Angel Thieves

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  TO ANNE BUSTARD FUSILIER, SWEET BELIEVER

  The Bayou

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  BUFFALO BAYOU

  The bayou giveth and the bayou taketh away. You can’t trust her, not for a minute. Give her the sun and she’ll blind you. Give her the rain and she’ll swallow you. Give her a storm and she’ll claim your highways and your bridges. She’ll breach your shiny new buildings, your waking nightmares, your broken heart.

  The bayou’s no angel, that’s a fact. But who’s to say she hasn’t seen one or two, their tattered wings, their tangled hair.

  Pay attention.

  Listen.

  Pray if the spirit moves you.

  Cade Curtis

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  SATURDAY, AFTER MIDNIGHT, OCTOBER

  Cade Curtis doesn’t know so much about praying, but he does know about angels.

  Heads bowed, hands held together in prayer, or maybe, palms toward the sky. Carved out of stone.

  Cade’s heart beats fast, like it always does whenever he’s out like this, with his father, Paul. Just the two of them.

  This is what they do, isn’t it? Wait for starless, moonless nights, rain-soaked or foggy, and together, father and son, make their way to hallowed ground. Churchyards. Graveyards. Bone yards.

  From their seats in the cab of their Ford F-150 pickup, they take note of the dilapidated church, so faded that it’s only barely visible in the glare of their headlights, a ghost of a church.

  The steeple is knocked askew, maybe the victim of a huge gust of wind or a fallen tree. Or maybe, Cade thinks, it simply collapsed of its own emptiness, slumping into itself like a crumpled paper bag. Abandoned buildings do that.

  His father parks the truck on the side away from the road, out of sight of anyone who might pass by. Unlikely, thinks Cade. The route they took to get here was as deserted as this church, even though it was barely an hour’s drive north from the center of bustling Houston. Together they step out of the warmth of the cab and into a cold mist that quickly turns to rain. Cade zips up his jacket. His dad rests his hand on Cade’s shoulder. Cade leans against him, but only for a second. They need to get on with it. Cade reaches into the back of the truck for a blanket, soggy from the rain, and Paul gathers his backpack. In it are the tools of his trade—a chisel, a hammer, a rope.

  The two make their way among the scattered headstones, square concrete blocks with barely visible names etched into them. Cade notices one monument that looks like a carved tree up next to a rusted fence.

  “Woodmen of the World,” says Paul.

  Cade has seen others like it, in other cemeteries. They mostly look like stumps, with the occasional ax leaning against them, as if the person buried there simply chopped a tree down, leaned their ax against it, and died. There are also a few crosses, some toppled onto their faces. Those aren’t what Cade and Paul are after, even though some, he’s sure, are carved of marble and could bring a fair price.

  He sweeps the grounds with the beam of his flashlight, paying attention to the monuments, the trees, the fence posts along the edges of the yard, the things he can see above the ground, and tries not to think about what is below the surface.

  “Just bones,” says Paul. “Old bones.”

  Nevertheless, Cade’s careful where he steps, especially among those graves where the ground has sunk like a shallow dish. It means that the coffin below has rotted and caved in. What’s to keep an old skull from floating to the surface?

  He pulls his jacket a little tighter beneath his chin. He’s never actually seen any bones. But it doesn’t keep him from imagining them rising to the earth with each passing day.

  Finally they find the angel, all alone in the far corner away from the road. “Texas granite,” says Paul. Cade knows that this makes her worth the trouble.

  She stands beneath a small grove of trees, draped in a curtain of vines that hang from their limbs. He and Paul pull the vines away. She’s taller than most of the angels that they’ve found, and the pedestal she stands on is anchored to a solid slab of concrete. Even in this darkness, he can tell how lovely she is. Mrs. Walker will say that she is “full of grace.” Cade hopes so. They need some grace. He shifts from one foot to another. Mostly they need the money this angel will bring.

  It’s obvious to Cade that the church, the graveyard, the angel—especially the angel—have been neglected. “I don’t think anyone will miss her,” says Paul. Cade doesn’t doubt his father. It’s clear, despite the dark, that no one has tended this cemetery in a very long time.

  He points his small flashlight toward the base of the statue while his father chips at the old grout with a hammer and chisel. The thin beam shatters into watery pieces before it can reach the angel’s feet.

  At last, Paul says, “Okay, I think she’s loose now.” Cade pockets the flashlight, throwing them into deeper darkness. They stop to get their bearings, and together, they wrap the statue in the wet blanket and snug the rope securely around her. Father and son stand on either side and rock her back and forth, to break her loose. Then, on the count of three, they lift her off the pedestal. Despite the blanket and his leather work gloves, the statue’s iciness penetrates into all ten of his fingers. She’s heavy. Solid granite. The dead weight of her pulls at his shoulders.

  “Careful,” Paul says. So much rain seems to add weight to the statue, and Cade feels it slipping from his grip. He leans over a bit, stumbles.

  “Hold up!” his father whispers. Cade freezes.

  The sound of tires on wet pavement is unmistakable. As gently as they can, they lower the angel onto the ground, then squat down beside her.

  Whoever is driving is slowing down; the light from the headlamps bounces off the trees above them, throws broken prisms against the headstones. Cade is sure he can feel the shards of light prick the back of his jacket.

  Who would be out on an old road at this hour? His mind races. A sheriff? A hunter? Cade knows it’s not anybody he’d want to meet while stealing from the dead, in the dead of night.

  He tries to keep from falling backward into the mud, tries to keep from thinking about the bones below his boots. He hates this. The rain. The mud. The drumbeat in his ears.

  At last the car passes. Paul straightens up, gives Cade his hand, pulls him up. They’re almost the same height, these two, nudging up against six feet, and they look so much alike, they could pass for brothers. Same sandy-blond hair. Blue-green eyes. Broad shoulders. Built for lifting heavy objects. Like this angel.

  “Let’s just take it slow,” Paul says. Cade’s legs are stiff from squatting down, so he shakes them out. He knows that if he slips on the muddy ground, he or his father or both of them might wind up being crushed by their quarry. Killed by an angel. How ironic would that be?

  He takes a step forward without noticing the invisible vine that stretches from a shaggy oak tree down to the ground. Its stinging nettles grab his face and bite into the tender skin beneath his right eyebrow.

  “Fuck!” he says, lurching forward. The statue slips, pulling both of them with her. It takes all their strength to keep from tumbling to the ground.

  “Take a second,” he hears his dad say. Once more they set the statue down, and Cade pulls off his glove, cups his hand to catch the freezing rain a
nd splash it on his burning eye.

  “You okay?” asks Paul.

  Cade nods. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he lies.

  Paul pauses. “Let’s hope she’s worth it.” Cade hopes so too. Finally they manage to push and pull her into the truck’s bed and slam the tailgate shut.

  “Good work,” says Paul. But for Cade, the job is not quite done. He digs the flashlight out of his pocket. Paul lifts his chin, nods. “Hurry,” he says. Cade knows it’s unlikely he’ll find what he’s looking for, but he can’t get back into the truck until he at least takes a look.

  If only, he thinks.

  He aims the beam of light across the scattered graves.

  It only takes a moment to see that what he’s looking for isn’t there. But before he turns back to the truck, he shines the light on the base of the angel they’ve just removed.

  The dates on the marker read b. 1878–d. 1899. Cade does the math. The woman who was buried there was twenty-one when she died. The angel is so much older. Stone outlasts people, after all.

  Just below her name are the words Beloved Wife, Mother, Daughter. She must have mattered, else why put an angel on her grave, especially one carved out of Texas granite? Once the angel was cleaned up, once the multiple coats of soot and resin and algae and bird droppings were washed away, she would recover her original color, a shade known as “sunset red,” which wasn’t so much red as golden pink. Take a good look at the Texas State Capitol building, or the Galveston Seawall, and you’ll see. Better, take a look at a Texas sunset.

  Cade glances at the truck’s bed. Anyone else might think there was a body back there. Cade clicks off the flashlight, pockets it again, and climbs into the truck with his dad.

  “It’s almost like she didn’t want to leave,” says Paul, rubbing his hands together to warm them up. Beloved Wife, Mother, Daughter.

  Unbidden, an image of Cade’s mother appears. Evie. Cade’s met her only once, but she stays in his head all the same, like a firefly, flicking on and off. There, not there. He pushes his wet hair back and wipes his face on his wet sleeve as Paul turns the heat up full blast. The sting from the scratch has gone from burn to simmer. Cade pulls the visor down and looks in the mirror. It looks like someone has taken a fine-point marker and drawn a line underneath his eyebrow.

  “Lemme see,” his dad says.

  Cade turns toward him. “It’s just a scratch.”

  His father switches on the running lights, puts the truck in gear, and weaves his way from behind the broken-down church; he eases back onto the road.

  As they near downtown Houston, Paul is extra cautious, careful to stay under the speed limit, mindful of traffic lights; he keeps his distance from other cars, to avoid any attention from the police. Because how do you explain an angel in the back of your truck at four o’clock in the morning?

  How do you explain an angel at all?

  Finally they pull into the garage behind Walker’s Art and Antiques. Paul puts the truck into park and turns off the heater. The quiet rolls over them, and for a moment, neither moves.

  Maybe it’s the simmering scratch, so close to his eye, that gives him some clarity, but Cade can see the cost etched onto his father’s face. Mrs. Walker calls the two of them “angel hunters.” That’s the euphemistic term for their profession.

  Nevertheless, call it what you will. A thief is a thief.

  In the sudden quiet, Cade gets it—this is not what he wants to be. And as if the angel herself was whispering into his ear, he realizes he needs to do something else. Something he can do in the light of day. Something Good.

  And once again, he wishes they had found a different angel, one that began with if only.

  Soleil Broussard

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  SUNDAY, OCTOBER

  Come Sunday morning, walk up the broad steps of the Church on the Bayou. Enter through its graceful carved doors, doors that are over a hundred years old, and right there, head bowed, you will see Soleil Broussard, sixteen years old, sitting beside her parents. She wears a small gold cross on a thin gold chain around her neck. There’s a tiny honey bear jar tattoed on the inside of her left wrist.

  This church is like Soleil’s second home. Her mother is the chief administrator, which is the second most important job after the minister. Soleil knows it as well as anybody and better than most—every crack and cranny, every inch of this old building, including the courtyard.

  This church. Every year she attends summer Bible school, and every Christmas she plays a shepherd in the annual Nativity scene (except when she was three, when she was a lamb). When you are the daughter of the chief administrator, you are expected to participate.

  She listens while the handbell choir, dressed in their red-and-white robes, rings out a version of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Their lovely notes hover in the sanctuary long after the song is done.

  Soleil closes her eyes and breathes in the familiar smells—beeswax from the candles; roses that have been clipped from a climbing bush in the church courtyard; her mother’s Aveeno hand lotion; the remnants of her father’s Camel cigarette, the one he smoked that morning with his coffee. The combination means Sunday.

  But this Sunday is not like past Sundays. Soleil sits up straight, back against the pew. She turns her face directly toward the minister. “Let us rejoice in this happy day,” the minister, Reverend Clara, says.

  Soleil? Mostly she loves to rejoice. If she could stand up in the middle of the service, she would shout, “Rejoice, for heaven’s sake!”

  Instead, she grabs her hair in her right hand and twists it over her shoulder, like she’s wringing it out, as if she could squeeze some rejoicing out of her hair. Her mother taps her on the arm to make her stop.

  Standing on the broad platform next to the altar is the Byrd family. Two parents and little Tyler, who is nestled in his father’s arms. The three of them are beaming.

  This family has been through so much, and now they are embarking upon a new life, but rather than starting that new life here in Houston, where Soleil could see them regularly, they are moving to California . . . and taking Tyler with them. New jobs and a family full of aunts and uncles and cousins are waiting for them. Waiting with open arms.

  So rejoice, okay? The thing is, Soleil is happy for them. She is. But she is not so happy for herself.

  She hears the minister’s familiar words: Let us be the heart and hands of Jesus. Soleil is fairly certain that Jesus would not be having His own nonrejoicing moment in the midst of all this happiness.

  She knew this day would come, when Tyler and his parents would leave, but knowing that and living it were two different things.

  And now, this persistent rain makes it all the worse. It was rain, after all—buckets of it—that had brought the Byrds to the Church on the Bayou in the first place.

  Soleil feels a lump in her throat. The Byrds lost everything in that storm. They were rescued from their rooftop by a neighbor with a flat-bottomed boat. When they arrived at the church, exhausted, Mr. Byrd was holding on to Tyler, and Mrs. Byrd was holding on to a plastic shopping bag with everything they owned. All that was left: a few disposable diapers and a bag of puppy chow.

  Tyler, clinging to his father’s neck, would not stop crying.

  The Byrds spent days on cots in the broad hallway of the church, days and days of rain and wind, and more people seeking shelter. And Tyler, crying.

  But that was a year ago. And now, here they were, with enough money to move back to California where they have family who can help them rebuild their lives.

  The honey bear on Soleil’s wrist is tender. The newness of it still surprises her.

  “Brothers and sisters,” says the minister. “Let us pray.” Soleil leans into the minister’s voice. She closes her eyes again and holds her hands together.

  “Let us call on the traveling mercies,” says the minister. “To carry this family safely all the way to Los Angeles, into the arms of their kin.”

  In the middle of t
he prayer, Soleil looks up. There is Tyler, safe in his father’s embrace, next to his mother. As she looks at him, he twists around and spots Soleil. His little face lights up, and he waves, his tiny fingers flashing open and shut like a warning light, his toddler smile as big as the moon.

  Just in time, the choir begins to sing. “This little light of mine . . . I’m gonna let it shine . . . this little light of mine . . .” Her mother leans over and whispers, “Your signature song, Lay-Lay.” Soleil winces at her nickname. The sound of it doesn’t make anything better.

  The choir keeps singing. . . . “Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”

  But how, Soleil wonders, can she get her light to shine with all this blue coming down? And yet? And yet? There’s this honey bear tattoo on the inside of her wrist. And it seems to hold a message: Rejoice!

  Zorra

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  SUNDAY, OCTOBER

  People come and people go. That is the way of things. The bayou knows this. It’s the same with the animals. Once there were ivory-billed woodpeckers, Carolina parakeets, red wolves along her course. They came. They went. But what about the ocelot? A young one, not fully grown, born in the Laguna Atascosa, four hundred miles south. What about Zorra?

  She presses herself as far toward the back of the pen as she can, but it doesn’t keep the pouring rain from seeping through the leaky roof of her enclosure and drenching her golden spotted coat. Despite its thickness, she shivers, tucks her paws underneath her chest. Where is her bright yellow sun, the warm dirt beneath her feet? Where is the cry of the nearby coyote, the one that sang her to wake every night in time for the hunt, and then sent her to sleep before dawn?

  These memories buzz all around her like a nest of hornets.

  She isn’t even sure how she got here. Only that she felt a piercing sting in her left shoulder, followed by darkness too deep to see. Next thing she knew, the only light came from a narrow window in the door of her cage. She curled into a tight ball.