Earthly Vows (18 page)

She sat at Mrs. Abercrombie’s table and ate alone for the first time in days. The house was cleaned up neat as a pin, but
a strong odor blew in and hung in the air like Edwin had gone and butchered a hog. Framed photos were nailed across the wall
near the kitchen table, one each of what looked to be grandchildren and one of Mrs. Abercrombie and a man that had to be her
husband. Claudia never mentioned what became of Mr. Abercrombie, Edwin’s daddy. Angel figured he died, since Mrs. Abercrombie
did not act like a deserted woman. Whatever happened to him, he left her in a good way and what with Edwin’s job they did
quite well for themselves. A Victrola, recent model, sat on a table right outside the kitchen next to a stand-up radio. The
rug on the floor was most likely made by Mrs. Abercrombie, a braided oval the colors of Christmas candy. She made a lot of
her things by hand: a moppish yarn dog, twenty or more doilies hanging over every piece of furniture, two dolls most likely
kept for grandkids, and a shawl folded up and kept on the arm of a chair.

She watched Thorne and John through the back screen door. Thorne slid off the chair, both hands in the air, balancing her
drink and spoon. She crouched down and commenced to play with Bean and the gray cat. She gave the cat a new name each time
it appeared. For the moment, it was Dew.

Angel kept looking at the telephone. The corn needed to be placed in the icebox, so she did that. Then she washed up her glass
and spoon and left them on a towel to dry. She stuck her hand into her smock pocket and pulled out the piece of paper bearing
Fern’s telephone number on one side and Nash’s number on the other. She picked up the receiver. Two women gabbed back and
forth. One of them heard the break in the line and asked who was there. Angel placed the receiver back on the hook.

She went back outside and cleaned up the corn silk and the remaining husks. She shoved them into a dry bushel basket. Then
she gathered up the naked cobs, packing them into the slop bucket. Thorne yawned. She would soon go down for a nap. “Let’s
go back to the house,” said Angel.

John protested. He liked Mrs. Abercrombie’s house. Angel coaxed him off the porch. She led them across the yard, opened Claudia’s
door, and blocked the cat from coming inside. Thorne padded to the mattress on the floor and curled up, holding the cornhusk
doll next to her. John clambered onto the mattress next to his sister and closed his eyes. Angel retreated to the porch and
waited for the kids to doze off. She read the telephone numbers again. Fern had nice handwriting: her
f
a flourish of confidence, the
e
a forward movement into the
r
. The
n
lapsed into a graceful mark that flew completely off the page. Fern taught Angel her penmanship. She hated her for that and
the way she smelled the spine of a moldy book before shelving it. She hated how Miss Coulter harped on proving arithmetic,
dividing into multiplying, chalk tapping the slate like a woodpecker until the numbers locked together in Angel’s head, equations
popping out, the annoying snap of the ruler, the straight edge rigidly guiding the pencil, the lines so straight, all of life
woven perfectly as she planned. She hated her for finding happiness in Nazareth. No one could love Nazareth except her. Miss
Coulter always had her way.

The sun finally went behind some empty clouds. Four buzzards circled a pasture distantly. There was the wafting of smells
from the hog pen mingling with sweet hay and nodding clusters of Saint-Andrew’s-cross. Angel cut across the front lawn, meandering
around the white picket fence.

The telephone had not rung, not since lunch. Since she was the last to leave, the door to the screen porch blew open, unlatched.
The cat ran onto the porch. The door closed, tapped open, slammed shut again, bounced, and fell ajar. The open kitchen window
sucked air from the outside in, the curtain billowing in and out, lapping onto the sill. The cat jumped onto the sill, made
a circle, and then crouched to nap.

Her hands were sweaty. Fern’s number was smudged, but still legible. She flipped over the paper. Nash’s handwriting was spare
and hurriedly scribbled. He was in a hurry when she met him and even the day he called her at Abigail’s. He never said where
he was staying. She could call and get some mobster on the line for all she knew. She could not prove Nash ran with a pack
of dogs. But she knew his kind. She knew better, had been taught better.

She made it to Mrs. Abercrombie’s screened-in porch.

Edwin’s car sputtered from the front of the Abercrombies’ house, choked, and then died. A buzzard glided straight down from
the sky and landed on a pasture post. The screen door slammed shut behind Angel as she went back into Claudia’s house. She
curled up in her sister’s bed. Claudia had not one book in the house to read or paper to write on. Until now, she had not
noticed the bedroom ceiling was mottled by round gray patches, flakes of gray ashes dotting the whitewashed tins, as though
Bo stubbed out his cigarettes on the ceiling. Or maybe Claudia did it after Bo left her. She could not explain it, so she
closed her eyes.

Jeb lagged out in the hallway at Stanton School. One of the teachers glanced into the hall, waving at Jeb, and then disappeared
back into the classroom. Fern’s husky voice echoed from inside her empty room. She chatted it up with Frank Harrison, one
of the students’ out-of-work dads who did odd jobs around the school, such as sweeping the halls and bringing books out of
the attic. Jeb tipped back in the chair against the wall. Fern’s door came open and she thanked Mr. Harrison for his help.
She looked surprised to see Jeb and surprised him. He came down hard on the four chair legs. “Fern!”

“You know Mr. Harrison, Reverend Nubey,” she said.

Jeb extended his hand to the janitor. “I’ve come by to take Miss Coulter away from her duties for a breath of air and soup
at the diner.”

“You should have told me. I’ve promised to join two of the teachers,” said Fern.

Jeb blinked, his hand resting atop the breast of the jacket that held Gracie’s letter. Mr. Harrison excused himself.

She held up her sack and said, “We’re eating out on the back steps. You can join us.” Her tone was flat.

Fern sat next to the other two women on the steps. The shade reached across the steps but not down to the bottom step, where
Jeb took his seat. He turned a bit to engage the women in talk, but they talked mostly to one another. Fern finished up a
ham biscuit.

Jeb could not wait any longer, so he got up and said, “Something’s come up, Fern. Maybe later today, sometime, we could talk?”

The two teachers glanced at Fern. One said, “I’m done.” She got up and the other teacher followed her back into the building.

“I didn’t mean to break up the party,” said Jeb. He climbed the steps and sat down next to her.

Fern rolled up her lunch sack. “I was expecting you yesterday.”

Jeb wanted to rebound from his momentary lapse in courage, to tell her that he got tied up in church matters, sick people
to see. “I know” was all he could think to say.

“Are we in trouble, Jeb?”

“Not in my book,” he said.

“Tell me what’s going to happen, if the tide’s going out on us.”

He imagined how things would be if he handed her the letter, how matters would turn around. She would congratulate him as
she should have done in Oklahoma City. They would kiss and start packing. He had trouble forming the words. “Fern, I got a
letter from Gracie.” He pulled it out of his jacket and handed it to her.

She snapped open the letter and read it. She looked at him for a long while without saying anything at all. Then she said,
“He’s coming back. Gracie’s coming back. Never did I expect it.”

They both stared into the woods. Green pecans clung tightly on the limbs, ready at any moment to burst open.

She looked at him and he felt a chill, as though it were the first time she saw him. “You’re going to Oklahoma City, Jeb.
I see it in your eyes.”

He didn’t like the flatness of her tone, the way she left her name out, the funny way she looked away and coughed.

“Stop talking like that, like this is about me. I’m not me, Fern, anyway, not the way I am when we are us. I’m not going without
you.” He made it clear so that she would not misunderstand.

She wrapped her arms around herself like winter had moved in.

“I belong in that pulpit, Fern. Can’t you see it all unfolding? It’s the hand of God. I’ve never known it to be so obvious.
Not ever have I seen it so clearly like this. When God drops His hammer, it’s done.” He clapped his hands in the air. A breath
seeped out of him. It felt good to let the words spill forth, lay out the obvious. He waited for her to say anything that
would soften the tension between them, watched the way the bow on her dress lifted as she swallowed hard.

“He’s cruel, then.” She lifted from the steps and fled into the school.

An early autumn wind blew and several nuts dropped from the trees.

The shade receded. The sun shone down brightly where she had been sitting.

Angel dreamed that someone came up on the porch. The unwieldy drum of shoes rattled the windows in their casings. The house
shook and then fell still. The cool air blowing in from the open door sent dust swirling across the floor. Angel came awake,
thinking the door had been sucked closed. She opened her eyes. Edwin Abercrombie was standing in Claudia’s bedroom watching
her sleep. She jerked up, spraddle-legged on the mattress.

“Did I startle you?” he asked. He smiled down at her.

“Claudia’s not here.”

Edwin stopped smiling. “Does she have to be? I mean, we can talk, just the two of us, can’t we?”

She slid off the bed. Edwin was between her and the door. “You smell like whiskey,” she said.

“I’m not drunk. Just a little mellow, wanted some company. Don’t you get lonely for company staying over here all day?” He
stretched out his hand and leaned against the door frame.

“You should leave.”

“Can’t you be civil, girl? I heard you was a Christian girl, brought up by a reverend. Did I hear wrong?”

Thorne sighed in her sleep from the mattress right outside the bedroom door.

“What about ‘love thy neighbor’ and all that?” he asked.

“Mrs. Abercrombie wouldn’t want you over here like this,” she said.

“Momma’s gone off to a quilting bee.”

Angel backed up, her thighs hitting Claudia’s bedpost. “Look, Edwin, I don’t like you and I don’t want you here.”

Claudia called from the front of the house. “Anyone home?”

Edwin turned around and said, “There she is! Claudia, your little sister and I were just having a talk. You asked me to meet
you here, five on the dot.”

Angel walked quickly around Edwin and met Claudia in the front room.

Claudia dragged in, holding a small bag.

John came awake and jostled Thorne. He showed his momma his cornhusk doll and ran straight into her, holding the doll in the
air and flying it all the way into his mother’s arms.

“I’m glad to see you,” said Angel. “I was starting to worry.”

“What’s to worry about?” asked Edwin. “I was keeping your little sister company until you got home, Claudia.”

Claudia thanked him, her voice wrung out from the day.

John wanted to know the contents of Claudia’s bag.

“It ain’t much, but look what Momma got us, babies.” She pulled out a bag of peas, some bacon wrapped in butcher paper, and
coffee. She said to Angel, “I told the boss man I had to keep my babies fed and he give me a small advance, enough to get
us through to Friday.” She hauled out three bright red apples and two potatoes and showed them to John.

Angel took the peas to the kerosene stove, rinsed them, and put them on to boil. She turned on the back burner to heat water
for coffee. She could not stand to look at Edwin for another minute.

Claudia eased out of her work shoes. Slaughterhouse blood had dripped onto the toes. She held up her bare feet, grimacing.
Her toes were red from standing on her feet all day. She glanced at Thorne, who was up from the floor, hand in her mouth,
staring at her momma. “Momma worked her hind end off today, little girl.” She told Angel, “They got me wrapping meat.” She
drew out a beef shank wrapped in paper. “Ain’t but a half pound. It’s all they’d give me.”