A Cry of Angels (45 page)

"Well, you know I can't pay much."

"Anything'll help out. We're scratchin' every nickel we can get. We spent everything we had on the store, and there's bills comin' due."

As activity picked up around the shop and at the site on Wolf Mountain, more boys came to hang around and watch, and, when no one was looking, to take a hand. Carlos had to retrieve his rule from one of them three times in the space of an hour. Mr. Burroughs suffered under the unflinching gaze of another, a solemn-faced twelve-year-old in ragged overalls, until he whacked his finger and turned on the youth with a tirade that almost blasted the boy off the mountain.

Down in the shop Skeeter was complaining of similar problems, he couldn't even get to the lathe, he said; turn around and a stranger was sanding your cabinet door, another was heating glue, and there were two with a basket that tried to catch shavings before they hit the floor, where a third with the broom might get at them.

"All right," said Jayell, when he'd had enough, "if you're going to help, get in here and let's do it right." He organized a crew of the older boys to work with Carlos on the mountain, and another couple of dozen under the supervision of Skeeter and Jackie James in the shop, and appointed the smaller ones independent water contractors. At one point I counted twenty-seven water boys running the routes between the nearest Ape Yard wells and the crews at the shop and on the mountain, which released the women to fix lunches and sell quilts. An unexpected dividend came when an old contractor friend of Jayell's, Werb O'Connell, who did a profitable business in the county despite Smithbilt's competition, dropped by and offered to subcontract his cabinet work to Jayell. "Hell, yes, we can handle it, Werb," Jayell said eagerly, and revamped the shop to accommodate it. By that time the shop force was thinned down to a dozen regulars, hard-working boys who showed real ability, and soon another informal class was in operation: "Don't fight the wood, work with it! Wood butchers . . . you're nothing but a bunch of damned wood butchers!"

One afternoon in a secluded place in the road a black man, strange, yet somehow familiar, waved down the truck. We were alongside him before even Jayell recognized Willie Daniels. The figure slouched in the faded overalls, the thin features under the leather cap had aged far beyond the three years he had been gone.

"Hello, Willie," said Jayell. "Heard you were out, and wondered why you hadn't been around."

Willie tucked his hands behind his bib. He had always been uncomfortable with white people, even Jayell. Jayell let the truck idle.

Two of the original members of Jayell's old shop crew were Willie and Boyce Daniels. They were the kind of twins who were always seen together, each reflecting the other's low-key personality, always smiling shyly somewhere in the background. Both were quiet, polite boys who had never been in any kind of trouble, both honor students at Pelham Grace School. But when the hot-car ring was broken in 1951 and the garage on the river raided, Willie and Boyce were among those named in the indictments. Some said they had incurred Doc Bobo's wrath. Others said they had simply been traded for two who had incurred his favor. Willie had just been paroled on good behavior. Boyce had been killed in prison.

"They say you buildin' ag'in." Willie's gaze was fixed somewhere over the hood of the truck.

"Well, I'm building myself a house, doing a little cabinet work. I can always use another good hand."

Willie nodded. His mouth tightened. He had the same shy manner as before he went to prison, but now there was a dark, disturbed look in his eye. He seemed aware of it, and kept his eyes averted. "You spoze you could help me get a place for Mama? You know, her house is on that lan'."

"I know," Jayell said.

"She got to get off."

Willie's mother was a tall, handsome woman with light brown skin. When her boys were sent to prison, one of the dog boys, "So-So" Clark, moved into the house. So-So was one of Bobo's most trusted lieutenants, whose chief responsibility was control of the gambling on the dog fights, sports, and any other book that was in the Ape Yard. In general, the dog boys had the run of the hollow, taking what they wanted without pay and living where, and with whom, they chose. And to those who pleased them, they were able to extend a certain generosity: clothes, jewelry, a car, or even a little three-room house. Before he died that spring, So-So Clark had arranged cancellation of the mortgage Doc Bobo held on Willie's mother's house.

"Well, damn, that's tough, Willie. But look, those prefabs are not all that bad. Tell you what, when she gets moved in I'll come over and help you finish it out for her, okay?"

Willie looked up, the anger, the bitterness full in his face now.

"They give her nothing for it. Just say she got to get out. She signed it over this morning."

Jayell's hands twisted on the wheel. He lit a cigarette with shaking fingers. "I'm sorry, Willie," he said, "I wish I could help you, but I got all I can handle right now. I've got to get my house built. Let me do some thinking. If I come up with anything I'll let you know." And he put the truck in gear and drove off, leaving Willie standing in the road.

We had gone less than a hundred yards when his foot suddenly stomped the brake so hard Skeeter came over on top of Phaedra and me.

"For Christ's sake!" he yelled. "I've got ten acres of land and enough lumber to build three houses! Willie! Hey, Willie, come on up here!" He slumped back in the seat shaking his head. "What the hell's wrong with me?"

Phaedra smiled. "Not a thing, Jack," she said. "Not a thing in this world."

The day work began on the Daniels house, a little farther up the slope to the right of the other two, more onlookers drifted up from the Ape Yard. Neighbors came to watch, to roam through the curious structures and tease Willie Daniels and his mother about the prospects of living in such a bizarre house.

"Where's the door, Sarah?" one asked Willie's mother. "This it here?''

"Mist' Jayell don't build no doors," said another, "you got to climb in and out the winders."

"One thing sho', nobody gon' break in on you, Sarah, less'n they come down the chimbley."

A stocking-capped woman clapped her hands. "Hit ain't got no chimbley neither!"

Children climbed through the bright colors and strange geometric shapes, uncertain at first, as though finding themselves in some fantastic world of adult play-houses, disturbed, as children are when adults do outrageous, childlike things. It was a storybook world that had no relation to the drab, gray existence of the hollow. But in that environment, spurred by the excitement of the boarders and the bustling energy of the shop boys, old crusts of behavior began to fall away, for both the children and the adults. They began to relax and enjoy it too. They wandered about, touching, marveling, laughing at the antics of Jayell as he sprang from house to house, trying to be everywhere at once, absorbed in one of his all-consuming fevers of creation. They drifted down the mountain and brought back other folks to watch, and at sundown men just getting off work came to see. They were still coming in ones and twos when we finally knocked off for the day.

That night Em Jojohn was even more worried. He didn't like the idea of building the Daniels house. "There's a pot boilin' down there," he said, pointing to the hollow, "and now we done stuck our hand in it." Again he talked about leaving. He got out his canvas traveling bag.

"Em, you're talkin' foolishness! Here things are just startin' to look up for us, and you're wantin' to run off and leave it. That house is going to belong to us just as much as it is the boarders, can't you understand that? For the first time we won't be living off somebody else, we'll have our own place!"

"Well, damn, you sound like you're gettin' ready to retire! I don't know what. . . there's the old folks up there jumpin' aroun' like kids, and you're talkin' like an old man. The whole damn place is goin' crazy!"

And he grew increasingly uneasy during the next two days as more and more people climbed the hogback hills, and the carnival atmosphere increased. He worked methodically, saying little to anyone, snapped back at Jayell's orders and cursed the visitors in his way, and he became even surlier at night. On Friday morning he was reluctant to leave the loft. He fidgeted. He stalled. He didn't feel well. The damned mountain rocks had scratched up his boots. He couldn't find his sock. He fooled around until we missed the boarders' bus, and breakfast, and then yelled, "Well, go on, if you're in such a damned hurry, I'll come on later!" I ran down to the shop and caught Jayell as he was finishing up his instructions to Skeeter and Jackie and the boys there, and rode with him and Phaedra to the job.

When we drove up to the jobsite Jayell took one look and said, "Holy Christ!"

The place was jammed with people. More than a hundred of them stood in the trees. When Jayell stopped, Speck Turner came through the crowd. "Mornin', Jayell."

"Speck, what the hell's goin' on here?''

"Sure some purty houses you got here," the plumber said with a grin.

"Yeah, yeah, what's this all about?"

"Well, we come to talk a little bi'ness. See, me and Loomis and Simon there all gettin' put off in them little shell things up the hollow, and—well, we figured maybe we could work a little deal and get you to build us houses up here like you doin' for Willie."

"Yeah?" Jayell turned to look at Carlos, thinking about it.

"Myself, I could take on the plumbin', see, and we all got the money Bobo give us for our places—I don't know how you pricin' now, or what you want for the lots . . ."

"How many?" said Jayell, trying to figure. "What's all these others here for?"

"They just come to help," said Carlos.

"To help?" said Jayell. "I can't afford a damn army!"

"Said you ain't got to pay 'em nothin'," Carlos added, "ain't nothin' much goin' on at the corner these days." Carlos stepped closer. "Most of these folks down from Fletcher Bottom. They gon' get moved out when the dam gets built."

Jayell looked around at the Ape Yard's most wretched, the ragged day laborers standing in their torn and faded shirts, beltless trousers and flopping brogans.

"Do they know anything about building?"

"No, but they'll do what you tell 'em." Jayell hesitated, and Carlos continued. "They wants to help, Jayell, and they ain't got nothin' else to do."

"Well . . ."

"Just one more thing," said Carlos, "like I say, a lot of 'em gon' get washed out when the river rises. If you got enough scrap to put up a couple more little houses . . ."

Jayell stood looking at him. He ran his eyes along the rows of black faces that surrounded him, then turned and looked at Phaedra, still sitting in the truck. She merely returned his gaze, a smile playing at her mouth. Jayell wiped his face. He turned and surveyed his acreage, looking from marker to marker, and up the rocky terrain that climbed sharply from the rear of the three houses already begun.

He opened his mouth to speak to Carlos, and stopped. The crowd was murmuring, shifting.

Then we saw it too. The green car nosing through the trees. In the hush it purred softly along the rows of people, who quickly opened a path before it and watched its glistening body glide past, their faces fixed in the fear and reverence of a pagan people observing the passage of an idol god.

The car moved up to the grassy mound where Jayell stood, and Doc Bobo got out and stood smiling.

"Well, it seems that what I've been hearing was not just idle rumor." He saw Phaedra and immediately took off his hat. "Good morning, ma'am, good morning."

"What do you want, Bobo?" snapped Jayell.

"Why, I just heard that you were building again, Mr. Crooms, and, like these people"—he turned and looked at the faces around him, faces averted now, staring at the ground—"I just
had
to come and see! And they are something, aren't they? Oh, Mr. Crooms, I believe you've outdone yourself this time. Let me see, now, that large one would be for these nice folks from the Cahill place." He turned quickly to the boarders, who stood nearby. "I do hope this regrettable move has not been too disruptive. Mr. Bearden has promised me that he is making every effort to see that you are inconvenienced as little as possible. Now, that one, Mr. Crooms, ah—that house could be for no one but you yourself." He shook his head admiringly. "Indeed, you are a man of unique talents. But that third one, now, who could that one be for?"

There was a pause. Doc Bobo turned around and looked directly at Willie Daniels.

He repeated, pointedly, more in the tone of a command, "
Who is that one for
?"

Willie Daniels licked his lips nervously. He glanced at Jayell. Finally he said softly, "It's mine."

"What's that, Willie?"

The boy cleared his throat. "It's for Mama—and me."

"But Willie, we're going to build you and your mama a house, a pretty house, right up the hollow. You don't need two houses, do you, Willie?"

The young man stood watching the undertaker, his head tilted back, nostrils flaring softly with his breathing.

"Do you, Willie?"

Willie lowered his head. "Naw, suh."

"Of course not." Doc Bobo smiled. He turned to Speck Turner, Simon Jesup and Loomis Freeman. "Anybody else thinking about moving up here with these white folks?"

Wordlessly, the plumber and his friends dropped down into the road and walked away.

"Speck!" Jayell called.

"Anybody else got business on this mountain?"

The people were turning, drifting down the rocky slopes.

Doc Bobo turned to Carlos and the shop boys. "Anybody else?"

And even they, one by one, were laying down their tools, pulling off their nail aprons, climbing down the ladders.

"Oh, Christ," muttered Jayell, watching them. He walked down to the truck and put a hand on one hip and leaned on the fender. Phaedra got out and stood beside him, trembling in anger, glaring at Carlos as he moved by them, his head lowered.

"
Go ahead, run, you gutless sons of bitches
!"