Fallen Angels (21 page)

“How about a black covering across the back, like a lot of things is underneath?”

Jeb nodded. “Sounds more like it. I hate they dented my fender. Where is it?”

“We think two young crooks may have heisted it from you to use as a getaway truck. They up and robbed an old man's general store up near Pope County.” The officer read the details off of a telegram. “Knocked him out and left him for dead. But when they pulled a gun on him, the old man's wife bid out in a side room and watched them pull away. She gave a pretty good description of both of them and what sounds to be your truck.”

“Knocked out an old man. Couple-a cowards is all they are,” said Jeb. “So they still have my truck is what you're saying.” He thought the deputy looked as though he still believed him.

The deputy's shoulders lowered. “I'm afraid so. But every cop from here to Missouri is on the lookout. If they don't wreck it getting away, we'll try our best to recover your truck.”

Most of the church people milled in small groups around the automobiles parked along the church lawn. Fern held the back of the arm Jeb recognized as the tailor's wife, Hazel Plummer. Her gout caused her to have to sit with her foot propped up behind the counter of Plummer's shop. On this day she'd wanted terribly to come and hear the new preacher so Fern had driven her to the church and sat with her several rows back.

Jeb felt her distance could not have been for any other reason, not deceit nor any other pretense. She relaxed completely when she spoke to him, “Look who I brought!”

The Wolvertons paraded to the old T-model held together by wire and hay bale rope. They always had a pilgrim look about them, traveling but seldom settling. The children from ages sixteen down to three wore shoes scarcely soled.

Jeb thumped Horace Mills upon the shoulder of his serge jacket. “Those Wolvertons need help in the worst way, don't, they?”

“It's a sad thing to see. You go inside their house and it has not a stick of furniture. Mr. Wolverton has knocked on every door in Nazareth looking for work.” Mills pulled a gold watch out of his trouser pocket. “Mrs. Mills doesn't like it when I keep her waiting. Sunday dinner to finish up when she gets home. I'll see you next Sunday, Reverend. Good message. Fiery. Keeps them happy, their troubles off themselves.”

Jeb grabbed his Bible and the plate of cash collected during the offering. Before he handed the offering to Will Honeysack, he watched the Wolvertons leave. The same sick feeling that had come up like acid when he prayed for that young mother now gave him a different kind of ill feeling. He didn't know what to call it. Some strange or guilty religious melancholy. But he wasn't comfortable with it.

“Up by five dollars,” said Will. “I'll make the deposit in the morning and drop by your pay tomorrow, Reverend.”

“Brother Honeysack, I think maybe we should give a few dollars to the Wolvertons for shoes or a little food or I don't know.” Jeb watched the Wolvertons disappear into the dust. He'd said the first right thing he'd said all day.

“Every family is on hard times. If we give it all back, we won't have the money to pay the church expenses.” Will flicked the ends of the money to assess the amount. “It's a shame everyone is having it so hard. We have an election coming up, though. Maybe things will change after November. Folks is worn out with Hoover's happy-chats.”

Jeb had seen his share of packed Hoovervilles, people living like rats in scrap-lumber lean-tos.

“I heard that a hundred men lined up along the streets of New York and Chicago selling apples. Too ashamed to outright beg. Then I look up and what did I see Saturday morning right on Front Street in our own town?”

“Mr. Wolverton selling apples.” Jeb had seen it, too. I bought some from him.”

“Pitiful sight. Better go. The missus is fixing a roast. The A&P had a sale on them.” Mills loosened his tie with the same hand that had just checked the offering plate.

“This brook is where I came and talked to God when I first moved to Nazareth. I didn't know a soul here,” said Fern. She balanced on a rock midstream, her arms taking flight and then resting at her sides. Her hat and sweater dangled on a tree branch. “Church in the Dell was still without a shepherd, so I drove back here often what with it being so quiet. It is the best place in town for solitude.”

Jeb mulled over the fact that he could reach out and assist her, but her surety did not call for a rescue and certainly not in a two-feet-deep stream. It just-left him pleased as punch to hear her yammering about anything but “the children, this” or “the children, that.”

“I'll bet you get your best sermons out here. I would if I were you,” she said.

Jeb might have figured a streambed the most unlikely place for a sermon. But coming out of her mouth, it sounded believable. “Most of the time I can't recall ten minutes later exactly what I said from the pulpit.”

“Everything you preach makes good sense. This morning's message, it was a real dandy.” One hand went out and he took it to help her keep her balance.

“I never saw you get so wound up like that. I could tell you really meant it.” Fern bent over the water as though she had just spotted her own face.

“You could tell I meant it?” The only thing showing in her eyes was sincerity—she had complimented him. But then there was that thought of the Almighty at work, right in the middle of his sermon. It had come to him once before. “You like it here in Nazareth, Fern?”

“I do. Don't you?” she asked.

“No place like Nazareth. But you ever think about moving away?”

A smile made her entire face lift. Fern clearly read him through ways that weren't in no book. “Never crosses my mind.”

He shook his head, of course, and agreed with her like he'd found a little piece of Eden in Nazareth. Why wouldn't he? It was his turn to say so. But the dogged niggling bothered him again, like he'd never told a lie ever. In Texas he would have been moving in, figuring out the next best move. But here in Nazareth as Reverend Gracie, the entire notion of giving this schoolteacher the very best part of his lips left him dumber than a hammer. All he could think to say was, “Roots is the best thing for growing children. Let those little feet sprout and take roots, Nazareth is the place to be.”

13

O
utside Honeysack's Grocery, the Catholics from Hot Springs were collecting money for a church bell, a year-long project that every Saturday brought tables of lemon cakes and pumpkin bread and platters of watermelon slices arranged like Oriental fans on newspaper table coverings. The Catholics, like the Protestants, usually kept to their own kind. But for the collections they gathered from as far away as Hot Springs and rallied on Front Street with cauldrons and ringing bells, little bespectacled girls in blue sweaters singing songs for a penny.

The sky blued magnificently, a cathedral ceiling for the gathering of downtowners on Sunday's eve. The front page of the
Nazareth Gazette
headlined Japan's forceful occupation of South Manchuria, a likely blunder on their part, next to a photograph of the prize sow at the county fair.

Greta Patton counted six spools of thread—three white, two black, and bell-pepper green—onto the counter in front of Freda Honey sack. “My grandson says that not a one of the Wolvertons came to school this week and you know what that means.”

“Careful. Someone might hear,” said Freda.

“Shoeless and skipping school. That's what I say.” Greta pulled a paper of needles from the turnstile and added it to the purchase while a display of Country Club chili tempted her noose-tight budget.

Freda, whose long mustine face was framed by a fountain-pen display, a tower of Coty face powder, and a running list of meat, deliveries, dropped the spools and needles into a brown bag,
ba-dop, ba-dop.
“Will says he has not seen the Wolvertons all week. Could be they're away.”

“Or holed up like mice. This Depression is eating families alive. What do my eyes see?” Greta pointed at the display of candies. “Half a pound of those horehounds for my grandson, since you have some spanking new.”

“Hoover ought to do more.” Freda rang up Greta's purchase. “Thirty-one cents. I hope someone up in the White House remembers it's an election year. We don't give a flitter about politicians and emergency committees if they leave the rest of the country to fend for itself.”

“Or let children run truant due to shoelessness. Someone ought to write Hoover a letter,” said Greta.

“You think he'd read it? I'll bet not,” Freda told her in a way that needled Greta into position.

Wouldn't that be the gab around this place? A letter from the president himself!” Greta mulled it around.

“You'd make us all jealous, Greta.”

“Oh, doodle! I'm writing a letter to the president and I don't care what anyone says!” She minced around Jeb, who was collecting two cans of Del Monte beans from the center aisle. “Reverend, I guess you should know I'm writing a letter to the president.”

Jeb noticed the grocery list bent over her wrist with the several items unchecked. “Don't forget to stock the grape juice for communion, Greta.”

“I'll have to do it later. Communion isn't for two more weeks. Busy, busy.” She halted fully in the doorway. “I'll mention to Hoover that my husband fished last summer with the man who once cut his wife's roses.”

“That'll show him,” said Jeb.

“Do remember to speak of the Wolvertons,” said Freda.

“Presidents lead hectic lives, Freda. And it is an election year,” Greta said, and continued down Font-Street, a bit of the temperance march in her step.

“After the Mississippi Flood, Greta sent letters to the governor. She means what she says,” said Freda.

“Maybe Hoover will read it and stop the Depression altogether,” said Jeb. He wanted sweet banana pudding but did not want to ask Freda for the ingredients when everything was clearly spelled out on the package. A sign hand-lettered by Hank Honeysack extended beyond a sugar display that advertised Jell-O, three for twenty cents. He knew his numbers good and the Jell-O picture helped.

Angel padded in behind him, one hand scooting Ida May through the door and the other looking at her own face in a hand mirror. The dress she wore had a wide yoke—too wide for a girl her size—that stayed in place like a box even if she moved her shoulders. She kept tucking her hand into the basket pocket, creating a posed expression, Jeb thought, like the movie star Loretta Young.

“What could I do for the Gracie family?” asked Freda.

“I need to post a letter.” Jeb handed her the sealed letter, Charlie's letter, and the one that would surprise him since Jeb penned it himself, even if he was a bad speller. It had taken a week and several wadded up and tossed away sheets before he got it close to right, according to Angel, who had insulted him all the way.

‘Texarkana.” Freda examined the address.

“Cousin of mine, on my mother's side,” said Jeb.

“None of my business. But you should put your return address on here. If they don't get it delivered, they'll need to know how to mail it back to you.”

“I'm sure they'll deliver it.”

“Never know. I'll scribble down your address on the envelope,” said Freda.

“Then it won't be a surprise.”

“Suit yourself.” She dropped Charlie's letter into the out mailbox.

“So the Wolvertons are without shoes,” Said Jeb, getting better at the nice tactful touch, a pastorly concern that softened his phrases.

“I didn't say that.”

“Greta said it, I know. But I overheard.”

“But she doesn't know herself. It's all speculation.”

Jeb sent Angel off with the shopping list. “Perhaps I should drop by, pay them a visit.”

“Just don't mention my name. I know nothing about the Wolvertons’ affairs. Nice family. Shame to see them fall into the pit of this Depression,” she told him. “But everyone is hit by hard times. I just hope that Mr. Wolverton doesn't turn to crime. So many do, nowadays. Dillinger, George Nelson, Bonnie and that what's-his-face.”

Every time someone dropped a nickel into the Catholic cauldron out front, the sisters rang their bells. Front Street sounded like St. Mary's Cathedral in intermittent jangling intervals, a lively fête that broke through the quiet Saturday spell that settled over downtown when the Grande Theater opened up for the matinee showing of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Tarzan
in a serialized showing preceded the moving picture.

Jeb had never paid an official visit to the Wolvertons, having made as few stops as possible around town, just enough to convince the locals that the Gracie train had landed. Another interval of chiming bells caused him to stiffen with his own thought. “Maybe we ought to have our own kind of charity bell ringing.
Shoes for the Wolvertons.
” He laughed about it, then got all of a sudden serious.

Angel announced, “We have everything on the list. Can I go watch the nuns now?”

“You all sell bells, by the way?” Jeb asked Freda.

“Cowbells, maybe. Nothing like the Catholics.”

“Add up my bill, will you? And sell me one of those cowbells.” Jeb walked across the wooden floor to get a better look at the nuns. Their thin faces were wedded between the folds of fabric that shrouded their heads. They looked jittery, like Mexican dogs. Even the virtuous suffered skimpy meals during the autumnal grinding of days leading toward the November election. There was always the coming victory of voting out the old to usher in the new, but it didn't fill empty bellies.

Jeb figured by Christmas this Depression would be rolled under the White House rug, a ploy that could be laid aside or shoved in a drawer after the vote count. Maybe he would be in Canada by then. He envisioned Fern dressed in a seal coat, her legs lifting out of the snow, her Ardmore feet strapped in wooden skis. But a picture of a long habit raided his image of her platinum locks and snapped the lust out of the whole picture.

“Is this bell what you wanted, Reverend?” Freda rang it until he took it out of her hand.

“I'll take it just like that. No need to wrap it for me. Ever get in a supply of skis, Sister Honeysack?”