Angels at the Yard Sale

Angels at the Yard Sale

James Barnes

Published by Smashwords

Copyright James Barnes 2010

Chapter 1

A redneck river town most people of my generation call it; nothing of value there, and if you blink on the way through your eyes have done you a favor, but that isn’t true. This place is a sparkling pearl rounded by the slow curving waters of the St. Francis River, patient and lasting. A treasure formed over time by a tight sense of community gracefully flowing through and beyond each generation; permeating our souls with a fierce devotion people in small towns just happen to acquire. A unique citizenry with a desire to stay and make it a better place keeps our town vibrant and alive. And bridge number three is a bright white expanse connecting east to west across that river with automobiles passing over gap toothed concrete echoing into a mile wide swamp and bouncing back through our quiet streets, waking me just before dawn.

Founded in the early eighteen hundreds, this dusty little farm town of two thousand exists aside a grassy levee holding back a fishy, murky flow that some say looks like a river of Kahlua. But everyone knows that would never be tolerated in the Bible belt.

This town was once a bustling center of commerce, where steam powered paddle boats reigned over the main channel, and the J. L.C.& E. Railroad, also known as The Moose, horsed through and across a wooden trestle on its way to the Mississippi.Our little community enjoyed a thriving economy seen today only in faded opaque pictures at the local museum.

Early in her past, Main Street was home to a blacksmith shop, dry goods store, and City Hall, among other businesses, offices, and hotels. At one end of the muddy road stood the white Methodist Church, whose copula hosted a cross topped steeple. The first and largest church is still one of many among us splitting open with parishioners on Sunday mornings, their melodic drones of organ music lifting voices perfectly synced up to heaven where God must certainly be pleased. And in that time, book ending the other end of the street was the bane of every religious maven who considered themselves the very hierarchy of saint hood west of the Mississippi. It was the saloon bursting at the seams Monday through Saturday.A place of revelry where drinking, gambling and the good ladies of the evening whiled away the melancholy of lonesome lumberjacks, hunters, and dock workers for a well negotiated, but reasonable price.

Lake City was an east Arkansas boom town destined to be a county seat. The rich Mississippi delta soil had yet to be cleared for farming and thick swampy cover of cypress, oak, cottonwood, and maple canopies shaded the wet and tangled forest floor. Tribes of Tula and Cherokee hunted beaver, muskrat and coon in those feathery forests before the clearing began making way for ambitious white Americans who invaded from the east on their way to fulfilling the nation’s manifest destiny.

But the constant of time changes everything, and now our town is a sleepy bedroom community to Jonesboro, a larger city of sixty-five thousand people just ten miles west sprawling completely across Crowley’s Ridge and into the valley between it and the Ozark foothills. From here to there along Highway 18 as far as anyone can see north or south lie rows of cotton, soybeans, and corn dominating the landscape from spring planting to fall harvest.

A shallow geologic wonder since ancient times, the lake was once situated just southeast of town and is widely believed by archeologists to have been an impact crater formed by a flaming meteorite plummeting to earth while dinosaurs could only watch in fear and confusion. A popular resort area, good folks came from all over Craighead County to rent boats, fish, and occasionally shake a leg under starlit skies at the pavilion near Williams Boat House. Over a few millennia, sugar like granules of silt settled to fill the cosmic aperture which was eventually completely drained when the levees were built. It has all but disappeared into the lowland swamp nearly a mile wide and spanning the entire length of the meandering river. Now a protected refuge it embraces some of the finest catfishing waters on earth and many still brave swarms of bloodthirsty mosquitoes and sweltering heat during the sauna that is late spring and summer to catch their supper on trot lines, in nets, and cane poles.

Borrow pits line the east side of the levees and were created when the Corp of Engineers came and erected those guardians against the inevitable deluge. Oblong ponds about fifty yards wide and some a mile long before a thin dirt road crossing was left so tractors could run between the levee and the river to farm the lowest acres. These rectangular pools with canopies of hundred year cypress lining the edges are full of pan fish such as bream, crappie, and bass but also the trolling gar, a hated garbage fish and the only remnant of a dinosaur left in these waters.

Thirty six years have passed since I was born in this place, and thirty two since my lovely wife Jessica, who was lying safely asleep beside me. A few cracks around my eyes and a couple of gray hairs amid all the black ones have all been earned among the finest people and the finest place I know.

Tires thumping in rhythm across the divided concrete on that new span were generally just a white noise in the clamor of day, but in the gray time between night and morning when everything is calm and quiet like small towns get, the unmistakable Kathunk, Kathunk, Kathunk, might as well have been an alarm clock.

There in the half light of morning, the static sound of a car passing on wet pavement penetrated my window and betrayed last night’s weather report firmly stating we had no chance of rain. Chores brought to mind; a wry smile cracked my face as a long day of slow rain would remedy the ill thought of hard work. I reached to the nightstand for my pack of Marlboro Lights so I might enjoy simultaneously the patting rain and a good smoke.

Taking into my hand and gently rubbing my thumb across the richly impressed Zippo cigarette lighter, reminded me each time of how I came to own this little trophy. It was won some twenty odd years ago while trying my hand at a midway game at the District Fair in Jonesboro. Lying perilously on the ninety degree angled wooden edge of the red, glass encased platform with a chrome encased metal crane affixed in the middle. Just over the dropping point where a wooden slide was smooth and ready to whisk it into my hands. This ornate igniter lay motionless and thought to be bonded to the floor by skeptics unskilled. But this was no sucker’s game; it was a game where only the most capable of operators could manage to retrieve a valued trinket. A hoister unlike the ones in every buffet restaurant and supermarket grabbing stuffed animals and plastic toys for every third attempt, it was a dragline of fortune manipulated by a single wheel outside the case requiring a deft touch and cunning placement of a steel bucket.

A sparkling pirate’s chest, the case was full of gold and silver plated pens, a metal playing card container, thick chained chrome bracelets and a necklace with a German cross for a charm. But the shining little booty I coveted most was the Zippo.

I stood watching and waiting while the delicious fried aroma of funnel cakes and pronto pups wafted through my nostrils and the muddled sounds of carnival barkers, loud music, and flashing lights served to heighten my excitement. My turn came when the hapless operator before me finally gave in and marched away in frustration. Quickly stepping forward, a carnie clad with an eye patch happily changed my dollar bill into four quarters.I sensed by the look of his one eye and the smirk on his face he doubted the abilities of any man intent on walking away with his treasures.

I dropped the first quarter and the greasy metal chains released the bucket to splash violently in the sawdust littered floor of the glass box. Careful not to touch the circular handle until all had settled, I gently placed my forefinger and thumb on the cold knob and began slowly turning causing the bucket to ascend to the end of the crane’s rickety arm. Lost on most was the next move. Depending on which way the handle revolved would determine the direction the arm would swing. Steady on the handle, I glanced at the cyclops carnie now squinting menacingly and studying every move. His Jolly Roger doo rag was damp with sweat as were the palms of my hands when I cautiously rotated the handle swinging the arm and stopping the bucket precisely above the Zippo. The pirate carnie’s lip snarled trying to intimidate me but only a hesitation was required to wait for the swaying bucket to still and reengage the chain mechanism. The next turns slowly descended the open bucket to the floor of the case resting it gently on the lighter. After all had settled, I began to gingerly elevate the bucket grabbing the Zippo with a fragile metal on metal grip. My confidence was soaring. I had it. All that was left was to get it to the slide and retrieve my prize. But in an absentminded moment of haste, I shifted the crane too swiftly; lurching sideways it swung wildly over the opening back and forth like a pendulum and the mighty crane’s grip was lost. The moment was frozen in my mind as time all but stopped. Horrified, I watched flashing metal tumble to the floor of the case. But the sawdust was thinly piled by the four cornered opening and the hard wood caused the Zippo to bounce once and gloriously topple onto the slide, out the metal flap, and into my hands.

For twenty-five cents I was the owner of a collector’s edition Zippo cigarette lighter with a design in relief to rival even the great works of Rodin himself. Proudly, I looked up to see the pirate carnie with his angry eye glaring at me as though I had somehow cheated the game.

A suspicious lot those carnies, always seemed to have more tattoos than teeth and they are never the romantic figures seen in old movies like Elvis’s Roustabout. Society’s washouts, most took a job with the carnival because it required no diplomas and no drug tests.

I noticed the pirate carnies’ blue T-shirt, covered in the random tarnish only the fair can bring, sporting the carnival logo, and I wondered how many blue shirts he had? All carnies wore one, fresh on Monday, only to be tattered and stained by the weekend.

What must company meetings have been like for these employees? The foreman with muddy boots soap boxing on a picnic table, Alright everybody, gather in. Now we ain’t got any insurance for ya again this year, and that means no dental plan neither. Hell y’all ain’t gonna have time to go to no dentist no ways. But the good news is, the company sprung for everybody a new T Shirt. How’s that sound to ya?

His question replied to with a boisterous cheer as the needle of the local tattoo parlor was a welcome alternative to the drill of a dentist.

Tipping my Razorback baseball cap, I smiled at the attendant and turned with satisfaction knowing I hadn’t cheated, owned no blue T-shirts, and my teaching job at Arkansas State University afforded me an adequate dental plan.

Briefly, a spark from the Zippo’s well worn flint flashed bright orange then relaxed into a blue and yellow flame. Drawing smoke into my lungs, I quietly snapped the lid shut as the orange glow of the cigarette grew bright. I noticed a figurine in the darkness of our bedroom. It was a six-inch tall porcelain angel wearing a flowing red tunic with wings extended white and lined in solid brass. Her hands folded in prayer and her face fixed by a consoling smile, she looks down as if gazing closely upon God’s earth from a heavenly position. She was lovely and glossy in the round, and I wondered what message the artist wanted to convey in the piece. Perhaps her expression was consoling to the poor and ill, or maybe she was appointed by God as a patriarch to the masses lost, but whatever the case she was a gift to my lovely wife, Jessica Carter, in her infancy from a mother who loved her little girl, and the little angel enough to pass it to her own. An heirloom, the angel was a gift to Jessica’s mother from her grandmother, Lillian Jones, whom everyone called Priss.

The nickname was given to her on the day her father, who nicknamed everyone due to a deficiency of good memory with actual names, noticed in her first steps a prissy gate all the Jones women were blessed with. Purchased from the Sears and Roebuck catalog in 1957, the angel was a special order with her nickname stamped in gold at the bottom. She gave it to Jessica’s mother and kept it in her nursery at their small three bedroom house on Fourth Street. When Glenna Jones was born, it watched over her from a shelf just above her crib where it would also watch over Jessica nineteen years later and has been with her ever since.

Jessica is lovely like the angel. Delicate and caring for people she encounters, including those not interested in being a friend to her. Thick, straight, shoulder length dark brown hair, teeth big and white as Chiclets hiding now behind un-waxed red lips, and round fawnlike eyes, she is always most beautiful in the morning sun without makeup covering her naturally attractive features.

Her infectious smile caught my attention at a little league baseball game when she came to watch her nephew from Weiner play against our Lake City Catfish where I was a young high school coach before my job at the college and she was a stunning spectator in a black full-length dress. Sister-in-law to my best friend, we had spoken only once before at his wedding. But that day she sat in a brighter sun than anyone else in the stands and after the game I asked for her phone number, and to my pleasant surprise, she graciously agreed. After mustering the courage to call, we talked until three in the morning and haven’t stopped talking since.

The stimulation of nicotine helped me escape the slothful restraints of our sheets and I moved through the ghostly gray room without waking my dear wife. She was sleeping soundly after a long shift at St. Bernard’s hospital where she nursed like her mother once did and her grandmother before her. After snuffing the cigarette out in a bean bag ash tray with a price tag, I quietly slid my feet across the floor to where the angel was positioned on the open shelf of a breakfront chest. As I lifted the cool porcelain body, stickiness on my right hand caused a swirl through my stomach. It was a piece of masking tape not firmly affixed at one end and written in the middle by my wife with a felt tip pen was; $.50.

Convincing Jessica of the sentimental value wasn’t necessary, she understood perfectly well, but porcelain figurines or Whatknots as she called them, were not fashionable in modern homes with modern designs and our European Lyman under construction would have everything new.In a cavalier manner she mentioned those old things were for grandmas and old houses, and she wouldn’t be a grandmother before