A Cry of Angels (20 page)

"What's he want all of us along for?" I asked.

"Must be scared to go it alone," Em said.

"Well, I hope she likes it," said Skeeter. "I ain't goin' through that again!"

We drove out to Marble Park and up past the postage-stamp lawns, heads lifting from putters, from car washings and mowings, Gwen watching but not saying anything, fighting to control her hair. Jayell turned up the final hill and stopped before the house.

It was beautiful, framed there under the trees. Clean, massively built, but light as a song. We waited as Gwen got out and walked around the hood and stood looking at it.

"I came up here at sunrise," Jayell said, "and when I looked at it, I knew I'd done something special. I just walked around and around it. I'd turn away and then try to look at it fresh, and each time it looked new to me. Crazy." He looked at me and grinned. "Not sleeping and eating right, I guess. It's simple, not like anything I've done before—but I've never built anything better. That's me, with love. Boy, you think I'm crazy?"

"Everybody says so."

Jayell laughed. "Let's show her inside."

Gwen moved into the house stiffly, hesitantly. She stopped in the high-ceilinged living room and slid her hand over the marble mantlepiece. "It's beautiful, Jayell," she said, "perfectly beautiful."

But was she just complimenting him? There is a feeling you have when something is shared, a feeling that doesn't need bright smiles and glittering eyes. As yet, that feeling wasn't there.

"We carried them fireplace stones from the Mahew plantation," said Skeeter eagerly, "but there's two ton of rock in there."

"Come sit in this chair," said Carlos, standing behind the brass-studded easy chair. "That's real leather, you know, ain't no vinyl." She sat in the chair, and sprang out with a laugh when it rocked. "I'm not ready for the knitting-needles bit yet, Carlos."

"That door's solid oak," said little Jackie James, "talk about a bother to hang! But, look here, moves like a feather . . ."

"Boys . . ." said Jayell. So we hushed, and followed her through the house, past the effort screaming to be noticed, the thousand small perfections hidden in simplicity, our teeth raw with wanting to speak, eagerly watching her face.

She liked the spacious kitchen, the abundance of cabinets. Perhaps they could hire somebody until she learned to cook. She was as terrible a cook as her mother. We trooped up the carpeted stairs, past the hand-rubbed miles of paneling. Skeeter dragged a rag along his brightly varnished banister rail. She was tickled with the nursery with its miniature furniture, done in blue, but teased Jayell that her family ran to girls. I stood by the crib admiring the dowels in the railings. A pure misery drilling those holes to equal depths. In the guest room even Jayell couldn't resist. He stamped the board planking of the floor, "That's real wooden pegs in there, you know. You don't see that anymore."

"Jayell," she said, "I just can't believe it. It's like a dream . . . like a dream." She was turning, really looking now, as if gradually recovering from shock. "The colors, everything, it's like you looked inside my head and . . ."

"Wait," said Jayell nervously, "wait a minute." And he pushed open the door to the master bedroom.

Gwen entered the room softly, her shoulders close, like a little girl.

If the rest of the house was wrought with meticulous effort and careful attention to Gwen's tastes, this room was Jayell's masterpiece. Gwen stood taking it all in, the gleaming mahogany, the dark beams soaring over the thick, luxurious carpet, the delicate ivory handles and elegant curving mirrors, the paintings, the drapes. It was Gwen, even I could see that, as much of her in line, in tone, in texture as can be said of a person in inanimate things. It sparkled around her, the love, the effort, the backbreaking devotion that only Jayell could give so completely, and not leave a trace of himself. She rested a hand on the post of the canopied bed and turned to look at him, her eyes moist, the sunlight striking gold in her hair.

A little electric pulse ran through the crowd in the hall. We were turning, grinning at each other. Jojohn slapped his hands. I wanted to shout! I could have grabbed her and kissed her and danced in the middle of the floor!

Then I caught Jayell's eye. He was smiling at us; he made a small motion with his head. Carlos nudged us, backing into the hall. He pulled the door to and we tiptoed softly down the stairs.

The wedding was set for the seventeenth of April, and it was to be a church wedding. Jayell wanted a quick civil ceremony, but since Gwen and her mother had conceded to his refusal to have the wedding in Atlanta, he felt he had to give in on that point.

Gwen's mother came to town a week prior to the wedding, and after one visit to the boardinghouse, put up at the Marble City Hotel and took her daughter with her. From the time she arrived, Mrs. Burns was completely in charge of the wedding plans. She was a butterfly general, flitting about, spluttering over this, swooping down on that, teary-eyed and always looking at the point of collapse, but always perfectly in command. On her arrival, Jayell disappeared, and stayed gone until the day of the wedding.

Gwen's father showed up the morning of the wedding with a sizable delegation of relatives. A tall man with Gwen's coloring and close-set eyes, he stood about smiling nervously through his hornrimmed glasses, trying to keep out of the way, and looking as though he would like to become part of the furniture until the whole affair was over. Seeing his discomfort, Mr. Rampey and Mr. Burroughs took him around the church for a pass of the bottle and became his constant companions for the duration. Gwen's younger brother, Larry, a pre-med student at Emory, whom she had insisted be best man, blew into town around noon in a Thunderbird convertible emblazoned with fraternity decals and immediately made it clear that he preferred his own company to anyone else's. He stood apart twirling the wedding band on his little finger, a ring Gwen had allowed her mother to select in Atlanta, and watched the boarders troop by with a bemused expression as though he were cataloguing a parade of diseases.

The little Episcopal church was filled to overflowing. The whole boardinghouse had turned out for it. Funerals were old hat to our crowd, but a wedding fetched the lot. Miss Esther brought some of her church friends. Even Mr. Teague dressed up and came. We loaded up the groom's side of the aisle and the boarders out-cried the blood kin.

The Hendersons from Marble Park were there, plus many of Gwen's friends on the faculty at Quarrytown High, including Thelma Martin and her husband, George. "If somebody's getting Jayell Crooms to the altar," he was saying, "I don't want to miss it."

There was an uncommonly long wait, it seemed to me, in getting the proceedings started. Chafing in the hard collar of a new white shirt, I sat next to a window, which was closed, as they all were, lest a breeze disturb some of Mrs. Burns's decorations, I suppose. The new sports coat Miss Esther bought me was stiflingly hot, which wasn't surprising. It was a hundred percent wool. But it was on sale.

After a while I became aware of a mild commotion in the church foyer. Nothing much, a very subdued wandering in and out, and whispering, the way it might be when a theater is afire and they're trying to decide how best to break It to the people. The minister went out. Then Mrs. Burns.

Then a very peculiar thing happened. The church windows began rising and falling. Starting at the rear, on our side, and moving up the length of the church, one after another would rise an inch or two, just enough to let the sunlight shine under the stained glass onto the startled people in the pews, then abruptly drop shut again.

When the window beside me went up the mystery was solved. It was Em Jojohn opening them from the outside, in search of me. As soon as his bloodshot eyes found me, relief flooded his face. He slapped a finger to his lips and frantically motioned me outside, and slammed down the window with such a loud bang the organist stopped playing.

"
Said what
?" shouted Mr. Woodall into the silence. The others fell to shushing him, but their whisperings only served to confuse him more, until the poor man was in such a state of agitation that Mrs. Bell and Mr. Jurgen had to lead him outside. I seized the opportunity and ducked out the side exit by the choir loft.

Jayell's pickup was outside, all decked out for the honeymoon, and Em beside it, dancing with excitement. Carlos steadied himself drunkenly at the wheel.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

Em formed his mouth to speak, but stopped, looking over my head, stark terror climbing in his eyes. I looked back, and saw that he had good reason.

It was Miss Esther coming down the sidewalk, marching as if to war.

She shouldered me aside and hung one of her wrath-of-hell stares on Jojohn. "Two seconds, mister!" she cried.

"It's old Jaybird," Em rumbled piteously, "he's down at Dirsey's, been there all night, says he ain't
studyin'
gettin' marr'ed!"

There was a very dark thunderhead that built over that brightly lit afternoon sidewalk, darkening us all in its shadow, centered directly over the top of Miss Esther's head. I was aware of it, and Em rolled his eyes aloft as if he could actually see it. Carlos sat quivering, more sober now than the Episcopal minister.

She looked from Em to Carlos. "Are you listening to me?"

They were.

"You climb in that truck, you go and get Mr. Jayell Crooms and have him at this church, in his wedding clothes, in twenty minutes flat—or you—will—wish—you—had—
never
been born!"

It was not a time to dawdle. Em hit the truck bed in a single bound and I snagged the tailgate and managed to climb aboard as Carlos was clawing away. The frightened boy squalled rubber two blocks up the street before he could get the truck into second gear. We cleared all four wheels on the railroad ramp, landed on the Ape Yard road, and careened down the hollow throwing gravel and scattering dogs, chickens and people, with Em standing at the windshield trying to spare what lives he could by shouting them out of the way. Tio saw us coming barely in time to run his fully loaded delivery bike into the creek.

Squealing to a momentary halt at the shop, Carlos ducked in and scooped up an armload of the formal wear Jayell had rented and threw it to me on his way back out. Miraculously, the whole outfit was there except for the cuff links, studs and one shoe.

We found Jayell leaning precariously on Dirsey's bar with one leg wrapped around the stool, a glass in one hand, a near-empty bottle in the other, from which he was studiously pouring whiskey on his wrist. The place was littered with empty bottles and full celebrants, sleeping peacefully where they fell. Dirsey patiently wiped a glass.

As we burst through the door Jayell turned groggily and pointed with the bottle. "I tole you . . . I ain't goin'. . ."

Before he could finish he was on his way out, Em's arms locked around his chest and Carlos carrying his feet.

Word apparently had spread, because on the return trip up the hollow, a crowd was ready and waiting. They lined the roads and hills and cheered wildly as the truck came roaring by. Tio, standing beside his dripping bike, held up soaked tatters of what were once bags of groceries and shook them at us as we passed. I couldn't hear him, but his lips read: You-gonna-pay-for-this!

Bucketing back over the railroad, Carlos cut hard by the water department, taking the most direct route back to the church, even though it took us straight through the center of town. We shot across Main Street and into the square, scattering people in the crosswalks, with Jayell floundering in the back as Em and I stripped him down and stuffed him into his wedding clothes.

"I can't do it, Em!" Jayell sobbed drunkenly, "I can't!"

"I know, boy, but Miss Esther
said
!"

We had him clothed down to the missing shoe when Carlos ran up the sidewalk at the church. Miss Esther stood glowering from the steps, fist on her hip, pocketbook in her business hand.

"We done it," said Jojohn proudly, lowering Jayell to where Carlos could steady him. "Keep a hand on him, now." Jayell blinked about at those around him, his feet groping for moving earth.

Miss Esther came and stood before him. "Jayell, I feel like taking a stick of stovewood to you."

Jayell got her in focus, and slowly lowered his head.

"He'll start cryin' again," warned Em.

Gwen's mother was white. The minister stepped forward. "I'll explain there has been an unavoidable delay, and we'll reschedule for tomorrow."

Jayell's head came up sharply. "What?" Getting his bearings, he leaned forward, Em and Carlos still clinging, and pointed a finger in the minister's face. "What reschedule for tomorrow? The wedding's today, ain't it? These folks came from At-
lanta
! To see a
wedding
! You can't keep
Atlanta
folks waiting—for a
wedding
!" He nodded, pleased with himself. He had settled everything.

"Oh, my Lord, what shall we do?'' wept Gwen's mother.

Jayell smiled benevolently at her, weaving in his crumpled clothes. "Ma'am," said Em, removing his hat, "at least today he's this far, and he's willin'. Knowin' this boy, I wouldn't take no chance on tomorra."

Jayell nodded again, and wiped his nose with a hanging cuff.

Miss Esther sighed and turned to Gwen's mother. "There's more'n a grain of truth to that. Seems to me you better go with what you got."

Mrs. Burns consulted briefly with her husband, whose only response was a shrug, and with the minister. Finally she said in a hard voice, one that reminded me of Gwen's that morning in the hall, "Well, I don't care. Whatever happens, my daughter deserves it. She deserves it. I tried to tell her. I just thank God we're not in Atlanta!"

"Amen!" said Jayell, and pulled away from Carlos to climb the steps. But he had trouble negotiating them, and Gwen's brother stepped up to take his arm. Jayell whirled around on him. "Put your hands on me, Larry, and I'll knock you on your ass!"