Earthly Vows (15 page)

Fern stared out her window too. Her fingertips slowly massaged her lips. She did not help him one way or another.

“Aunt Angel, we’re here!” John voiced it so loudly from the center aisle, the passengers seated around him laughed.

Thorne climbed back into Angel’s lap expecting again to be carried off the bus. Several people shoved past them. Finally a
Spanish-looking man seated in the back of the bus stopped and let them out into the aisle. Angel picked up the bag she carried
on, along with her purse, and hefted Thorne onto her hip. Claudia and John waited out on the walk. “Welcome to the big city
of Norman,” said Claudia.

A clap of dry thunder made Thorne holler.

“I wish to goodness the sky’d stop threatening us. Just let us have it!” Claudia spread her arms, but then said, “I wasn’t
yelling at God. Just the sky.”

Angel stared at her impassively.

“What with you being brought up by a preacher and all, I didn’t want to offend your upbringing,” said Claudia. “Claudia, don’t
start.”

“I’m not funning.”

“Shut up! Do we hitch a ride or walk to your place?”

Angel asked. “One or the other. We walk a piece, then rest a piece.

It’s a good half-hour walk.”

“Daddy took the truck,” said John. “I hate him.” Claudia smacked John’s mouth. He cried. Angel set down her suitcase, stepped
up, and took his hand. She had watched Claudia backhand John more than once at Abigail’s, but was starting to have her fill.
She picked up her luggage again and struck up a bit of chatter to busy his mind and to calm him.

Claudia wanted to maintain control over the boy. “Don’t coddle him. Boys are hard to raise. You got to give it back to them
or they grow up wild like Bo. His momma says she’s to blame for him taking off on us.”

John was already mad as wet bees and shook his head vigorously. “Granny said it was you to blame!”

Angel stepped between them and then trailed behind Claudia, holding tightly to John’s hand for the first mile. The roads running
around the shops and houses in Norman were bricked, but as they left the pretty row houses and a place called The Diner, the
bricks gave way to the hard-pounded dirt roads. The occasional motorist left them in a cloud of smothering dust.

Finally a hay truck pulled to the side. The farmer’s arm came out the window and motioned them aboard. Angel was grateful
Claudia traveled so light, but her own bag felt like iron weights. The muscles in her right shoulder ached. She threw the
bag onto the bed and helped John scramble onto a hay bale. The farmer drove them two miles. Claudia crawled up to the cab
and pounded on the top. The driver slowed to a stop at a crossroads near a country house. “This is our getting-off spot,”
she said.

Angel followed her down a country lane. There was a pretty house encircled with a white picket fence. On the fence hung a
small hand-painted sign that said, house for rent. Claudia picked up the sign and carried it under one arm. She opened the
gate and allowed John and Thorne to run inside. Thorne immediately took up with a gray cat, which wound around her stubby
legs.

“Claudia, you never told me you had such a house,” said Angel.

“Oh, this ain’t mine. This is the landlady’s house. Ours is out back.” She walked around the house and then down a stone walk.
She pointed to a shack, a slapdash nailed-together job of scrap wood and tin. The picket fence separated the two houses like
the good from the bad. She laid the sign on the porch facedown. “Looks like Mrs. Abercrombie is up to her old tricks.” She
mounted the concrete steps and yanked on the lock and chain bolted to the front door. “She pulls these shenanigans to bully
me about her money.”

“How much do you owe?” asked Angel.

“Fifteen, plus two dollars for milk.”

“That’s almost everything Jeb gave you.”

“Take her half and see if she’ll buy it,” said Claudia. She handed a roll of bills to Angel.

“Why on earth would you think she’d take it from me?”

“You got a nice face. Bo always got around her with a smile. Me, I’m not too good at maneuvering women like Abercrombie.”

Angel headed across the yard. Before she could reach Mrs. Abercrombie’s backyard, the woman came out of her house and stopped
Angel at the gate. “Who be you?” she asked.

“I’m Angel Welby, Claudia’s sister. I came to help out my sister.” She handed the woman the money.

She flipped open the roll. “That’s only half. Not good enough.”

“Claudia’s getting a good job at Packingtown. She’ll have the other half soon.” Angel was too tired to smile. The heat was
making it hard to breathe.

“I got other boarders that’ll pay twice what the Drakes have been paying me and they say they’ll pay up front. None of this
half now, half later business.”

“She’s lying,” Claudia said from the porch.

Mrs. Abercrombie kept her words for Angel only, as if Claudia were not looking at her across the yard. “I got bills to pay
too.”

Angel pulled another couple of bills out of her purse, the money Fern had given them for extra food. Mrs. Abercrombie accepted
it. She handed Angel a key to the bolt lock. “Bring me back the hardware. I might need it again, knowing that Drake woman.”

“We’ll see you’re paid on time from now on,” said Angel.

“You got a believable face, girl. Whether or not it’s true, we’ll see, I reckon.” She kept studying Angel. “I got some corn
to bring in tomorrow. Not a lot, mind you, what with the drought and all. You help me shuck and can it, and I’ll pay you for
it.”

“I can do that. I used to help a woman back in Nazareth with the canning. May I have the shucks when they’re finished, ma’am?”

“Suit yourself.”

“I’d like to make a doll each for Thorne and John.”

The woman took a step closer to Angel and asked, “Ain’t you got no other family, girl?”

“Not with me, no, ma’am. My sister and brother live back in Nazareth, Arkansas.”

“Nazareth?”

An apple pie cooled in the kitchen window.

Angel hesitated.

“You an orphan?”

“Not that, no, ma’am.”

“I remember now. Your sister told me you kids was put out by your folks. Shame you ain’t got nowhere left to belong.”

“I belong here with my sister, ma’am.”

Claudia yelled across the backyard at John.

“That sister of yours ain’t right. She’s got the brains of a rabbit. I hope you know that.”

Angel thanked her for taking the partial rent payment. “You got a little food we can buy? I got another dollar I can give
you.”

The woman said, “I got stew and apple pie. I can ladle you out some stew in a jar for yourself and those kids and a slice
of pie you can share. I wouldn’t do it for that sister of yours.” She went inside and came out with the stew and pie.

Angel gave her the dollar and she turned it down. She didn’t know what to say to the woman. The stew smelled like something
from back in Nazareth that a woman named Josie Hipps would bring by from time to time. She put that thought out of her head.
She was done with Nazareth and back with family.

J
EB LET
F
ERN KEEP TO HERSELF THE WHOLE
way home. Since Willie and Ida May dozed off and on in the rear car seat, she had to keep a lid on private matters about
the past anyway. She did a good job of keeping the chatter on an even keel; how nice to see Donna again and her brothers and
how big the Coulter nephews and nieces had grown. Not once did she bring up Walton Baer, and a good thing, because whatever
she decided to spill out about him would be at her own discretion, no prompting whatsoever on his part.

The matter of the Oklahoma City pulpit swam around his head, but he held off beating that dead horse, keeping his promise.
He finally figured out the things about her that had been a mystery to him. Patience had to play its course. Once he assured
her the matter was settled, they would not marry until December and after that they would settle down in Nazareth like they
planned all along, the tension lifted. Her cheeks turned red as berries again, and even her hands talked as she spoke, her
long slender index fingers lifting and tapping the air like a person sending a telegraph.

“Jeb, I see the sign ahead for DeQueen. Let’s stop and stretch our legs, why don’t we, at that downtown café? You remember
the one, don’t you?” she asked.

“You want to wake up Willie and Ida May?”

Fern turned and wiggled Willie’s big toe. It stuck out of his sock.

The town sign for DeQueen welcomed them back across the Arkansas border. Fern slipped on her shoes and tucked the strands
of hair around her ears up into a blue hat.

On the side of the road, a faded black car full of children sat broken down. Four children peered out the windows as they
drove past. A woman, wearing a dress that may have once been green, leaned against the hood, her face in her hands. The wind
was hot, hot like blue blazes. The woman’s skirt flapped around her calves. Jeb pulled aside. When he got out, the woman waved
him on, saying in a raspy voice, “My husband hitched a ride to go for gas. We run out two hours ago.”

“Anything I can do to help, ma’am?” asked Jeb.

She said no. Jeb said he was sorry and that was when she ran her hand down her thigh, her eyes drinking him up. Jeb wanted
to yell at her. What else was she hiding from her old man? Fern stuck her head out the open window and offered a loaf of Abigail’s
bread. “May we offer your children a bite to eat?” she asked.

The woman said, “I’ll take that if you don’t mind.” She averted her eyes.

Jeb handed the bread through the open car window to the oldest girl seated up front so he wouldn’t have to look the woman
in the face again. The kids inside dove for the bread like gulls fishing out of the ocean. He got back in the car and drove
until Fern spotted a roadside café outside DeQueen. The café stood out on a stark lot; a load-bearing square, built of masonry
blocks, painted white.

Jeb got out and put on his hat to block the sun.

Fern led them inside to a table near a window. “It’s as hot out there as Oklahoma,” she said.

Willie ordered a Coke and a ham sandwich. Ida May wanted the same thing.

Fern dithered back and forth between the house stew and the Blue Plate Special. The woman serving the counter customers—two
besides their clan—had a dog face, hair softly glistening on her upper lip, and big sausage arms that rested against her hips.
She kept sighing, a sort of whistling sound that hissed from her nostrils like a baby bird. Fern snickered before her hand
could cover her mouth, so unlike her since she got onto Jeb and Willie in the past for laughing at strangers. Ida May glanced
curiously from her stool, leaning to see around Willie. Finally she laughed for no reason other than the sight of Fern burying
her face in the menu.

The waitress asked Jeb, “She going to order or not?”

Fern said apologetically, “I’ll take the stew and crackers. Iced tea.”

Jeb ordered a hamburger and coffee. He gathered up the menus and handed them to the waitress. She huffed and disappeared back
into the kitchen.

Fern blushed to the point of her ears turning red. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me,” she said. She unbuttoned her top
button and fanned her neck.

“I’m glad you’re happy,” said Jeb. “Glad to the bone, Fern.”

She tried to compensate for her behavior. She came off the stool when the waitress came out with the tray of soda pops and
took each drink off the tray for her and passed them around. Then she excused herself to the only bathroom in the café, maybe
the whole highway.

Willie did not laugh at any of Fern’s shenanigans. Jeb slid Willie’s Coke down the counter and set it in front of him. Willie
kept staring down at his boots, his toes tapping the counter.

“What’s on your mind?” asked Jeb.

Willie shrugged.

Jeb blew on his coffee and then set it back in the saucer. Angel said little to Fern on the trip to the bus depot. Willie
was giving Fern the silent treatment too. Jeb said, “I shouldn’t have let Angel go.”

“I know why you did it. So does Angel,” said Willie.

Jeb turned the stool toward Willie.

“It was for Miss Coulter.”

“Fern had nothing to do with it, Willie.”

Willie hefted the large iced-down drink to his lips and took a long draft.

“Fern doesn’t deserve the blame. Angel chose to leave.”

“She told Claudia she wasn’t going. Then she said you and Miss Coulter was into some sort of feud. That was when you decided
Angel had to go. After they go up and get things squared away in Norman, then me and Ida May have to foller.”

Jeb set him straight. “You have it all mixed up, Willie Boy.”

“Angel was outside your door. She heard the whole thing.”

“That’s not how it came down at all.”

Fern came out of the restroom. Her skin was damp, her sleeves and skirt clinging to her limbs. “It’s hot as an oven in there,”
she said.

The waitress pushed out from the back kitchen doors. She carried all four plates on her arms. Ida May clapped. Each order
was exactly as it should be.