Cry of Angels

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3O "DAMNIT, HOLD STILL!" "You cut me!" I jumped off the stool and rubbed my stinging neck. My hand came away with blood on it. "Look at that! Would you just look at that?" "Jes' a little nick. Set down." Em grabbed my arm and pulled me back on the stool. "Never heard such carryin' on over a little scratch." "I'll probably get blood poisoning. Whoever heard of cuttin' hair with hedge shears anyway?" "Seventy-five cents for a barber—ain't no sense in it. Tilt your head so I can wipe it off." "Don't use that towel, it's dirty. Get the yellow one." Em flipped the towel back over the rafter and pulled down the clean one. "The way you wash clothes, it's hard to tell." "Well, if you got any complaints, the washtub's on the wall and the rub board right beside it." "I got no complaints." 261 A C R Y O F A N G E L S "And the next time you polish your boots I wish you'd use a newspaper. Look at that floor." Work had been scarce, and it was cold; the thermometer hung at twelve degrees and the wind howled up out of the Ape Yard in gusts that lifted tin and sent a bird side-stepping to get his balance. And worst of all, it was Christmas. That whiplash frenzy of joy that cracked at the end of each dying year was flying upon us again. Holidays always seemed forced on us somehow, as though they originated elsewhere and the Ape Yard only imitated, without knowing why. It was as if an order came down saying, "All right, Ape Yard, it's Valentine's Day. Never mind how you feel, it's the calendar day for you to LOVE! Swap those cutout hearts. Christmas! Christmas . . . Savior's birthday—no, it's not actually His birthday, but it's the day we've set aside for it, now stir yourselves! New Year's! Happy New Year Everybody . . . !" During the two weeks before Christmas, Em and I had combed the town for work, but despite the commercial frenzy of the season, jobs were not easy to find. They were snapped up by vacationing students to buy their sweethearts ID bracelets and hi-fi albums. We helped Triangle Hardware relocate in a new building, cleaned bricks at a burned-out service station, and for three days I filled in for an ailing soda jerk at Saxon's pharmacy. Em was almost relieved when he was laid off from the job on the coal truck. Wasn't his kind of dirt, he said. Christmas Eve the town lay exhausted. Last-minute shoppers combed the stores under the weary eyes of clock-watching clerks. At the clubs and halls white jacketed Negroes trayed drinks to those already too drunk to heed the combos' call to dance. The firemen's wreaths hung from lampposts with the same air of loss and desolation as the peeling Nativity scene propped on the courthouse lawn, while around town, church choirs hopefully primed their "messiahs." On Rock Crusher Road hotblooded virgins wallowed in bushes of crinolines to consummate new "steadies," sealed with mustard-seed lockets and St. Christopher medals. Young married couples, tired, broke but happy, cruised the streets listening to carols and showing their children the Christmas lights. And along the Ape Yard, children lay dreaming of leather cowboy suits and dolls that walked and talked and all the beautiful toys that wheeled and flashed, while their 262 B O O K T W O mothers filled show boxes with fruit and bulk candy and cardboard games, and shame-drunken fathers spat in the grate. The field behind the garage was beautiful: the night blue-cold clear, and the grass still shimmering from a trace of snow in the morning. While Em cut my hair I soaked my thumb in a cup of cold water. I was going to lose the nail, it was already darkening, but the throbbing was slowing and numbness overtaking the pain. Despite the accident I felt lucky to have gotten the two days' work at the water department sorting pipe fittings for inventory. The pay was good, a dollar an hour, and nobody ever rushed anybody at the water department. I should have watched Ronnie with that box of ells, though, I know he was clumsy...