The Sleeping Night (33 page)

Goddamn caveman.
She kicked and scratched at him, even threw herself down on the ground, tumbling Edwin with her, but with a savage cry, he pulled himself and Angel back to their feet and crashed into the forest.

Isaiah heard Jake moving to his left. Angel’s screams were abruptly silenced, and Isaiah jumped to his feet, struggling to chase the pair. He didn’t break into the clearing, but moved laterally through the trees, keeping one ear cocked for Jake behind him.

He heard the shot whistling through the air before it hit him, hard and hot. He whirled and fired, but knew it was wild. Staggering, he pressed a hand to the wound in his side felt his blood running hot over his hand.

Oh, hell no.

From the other side of the clearing came Angel, shotgun in her hands. Blood stained her nightgown—Edwin’s blood, Isaiah realized as he clutched his side, feeling his life pour through his fingers. Uttering a sound both primitive and savage, Angel leveled the shotgun at Jake and fired point blank. He fell, his face gone.

Isaiah fell to his knees and Angel whirled toward the sound, ready to fire again. She caught sight of Isaiah, and her face went lax for an instant.

The edges of his vision were going black, too fast, much too fast. The ground rose and smashed into him. “Aw, hell, Man,” he muttered to God in weak protest. “Not here.” Then Angel was beside him, weeping, clutching his shirt.

“Isaiah!” she cried. “Don’t you dare die on me!”

“No, baby.”

She stood up. Isaiah watched lazily, almost distractedly, noticing the fire shimmer in her hair, “All right, God,” she said, and he heard a power in her call, even through her tears. “Enough. I
claim
this man,
this
man, as mine. You can’t have him yet, you hear me?”

And it seemed to Isaiah as he slipped into lapping darkness that Angel seemed to grow and expand, seeming almost to glow, become light. He reached for her, touching her ankle.

So that’s it,
Isaiah thought, and fell into darkness.

“He’s mine!” Angel cried, furious.
Tears of anger flowed over her face, and she wanted to add an enticement, and bargain, swear she’d do some big thing in God’s name, but held off. Bending down beside Isaiah, she pressed her hands to the leaking wound, and then remembered something from a movie. Grabbing handfuls of mud and leaves, she slapped the cool material on his body.

Panting, she begged,
please God. Please. Please
. She hardly knew what she was saying. The earth covered his wound and it seemed to stop bleeding, but Isaiah didn’t stir. Wiping her face, feeling the grit of dirt and blood and heaven knew what else, she bent over him and put her forehead on his chest. The sound of his breath comforted her. She would run across the river for help. “Don’t die, Isaiah. Please don’t die.”

“How come you love that nigger so much, Angel Corey?”

She bolted upright. Not three feet away, a shotgun in his hand, stood Edwin. Blood oozed from the wound high on his chest. His shirt was soaked with it. Gone was the wild hysteria. A grim, grieving sobriety replaced it, raw and all too human.

Sensing she needed to be calm, she stood up slowly, clutching the gun from Isaiah’s hand, not even sure there were any bullets left in it. She held it loosely at her side. “I don’t know, Edwin,” she said honestly. “It would have been easier to love somebody else, but I always loved Isaiah. Can’t even remember when I didn’t.”

He nodded, gravely, as if the motion gave him pain. “Shame, Angel.” His voice was ragged and tired and bleak. “But I know how it is—that’s how I always loved you.”

Angel gripped the gun in her hand. She had shot the others in panic and a fierce need to survive. Edwin stood before her in a place of agonized recognition, his familiar face shadowed with the demons that had dogged him through his life. How could she kill him?

But she had to get help for Isaiah. “I don’t want to kill you, Edwin, but I have to go.”

“No.” Angel lowered the revolver, but stayed close to Isaiah as Edwin stumbled forward, looking aimlessly around him as if he’d just noticed his surroundings. His face was ghastly white, his eyes too bright as he suddenly whirled, an edge of the insanity back now. “That man prayed like a preacher, you know it?”

Very gently, Angel asked, “Who did?’’

But Edwin seemed not to hear. “He prayed and prayed, singing and hollering. Like to scare me half to death.” He shook his head, eyes fixed on a spot at the edge of the fire. “‘Praise God! Glory!’” he shouted in imitation, and Angel suddenly realized who he must be talking about. “Why’d he pray, Angel? Why’d he sing?”

“Jordan High sang?”

“Top of his voice. Never heard nothin’ like it.” He coughed suddenly, and blood came out of his mouth, and he looked surprised. He clasped a hand to the wound. His knees buckled. Angel glanced at Isaiah, lying still but breathing. She went to Edwin and put a hand on his shoulder. Her voice was very quiet. “Tell me.”

He swallowed and looked down at his hands, covered now with his own blood. “He died. They did all kinds of things to him after, but he died before anybody touched him. From nothing.” Tears welled up in Edwin’s eyes and his lip trembled. His voice was ragged. “He looked right at me, Angel.” He coughed and there was a bubbling sound in the wound.

She touched his hair. “Go on.”

“Looked right at me,” he repeated. “And he said, ‘You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.’” Edwin shuddered. “And then my daddy punched him, but he was already dead. Already dead.” He grabbed her hand. “An’ I’m gonna burn in hell. “ He fell over.

Angel knelt and pulled her hand out of his grip. He stared sightlessly toward nothing, and Angel found she was weeping as she knelt again beside Isaiah. He was breathing evenly, and she kissed him. “Don’t you dare die.” Now that she could leave him safely, surrounded only by ghosts, she ran for the river, and splashed across to find help.

Isaiah was carried on a makeshift stretcher across the river and into his mother’s house. Nothing would do that Angel had to be with him, and nothing anyone said could make her go, not to wash her face or change her bloody clothes. Geraldine brought a blanket to wrap around Angel’s shivering body, and a cup of tea that sat at her elbow ’til it was cold. She clung to Isaiah’s hand all night, praying, not caring what any one said.

Watching her, Geraldine was ashamed for flinging out her accusation to Isaiah, even though she hadn’t meant it at the time. If Isaiah died, Geraldine expected Angel to lie down right beside him and go along.

And for most of the night, there was no doubt at all in Geraldine’s mind that her son would not last the night. The bullet had gone clean through him, and though the wound had been cleaned and patched as well as possible, the blood that had been drained out of him would fill a small pond.

Toward morning, Angel started singing:

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;

Praise Him, all creatures here below;

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

She sang it over and over and over, rocking back and forth in her shawl of blankets. Louder and stronger every time.

Geraldine was standing in the doorway when Isaiah opened his eyes and whispered, “Angel.”

With a single, joyous cry, Angel sank to her knees by the bed and began to weep, raining kisses over Isaiah’s hand. He smiled weakly and lifted his free hand to touch her head, sighing softly before he closed his eyes again in a more natural sleep.

When Angel awakened,
she had no idea where she was—only that she was stiff and achy and grimy. It was Isaiah’s hand that brought her around, finally, his big warm hand curled around her own, and his other, heavy on her hair.

She moved slowly, remembering, to look at him. Still sleeping, but sleeping right. Her throat clutched. “Thank you, God,” she breathed. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

The house was silent. Angel struggled to her feet. She need a bath, she thought vaguely, some clean clothes, something to eat. There was an empty clawing in her belly.

Wandering out into the kitchen, she found Geraldine at the table, reading her Bible in the quiet. At this simple sight of normal life, Angel swayed, the bitterness in her stomach roiling. Her hands trembled, and she must have made some sound because Geraldine looked up. Seeing Angel, she leapt to her feet and rounded the table. “Are you all right, Angel? You wouldn’t let nobody see if you was hurt—or anything.”

Her meaning was clear. “None of them did anything like that,” she said dully and sank in to the chair Geraldine urged her into. She laughed without humor. “Edwin wouldn’t let them.”

At those words, the horrors came tumbling back into her mind from whatever place she’d shoved them away—and violent kaleidoscopic whirl, she saw them again. Saw Edwin with the gaping hole high in his chest, and Isaiah with his in his side, and Tom with no face and the flames exploding out of from the front of the store, killing Ebenezer and everything her daddy ever worked for.

“Ebenezer died,” she said, then wildly looked at Geraldine, gripping her fingers. “I
killed
people,” she whispered.

“Oh, Angel,” Geraldine said, and she took her in her arms.

And against the cushiony bosom that had provided a pillow so often in her childhood, Angel wept—great, sobbing tears that washed clean the horror of the night. Geraldine murmured soothing words that meant everything and nothing, and cried right along with her.

When both of them were finished, Geraldine drew a hot bath in the tub in the kitchen and helped Angel into it, then left her alone to wash away the blood and grime, the sticky tears and smell of smoke in her hair. Clean at last, she put on a soft dress of Tillie’s that hung almost to her ankles. She ate the food Geraldine put before her, then went back to Isaiah, curled up next to him, and slept.

Geraldine had to pretend
that all was just as it had been. Once Angel was cared for, she put on her work shoes and marched over the bridge as she did every morning, even if it was a bit later than usual.

She had tried to prepare herself for the store, for what remained of it, anyway, but the sight of the smoking, blackened ruins made her feel instantly ill. A crowd of people milled around, the sheriff and his deputies among them. Geraldine spied Horace Walker by Edwin’s truck, and Angel’s aunt Georgia in her big car, looking half-terrified, half-gleeful. There wasn’t a black face among them at all. Only white folks, here for gossip or work.

For a minute, Geraldine paused, breathless with a certain fear that all would be uncovered, and the two she had left safely back at home would somehow still lose. Then she narrowed her eyes and straightened her back.

No bodies would be found. When Angel had come splashing over the river, almost chillingly coherent about Isaiah and all the rest, there had been those who had taken shovels over the bridge, melting into the darkness to do a gruesome, ugly job, at great risk to themselves, for if anyone had come to investigate the fire that could almost certainly be seen in town, they would likely have paid with their lives.

But no one had come. The job was done. Today, Angel and Isaiah would be hidden, too. No trace of any of them would ever be found. It was the only way.

The sheriff spied her. With heavy steps, he approached. “I guess you saw the fire?”

She nodded.

“I reckon Angel’s dead.” His mouth twitched and he cleared his throat. “I know you cared about the Coreys, and I’m sorry.”

Of all the things Geraldine had expected, this wasn’t it. “Thank you, Sheriff.” She bowed her head to hide her relief. “I’ll go and talk with Mrs. Pierson, less you have already. She’ll be making the arrangements, I’m sure.”

He nodded, and for an instant, there was a sheen of tears in his eyes. “She came to me just a few days ago,” he muttered. “Wish to hell I’d done .
 . .”

Geraldine nodded, then she turned away, passing the milling crowd, the resigned face of Horace Walker and the pinched one of Georgia. When her back was to the mess and crowd, she felt a smile she couldn’t stop spreading wide over her face. There were hurdles yet, but sometimes, the Lord understood about humans.

Sometimes, yes, he cared about just a single pair.