River Angel Page 2

“You’ll feel better after a catnap. Ten, fifteen minutes, and the world will be a brighter place.” He took off his woolly cap and tucked his gloves inside it, making a small round pillow. Then he wedged it between the seat and the door, put his head against it, and slept.

  For a long time Gabriel waited, staring at the broad, blunt shape of Shawn’s chin, the fine hairs outlining his ears like an aura. He divided his father into parts and let his gaze move slowly, deliberately, over each of them. The lean, rough cheek. The neck with its strong Adam’s apple and the finger of hair curling out from the collar. The sloping shoulders beneath the dark coat, the long narrow thighs. He looked at his father’s crotch—there was no one to tell him not to—but then he made himself stop. An eyelash clung to the side of his father’s nose and, breathless, he reached over and flicked it away. When Gabriel was still a little boy, his father would occasionally allow him to comb his curly black hair, and afterward Gabriel would smell his fingers, the bitter mint of dandruff shampoo, the oily musk of his father’s skin. He’d make up his mind to concentrate harder, to stop daydreaming, to do better in school and make his father proud. He’d lie in bed imagining scenes in which he rescued his father from some terrible danger, and—over and over again—he’d imagine his father’s gratitude.

  Shawn Carpenter was so handsome that people, women and sometimes men too, would stop on the street and turn their heads to look as he walked on. He had robin’s-egg eyes speckled with green, a dimple in his chin so deep you wanted to heal it with a kiss. He was an accomplished welder and electrician; he could fix cars and photocopiers; he was a natural salesperson, an elegant waiter, a creative and indulgent chef. And when he met another woman he wanted to fall in love with, it was hard for Gabriel not to be jealous. He watched him for the early symptoms of a crush like a parent alert for fever. There were sudden bouts of giddy playfulness, late suppers, a rash of practical jokes. Raw eggs in Gabriel’s lunch bag instead of cooked. A fart cushion under his pillow. Next came splurges: take-out pizza, television privileges, a toy that had been previously forbidden. There were professional haircuts for them both and, for Shawn, a trip to the dentist. Soon a woman’s name would ring from Shawn’s tongue too often, too brightly, an insistent dinner bell, and then would come the first awkward meal all together in a restaurant, with candles and fancy wine and a waiter quick to mop up any spills. One night, Shawn would step out for a good-night kiss and not return until the next day, and tears would glaze his eyes in that moment before he shouted at Gabriel for forgiveness. “It’s hard,” he’d say, “raising you alone. Every day of my life since I turned eighteen I’ve spent looking after you.”

  Eventually, they’d start moving a few things from wherever they were staying into the woman’s apartment or trailer or house or camp, and sometimes these places were elegant and clean, and sometimes they smelled of dog or fried potatoes, but ultimately none of that mattered because, eventually, they became the same. Shawn unpacked his butterfly collection and his beanbag chair, his dulcimer, his snowshoes, his cookbooks. He hung the butterflies on the living room wall, worked a little more on the dulcimer, and prepared chilled soups and golden puff pastries and fish baked inside parchment paper. He’d get to work on time each day and, at night, cut back on his drinking. He was charming and energetic; when he spoke, he waved his hands in the air. But it was always during these optimistic periods that he started to look at Gabriel with a shocked, critical eye, the way that Gabriel himself had looked at the world the first time he was fitted for his thick eyeglasses. “Kiddo, you were blind as the proverbial bat,” Shawn told him. “Things must look pretty good to you now,” but the truth of the matter was that everything had looked much better before, and sometimes Gabriel still took off his glasses to enjoy a stranger’s smooth complexion or a soft gray street, its velvet sidewalk lolling beside it like a tongue, the slow melt of land and sky at the horizon. “Where are your glasses?” Shawn would say. “I didn’t spend that kind of money for you to decorate your pockets.” Then everything jumped too close and filled with complicated detail: acne and scars and colorful litter, painfully double-jointed trees, clouds with their rough, unsympathetic faces.

  Suddenly Shawn would decide that Gabriel needed more exercise, less TV. Perhaps it would occur to him that Gabriel should learn French, and then every night he’d have to listen to a tape that Shawn had ordered from a catalogue. Sometimes it was cooking lessons, Shawn standing over him as he tried to make a smooth hollandaise. It could be his posture, or his attitude, or his ineptitude at sports, and sometimes it was all three. He’d always remember one endless autumn, when they’d lived in Michigan with a woman named Bell, her three sons, and their basketball hoop. Every night, Gabriel had to practice jump shots and layups and free throws with the other boys. Every morning, he’d cross his fingers and stare up at the sky, willing winter to blow in early and leave the driveway slick with ice.

  Eventually, Shawn would give up on Gabriel and turn to the girlfriend they were living with. At first, there were only a few small things, and he’d bring them to her attention reluctantly, sweetly, and always with a remedy: a permanent wave, adult ed classes, a more functional arrangement of the living room. He’d sit up late in the orange beanbag chair, drinking from his flask and writing scraps of poetry, and he’d sometimes oversleep in the morning. Around that time, the fights would begin, secretive at first: a hissed exchange in the bedroom; sharp voices from the porch. One night, Gabriel would awaken to find Shawn sitting on the edge of his bed. “What was I thinking?” Shawn would ask, his breath golden with Jack Daniel’s. “Next time,” he’d say, “warn me, kiddo. I’m pushing thirty. That’s too old to be making big decisions with the wrong damn head,” and he’d lie down on top of the covers beside Gabriel, and if Gabriel threw an arm over his chest, his father didn’t shrug it away.

  It was always best between them just after they’d moved back into a place of their own or, more likely, pointed the station wagon toward a city or town where they hadn’t lived before, some place where Shawn still had a friend or two, somewhere he knew he could find work. Together they’d bask in the afterglow of leaving, and it was during these times that Shawn always brought up the possibility of moving back to Ambient. Maybe he’d find a job doing piecework for the shoe factory on the River Road, something that would leave him time to write a novel, a thriller; he was certain it would sell. Or maybe he could start a little business, run it with his brother—a landscaping company or, perhaps, a used-car dealership. “Kiddo,” Shawn would say, “I have got to get a grip on myself. I’ve got to get things together.” At times like these, with Shawn’s face flushed and open and hanging too close, Gabriel thought he might die of love for his father. “Daddy, it’s all right,” he’d say. “We’re fine, everything’s fine.” And when he thought about how fervently his father believed in those words, words that fell like manna from Gabriel’s own mouth, he truly understood the power of faith.

  But now his father was sleeping. They were on their way to Ambient. There was no need for Gabriel to say anything. He dug down between the seats, looking for loose change, and when he’d collected enough dimes and nickels he got out of the car and went over to the kiosk. The vending machines were lined up in an outdoor alcove at the back, and he took his time before deciding on an Almond Joy. He ate the first section in one sweet, greedy bite; the remaining section he ate more slowly, licking off the chocolate to expose the clean white coconut beneath. Then he explored the small wooded area behind the kiosk. Finally, he sat down on a graffitied bench and flattened the empty Almond Joy wrapper, folded it into a fighter jet, guided it through barrel rolls and screaming dives and bombing runs. He wondered if his uncle and grandfather would really be glad to see him. He wondered if he really could have his own room, or if he’d be sleeping on a couch until Shawn found them a place of their own. His butt was getting numb from the coldness of the bench. His nose was running. His toes hurt. He decided that even if there was an angel in the Onion River, his
father had never seen it.

  A thin winter sunlight trickled through the trees, and he let his head fall back, thinking about the shapes the branches made against the sky. If an Iraqi plane flew over, he’d make it disappear, leave all those soldiers hanging like cartoon characters in midair. He imagined them falling to earth. He imagined their souls rising like milkweed, like dandelion seeds. Though he felt the thump of Shawn’s hand on his shoulder, it took him a moment to respond to it.

  “Like an idiot,” Shawn was saying, “with your mouth hanging open and chocolate all over your face. How old are you now? Eight? Nine?”

  “I’m ten,” Gabriel said.

  “Almost grown up,” Shawn said. “Almost a goddamn man. What do you think about when you sit there like a ninny? Girls?” He plucked the candy wrapper airplane out of Gabriel’s lap and threw it at the ground, but the wind caught it and sent it wafting away into the woods. “I hope to God it’s girls,” he said. “Christ.” He pulled Gabriel up by the shoulder. “Where did you get the money for that candy?”

  “The car.”

  “A thief, on top of everything,” Shawn said. “Well, maybe your uncle and grandfather will have some idea what to do with you. Because I do not. Because I simply have had it up to here,” and he made a slicing motion across his throat.

  They walked back to the station wagon. As soon as they got inside, Gabriel’s teeth chattered stupidly. Shawn glared at him, then started the engine and turned the heat on high. “Scared me half to death,” he said, and he raked his hands through his hair. “What possessed you to get out of this car?”

  “Hungry,” Gabriel said. His toes burned. He shifted them carefully, trying not to rattle the cups and plates and risk drawing further attention to himself.

  “Hungry!” Shawn said, as if that were the most outrageous of possibilities. He pulled back onto the highway, and they drove for another hour, listening to talk radio. Now and then there were bursts of static, which made the people sound far away, as if they were calling from the moon. A man said the hell with the UN, the United States should drop the bomb. A woman said that if people over there wanted to kill each other, let them. They passed billboards advertising an adult bookstore, a barn with SEE ROCK CITY! painted on its roof, the carcass of a deer and, less than a mile beyond it, a hitchhiker, his face hidden by a multicolored scarf. They passed a low brick church decorated with a banner that read: PUT THE “CHRIST” BACK IN CHRISTMAS. They passed two white crosses at the mouth of an off-ramp, each decorated with a small green wreath. At the end of the ramp was a bullet-ridden stop sign where a van idled, as if the driver was uncertain, exhaust drifting lazily through the air. But all the county roads met at ninety-degree angles. There was never any question which way was left, which was right, which was straight ahead.

  When Shawn finally spoke to Gabriel, his voice was softer. “You frozen anywhere?”

  “Maybe my feet.”

  “Kick your shoes off. Get them up against that vent. Does it hurt?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s good, kiddo,” Shawn said. “Pain is the way we know for certain that we’re living. If you only remember one thing your old man tells you, try and remember that.”

  A truck passed them, traveling too fast, splattering their windshield with icy slush. Gabriel pictured it rolling over, bouncing off the guardrail, bursting into a perfect globe of fire. But though he believed without reservation, just the way Miss Welch had said, the truck slipped into the dark eye of the horizon. They were coming up on an exit. A McDonald’s sign floated high above the highway, dazzling against all that gray and white.

  “Look at that!” Shawn said heartily. “The answer to your prayers! What do you want, a hamburger? Fish sandwich?”

  Help bring the Christmas story to life! Human and animal volunteers needed for Ambient’s annual Living Crèche to be held in front of the railroad museum from noon till three on Christmas Eve Day. Costumes and hot chocolate provided. The manager will be heated this year! Participants and visitors alike are invited to warm up in the museum lobby where the Christmas Ornament Collection of Mr. Alphonse Pearlmutter will be on display.

  —From the Ambient Weekly

  December 1990

  two

  You could ask anybody in Ambient: Fred Carpenter’s new wife, Bethany, wasn’t the type to bend her own rules. But that Christmas Eve, she allowed the men to bring their whiskey inside the house. Later, she’d say she’d had a feeling all along that something was about to happen, and it drove her to such distraction that when Fred asked her if just this once, for the holidays, they might have a round before supper, she nodded before she realized what he’d asked, what she’d done. The telephone rang, but when she picked up the receiver, a giggling child asked if her refrigerator was running. A lightbulb blew in the foyer and then, only minutes later, in the bathroom off the hall. For no reason whatsoever, a jar of sweet pickles slipped from her hand and shattered on the linoleum floor. More than once, she caught herself checking the sky above the field where, just last August, the legs of two tornadoes had stumbled, knock-kneed, toward the highway.

  But on this day, the winter sky was plain and pale as her own face, and at six o’clock sharp, Bethany called everyone to the table: her boys and Fred and Fred’s father, Alfred, whom everybody called Pops. Pops was well known around Ambient; since losing his driver’s license for DWI, he’d been driving his tractor to Jeep’s Tavern each weekend, parking it on Main Street, forcing traffic to squeeze by. Now he wore the nice dress shirt Bethany had given him last Christmas, fresh from the box, all the creases intact. His beard—once dark and thick as Fred’s—had grown in pale and patchy since the night he’d accidentally set it on fire, heating up a pan of SpaghettiOs. Still, it brushed the clean surface of his plate as he hitched his chair up to the table. The water in the glasses shivered and danced.

  “Already a few sheets to the wind,” Bethany complained, not bothering to lower her voice.

  Pops said, “Hell, I only had two.”

  Bethany said, “Language.”

  The boys nudged each other and grinned.

  “Well, heck, then,” Pops mumbled, cracking his knuckles as if he wanted to fight the Christmas ham. But the electric company had cut his lights again, and even Bethany could see he was pleased enough to be sitting under her bright chandelier. Outside the dining room window, not ten yards beyond the edge of the gravel courtyard, the farmhouse he’d occupied for sixty years loomed like a pirate’s ship—all it needed was a skull-and-crossbones to replace the tattered American flag that drooped from a boarded-up window, stripes faded pink. The yard was a carnival of discarded chairs and mattresses, tires, tractor parts, buckets of paint; the porch sagged beneath two mildewed couches where, in summer, Pops and the boys from Jeep’s gathered to talk dirty, to swap outrageous lies. Each year, the whole place leaned a little more to the right, and though Fred had spent the better part of one summer jacking up the central support, the house still looked like it wanted to slide off its foundation and slip away, embarrassed, into the fields.

  “Now, Beth,” Fred said from time to time, twisting at his beard until it formed an anxious point. “It seems to me we might have Pops over for a hot meal now and again.” But Bethany refused to pity Pops. She figured he made his bed each time he headed for the liquor store. After all, he had his social security, plus whatever he earned doing odd jobs for Big Roly Schmitt—that is, when he made up his mind to work. She had him to supper on holidays, of course; beyond that, she drew the line. Otherwise, she knew, he’d be crossing the courtyard every night of the week to eat her good food and stink up her nice furniture, to mistreat her house the way he’d done his own and infect her boys with his laziness.

  Back when Fred had first proposed, Bethany saw he had some idea about her moving into those cat-piss-smelling rooms, looking after his father, imposing some order on their lives. Even then Fred’s beard was thick enough to hide his mouth, but Bethany saw the smug pride in his eyes, ho
w he expected her to leap for that ring like a cat for a bird. After all, at the time she was a thirty-something waitress, mother to two boys who’d never had a father’s name. But Bethany told Fred, “Listen once. We’re not kids so we can be straight with each other. If you marry me, you are getting two fine sons and a wife who will cook you the best meals you’ve ever eaten, and keep a nice garden, and make sure your clothes are tidy-looking, and don’t forget I’ll be out there earning money too. When the lights go out I’ll never say no, provided you keep yourself clean. So that’s a good deal for you and well worth the cost of a house I’ll be proud to live in.”

  She’d surprised him, but Fred was quick on his feet. He said, “There are gals who’d take it as a challenge to fix an old farmhouse into a showplace.”

  “I guess you should propose to one of them,” she said.

  He set his beer down on the coffee table; she nudged it onto a coaster. It didn’t take much to leave a ring.

  “I guess you should take another look in those magazines you’re always reading,” he said. “Half those ladies’ fancy places are old farmhouses somebody smart bought cheap. I’d give you a thousand dollars,” he said, and he paused to let that sink in. “You could spend it however you pleased.”

  She took a Better Homes and Gardens from the magazine rack and held it out to him. “Show me,” she said, “where one of these fancy places comes furnished with a half-crazy drunken old man.”

  She knew he had money for a decent house—a thirty-six-year-old bartender who sleeps in his childhood bed can save a pretty penny—but he said, “I have to do some more thinking on this,” and walked out, taking that ring along with him. Her mother said, “Oh, Bethany, look what you did, those boys will never have a father now.” And Bethany said, “Ma, these boys live in a two-bedroom apartment with carpet on the floors and cereal in the cupboards, which is more than any father ever gave them.” True, she was lonely, but if it came down to a choice between a man who’d have them live dirt cheap and dirty, or her own waxed floors and freshly scrubbed windows, Bethany was proud to choose door number two. Why marry if it didn’t improve your standing, make things a little easier on yourself? Why lose control of the few things you’d finally managed to get a firm grip on?