The Sleeping Night (24 page)

Wearily, she rose and donned a long flannel robe and a pair of slides to protect her feet. She put the coffee on the stove to simmer, then wandered out to the back porch and sank down on the step. She folded her hands loosely in front of her, then closed her eyes and bent her head, reaching for the quiet and swirl of God within her. She had no words for any kind of official prayer; she was just too exhausted.

But this morning, she waited in vain for the weariness to ease, for the worry to fall away. She rested her forehead on her arms, and just let go.

Into the unguarded bleakness of her mind slipped her dream. A memory, really. In it, she stood against the tree house railing in the cold of a late fall afternoon when she was fifteen. Below, she could see Isaiah coming through the trees. At seventeen, he was nearly his full height, with long limbs and a velvety complexion. His hair in the misty day was dotted with tiny diamond beads of water, and he already moved with the strong, sure grace he would carry as a man.

Angel stayed where she was, didn’t leave like she knew she ought to, because it had been too long since she’d really seen him, been able to talk to him without somebody listening in. He stopped at the foot of the tree and looked up, meeting her eyes, then climbed up through the branches. Looking around at the top, he said with no small satisfaction, “It’s holding up pretty well, ain’t it?”

She nodded. “I still come here a lot.”

“I know. I see you up here sometimes.”

There was nothing to say to that. Angel bent her head and traced the edge of a piece of wood with her toe. She felt him next to her, boiling with something hot and restless. She waited.

“I have to quit school,” he said finally, his voice thick with bitterness. “Mama’s sick, and I gotta make more than a little part time job can give me.” The words were sharp, but his eyes filled with his broken heart as he looked down at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

“I really thought maybe I could be somebody one of these days, you know?” He shook his head. “And all I am is just another goddamned field hand.”

As Angel looked up at him, seeing despair in the hard lines of his face, in the rigid set of his mouth, she saw her own future with perfect bitterness. Saw herself trudging back and forth to town on Sunday mornings until all the life was strangled right out of her, until they put her in a box and laid her to rest in the little graveyard on the outskirts of Gideon. Letting go of a pained sigh, she leaned her head on his arm.

“We ain’t even gonna have each other,” he said softly, “so we could remember what we used to think. Maybe I could stand it if we could laugh someday about what we thought we was gonna do. But we won’t. Time’ll come you won’t even wave when you pass me in the street. You’ll be ashamed when you think of this place.”

“No,” she said, and raised her head. “Never.”

For a long time, he looked down at her, his dark eyes luminous and full of unspoken things. Angel lifted a hand and touched his jaw, hesitantly. He put his hand over hers, holding her palm against his face, and closed his eyes.

She had told herself that a girl got over things, that young love evaporated in the full sun of adulthood. She would get over her crush on Isaiah High and take on her real life. But now he pulled her close and hugged her, bodies crushed together, arms tight around each other. A hundred things moved in her. She moved her face against his chest, smelling the sunlight-scorched heat of his cotton shirt, the heady notes of his faint sweat, a fresh green note that was Isaiah himself, a scent she could pick out of a thousand. A million. His chest was strong from hard work.

Half of her wanted to faint, half wanted to cry, and all of her wanted to stay right there for the rest of her natural life and more, feeling his breath on her hair. When he pressed his lips against her temple, she grasped him tighter still.

They stayed there like that for a long, long time, their bodies rocking and swaying with the breeze in the branches. She pressed every tiny curve, every angle, every scent and pressure and every everything into her memory so she would never forget.

Remembering it now, in the still, pre-dawn quiet of her back porch, she really did cry. Wept for the loss of the simplicity of childhood and the dreams she’d cherished then; wept in vast loneliness and despair. She had no idea what to do, where to go, what was the next step in her life.

A footstep alerted her, and of course it was Isaiah, because she had not brushed her hair, and her robe, which she’d worn since before the war, had holes in the elbows, and she never had cried like a lady, but like a little kid, all snot and red eyes. She made a mournful, embarrassed sound, and waved him away, covering her face with her arm. “Go away.”

But he simply bent and gathered her up, sitting down in the shadows of the porch with Angel curled in his lap. He pressed her head into his shoulder. “Go ahead, baby,” he said, stroking her hair. “Cry it all out.”

In her sorrow and exhaustion, she did. She gave herself up to it, resting her face on his shoulder, clutching his back fiercely. It had been so long, she thought, so long since she’d been enveloped like this, given leave to set down her burdens and admit she was completely lost.

He murmured against her hair as he rocked her back and forth, gently, “It’s gonna be all right, baby, you’ll see. “ He smoothed her hair, her back, with his big hand. “You’ll see.”

They were no longer children, however, and the sky was growing light. The back porch was private, facing the river, but still.

Angel forced herself to take a deep breath and push away. “I’m sorry,” she said, feeling weak in her arms and legs. He let her go easily, one hand on her elbow to steady her. “I’m just so tired today.”

His voice was gravelly. “I know. “ He touched her arm. “You go on take a cool bath and then you can get some breakfast.” He winked. “Once you get some breakfast, things always look a little better.”

It was something Parker had always said and Angel managed a smile. Then, conscious of her unbrushed hair and teary face and worn-out robe, she headed up the steps. “There’s coffee on the stove. Help yourself.”

Things always looked fine
in the morning, Geraldine High thought as she walked toward the Corey store. Birds singing, cats chasing moths in the grass, things quiet and cool and easy. She’d heard Isaiah come home late and let him sleep, making her breakfast as quiet as she could in the kitchen so close to his room. She crossed the bridge over the river, humming to herself, anticipating the bits of small talk she’d find among the women at the store in these early hours.

Bless Angel Corey, anyway, for making a place where the women could stop for a minute, just be themselves. Be a shame if she had to let the store go. Better a colored man than any of the Walkers, surely, but no man of any color would be getting up to make coffee for the women like Angel had since she was just a girl. It was her own special thing, something Parker had encouraged but would never have come up with on his own.

Catching sight of the store now, she quickened her steps, taking pleasure in the fact that her legs could carry her so well so late in her life, in spite of working as hard as she had, in spite of arthritic knees and tired feet. She even, in her ignorance, sent up a heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving.

As she rounded the last tall cottonwood by the store, she caught sight of the windows, morning sun catching on jagged edges, making the dark between more threatening. The roof, too, the roof Isaiah had been working so hard to replace, was torn to bits, black shingles littering the ground. Some of them were caught in the morning glories climbing up the porch. Tender trumpets of pink and blue were just now opening under the gentle proddings of the early sun.

Nearby, not sleeping as she had thought, but up much much earlier than Geraldine, was Isaiah, working alongside Angel to pick up the torn asphalt shingles. Geraldine slowed, knowledge burning her esophagus like acid.

It was plain they were unaware of her. There was nothing so obvious as touching, not with hands or lips, or any of the things lovers might display under normal circumstances, but that didn’t matter. As Angel bent to pick something up, Isaiah paused. He looked at her, his face and body so full of yearning that Geraldine felt an intruder. It was a yearning that needed no physical touch to complete it, for she could almost see his spirit reach out to circle Angel, saw the exact instant Angel felt it. Geraldine halted, watching as Isaiah turned away, busying himself as Angel lifted her head.

None of that was new. Isaiah had told when he was child that he intended to marry Angel Corey. Geraldine had punished him, made him stay away from the store for two weeks to get the lesson through his head. Nobody would laugh that away, not even from a boy.

But this, now, was new. Angel had grown into her own passion. In the big green eyes was the knowledge Geraldine had always feared. It wasn’t lust or a foolish curiosity shining there; Geraldine might have borne that, knowing Isaiah to be a man wise to the ways and guiles of woman.

This was not lust. It was wonder, a recognition of something long held, steady and fierce as a calling. No false shame or fear, not even when Isaiah felt her gaze and turned to meet it. Angel simply lowered her head, letting her hair fall forward to hide the flush on her cheeks.

Geraldine stayed frozen on the road, half hidden by the branches of a tree, watching. She began to pray, praying desperately that God would, just once, see things the way a human would see them.

It was, after all, God who had tangled these two lives so, against all odds of it. God was the one who’d given Parker his vision in France—that Jesus lived in all people—which led to his change of heart on the edge of town. God made Jordan and Parker, with their shared history of a gruesome war neither one would ever speak of again, such fast friends.

So their children became friends.

It was God who’d sent Isaiah home again when Angel was alone and grieving and most vulnerable to discovering what had lain secretly in her heart, plain for Geraldine to see in her anxious questions about Isaiah, plain for Parker to see when he talked and talked and talked to get Isaiah to go away to the service in his fear for both of them.

Thinking these things in the cool of a summer morning, Geraldine’s lip trembled. For she knew God didn’t always see things the way a woman might. That it might serve His greater purpose to kill these two beloved humans—or at least let them die; that might even be why they’d been born, to show the world or the town or somebody a thing that just couldn’t be shown any other way.

The mother in her howled, prayed instead that Isaiah would have the strength to finish his work in Gideon before this blooming between them got them both killed.

October 24, 1944

Dear Isaiah,

I’m sitting at my kitchen table as I write this, the radio on with the war news. There’s a lot of hope that maybe this’ll all be over one day soon. Sometimes it seems like there’s always been a war, that it’ll never be over. And now, when I think of you being there in all the fighting, I get sick to my stomach and it feels like I can’t hardly breathe.

Telegrams and phone calls are coming in way too much around here. 16 men killed, just from Gideon, this summer. Word is maybe 100,000 of our own men were killed, so many I can’t even think about it. So many hearts broken. So many lives ended, just like that. I just don’t know what God is thinking. I’m so mad sometimes I just want to have a knock down drag out fight. I want God to mail me a letter and tell me what this is all about.

I did cry about the animals, but your writing is so beautiful, Isaiah. Don’t ever stop putting down those things. I can manage to hear whatever you need to say. It’s you I’m crying over more—I’m so scared. I cried because it scared me so much to think of you out there, a big target for all those bullets. If God took you, too, with Solomon gone and my daddy going

[Never mailed]

October 26, 1944

Dear Isaiah,

You’re breaking my heart with all your hungries. If I could send you sweet tea and baby limas, I’d do it, but I don’t think they’d be much good by the time they got to you, so you’ll have to make do with these pralines. Maybe you’ll get them by Christmas. My daddy is sending peanuts and a fountain pen like you asked, and some other things he thought you might be able to use. In another package, I’ll mail a couple more paperbacks I picked up for you. Whatever you can’t carry, just give them away. I imagine you could use some distractions.

We’re praying for you every day. I’ll move it up to morning, noon and night. Between me and your mama, that should keep you bullet-proof.

I did cry about the animals and children and your description of the things you are experiencing. Your writing is so beautiful, Isaiah. Don’t ever stop putting down those things. I can manage to hear whatever you need to say. I’m right here, listening.

They keep telling us to write cheerful letters to you all, upbeat and happy, and I will do that tomorrow, but today, I just don’t feel real cheerful, and like you, sometimes I feel like I’ll explode if I don’t tell someone. My stubborn old daddy is the thing right now. He’s got the cancer, but will he stop? No, works every day, just like always. He’ll last the war out of sheer Texas stubbornness, just to see how it all comes out.

I do think he’s got a lady friend somewhere about. Sometimes, he leaves after supper and I don’t see him again till morning. Thinks he’s fooling me by being there when I get up, but he isn’t. I swear sometimes he thinks I’m blind or dumb or something.

And that made me laugh, so here are some cheerful things for you to think on. My garden gave me a big old crop this year, and right now, I’m looking at the prettiest dahlia bush you ever saw, just the color of sunrise. It was a real good flower year, though I couldn’t for the life of me tell you why! Flowers are a mystery.

There are a lotta women in the fields this year. Your sister Tillie nearly beat your record picking cotton the other day. Said she’s gonna do it before you get home. You wouldn’t even know her, Isaiah. Nearly six feet tall, strong as you, and meanest eyes I ever saw. Your mama worries about her. I heard her telling Parker about it the other day, and he just laughed in that hoarse way he’s got. “I wouldn’t spend any time worrying over that girl,” he said. “Not a minute. She’ll be fine.”

And he’s right. There’s nothing she can’t do, but I reckon she’s gonna have some trouble finding a man strong enough to keep her.

Reckon I ought get up and get the dishes done. You enjoy the pralines and the books and when you get home, I’ll cook you catfish and beans and a gallon of sweet tea. You just get home safe. Keep your head down. It would break my daddy’s heart not to see you grown into a man (and mine, too).

Your friend,

Angel