Sentinel of Heaven (4 page)

His smile
stayed but his eyes darkened with sorrow; he pointed upwards.

It's colder up
there, in the sky.

“Of course it
is... I should have realized.  Are you well enough – to go back yet?”  She
hated the sense of relief she got when he shook his head and tapped a fingertip
over where the knot in his scalp had been, then flattened his hand in front of
him and see-sawed it back and forth.

“Your head...
can't you remember who you are?”

He shrugged.

“What
can
you remember?”

A flip-flop of
his palm; a little of this, a little of that.  He stopped the line of inquiry
by pushing the towels into her free hand and affecting an intense interest in
the bottle of body wash, popping it open and sniffing it carefully.

“I did the
same thing in the store; it seemed to be the least obnoxious of what they had. 
No – get out one of the sponges and pour it on that.”  She dumped the towels on
the bench and twisted the head of the sprayer.  “Go out into the yard and I'll
hose you down.”

He’d walked
out a few paces when the hard direct stream hit him square in the back of the
head.  He looked back over his shoulder and fixed her with a glare of
mock-admonition.

“Sorry!  Here,
just a minute.”  Hiding her smile she switched back to the shower setting and
blew it in his direction.  The very picture of long-suffering, Leo moved into
its path and filled up the sponge, scrunching it to generate suds; he ducked
his head to soak his hair thoroughly and started from the top down.

Moira leaned
on the faded wooden rail around the deck, holding the hose on him in one hand
and propping up her chin in the other.  His abdomen flexed and tightened as the
rivulets of water ran down, carrying a stream of bubbles into his navel and
below, tracing the muscles of his thighs...

Can I get
paid for this?  Without a doubt, I could happily stand here forty hours a week
and wash down naked angels.  Damn the meds; I'll get a good lawn chair for when
the leg and back get bad again...  Might even sell video, if I could ever bring
myself to share.

Leo rubbed
until he'd gotten the blood out of his hair and his entire mane was white with
soap; he scrubbed his face with slightly less ferocity, wiping the bubbles away
from his eyes before moving on.  Carefully the angel washed both his sides,
back to the start of his feathered wings.

He beckoned
for her to toss him the body-wash; he refilled his sponge and hefted the bottle
back, pleased to see her catch it easily.  Now he was rubbing the sponge back
and forth over his chest in a lazy figure-eight that spiraled down his
stomach.  She forced her eyes up and caught him watching her... and grinning.

“Time to
rinse!” she said brightly, squeezing the hand-trigger hard and blasting him. 
He quaked with silent laughter and dropped his sponge to fend off her attack,
shaking the suds out of his hair.

Moira relented
when he waved his hands back and forth – pax, pax!  The sponge was brought
close to be washed out under the hose and refilled with soap.  Then he stepped
away once more, turning almost primly in order to block her gaze and continue
his bath with a smirk at her sensibilities.  She fanned the spray from one side
to the other over his back and wings, instead. He didn't seem to mind getting
them wet but didn't care to use the soap on them and there wasn't really a
need.

When Leo
turned back he was covered in soapy bubbles from navel down, as modest as a
loincloth.  He set the sponge on the rail beside her and took her hand, lifting
it up to hold the hose high enough that the spray would rain down on his head. 
He scrubbed through his hair one last thorough time and ran his hands over his
torso and legs, flicking away the foam.

Imperious as a
reigning monarch he gestured for her to turn off the water.  She let go the
hand-trigger and allowed the hose to slip down onto the deck.  He turned,
strode off towards the forest, paused halfway to the trees – and shook himself
all over like a giant gangly pigeon.  When he came back she was holding out the
best of the towels and not even chuckling.

As he dried
off she distracted herself by cutting the tags off the new pants.  He slipped
the red ones out of her hands as soon as she was done and stepped into them. 
They did come up to his waist but the cuffs were floating around the bottom of
his calves, leaving his ankles bare.  He cinched the drawstring, tied a half
knot in it, and struck a bit of a pose for her review.

“The color's
good on you.  I'm sorry they're not longer; I tried to get the biggest ones
they had.”

He waved away
her concerns absently, finger-combing his hair.  At the other end of the porch
was an old rusted grill, the kind that may have been a re-purposed oil barrel. 
He stared at it speculatively, then looked at her and nodded to it.

“The grill? 
What would you want with that?”

He flipped one
of his wings forward, rubbed a feather between his fingers, then gestured back
to the corner where the rose-bush was and forward to the kitchen where the
table was.  The gathering gesture again, now pushing towards the grill.

“You want to
burn your old feathers.”

He nodded
firmly, tilting his head.

“I've not used
the grill here yet... I suppose we could, if we keep the fire small.  I've not
got any charcoal.  You'd have to get some dead branches from the forest.”

He shrugged
and lumbered off in the direction of the tree line.  She went back inside to
get the matches and an old newspaper from a small stack in a cabinet under the
counter (last updated in 1984), and to sweep the feathers on the table into a
small pot with a lid so that the wind wouldn't blow them away.

The crack of
dry dead wood between his hands seemed as loud as gunshot when she shuffled
back outside – he was casually breaking limbs that were as thick as her wrists
with no sign of effort.  She tore the newspaper into shreds and crumpled them
into loose balls to make tinder.

“No, Leo, like
this.  Put those bigger pieces aside, we've got to start with the newspaper and
the smaller ones.  Once we've gotten the smaller ones to catch we can add the
bigger sticks.”

She set up a
little teepee of sticks over the pile of ripped newspaper in the bottom of the
grill, then glanced up to see his reaction.  He stared at it blankly.

“I guess
angels don't have to light fires very much.”

Leo shrugged. 
He pointed to her, to the kindling she was laying out.  He pointed to himself,
then to the side of the house where the rose-bush was.

You tend the
fire, I'll go look for more feathers.

“Yeah, yeah, I
get it, you Tarzan, me Jane.  I got this covered.”  She shifted her body to
face the grill again but was stopped by his huge hand gently gripping her
shoulder.

His blue eyes
were intense and earnest.  Thank you, he mouthed; then the seraph bent low and
kissed her forehead.

She sighed. 
The pain was probably creeping back, just below the threshold of her ability to
ignore it – it tended to make her cranky.  “It's okay... I just had a moment. 
Go take care of business, kiddo.”

His lip
quirked but he bobbed his head in acceptance and stepped off the back porch,
disappearing quickly around the far corner of the house.

Moira lit a
match, cupped it in the shelter of her hand and carefully conveyed it down onto
the newspaper.  It caught quickly and the grill was positioned to accept just
enough of a draft... she was pleased to see that as the newsprint flared and
began to be devoured the tips of the little sticks were glowing.  She added
more paper and gradually larger sticks until they started to blaze and generate
some real warmth.

Man, I
should have been a Boy Scout.  Pretty decent for my first attempt in years.

When she was
sure it was going well and wouldn't die out during a moment unattended, she
slipped back inside and took another pill.  He was there on the patio when she
came out, a long green rose-wood switch in his hand, stripped of its leaves. 
It appeared he had only managed to find a few more feathers and it had taken
him a while to look; she was absurdly proud of her early morning efforts, as
out of sorts as she had been.

Making sure he
had her attention he pulled out the longest of the feathers he'd found, showed
it to her, and laid it on top of the small fire.  It immediately began to char
and smoke – although not as noxious-smelling as she'd thought it would be. 
With dedicated care he poked it with the green stick until he was certain that
the entire quill was reduced to ash.

See? he
indicated with his makeshift poker.

“Yup, all
gone.”  She sat down at the table on the least splintered section of bench she
could find, sliding the lidded pot closer to him.  “The rest are in here.  Can
you take care of it?  I probably shouldn't be standing for a while...”

He smiled
softly at her again, flipping his hand.  She settled back to watch him work.

Leo was
incredibly cautious about this act of disposal.  Each feather was added one at
a time; each one was allowed to completely burn to ash beyond any hope of
reconstruction before the next was consigned to the flame.  Was this some sort
of ritual for him and his kind?  Was there a health concern with leaving them
around loose in the world, undestroyed?  Was it simply a matter of compulsive
tidiness with regards to his own cast-offs?  The whole process had a ceremonial
feel to it.

He was finally
getting down to the last and smallest feathers and she was glad – the sun was
setting and the temporary warmth of the afternoon was fading, especially since
she’d had to stop moving around.

Leo picked up
the final feather, the absolute smallest one no longer than his pinky,
oval-shaped and soft.  It had to have come from close to his body – that
sensitive area where seraphic down gave way to flesh.  He stared at it for a
long moment.  The sunset was coloring his features ruddy; his wings were dyed a
faded peach and his hair was lined in brilliant frost.

Seeming to
arrive at some sort of decision Leo turned slowly, coming down on his knees
before her again.  One huge hand rotated her right palm to face upwards.  He
solemnly laid the feather on her flesh then folded her fingers to cover it, as
if he were giving her the most precious and priceless thing he could ever
imagine.

He held her
hand in both of his, closed protectively around her fingers and around the
little bit of fluff.

“You want me
to keep this one?”

He nodded
firmly but didn't let go.

“And it's very
important.  So I shouldn't lose it... or treat it with disrespect?”

Again the nod,
still not relaxing his grip – he shook her hand tentatively.

After a moment
she guessed: “I should keep it with me?”

Yes! he
exclaimed silently, eyes lit with delight at her perception.

Moira reached
around with her left hand to fish her slim leather wallet out of her jeans.  “This
goes everywhere with me – any time I leave the house I have it.  I always know
where it is.  So I'll put this inside it here...”  Under his avid gaze she
opened the clear plastic slot that contained her driver's license and slid the
feather behind the card.  “Now it will be as safe as I can make it.”  She
folded it shut again and put it back in her pocket with a sense of finality.

The look of
gratitude in the lovely cerulean eyes, his tiny smile... she was suddenly
overwhelmed by the roller-coaster of the night and day and felt her eyes fill
with tears against her will.

“I'm trying to
understand,” she managed eventually.  “I don't know why any of this happened...
I don't really know what you want, or what you need.  But I'll keep trying. 
I'm sorry.”  She tried to cover her face to hide her confusion but he brushed
her hands away, tenderly kissing the tears as they fell.

He wrapped his
arms around her, wrapped his wings around her, and held her in his warmth until
the stars came out.

“I don't
normally do that,” she swore, sniffing, her head resting against his broad
chest.  “I don't just up and completely lose my cool.”

Leo stroked
Moira's back once, and kissed the top of her head.

“Thank you,”
she whispered.  She could feel his smile.

“Let's get
up.  If I wait much longer my joints will turn to stone.  Time for more meds,
and to try to get some food down...”

He stood up
quietly, coiled the hose at the foot of the patio stairs, carefully wiped any
trace of mud from his feet with the most raggedy of her old towels, wrung out
the sponge and gathered up all the other items on the table.  He gestured with
his chin for her to open the door.  All she had to do was hold it back and
stand aside – in the next minute he was in her kitchen finding places for
everything but the pants and the tie-backs.

Damn,
that's convenient:  having someone around to carry things and put them in the
cabinets.  He doesn't even need a step-ladder.

Now Leo
turned, his wings tightly folded, shooing her with his hands into the living
room.  She stepped over the pile of laundry (
tomorrow will be Laundry Day
and I don't want to think about that, therefore I will not think about it,
because it will be tomorrow
) and settled obediently in the recliner,
taking off her socks and shoes.  He held up the quilt and waited for her nod,
then smoothed it around her lap and legs.  He stepped away to return with the
ubiquitous amber pill bottle and a glass of water, which she accepted
gratefully.  As soon as he'd handed it over, he was gone again.

She sipped the
water slow after the first two pills went down, listening to the domestic
little noises from the kitchen.  He opened the fridge, contemplating.  Decided
no.  He opened the freezer, sorting through the boxes inside.  He slid one out;
she wondered wearily which it was, trying to remember what all she'd bought and
might still have.  Frozen dinners were relatively cheap and useful when her
body wouldn't let her actually cook something but she tried to refrain from
using them much.

Moira could
hear him flip the box back and forth, looking at the picture, looking at the
back.  He
must
be able to read; in the next few seconds he was opening
the box, piercing the film with a fork (she heard the drawer open and slide
close), then putting it into the microwave.  That was one of the few modern
conveniences she'd allowed herself since she moved back to this little house;
it came in handy during the bad days.

After a long
moment of silent contemplation she could hear the microwave buttons beep as he
pushed them. 
Good for you, Leo – pretty steep learning curve.

He puttered
around while it heated, opening other drawers and cabinets, setting a plate
down on the table.  She shut her eyes and let the world recede for a moment,
wondering... when was the last time she'd been taken care of?  Not by a nurse
or a doctor or a physical therapist, not by anyone paid to put up with her, but
by someone who expected little to nothing in return?  Someone who presumably
was doing it because they wanted to?

She could hear
him open up the box and dump the contents onto the plate, scraping with the
fork.  The night was so still Moira caught the soft wet noise of him licking
his fingers, then wiping them dry on the kitchen towel.

He bore the
plate into the living room; it turned out to be chicken alfredo.  Leo settled
it in her lap, passed her the fork, then held up her pepper and oregano
shakers.

“Yeah, sounds
good; this brand can be a bit plain.  Thank you, Leo.”  He distributed a
sufficient amount of each according to her nod, then capped the containers and
set them on her end table, dropping into his cross-legged position at her feet
once more.

“How do you
know so much about cooking and about food if you yourself don't eat it?”  She
stirred in the seasoning and swirled the pasta around her fork, lifting it up
to blow on it.

He flipped his
palm again; a little of this, a little of that.  Then he sniffed the air
dramatically and smiled.  Still smells good.

“You sure you
don't want any?”  He waved away the offer, instead picking up her water glass
again and drinking a long gulp before putting it back.

“You know you
could get your own glass, right?”  Leo quirked his lips and gave a wry shrug
that contrived to indicate he knew but didn't care to make the effort to do so.

“Fine, I guess
– if you had cooties I'd probably know by now.”  She ate slowly, disconcerted
by his attention.  The meal was good but he didn't do anything else, just sat
there and watched her with as much focus as a human man might watch a football
game.

“Leo, is there
something I can help you with?”

Quick shooing
flip of his hands – finish up, first.

When she was
done Leo stood up and took the plate back from her hands, picked up the shakers
and the glass, and headed to the kitchen.  The shakers went back in the
cabinet.  The plate and fork were rinsed and put in the sink.  The glass was
filled again with that teeth-numbingly cold well-water from the faucet and set on
the table within her reach as he sat down.

Smiling, he
leaned forward and tapped two fingers over her heart again.  Even through the
pain meds Moira felt her heart skip a beat.  Surely he didn't mean...

He waited for
a response, then tapped his own chest.  Reached out and touched her lips, then
put the same fingertips to his ear.

“You want me
to talk to you,” she said at last.

He nodded
firmly.

“About what?”

He pointed –
you.

“What about
me?”

Leo spread his
hands.  Anything.  Everything.

“Couldn't we
just read a book instead?  That's what I usually do after dinner.”

He was having
none of it.  He wanted her story.

“Fine then. 
It's boring, anyway.”

He gave her a
look of serious doubt, and indicated she should continue.

“I was born in
a little hospital in Valdosta, Georgia on October twenty-fifth, late nineteen-seventies. 
My parents named me Moira Jerilyn Newton; I've tried to live down to it ever
since.”

She took a
deep breath.  “My father was a real estate agent.  He died of heart disease
when I was five.  My mother was a home-maker with some typing skills; she
couldn't afford to take care of us alone so she moved back in with my
grandmother, here in this house.”

The tiny
sitting room with all its little country finery packed away into the attic, to
become a cramped and noiseless space with two twin beds in it: mine and my
mother's.  All the delicate things through the rest of the house I couldn't
touch because they were Grandmother's and they might break.

Spending
the day climbing the trees outside and scouting the forest by myself, coming
back in and getting roundly scolded for the state of my clothes.  Mother went
to vo-tech on Dad's life insurance to learn medical transcription; I went to
elementary school in what all the other girls recognized as their cast-off
clothing, given to Goodwill.

Evenings
spent in silence inside these tiny walls, silence broken only by the click of
Grandmother's knitting needles and the clack of Mother's crotchety typewriter
that was always breaking, always sent in for repairs that cost so dear.  And I,
sitting on the floor where he is now, with a book pushed into my hands to keep
me quiet.

Letting me
read was the only way to persuade me to sit still.  They used to make me read
the Bible in church during the sermons so I'd be good.  I got used to not
asking questions about the errors and logical inconsistencies I discovered – no
one was ever willing to answer, anyway.

Leo was gazing
at her encouragingly.  She couldn't seem to find her voice but the stream of
thought went on.

At the
bottom rung of the school hierarchy, being the poorest kid in a poor town, I
had few friends.  I found what I needed in books.  I used my library card
constantly and never dared rack up a late fee.  I bought the five cent pulp
paperbacks with what I earned sweeping porches and raking leaves on the
weekend.

I never
was much of a believer but I begged for Heaven to help me when I was the first
in my class to develop tits.  Mother pressed her lips tight at the thought of
having to spend money and buy me bras – not much in that size at the local
consignments but it wasn't like I could do without.  Grandmother barely
noticed; her sight and mind were beginning to go by that point anyway.  The
casual cruelty of the other girls in middle school became a focused crusade of
hatred as the boys started noticing the little 'rag doll'.

Not that I
really wanted them to notice.  Fourteen year old clod-headed brutes with
young-old faces and boots that reeked of local farmyards, already filling their
bottom lips with chewing tobacco, daring each other to pinch my ass in the
hallway.

I took up
boxing.  The gym teacher was distantly sympathetic; as a closeted lesbian in
the Bible belt I guess she thought we misfits should stand up for each other. 
The pinching stopped – but they started whistling, hissing, cat-calling
instead.  When I was sixteen I gave the worst of them a fat lip; when Mother
found out I was suspended for a week she pulled down a willow-switch from the
tree at the front of the drive and gave me my first and last thrashing.

The next
day I started walking down the road, since I didn’t have to go to school.  I
stopped at every restaurant and coffee shop on this old truck route until I
found one willing to take me on as a waitress and pay me under the table.

Oh, the
shrieking when I announced it that night.  Her daughter, a Newton daughter and
a Delano daughter, take a job as a common waitress!  You might think
street-walking a more honorable profession based on the sturm und drang...

I bore up
under the anvil-weight of her disapproval for the rest of that year… worked
evenings during the week; worked as much as I could on the weekends and over
the summer.  Quit buying books.  Saved my wages.  Before school opened again
that fall I packed up all my decent clothes and said goodbye-so-long and lugged
my one small suitcase out to the Greyhound bus station ten miles south of here.

Bought a
one-way ticket for as far north as a third of my savings would take me.

Leo reached
out and touched her hand tentatively.  She shook her head, trying to clear the
reverie.

“My mother and
I... were not close.  Never really were.  I guess I must have been a
disappointment.  I wasn’t the genteel lady she wanted me to be – climbing trees
and boxing like a boy and reading trashy novels that no person of good breeding
would be seen handling.  I moved out the year I turned seventeen.  Ran all the
way to Philadelphia.

“I managed to
get a one bedroom apartment with three other girls; we all worked different
shifts.  They got me jobs as a waitress and a third-shift store-stocker.  I
saved up my money and earned my GED.”

And
Grandmother died that year; one girl wrote the message down on a Chinese menu
and left it on top of my stack of clean laundry.  When I called my mother back
to ask if I should try to come down for the funeral she told me not to bother;
Grandmother wouldn't have known me at the end anyway.

“Once I had
been there a year I was able to apply to the Community College of
Philadelphia.  I managed to earn an associate's degree in English – I paid for
it myself.  When I transferred to Bryn Mawr to get my bachelor's I quit
waitressing and stocking and got a job working in a cafe not far from the
dorms.  Between that and a couple of academic scholarships, I was getting by.

“Then I met Taylor...
we hit it off right away.  Like a house on fire.”

She smiled
down into Leo's eyes.  “What is it about me and the tall ones, huh?”

Taylor
Madison.  Six foot four with a mocha complexion; short wavy black hair with
that little brown streak up front that she never could stop herself from
touching.  He was only three years older, graduated and teaching English at the
local high school.  She remembered thinking he had the most gorgeous smile. 
First thing he said to her was “I'm surprised a cafe girl recognizes Plato” –
and after fifteen minutes facing the rough side of her tongue and being bombarded
with her opinions on
all
of the classic thinkers he laughed ruefully
and begged her forgiveness, swearing to never take the mind of a cafe girl for
granted ever again.

Taylor
Madison.  Well-spoken, well-read, soon to be well-written because he had that
novel he was forever close to finishing.  He took her for a roof-top moonlit
picnic on their first date; took her willingly-given virginity the same
evening.  She flattered his wit; he wrote her pretty love notes.

When Moira
called her mother to tell her they were moving in together six months later,
her mother's only response was to thank her for doing her whoring up north
where no one who knew the family would see it.

Taylor Madison
– the self-made man of letters.

Taylor Madison
– the increasingly-possessive boyfriend.

Taylor Madison
– the verbally-abusive little shit.

She took a
deep breath.

“We'd been
together about a year and a half; I was a semester or so away from graduating. 
For the most part I was happy – he'd gotten me a little ring.  I figured I was
another year or two away from becoming 'Mrs. Moira Madison'.  But we'd started
to fight; too many discussions degenerating into shouting matches.  That Friday
morning, I was complaining to my coworkers about our latest row.”

I told
them I was tired of his bitching.  I didn't tell them he'd grabbed me by the
upper arm and shook me as he roared his hateful, disrespectful words down into
my face.  I didn't show them the bruises his fingers had left.