Angeline - Episode 2

The old truck rattled like a skeleton dance down the dusty strip of broken road. There was only one house on this dirt and gravel excuse for potholes, and he could see it through the windshield, sitting like a vulture on the corpse of desiccated farm land. The radio was saying something high pitched and tinny about love over the metal shake of old bones and the low down diesel growl. He didn’t hum along. He never did.

He stopped in front of the withering structure and a cloud of dust washed over the truck like a dry wave in a parched sea. He turned off the engine and sat for a moment. He was in no hurry. The house sat too, the color of unkept teeth, singing softly in the hot breeze. A tumbleweed like a gamboling puppy bounded across the yard. He shut his eyes and breathed for a moment, alone in that warm darkness.

It came first through the cracks and holes in his rusted out chariot like a swarm of smaller, insect-like reeks, and he opened his eyes in disgust when the first buzzed deadly into his open nostril. The stench was terrible. It was a physical, tangible thing. It was the kind of smell you could take a swing at. He waved his hand violently in front of his face and coughed. His eyes filled with tears and the coughs joined forces to form a small but convincing fit.

Recovering but still sickened, he reached into the back of the truck and pulled a single envelope out of a bag. It was white, crisp and official, stamped with a red “urgent”. He kept one hand over his nose and mouth and, with the letter in the other, went out into the dust and stench.

Outside the sickly sweet smell of rot was dense and almost wet in the dry air. The light breeze fluttered the white envelope in his hand like the lost wing of a dove, blood stained, broken. He was crying openly now as the death smell stink came in hot waves from the very porch he was walking toward. He hurried in the shuffling limp of the long wounded, determined to see an end to this ordeal, to do his job, turn away and leave the horror of this air.

A crow fluttered up stark black and startling from the porch as he approached. It flew like the letter’s opposite, though both spelled doom in different tongues. He could hear the heavy buzz of fat satiated flies. Bile made exploratory forays into his throat as he began to fear the source of this odor more than the odor itself.

The piece of newspaper nailed to the beam of the porch shifted in the corner of his eye. It caught his gaze and drew it. Written in a heavy hand in some greasy substance across the fine lines of the newsprint were a small collection of words. “Dead dog stink holds the front porch. Go round back.” Relieved, he turned and nearly ran around the corner of the house. Up wind now and winded, he breathed deep, and the dusty hot air tasted like cool mountain spring blooming in his lungs. Dead dog stink was definitely in control of the front.

Around the back corner of the house the old woman waited for him. She sat rocking in the cracked earth dust of her back yard with a jug hanging from one gnarled finger. As he approached she spat a swollen, black, tobacco gob onto the parched ground, and he couldn’t help but stare at it quivering there. But even that thirsty earth wouldn’t swallow it. The expectoration sat solid at the gates of the firmament and waited for the sun to do its work.

At first he thought she was asleep. Her eyes were closed, and her rocking was subtle enough to be somnolent. She wore drab ill fitting clothes, jeans and an old pearl-snap shirt decorated with stalks of wheat. He almost thought she and the rocking chair might have just grown up out of the earth, another browned and sad plant in this brown sad land. But then one of her milky eyes snapped open, followed in a more stately manner by the other. She stared at him with a hard scowl.

“The hell you starin at ya no good trespassin son bitch? Best git on outta here for I have to fetch my gun.”

Her voice was full of the hard dust and rocks he was standing on. It might as well have been the old terrible house, or the brittle field talking.

“No. I mean, I’m not trespassing. S’just a letter here for ya. Looks kinda important.”

“Looks kinda important. Looks, huh? You sposed to be lookin at my mail you spyin little shit? Hand that there over and git your sorry ass off my land.”

“Yes ma’am. I mean, I didn’t mean no harm by it ma’am. Here’s your letter now.”

He stepped toward her quickly and held out the shaking envelope. It hung for a moment on the end of his arm like the last leaf of fall until, as winter does, she snatched it away. She tore it open with one long withered finger and exhaled loudly through her nose as she saw what it held.

“Um, well gooday to you ma’am”

“No, no, you wait there one minute boy. I got a letter that needs sendin’. ‘Sinside. Wait here. I’ll git it.”

She took a match out of her front pocket, struck it on her jeans and unceremoniously lit the envelope and letter he had brought on fire. It gave off thick oily smoke and she held it until the flames licked at the dry paper of her wrinkled hands. Then she tossed it into the air and turned away before it had broken apart and rained its white ash to the hard ground.

He thought about leaving while she was gone. He could have just turned and run back around the sad house, through the dog corpse mist and into his truck. He could have proceeded a great cloud of dust away from here and back onto the black smooth road of the real world, but he did not go. Instead he waited and casually scattered the ashes of his reason for coming out here with the toe of his boot. He gathered a little saliva in his dry mouth and tried to hit the last glowing piece of discarded paper, but he missed and had no spit to try again.

He didn’t see or hear her come back out and she was nearly on top of him when he looked up. He started and she gave a disdainful snort which somehow made him feel smaller, twisted and weak.

“Here”

She handed him a letter.

“Now git.”

She went back to her chair and picked up the sloshing jug. She gave the mouth of it a quick meaningless wipe with her sleeve and poured a long draught into her nearly toothless maw. He swore he could see the rotgut fumes distort her face as she drank. Shuddering he hurried around the side of the house, through the terrifying gauntlet of rot and into his truck.

He looked at the letter in his hand. It was addressed to Dirty Son of a Bitch, 1500 JFK Boulevard, Philadelphia, PA 19102. There was no postage stamp but he had expected that. For a moment he considered not sending it, maybe even opening it, but the same feeling that held him when she went inside for the letter held him again. He would send it. He would pay the postage himself. He would not dare to cross this woman, even if she would never know.