Fallen Angels Read online

  Angel would not cut eyes at the deputy as though she and Jeb had thought out the details of their story.

  “I had a little problem with my supplies. I got it all back in place.” Jeb kept his eyes straight ahead on the road.

  “Purty kids,” said the cop, like he didn't notice the grime around their eyes. “They yourn?”

  “Mine? Why, yes. Sure, officer. They mine.”

  Ida May whispered, “Liar, liar.”

  “You passing through, I guess.” The officer pulled out an etching of a bearded man, a wanted poster.

  “Me and the kids on the way to visit my sister-in-law in Hope.”

  “Good melons in Hope. You just in time for the watermelon parade. Hope peaches is as good as they watermelons. They put on a big to-do, old timey picnics and sech.”

  “Thank you, Deputy. We'll take in the festivities while visiting the family.”

  “Just watch yourselves. They's a killer on the loose up from Texarkana. Least way, they's a man about to die after taking a beating from a cotton picker hired by his daddy. This man kicks the bucket, this Jeb Nubey feller, he'll be a murderer. You seen him?” The deputy held up the poster.

  Jeb heard a ragged sigh next to him, but he didn't turn to see who made the sound. “Don't believe I've ever seen him. Why they think he's headed for Arkansas?”

  “They got us looking from Dallas to Little Rock. We'll catch him. He's an itinerant worker. Vagrant. Hobo. You know the type. They pretty stupid.”

  Jeb held his words. With a turn of the key, the truck engine turned over. “I'll keep my eyes peeled. Kids, you help me look out for this feller,” he said. He turned back to the deputy. “We could use the reward.”

  The cop watched him go.

  As the truck made a turn, Jeb saw the smoke lift from the deputy's tailpipe before he disappeared from sight.

  “You was that man in the picture, wasn't you?” Angel elbowed her brother to make room in the cramped cab.

  “I'll have you know I'm a farmer. I drive into Camden for supplies and to get into town from time to time. Didn't know it was a crime.”

  “I guess you killed one man, you might kill all-a us.”

  “You going to kill us?” asked Ida May. Jeb didn't answer.

  “I knowed a killer once. A for real John Dillinger type,” said Willie. “He was dangerous but I didn't keer.”

  “I know the one you mean, Willie. That man who lived in the shack not two miles from our place in Snow Hill. He hid out acting like he was one of us, but Daddy said he was shiftless. He just disappeared one night. We saw the law all over his place at sunup but no murderer in sight. I think I hear him some nights when I'm about between sleep and dreaming. It feels like pricklies on my skin when that happens.”

  Jeb said, “Sounds like you're tellin’ stories.”

  “He was evil and you could smell the devil when he came around. Daddy said to keep away from him.” Willie sat up and watched the road ahead, like any boy seeking a diversion from a mind-numbing country ride.

  “How you know what the devil smells like, Willie boy? You been sneaking around playing cards while your momma's not looking?” Jeb wondered where he might drop them off. But the oldest girl had a mouth that shot itself off too much. He'd have to find something to appease her, to make her want to keep a secret.

  “The devil smells like coal dust mixed with blood,” said Willie.

  “I don't like this talk, Willie. You always tryin’ to scare me,” said Ida May.

  “He smelled like you, Jeb Nubey,” said Angel.

  Jeb softened his eyes and allowed his lips to part. “I'm not him and you need to get it out of your head. How you feel if they string me up, a farmer, all on account of your mouth, girl?”

  “Why else would you give us a ride—you the feller who wanted to leave us on the side of the road?” Angel's voice lifted, convincing Wise. A voice that anyone would want to listen to if she decided to squeal.

  “I felt sorry for you. You're orphans, ain't you? Probably run off from some home. They beat you or something?”

  “Jeb Nubey. What kind of name is that, anyway? Like some hick from Texarkana.” Angel bluffed well.

  “I figure you got somebody looking for you, like a orphan home. Maybe that deputy will show up with a poster of your face and say they need their three sweet potatoes back for the government money they missing out on.”

  “I ain't no orphan and I ain't nobody's sweet potater, neither. Me and these two, we was supposed to be at our sister's place by now. But that stupid Lana ran off and left us on our own. If Daddy hears of it, he'll come for us. But how he going to know if we don't make it to Claudia's and get him a letter?” Angel's bluntness made her look less pretty. “You get us to Claudia's and we'll just keep mum about you being Jeb Nubey.” A bit of light came into her eyes and she added, “That and a little shuttin-up money.”

  “You can sing till the cock crows, little stray, but ain't no one going to believe you! If I drop you off at your sister's, it's ‘cause I can't wait to have my peace and quiet back. Here I was feeling sorry for you. Now I just want you to be a memory.”

  Angel let out a girlish sigh, vulnerable. “A little cash, then, and it's a deal.”

  Jeb agreed with silence. She left him in peace until the noon hour when a road sign ahead read “5 Miles to Nazareth.” Angel yelled it when she saw the sign. He had not believed up until men that such a place existed.

  “Oh, Claudia, we're almost home! Sweet pudding and fried potaters. She's really the best cook in the family,” said Angel.

  Jeb realized this Claudia wasn't a drummed-up invention of the girl's colorful imagination. “Sweet pudding. Maybe I'll just hang around for a bit and see if she feeds me, too. She got a man?”

  “Claudia got a good guy from Fort Smith. Not like you. They got a baby now, or maybe two. And number one, she would never look at you, anyway, what with you being a murderer. Number two, you being from Texarkana.”

  “What's wrong with Texarkana?”

  “It's like living nowhere. You don't know if you're waking up in Arkansas or Texas, only cause you're surrounded by so many states you don't know where you live—Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma.” She counted them off. “Your whole life you're confused about things, like whose side are you on in a fight or how do you tell people where you live. People who can't make up their mind about things, well, they just live in Texarkana.”

  “You don't know nothing at all,” said Jeb.

  “You quit denying you're from Texarkana. ‘Sides all that, you sound like one of them Texans. How come you're so easy to catch in a lie? Not like a real crook, are you?”

  Jeb ignored her.

  Honeysuckle bloomed along the fence lines all the way down the next three-mile stretch of road. It perfumed the air. Jeb remembered Myrna, how she wound honeysuckle vines through her hair and danced in her white dress, her shoes kicked off under the moon. The girl sitting next to her smelled like mud and soured apples.

  “I want a ham biscuit,” said Ida May.

  “This Lana, how come your momma let you go off with her, anyway?” Jeb threw in a new question before the girls got off on a long list of things they wanted.

  “Our momma wasn't about or she never would have allowed it. Daddy, he never had good judgment about women like Lana. Not that it was his fault. Granny, his momma, once told me that men was just growed-up boys. Granny lived with us ‘til she died. She lost her place on account of her oldest girl and husband left her with nothing. I told Daddy not to put us in Lana's care, but would he listen to me? Like he ever listens to what I have to say.” Another fissure opened in Angel's clapboard exterior. She sounded like a woman again, and sovereign. A girl that might stay home a year longer than others just to help out her family.

  “So where's your momma?”

  “Little Rock. Making money,” said Willie.

  Angel gave him a look.

  “Your family's been split up by this Depression. Sad, but it'
s happening all over.” Jeb saw a shimmer in Angel's eyes, but did not try and read it.

  “If you ain't Jeb Nubey, how come you won't tell me your real name?” Angel paddled past Jeb's queries, the dogged rower that did not know she lagged behind.

  But her question sparked a bit of hope. He picked a name that was not too far from his own, so he would not slip up and forget. “Fred Judson. I live in Hope.”

  “That's why you know so much about Hope, then, I guess,” said Willie.

  Jeb held back his elation. “That's right, Willie boy. You all ought to drop by the farm sometime and bring your sister and her youngens.” Courage overtook his pack of lies.

  “How come you let that cop tell you all about Hope, then, like you knowed nothing at all?” said Angel. “I'll bet you don't live there nor know a thing about it so it wouldn't do no good to look you up. Besides, after we get settled in with Claudia, we won't have no time for visiting. She knows everyone in Nazareth, I'll bet. We'll go to school and be very busy with our lives, I'm sure. Like normal folks.”

  “So you never visited her, before?” Jeb saw another sign just as Willie yelled, “Nazareth—one mile away.”

  “This is our first time to Nazareth. It's our first time anywhere, besides Snow Hill and Paris,” said Angel.

  “Paris. France?” said Jeb. “I know that's a lie.”

  “Paris, Arkansas, further up than here. See? You don't even know about any place in Arkansas,” she said.

  “I got sick goin’ through those mountains when we moved away from Paris,” said Willie to Angel.

  “But you know she's expecting you.” Jeb pressed for an answer.

  “ ‘Course she's expecting us. I wrote her myself just before Lana hauled us off to Camden.”

  Jeb dismissed from his thoughts the way she looked so all-of-a-sudden troubled. “Look ahead. Nazareth on the border. I'll stop at this house and get directions to your sister's place. You got a letter, you say, with her address?”

  Angel pulled the letter out of her pocket. “See, right here where it says ‘Bo and Claudia Drake’?” She lives on Boll Avenue. The ink's kind of runny, but that's what it says. I remember Momma saying she lives on cotton boll once, just to be funny. Bo got hisself a good job working for the railroad.”

  Jeb read the year when it was mailed. Numbers he could figure out. “This letter's three years old.” He opened the truck door.

  “Has it been three years? I been saying two so long, I guess time has slipped past,” said Angel.

  He handed her back the letter and stepped out of the truck. When he stepped up onto the porch, he felt as though he should not allow all of his weight to rest on the steps. The clapboard structure had a sagging porch that gave the house a gray smile. Geraniums grew out of old, rusted lard cans stuck in the ground all the way down the length of the porch. But the blooms lay all around the pots as though stripped naked. He knocked on the screen door and the wood splintered soft around his knuckles. The smell of wet dogs and soured babies’ things wafted from the one-room house. A woman, her face gaunt and drawn, stopped a foot from the door, shocked to see a visitor. Around her feet, twin baby boys who looked as though they had sucked all of the nourishment from her thin body banged on the floor with spoons. Their momma stepped over them as though to do so drained her of her last ounce of strength.

  “Sorry to bother you, ma'am,” said Jeb.

  She didn't answer.

  “We're looking for the family of these kids I got out in my truck. You know of a family by the name of Bo and Claudia Drake? They live in Nazareth. Got some little ones about your boys’ age, I guess,” he said like he knew the couple. He wondered if his smile looked truthful to her.

  “Why, I lived h'yere, goin’ on three yers.” When she spoke, she showed that her shapeless face was fashioned from a toothless mouth. “I never heard of no Drakes. You say they live in Nazareth? Where ‘bouts?”

  “Boll Avenue.”

  “Now I heerd of Boll Avenue. We don't get out much, me an’ ‘ese, two. Maybe I just missed meetin’ up with the Drakes. Want me to tell you how to get over to Boll? It ain't fur.”

  “If you don't mind,” said Jeb.

  She took the letter with Claudia's address and made a primitive map on the back. “Does this make sense? I'm not a good explainer of things, my husband says.”

  “You're doing fine, ma'am.”

  One of the twins erupted in a fit of rage. His brother had grabbed both spoons.

  The mother ignored them and was quite good at it. Jeb realized he was her amusement for the day. “I guess we'll be on our way, then.”

  “Won't you come in for coffee? We just bought new.” The young mother smiled and it aged her.

  “We best not stay, ma'am. These kids are anxious to see their family,” said Jeb.

  “I can tell you're a kind man. Lookin’ out after three youngens. My husband, he don't have nothin’ to do with kids. Figgers it's my place to run after these two.” She patted her abdomen. “And this other one that's on the way. Shore hope it's a girl baby ‘is time. Boys eat too much.”

  Jeb excused himself.

  Angel, by now, had his door opened and was sitting up on her knees with her hand bracing the steering wheel. “Did she know anything?”

  “We're not far. Boll Avenue's a real place. But she said she never heard of the Drakes.” Jeb studied the woman's scrawled, quivering pencil marks, his strained sight traipsing out on the tedious hard-to-read lines.

  “Woman like her most likely doesn't know nobody.” As they pulled away, Angel watched the woman and drew up her mouth, a sort of piteous pout.

  Jeb wondered over the thought of a soul trapped in a country way of life. No other existence. He wondered if, when the woman saw the moon through the pecan trees, she thought it was a distant place or just a decoration for her prison.

  He noticed Angel fidgeting and muttering as they followed the roads from one thin dirt lane to the next.

  “What that lady said don't mean nothing, Jeb Nubey, you know. Claudia's on the porch waiting for us. I know she is and don't you try and say she's not.”

  Jeb remained quiet until Angel yelled out the hand-painted sign that read only “Boll.” The truck turned onto Boll Avenue. The sun had melted into its own ebbing remains. The sky greened from the last storm, while the wooded land looked bleak, like a quiet place where no one lived.

  3

  If the youngest had not wailed while she held on to the doorpost, Jeb might have thought the whole story about the sister Claudia had been concocted by Angel. She had a fast tongue and he knew she kneaded her words, massaged them to obtain the desired effect.

  “If Claudia moved, why didn't she tell us?” Willie talked over Ida May and then shushed her, a bite in his tone. That made her yank away and run out into the yard.

  “Not a stick of furniture inside, not nothing to tell us where she's gone to,” said Angel. She pressed her hand against the front door, which looked as though it had a whitewash of paint over a turn-of-the century layer of blue. Paint chips feathered to the porch. She went inside.

  Jeb watched her go room to room. He pulled out a flask; one Big Brother had won in a crapshoot, and closed his eyes as the Camden-bought whiskey washed over his tongue and down his throat. A truck motored down the same road that ran in front of the old house.

  Jeb followed Angel inside. In one corner of the room lay a child's toy—a doll's head tossed against the baseboard, eyelashes missing, starting up open-mouthed with what was once blond strands of hair curled in the only two remaining wisps on its scalp. Jeb wearied of the littlest one's crying out on the porch. An old mattress lay against the wall in one small room.

  “You all can sleep here tonight. Won't hurt you.”

  “You don't mean you're leaving us here?” Angel stepped out of the kitchen where she had picked up a discarded letter and two wooden spoons.

  “I mean you got a roof over your head and it beats sleeping in the back of my truck. I don't have
no room for kids if you haven't noticed.”

  “You is a plain mean man, a hateful killer.” She moved around him as though he had a plague. “You're dangerous, that's what.” She said the last part only so Jeb could hear.

  “I can't let you ride no more with me, you kids.” He hoped a dollar would appease her. The youngest, Ida May, pressed her face against the window, hiccuping through the smoky glass of the cab. She'd heard him tell Angel they had come to the end of the road and had climbed inside the cab to resist desertion. She closed the door and her head dropped Her feet appeared in the window. She had taken to calling Jeb “Dud”—ignoring his Fred Judson alias. She'd made up a song about it that sounded like a cereal jingle. She sang it now. She ignored him when he yelled for her to get out.

  “I'll pull you out by the feet, then!” Jeb ran through the open door. The whiskey made his face warm.

  “Is that what you plan to do, Mr. Nubey, or whatever you call yourself?” asked Willie. “You going to leave us here? This place, it don't have a scrap for my littlest sister. Me and Angel, we get by, like we always do. But you can't mean you'd leave Ida May without food.”

  Ida May's feet clicked together at the toes to the beat of Dud's jingle.

  “I'll leave you food, then. But don't ask me for nothing else. Willie, you can be the lookout. You wait for a nice family to pass by, then you tell them you been left behind by your kin. That's what has happened here. I'm not to blame for your mess. This sister of yours, she was the one who left you all here. This Claudia, or Whatever. I'm the good feller, the one who gave you a lift. That's all you honestly got to say about me. But this is as far as I take you. You think you can be the lookout for these girls, Willie?” He slipped him a buck.

  “We all going to be the lookout, Jeb Nubey,” said Angel. “Looking out for the law. When we find a law feller, see, we tell them everything we know about you—how you killed a man in Texarkana, used us for a front like you was our daddy, then left us here for bobcat food. Know what else? I'll tell him how you a shaved man now and they looking for the wrong face. That kind of lookout, you mean? The kind they pay a reward for, you know. Fix us up with some big bucks for your ugly head.” She tore the dollar bill from Willie's hand and threw it in Jeb's face.