Make Me an Angel

By W.E.Turner


I watched my husband chop wood this afternoon. We got to his mother's house early, about 1 o'clock, long before Ruby got away from the funeral home and drove the six miles from Mt. Vernon back out to the farm. I wanted to go on into town, too, to be with his mother, but Charlie told me she said Russell's body wouldn't be ready for viewing until that evening, and that's when the whole family would gather.

Charlie thought it would be a nice gesture to split some of the fire logs piled up in back of the house. A neighbor had cut up the trees that blew down during the storms last spring and left them there for Ruby and Russell to use this winter, but it hadn't been split yet, so Charlie did it. Ruby won't have to warm up the house with propane every morning, this way, which has become her usual practice. Charlie said he doubted if the wood stove had been fired up at all since Russell got sick. It's a lot easier, you know, to just turn up the thermostat and let the furnace kick on. A wood fire is much more pleasant way to warm up on a cold winter's day, but it takes a lot of effort. Ruby said she doesn't have the energy.

I was tireder than hell by the time we got there, but I couldn't take a nap--not in the middle of the day. Jacob went right back to sleep when I laid him down on Ruby's bed. I couldn't get him to nurse, even though the aching throb in my breasts demanded some sort of relief. Jacob slept almost all the way down from Kansas City but still acted like the trip had just worn him out. Babies are like that, sometimes, I hear. I laid down on the bed with him for a while, trying to get him to nurse and thinking I'd go to sleep, too, but he only gave a few desultory sucks before dropping off again, and with the ache in my breasts and everything else, I couldn't sleep. I laid there, wondering where the breast pump the doctor gave me was, but couldn't remember. I hadn't had to use it before, because Jacob was such a good feeder. That's when I heard the intermittent "thunk" of Charlie splitting the wood and came on out of the house to see what he was about.

The air outside was biting and cold with just a hint of wood smoke and cinnamon and apple smells in it. As I stepped out the back door, I saw the dark rust-colored axe head swing down to bury itself in the fire log Charlie had set up on the chopping block. I carried along a cup of bitter leftover coffee I heated up in Ruby's microwave. I sat down on the back porch steps to watch Charlie. The coffee cup steamed in the cold air but the steam carried away in the wind as soon as it rose above the rim. I held the cup in both my hands, trying to keep them warm.

The axe head was buried in the log, which hadn't split on Charlie's last effort. He had to use the handle to lever it out of the chunk of oak. Then it swung up and out and back down again and the wood flew apart with a snap as the metal axe-blade thunked onto the block. The two split pieces added themselves to the respective piles of firewood on either side of the chopping block--an old axe-scarred two-foot wooden slab that seemed to be cut from an old stump. It surprised me to see how much split wood was on each side of the block. I hadn't realized Charlie'd been at it that long. Maybe Russell had already done some and left it there before he died, but I couldn't see how he could have, eaten up with cancer like he was.

I remembered the way Russell looked the last picture I saw of him; the sunken eyes, the normally swarthy skin looking yellow and stretched—almost to the breaking point. Charlie inspected one of the splits, decided it wasn't small enough and set it back on the block. This time the wood split with the first swing and I saw Charlie almost smile that little smile of satisfaction he gets when things go right the first time. I knew he was proud and eager to show off for his wife--even though his wife didn't give a shit one way or the other what he did.

I thought about saying something to Charlie; some trivial bit of conversation like, perhaps, speculating on when Ruby would get home, but I didn't say anything. I tried taking a sip of the coffee, but it was still too hot. I sucked the hot steam into my mouth but untipped the cup before liquid touched my lips. I didn't want to get burned again.

"Wonder when Mom's gonna get home," Charlie said.

I looked at him sharply; jealously, I realized. For some reason, I didn't want him stealing my thoughts. They were just banalities, admittedly, but they still felt proprietary. He had no right to feel the same way. Let him find his own banalities.

The axe swung up and out and down again and thudded into another chuck of wood. Charlie pried it out and swung again. Again the wood refused to split. On the third swing, the wood cracked but didn't split in two. Charlie laid the log on its side and chopped at the crack he'd made. Now the wood came apart and he sat one half up on the chopping block and split it again, then did the same with the other half. He repeated the process, over and over.

I drank some of the coffee. It had cooled enough, finally, but its bitterness made me shudder and caused the sides of my tongue to curl up. It was boring, watching Charlie work on the wood, so I busied myself by looking around at Ruby's yard.

There wasn't much color left in the foliage. Some Persimmons (I never could figure out whether to call them "trees" or "bushes") that stood around the edges of Ruby's garden plot were still a deep crimson, but not very vibrant, and down off the hill some hickories were still yellow, but not very bright. Everything else had faded to a dull and dirty brown. The sky looked dirty and dull, too; gray and worn-out looking with darker wisps of cloud scudding quickly past on the wind like tattered laundry on a rusty clothesline.

The simile made me smile, as I thought about the abandoned farm we saw along the road between Carthage and the farm. The house was filled with hay bales that you could see through it's glassless windows, but it actually had laundry hanging out on the clothesline in the side yard. I wondered how long the house had been abandoned and about what the farm wife was thinking of in those last few hours before the family packed up and left the place. What was it that made her hang out those last few vestiges of the family's laundry, knowing she'd never return to take the clothes off the line? Hope? Stubbornness? Denial?... What?

"Is Jacob asleep?" Charlie asked me.

"No, asshole," I said. It was automatic and spontaneous. The old contentiousness. "He's wide awake. That's why I left him in there all by himself. So he could roll off your mother's bed and kill himself." I looked away from him. "Yes," I said, finally. "He's asleep."

Charlie took it just like I knew he would. Like a whipped dog, hanging his head and looking contrite. And predictably, he changed the subject.

"You know," Charlie said, leaning on the axe as it rested on the chopping block, "I really feel kind of bad that Russell never got to see Jacob."

I resisted the requirement to ask the obligatory "Why." I knew Charlie would continue without any prompting.

"I mean," he shrugged, "you know.... First grandchild and all that."

"He wasn't Jacob's grandfather," I said. "Your dad's dead. Russell wasn't any goddam relation at all. Hell, he and your mother weren't even married."

"You know what I mean," Charlie said. "They lived together for eight years. Loved each other. I liked him. He was the closest thing to a grandfather Jacob could have had."

"What about my father?"

Charlie shook his head resignedly. "Of course he's Jacob's grandfather, too, but I mean on my side of the family. Besides, your father's a thousand miles away, not a hundred and fifty."

I took another sip of the coffee, grimaced involuntarily and set it aside. It wasn't worth the aggravation. "Doesn't make any difference how far away, really," I said, quietly. "We probably wouldn't have come to visit him, either."

Charlie looked at me for a while, but didn't say anything. He started picking up split wood from beside the chopping block, looking at me again for a moment, like he wanted to say something else, but he didn't. He picked up a few more pieces and walked over to a tree growing in the middle of the back yard. He bent down and placed one piece of wood on the ground next to the tree trunk, then set another piece beside it, then another, then another, then another on top. He walked over to the split woodpile again and I could see the accusatory look in his eye from the one glance he stabbed in my direction. I looked back up at the November sky. As Charlie picked up and stacked more wood I stood up, brushed off the seat of my Levi's and started back into the house.

We seldom talk anymore, Charlie and I. We say words to each other, but we don't really talk. 

I checked on Jacob. He was still sound asleep. The soft, innocent sleep of a two moth old. No bad dreams, yet. Nothing to terrify you. Yet.

I went back to the living room. It was immaculate, the way Ruby's house always was; warm and live-able. Comfort without ostentation. Just like Ruby. I walked slowly around the room, looking at the pictures and other decorations. There was a picture of a woman with folded hands, reading a bible. I'd seen prints of that picture a thousand times before in antiques stores and junkshops. There was a photo collage of Russell's kids & grandkids, taken at high school graduations, family dinners and the like. A portrait shepard dog howling up to the sky as it stood over a tired lamb curled up in the snow—another refugee from a garage sale somewhere. Photos from fishing trips, friends' weddings, birthdays... The usual memories.

I stopped by the nick-nack shelf where Ruby displayed her collection of ceramic swans—it had almost become a joke and a given between Charlie and I: when in doubt of what to give her for a birthday, Mother's Day or Christmas, just find a swan of some type and she'll be happy. There on the top shelf was also a bronze-looking replica of the Empire State Building. I picked it up and looked at it. “A Souvenir of New York, N. Y.” was embossed on the metal. I didn't know Ruby'd ever been to that city. I sat the artifact back down. It fell over. I picked it up and set it down again and one more time it fell. I set it back up, quietly muttering an oath.

On the wall over the shelves there was a shot of Russell and Chuck (Ruby's first husband and Charlie's father) standing in front of an oil rig. I looked at that picture for a long time. The two men built the rig together, Charlie told me once; raised the tower, sank the well, went into debt together when the well turned out to only be a marginal producer, then capped it and went back to work again refurbishing worn-out oil refineries. Twenty-some-odd years of working first this contract, then another; coming back home to rest up between jobs and maybe put in a crop if it was that time of year, but mostly leasing out their land to other farmers in the area for pasture. Charlie said he and his older brother spent most of their childhoods living with neighbors so they could go to the same school all the time without having to pull up stakes every six months or so after a refinery job was done. Instead of parents, in the usual sense of that word, that made his mother and father, every time they returned home, seem more like distant relations come to visit.

I contrasted that with my own life of boring military brat existence. Moving every few years to another Air Force base's housing complex. Making friends for only a little while before either your family or theirs moved away again.

On the table beside the recliner were two other framed pictures. One was of Ruby and Chuck, standing in front of the farmhouse, smiling at the camera and dressed in Sunday clothes; the other of Ruby and Russell, casual in shorts and T-shirts with a barbeque grill between them. Everybody looked relaxed, comfortable and appropriate in both photographs. I ran my finger slowly across the tops of each frame; like I was wiping away dust, perhaps, even though I knew Ruby would never let dust accumulate there. I looked at Chuck's face for a long time, then at Russell's. Chuck was fair-haired and cherubic, just like Charlie; Russell was darker and swarthy, an indication of his mixed native-american heritage.

Looking around the living room again, I noticed there was no picture of Bobby, Charlie's older brother.. But I knew Ruby had several pictures of him in her bedroom. I had noticed the one of Bobby in his Green Beret uniform sitting on a nightstand beside the bed when I laid Jacob down on it. Hell, I thought, cynically. She probably kisses it every night before she goes to bed. Her fallen warrior. Bobby Alexander Simpson was killed in 1968 by a lightning strike while rapelling down a mountain in Vietnam. An act of God, not a combat death, so his name isn't even listed on the Vietnam Memorial wall in Washington.

I could feel the liquid welling up in my eyes, but then I heard Ruby's car in the driveway. I blinked the moisture away. After giving Jacob a quick check to make sure he was still sleeping I went to the back door and outside to where Charlie and his mom still stood beside her car, embracing.

As I went down the steps from the porch I heard Charlie say, “I'm so sorry, mom.”

“Oh,” I heard Ruby say as they broke the embrace. “Don't be sorry. Russ knew it was his time to go and he accepted it. He had his daughter and son and everybody in his family with him in the room when he died.” She broke away from Charlie and started toward me, her arms stretching out in my direction. Despite her seemily cheerful words to Charlie, I could see the look of strain and sadness on her face as she advanced toward me, her ever-present purse dangling from her arm over the sleeve of her rather cheap-looking cloth coat. “Katy,” she said as she wrapped her arms around me.

I didn't return the embrace. The air was chill and the November wind from the north had picked up since I was outside earlier. I felt like one big goose-bump and had wrapped my arms around myself as soon as I hit the top porch step. I welcomed the warmth of the hug Ruby gave me, but it was too soon over.

“You brought Jacob, didn't you?” she asked. “Charlie said on the phone you would. Did you?”

“Of course,” I said, starting to shiver. “He's asleep on your bed. We wouldn't want to deprive him of a chance to see his grandmother.”

“Grandma,” Ruby said as we started up the steps together. “I want him to call me 'Grandma.'”

I stiffened a little at that. It was totally different from what my own mother demanded. Mom insisted that my sister's kids always to refer to her as 'Grandmother.'

We talked some more as Ruby moved through the hallway to the living room, taking off her coat and carefully hanging it on a hook as we passed by. She asked me what time we left Kansas City and whether or not we'd had any lunch. I assured her that we'd eaten in Carthage. We had moved through the living room and back into the kitchen by this time.

“Well,” she said “I'll heat up some water and have a little soup. I haven't had anything but some instant oatmeal this morning. And I can make you some coffee or tea as long as I have the teapot on.” Matching her words, she filled up the heavy cast aluminum tea pot, set it on the stove, reached into the matchbox hanging on the wall, struck the match and lit the burner under the pot as she spoke.

I recalled the earlier coffee experience. “Tea would be fine,” I said.

Ruby opened a cabinet door and picked up some small paper packages. “We have all sorts of teas,” she said as she rifled through them. “Camomile. Pekoe. Orange Pekoe. Ech... Eck... Ekkin.....”

“Echinacea?” I volunteered.

“Yeah,' she said. “I never could pronounce that danged word. But it's supposed to have all sorts of good properties to it. Herbal.” She said the last word with a distinctive “H” sound at first, then quickly corrected herself. “Er-bal, I guess I should say. 'Erbs. Or 'yarbs' as my grandma used to call 'em.” She tossed the tea packages onto the kitchen table in front of me as I sat down.

Ruby continued puttering around the kitchen as she talked, getting out a bowl and spoon, setting them on the table in front of the chair beside mine, retrieving a styrofoam “Cup-o-Soup” package out of the pantry and setting it on the counter beside the stove.

I looked through the tea packages, picked one, unwrapped the tea bag and started to get up to get a cup.

“No, no,” Ruby said. “Stay right there.” She went to the cabinet, retrieved a coffee mug and sat it in front of me.

I put my teabag into the mug and hung the string and tag over the side. Charlie came in from outside about this time.

“Honey,” he said. “I'm going into Mt. Vernon to pick up some more diapers. You need anything else?”

“No,” I said, looking at him disdainfully. I knew why he was really going into town. To get some beer.

“Do you need anything from town, Mom,” Charlie asked his mother.

“No,” Ruby said, shaking her head. “But why don't you wait until Marilyn and Ted get here? We'll all be goin'...”

“I'd rather go now,” Charlie said. “I don't want to wait until tonight. Afraid we might forget.” He turned and headed toward the door. “Be back in a little bit,” he said.

I knew I was probably looking daggers into Charlie's back as he left the room, but softened my expression as Ruby approached.

“Now,” Ruby said, finally sitting down in the kitchen chair beside me. “How's that grandbaby of mine?”

Even though I knew Ruby had only just now sat down but I said, “Let's go look,” and stood up. “He's napped long enough.”

“Oh, don't get him up on my account,” Ruby said, following me to the bedroom.

But Jacob was already awake when I walked through the bedroom door. His eyes were bright and lively and his tiny fists were waving in front of his face.

“Well, I'll be,” Ruby said when she saw Jacob. “No cryin' or nothin'. Does he always wake up like that?”

“I don't know,” I said with a shrug. “He usually does, I guess. When he starts crying in middle of the night, it's usually Charlie who goes in to get him. He changes him and then bring him to me to feed.”

“Charlie does?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You remember. I couldn't even pick him up out of the crib when he first came home because of the C-Section. He weighed close to ten pounds when he was born. And ten pounds is the limit for lifting.” I sat down on the bed and started to change Jacob's diaper.

“Let me do that,” Ruby said over my shoulder. “I haven't had a chance to change a diaper in ages.”

“OK,” I said. “I'll let you.” I stood back up and backed away, folding my arms over my chest as I leaned against the doorjamb. I was more than willing to let Ruby change the diaper, just as I was secretly glad that it was Charlie who got up in the middle of the night when the baby cried. I knew I wasn't being a very good mother but at that point, I didn't care. I stood there, disgustedly listening to the constant stream of baby talk coming from Ruby's lips as she worked.

“I thought you were going to use cloth diapers,” she said after removing the wet one.

“We do at home,” I said. “We're only using these disposables while we're travelling. We thought it would be easier than carting around a bunch of dirty cloth ones with us.”

“Well, you could have used my washer and dryer, you know.” She looked back at the baby. “Yeah, she could,” she said in a sing-song voice as she shook Jacob's round little belly with one hand. “Couldn't she, Jake?”

“Please, Ruby,” I said. “Call him 'Jacob.' No nicknames. Just 'Jacob.' We'd prefer that.”

She looked up at me and kind of shrugged. “Whatever you want,” she said. She continued to play with Jacob as he lay there on the bed, cooing at him softly and rolling him from side to side. “He Gamma's goo boy, ida he? Yes, he is!” she said. Ruby continued working on Jacob, using the baby wipes I retrieved from the diaper bad and throwing them away in the trash can beside the bed. Then, without turning around, went on talking to me. “But 'Katy' is a nickname, isn't it? Short for 'Kathryn'? And 'Charlie' and 'Chuck' are both nicknames for 'Charles'.”

“Yes,” I said. “But Charlie and I both think we'd rather have him just called 'Jacob'. 'Jake' just sounds too... I don't know. Too informal, somehow. Too short. Too insignificant. We'd just prefer 'Jacob'.”

“OK,” Ruby said, dropping her argument. “Whatever you want.”

But I kept the whole thing going. “And 'Katy' stems more from my initials than from anything else,” I said. “Not just from my middle name of 'Kathryn'. My initials were M-K-T, Margot Kathryn Travers. So I was 'MKT' like the 'Missouri Kansas Texas' Railroad. They called that the 'Katy' line. That's how I got the 'Katy' nickname. Or at least that's how my dad always explained it to me.”

“Your dad's retired military, isn't he,” Ruby asked.

“Yes,” I said. “But he comes from a railroad family. His dad—my grandfather-- was a supervisor at the rail yards in Kansas City. Daddy even worked in the rail yards before he went off to college. Took ROTC, then joined the Air Force when he graduated. Retired after 30 years as a personnel officer.”

“Why is he living in Michigan?”

“That's where my mother's from, originally. Grand Rapids.” Talking about my parents with Ruby was not really something I wanted to do right then. I'd told Ruby all about them previously and I felt like I was just repeating myself. “So when Daddy retired, he and my mother moved up there.” I stopped at that. I knew I really wanted to tell her how I was happy Mom had gone; it meant I wasn't under her thumb anymore. It was just too bad she had to take Daddy with her. But I knew I didn't dare tell her that.

“Do you get to see them very often?” Ruby asked.

“Not as often as I'd like,” I said. “They're snowbirds, you know. Go down to the Rio Grande valley every winter, then back up to Michigan in the spring. Only get to see 'em on one of the legs of their trip, either going down or coming back. On the other leg, they go by way of Memphis, where my sister is. So we only get to see them every six months or so. They came through Kansas City this fall, when Jacob was born, then will go back through Memphis in the spring.”

“But, didn't you go up to see them on vacation this summer?”

I could feel myself flushing at that; having been caught at an inaccuracy. “Yeah,” I said, “We did. But it wasn't much of a vacation. For me, anyway. Charlie and my dad were always off fishing or playing golf or else just driving around the country, drinking beer. I spent all my time helping Mom get ready for their trip down to Pharr.”

“Pharr?”

“Pharr, Texas. It's close to McAllen. Down in the Rio Grande valley. That's where my folks go in the winter.”

“I know where it is,” Ruby said. “Chuck and I lived there for about six month s while he was working on a refinery project.” She shook her head. “Pharr. Huh. Small world. I think that was Bobby's last year in high school.”

By this time, Jacob was all cleaned up, his diaper changed, his jumper rebuttoned, so I walked over to the bed and picked him up. As soon as he felt my hands on him, Jacob began howling; crying out to be fed. I held the squalling, wiggling bundle that was my son at my shoulder as Ruby and I walked back into the kitchen.

The teapot was boiling by now. We could see steam and water spitting from its spout. Ruby walked up to the rangetop built into the cabinet and turned the gas off. I walked over to the chair I had been sitting in earlier, sat back down and with one hand began unbuttoning my blouse and undoing the flap of the nursing bra over my left breast. All this time Jacob squirmed in my arms. He knew what was coming and was anxious to get at it, but no more anxious that I was.

As I settled him into the crook of my arm and he latched onto the nipple, I watched his spasmodic arm movements and saw his left eye first looking up at me, then slowly closing as he nursed. I sighed. Finally.

Ruby went about her business there in the kitchen, first opening the Cup'oSoup halfway, pouring in hot water from the teapot, closing the lid, pouring more hot water from the pot into my cup for the tea, then finally sitting back down on her chair. She looked over at me, placing an elbow on the table, then leaning her head on the palm of her upraised hand. She had a soft, small smile on her lips as she looked, almost lovingly, at me.

For some reason, I couldn't hold her gaze and looked away, casting my eyes downward to watch Jacob nursing. His eyes opened again and I watched as the irises floated upward, almost as though they were turning over to look backward, into his tiny skull. He was in ecstasy. One more time I felt tears welling up in my eyes. This time, I didn't blink to drive them away.

“How do you do it, Ruby?” I asked. I looked back up at her, seeing her kindly face through the shimmer of my tears. “How?”

“How?” she asked, looking almost puzzled, but not quite.

“How do you keep going on?” I said.  “How can you do it?”  I could feel the tears brimming over, now.  One dripped from the eyelashes of my left eye and I could feel it running a staccatto path down my cheek, running in fits and starts, bouncing from one freckle to the other as it traveled toward the jawline.  “I mean...  Russell just died, Ruby....  He's gone!  And.... And.... And Chuck died.  And Bobby....”  More tears were flowing, dripping off my cheeks down onto Jacob as he lay nestled in my arms.  I turned my gaze away from Ruby, staring off across the kitchen but not seeing anything.  “How can you go on?”

“You just keep goin' on, honey,” Ruby said. Her voice was slightly chocked and strained. I looked back at her and saw she, too, was tearing up. “That's all you can do.” She stopped, seemed to steady herself, cleared her throat, then went on in a more normal voice, but sadly. “My momma used to tell me, talkin' about her family... My family... That all you can do with 'em is to feed 'em, love 'em and watch 'em grow. Just feed 'em, love 'em and watch 'em grow.” She stopped, shook her head slightly, then went on. “I amended that a little bit, in my own mind, when I had a family. I said you feed 'em, love 'em, and watch 'em grow. Watch the kids grow up, then watch the men grow old. But sometimes, you don't get to do that.”

She paused, sighing and I saw she, too, was now looking at something not quite there.

We were still sitting there, crying softly, when Charlie came home, later.