Fallen Angels (17 page)

Angel's body stretched from the toes up to her shoulders. She expelled the elation and said, “I'd really be grateful.”

Florence told her, “We'll have at least a few of your things ready in time for school. Only two weeks left. Now you take this box of pencils and paper to your brother and divide it with him.”

“I will. Thank you,” said Angel.

“You got some pins; I'll start with this green dress if you like it.”

“Mrs. Bernard, you've done so much, I hate to impose,” said Jeb.

Angel said to Florence, “I'll get the pins, ma'am.”

“Pleats are a specialty of mine. You'll need a good pair of stockings to set that off.” Florence called out to her. “But I don't know what to tell her about shoes”. I'm never clever about picking out children's shoes.” A bit of reticence settled in Florence's voice.

“The girl has a pair of shoes,” Jeb interjected. “If this isn't a good time, you can do this later. I feel as though I've interrupted your whole day.”

“Actually, Reverend, it is I who have interrupted you.”

Jeb could not prove the insinuation in her tone. She kept her back to him the entire time she spoke with Angel. But he felt the heat of what she didn't say.

He excused himself and wandered out onto the porch. Angel and Florence could be heard exchanging polite girl banter. Florence commented upon how Angel should not allow such a small matter to distress her.

Angel's reply could have been directed at him or not. “One day I'll be good as you, Mrs. Bernard, at not allowing petty things to get the best of me.”

Jeb chopped wood even though the night was warm. The very act of aggression against an inert object eased his tobacco jitters. Angel braided Ida May's hair on the front porch and sipped orangeade. She pretended, as she had all day, not to see him.

“You act like this scam is all me when most of it is you. I been watching how you sit in the middle of the church ladies with your orphaned face.”

“The things I say about my mother are all true” Angel twisted her sister's shoulders three quarters to the right.

“But what they believe is a lie. When they find out about me, you're the one they'll hate. Ida May, well, they'll believe she just did as she was told. Willie, he's a boy, and most boys lie. But you've painted yourself as the near-grown motherless orphan they all dote over. Don't think they won't find a punishment for you, too.”

“I didn't haul off in front of Florence Bernard and throw a fit, foaming at the mouth like a mad dog for a cigarette. If they find out your nasty secret, it won't be me they blame.”

“This is like waking up and finding out you're someplace you know you wasn't at when you went to bed. Am I hearing you right? Wasn't it you that begged me to go along with your plan? Best as I remember, you even called it that—your plan.
Just for the night, Jeb. Then, just one more day.
Now look at me, I'm the Big Preacher Boy now!” He made a brazen motion in front of him with the ax, a figure eight. “Charlie, he'd laugh a big one, if he saw me behind that pulpit with my shiny tie. Might even give me credit for the best little hidey-hole this side of Texarkana. But I can't take credit for it You know why? Because I give you every bit of the credit.” He, leaned over the porch railing and pointed at Angel with the ax blade. “You, Biggest.”

“You just keep flapping that big mouth of yours, Jeb, and let Miss Coulter know who you really are. Here she comes right now in that old car of hers. Maybe she'd like to hear what else you got to say, like what Mrs. Bernard heard this morning.”

Fern's Chevy Coup motored down the dirty lane toward them.

Angel continued to rant, “Or-maybe she's already heard from Mrs. Bernard. Maybe the whole town knows. Church in the Dell has itself a tobacco-addicted preacher. Maybe they'll just call you Smoky Joe.”

“Quiet!” Jeb told her.

“Fires of hell, Jeb. That's what you smell like!”

Before Fern could open her door, Jeb met her and helped her out. “Fern glad you could drop by.”

“Reverend Gracie, I wanted you to know that I'm having trouble locating the children's last teacher. Here's the letter I got today,” said Fern.

Jeb pretended to read the letter. He thought of coaxing Angel off the porch, pretending he needed glasses. But Angel, he figured, would not cooperate. “Let me know what I can do to help, Fern.”

“Maybe if you used the phone up at Honeysack's store? He'd let you. Call this number here.” She circled the telephone number at the top of the school's stationary. “Let them know you're the children's father and ask for these three things.” She pointed to three lines of cryptic language. They don't have to have it to start school but it would help me out to know a few things about their schooling.”

“I'll do my best” he said

“What are the three things we need, Daddy?” Angel asked.

Fern turned the paper around. “Your grades mostly. At what level you last tested at. And any letters from your teachers. It helps to track your progress.”

Jeb blew out a breath.

“It's like the letter says, they don't remember your children at all.”

Willie ran around the house, no shirt, just overalls and a streamer of fish trailing behind.

“Reverend Gracie, I'll bet you can clean those fish, can't you?” Fern asked.

“Like a thousand before them.”

“I can't clean them, but I can cook them. Angel, you all have cornmeal and salt?”

“Last time I checked yes,” Angel answered her.

Jeb remembered the shoo-fly pie. “You don't have to cook for us again, Fern.”

“I insist. Ida May, you go get some shoes on. The ground is getting chilly with dew.” Fern disappeared into the house.

“If I didn't know better, I'd say you aren't wild about Miss Coulter's cooking,” said Angel.

Jeb knew betted than to answer.

The biggest trout, too big to be pan fried, had lain tail out of the pan, coated in cornmeal and seasonings but not touching the grease. The other pieces had cut tip nicely. But Fern, in an effort to have at least one whole trout laying wall-eyed on the plate and festive, had left it whole. When Jeb cut into the middle, the insides were still pink and moist. He forked a smaller, crispy piece onto his plate and said, “It sure smells good.”

While Fern walked around child-to-Child, adding potatoes and cornbread to their plates, he choked down as much as he could, careful for the bones and remembering the simplicity of trout cooked along a streambed Maybe it was the rushing stream, the spray of fresh water in the air that made the trout taste better. Fern's recipe tasted sooty, like the bottom of the skillet. He doused everything in ketchup and drizzled the fish with extra salt. All the while he lamented over the waste of a good trout He wanted to apologize to the largest fish, repent of it having made its way onto his hook. He poured on more ketchup to atone.

But he liked the cornbread and the way Fern looked when she served it, slender and round and bent over the table, nurturing and faintly smelling of whatever perfume she had sprayed on that morning.

“Ida May tells me that every night Angel reads the Bible to her daddy,” said Fern.

Jeb drew in his bottom lip, did not look either at Ida May or Angel, and said “Yes, it's a tradition.”

“I don't want to interfere in your family customs, but if it's all right I'd like to stay and listen.”

Angel, with her fingers tugging at her earlobe, prepared to offer up a defense, but Jeb interjected before she made a lame excuse. “Sure, Fern. Please join us.”

With the front door still open and the screen door the only barrier between the parlor and the outdoors, the crickets started a song that set all of the forest in motion. Owls, katydids, toads, all in a ruckus. Willie sat on the floor cross-legged and listened to the night music while Angel read.

“This is from the book of John,” she said. “ ‘Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing’ “

“You have; a nice reading voice,” said Fern. “Willie, you want to tell us what your sister just read about?”

“Vines and branches. Growing grapes, I figger.”

Jeb figured on how to get Angel up and Fern seated closer to him.

“The vine is Christ. We are the branches. We can't bear fruit unless we are attached to him.” Fern explained it but Willie did not get any of it.

“I wish I could make fruit. I'd make lemons and then make lemonade. We never buy lemons. How much could they be?” Willie asked. “Arnell Ketcherside's mother always has lemonade waiting for him when he gets home from school.”

“Willie, you're off the track now, son,” said Jeb. When he tapped the back of the sofa, his intention was to make a point with Willie. But his finger touched the back of Fern's hair, soft, blond circular strands. He left his hand on the back of the couch.

Fern said to Jeb. “Maybe you can explain it better than me, Reverend Gracie. How do you all do this? Read a bit and then explain?”

Willie piped up, just as though for once he knew the answer. “Angel reads a Bible verse over and over until I'm about ready to scream, then
Daddy,
here, says it back to her.”

Jeb took the Bible from Angel and closed it up. “You explained it well, Fern. We probably need you over more often, what with you being a teacher. I'll bet your explanation is more on their level. More for children. I probably talk way over their heads.”

Angel watched him lift the Bible over her head. She dropped her hands in her lap and sighed.

Fern said her good nights and walked more slowly toward the Chevy. “Any more news about your truck, Reverend?”

Jeb pressed his lips together and shook his head.

“I hate to see you all riding back and forth to town in that wagon. I had to explain to one lady it had nothing to do with your religion. Funny how rumors can spread. If I didn't have to have mine every day for school really soon, I'd just let you drive the Chevy”

“Please, we're doing fine. You already do so much, Fern. I feel guilty about all you do.” Jeb saw Angel waiting at the screen door. She opened it and came out onto the porch. Her habit was to call out to him if he got as much as six inches from Fern. But this time she just watched. “Good night, and thanks for the fried fish,” said Jeb.

“Anytime. I don't know how much I should come over here. Or if I should. You never say if you need anything. Or if you need for me to drop by.”

“You're always welcome.” When she turned, Jeb thought he saw the faint hint of disappointment He wanted to take back whatever had caused her brows to sag. But she climbed inside the Chevy and started the engine.

As Fern drove away, Jeb listened to the sounds of croaking and hooting, which made as much sense as a woman's thousand-and-one shadowed signals.

He heard Angel call out to him, “You're such a goof, Jeb Nubey!” Then the screen door slammed behind her.

10

H
ere you are settling into this place when you should at least try to find your sister Claudia. Look at you with your schoolbooks in hand, ribbon in your hair. It's a fine kettle we got us, that's what!” Jeb held a letter in his hand, the envelope addressed to Church in the Dell, the contents from Reverend Philemon Gracie. According to what Angel read, the minister had extended his stay in Tennessee.

“That's not bad news. It's good, Jeb.” Angel cheeked the green pleated dress in front of the mirror. “That Mrs. Bernard has a very good hand at sewing. You'd never know this once fit Millie Fogarty's big niece Hester.”

“Extended means nothing but that—that the preacher is going to come sooner or later. We're living in a fool's paradise, Baby, and it goes downhill from here on out.” Jeb tucked the letter inside his shirt, drew it out, and then searched the parlor for a hiding place. But every nook and cranny looked to be obvious and a place that might tell tales.

“I like it here, Jeb. Don't you?” Angel asked. She never took her eyes off the mirror, but smoothed her dress with her right hand. Her books, given to her by Fern, she cradled in her other arm.

Angel retrieved the letter. She read it once more and said, “The preacher is in Tennessee, the ever-loving Appalachian Mountains, for Pete's sake! No way is he about to just tool on into town. You know where the Appalachian Mountains are, don't you?”

Jeb crt1 “I have heard of the place.”

“Clear up in Canada, Jeb!” She tugged her ear. “It could be a year before he makes it this far. This feller, he is preaching his way all the way down the whole map of America.” The ribbon tied around Angel's, head slipped. She laid her books on the floor and readjusted it to make a headband. “Willie, if you don't come right this minute, you can walk to school alone!”

Ida May came in through the kitchen, crying.

“Now what's wrong?” Angel pinned the green ribbon behind her ears with hairpins.

“I tried to go pee-pee without you. But I can't,” said Ida May. ”You'Il be, gone all day and then what?”

Explode, Jeb thought.

Angel told her, “Ida May, you won't go when I'm with you, let alone when I'm not. Go and try again. I promise I won't leave for school until you do.”

Ida May shuffled back through the kitchen. Her fingers clenched a doll by a few black wisps of hair.

Jeb took the letter from Angel. It occurred to him that she could tell him anything her lying lips wished to convey. He pointed to the first letter of the salutation. “What's that letter there?”

“D.”

“And that one?”

“E, for heavens’ sake!”

“That one, and that one?”

“A, R. Read it, Jeb.”

“Dee. Are. That don't make sense.”

“Dear,
Jeb. It's how a person starts a letter. This is to Mr. Honeysack, the head deacon:
Dear Brother Honeysack.
I already read this to you. We have to leave for school.”

“Wonder why Gracie didn't just mail this to Honeysack himself? That don't make sense, does it?”

“Maybe because it says ‘Dear Brother Honeysack and the Congregation of Church in the Dell.’ The letter's to everyone in the whole church, so he mailed it to the church.”