Cry of Angels

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1 3 THE WEDDING WAS SET FOR THE SEVENTEENTH OF APRIL, AND IT was to be a church wedding. Jayell wanted a quick civil ceremony, but since Gwen and her mother had conceded to his refusal to have the wedding in Atlanta, he felt he had to give in on that point. Gwen's mother came to town a week prior to the wedding, and after one visit to the boardinghouse, put up at the Marble City Hotel and took her daughter with her. From the time she arrived, Mrs. Burns was completely in charge of the wedding plans. She was a butterfly general, flitting about, spluttering over this, swooping down on that, teary-eyed and always looking at the point of collapse, but always perfectly in command. On her arrival, Jayell disappeared, and stayed gone until the day of the wedding. Gwen's father showed up the morning of the wedding with a sizable delegation of relatives. A tall man with Gwen's coloring and close-set eyes, he stood about smiling nervously through his hornrimmed glasses, trying to keep out of the way, and looking as though he would like to become part of the furniture until the whole affair i38 B O O K O N E was over. Seeing his discomfort, Mr. Rampey and Mr. Burroughs took him around the church for a pass of the bottle and became his constant companions for the duration. Gwen's younger brother, Larry, a pre-med student at Emory, whom she had insisted be best man, blew into town around noon in a Thunderbird convertible emblazoned with fraternity decals and immediately made it clear that he preferred his own company to anyone else's. He stood apart twirling the wedding band on his little finger, a ring Gwen had allowed her mother to select in Atlanta, and watched the boarders troop by with a bemused expression as though he were cataloguing a parade of diseases. The little Episcopal church was filled to overflowing. The whole boardinghouse had turned out for it. Funerals were old hat to our crowd, but a wedding fetched the lot. Miss Esther brought some of her church friends. Even Mr. Teague dressed up and came. We loaded up the groom's side of the aisle and the boarders out-cried the blood kin. The Hendersons from Marble Park were there, plus many of Gwen's friends on the faculty at Quarrytown High, including Thelma Martin and her husband, George. "If somebody's getting Jayell Grooms to the altar," he was saying, "I don't want to miss it." There was an uncommonly long wait, it seemed to me, in getting the proceedings started. Chafing in the hard collar of a new white shirt, I sat next to a window, which was closed, as they all were, lest a breeze disturb some of Mrs. Burns's decorations, I suppose. The new sports coat Miss Esther bought me was stiflingly hot, which wasn't surprising. It was a hundred percent wool. But it was on sale. After a while I became aware of a mild commotion in the church foyer. Nothing much, a very subdued wandering in and out, and whispering, the way it might be when a theater is afire and they're trying to decide how best to break it to the people. The minister went out. Then Mrs. Burns. Then a very peculiar thing happened. The church windows began rising and falling. Starting at the rear, on our side, and moving up the length of the church, one after another would rise an inch or two, just enough to let the sunlight shine under the stained glass onto the startled people in the pews, then abruptly drop shut again. When the window beside me went up the mystery was solved. It was Em Jojohn opening them from the outside, in search of me. 139 A C R Y O F A N G E L S As soon as his bloodshot eyes found me, relief flooded his face. He slapped a finger to his lips and frantically motioned me outside, and slammed down the window with such a loud bang the organist stopped playing. "Said what?" shouted Mr. Woodall into the silence. The others fell to shushing him, but their whisperings only served to confuse him more, until the poor man was in such a state of agitation that Mrs. Bell and...