The Sleeping Night (14 page)

He sat down next her, cross-legged. At nearly fifteen, he was mostly arms and legs and feet. The arms were gaining shape, taking on the long ropy muscles they would carry as a man. His brow was high and wide, ending in an even line of hair that fell, when wet, into a natural arrangement of precise, tight rows. Above the high cheekbones that gave his face an exotic look, his polished dark eyes measured her steadily.

“I don’t want to get in trouble, Isaiah,” she said and covered her eyes with an arm.

“Only person would tell is Solomon and he’s in the fields with his mama.” He nudged her knee with his big toe. “Ain’t you bored this afternoon? Like some company?”

In truth, it was good to have him there, like old times. She felt her mouth curling into a smile, heard his answering laugh, changing now from the boy’s piping to the man’s boom. Halfway through, it slid up the register and ended on a hoot.

Angel opened her eyes. “That’s horrible, Isaiah. You gotta promise not to laugh anymore today.”

He laughed again. “Cain’t promise. You’ll get used to it. I did.” He fell down beside her, stretching out his legs to stare overhead. “Pretty. Looks like gold coins.”

“Mmm-hmm.” She relaxed, lifting a knee. A soft wind swept the platform, rustling the leaves. “That feels good.”

“Does,” he agreed.

There was no need for conversation. They simply rested side by side in the oven of the afternoon, waiting together for breezes.

A long time later, Isaiah touched her hand with the back of his. She turned her head to look at him.

“I miss you, Angel.”

It almost made her cry, and she rubbed her knuckles against his. “I miss you, too. Nobody else thinks like I do.”

“Me, either.” His expression was solemn. “I wish we didn’t have to grow up.”

“I know.”

Together, they looked again at the roof of branches, letting the back of their hands touch. There they stayed, mostly silent, until the afternoon was late and both heard the call of supper in their bellies. They climbed down together. Angel headed for the path that led to her back yard through the forest, Isaiah for the river, to swim home over the low shallows of August.

It was the last afternoon but one that they had together. Except for that one other time, she never got to even
talk
to him again. She would see him on the road going into town to work and, when forced, he came to the store with his mama. That was all.

Long ago, Angel thought drowsily. In spite of the time that had passed, she could still remember the feel of his knuckles against hers—the satiny smoothness of the skin there, where hands were usually rough. She fell from the doze into sleep, remembering the comfortable quiet they had shared waiting for breezes, side by side, high above the earth and its trials.

V-Mail

January 10, 1944

Dear Angel,

Bless your sweet little heart, girl. I been half-froze since I got here. Thanks to you, I’m finally warm. Everything fits just fine. I’m wearing a pair of socks right now, and the other is hidden good because I’m not gonna take no chance some other soldier’s gonna take advantage of my carelessness. They’re warm, Angel, So warm. The sweater fits good, too. I wear it under everything else.

The gloves and scarf for Mrs. Wentworth were good, too. She asked me to tell you thank you very much for all of it. I guess you got her letter, too, though? I helped her write it because she got arthritis so bad in her hands in the winter.

You have a good heart, Angel. Thanks for all you’ve been doing. I’m gonna keep my eyes open for something that you’ll like, a souvenir from England just for you.

Tell your daddy hey for me.

Isaiah

V-Mail #1

January 12, 1944

It’s a cold, wet day here and I’m about fed up with cold and wet. Feels like my toes is wrinkled all the time, and you just can’t get warm. I’ll never complain about being hot again as long as I live.

Not far from where our barracks are is a ruined castle, and last night I went over there with a local person. The walls are all tumbled down, with holes for where the windows used to be and a tower with stairs inside leading up to nowhere. Somebody told me it was built in 1285. Think of that, Angel! I thought of you the whole time I was in there, seeing how you loved castles so much when we were children, so I made some little drawings for you.

And I made a point of paying attention like you was with me, so I’d remember lots of things to tell you. Some of the walls are fallen all the way down, but in other places, they’re fine, sticking right up in the sky, even with a turret on the top. You can walk around on the inside, and mostly, it’s all grown over with grass, and there are clumps of moss and flowers on the walls. You can see where the rooms were, like the kitchen with a hole in the wall where they used to bake bread, still all perfect, and a giant fireplace which must have been the main area, and a little bitty church, which was cold, cold, cold, but you can sit there and know it’s holy. Or maybe that’s just ghosts, whispering around. In any account, I knew you’d have liked it, would have been cooing like a little pigeon.

The whole country is old. Old, old, old. There’s this place on the side of a mountain where there’s a great big old horse drawn right on it,

V-Mail #2

and it’s been there for two thousand years or something. I kinda get all quiet inside when I think of it, some folks all those years ago drawing that horse, and all the people since then making sure it stays up there, all tidy and nice.

It changes your thinking a little to consider all that time, all those centuries. Did you know the Romans were in Britain? Mrs. Wentworth loaned me a book about it, and she said if I can get there, there’s some ruins down south. Imagine that! In Texas, the oldest thing I know about is the Indian fort, and it was what, a hundred years old or something. Nothing. No time at all, considering.

And that makes everything that’s happening now both better and worse. Better because no war lasts forever, does it? Someday, this one will be over, too.

But worse, too, because all these modern bombs and planes are doing a whole lot more damage than the old warfare could do. England is wrecked in a lot of places—old churches and things knocked down so bad you know they won’t be there in 800 years like those castle walls. Whole streets just a big mess. It makes me sad to walk through and see it. Lot is still here, naturally, but a lot is gone, and it’s gone forever. Nobody much remembers what war was going on when that old castle was built, but I can still walk around in it, get a feeling for the way things were, and tell you about it, a half a world away.

I’m running out of room again. Better go. Hope you enjoyed this little “travelogue.” Ha ha.

Your friend Isaiah

V-Mail #3

[Sketches of interior of castle ruins]

In the humid stillness of Monday afternoon, Isaiah worked in Mrs. Pierson’s backyard, a place that reminded him of the gardens he’d seen in London. Here, as in England, masses of flowers of every description grew and thrived, nourished by the moisture in the air.

The flowers were neatly placed, but the effect was far from fussy. Flowers tumbled from the rows in exuberant falls of purple and red, yellow and white. Some of them he knew by name—alyssum and chives, roses and cornflowers. Others he labeled by their shape or scent. He called the heavy purple ones trumpets, the tiny white ones lace.

The gardens he had planted and tended as a child were practical things, full of greens and squash and tomatoes, vegetables that could be put up in the fall for winter eating. The very notion of flowers had once seemed frivolous.

But Mrs. Wentworth’s garden in England had taught him there was joy to be found in the simple beauty flowers provided. He found himself eased when he’d spent an afternoon weeding. It seemed he could smell the flowers long after he quit. Now he loved the idea of something just living because it was beautiful, could understand why somebody might grow something they wouldn’t ever eat.

Once Mrs. Pierson had done this work herself, making of herself a legend. Folks couldn’t understand how she made those flowers grow like they did, nor why, blind as she was, she would want to. Now, though she’d hired Isaiah to build a flagstone pathway through the garden, she really needed his quiet help weeding and fertilizing and tying up the climbers. He found her an agreeable employer, mainly because he worked
with
her, never
for
her. She accorded him a rare dignity.

This afternoon, Gudren sat on a little stone bench in the yard. Her thin body was covered with an airy kind of dress with flowers all over it, the sleeves short. She had the knack of sitting so still he forgot about her, a contented expression never quite chasing away the shadows around her eyes.

He had believed, before he went to war, that he’d seen human cruelty at its worst. But even his own childhood had not prepared him for the work he’d had to do in the camps or the walking skeletons with their hollow eyes, or the bodies they had buried.

As he weeded, the sun hot on his back, even the simple beauty of a single, heavy blossom couldn’t quell the anguish that rose within him. It was an ache so deep and wide he could barely put a name to it.

The graves. He had wanted to see each wasted body buried in a place of its own, so there would be at last, dignity. But there had been too many to dig by hand. In the end, bull-dozers had done the work, scooting limp skeletons over the dirt into their resting place.

He tore out a handful of some creeping weed and cut his hand. He grunted softly in pain.

“Gloves,” came a voice behind him. Mrs. Pierson. “Gloves will stop that.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Eerie how she knew things she shouldn’t. The flowers, he understood them. They had scent and shape and texture a blind woman could love. But sometimes, it was like she had another kind of eyes.

He reached for another clump of weeds, waiting. She never just talked for nothing.

“You are blue today, Isaiah?’

He glanced at her. “I reckon I am, a bit.”

“Is it the war?”

Isaiah paused. She said nothing, so he finally answered in a low voice, “Yes, ma’am.”

“It is not new, Isaiah.” Her head lifted a fraction. “When I was four years old, soldiers found my mother and I in a field. They blinded me and raped her.” The voice was calm, without rancor. “My mother died. That’s when we left Poland.”

Isaiah lowered his head.

“The point is, Isaiah, we go on. As your mother has, as you have. God has given you a great gift by showing you the power to be had in one life. One man, Isaiah, can change the world forever.”

His jaw burned with holding it closed. The fat lady on his back jumped with glee, her heels thudding hard into his spine. In his mind’s eye, brutal images whirled; fleshless arms and legs tumbling into holes in the ground; his daddy’s feet swinging; this tiny, strong woman .
 . .

“It wasn’t God led Hitler, Miz Pierson.”

“I am aware of that, Isaiah,” she said briskly and stood up. “Now, I want you to quit pretending to pull weeds and drive Gudren out for a visit with Angel.”

Isaiah smiled in spite of himself as he caught the glitter of humor on Gudren’s face. “That all right with you?”

“Of course.”

“All right then.” He stood up, brushing the dust from his hands and pants. “Let me wash my hands and I’ll get the car.”

Angel was sweeping the porch
when Isaiah came, not on foot as he usually did, but driving Mrs. Pierson’s big car. With him was Gudren. She stepped out of the car a bit shyly. “Hello, Angel. I hope you are not too busy for a visit?”

“Heavens, no!” Angel exclaimed, setting the broom aside. “I’m so bored, I’m about to explode.”

“I’ll drive you back whenever you get ready,” Isaiah interjected. “Meantime, I’m’na go ahead and get some work done.”

“Did you remember to bring the book you told me about?” Angel asked, shading her eyes.

“I forgot,” he said, but the way he shifted and didn’t look at her made Angel think it was deliberate forgetting.

At that moment, Paul slammed outside and with the pure trust of a child hurled himself from the top step into Isaiah’s arms.

Isaiah laughed as he caught the boy and hugged him tight before setting him down. “You gonna help me today, little buddy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, come on then, ’fore the sun sets and leaves us in the dark.” He held out his hand for Paul’s and they rounded the house.

“How sweet,” Gudren commented. “Is he Isaiah’s relative?”

Angel frowned. “I’m not sure, exactly. They’re related somehow. Both Isaiah’s mother and Paul’s grandmother come from the same little town in Louisiana. They might be kin.”

“Kin?”

Angel laughed. “Related. But it wouldn’t matter if they weren’t kin at all. Children love that man.” She tipped her head toward the store. “Let’s go get a glass of tea. I have some cookies I made for Paul.”

“Wonderful.” Gudren had lost her shyness and now smiled. Her teeth had suffered some, but even so, it was a transforming expression. Easy to glimpse the beauty she had been before the war.

In the sunny kitchen, Angel waved Gudren into a chair. “I hope you like your tea real sweet,” she said, chipping ice into glasses. “I managed to do without sugar during the war, but I gotta admit I missed it.”

“Sweet tea is fine.” She glanced around her with curiosity. “This is a beautiful room,” she commented. “You must like blue.”

Angel looked at the dotted Swiss curtains and ceramic canisters and cup towels. All of them were in one shade of blue or another. She smiled. “I guess I must, although I never noticed before.” She put the tea in front of Gudren and uncovered a plate of cookies before settling across the table. “What’s your favorite color?”

Gudren lifted her eyes to the ceiling, considering. Then she looked at Angel. “Red,” she said firmly, “It is the color of roses and sunsets and rubies.” She laughed.

“My husband loved red. He had a bright red corduroy shirt that he about wore to death.”

“Were you married, Angel?” Gudren sounded surprised, and Angel realized that, unlike everyone in town, this woman didn’t know her entire history from before birth. There was something curiously pleasurable in that fact.

“Yes,” she said. “He was killed in the Pacific.”

“I’m sorry.

“Thank you.” Angel shook her head. “We were only married two weeks before he left, but we were friends our whole lives.”

“Tell me about him,” Gudren said, a curious hunger in her voice.

Angel thought for a minute. “He was real fair, and had blue blue eyes. That red shirt used to make his eyes look real pretty.”

“Was he handsome?”

Angel picked a cookie from the plate and pushed it toward Gudren. “I don’t know,” she said. “Not really. He was always kinda skinny and he had a lot of freckles. His nose used to be sunburned right here,” she indicated the bridge of her own nose.

Gudren inclined her head. “You did not marry for love?”

“He was my husband.”

“Yes.” She smiled. “But people marry for many reasons other than love, and much more so during wartime, no?”

Angel brushed a scattering of sugar from the oilcloth. “I always thought I loved him,” she said finally, lifting her eyebrows. “But you know what? Mostly Solomon just drove me crazy. He wouldn’t stand up straight and always tried to boss me around and he never once, in his whole life, thought of doing anything but get himself his own farm—” She broke off. “I think it was a shock to Solomon to find out there were other countries.”

“What led you to marry?”

Angel shook her head slowly. Lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. I reckon I felt sorry for him. Wanted him to have something of his own before he shipped out.” A pang of guilt touched her. “I shouldn’t talk about him like this. He was a good man.”

“Yes.” Gudren ate a cookie with surprising gusto. “Perhaps,” she said when she could speak, “one day you will marry again. A more suitable husband.”

“I don’t think I really care to,” Angel said. “I’m too independent to make a good wife.”

She chuckled.

“Did you have a husband, a sweetheart, before the war, Gudren?”

“Yes. My fiancé. He was lost to the camps. I don’t know what happened to him.”

“I’m so sorry.” And now she understood Gudren’s need. “Won’t you tell me about him?”

“His name was Daniel,” Gudren began, and, once in motion, she talked for nearly an hour, beginning with Daniel and moving on to her mother, her father, her girlfriends. All of them lost to the camps or the war. Angel listened, prompted, refilled her glass, brought out more food. She pulled out a bowl and began to make some dough for supper, and still Gudren told stories of her lost companions.

Finally she stopped abruptly, mid-sentence, and laughed, putting her hands to her cheeks. “I am so sorry, Angel!” she cried. “I haven’t talked like this for years.”

Angel reached for her, pulling a hand free and pressing it between her own. “I have been unbearably lonely,” she said. “I love listening to your stories.”

Gudren swallowed. “Thank you.”

“Have another cookie,” Angel said with a wink to break the tension.

“I have already eaten a hundred! What are they?”

“We always called them River Cookies,” Angel said with a grin, “because the pecans look like rocks and they feel kind of sandy, but that’s not the real name, I’m sure.”

Gudren nodded seriously, eating another. “They are very good.”

“These are the things I missed,” Gudren said. “My mother was a fine cook, and her best dishes were little flaky pastries, filled with fruits, and nuts. She scolded me. Told me I would become very fat.”

Angel glanced at her and was surprised to see tears on Gudren’s face. “You must miss her something terrible.”

“Yes.” She brushed the tears from her cheeks. “It has been a long time since I last saw her, but there has been no time to grieve for her or my father.” She sipped her tea and took in a long breath. “I know I am fortunate in having my aunt to take me in. There are so many who have no one alive anymore.”

Angel stirred salt and sugar into the flour. “Where do they go?”

“Camps, I think. Perhaps Isaiah knows more than I.”

Angel nodded.

“May I ask another question?” Gudren said.

“Of course.”