The Writing of John Scott Ridgway
Angels
She’s late. The locals pause in the road and stare at the limo before slowly moving out of the way. "Why don’t they move a little faster, for god’s sake. Johnny, when we get to the flower stand on Marquez, I need to make a quick stop."
His feet strike the road and brown dust rises. Black drops fall from his pant-legs. The street is lined with piles of bananas and apples and fish. Vendors pause to watch his hands as he passes.
She had heard people say the heat made them lazy, and though she would never in her
life have repeated such a thing, she could see why some people believed it. Johnny was laying on the horn and the 'Indiginies' were acting like they were granting them some favor by just moving out of the way.
He runs by too fast to hear an apple vendor turn to his squatting wife and whisper, "It's a shame, a damn shame."
"Now, Johnny, if any ghosts get in the way, you can drive right through them, you know? The Day of the Dead, Jesus. The women here spend all week cooking, only to leave the food out to rot. Look at those plates they're carrying. I thought half this country was starving? Next, we’re off to Switzerland, you know? The civilized world."
Her halo shines the gold of sun. Her wings are the white of morning doves. Her eyes the blue of river water. He knows her from the book that the priest brought to the village. She is the angel who will take him to heaven.
She imagines a portly Swiss banker in a black suit stooping down to set a china platter of filet mignon on a manicured grave, lays her head back into the upholstery and laughs silently.
A sickly thin face appears in the window, just inches away, filthy and crying, blood coming out his noise, mouth . . . She pulls down the blind. Tells herself, '’Dammit, I need at least one night without this.’
Julio said that he was going to get something to eat. He came back with apples. The soldier followed.
Before coming to the country, she read a company brochure on the street urchins. She had known what to expect and how the experts said to deal with them. Still, that first day, as she walked into the airport and was surrounded by dozens of children with distended stomachs, her heart shouted. She gave away all of her change, every last penny, three or four dollars, at least-exactly what the brochure said that she wasn’t supposed to do. And, of course, that wasn't enough for them. One of the boys who she had just given money to grabbed her purse and tried to jerk it out of her hands. The others started grabbing for her watch, her necklace . . . She was close to hysterical by the time her limo driver came up and started pushing them away.
Everything exploded. Then it was later and he was waking up. Julio was laying on top of him. His face was torn up, bloody and scary like a monster. He tried to crawl away from Julio. It hurt too much. He turned his head the other way. People were passing the alley. They looked down, saw him and moved off quick. He thought that maybe he would finally go to heaven and be with his mother, like he wanted. Then he saw the angel and he was up and running. She would take him to his mother. Like the priest said at the funeral. He remembers that he should pray for forgiveness of his sins. He does.
She steps out of the limo with her eyes on the flowers, then turns toward the sound of yelling. The boy is running straight at her. She takes hold of her purse with both hands, looks back at the car and sees that Johnny is already getting out.
He dives into the air and sees his finger near her face. Someone grabs him around the waist from behind and jerks him up into the sky.
The soldier raises a muscle-cut forearm over the boy’s impossibly thin neck. . . slams down hard. Pulls his fist up, slams down again, and again, and . . . She can hear bones breaking. She feels nauseous, a head ache pounds into her skull. She can’t believe that she was actually seeing it happen. The soldier twists the boy’s head around backwards. Her stomach convulses. Yellow bile explodes from her lips, splatters over her breasts and flows down the white satin costume . . .