Dream With Little Angels (28 page)

Blackberry Trail ended just outside of Cornflower Lake, possibly the prettiest lake in all of Alvin. We slowed along the edge of the small copse of trees that bounded the lake, until pulling to a stop when my mother found a suitable place to park. The air outside the car was sweet and wet. It was the smell of trees, the smell of the lake, the smell of black dirt. As we followed the narrow path through the nest of oaks, I smelled everything. All of nature combined in my nose. The smell of life.

The path led to the lake, where everything was quiet and still. It was encircled by trees and there were no other people anywhere along the shore. The placid water shimmered, looking almost emerald as it reflected the sun shining down from the bright blue sky along with the boughs of the cypress wrapped around the other side. They were the largest cypress I'd ever seen. Their huge, muscular branches hung heavy with Spanish moss yet still seemed to reach higher than any skyscraper I could imagine.

I picked one of the stones up out of the gray sand near the water's edge. Smooth and black, it had a pattern of white salt lines running through it. Like everything else here, it was beautiful. I put it in my pocket.

Never before could I remember being in a place so beautiful, or one that felt so alive. I realized my mother and I still hadn't spoken since leaving the police station.

“Why are we here?” I asked. Three sparrows darted from the trees behind us, the lake reflecting them like black darts as they flew across the sky.

“I need to get rid of something,” she said. Carefully, she lifted the Virgin Mother off her neck, pulling the chain over her head. I had never seen her take it off before.

“What're you gonna do with that?” I asked.

“I don't need it anymore.”

“How come?”

She squatted beside me with the Virgin Mother and her chain gripped in her right hand. A light wind broke the reflected sunlight into bright sparkles across the top of the lake, making me squint. “I don't know if you'll understand this, Abe,” she said. “But I wore this because it kept my father—your grandpa—close to me. Now I realize he
is
close to me. He's part of me. He's here.” She touched her chest above where her heart was. “I no longer need to wear
this
to know his strength and courage will always be alongside me.”

“So you're just gonna throw it away?” I asked.

“Not away,” she said, standing. “Into the lake. It's a beautiful lake, isn't it?”

I agreed it most certainly was.

“Then I can't think of any better place. It's a beautiful necklace and deserves to be in a place like this.”

I wasn't exactly sure why she was throwing away something Grandpa gave her, but it seemed like she knew she had to do it, so I didn't bother asking any more questions.

She brought the hand holding the necklace behind her back as far as she could and, with all her strength, flung the Virgin Mother like a discus, as high and as far as she could over Cornflower Lake. Briefly, I saw the sunlight glint off the silver chain. It looked like a string of pearls, sparkling and tumbling against the robin's egg sky. Then I lost sight of it until a second later, when I heard a far away
kerplop!
For a few seconds, the sunlight played in the ripples my mother's necklace broke in the lake's mirrorlike surface until, slowly, the water went back to being still.

When I looked back up at her, tears stood in my mother's eyes. She left them there and smiled at me. “Come on,” she said. “Let's go home and make supper.”

T
he Friday before Thanksgiving came two weeks later. That was the traditional day of the Alvin Harvest Fair. Despite all the threats of being canceled, the fair went off as usual.

Near on all of Main Street was taken up by the fair, and we walked to it from our home. Me and my mother and (of course) Dewey but, most surprisingly, even Carry came along. For once, she decided to pretend to actually be part of our family again. I couldn't believe it. I decided not to press my luck, so I kept my thoughts to myself.

The Alvin Harvest Fair was one of the biggest fairs in the area, bigger by far than the one they threw right before Christmas in Satsuma. In fact, many people from Satsuma came down to Alvin specifically for our fair.

We had barely made it onto Main Street when somebody dressed as a clown rode right by us on a unicycle.

“I'm gonna get me one of those,” Dewey said.

“A clown?” I asked.

“No, a bike with only one wheel.”

The sun glinted off the chrome bar holding up the unicycle's seat as the clown rode past us. Today was yet another nice autumn day in Alvin. Although a few white clouds stretched high across the sky, the sun was out and the weather was perfect fair weather; not too hot, not too cold.

“I'm pretty sure I saw a bike with only one wheel at Luther Willard King's house,” I said. “ 'Course, it was supposed to have two.” I thought I was being pretty funny, but my mother shushed me.

“Don't talk like that, Abe.”

“Am I bein' racist again?”

“No, you're just bein' annoyin',” she said.

Dewey laughed at this.

Mr. Kensington from the Alvin bank walked by on stilts with at least thirty balloons floating above his head in all kinds of colors. He asked us if we wanted a balloon. I said no. Dewey said yes, he sure did.

Mr. Kensington gave Dewey a green balloon. “How come you don't want one?” Dewey asked me.

“I'm too old for balloons,” I said.

“You ain't no older than me.”

“Well, maybe you're too old for balloons too, then,” I said.

“I don't feel too old for balloons.”

“Well,” I said, “lately I've been feeling older than usual, I guess.”

Just before the library, a midway was set up featuring all kinds of games with prizes like stuffed animals and goldfish. We slowed down at each booth as we went past. The first one was a basketball game. “Sink three balls and win one of the big bears!” said Mrs. Grace. She was a teacher from our school. For some reason, today she was dressed as a pirate, with an eye patch and a black scarf wrapped around her head with a skull on the front. She even had a stuffed parrot on her shoulder. “Only one dollar to try!”

“You can't win that game,” Dewey said. “They tilt the baskets so it's near on impossible to get the ball in.”

“What the heck does a pirate have to do with basketball?” I asked.

“No clue,” Dewey said.

We kept on going.

Three booths later we came to the shooting gallery. You had to knock down four wooden people with an air rifle to win a goldfish bowl with a fish. “Hey, it's only a dollar for eight shots,” I said. “Mom, you should try it.”

She scrunched up her nose. “I ain't so good with an air rifle, Abe.”

“You're a pretty good shot with a normal gun, though,” I said. “What's the difference?”

“I dunno.” She shrugged. “Besides, I just don't feel it's right for me to play a game like this on account of what I do.”

I was thinking those white wooden guys on the back wall reminded me a bit of Jesse James Allen running into that cornfield.

“Can I try?” Dewey asked.

“Did your mama give you any money?” I asked back.

My mother shushed me. “Of course you can, Dewey,” she said. The man behind the counter had a handlebar moustache and bushy eyebrows. His head was the closest I'd ever seen to being perfectly square. He took my mother's dollar bill and handed Dewey a rifle. “You be careful with this, boy,” he said.

“Don't you worry about me,” Dewey said.

Dewey took the rifle, carefully lining up his shot before squeezing the trigger. He looked so serious I nearly laughed, but when he took the shot, it was followed by a loud
thunk
as the rightmost wooden man fell backward. I near on couldn't believe it.

“Good shot!” my mother said.

“Lucky shot,” I said.

Still keeping very serious, Dewey lined up his second try and, as amazing as it sounds, he managed to take out the second wooden guy in line.

“Did you start some kinda new hobby and not tell anyone?” I asked.

“I told you already,” Dewey said. “I used to have an air rifle when I was a kid.”

I shook my head. “You're
still
a kid. You've got a balloon tied to your wrist, for cryin' out loud.”

“I think you should maybe consider working in the police force when you're older,” my mother said.

“You really think that's where he'll end up using this kinda skill?” Carry asked, sounding almost like the old Carry. She was even being funny again. “I think you're bein' overly optimistic.”

Dewey managed to nail all four of them targets with only four tries. Every single shot he made with that rifle was deadly accurate. None of us could believe it as we walked away with him carrying that goldfish bowl in his hands. He had a big, stupid grin on his face. “I've been practicin',” he said.

“With what?” I asked.

“With my finger. Like that night in your room.”

I couldn't see how that could possibly count as practice, but before I could tell him, my mother said, “That was some pretty impressive shootin' back there, Dewey. Seriously, I don't think I could've hit all four with even eight tries.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Teal,” Dewey said. He said it as though he himself wasn't at all surprised by how well he did, though. It all felt very strange to me—almost as if I just saw a part of Dewey I'd never seen before, and I'd known Dewey a long, long time.

My thoughts were interrupted by someone shouting through a blow horn that the pie contest would be commencing at the top of Main Street in ten minutes.

“After all her gripin',” my mother said, “Sheryl Davis better win.”

“Doesn't she always win?” I asked.

We managed to get a spot within viewing of the judges. There were five of them in all, two of which were Chief Montgomery and Mr. Robert Lee Garner. All the judges wore big red bibs that said A W
ORD TO THE
W
ISE
, E
AT
A
LVIN
P
IES
on them in bright yellow letters.

This year, eight different pies were entered in the contest. Of course, one of them was strawberry rhubarb and belonged to Sheryl Davis, who brought hers to the judging table looking as proud as if she'd just saved the world from some kind of certain disaster like typhoid.

“They all gotta eat eight whole pies?” Dewey asked.

“I think they only gotta have a piece of each,” I said.

“Probably more like a mouthful,” my mother corrected.

“Oh,” Dewey said. I think he was a bit let down they weren't gonna eat whole pies.

“For someone so good with a rifle,” I said, “you're pretty dumb when it comes to normal stuff like pie contests.”

My mother shushed me. Carry said, “You're just jealous because
you
ain't got no goldfish.”

“I don't want no goldfish,” I said.

“But you wish you could shoot like me,” Dewey said. I didn't bother responding on account of I saw the potential of this conversation spiraling out of control.

One by one, each of the judges took a bite of each of the eight different pies, filling out a small form after every swallow. “I wonder what they're writing about,” Dewey said.

“Probably making a list of groceries they need to remember to get,” I said, sarcastically.

My mother smacked the back of my head lightly. “Will you quit the snide remarks? You really are jealous about that goldfish, aren't you?”

I said nothing.

“I think they're likely rating different aspects of the pies,” my mother said. “Things like taste, texture . . . I dunno. Whatever you can rate pies on, I suppose.”

When they were finished, all the forms were handed down to Mr. Greenwood, a strange-looking man with very pointy facial features (especially his nose and chin) and cheeks that curved inward instead of out. He'd always reminded me of a fish. He usually worked at the post office, but today he was in charge of tallying the pie votes. It took him only a few minutes before he announced, “We have a winner! And the winner of this year's Harvest Fair Pie Contest is . . .”

Sheryl Davis was beaming in her pink and white checkered apron. I could tell she was on the verge of stepping up to the table.

“. . . Nancy Tress's blueberry apple.”

Everyone roared with applause as Nancy Tress, her face full of surprise and shock, walked up and accepted her certificate. She wore a bright yellow apron that said K
ICK THE
C
OOK
! on the front. The only person not clapping was Sheryl Lynn Davis, who now looked like she wished she had an air rifle full of pellets and that everyone in the crowd was white and made from wood.

“I bet she's wishin' you'd kept the fair canceled now,” Dewey said.

“Justice is a wonderful thing,” my mother said.

We walked back past the midway to the parts of the fair we hadn't been to yet. “Look at that,” I said, pointing to Happy Shogun Sushi Palace. Except it was no longer Happy Shogun Sushi Palace. The restaurant had a completely new front, and the paint was so fresh you could smell it gleaming in the afternoon sun. The big fish swallowing the grumpy guys with the swords was gone from the window, replaced by a cowboy riding a bull with curved horns. The cowboy had a big ol' grin on his face and held his hat up in the air. The restaurant name painted above the cowboy said HAPPY COW BURGER SHACK.

Standing out front, Mr. Nobu Takahashi handed pink fliers to people passing by. Instead of the red jacket with gold buttons, he now wore a white collared shirt with a bolo tie, tucked into brown denims. His thick leather belt had one of the biggest buckles I'd ever seen in my life. A cowboy hat hung off the back of his head, held there by leather ties fastened around his neck. He gave my mother one of the brochures.

“What happened to Happy Shogun Sushi Palace?” I asked.

“Nobody in Alvin like sushi much,” he said. “So we change. Come to second grand opening next week. Our specialty is French fries with bacon, smothered in cheese.” He did a quick two-step in his snakeskin cowboy boots.

“Your specialty sounds awesome!” Dewey said.

“Do you want to eat his fish?” I asked Mr. Takahashi. As soon as I said it, I worried my mother was about to give me a lecture for being racist, but instead everyone laughed, including Mr. Takahashi.

“No, thank you,” he said.

“Besides, it's
my
fish,” Dewey said. “Only I can let other people eat it.”

I read the brochure my mother was holding. “You have a triple burger?” I asked Mr. Takahashi. “How big is it?”

“Bigger than your head,” he said.

“Sounds awesome,” Dewey said again.

“No octopus burgers?” I asked.

Again, everyone laughed. Funny, I still wasn't entirely clear on what was racist and what was actually funny until after I said it, but it seemed to me I was doing a lot better sorting out the funny ones.

“No,” Mr. Takahashi said, “no octopus burger. Unless if you want one special, I make exception just for you.”

“No, that's fine.”

We promised to be at the second grand opening and continued on. “I reckon he'll do well with this one,” I said.

“I reckon you're right,” my mother said. “And who knows? Maybe in a year or two, Alvin will be ready for sushi.”

I was about to add a bit of sarcasm that I'm sure would've resulted in another lecture on racism when I saw something up ahead that made me freeze on confusion and fear. Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow was making his way through the crowd straight toward us, his gaze locked on me and Dewey.

“Oh, no,” I whispered.

“What?” said Dewey.

“Look.”

“We gotta get away,” said Dewey. “He's going to kill us.”

“He's got a sack,” I said.

“What's in it?”

“How the heck should I know?” I whispered back. “I bet knives or something like that. Probably butcher knives.”

“Wish I still had that rifle.”

“Dewey,” I said, “it was an
air
rifle.”

“It was still a rifle.”

We turned and walked in the other direction, but a group of people were blocking the way. In a burst of confusion, we tried going left, then right, then left again, until the next thing I knew, Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow was standing right in front of us, barely a few feet away. Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow—in the flesh. His long face was pinched. His mouth formed a thin frown.

“I've got something for you boys,” he said, undoing the drawstring on his sack. The sack was big, like the sort of thing you see in Santa Claus displays through Christmas season, only it was canvas and gray in color. It was so large, it probably held lots of butcher knives or at least one really, really big one.