Earthly Vows (14 page)

“Claudia won’t know her hours until we get to Norman,” Angel told her.

“But you’ll continue in school no matter.” Fern kept glancing over at Claudia, who had inched into a spot on a shaded depot
bench.

“Of course, what else?” asked Jeb.

“If you’re looking after John and Thorne while Claudia works, how will that work?” Fern would not let up.

“Put it off until later?” Angel said it like a question.

“Jeb, you need to say something,” said Fern.

Angel swallowed. She kicked a dust puff up from the ground with the toe of her shoe.

Jeb shook his head and said, “I didn’t agree to that.”

Angel shifted onto her right foot. Her hip jutted out and she sighed as though she were being grilled. She shaded her eyes
with one hand. “How did you think this was going to work, Jeb? I can’t run after Claudia’s two and go to school. I’ll have
to wait.”

“Wait how long?” asked Fern. “You’ll fall behind. Jeb, remember how hard she worked to get caught up with her classmates back
in Nazareth?”

Claudia got up from her perch. She broke off a corner of the bread loaf and gave it to John, who was jumping up and down wanting
to feed the pigeons. John promptly disintegrated the bread between his palms and tossed crumbs into the air like he was tossing
up sand.

“That was supposed to be for lunch,” Jeb said to Fern.

Fern extended her fingers and touched Jeb’s arm.

Claudia joined the circle and said, “If you don’t mind my two cents, Reverend, I read ever’ bit of the letter you give me
on that meatpacking job. There’s a five-to-midnight shift. I’ll go for that and then Angel can still mind her studies.”

Jeb walked away from the women toward the street to steer Thorne back toward her brother. He hefted her onto the bench, picked
up John, hurled him up laughing like a lunatic and then plopped him next to his sister. The boy scraped precious bread from
between his fingertips to the waiting flock.

The skin around Fern’s temple relaxed and she talked to Claudia and Angel as if they would all be back together again soon.
She had Angel dig out a slip of paper from her drawstring purse. She scrawled down her telephone number and tucked it back
into Angel’s bag. The bus to Norman pulled up. Jeb helped Angel carry her suitcase to the bus. Claudia stepped up into the
bus, eyes straight ahead, herding John and Thorne up the steps and into a front-row seat. John stood up and looked out the
window, his eyes big as headlights until he spotted his aunt. Angel motioned for him to settle into his seat and mouthed,
“I’m coming,” so the boy would stop troubling over her.

Fern hugged Angel. Angel was not as affected as she had been at the house saying good-bye to Jeb. She had not said much to
Fern in the last few hours. There was a final kiss she planted on Fern’s cheek, the same as her good-bye to Abigail. Time
was spinning away from them and she let it go without a single complaint. She waved at Jeb from the bus steps. The door closed
between them.

Fern said, “Jeb, where are you going?”

He kept walking behind the bus to see if Angel might turn and wave wildly for the bus to stop, yelling in that way of hers
that she had changed her mind. Other passengers waved from the window as they departed. But the bus swallowed Angel whole.
She was not in his sights any longer. He was out of breath in the heat. The sun was eating his brain. The bus turned right.
There was a flash of girl in the window, pale and full of quiet craving.

“She’s gone,” said Fern. “I wasn’t ready.”

There was a stop five minutes before noon. The sudden jolt on the bus brakes brought Angel out of a thin sleep. Her neck hurt
from dozing in a sitting position. Claudia turned completely around in her seat and smiled when Angel’s lids came open. The
passenger seated across the aisle from Angel smelled like cigars rolled in bourbon, a cloying smell for a woman dressed so
well. Thorne was stretched out across Angel’s lap, limp as a dishrag, her right arm hanging out into the air, her left arm
straight up, fingers closed in a relaxed fist. Angel was hungry. Claudia had taken charge of the food. John stuffed his face
the whole trip from Ardmore.

The bus stopped in Pauls Valley. Ten or maybe even a dozen passengers got up and filed out of the bus. The driver held to
the grab bar and facing them said, “We’ll be here in Pauls Valley a half hour, folks, so if you want to get out, stretch your
legs, or get a bite to eat, feel free.”

Angel rubbed Thorne’s forehead and kept saying her name until her eyes came slowly open. “Let’s step outside and have us some
lunch, Thorne,” she said.

Claudia and John fled out of the bus and took a seat under a sprawling black walnut tree. Angel carried Thorne and laid her
on the grass next to Claudia. The hem of the girl’s dress had come loose. Angel said she would fix it when they got to Claudia’s
place.

“If I still have a place,” said Claudia.

“Jeb gave you money, Claudia. Landlords don’t turn down cash on the barrelhead.” Angel pulled open the sack. Myrna’s fried
chicken had come loose from the cheesecloth. Angel drew out a leg for Thorne and one for herself. One end of the bread loaf
looked like mice had been at it, of course. She tore off two nice pieces and handed one to Thorne, who was finally sitting
up.

Two women stopped on the corner to gab, townsfolk out for a walk. They each sipped on a cold Coke. Claudia smiled at them.
They raked her over with their eyes and took a few steps back to find shade under a drugstore awning. One of them lit a cigarette.

Angel finished her chicken and bread. She pulled out a napkin and cleaned Thorne’s greasy fingers and mouth.

Her skirt rode up around her diaper. A rash ring showed around the legs of the diaper. “She’s wet and needs a change, Claudia.”

“I’m almost out of clean diapers. We’d best make do with what she’s got on.”

“She’s eaten up with rash, Claudia.”

“It’ll clear up.”

Thorne scratched at her diaper.

“I thought you did the wash yesterday. You ought to have plenty of diapers,” said Angel.

“My hands were too full with these two to do it all. Why you think I need you, Angel?”

The two women under the drugstore awning left and one threw down what remained of her smoldering cigarette. Claudia got up,
and when they were out of eyesight, she retrieved the butt and took a drag on it.

“I thought you had plenty of smokes.” Angel put away the dinner sack and cleaned up the bones.

“All I had was what Bo left behind. Still got a card of papers. I could buy a tin here in this drugstore.”

“We need the money for food and rent, though.”

“Just a tin is all.” She went inside.

Angel turned her attention back on Thorne. A few of the passengers were eavesdropping, having nothing better to do for the
next fifteen minutes. John crawled into Angel’s lap and laid his head against her shoulder. “My belly’s full, Aunt Angel.”

“I know, John. I’m glad.” She dug through Claudia’s bag and found the last clean diaper. She laid Thorne back in the grass.

Out of boredom, the passengers went back to their lunches.

Willie and Ida May accepted the pillows given to them by Abigail for the trip home. They each claimed a corner in the rear
car seat.

Fern kissed Abigail and Donna Faye good-bye.

Jeb thanked Abigail and Myrna for their hospitality and started the engine. Abigail cried liberally as Fern had prophesied.
Myrna dallied on the porch picking sprigs from some of Abigail’s plants, not actually watching them pull away, but doing other
things as if time had taught her to keep busy when Abigail’s offspring pulled out of the family drive. Jeb turned right onto
the road and glanced for the last time at Abigail. Myrna had her arm around her mistress, coaxing her inside.

“I don’t know why Mother wants to annoy me like that,” said Fern. “She always gets so overwrought.”

“Shame on Abigail. She ought to give a cheer as we pull away,” said Jeb.

“I’d like that,” said Fern.

Jeb wondered how far Angel’s bus had traveled, if Claudia would ration their meals correctly, or if the ride was bumpy or
dusty. Angel had taken to Fern’s fostering of womanly needs more than his and had grown spoiled. She would do well to run
after Claudia’s children, but then she had not known much else since being put out by her family to look after Willie and
Ida May. Of course the women at Church in the Dell and Fern saw to things like helping Angel keep a few dresses done up for
church and Saturday night goings-on. Claudia did not strike him as the type of woman who would think about those things. “Angel
looks out for herself well enough, doesn’t she?” he asked Fern.

“Better than most, I’d say.”

A single drop of rain hit the windshield. Jeb leaned forward and glanced up. There was a cloud cover, a few acres of gray-and-white
cumulus stretching over Carter County. But the smattering of storms that came through Oklahoma on this trip only teased them
with a brief sprinkling of rain and a barren show of lightning; nothing that promised the end of the drought. “When did your
mother say that last dust storm hit?”

“Last March, wasn’t it?”

“Miz Abigail says it was like the end of the world,” said Willie. “I wish I coulda seen it. Nothing big ever happens in Nazareth.”

Ida May opened her mouth and sighed out a yawn and then a big burp. Willie doubled over laughing. Ida May covered her face
and laughed too. Fern told her to rest her eyes and take a nap on Abigail’s feather pillow. Ida May smiled at Fern, and after
she closed her eyes, she said, “Angel said that you was going to make a good momma. She was right.”

Fern looked pained by the comment. She pulled her hair up to one side into a comb so that she could rest her head comfortably.
“Angel didn’t say much to me today. How about you?”

“Not a lot. So much on her mind, I guess. Finally after all this time, she gets her wish. I think Claudia needed her worse
than she needed Claudia, though. I don’t know.

I don’t know.”

“Did you ask Angel if she wanted to go to Norman?”

“Sure she wanted to go,” said Jeb. “What else has she wanted all this time?”

“You know that for a fact?”

“I wouldn’t have let her go otherwise. What makes you say that?”

“Angel never actually said she wanted to go. But then again, she was always one to let you know if she wanted something.”

“Of course! She’s not one to be pressured,” said Jeb.

“I agree with that.”

There was a quiet that fell between them.

“Claudia has a lot on her plate, though. I wonder if it’s too much for Angel.” The winding road straightened for a good ten
or twenty miles. Jeb lost track of time as he put more and more road behind them. Fern stopped commenting, but as to how much
time had passed since her last comment, he couldn’t say. “I never actually asked Angel if she wanted to go. Should I have
done that?”

“It never hurts to ask.”

A road sign sticking out near the highway advertised fuel and window cleaning. The glass was already dirty from the road dust.
Jeb pulled into the filling-station lot. He turned off the engine and sat staring straight ahead. “I may have made a mistake,”
he said.