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I Am A Proud |
The Angel (This story was published in the 2001 edition of The Cadenza, the Mars Hill College literary magazine.) Thin light splintered off the tree branches and shattered into pieces on the icy sidewalk. Sarah banged a mittened hand against the ice coating the mailbox and yanked it open, icicles plunging into the snow underneath. They made murderous holes in the stiff black earth. Nothing again. How long had it been since she’d had something, anything, in the mail? Sarah wandered disconsolately back up the driveway, stepping carefully. No sense in falling on the ice. That certainly wouldn’t help. The neighbor’s dog bounded over, yapping. At least someone’s excited by the snow, she thought. She bent to pet its brown furry back. From where she stood, ankle deep in snow, the house looked empty. It had always looked empty. It stood in the deepest hollow of a valley glassy with ice that had been there since the blizzard three days ago. The weather had somehow managed to combine ice-covered driveways and sidewalks with snowy yards, stranding the entire area in a coldly glittering cage. The dog yipped at her heels, its small body pelting up against her calves. Sarah laughed and scooped up a handful of snow, patting it into a ball and tossing it across the yard. The dog scrambled after it, barking excitedly. It reached the spot where the snowball had landed and burrowed into the snow, scattering dirt and ice. Its small furry tail wagged frantically. She sat on the porch step to watch it, amused at its antics. Her hand reached into her coat pocket to curl around the tiny statue within. The angel felt the same as always in her hands, smooth and slightly warm from her body heat. Sarah pulled it from her pocket and held it in front of her. The wan sunlight reflected from the snow and glinted on the polished wings. It was made of some light material that felt weightless in her hands. She raised it to the sky like a talisman, but it only smiled impassively back at her. She could feel words swelling in her again, bubbling to the surface of a long-hidden spring. There was something about the light on the statue that almost made her want to write again. Before she could capture the words they were gone, and she was alone on the step. Sarah dropped the angel in the snow at her feet. What good was it anyhow? All it did was remind her of what she had left, what she had chosen to lose when she traveled a thousand miles to become a writer. Sometime later, the little dog came barking to her feet. Sarah raised her head. The dog dropped a smooth gray stone at her feet. She smiled and set the stone down, then placed the angel beside it. The dog settled beside her, curling up in the snow. Sarah picked up a handful of snow, patting it this way and that in her hands. As the dog watched curiously, Sarah shaped the snow into a shallow bowl, placing the angel and stone inside. She looked at them for a long minute, then got to her feet. The clouds broke, and for a moment her eyes were dazzled with the sudden whiteness of the snow. She turned and went inside. Sarah went straight to the kitchen, avoiding the computer. It blinked accusingly at her, the screen white and black with the same paragraph it had been at for two weeks. Three words were all she had managed to add. Somehow, the words just weren’t coming, and she had given up. She managed to avoid even looking in its direction as she made hot cocoa. * * * Cool water poured down around her bare shoulders, a gentle cascade of pure liquid almost like light. She reached out to touch it, to catch it in her hands and taste its purity. The drops landed on her hands like diamonds, rolling over her palms and between her fingers. She laughed aloud with delight and watched each drop fall into the pool at her feet. The stream of water increased, more and more spilling over her head. Gasping, she stepped forward, but the downpour was all around her. Its heaviness choked her. She began to run through the water that surrounded her, waving her arms as if to break a spell. The whole world began to rain down, pieces of the sky shattering on her shoulders. She could barely see them, for everything was growing dark, the deep blackness of space. Sarah awoke to an unpleasant splashing noise. Something didn’t seem right. She put her foot down cautiously and plunged into cold water up to the ankle. The dream! Sarah sighed and put her other foot down, feeling the wooden floor solid beneath several inches of water. She slogged prosaically through the water to the light switch on the wall. Water was everywhere – her house was a tiny sea of melting snow. Sarah groaned. How could things possibly be worse? Water had seeped halfway up the couch, and muddy swirls in the water promised that her carpet would be ruined. The kitchen and bathroom held more of the same as she sloshed around to check the damage. The television was high on a table, although water lapped dangerously close to the wall outlet. She turned it on, sitting on the waterlogged couch. The weather report told her exactly what she already knew. Sarah watched as people from her own neighborhood were interviewed, telling the news anchor how many valuable items they had lost to the water. Valuable items? Sarah felt suddenly as if she were on a roller coaster ride. Her heart jerked into her throat. She jumped to her feet, cracking her shin hard on the table as she tried to run across the room. The water sucked at her ankles, dragging at her feet as she rushed to the door. Sarah yanked open her front door and rushed out, ignoring the water that swirled in over the tops of her feet. The ground beneath the step was hidden in several feet of muddy water. She plunged in, ignoring the protest of her legs as the icy water gripped her. Sarah dropped to her hands and knees, frantically running her hands through the sunken grass. Her searching fingers moved in ever-widening circles around the step, combing the grass and mud. Finally she hung her head in despair, feet and arms numbed by the water. The angel was gone. Later, Sarah sat at the kitchen table. Her sodden hair and nightgown dripped water on the chair and streamed onto the floor. She didn’t seem to realize that she was shivering. She stared at the blue and white pattern on the linoleum, large and small squares that formed a worn pattern across the floor. Slowly she raised her head. Her eyes met the challenge of the half-finished chapter on the screen, the paragraph that had been unfinished since she left home. The words began to come. |
