Earthly Vows (25 page)

The postman came early. Mrs. Abercrombie accepted the mail on the front porch and she was in an unusually optimistic frame
of mind, so much so that she hummed to herself. She tucked the mail under her arm. “I’m off for a bit,” she told Angel. “There’s
a stew on to boil. After it simmers, turn it down, will you, Angel?”

Angel already had her hand on the back doorknob. “I was leaving, ma’am. Edwin comes home early of late. He’ll see to it, won’t
he?”

“Dear, don’t balk. Edwin’s never home early and he’s a mess in the kitchen. Am I paying you too little?” she asked.

“It’s enough,” said Angel. “I have to keep watch for Thorne. She’s young yet and can’t be left alone or she’ll get into the
waste bucket.” Thorne and John would sleep another hour, but she needed the alibi.

“You know those children can play out on my porch, long as they want.”

“I know.”

Mrs. Abercrombie laughed and put on a woolen hat, pulling knitted flaps over her ears to keep them warm. “He’s taking me to
a cockfight. Ever heard of that?”

She never said who the mister was, but Angel told her, “Where people place bets on roosters that peck one another to death?”

That surprised her, as if she really didn’t know. Then she laughed again. “Learn something new every day. You must think I
was born yesterday.”

Angel liked watching her leave through Mrs. Abercrombie’s own bedroom window. Her linens crisp and clean across the bed, not
a ripple. This man of hers had never rumpled the sheets. He hadn’t set foot on the lawn, let alone Mrs. Abercrombie’s bedroom.
The music box on the vanity closed shut, the lamps all turned out but one on the nightstand, as if waiting for her return.
The black car rolled away in a veil of dust.

She rocked on the back porch, sunning, watching the house in case Thorne or John got up from their nap; also the front door
for Edwin. The pot lid commenced to jingling. She ran in and turned down the fire and stirred the bottom of the pot, using
a long-handled wooden spoon. She resumed sunning. The days were shorter and colder, so the sun beating down through the screen
warmed her bones. She had not planned to drift off. Nothing so gentle and calming as the afternoon nap, the rhythm of the
rocker, the lulling away. The tiny screen holes acted as a strainer for the October wind, mingling into the sunny rays, summer
and fall reconciling. A clock on the stove chimed, three slipping away, four slipping away, five. The sun moved farther away,
a kite let go. Cold seeped in, afternoon fell away. Fingers touched her skin. Her eyes opened. Edwin crouched in front of
her watching her sleep.

Ida May had no coat, and the evening would be cold. Night was falling and the first frost whitened the grass that morning.
Jeb told her to put a blanket in the car. Willie’s coat from the previous winter was long in the sleeves. He had grown into
it now, had not used it for hunting, saved it for school and church. Angel had a coat too. Fern boxed the things she left
behind in Nazareth, one personal item being a pale blue coat. Jeb laid it on the passenger seat.

The motorists thinned out beyond the city limits. The deacons were a chatty bunch, holding over at least two hours longer
than expected. He didn’t mean to get out of town so late. It would be supper time, at least. Angel would have a meal on. Jolene
brought by a cake, one he salvaged for Claudia and Angel. It was covered and on the floorboard. Cinnamon, it smelled like,
and vanilla.

He drove through Del City and on into Moore, a highway, mostly, dotted by older houses, laundry on the brew in one front yard,
a hunting dog in hot pursuit of a fox squirrel. The road was bumpy in places.

Henry Oakley’s voice yet rattled around his thoughts. He was long on exposition, but it was smart of him to lay out the figures
and facts, a man who kept the books right on the money. Sam Baer was the lawyer in the bunch, first one he ever had the chance
to know. He was a ruddy-faced gentleman, a white shock of hair, his face chiseled out like the side of a mountain. He and
Henry worked side by side like brothers, or like men who had gone to sea together. But it was a Baer Fern had known, shared
a past with. That was all no more, she said. Still, the Baers and all of their acquaintances unconsciously tortured her, not
that she said it exactly that way.

Sam supplied a pencil-drawn map to Norman.

“Remember to tell Claudia that Angel has to come home. She can’t stay at Claudia’s anymore,” said Ida May.

Willie asked for cake.

“When we get there,” said Jeb. Sybil Bloom, he liked. She was a confident young woman, not ever having used her education
like Fern, at least not in the traditional sense of female graduates. Pregnancy dodged the Bloom household. So she devoted
herself wholly to sick Anna, whom Jeb had not yet met, nor had he met Sybil’s husband, Rodney, only Anna’s husband had he
encountered. Walton Baer. Their family ties extended to the state capitol.

Anna has a tumor, Sam said. Where, Jeb didn’t know, only that she grew weaker by the day. If it had not been for Sybil, she’d
have been lost for certain. Little was said about Walton.

“Norman, straight ahead!” Willie came out of his seat, pointing to the town sign.

Highway 9 angled straight into downtown. Most of the lights were out on the shops. The Diner on East Main was still lit. Jeb
parked, pulling out the address that Claudia scribbled down. A waitress cleaning the counter smiled at him, asked if he’d
like a cup of coffee. Jeb showed her the address.

“Take East Main two more blocks up, make a left.

Stay on that road until you run out of pavement.” She pointed out to Jeb the twists and turns, landmarks like a big oak, a
small grove, and a cornfield picked over.

Jeb wrote down her directions the best he could and thanked her. The sun was gone entirely.

Angel lost track of time knowing that with nightfall the only thing illuminating the pasture was the moon. It had not taken
long to shove a few clothes into a small bag. The big suitcase she lugged from Ardmore to Claudia’s was too big to haul on
foot. Claudia’s small bag was nice and light for traveling in a hurry. If she followed the fence line, eventually she would
make it to the road without crossing Mrs. Abercrombie’s yard.

Claudia fell asleep listening to a news drama. Thorne and John played quietly at her feet.

A light flickered behind the barn and the back pasture fence. Angel crouched. Edwin could be out looking. A female giggle,
the muted thump of running feet made her freeze. Two figures ran in the shadows and hopped inside a sedan. A young male voice
spoke. Angel ran for the sedan. The engine cranked. “Wait, wait up!” she yelled.

“Who’s there?” said the male. “I got a gun.”

Taking a chance, Angel called, “Loretta, it’s me, Angel. Your neighbor.”

First silence and then muttering. The boy spoke again. “What do you want?”

“Is it you, Loretta?” she asked.

“What’s it to you?” Loretta answered.

Angel made it to the driver’s side of the sedan. She could not breathe, bending over, clamping her hands on her knees. “I
got to get a ride into town. Have to meet someone.”

“A boy?” asked Loretta. The story seemed the best to tell. “Yes, a boy.” She straightened. “Can’t help you out,” said Loretta’s
beau. He put the car in gear. “Please, Loretta, you have to get me out of here!”

“Let her talk, Joe. What’s wrong?” asked Loretta. “Edwin. He … he came after me.” A tear streamed down Angel’s face. She locked
eyes with Loretta. Angel hiked her skirt up past her knee. “He hurt me.”

“Hurt you, how?” asked Loretta. “Tried to hurt me like he hurt you.”

“Loretta, what’s she talking about?” asked Joe. “Give her a ride,” said Loretta. She opened her door. Angel ran around to
the other side of the car and climbed inside. Loretta pushed her seat back in place, but was turned so she could see Angel.
“Gun it into town, Joe. Edwin Abercrombie will burn in hell!”

Angel wiped her eyes.

“That momma of his, she’s no help either, is she?” asked Loretta. “She’s mad, like I was the one done something wrong.”

“What happened?” asked Loretta. “You can tell us.”

“I fell asleep on Mrs. Abercrombie’s back porch.

When I woke up, Edwin had me by both arms. I slapped Edwin, kicked at him, and ran hard back through the house. It was Mrs.
Abercrombie coming into the house right about then. I ran straight into her. When I told her how Edwin had grabbed my arm,
tried to take me down on my knees, she called me ‘liar’ and ‘hussy.’ ”

Edwin had stared at them both from the front door, gawking, raking his hair out of his face.

“You got away, right, Angel?” asked Loretta. “I mean before he did something bad.”

“He hurt my arm. My leg is bruised, but I got away. I got someone meeting me in town for a lift.”

“Where you going?”

“Away from here.” She thought it best not to say.

“Where’s your family?”

“That was my family, my sister Claudia.”

“She blind or something?”

The waitress insisted on giving Jeb fresh hot French-cut potatoes. They would at least keep Willie out of the cake. Willie
took them gratefully.

“You think Angel will look different? It’s been so long since I seen her,” said Ida May.

Jeb turned around in the car seat and said, “Ida May, you need to listen. We’re paying Angel a visit. If she says that it’s
time for you and Willie to join her, then we’ll see about getting you down here next week. She thinks you-all ought to be
with family now and I have to let her decide those things. Claudia is family.”

“For a visit. We’re going to come visit Claudia, is that what you mean?” asked Ida May.

“For good!” said Willie.

Jeb cut his eyes at Willie.

Ida May wailed.

“Not like that,” said Jeb. “You don’t unload on your sister like that!”

Jeb drove them through the downtown sector past a drugstore, a dry-goods store, and a barbecue joint. “That’s a hopping place,”
he said. The parking lot was full. He turned left and headed down the road, away from town.

The thought of how Fern looked when he insisted she live with Sybil was haunting him. She was coming up Sunday for the church
service, she said. He wanted to sit down with her, talk over the matter about the Baers. Tell her he was having second thoughts.

He followed the directions, drove too far, as she said he might if he came to a sign advertising a dairy farm. He turned the
car around, headed back up, finally saw an arrow-shaped sign in the weeds pointing him down Arrowroot Road. He pulled aside
at a house painted a dark color. But what color he could not tell by night. The farmer inside was helpful and knew the address.
“Go past this next house and you’ll see a white house, a pretty white fence. That ought to be the place,” he said.

Jeb did as he said. Ida May was clambering over the seat by now, squealing. Jeb told her to watch for Angel’s coat. She spotted
the fence and he had to grab her to keep her from opening the door before he pulled to a stop. She ran out of the car, cutting
across the dark yard, and beat him to the front porch. Before he could reach her, she was pounding the door.