A Quiet Belief in Angels

  Lying down she was.

  Lying down like she was taking a rest.

  Could see the soles of her shoes.

  And no matter how hard I tried, no matter how many times I spoke to Alex, how many times I woke sweating in the cool half-light of nascent dawn, I could still feel those things, still see . . .

  Fall leaves curling up on their branches like children’s hands, infants’ hands: some final, plaintive effort to capture the remnants of summer from the atmosphere itself, and hold it, hold it close as skin, for soon it would be hard to recall anything but the brooding, swollen humidity that seemed to forever surround us.

  And thinking how she must have felt—

  Stop it! Help me . . . oh Jesus, help me!

  A girl like that, arms like twigs, legs like sapling branches, hair like flax, smell like peaches, eyes like washed-out sapphire stones.

  And realizing that it had happened again.

  And this time, just like the last time, there had been no one to help her.

  Her name was Mary. Same as my mother. Mary Tait out of Surrency, Appling County, twenty miles northwest of Jesup, five miles beyond the Wayne County line. She was twelve years old. Four days after her body was discovered there was a picture in the Appling County Gazette. Mary Tait was a pretty girl, wide-eyed and expectant for what she believed the world would give her, what she believed she could give in return, and that expression would be all the world would ever know of her. I cut out the column, hid it in the same box with the others. Some of them were now fading, the print like something seen through a smoky haze.

  The little that remained of Mary Tait’s torso and head had been found in a shallow grave near Odum. Odum sat near the Little Satilla River, a tributary of its big brother that branched near Screven. Both her hands had been severed, as had her legs at the thighs. These were never found, and from what could be read in the earth and rocks it seemed that the body parts had been hurled into the river and washed away. Odum was Wayne County; Mary Tait’s hometown was Appling. Now there was a representative from each of the six sheriffs’ departments: Dearing from Charlton, Ford Ruby from Camden, Fermor from Clinch, Landis from Liberty, and the two new boys—John Radcliffe from Appling and George Burwell from Wayne.

  Their first meeting took place in Jesup, a central point and closest to the location of Mary’s body. It was Tuesday, October fifteenth. Rain hammered the roads and fields, brutal and unrelenting, and the swollen breathlessness of the atmosphere lent itself to the dark melancholy of the gathering. They met in the mid-afternoon, but the overcast nature of the sky gave it the denser shadows of evening.

  I thought of my mother; that she believed she knew the identity of the child killer.

  “I don’t think so,” Alex said. “She’s . . . well . . .”

  “Crazy?” I ventured. We were seated in the kitchen of Alex’s house. I knew of the Jesup meeting. There was little else I could think about. Six counties, six sheriffs, nine dead girls.

  Alex smiled and looked away. “There isn’t an easy way to tell the truth, is there?”

  “Why look for an easy way?” I asked. “The truth is whatever the truth is. She’s crazy. I don’t know why, and now it doesn’t really matter. Wherever the hell she went she isn’t coming back. That I know. Maybe the guilt made her mind head as far south as it could go.”

  “Guilt?”

  I laughed. The sound came out hollow, edged with bitterness, but I did not feel bitter, not after all these years, all that had happened. “The thing that happened with Gunther Kruger—”

  Alex raised her hand. “Yes,” she said emphatically. “Yes, of course. Sorry, I thought you were talking about something else.”

  I didn’t reply. I walked to the window. The rain was a dirty torrent. The sky was orange, graying at the edges like turned meat, the air in it thick and tough to breathe.

  Later she asked, “What’re you thinking about?”

  “Thinking about?” I turned. “The meeting in Jesup.”

  “Is it because of the girl you found?”

  I frowned. “Is what because of the girl I found? What are you talking about?”

  Alex looked at me unerringly. “The fact that you can’t let go of this. The fact that this thing seems to consume you.”

  “It doesn’t consume me,” I retorted. “What gives you the impression it consumes me?”

  She waved her hand nonchalantly. “I don’t know where you’ve gone to, and I have a feeling you don’t know either.”

  I smiled. Alex had a way of gently reminding me when the edges between the inside and the outside had faded.

  “What happened with your book? You were going to write a book.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, closed it, shook my head. “Don’t feel like I have a lot to say right now.”

  Alex was quiet for a time, and then she rose and walked toward me. The expression on her face was unreadable, skin pale yet luminous, an orchid’s cantharus backlit by morning. Her eyes, well-deep, were narrowing as she approached me. I had seen such a thing before.

  I opened my mouth to speak.

  She reached me, raised her hand, pressed her index finger to my lips.

  “Ghosts,” she whispered. She leaned forward and pressed her cheek to mine.

  “Ghosts?” I asked.

  “Everyone has ghosts, Joseph . . . ghosts of the past, ghosts of the present, ghosts for the future.”

  “I don’t under—”

  “Shhh.” She leaned back a fraction and looked directly at me. “No one knows what has happened. No one knows except the killer himself. Your mother doesn’t know, six sheriffs from six counties don’t know. They will talk about it forever, but unless he does something to give them a name, a face, a clue to his identity, it will only ever be talking. Words are only so much use if they say something worth hearing.”

  Alex paused; she gripped my right hand, raised her left and held it against my face. “You have a great deal worth saying, Joseph Vaughan, always have. Even as a child—”

  “I don’t want to be reminded of being a child—”

  She laughed. “Why not? Christ, Joseph, you’re nineteen. You’re a man now, not a little boy. There’s a handful of years between us, and if you haven’t come to terms with that now then you probably never will.”

  She tried to pull away.

  I reached out and grabbed her, held her firmly, pulled her toward me and kissed her forcibly.

  Alex struggled against me, pulled away once more. “Perhaps you should think about what you have, not what—”

  I forced my mouth against hers again and silenced her. I sensed her eyes widen. I withdrew and looked at her.

  “So?” she said.

  “So what?”

  “So, are you going to keep on being morose and tormented about something you can do nothing about, or are you going to be a writer?”

  I smiled and shook my head.

  “Is that recognition of your own stupidity, or is it uncertainty about your answer?”

  “The former.”

  “You admit your own stupidity?” she teased.

  “I admit sufficient stupidity to make present company tolerable.”

  “Is that so?”

  “That is so.”

  “And you think saying things like that is the kind of thing that charms a girl?”

  “I don’t have to charm you.”

  “Oh, you don’t, do you? And why not?”

  I grinned. “Because I own you, Alexandra Webber, because I own you.”

  “Fuck you, Joseph Vaughan.”

  “And fuck you too.”

  “Not after the way you talk to me.”

  “Is that so?”

  She smiled wickedly. “That is so.”

  I grabbed her hands, held them close to her sides, and then turned her around to face the kitchen door. “Upstairs,” I said, and leaned forward to bite her shoulder.

  She yowled in pain and struggled to free herself. I held her even t
ighter, walked her to the bottom of the stairwell.

  “You think you’re gonna get me upstairs you have another thing coming,” she said.

  “Oh, I have something that’s going to come, sweetheart, believe me.”

  She laughed so much I nearly lost my grip.

  That night, the night of the sheriffs’ meeting in Jesup, we made love as if seeking revenge for an unknown crime.

  Ten days later I returned from some work I had taken with Reilly. I walked from his house, back across the field and down the road toward my own place.

  I saw Alex on the porch from fifty yards away. She stood motionless, and even though she did not move there was something about her that I sensed.

  I broke into a run. By the time I reached the end of the road and turned down the path I was breathing heavily.

  She did not move. Even as I reached her, my hand outstretched, she did not move.

  I opened my mouth to ask her what was wrong.

  She started to smile. Within a moment she was laughing.

  “No . . .” I said. “For sure?”

  She nodded, stepped back and sat down on the steps. “For sure, Joseph, as sure as it gets.”

  “Oh my God,” I whispered. I knelt down before her. I wrapped my arms around her waist, pulled her tight, and then—suddenly aware of the pressure—I released her. “Sorry,” I said.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay.”

  I felt overwhelmed with a breathless sense of elation; other things I couldn’t even begin to describe. I felt—more than any other time in my life—as if I had arrived. “Jesus, Alex, we’re going to be parents.”

  She ran her hand through my hair, she pulled me tight in return.

  “I know,” she whispered.

  Later that night, lying awake as Alex slept soundly, I thought of what had happened, and how it seemed to redress a balance. Like Alex had once said: a life created for a life lost. Another child had been murdered, and I was to be a father. At the time I was unsure which scared me the most.

  At times I have believed that age is the enemy of truth.

  As we grow older, with cynicism and bitterness heaped against us throughout the years, we lose our childlike innocence, and with it goes that element of perception that permits us to view the hearts of men. Look into their eyes, I would tell myself, and you will see the truth of who they are. Eyes are the windows of the soul; look closely and you will see the darker aspects reflected.

  Now I am old, and even though the truth is right in front of me, even though I am now closer to the truth of what happened than ever before, I find myself afraid to look. The thing I fear most is that I will see a reflection of myself.

  I remember Alabama and Tennessee. I remember towns like Union Springs, Heflin and Pulaski. I remember the miles I traveled, the person I became, and to think of such things makes me feel that I have lived three or four lives simultaneously. I grew older with each journey, each mile, each step. I grew bitter and twisted, and saw things within myself that I hoped never to see. I saw the impulse to kill, but not just to kill . . . I saw the impulse to make this man feel such pain. An eye for an eye.

  Now he faces me, and though he is dead I imagine he can hear my thoughts. I want him to understand what he has done, the lives he has ruined, the sadness he has brought to bear on innocent human beings. I need him to feel the terror that he inflicted, and though I know he feels none of these things, I can only hope.

  I hope there is a better place for me.

  A worse place for him.

  SEVENTEEN

  BY THE TIME ALEX PASSED HER FIRST TRIMESTER WE WERE struggling. Money came like drawing blood. She tired easily. Dr. Piper said there were indications of anemia and iron deficiency, and recommended a high intake of green leafy vegetables and rare meat, the same as my mother. I wondered if Dr. Piper possessed only sense enough for one diagnosis, one panacean remedy. We did not have the money for such things. Alex missed enough days at the school for the school board to call in a substitute teacher. The substitute, a bitter-hearted spinster, seemingly more desperate than honest, wrote a lengthy report to the state education board detailing anomalies between the prescribed curriculum and Alex’s term notes. An inspector came down at the end of January and interviewed some of the children. He found no cause for alarm, but board policy dictated that any report had to be subjected to lengthy scrutiny before action could be taken or waived. Until such time Alex was on suspension. They maintained a salary, but it was one quarter of her official amount. The substitute kept the job.

  Alex sat around the house growing more despondent and pale. I worked as best I could, relied on my relationship with adjoining farmers for some handiwork and chores. I thought to sell the house but could not. My mother, though committed to the care of the state, was alive and physically well. The law required an affidavit of intent, a sworn testimonial of proxy, before I could act on her behalf within the parameters of the law. In the spring of ’47, as Alex entered the third trimester, we packed her things and moved them into my mother’s house. We could not maintain the rent for Alex’s house, and it was lost. Alex cried for two days straight, cried herself to sleep, and woke in tears. She barely ate. I called Dr. Piper and he gave her iron injections. She suffered stomach cramps and there was blood in the toilet. She said nothing when I asked about it, but withdrew from me, from the people she knew, from the world. In May I drove her to Waycross Hospital, ostensibly to see my mother, and while we were there I stepped away for a brief moment and spoke to one of the orderlies. The orderly said he would have a doctor happen by us and comment on Alex’s complexion, ask her how she was feeling, take her away for an examination. What I had arranged worked well, and in Alex’s absence I sat and held my mother’s hand while she watched me through eyes that seemed shrouded by smoke. I looked at her and knew she wasn’t there. My mother had left some long time since, and to see her like that frightened me. I had driven out for Alex, not for my mother, and I did not believe I could see her again in such a state.

  During the hour we spent alone she spoke of things that made no sense to me at all. She talked of people I did not know, names I’d never heard before, and when I tried to clarify something she merely looked at me with an expression that made me feel like a foolish and ignorant child. Only once did she say something that bore a connection to my thoughts, and the moment the words left her lips I felt myself grow cold.

  She rambled, her words falling over one another in their hurry to leave her mind, and in the midst of some awkward monologue about “Edward John Tyrell, you know? Just like Edward John Tyrell he was, with his suit all pressed and his shoes shined bright as beacons, standing there looking like he’d done something wicked, you know?” And then she’d leaned forward, and the half smile folded into something altogether more sinister, and she said, “Like the children.”

  In that moment her eyes were clear and blue and piercing.

  “The children?” I asked.

  “Ha! The children! You can’t possibly know anything about the children! I was the only one who ever knew about the children . . . me, and him, of course. He knew all about the little girls because he knew who had done those terrible things—”

  And then she stopped mid-flight and stared at me, literally pinned me to the chair. “Who are you?” she snapped. “What are you doing here? I’m not telling you anything until you tell me who you are!”

  I frowned. “I’m Jose—”

  She raised her hand. “As a matter of fact, I don’t want to know who you are! I don’t want to know anything about who you are or what you’re doing. I want you to leave now. I was doing just fine until you came and started pressing me for answers to questions, questions I don’t even want to answer.” She paused to catch her breath. Her eyes seemed to cloud over once more and she turned her face away from me. “They will not poison me, you know? They try to poison me with their lies and filth, the things they say . . . I hear them. I hear them all, their whining voices, their
crying, and they don’t want to understand that there is nothing—” My mother turned to look at me. “There is nothing I can do to help them. It’s too late now, too late for anything to be done.”

  She started to cry silently, her chest rising and falling as she suppressed her sobs. I rose from the chair, stood for a moment looking down at her, and believed that it would be better if she died. Such a thought did not seem criminal, but rather compassionate.

  I left the room and went outside. I walked up and down the road for half an hour. When I returned I found Alex seated in the front reception area of the hospital. She looked as if she too had been crying.

  She said little, but then Dr. Gabillard came through and took me aside. He spoke to me in hushed words. I had forgotten about him, had avoided looking for him each time I had visited.

  “She will need to rest from now until the birth,” he said. His expression was grave and concerned. “She needs to eat well and rest. She needs a good diet, a very good diet. She needs to eat for two, and until now she has barely eaten for one—”

  “I understand—” I started, but the doctor interrupted me.

  “She has explained to me the situation,” Gabillard went on. “I didn’t ask her, she just told me. I appreciate your predicament, what with your mother here and the fact that you have no legal foothold in this situation.” He shook his head slowly. “The fact of the matter is that your mother is unwell. She has not responded to the treatment we have attempted, and the painful truth is that I don’t believe she ever will. I cannot see that she will ever leave Waycross.”

  Gabillard waited for me to speak, but there was nothing I could think to say.

  “See an attorney,” he said quietly. “Have an attorney draw up papers to transfer control of your mother’s affairs to you, and I will do what I can to have her sign them.” He paused and took a deep breath. “This is neither my jurisdiction nor my professional responsibility, but I cannot help the fact that I am human. Your mother is going to die before she leaves here, and I cannot stand by and let a pregnant woman suffer. Do this thing, Mr. Vaughan, and whatever moral issues might be raised, whatever element of social obligation and expectancy may or may not apply, I also seriously, very seriously, recommend that you marry this girl before your child is born.”