

Her comment made him nauseous—the thought of every eye on him, expectant. He coughed. “If I were to tell them I did this only to get a meal, that'd be a sight to see on their faces. It would. Something I'd tell my brother about later and both of us would laugh.”

Angel's forehead formed a ridge above the inward corners of her brows. “You do that, and you'll be laughing from jail. That's a funny if I ever heard one. Ha-ha.”

He rubbed his palms, the lifelines moist and the fatty pillow at the base of the thumb almost hot. “I don't know what to do with my hands.” He raised his arms up beside his ears and then lowered them in front of him. Practicing in front of the mirror might help.

Ida May entered the room, her nightgown so long she appeared to move as liquid, minus feet.

Angel demonstrated for Jeb. She had an all-day sucker poised in the right corner of her mouth as though it plugged a leak. “Maybe that's not right. When our preacher said ‘Heavenly Father,’ he pointed up, I'm almost certain. When you talk about the Son, spread out both arms wide.”

Jeb bowed his brilliantined head in front of the mirror, lifted it, his eyes gray in the morning light. He mouthed silent prayers, creating an act to match the text he had memorized on Saturday, and then finished each point with a gesture. Father—hands raised. Son—arms open wide. Holy Ghost—a locomotive churning of his arms. He added a body swivel that made his shoulders gyrate. “Fern had me cut my hair yesterday at the barber shop on Waddle Street. That girl, she knows how to take care of me. You know a haircut is twenty-five cents now, but the barber threw in a shave just because I'm a preacher. If we don't make a dime, this business sure as the dickens hasn't cost me anything.”

“Fern Coulter has big eyes. Kind of makes you nervous if you catch her looking at you—kind of a staring-at-you-all the-time thing she does. Pop-eyed looking.” Angel sniffed the air. “Willie! I told you to check the biscuits!” She left Jeb to practice alone in front of the mirror.

He grasped the tie at the knot. “Nobody told me I had to wear a bow tie. Nothing wrong with this little deal. Ida May, get up off the floor and go find your clothes. “ He heard Fern's Chevy Coup idling outside. He yelled into the kitchen, “What do you mean, big eyes? I think you're jealous, Angel, and it is quite childish, too, if I might say so.” He watched Fern through the window just as he had watched the young women from his bunk. She wore a slip-on style of shoe, not lace-up, and they had thick heels that made her ankles look thin. Her rayon stockings were the color of a young doe he had almost shot once in Texas—tan, gleaming in the sun. Not wanting to break the stillness of his uncle's wooded acreage with a shotgun blast he'd shaken the tree where he had sat perched for an hour and watched the doe lift its hindquarters and disappear.

Fern's legs were the color of the doe. She moved toward the house and he watched her, the thick heels wobbling across the stones, her black handbag tucked under her arm so that she could manhandle a basket with both slender hands. Jeb opened his mouth, feeling a desire to create the necessary noise to scare her away, but then swallowed it.

Fern knocked against the parsonage door and he opened it, smiling. “Nice to see you, Fern.” It surprised him to hear his own voice, the first hint of authority punctuating his syllables. He sounded fatherly, felt preacherly, and liked the manner in which she addressed him, as though she spoke up to him from down-the-hill while he, the Jim Dandy, exuded coolness high on a summit.

“Reverend, I hope I didn't come too early. You're dressed already, I see. What about the children? Ida May, I'll bet she isn't dressed.” Fern set everything she had gathered up in her arms on the sofa and ran her hands through her hair. The pin curls were softer than they'd been on Friday night and lay flat against her shoulders.

“Ida May is not dressed, as you say,” said Jeb. “Willie is in the kitchen with Angel. Biggest is dressed, however, and I do consider that a miracle.” He noticed how she sniffed the air, the aroma of charred bread, without commenting. “It could be that breakfast is burned.”

“If I run in and make a fuss over the biscuits, Angel will think I'm interfering, won't she” asked Fern.

Jeb found it kind of her to notice.

“I brought breakfast by, already made. I'll see if we can make things right for Angel's sake.” She left the basket on the sofa and soft-footed her way into the kitchen.

Jeb followed her.

“I see you're already dressed, Angel. I had a lot of food left over from my breakfast. I thought you all might want to add to what you already have.” Fern did not go all the way into the kitchen, but left a wide space between herself and Angel.

Angel covered the black bread with a cloth. “If you want to you can, but you don't have to.”

“I'll just leave it on the table for you all to eat, then,” said Fern. Two willowy arms appeared around her hips. “Morning, Ida May. I guess you want help on with your dress.”

Ida May smiled.

“Ida May, why don't you eat first and then dress? I'll help you with those troublesome back buttons.” Angel slid the biscuit pan behind a canister.

Ida May slipped her hand into Fern's and then she smiled unevenly, insecure.

“You have a wise sister,” said Fern. “Eat first and then we'll help you dress.” Fern stepped around Jeb and fetched the basket. “Ham biscuits. Fast and easy to eat. While you all have your breakfast, I'll do the kids’ ironing.”

“I insist that you join us,” said Jeb.

Fern set four places around the kitchen table. “I've already eaten. If you don't mind, I'm going to open up the church. Greta Patton wants to come early and prepare the communion cups. It's been months since we had a decent communion. I figured you would want to do that today anyway.”

“Communion?”

Angel made gestures behind Fern. All Jeb could equate to communion rang distantly Catholic in his memory.

“We do need to take the Lord's body and blood,” said Angel. She continued making signs with her hand until Fern followed Jeb's bewildered gaze.

Angel clasped her hands beneath her chin.

“Does Church in the Dell have communion at the beginning of the service or the end?” Jeb strained to hear any glimmer of enlightenment about this ritual.

“The beginning of the service, usually after the hymns. You can do it whenever you want, Reverend Gracie. You're in charge.” Fern tore off a piece of biscuit and stuffed it in her mouth, careful not to rake it over the dark red of her lipstick. “I'll go and iron those clothes for you all. If you want, Reverend Gracie, I'll stay here and bring the children into Church a little later so you can go early, that is, if you don't mind letting Greta in.”

If he repeated her one more time with a question in his voice, she would see through him.

“To pray. Go in early to pray. You always look so lost.” She laughed but it didn't sound threatening or as though the facts about him had somehow rose up from the fear behind his eyes. “I'll bet you'll be glad when you get settled in so you can take charge of church matters.”

Ida May and Willie joined Angel at the kitchen table—Ida May with her dress open at the back. All of them looked up at him. Ida May finally said, “You ready to preach, Dud?”

“You look nice, Ida May, for a girl who calls her daddy Dud,” said Fern.

“He's just Dud,” said Ida May.

Jeb touched the Bible that lay open on a stand with the same forefinger that popped the top of the whiskey flask. He closed the cover and took it under his arm, the biggest Bible he had ever seen. The first one he had ever touched. Across the living room, out onto the porch, the holy writ took on a heaviness, so much so that by the time he reached the back door of the church, it felt heavier than a dead body. Jeb remembered then how Hank had looked sprawled out under the moon with blood trickling out his mouth. The Bible felt heavy, like Hank's body when he had hauled it into the barn to check him under lantern light. Ducks had scattered that night and fluttered out into the barnyard, honking harsh complaint at the strange goings-on at the Hampton place.

The key to the church door was equally weighty but Jeb could not allow anything else to weigh on him before he preached. By nine he wanted every little shackle lifted off so he could have a moment of peace; clarity so he could say what he had come to say. The shackle idea might be a good point to pass on and leave with the sinners in the pack, though. He'd save it.

”I say skip the whole communion idea and go for the throat, Jeb. Before you forget what it was you wanted to say?” Angel knelt next to the parson's chair on the church platform. She murmured, “Fern Coulter don't have no right telling you your business. Do it your way and she'll have her old communion when we say it's time.”

“So I just take the grape juice, say a prayer, give us a sip. Everybody else just does what I do? That's the way it goes?” Jeb felt small inside the coat jacket, less at home than in the shabby jacket that had accompanied him out of Texarkana. He shut his eyes and rehearsed communion once more.

A woman with a purse that looked like a doctor's bag seated herself at the organ bench.

“That's Doris Jolly, the momma to Josie, the lady who come over with Fern Coulter on Friday night,” said Angel.

“I need to know this or something?” Jeb asked.

“Sure. That's part of what a preacher does, know who is who and which person is another person's momma. I'm going to go and sit down with Willie and Ida May. You screw up and we'll stand right up and holler that you made us do what you wanted.”

“I appreciate your honesty, Angel. Like I appreciate a burr in my saddle. Beat it, will you?”

She drew her bottom lip into her mouth. “Remember, the organist is Doris Jolly, but you call her Sister. Sister Jolly.” She alighted from the platform.