The Sleeping Night (25 page)

Angel closed the store for the day. There was no point to opening when everything was such a mess. Isaiah borrowed a truck to drive into the next county for supplies, grumbling that nobody in Gideon was gonna make a profit on the mess Edwin had made, not if he could help it.

The day was hot, the air thickening with summer. Angel walked to town, armed with her complaint, and marched into the sheriff’s office.

He sat behind his big desk, sweating and red-faced, and when Angel came in, he was snapping at someone on the telephone. He acknowledged her presence with a wave, and she settled into a chair to wait.

It was his wife on the phone, evidently asking for something he wasn’t willing to pay for. “Look here, Retta May, I got somebody in here needs to talk to me. I’m gonna have to cut you loose. We’ll talk about it over lunch, all right?” He paused. “A pie sounds good, sugar. See you then.”

Angel grinned as he hung up. “A pie for a sofa?”

“Yep.” He cocked his head with a click of his tongue. “That woman.” He chuckled. “She does make the best butterscotch pie in Texas.”

“I’m sure she does.”

“How you been, honey?” His watery blue eyes were kind.

“I’ve been all right, I guess. You?”

He shuffled a stack of papers into a neat stack on his already neat desk and picked up a pencil to slide back and forth between his fingers. “I sure miss your daddy,” he said in a conversational tone that belied his alertness. “Don’t suppose he left a passel of jokes behind for me?”

Angel smiled. “No. He was good at them, wasn’t he?”

“Good man.”

She shifted. “Sheriff, I came to tell you—”

“That your store got practically ripped to pieces last night.”

“You know. “

He sucked in a load of air and blew it out through his lips. “It’s all over town.” He cleared his throat. “I’m already looking into it.”

“You know as well as I do who did it.”

“And you know that I can’t arrest somebody without evidence.” His voice was harsh. “You got evidence?’’

She wanted to tell him that she’d seen it, had seen Edwin Walker and his cronies out there tearing up her store with her very own eyes. But Isaiah was right—that tree house had been a safe spot for a long time, and she aimed to keep it that way. “I think I do have evidence,” she said. “Not much, but maybe it’ll help.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“I’ve got a pet blue jay. He was there last night and he scratched or pecked somebody pretty good.”

He raised his eyebrows and nodded in resignation. “Thank you.”

“It doesn’t help, does it?”

“I’m sorry, Angel.” His mouth was grim. “It doesn’t help much, but you never know. I always need more than what I can get,” he added, half to himself.

“Well,” she said, standing up. “Thank you, anyway. I knew that—” She broke off and sighed. “I know you do the best you can.”

“Angel.”

She looked at him.

“You need to get the hell out that store. Ain’t nobody going to bother you if you just move into town, get a job at the five and dime, maybe. They’d be lucky to have you, with all that experience.”

“I’m working on it.” But it suddenly struck her as completely unfair. “It means he wins, doesn’t it?” She was fighting tears, and had to admit, at least to herself, that she was deeply frightened. But if she gave in now, it would be like spitting on her father’s grave. “He’s not going to get that store. At least I can make sure of that.”

He shook his head. “Stubbornness runs in the family, don’t it?”

“He’s just not gonna push me around.”

“No—maybe he’ll just kill you instead.”

She narrowed her eyes. “No, he won’t. Mark my words, Sheriff.” Smoothing her skirt, she stood and smiled politely. “Thank you for your time.”

“Angel, girl—”

She didn’t wait, holding her shoulders straight and proud as she walked out. Out in the open, her bravado melted. She paused in the shade on the sidewalk, her stomach a little weak as she tried to decide what to do next.

The morning bustle was in full swing. A blue pick-up drove by and pulled in front of the drugstore, and she saw Agnes Miller tugging surreptitiously on a slip as she pretended to window shop. Across the street, through the plate glass windows fronting the diner, she could see Joe Brown in his mechanic’s overalls, eating a late breakfast with Douglas Neally, the dry cleaner. Angel had gone to school with Milly Reading, the waitress, who came by with a pot of coffee to fill up Joe and Douglas’s cups, trading jokes with them as she picked up an empty plate. Milly had been really pretty once, with loads of auburn hair and a slim figure. Four children and twenty-odd years of Texas sun had done a lot of damage. She was still slim enough—nobody worked on her feet like that and then went home to all those children and got fat all at once. Traces of prettiness lingered, but it had gone hard around the edges, her smile slipping right off her face like a rubber mask as soon as she hurried away from the table.

It made Angel feel vaguely sad. Didn’t anything ever turn out the way you thought? Didn’t
anybody
ever get what they wanted? She looked down the single main street of downtown upper Gideon with an almost oppressive sense of discouragement.

She had to get out of here.

Realizing she’d been standing there a long time, she roused herself and started walking without any real sense of where she was headed, but if she didn’t move, everybody would soon be staring.

Aimlessly, she wandered down the sidewalk in the close, heavy air. Lucas Meyer approached with his head down, a circle of shiny dark scalp gleaming in a bald circle at his crown. He didn’t speak, nor did Angel expect it, even though she had been waiting on him in her store for at least ten years.

The incident stopped her in her tracks.

Rules. Rules for what you wore and who you talked to, and how you talked to them. A rule that nobody had ever had to tell her made her walk aimlessly down the street, made her keep her eyes averted from Lucas Meyer—entirely for his sake, of course. If she spoke in defiance of the rules, it wouldn’t be her who’d pay the price.

She thought of Isaiah, in the trees, his great ambitions turned to dust; thought of her mornings in the store with the women, their own pool of quiet before the world intruded, a pool of time that would now be lost no matter what she did.

She was suddenly so chokingly angry that she couldn’t swallow. Just ahead was the feed store, and she acted without thinking, something cold and new making her smile as she headed straight for it, ducking into the dark, vast interior. The smell of hay and fertilizer filled her nose. Nearby somebody measured out nails into a bag.

“Why, Angel!” came a voice from behind her.

She turned and Mrs. Walker, limping slightly, hurried over and touched her arm.

Angel took a breath. There was no point being ugly to this simple and protected woman. “I’ve been real busy running the store,” she said.

“Oh, I reckon that’s a real big job. Edwin was just telling me how well you’re doing with it, though.”

So summoned, Edwin stepped from behind a pile of feed bags.

“Is that right?” Angel said. A long, fresh cut slashed through his eyebrow and into the puffy flesh of his eyelid. Below, on his cheek, was a series of tiny scratches. She cocked her head, unable to curb a triumphant lift of her chin or the slightly sarcastic tone of her voice as she exclaimed, “My goodness, Edwin, whatever happened to you?”

His eerie eyes flared hot and mean for the barest second. “Just a little altercation, sweetie. Nothing to concern yourself about.” He gave her his dark smile. “What brings you to town today?”

“A little of this and little of that.”

“Ah-uh.” He drew a cigarette out of his pocket. A ghost of a smile played around his eyes as he tucked it into his lips. “What can we do for you today?”

Something in his voice made Angel think suddenly that it had been very very, very stupid of her to come in here like this. “I need some bone meal for my roses.”

“You want that delivered?” His raspy voice promised more than bone meal.

“No, thank you.”

“Gonna send your nigger over here to pick it up, are you?” He didn’t bother shield his hatred. “I offered to fix that roof for free, why you let him do it, anyway?”

As if disturbed by this turn in the conversation, Mrs. Walker fluttered her hands and made an airy excuse to escape them. Angel stepped forward. “Because I don’t want you anywhere around me, Edwin, and you know it. I’m sick to death of you doin’ whatever you want, and I’m not afraid of you, you understand me? Stay away from my store and me.”

Very slowly, he smiled, jeweled eyes glittering. “Or what, Angel?”

“I’ll kill you.” She delivered the words in a voice she didn’t even recognize as her own, before she knew she would say them. It shocked her, but she meant it. Like she had never meant anything in her life.

“I’d love to see you try, sugar.” He leaned in close. “Because if you don’t kill me, and I’m hurting, I might finally forget I’m a gentleman where you’re concerned. I might remember that you’re nothing but a little scrap o’ white trash and nobody in this county would give one little goddamn about what I do to you.”

Angel stood her ground. “I’m not afraid of you anymore.”

“S’that right,” he said softly. “Well, I reckon the war is on, sugar. We’ll see who wins it. “He spun on his heel, chuckling softly, as if there was no question at all about who the victor would be.

As Isaiah unloaded shingles
and glass from the back of a pickup into the side yard of the Corey store, late afternoon sunlight slanted yellow through the trees. It fingered Angel’s straight, fine hair, setting it ablaze as she helped him with the lighter bundles. He could see that she was preoccupied, and waited without speaking for her to reveal her thoughts.

When the last roll of roofing was propped against the side of the house, she crossed her arms on the edge of the truck and leaned in. “What do you think happened to Edwin?”

Isaiah frowned. “He’s crazy, that’s all.”

“He was a sweet child. We used to be in the same Sunday school class and most of the time, he was a cherub. Happy.” She chewed on her bottom lip, looking toward the river. “He was a mama’s boy, too, crying to her whenever he got a little scratch on his knee. The other children used to tease him.”

“Raise up a child in the way he should go,’” Isaiah quoted, “and when he is old he shall not depart from it.’”

“I guess.”

He slammed the pick-up gate closed. “You have any luck with the sheriff?”

“He can’t do much.” She flashed him a grin, her pale green eyes glittering. “But Edwin’s a sight.”

“What?”

“Ebenezer tore him up. Practically took out his eye.”

“Where’d you see Edwin?”

She shifted. “At the feed store.”

“You went looking for him.” It wasn’t a question. When she didn’t reply, he cursed softly. “You don’t have the sense God gave a monkey.”

Instead of protesting, Angel lifted her shoulders in admission. “It was my pride and my daddy’s Irish temper that marched me in there.” Her face clouded. “I was standing there before I knew it—and then what could I do? Turn tail and run?”

In his imagination, he saw it—Angel standing in the dark, cavernous store in her thin little dress, suddenly realizing how foolish she’d been. “Well, I don’t know nothin’ about pride,” he said with a rueful smile.

She returned his smile, just as the sun sank an inch, sending an arrow of gold over her, like a spotlight. Isaiah remembered suddenly how she had felt in his arms this morning—slender and fragile and pliant. So right.

He swallowed, “Better get this truck back to Harold, now.”

Before he climbed in the driver’s seat, he hesitated. “Keep that gun by your bed tonight.”

“I will.” She looked a little forlorn somehow, standing there by herself against the big Texas sky. “Thank you for all your help, Isaiah.”