Fallen Angels by Patricia Hickman

hand.”
    Jeb dwelled on everything she said. “Then I got to put up with you.”
    “I'll keep looking for Claudia. You got my word. I don't want to be tied to you neither.”
    “We have to keep calling him Daddy?” asked Willie. Angel waited for Jeb to answer.
    “Not only you going to call me Daddy, you going to do what I say.” Jeb put back the flour and sugar in the homemade pantry cabinet.
    “What we do is our own business—you ain't the boss! Let's just get things straight.”
    “You take your brother and sister and that frilly dress off to your beds. I need some time to think.”
    “Or some time to drink,” said Angel.
    “That don't mean nothing to you. What I do ain't none of your concern.”
    “People see us fighting and they'll suspect. They see you drinkin’ … now that's a whole new kettle of fish. They'll know we're cons for sure. You supposed to be a kind man and temperate, like my grandma said.” Angel shook Ida May who had already fallen asleep with her head on the soft chair arm.
    He still wasn't buying the whole preacher seam, but said, “They's different kinds of preachers. Maybe I'm the hard-nosed kind. I got to be true to my own self or I'll come across as a big fat phony. You kids don't mind what I say and folks sure as all get out won't think you're mine. Let's have us a little practice maneuver. All three of you—get to bed! I don't want none of your lip, neither.”
    “Maybe I'll just get me a helping of Freda's beans. You think you can just snap your fingers and I'll go running off with my tail tucked, you wrong about that!” Angel minced to the table, her on-loan shoe heels slightly too tall for a girl with a gangly gait.
    “You want this con of yours to work, Biggest. You march your prissy self past that table and on into that little princess bed of yours. Otherwise, give me two minutes and I'll be out the door jackrabbit fast. You can explain my absence to the good people of Nazareth in the morning. They'll have you checked in to the closest sanatorium.”
    “Why you think they'd put me in the sanatorium?”
    Ida May kept asking, “What's the sanatorium?”
    “You're dead weight, Biggest. A nice family, they'd take your cute little sister, figure she's still young, not yet ruint. Your brother would fit nicely behind some old farmer's plow. But you, you're too old to raise. Too thin boned to work. All the children's homes is full. It's the sanatorium for you.”
    “Willie, Ida May, get to bed now!” Angel scuttled into the bedroom with the three matching hand-cut beds.
    “Good night, Biggest.”
    She slammed the door.
    Night crept into Nazareth with crickets grating against tense silence. Jeb pushed himself back in the rocker left on the front porch of the parsonage. The storm had cleaned the night air squeaky fresh, leaving behind only a few bluish clouds in the sky. A transparent halo ringed the moon. An owl perched out on a pine limb screeched twice until Jeb came close to blocking the bird off its roost with a pine cone. He reached into his pocket for his flask. Then he felt a prickly feeling, like the hairs of his head standing up on his neck. What if the good Mrs. Honeysack returned to remind him of one more tedious detail? Or, as the word spread that the Grade family had finally arrived, what would happen if more church people chanced by to pay a visit? He made a circular motion on the cap of the flask, as though he anointed it. His tongue pushed to one side of his mouth, parched, deprived. He wondered how a parson went seven days without a drink. Or did he sneak out into the woodland to steal a taste? But then it came to Jeb that the minister might run into trouble if he was so much as caught buying a pint or two of the good stuff.
    Jeb's lips pruned. Thoughts of spending one more day as the town holy man gathered into his insides, congregating, bantering and milling in whispers about the destiny placed on Jeb Nubey. Another day as Reverend Grade meant visiting the