Metal Angel

Metal Angel

Nancy Springer

To my angel

“Holy hell, this guy sings like an angel in
heat.
”

—Deejay, WSAY, Cassandra, Alabama

prologue

He incarnated on an L.A. rooftop with no onlooker but the ever-galloping Marlboro Man, who watched, indifferent, as he imagined himself into being. It was an act not without discomfort. His first experience of flesh was of panting, of strain, of sprawling on a hard, gritty surface, wet as a newborn with sweat. His first bodily thought was
What will be my punishment?
A cosmic rebel engaged in an act of blatant self-will, he knew there had to be a price to pay aside from the obvious ones of the temporality, transience, and death. The Supreme Being's convoluted sense of humor had come up with AIDS, atomic power, poisonous snakes, and illogical hope; what might it have in store for him?

A seagull flew over with a spoiled-brat cry: “More! More! More salsa, more clams!” The newcomer lying on the rooftop saw first the shadow, then the bird, and smiled, and heaved himself up, struggling to his unaccustomed feet. Standing spraddle-legged, he looked down at himself.

Jeans. Levi's 501 blues. He had paid a lot of attention to the jeans, and they were faded and torn and fit long and tight, just as he had wanted them. Quickly he opened his fly and checked—yes. He had taken care to fully imagine his genitals, also, and they appeared complete and very satisfactory. He zipped, noticing the slight, just-right bulge of denim at his crotch, the long slim line below, the urban-cowboy boots with their glint of silver at the toes. Naked chest and belly, arms, hands—all were lean, long, fit, and firm, all as he wanted them. He raised his hands to his face, feeling it, reassuring himself; the essential features seemed to be in place. The face had been the hardest part to envision, and he would not know until he found a mirror whether he had succeeded in being beautiful. But he felt hope, for there were many sorts of mortal beauty.

He looked at his hands, admiring the sunlit dexterity of them. “Hello, strangers,” he whispered to them, checking his voice. “Do you know how to play a mean ax?”

They did. He knew to the marrow of his brand-new bones that they did. He could feel it, the wildly physical electric music pumping in them like the beat of his ardent new heart.

To Volos music was the center of every circle, the locus where crosses joined, the hub of every compass. And the axis on which his adopted world turned, the flame with which it blazed, was called rock and roll. This was the music that glorified the body, that thrust like a cock, enveloped like a cunt, pounded like his strong new pulse. This was the loud music, the renegade music, the music of tight jeans and suggestive lower-body movements, the music that shook its fist and thumbed its nose at its elders. This was the music of decadence, of defiant youth, of rash, rich life with death as its ultimate adventure. It was for this that he had chosen this rash, rich young country, this decadent city, in which to will himself into mortality.

And just being real was all Volos had believed it would be. The rhythm, the heartbeat, was ecstasy. It lidded his eyes, turned his face toward the sky, parted his lips. He shouted, he drew out the shout into a jolt of barbaric song, startling echoes off the Marlboro billboard, feeling for the first time the hot, vibrant rush of air in his throat, the willing effort and deep resonance of his chest. He flung wide his arms, he felt the cantilevering strength of his shoulders, the lift of his wings—

Wings.

Wings! Hell forever, no! His song splintered into a yell of despair. Hands clenched into fists, trembling tight, shaking hard, like the rest of him. With all his renegade strength of ego and in all the old languages of power, in Latin, Hebrew, Sanskrit, he commanded the wings to be gone, demanded the demons of the Unholy Sefiroth to take them from him; he wanted to be all and only human, human, human and damned! He kept up the effort for moments, until even his taut eyelids shook. But it was no use. Fatigue made him go limp. He was flesh now, he was frail, stubborn, defiant, and helpless within his own selfhood. A bird flies, and when death smashes it to the roadway it is reshaped. He could be reshaped only by his own death.

“Damn it to hell,” he whispered to the rooftop.

He kicked at some pigeons pecking near his feet. Sullen city birds, they merely walked away, complaining through their beaks. “Who does he think he is?” they remarked to each other. “Bigwing. Flap-happy.”

“Bigwing freak,” Volos said bitterly, face turned away from the sky. “Damn it all, who said God does not lie? Free will, my eye. He saw what I would do, and he has made a fool of me. I should have known.”

It was a familiar feeling, the rage. Not that he had considered leaving it behind. Rather, he cherished it, took satisfaction in the way it buzzed and clicked in him, high voltage, ready for him to use. He would wire it into this new world, lick it with his skilled hands into savage, dissolute music.

“What are you staring at?” he stormed at the billboard where the American hero gazed. “You can sit there and wait for your sunset. You can rot up there, for all I care. There is no halo on me. I came here to live fast and deep, and I will do it. Wings be damned, I am going to dance and learn love and live.”

Amid sulky, waddling birds, near the sweaty patch of rooftop where he had lain while giving birth to himself, he saw a sprawl of shimmering blue cloth. Though he had never before seen celestial garb in its physical manifestation—for it was not customary for immortal beings to risk incarnation, not at all—he recognized the garment and picked it up: a turbanlike thing, it was his headcovering, the very plain headcovering required of the lowest choir. Its only ornament was a
petalon
, a four-lobed flowerlike medal made of solid molded gold. This he pulled off and put in his jeans pocket. Pawned, it would give him the guitar he needed. As for the headcovering itself, symbol of respect and humility before the throne of the Almighty: with sudden energy he hurled it down, sending the pigeons flying at last. He trod on it, leaving the marks of his booted feet on the heavenly fabric, as he walked away.

chapter one

If you live in an eastern state, when you run away you go to the West Coast. This is one of the unwritten rules, the kind real folks live by, and Bob Balfour “Texas” McCardle at age forty had always lived by that kind of rules. When he ran away from his wife and West Virginia, he headed straight for the City of Angels.

Not that he had any grudge against his wife. Wyoma was a strong, good woman, held a well-paying job brazing metal in the air-conditioning factory, mothered their two daughters like an Apache, so sensible and tough he felt as if she didn't need him to speak of, maybe not until her old age. And it wasn't as if he didn't figure on going back. He sent her a quick letter when he got there.

Dear Wy,

Well as you can see by the postmark I am in L.A. I guess I surprised everybody pretty good taking off that way. You can tell people I'm looking for my father if you want. Truth is I got the shits of everything and had to get out awhile or bust. I don't know how to explain it any better but I don't think it's anything you did. I guess I'll be back when I get over it. Will keep you posted.

Bob

She was the only one who called him Bob. Everybody else in Mingo County had called him Texas since as a teenager he had gotten himself Western boots and a cowboy hat. The nickname was not meant kindly at first, since affection for the trappings of TV westerns was seen as a tacit betrayal of the good things of Persimmon, West Virginia. Who needed far places when home meant friends and family and God's own mountains? The boy showed signs of being a no-good like his daddy.

All McCardle's adult years, when he had tried hard to be as solid as anybody, the epithet had stuck with him. Well, hell, he didn't mind. He still preferred to dress western style, and knew he looked the part: slim no-hurry body, sandy hair, the weathered face of a guy who liked to be out on his horse. Though in fact he owned no horse, just wanted one. Went fishing or skeet shooting or woodchuck hunting with friends when he could, but wished sometimes he was a kid again, gunning for trouble all the time. Looked at the stars sometimes and wondered about things. Hated to think of growing fat or old.

Maybe there was some truth to what people had thought of him. Because here he was, wasn't he, where he had no business to be? Never content with what he had.

He had not signed his letter to Wyoma “Love.” They had been together seemed like forever, since he had got her pregnant at age sixteen. There had been no mush at their wedding or since, and he didn't think she would want or understand it now.

So if he was out along the one-way street below his cheap hotel at three in the morning it was maybe not because he was looking for his father.

“Hey, cowboy.” A black whore approached him. She wore a spangled dress that she had probably gotten at a Hollywood secondhand store, might have belonged to a movie star once. And she had shaved her eyebrows entirely. The penciled substitutes halfway up her forehead appeared to have crawled there, millipedes at a standoff. “You look like a guy with an appetite, Slim,” she wheedled.

“I'm a bed wetter,” Texas informed her. “Also I got a nervous disease makes me drool.” Being a cop most of his life, even just a backwoods West Virginia cop, had turned him off on hookers pretty good.

“Come on, Stretch. I can tell you're looking for some action.”

“No, thanks.” He was looking for something, all right, but he felt pretty sure it wasn't her.

“Want to buy some grass? I know where you can get good Colombian.”

“No, thanks.”

“And you ain't interested in me, huh?”

“Nope.”

“You looking for boys? They're down the other end of the block.” She sounded anxious to please. Maybe she worked daytimes at the tourist bureau.

“Jesus,” he said.

“Well, if it ain't that, then what the hell do you want, honey?”

As she spoke her eyes looked past him. He said, more to himself than to her, “Damned if I know,” and turned to see what she was gawking at.

Walking down the middle of the street, stopping traffic, was a tall youth, bare-chested, with wings.

Big wings. Must have been over six foot, and he must have been about the same. Their leading edges, folded, rose above shoulders that looked strong, muscled like he'd been pumping iron. Their tips trailed almost to his booted feet.

“Some sort of publicity stunt,” Texas said. City of Angels, right? The guy looked like a show biz hopeful, very young, very well hung, very pretty in the face. Some kid from Podunk, new in smog city, getting attention any way he could.

No, maybe not from Podunk. There was hot blood in this one. Full lips, high cheekbones, something strange, exotic, about his thin face. Skin the color of a dun stallion, not suntanned but earth-toned. Awfully dark for an angel.

“Where's he get off, wearing them things?” said the whore, her voice no longer eager to please—it had gone shrill. “He's gonna get his ass kicked coming here that way.”

“Probably just heading back to his room,” Texas offered. The kid should have taken off his wings before he came into that neighborhood. Texas wondered how he fastened the things on. The guy had crossed to the other side of the street, too far away for Texas to tell in the shadowy streetlamp light.

The whore snorted and turned away. Texas kept watching. They were damned impressive, those wings. Not white, though. This guy must think of himself as an angel of a different color. Or maybe it was just the glow off the neon bar signs, but the feathers looked pearly pink.

Which was the wrong color for the ambience in this particular garbage-filled gash of an asphalt-and-concrete hole where the stars never shone. Texas saw it coming—attention the kid didn't want. Issuing in gang uniform out of an alley. Jeering.