Nazareth's Song (17 page)
Jeb promised to return the next day with groceries. He did not know how he would pay for the gas to return. He would have to share from his own pantry, but he was certain that Gracie would offer food to the Hoppers if he asked. He left Telulah sitting in a stupor. She laid her head against her knees and cried.
When Jeb passed Marvelous Crossing, he saw Fern’s Chevy coupe slow and then stop in the middle of the bridge. Her face suggested her anxiety. She rolled down her window to say to Jeb, “The Ketcherside boys said they heard that Beck and Angel had run off to marry. I don’t know if you can count on the Ketchersides telling the truth. Arnell Ketcherside and Angel don’t get along.”
“Any idea where they may have run off to?”
“Roe Ketcherside says that one of the Lundy girls heard Angel talking about living in Hot Springs. That doesn’t mean they’ve gone to Hot Springs.”
“I should have taken her to Little Rock. She’s not going to listen to me. I’m not her daddy and she knows it.”
“Angel respects you, Jeb. Don’t blame yourself for her running away. She’s confused is all. So many of the boys pick fights with Angel. I don’t know what it is about her that makes them treat her like another boy. She doesn’t flirt like other girls her age, and she misreads the boys when one of them is trying to get her attention. She takes that kind of attention all wrong, like they’re against her when they’re really just trying to get her to talk to them. I understand; I was never a flirt. It makes sense that she would become so enamored with the first boy to pay attention to her.”
“I don’t see any other choice. I’ll have to drive to Hot Springs. I’ll see if Josie will take in the kids for a night and get them to school in the morning.”
“You got gas money?” she asked.
Jeb checked his gauge. What with driving all over town and out to the Hoppers, the truck tank sat near to empty. He let out a breath and slumped back against the seat.
“Take this,” she said, leaning out the window.
Jeb could not look her in the eye to take the money.
“You don’t have time to argue.” She tossed it through his window and the bills scattered across his lap. “I’ll take Willie and Ida May to Josie’s if you want. If she can’t take them in, I’ll take them home with me. Maybe I’ll do that anyway. You can head for Hot Springs right now. Those two’ll have to stop somewhere for the night. I doubt they have much money.”
“Beck sold his daddy’s shotgun. What money they do have they’ll not want to spend on gas. I don’t know how to thank you, Fern.”
“Find Angel, is all.”
The drought had turned the road to Hot Springs into a winding ribbon of dust. Jeb stopped at a roadside store and filling station to buy a cold drink, gas up, and ask around about Angel and Beck. The store owner considered Jeb’s description of the Hopper truck but then shook his head. “Not many folks has passed by h’yere today. Seems like I’d remember a truck like that.”
For a quarter, the store owner’s wife bagged up a ham sandwich for Jeb to take on the road.
Jeb could not beat the night to Hot Springs. Dark fell before he reached the city limits road sign. He pulled into the lot of a diner called Sam-Anne’s. The lights inside made the place look green, as though filled with pond water. Every bar stool was taken, and the noisy clientele made Jeb’s head pound. He saw nothing of the Hopper truck. A waitress with a slight limp yelled at the cook like she was married to him. Then she saw Jeb on the last stool at the counter’s end. “Help you, mister?”
“Cup of coffee. I could use some help too.” Jeb accepted a small pitcher of cream from her.
“Not too good at help. My husband’s more helpful than me, he says.” She filled Jeb’s cup perfectly—to the rim, but stopping short of spilling over.
“I’m looking for . . .” He thought of how he should describe Angel. “. . . my daughter. She’s run off with a boy her age. Both too young to be out on their own.”
“Girl about yay tall?” She held up her hand and made a knifing motion next to her cheek. “Boy, skinny, with close-set eyes, dark haired and needs a haircut? Smokes like a chimney.”
Her words nearly took Jeb’s breath away. “You saw them? That sounds like Angel and Beck.”
“I heard her call him Beck. Sounded like they was getting into a fight. I don’t think she was happy with the evening accommodations. They’s spendin’ the night in that old truck, from what I overheard. Your daughter’s a mite spoiled to better sleeping quarters, I gathered.” She sliced a piece of pie—rhubarb—and gave it to Jeb. “You got plenty of worry on your hands with your girl run off. Pie’s on the house.”
Jeb said, “How long ago were they here?”
“Mel, you remember that couple of kids that came through. Split a piece of pie?” she asked her husband.
He checked the rusting clock above the grill. “I’d say they been gone a good half hour. ’Peared not to have had much scratch between the two of them, if you want to know the truth.”
“Did they drive into Hot Springs?” Jeb pushed aside his coffee.
“Only one way in. That way.” The waitress pointed east. “But the girl did say she didn’t want to drive much farther. If I were to take a guess, I’d say they took a side road about a quarter mile up the road and turned in for the night. Up around Carpenter Dam. Kids use that road for parking. Let me box up that pie for you. No need to let it go to waste.”
Jeb took the Sam-Anne’s box with him and headed east. The night was as black as a cave.
Beck had more on his mind than sleeping. He parked off the road just short of the main road leading to an enormous dam project. They had passed only one other parked car—two teens sparking near Lake Catherine. Beck sat staring at the lake, one arm stretched along the top of the truck seat. He wound a strand of Angel’s hair around a stubby finger. “We’re finally on our own, girl.”
“On our own and tired. I should have brought a pillow. I’ll sleep against this door, I guess, and we can share the blanket.”
“Come lay against me, Angel. I’ll keep you warm.”
Angel shifted and then turned the opposite direction and leaned her head against Beck’s shoulder. His bony frame felt frail and he had a musty smell like her Uncle Dew after he’d spent the evening tinkering under the hood of their old Ford.
Beck whispered something that she could not understand. His hands came up under her blouse.
“Beck, I thought we were going to sleep.” She tried to move his hands, but he was strong from all the heavy lifting he had done for his daddy.
“We can do anything we want, don’t you see? No one’s around to tell you what to do, Angel. You’re my girl now. I love you, Angel. Let’s get to what we came here for.”
“Beck, stop it! I’m tired and I can’t think straight. Let’s get some sleep and not rush things.”
Beck ran his fingers across the top of her skirt. “How you undo one of these things anyway. In the back?”
Angel tried to pull away, but he pulled her next to him.
“Girls like you are the most fun, my brother says. A bit on the feisty side, but fun in the sack. My brother Clark told me all about how to do it, so you don’t have to worry.”
Angel jerked forward, but too fast. Her forehead banged against the side window glass. She howled and then felt her eyes tear. “Beck, I’m hurt. Now quit, or I’ll get out and walk home.”
Beck sat back in disgust. “I don’t get you at all, Angel. You came all this way with me and now you’re backing out. You’re afraid. I knew you’d be like this. You sure talk tough for a girl in your situation.”
“What do you mean by my situation?”
“Your family threw you out. You’re living with a man you hardly know. Seems like you’d appreciate what I’m trying to do for you.”
Angel’s stomach rumbled. The half a slice of pie had only made her more hungry. “So I have to be desperate to run off with the likes of you, is that what you’re telling me, Beck?” She straightened her skirt and pulled it down below her knees.
“I’m not better off than you myself. I know I’m no catch. Look at me. My daddy’s in jail. Momma’s about to lose the land and house her daddy left to her. All my brothers are no good, and I’m turning out just like them. I’m skinny and ignorant as a stump. I never knew what you saw in me to begin with.”
“Beck, I didn’t mean to say you’re a good-for-nothing. You’re not like your brothers, and your daddy’s just fallen on hard times like everyone else. I see a lot of good in you. You’re kind and you make me laugh.” She allowed her hand to fall on top of his. He clasped his around hers and it felt warm. “You’re handsome and you’re not ignorant. You just need to work on your reading some.”
He laughed and squeezed her hand.
Angel rolled down the window to let in some air. “You kiss good. At least I think you do. You’re the first boy I ever kissed.”
“You’re the second girl I kissed, but the best. I can’t tell you who else, or she’d lie and say it wasn’t so. But I know the truth.”
“Why would she lie?”
“Because I’m a Hopper and her daddy’d kill her if he knew.”
“Not Sarah Dolittle?”
Beck’s stunned demeanor told Angel she had guessed right. “You’re right. Her daddy would kill her and you too.”
“I hate being poor. I mean, I could take not having all the things the Dolittles have because they have a dairy farm that’s brought in enough to get by on. But I hate being looked down on.”
“Ain’t no different being a sharecropper’s daughter. It’s worse. Nobody thinks you’re worth a dime unless your daddy owns land and drives a big car. People around Snow Hill all had it bad, though. Lots of families were bad off as we was. But my momma, she took it all inside of her like nobody I ever knew. It affected her mind. You ain’t no good to nobody without a good mind. People say things about you and call you crazy. Momma wasn’t crazy. She was just looking for a place inside of her that didn’t hurt so bad. She started staying holed up in that old shack and quit seeing her friends. She wouldn’t go to church with my grandma no more. Granny had to take us kids and she couldn’t drive and daddy wouldn’t drive us to church. It was a waste of gas. So we rode in Granny’s wagon every Sunday to church. Her horse was older than her, and some Sundays I thought that old mare would just keel over. But it outlived her.”
“Ivey Long still drives to church in a wagon. Nobody looks down on him.”
“It’s different when you want to drive a wagon than when you don’t have a choice. Ivey thinks automobiles are of the devil. He saves his money for other things besides gas. The Longs never do without. Beck, I’m tired of being hungry. I’m not spoiled. I just want to have a minute in the day that I can have to myself without worry. Not have bill collectors coming around threatening to shut off the lights. I don’t need no big house or a big car.”
“I want to give you those things, Angel.”
Her stomach rumbled again. But she leaned forward and kissed Beck. She wanted to love him and needed to love him. She would settle for the need to love.
Beck wrapped his arms around her—awkward boy arms that had never loved any more than she had but wanted to know love. It was an empty kiss and it disappointed her. She had expected more from it, as though it would flood her soul with love just by the very act. Or rearrange the hurt inside her. But she felt like the old Long house had looked with nothing inside it.
The sound of feet against pebbles had them both sitting straight up in panic. Angel saw the troubled face through the open window.
“Jeb!”
A
ngel shivered, even though she had wrapped her trembling limbs in the blanket from Beck’s truck. Jeb had said almost nothing at all to her after he had thrown open the door and marched Angel back to his truck. They had driven less than a mile when he pulled into the same diner where the waitress had told him about seeing Angel and Beck. The parking lot had thinned of cars except for a few farmers who had stayed late for coffee and smokes. “Did he feed you supper?” Jeb asked, even though he already knew exactly what she and Beck had shared.
“I’m hungry,” was all she could say.
The waitress put out her cigarette when she saw Jeb walking Angel through the front door. “Hello again,” she said to Angel. “Have a seat, sweetie, and I’ll fix you a plate of corn bread and beans. Have we still got some of that chicken stew?” she asked her husband.
The cook checked the pot on the stove and ladled out a full bowl of stew. The waitress set it in front of Angel and returned with the beans and corn bread. “Coffee for you, mister?” she asked Jeb.
“Nice and strong. I have to keep awake for the drive home,” he said. “Bring the girl a glass of cold milk, if you don’t mind.”
Angel shoved a spoonful of stewed meat into her mouth. Then she let out a sigh of relief.
“How long you think you can go without food?” he asked.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” she answered.
As she ate, the waitress commented about the ring around the moon and how cold it had gotten and then how the night had grown cold enough to bring sleet. She filled Jeb’s coffee cup a second time and then returned to the counter’s end to gab with the farmers.
“Angel, you drive your momma crazy too?”
“Don’t ever say that!”
He sighed and rephrased his question. “I didn’t mean to say it like that. What I mean is did you get into this kind of trouble when you lived in Snow Hill?”
Angel drank nearly half the glass of milk in several rapid gulps. She wiped her face with a napkin and said, “I wasn’t trying to get into trouble. I was trying to find my way out of it.”
“Beck Hopper can’t take care of you, Angel. He up and sold his daddy’s gun and took what little cash his momma had stowed away for their meals this week. Nothing he took with him was his to call his own. It was only a matter of time until he resorted to taking from others along the way. He’s a messed-up kid. I don’t want you getting mixed up with him. With the two of you running out of food and gas in a few days, you think he’d find work at his age when all the qualified men are taking up all the low-man jobs?”
“I don’t know what I thought. Maybe I had the idea of a better life in my head and it seemed to me I ought to just try and grab hold of it. I’m tired of waiting for a better day to come. What’s wrong with right now?”
