Page 46 of Price of Angels

The mailman was still at the box, sitting in his white truck, sorting their letters.

Holly had never encountered him before. He was a heavyset man, his stomach folding over the top of his belt, with a mustache like a push broom and fat, red cheeks that made his letter-carrier cap seem much too small on his head.

She paused at the end of the driveway, watching his thick fingers tick through the basket of correspondence. He was a stranger, and he was a man. Holly had never met a strange man in her entire life who hadn’t shoved his cock inside her. So she was fearful and timid a moment, wondering what to do.

And inside her chest, a pressure was building. Something was happening that she didn’t understand, this swelling, growing pulse that radiated into every finger and every toe. Her stomach felt tight, and full of living, pattering things. Things with wings that beat frantically.

Excitement.

Daring.

Hope.

Here was this person who wasn’t her blood, who wasn’t one of the smoking, faceless bible study men. Wasn’t her cousin-husband. Her father, her uncle. This person with a truck. This person who was about to drive away from this farm and go somewhere else. Someone where Abraham, and Jacob, and Dewey weren’t waiting for her.

Did she dare? So many times she’d thought about bundling up a kerchief full of cheese and crackers and cooked bacon and setting off through the woods. She was so quiet and careful and small, she could slip off undetected, making her way through the forest like one of the animals. But always she hesitated because she didn’t know how deep and dark the woods were. She didn’t know if she’d ever reach civilization, or if she’d be lost, and run out of food, starving in the rain until Mother Nature ended her misery.

But this wasn’t so chancy. This was a man and a truck and roads to travel on. This was her ticket to the outside world.

Holly walked across the street, stepped in front of the mailbox, and smiled broadly when the mailman glanced up at her, clearly startled, his button eyes bugging.

“Excuse me,” she said, “but do you think you could give me a ride into town?”

Holly had no concept of the scale of a big city. When the mailman reached an intersection dotted with a used car lot, a Dress Barn, a salon and a diner, and let her out saying he really wasn’t supposed to have anyone in the truck with him, Holly didn’t know if this was a roaring metropolis, or a tiny shabby town. Months later, she’d realize just how tiny and shabby it was, but in that moment, it seemed as wondrous as Disney World.

She didn’t have so much as a nickel in her pocket, but she was hungry, and she was lost, and she had no idea where to go or what to do now. She went into the diner, where a harried-looking woman with a falling-down topknot served heaping greasy plates to truckers at the counter. Holly stood politely by the register, until the woman noticed her with a little start.

“Excuse me, but I was wondering where I might go, because I think I’m homeless now, and I don’t have any money.”

The woman stared at her a long moment, a strange expression on her face, stray wisps of graying hair dancing in the drafts of the air conditioning. Holly had a brief wonder if her mother would look like this lined and weathered now, if she’d been allowed to live.

Then the woman said, “Come here with me,” and came around the counter, leading Holly to a booth by the window, where a puddle of sunlight warmed the vinyl seat. “Sit right here,” she said, “and I’ll be back.”

Holly sat, lulled immediately by the warmth of the sun. In the glass, she could just make out the bruises on her face, but she looked beyond them, out at the street bustling with traffic, the ladies in the spinning chairs in the salon across the way.

The woman brought her a plate of chicken, green beans, potatoes with brown gravy, and a bubbling glass of Coke with a striped straw. “Eat as much as you want, darlin’,” she said, “and I’ll make a phone call to the shelter.”

A shelter. That’s where the homeless went for help, wasn’t it?

Holly didn’t care. She’d rather go there than home. Anywhere was better than home.

The chicken was baked, and the skin was crusted with herbs. She cut into it and the steam rose up into her face, fragrant with spices.

As she ate, she planned. She would go to the shelter first, so she’d have a place to rest a moment, a base from which to begin her real search. Shelters helped people find work, didn’t they? Maybe there would be a job board with postings. If she could find work, any kind of work, she could save up enough money for a bus ticket, and then she could get a little farther away, and she could get a job somewhere that wasn’t so close to home.

It thrilled her, the idea of escape. This foreign sense of freedom. She’d work as hard as possible, do whatever she had to, but she’d make this departure work. None of the horrors of the street frightened her: she’d lived through horrors much worse.

She was mopping up the last of the gravy with a honey-buttered roll when movement at the door caught her eye. The bread got caught in her throat.

Abraham and Dewey stood just inside the diner, staring at her, Dewey with abject relief, Abraham with quiet murder in his gaze.

The woman from the counter came toward Holly. “Darlin’, your family’s come for you.” She hovered at the edge of the table, expression etched with concern. In a whisper, she said, “Should I call the shelter anyway?”

Holly shook her head. “No thank you, ma’am.”

Time had lost meaning. Her body could no longer be Holly-shaped, could it? How could one small vessel contain such throbbing, awful pain?

She’d stopped counting the strike of the belt after fifteen strokes. The hot blood running down her arms from her wrists where the rope was tied tight enough to cut into her flesh had cooled. Her arms themselves were like someone else’s arms, for all she could feel of them. Every inch of skin was aflame, fevered, even the sheets beneath her too rough to lie against. She closed her eyes tight and let her face rest on the mattress and prayed for unconsciousness.

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