A Quiet Belief in Angels Read online

  Later I would remember my father’s burial. Remember that day in Augusta Falls, Charlton County—some antebellum outgrowth bordering the Okefenokee River—remember an acreage that was more swamp than earth; the way the land just sucked everything into itself, ever-hungry, never satiated. That swollen land inhaled my father, and I watched him go; I all of eleven years old, he no more than thirty-seven, me and my mother standing with a group of uneducated and sympathetic farmers from the four corners of the world, jacket sleeves to their knuckles, rough flannel trousers that evidenced inches of worn-out sock. Rubes perhaps, more often uncouth than mannered, but robust of heart, hale and generous. My mother held my hand tighter than was comfortable, but I said nothing and I did not withdraw. I was her first and only child, because—if stories were true, and I had no reason to doubt them—I had been a difficult child, resistant to ejection, and the strain of my birth had ruined the internal contraptions that would have enabled a larger family.

  “Just you and me, Joseph,” she later whispered. The people had gone—Kruger and Reilly Hawkins, others with familiar faces and uncertain names—and we stood side by side looking out from the front door of our house, a house raised by hand from sweat and good timber. “Just you and me from now on,” she said once more, and then we turned inside and closed the door for the night.

  Later, lying in my bed, sleep evading me, I thought of the feather. Perhaps, I thought, there were angels who delivered and angels who took away.

  Gunther Kruger, a man who would become more evident in my life as the days went on, told me that Man came from the earth, that if he didn’t return there would be some universal imbalance. Reilly Hawkins said that Gunther was a German, and Germans were incapable of seeing the bigger picture. He said that people were spirits.

  “Spirits?” I asked him. “You mean like ghosts?”

  Reilly smiled, shook his head. “No, Joseph,” he whispered. “Not like ghosts . . . more like angels.”

  “So my father has become an angel?”

  For a moment he said nothing, leaning his head to one side with a strange squint in his eye. “Your father, an angel?” he said, and he smiled awkwardly, like a muscle had tensed in the side of his face and would not so easily release. “Maybe one day . . . figure he has some work to do, but yes, maybe one day he’ll be an angel.”

  TWO

  ALONG THE COAST OF GEORGIA—CROOKED RIVER, JEKYLL ISLAND, Gray’s Reef and Dover Bluff—roads that were more half-bridges and causeways wishing they were roads, every now and then skipping stretches of water like flat stones spinning from the hands of children; a flooded swell of islands, creeks, sounds, salt marshes and river inlets, trees shrouded in Spanish moss, split logs bound together to navigate a corduroy track across the deeper swamps, while the flatlands in the southeast rose gradually across the state to the Appalachians. The Georgians grew rice, and then Eli Whitney came with the cotton gin, and field hands harvested peanuts, and settlers tapped the pines for curing rope, caulking the seams of sails with pitch and turpentine for paint. Sixty thousand square miles of history, a history I learned, a history I believed in.

  A tablet-arm chair; a one-room schoolhouse; a teacher called Miss Alexandra Webber. A wide-jowled open prairie of a face, eyes cornflower blue, simple and uncomplicated. Her hair was flax and linen, and forever she smelled of licorice and peppermint, and something beneath that like ginger root or sarsaparilla. She gave no quarter, expected none in return, and her depth of patience was matched solely by the spirit of her anger if she felt you had willfully disobeyed her.

  I sat beside Alice Ruth Van Horne, a strange, sweet girl I found myself caring for in some inexplicable way. There was something simple and affecting in the way she twirled her bangs as she concentrated, every once in a while glancing back at me like I had the answer she couldn’t find. Perhaps I gave her the impression I understood this thing she sought, perhaps for no other reason than appreciating her attention, but when she was absent I was aware of that absence in some manner other than physical presence. I was eleven, soon to be twelve, and sometimes I considered things that would not have been appropriate to share with others. Alice represented something that I did not fully understand, something that I knew would be altogether too difficult to explain. For the four years I had attended the school, Alice had been there, ahead of me, beside me, for one term seated at the desk behind. When I looked at her she smiled, sometimes blushed, and then she would look away, only to wait a moment and look at me again. I believed her sentiment was uncomplicated and flawless, and I knew that one day, perhaps, both of us might recall it as a perfect memory of who we had been as children.

  Miss Webber, however, represented something else entirely. I loved Miss Alexandra Webber. My love was as clear and simply defined as her features. Miss Webber conducted her classes along Robert’s Rules of Order, and her voice, her silence, everything that she was and everything I imagined she would ever be, was an anodyne and a panacea following the death of my father.

  “Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne . . . who has heard of Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne?”

  Silence. Nothing but the sound of my heart as I watched her. Seventeen of us were crowded in that narrow plankboard room, and not one raised their hand.

  “I am disappointed,” Miss Webber said. Apparently she had come all the way from Syracuse to teach us. People from Syracuse breathed different air, air that made their heads clear, their minds sharp; people from Syracuse were a different race.

  “Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, born in 1722, died in 1792. He was a British general during the Revolution. He found himself surrounded by our troops at Saratoga on the seventeenth of October, 1777. It was the first great American victory and a truly decisive battle of the war.”

  She paused. My heart missed a beat.

  “Joseph Vaughan?”

  I damn near swallowed my tongue.

  “Where have you gone to, Joseph Vaughan . . . surely you’re not on this earth?”

  “I am, miss, y-yes . . . yes, of course I am.”

  The sound of cupped laughter, like the ghosts of trick-or-treat children. Children I knew from Liberty County and McIntosh, others from Silco and Meridan. Alice was amongst them. Alice Ruth Van Horne. Laverna Stowell. Sheralyn Williams. They came from all around to learn of life with Miss Alexandra Webber.

  “Well, I am very pleased to hear that, Joseph Calvin Vaughan. Now, in order to demonstrate how much attention you have been paying this afternoon, you can stand beside your desk and explain to us exactly what happened at Brandywine, Southeast Pennsylvania in the same year.”

  My précis was stale and insubstantial. I was instructed to stay late and wash the blackboard rags.

  She stood over me, at first I believed to ascertain whether I would shirk my duty, perhaps to reprimand me further for my lack of concentration.

  “Joseph Vaughan,” she started.

  The schoolroom was empty. It was mid-afternoon. My father had been dead the better part of three months. I would be twelve in five days.

  “Our lesson today . . . I had the definite impression that you were bored.”

  I shook my head.

  “But you were not paying attention, Joseph.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Webber . . . I was thinking about something else.”

  “And what would that have been?”

  “I was thinking about the war, Miss Webber.”

  “You have heard about the war in Europe?” she asked. She seemed surprised, though I would not have known why.

  I nodded.

  “Who told you?”

  “My mother, Miss Webber . . . my mother told me.”

  “She is a cultured and intelligent woman, isn’t she?”

  “I don’t know, Miss Webber.”

  “Believe me, Joseph Vaughan, any American woman living in Georgia who knows about Adolf Hitler and the war in Europe, I’ll tell you now that that woman is a cultured and intelligent person.”

  “Yes, Miss Webber.”

 
“Come sit down, Joseph,” Miss Webber said. I looked up at her. I was a handful of years younger and perhaps half a foot shorter.

  She indicated her desk at the front of the classroom. “Come,” she said. “Come sit here and talk with me for a moment or two before you leave.”

  I did as I was told. My skin felt too big for my frame. I could feel my skeleton struggling as it dealt with such flexibility and inexactitude.

  “Tell me another word for a color,” she said.

  I looked at her, my puzzlement evident.

  She smiled. “It’s not an exam, Joseph, just a question. Do you know another word for a color?”

  I nodded.

  “Tell me.”

  “A hue, miss.”

  “Good,” she said, and smiled wide. Her cornflower eyes blossomed beneath a Syracuse sun.

  “And another word?”

  “Another?”

  “Yes, Joseph, another word for a color.”

  “A shade perhaps, a tint . . . something like that?”

  She nodded. “And can you think of another word meaning many?”

  “Many? Like a host, a multitude?”

  Miss Webber tilted her head to one side. “A multitude?”

  I nodded.

  “Where d’you find a word like that, Joseph Vaughan?”

  “In the Bible, Miss Webber.”

  “Your mother has you read the Bible?”

  I shook my head.

  “You read it yourself?”

  “A little.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I wanted—” I could feel the color flushing my cheeks. How many words for such a feeling? I thought.

  “You wanted what, Joseph?”

  “I wanted to learn about angels.”

  “Angels?”

  I nodded. “The seraphim and the cherubim, the celestial hierarchy.”

  Miss Webber laughed, and then she caught herself. “I’m sorry, Joseph. I didn’t mean to laugh. You merely surprised me.”

  I said nothing. My cheeks were hot; like the summer of ’33 when the river dried up.

  “Tell me about the celestial hierarchy.”

  I shifted awkwardly in the chair. I felt something like embarrassment. I didn’t want Miss Webber to ask about my father.

  “There are nine orders of angels,” I said, my voice catching at the back of my throat like it had encountered a crab net. “The seraphim . . . fiery six-winged creatures who guard God’s throne. They’re known as the Sacred Ardor. Then there are the cherubim, who have large wings and human heads. They are God’s servants and the Guardians of Sacred Places. Then there are thrones, dominions, virtues, powers, principalities, and then come the archangels, like Gabriel and Michael. Finally there are angels themselves, the divine intermediaries who protect people and nations.”

  I paused. My mouth and throat were dry. “Michael fought Lucifer and cast him down to Gehenna.”

  “Gehenna?” Miss Webber asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Gehenna.”

  “And why did Michael fight Lucifer?”

  “He was the lightbringer,” I said. “That’s what his name means . . . lux means light and ferre means to carry. Some people call him the morning star, other people call him the lightbringer. He used to be an angel. He was supposed to bring his light forward and show God where Man had sinned.”

  I glanced toward the door. I felt stupid, like perhaps I was being tricked into talking about things. I looked back at Miss Webber and she was just smiling, her expression one of interest and curiosity.

  “He brought his light and showed God where Man had sinned, and he collected evidence, sort of like a policeman would. He then told God, and God would punish people for what they’d done.”

  “So what was wrong with that?” Miss Webber asked. “Seemed like he was just doing his job.”

  I shook my head. “He did at first, and then he became more interested in pleasing God than in the truth. He started tricking people into doing bad things so he could tell God all about it. He brought temptation to Man, and was tempted himself. He started to tell lies, and God got real mad at him. Then Lucifer tried to start a mutiny amongst the angels, and Michael fought with him and he was cast down to Gehenna.”

  I stopped talking. My mouth had run away with itself. By the time I realized where it was going it had crossed the horizon. The dust left in its wake parched my throat and made me cough.

  “You want a drink of water, Joseph?” Miss Webber asked.

  I shook my head.

  She smiled again. “I am impressed, Joseph. Impressed that you know so much of your Bible.”

  “I don’t know much about the Bible,” I said. “Just a little bit about angels.”

  “You believe in angels?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Of course I do.” It seemed strange to me that she would ask such a question.

  “And why did you want to learn about angels, Joseph?”

  I swallowed my fear loudly. It made a lump like a walnut in the front of my throat. “Because of my father.”

  “He wanted you to learn about angels?”

  “No, miss . . . because Reilly Hawkins told me that if my father worked real hard he might become one.”

  She paused for a moment. She looked at me, perhaps more closely than before, but she did not smile, nor did she laugh. “He died, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “When did he die, Joseph?”

  “July the twelfth.”

  “Just a few weeks ago?”

  “Yes, Miss Webber, about three months ago.”

  “And how old are you now, Joseph?”

  I smiled. “I’ll be twelve in five days.”

  “Five days, eh? And you have brothers and sisters?”

  I shook my head.

  “Just you and your mother?”

  “Yes, Miss Webber.”

  “And who taught you to read?”

  “My mother and my father . . . my father used to tell me it was one of the most important things you could ever do. He said you could stay in a one-room shack in a two-horse town for the whole of your life, but you could see everywhere in the world right there in your mind’s eye so long as you could read.”

  “He was a wise man.”

  “With a bad heart,” I said.

  She looked momentarily taken aback, as if I’d said something out of turn.

  “I’m sorry—” I started.

  She raised her hand. “It’s okay.”

  “Maybe I should go now, Miss Webber.”

  She nodded. “Yes, perhaps you should. I’ve kept you too long.”

  I edged along the chair and stood at the side of the table. I took my small heart in my hands, fragile like a bird in a straw-built cage. “It was nice to talk to you, Miss Webber,” I said, “and I’m sorry for not paying attention about Brandywine.”

  She smiled. She reached out her hand and touched the side of my face. Just for a heartbeat, a fraction of a second. I felt energy surging through me, energy that filled my chest, swelled my stomach, gave me a feeling like I needed to pee.

  “Never mind, Joseph . . . I can imagine you were some place a whole lot more important.” She winked. “Go,” she said, “away with you now, and keep your mind’s eye open.”

  My birthday was a Saturday. I rose to the sound of Negroes singing in Gunther Kruger’s field. On the stoop was a brown paper-wrapped parcel, my name printed in clear and unmistakable letters—JOSEPH CALVIN VAUGHAN. I carried it inside and showed my mother.

  “So open it, boy,” she insisted. “It’ll be a gift, perhaps from the Krugers.”

  The Long Valley by John Steinbeck.

  Inside it bore the inscription: Live life with a bold heart, Joseph Vaughan, as if life is too small to contain you. Best wishes on this, your twelfth birthday. Your teacher, Miss Alexandra Webber.

  “It’s from my teacher,” I said. “It’s a book.”

  “I can see that it’s a book, child,” my mother said, a
nd, drying her hands on her apron front, she took it from me. The cover was stiff board, the pages smelled like fresh ink, and when she handed it back to me it came with the entreaty to care for it well.

  I held the book in my hands and pressed it close against my chest, almost afraid to drop it, and then I paused before I opened it. I closed my eyes and thanked whatever had inspired Miss Webber to demonstrate such an act of generosity.

  THE CHRYSANTHEMUMS

  The high gray-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world. On every side it sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a closed pot.

  I carried the book outside, sat there on the porch steps, the sound of the black people in the fields, the smell of pancakes and a new morning all around me, and I read—page after page, flying by words I neither understood nor cared to understand, because there I found something that challenged and frightened me, that excited me with a rush of fever and passion that I could not describe.

  Later I told my mother that I wanted to write.

  “Write to whom?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “I want to write a book, write several books. I want to be a writer.”

  She leaned over me, pulled the covers up around my throat and kissed my forehead.

  “A writer, is it?” she said, and smiled. “Then it seems to me you better start carrying a pencil.”

  On Friday, November third, 1939, Alice Ruth Van Horne’s body was found. I knew her better than anyone in my class. She had green eyes, and hair that was neither gold nor red nor brown but the myriad colors of a thousand fallen leaves. When she laughed it sounded like some exotic bird had mistakenly flown in through our window. In her lunch pail she brought sandwiches, which I knew she’d made herself. The crusts were cut off and wrapped separately.

  “Why d’you do that?” I asked her one time.

  “You want one?” She held out a thin, brown twig.

  I shook my head.

  “Try it,” she said.