In the Matter of Fallen Angels: A Short Story Read online

  Apart from Claire Williams and Quinn shaving his face as meekly as one of Reverend Breedlove's lambs, the most exciting event by far to mark day five of the angel was the afternoon arrival of Old Man Stoat's granddaughter Angie, who unexpectedly returned from having run away with a tattoo artist with no fixed address and a vintage Harley-Davidson Knucklehead with bottle-green fenders.

  What Angie Stoat said when she saw the angel, after she screeched to a halt in front of the General with Metallica blaring from the enormous speakers she'd installed in the Chevy S-10 pickup truck that she'd bought with the money from her parents' life insurance policy and that everyone figured she'd sold on the road, after she threw open the back door of the General and barged prodigally back into life in Utopia, was, "Holy shit!" Which was, all things considered, an honest reaction.

  In any case, it gave everyone plenty to talk about, especially after Angie and Old Man Stoat got into a shouting match fit to rival anything the Reverends could dish out, and all the while the angel never blinked one celestial lash. It ended with Angie storming off, screen door banging, Chevy tires squealing and everyone agreeing that gossip-wise day five was the best yet, while Old Man Stoat sat on a corner of a picnic bench mumbling around a wad of Skoal so large that no one, not even Bobby MacReary, could understand a word he said.

  No one knew if Angie's leaving meant that she was gone temporarily for good again, but the fact was she had only driven as far as the levee a few miles downriver where all the teenagers hung out and drank beer and hillbilly lemonade and hooked up and broke up in endless adolescent geometries, all of which Angie had run away from once already. What awoke Quinn from his vigilant, blanket-huddled doze in the small hours of the night was that Angie Stoat cursed softly when she bruised her hip bumping into the corner of a picnic table.

  It was not raining that night and the moon was gibbous, nearly full, drenching the landscape in the sort of milky, pearls-on-black-velvet luminosity that drives poets to put words on paper. Quinn watched Angie Stoat stand before the coop, her fingers curling into the chicken-wire. He watched her step back and kick off her boots decisively, strip off the faded blue jeans and the sleeveless black t-shirt that said “Zeke's Custom Shop” on the front, watched her unlatch the coop and walk in naked. She had a tattoo of a dagger entwined with ivy on her right shoulder blade and her naked body twined about the angel's like ivy in the moonlight, limbs winding, one pale hand seeking to turn the angel's face from its moon-fixed gaze, shadow-tangled hair spilling like ink over the angel's shoulder, mouth seeking heat.

  To what avail? None. The angel stood firm in the moonlight, legs planted like columns, head tilted; maybe, just maybe, Quinn thought he saw the angel's wings quiver faintly when Angie Stoat disengaged herself with a short, rueful laugh, but that could have been a shivery trick of the silvery moon. She stood hugging herself and regarding the angel, then stepped out of the coop, latching the door behind her. Naked by moonlight Angie looked only seventeen—which she was—and too thin with shadows pooling in the hollows of her loins and revealing the frailty of her ribcage; but her skin was silver in the moonlight and when she stretched up her arms to put on her t-shirt her nipples were as dark as plums.

  Leaving, Angie Stoat caught Quinn's wakeful eye and paused and smiled an ambiguous smile that was neither triumphant nor defeated and was definitely not seventeen years old. "You would have tried it too," she said with a shrug, and strode off into the night on her long, lean, blue-jeanned legs. Quinn blinked his bleary eyes and settled back into his doze, not entirely sure he had ever awakened.

  So passed the fifth night, which may well have been the sixth, and it cannot be considered odd that neither Quinn Parnell nor Angie Stoat ever spoke of what was seen and done in those dark, mercuric hours, for a glance exchanged by moonlight is both conspiratorial and a secret of the most fragile sort that may be destroyed by a single word.

  On the sixth day the heat was worse, causing the air to shimmer and the cottonwood seeds to burst their pods and drift about the backyard like the down of molting swans. It was in fact too hot to do anything but gossip, and that languidly. Garrett Ainsworth brought out a couple of patio umbrellas to provide shade and gave out free ice for the coolers, since by now everyone just brought whatever refreshments they wanted. A lot of the parents brought Kool-Aid for the kids because it was cheaper than pop, and Hilary Putney-Smoot brought fresh mint from her herb garden for all the people who set out jars and made sun tea. Everyone took turns making sure that Quinn had something to drink and didn't dehydrate in the heat. Despite having shaved yesterday, he was looking more haggard today and a few people like Claire Williams and Garrett Ainsworth were beginning to wonder privately if it wasn't time to start worrying about him. If they had known what happened last night, they might have guessed that Quinn was suffering from lack of sleep and a voyeurist's hangover, but they would have been wrong. Quinn's increased preoccupation had in fact nothing to do with Angie Stoat's attempted celestial seduction and everything to do with the angel's slow deterioration.

  It was still Quinn who stayed, you see, and Quinn who noticed how the angel's tawny locks hung now lank and untended, how the angel's sculpted torso rose and fell with the effort of respiration, how it carried its wings imperceptibly lower and the feathers hung limp in the torpid heat. The once-dazzlingly-white cloth that girded its loins was merely white, no whiter than the cottonwood seeds blowing about the yard and catching in the chicken-wire. The angel's naked feet were grimy with dust and there was a streak of dirt on one bare shoulder where little Rick DeKalb had thrown a dirt-clod at it. Because he could not give voice to these things, Quinn stayed silent and suffered a grinding pain in his heart that he knew to be an intimation of mortality not his own.

  The main debate in Garrett Ainsworth's backyard that day was whether or not any events of a miraculous nature had occurred in Utopia since the angel had arrived. There was Miss Jessamine's nasturtium which had unexpectedly revived and Del Danby's black labrador retriever Lucy which had given birth to a litter of no less than twelve pups on Tuesday, but these were rather dubious as miracles go. There was Angie Stoat's prodigal return, of course, but this was not as miraculous as would be, say, her graduating from high school on time next spring. Madoc Jones claimed to have heard the voice of God in the woods behind the old Oosterberg place, but everyone knew he went out into the woods to hunt for hallucinogenic mushrooms, so that didn't really count. Besides, he was Welsh.

  In the early evening hours it cooled off a bit and Patsy Tucker donated the usage of her croquet set for anyone who was interested in playing, which it turned out was quite a few. Bobby MacCreary fell in the creek trying to make a tricky shot after Claire Williams had knocked his ball out of the course, but declared that it was refreshing and jumped in again to prove it. After that a lot of the kids wanted to jump in the creek, but then Bobby MacReary discovered he had a leech on his ankle and almost passed out when Garrett pulled it off, and after that no one wanted to go in the creek. Claire Williams won three out of four games of croquet and admitted that she and her husband used to play it a great deal at their friends the VanderKemps' summer house and then her lips compressed into a thin line and she wouldn't say anything more about it.

  Around 7:30 p.m. Bob Angler—who wasn't supposed to be driving—and a couple of his friends pulled up with a mess of brook trout and a keg of beer and organized a fish fry. All in all, despite the heat it turned out that the sixth day was a good one and everyone except Quinn went home after dark declaring that they didn't remember when they'd had so much fun. Which was a good thing since this would be the last day, although of course no one knew this at the time.

  That night the moon rose full, and it was so round and perfect that you knew last night's moon had only been for practice. For a long time after dark sounds of life could still be heard throughout the town, people shouting, cars passing, doors slamming and occasionally music, which was not surprising what w
ith it being Saturday night and a full moon. But after a while, in the hours between when the latest revelers went to bed and the earliest risers rose from it, everything became silent and still. The moon was at its apex then, small and bright and high overhead, lifting the angel's regard to its own apex with raised chin, bare-throated and vulnerable in the moonlight.

  And it was then that Quinn Parnell got up. All his joints were stiff and made clicking sounds when he moved and the muscles in his legs were knotted and cramped. He hobbled over to the coop like an old, old man and supported himself by hooking his fingers in the chicken-wire the way Angie Stoat had done, and he stared at the angel.

  And slowly, slowly—though not compared to how it followed the orbit of sun and moon—the angel lowered its moon-fixed gaze and looked Quinn full in the face. Its wings quivered, for sure this time, raising a little breeze that stirred the bits of cottonwood seed stuck in the chicken-wire.

  How long did they stand staring at one another? Quinn never knew, only that he never ever forgot it and never ever told another living soul. When he could look away he did, and unlatched the coop with hands that trembled before turning his back and hobbling away on pain-racked legs. When he reached the farther picnic table he stopped and waited.

  There was no sound and no change in the subtle moonlight, but presently a brief wind sprang up and died again, and Quinn waited another full minute afterward before turning around and seeing that the coop was empty and there was no sign of an angel anywhere in Garrett Ainsworth's backyard.

  It took a while, but after that things pretty much went back to normal.