A Cry of Angels by Jeff Fields

Author:Jeff Fields [Fields, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780820328485
Publisher: Ballantine
Published: 1974-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

I walked the streets and around the square, Jayell's words pounding, the feeling of desperation building. The summer streets were filled with young people. They sat on fenders at the drugstore and shouted to those passing in hot rods, they sprang along twirling tennis rackets, bicycled past with bathing suits on their handlebars on their way to the city pool. Not a worry in the world, performing to the hilt their role in the golden, carefree pageant that youth was supposed to be.

And here I was, moving through them without so much as drawing a glance, heading back for the Ape Yard, where I was, in truth, as much a stranger.

I lay on the cot in the loft, hours passed, it began to grow dark. A hot metallic taste burned at the back of my throat. Was I ready to take responsibility for this creature named Earl Whitaker, to do his thinking for him?

In our readings on the porch, Gwen had quoted a writer named Steinbeck as saying a boy gets to be a man when a man is needed.

A man was needed now, desperately needed. But it was so hard to give up being a boy. I wanted so much to stay a little longer in that golden time.

I lay on the cot in the fading light and begged for it as a dying man must beg for moments of life.

Then, ominously, something started to happen.

The subtle nausea. The light throwing faint, wavering shades of green. The old symptoms of that night at Miss Esther's when things had become more than I could stand, and I had to go to the hospital. From out of the wood's drone I heard the mumbling voice of Dr. Breisner . . .

"No!" I screamed. It could not happen again!

Suddenly I was on my feet, throwing everything I could lift at the walls, screaming at the top of my voice. I kicked over the cot, the footlocker—the frustration turning to anger, feeding on itself. I knocked down the makeshift ironing plank and swept everything from the shelves. I smashed the tin stove apart and fell on it, kicking and beating it into a twisted mass of metal.

It was dark. I stood in the wreckage of the loft, sweat pouring off of me. I wiped away and turned and saw in the mirror a pale figure with blood on its face. My hands were bleeding. I threw open the door and sprang down the steps and raced out across the sedgefield.

Down below the field stood the dark wall of the woods, waiting. I couldn't stop. I wouldn't let myself stop. The old terror swelled up in me, I felt a hush, things were gathering, watching. Something skittered through the underbrush, something that couldn't contain itself, dancing with maniacal glee. Limbs waved as they scampered aloft. The woods loomed above me, stretching its darkened maw. I threw myself forward into it. I ran off that moonlit field and into the woods, and all the breath I had left came out in one hoarse, throatscalding cry.

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