Fallen Angels (2 page)

Hampton's hound dogs bayed. The moon had a faded paleness, as though a candle inside its glass was melting before sunup.

“I never meant to kill him, Charlie. If he dies, I should be hanged.”

“You listen to me, and you listen like I'm our momma! Give us some time, me and the boys, to talk to the sheriff. Otherwise they could string you up and gut ya before you can even whisper your own name. Hamptons, they got money. That sheriff listens to money. It calls his name. But if we all get to him, before the story gets turned around, blown into more than it was, I'll send for you.”

“I don't know where to go, Charlie! Just where do cowards hide?”

“Find a big place with lots of people. Hot Springs. Little Rock. No, that's the first place they'll look. Best you don't tell me. But after you get settled, write.”

“How you expect me t'do that?”

“Don't put your name on it, like,
Here I am, come and get me, police.
“ Both of them stared at the floor, locked in place and out of ideas. Disgraceful shame. Good schemers, but between the two of them, kind of low on dependable means. “I tell you what—just draw a big X on the letter. Have the postman stamp it with the town name. Lay low. I'll find you when it's safe.”

The whole desertion mess started in the Rialto Theater in Camden, Arkansas. The warm lap of summer brought out the townsfolk to the dance like they'd been spring-dosed with yarbs. Angel figured the Ouachita's, old ballroom dance hall across the street had lured in the wrong kind of man to draw her Aunt Lana's wandering eye. Lana, who wasn't really her aunt anyway, only a conniving woman, of a mind to do her daddy's errands only so she could keep food in her belly.
Aunt, my hind foot,
her mother might have said—if she herself had stuck around.

Saturday night at the movies in Camden fed hungry imaginations a front row view of the American Dream. Pin-up girls Iolled poolside on the big screen, California smiles as bright as morning light trickling across the Ouachita River. In the Arkansas movie theater, Angel closed her eyes to imagine the California sun warming her unshapely legs, tickling her calves until they turned heads, brown and never-ending like tall, elegant Sequoias. Forever legs, she imagined. Then she opened her eyes, palely thirteen again and deserted in the Rialto with her little brother, Willie, and her youngest sister, Ida May.

Two kids, a big girl with her younger brother, sat in front of them not in the least bit interested in Barbara Stanwyck or that glamour gal's rendering of a charlatan evangelist. With the movie screen for a halo, the girl turned around in the threadbare chair and stared at Angel and her siblings, curious and bored. The girl, her hair pig-tailed to distraction, pressed another jelly bean between her lips that puckered when she spoke as though she had practiced the Shirley Temple pucker too long at her mirror. She glanced up the aisle and then back at Angel. “Where'd your momma go to?”

“None of your business,” said Angel. She leaned right and slightly cocked her head.

“She ain't our momma. She's Aunt Lana,” said Willie.

Angel gave him a sort of tap in the arm with her elbow. “Don't say ‘ain't.’” She hated being marked an Arkie even though every farmer, bank clerk, and soda jerk in sight fit the type—the kind of people who drift into the middle of the nation, lose their wind, and stay. To Angel, saying “Ain't” was like saying “I give up and can't get no smarter.” But worse was hearing Willie mix Momma with Aunt Lana.

Angel talked about everybody and everything. But not Momma. It was the kind of thing she kept to herself as though some day the secret would bring the two of them closer. Her momma, Thorne, had disappeared into a Ford with two women who traveled to Little Rock to try and find work. Angel had stared after her, held onto her eyes, a pair of exotic browns like the kind that belong to bronzy island girls. Eyes that set off her luxurious hair tendriling out of the window. With her momma had left the only opulence that lingered in Snow Hill. The only hope that Angel would some day be as elegant as Thorne, drove off to Little Rock with a promise to send money.

Lemuel, her father, had too often of late paid more attention to a neighbor divorcee named Lana than his own kin. With Thorne run off to Little Rock, he finally packed the kids all off aimed in the general direction of the town of Angel's oldest sister, Claudia—a place called Nazareth. But of all the foolish ideas Daddy had ever dreamed up, sending them off with Lana took the cake.

“Where is Aunt Lana?” Willie shared his popcorn with Ida May, trying to keep her in her own seat and out of his.

“She's not our aunt. How many times I have to say it?” said Angel. She knew that Daddy thought that if he had the little ones call her “Aunt” her every-other-day appearances at the front door would give her full authority over the youngens. But Angel knew better.

Daddy had underestimated his girl.

“I think she run off with that huckster nosing around the hotel and left us here. If Daddy knew, he'd bean her.” Willie picked Ida May off his shoulder and deposited her on the other side of the chair arm.

“What's a huckster?” Ida May tried to curl up against her brother again.

“A peddler who ain't a bonafide person of worth.” Angel disappeared into the screen again, into the sin of Barbara Stanwyck,
The Miracle Woman.
The motion picture had finally made it into Arkansas. When Willie tried to speak again, Angel shushed him, a slow hissing that seeped out of her as she followed Miss Stanwyck across the screen.

Angel made them stay until the last credit rolled up and away. The house lights brightened slow and easy, turning the wallpaper red as lipstick.

“Let's try and find Lana,” said Willie.

Angel rolled up Willie's popcorn bag, tucked it under her arm, and herded the others out into the lobby. Once she thought she heard Lana's high, squeaky cackle—the same one she heard at night out on their front porch when Daddy sent them off to bed. But Lana was nowhere to be found.

Across the street from the Rialto a steady stream of couples clambered up the steps and across the mezzanine of the Ouachita Hotel to the grand ballroom, where a live band played. Most of Camden had turned out for the dance. The threesome headed out into the street and searched the crowd for what seemed like an hour. Finally, Angel turned to face the younger ones. The Rialto's neon marquis buzzed overhead. “Let's face it, Willie. Lana's gone. She ditched us.”

Ida May huffed, “Did not!”

“Willie, you stay down here next to this couple. Make like they're our folks until I get back. For safety. Stop looking at me like that. I'll check out the dance.”

Angel sidled up the steps to the landing. It led across the alley to the ballroom. She could see couples swaying across the hardwood floors, but no Lana. She met Willie and Ida May downstairs again and led them to Usrey's Drugstore on the corner of Washington and Adams, where she helped Ida May onto a stool. She made Willie stay with her while she crept past the faces reflecting back at her from the long ornate mirror behind the soda bar.

Moments later, Willie found her in the back and ran at her red faced. “That soda jerk told us if we ain't ordering, we have to leave!”

“Lana's not here either. Let's go,” said Angel.

“Go where, Angel?” Instead of acting scared, Willie got mad. “Back to Snow Hill? To Claudia's? Where?”

“Hush! Don't be a rat, Willie! You got to give me time to think.”

Ida May waited like a ghost in the doorway, jostled aside by paying customers. Her face was oval with brown eyes like her mother's. When upset, the oval got all long-like, hardening her eyes like penny candies. Her momma had always said, “Little Girl, you'll turn to salt and blow away makin’ faces like ’at.” Ida May stood in the doorway, her mouth an O. Angel hated the way the Depression toughened girl babies and made them old before their time.

Angel examined the town in front of her. First off, Camden was more electrified than Snow Hill. The Camdenites gathered in clusters in front of the movie theater, some in front of Usrey's Drugstore, and a lot of the people dressed for Saturday-night-showing-off. They clambered in and out of the ballroom, little ants spilling out of a thrown-away Coke bottle. The young women all wore hats that snugged to their heads like colored helmets. The whole place had a pace contrary to Snow Hill. By this time of night Snow Hill had rolled up inside of itself, an old man glad for the day to be over and done with.

“If we don't find Lana, where will we go tonight? Where will we sleep or eat? Lana didn't check us into the motel like she said she was fixing to do,” said Willie.

“We'll find a room. I'm no louse when it comes to figuring things out, Willie. I can take care of things as good or better than Lana. I am thirteen, after all.” Angel took Ida May's hand and led her down past the hotel and across the street to the Rialto. She tapped the counter to attract the ticket seller's attention. “Excuse me, Mister. I got something to ask,” she said.

The ticket seller lifted his eyes and revealed a long, thin face with a chin that protruded like a potato. “Yes, what you chil-dern want?”

“I'm supposed to meet my aunt. She's getting us a room. Know where she might get us a room?”

Willie mumbled behind her.

The ticket seller pointed at the Ouachita Hotel. “Only one place.”

With one graceful, popcorn-oiled hand, Ida May pointed toward the hotel. “I see her, Angel! Look, there she is yonder.” Ida May bristled past her older sister, who had failed her as a stand-in leader.

Angel chased her across the street, through the gaggle of humans from the hills and lake that encircled Camden proper. Willie ran past her, charged up the hotel stairs, and barreled past the mezzanine.

“Angel, it's’ not Lana!” he called from the opening to the ballroom. The music blared above his nasal yell.

Angel reached the doorway and looked in at the mass of swaying bodies. A woman, blonde, bore Lana's posture—hips forward, shoulders slumped. The woman gingerly held up a cigarette for a man to light. She drew on it. The tobacco end warmed and kindled red like coals coming to life. The blonde leaned toward him and whispered into his ear. Then she turned and walked away from him as though she had excused herself to the powder room.

“It's not Lana, Ida May,” said Willie.

Ida May had by now twisted Angel's skirt around her pointer finger. “I'm skeered, Angel.”

“I'll get us a room. We'll get some shut-eye and then figger out what to do tomorrow.” Angel led them across the mezzanine and down into the hotel lobby.

“I didn't like her anyway,” Willie said. “Matter of fact she made me sick, come to think of it. She told lies about Momma.”

Angel paused, remembering how Lana had said,
“It's a hard thing to hear. Your momma had to be taken off to stay with her sister who could keer for her better. Don't think that means she didn't love you kids. She loved you all right. But this Depression is enough to drive any person over the ledge.”
She'd spewed it out inside the Rialto after pacifying Ida May with popcorn.
“Then Strap on too many mouths to feed and you got trouble. Your mother went and leaped off the cliffs of insanity, that's what. They call it stark-ravin’ mad.”
Lana disappeared after that, Angel decided, to run into the powder room to smooth the bleeding rivulets of color on her lower lip.

“She tells lies, Willie, when it's easier to tell the truth!” Angel approached the front desk. She lied to the clerk about meeting her aunt When Willie showed the clerk hard cash, he didn't seem to mind. He handed Angel the key. “Back up the stairs, down the hall, and third door on the right. You kids'd do best to remember we like it quiet after midnight.”

Angel took the key and started up the stairs. Ida May took every step as though she expected Lana to appear and give an account for her delay. Willie beat them to the door and waited while Angel used the key and opened the door.

“I'm hungry again,” said Willie. The first thing he did was to riffle through the nightstand drawer as though he might find a candy or two left behind by a former hotel customer.

“Ida May, you wash up in the lavatory and climb into bed with Willie. I'll take the extra bed near the wall.”

Angel stopped for the first time and examined the lay of the room. The hotel room had wallpaper—genuine wallpaper, not magazine pages stuck to the wall—the first that Angel had ever seen. Her mother might have called it elegant, a swirl of gold and red that twinkled in the chandelier's light like a kaleidoscope. “This is a pretty nice place.”

In the bathroom, Ida May ran the sink water until Angel yelled for her to shut if off and get in bed. After making sure Ida May and Willie were covered up good, Angel slid her mother's old satin nightgown out of the sack and pulled it on top of herself. She whispered twice, “Lana's a liar,” and fell asleep.

She dreamed dreams of Barbara Stanwyck perched on a platform—the charlatan queen who touched her flock with her healing lies. The actress's features disappeared and Angel's face took Stanwyck's place. Her stomach was stretched full, satisfied with delicacies paid for by the faithful. She lifted her arms as though she possessed a power from above. The divine gesture caused the loyal to toss money onto the platform. She moved across the stage with her gown trailing behind her and dollar bills crunching beneath her slippers.

When she awoke to the sound of voices in the hallway, the first thing to draw her eye was Ida May staring out of the window into the alley below. Lana had never come back.

A deputy sheriff stopped Willie and Ida May out on the sidewalk. “I don't believe I know you kids. Who's your momma?”

Angel pushed through two people to get to them and lead Ida May away from the policeman before she gave away more than was needed.

“I'm calling Daddy,” said Ida May. And then she yanked away from Angel and ran down the street away from the Ouachita.

Angel trailed behind her until she saw her disappear into a storefront. Inside, Ida May crouched behind a flour display.

“You can't call Daddy. You lost your mind?” Angel was entirely disgusted. Willie caught up with them, and the two younger children stood looking at the eldest. Angel hated to tell them but finally broke down. “He took off soon as Lana drove away with us.”