The snake woman clutched at her bloody breast with her tiny hands and rose up on her serpent body. She smashed against the roof, then slumped against the wall. Blood and feathers surrounded her open mouth. Her coils threshed madly, wrecking roosts and overturning nests. Cackling chickens flew out around Sis, but she hardly noticed them. The snake woman slid slowly down the wall, her coils looping and constricting. Then she lay still. The only movement was a slight tremor in her coils and then they too were still.
Sis’s mother grabbed her arm. “Did you get it? What was it?” she shouted above the wind.
“Look,” Sis said and held out a shaking hand.
Her mother squinted into the darkness. It was only a second before lightning flashed. “Oh, my goodness,” she gasped. “It’s that thing from the tent show. Maybe you shouldn’t have killed it. It must be worth a lot of money.”
Indignation immediately overrode Sis’s feelings of guilt. “It was killing my chickens, wasn’t it? Let’s see ’em try to make something out of it.”
Then the rain came. Those fighting the fires heard it coming, a hissing roar that approached like the night freight to Wichita, growing louder by the second. They breathed sighs of relief as the wall of water hit, then ran under shelters to escape the pea-sized hail that came with the rain.
Harley Overcash rolled the hose back onto the fire truck, the hail rattling on his helmet. He wished the rain had come just a little earlier.
The flaming wagons steamed and sizzled under the downpour. Soon they were only piles of wet charcoal, emitting an occasional hiss of steam as the rain soaked in and found a few still-glowing embers.
The rain eased quickly. People emerged from storm cellars and went back to bed. Soon stars were visible in the south, but there was no one to see them. The only light in town burned in Haverstock’s wagon, where he and Louis had taken shelter.
26.
Angel awoke slowly, stretching his arms and yawning. For a moment he didn’t remember where he was, then he tensed and his eyes darted from side to side. His beginning panic was eased when he looked into Evelyn’s smiling face. His body relaxed and he lay back on the cot in Dr. Latham’s clinic. He smiled at her tentatively, feeling a strange sensation in his throat. He sat up.
“How do you feel?” she asked softly.
His smile widened and the room seemed sunnier.
“Good,” she said and felt warm. “I don’t know where Dr. Latham is. Nobody was around when I got up. He said all you needed was a good night’s sleep.”
They contemplated each other for a moment.
“Well, what do we do with you now?”
He looked doubtful and apologetic at being a problem.
“I talked to Henry last night.”
Angel’s eyebrows rose inquiringly.
She shrugged. “He didn’t seem to know what to do either. He was very worried about you.”
Angel’s expression became apologetic again.
“He said he had to talk to Tim, that between the two of them they would know what to do. I told him where you were. I thought they might come here.” She frowned when the thought flickered through her mind that maybe they had decided not to help Angel, that they were too worried about their own safety. But she dismissed the thought quickly, not able to believe it. There obviously was some other reason. She thought for a moment, then reached a nervous decision. “There’s only one thing we can do. You’ll have to come home with me and I’ll get word to Henry where you are.” She looked at him quickly. “I mean, you can’t stay here. Haverstock and that Mexican are looking for you, and this is a little too close for comfort. Our place is out in the country; they’d never think about looking for you there.”
He watched her with an expression she couldn’t read, but she felt again that sensation she’d had on the road the night before when he had seemed to survey her soul. Then he nodded and looked at his clothes draped over a chair. He grinned and motioned for her to turn around.
She did so and smiled wryly, thinking about his act in the tent show, when he floated over the audience stark naked. Of course, with the globe of water and the clouds and the lightning, he might as well have been fully clothed for all you could see. She almost said something, but remembered what Henry had said, that Angel never remembered what he did in the show.
Angel turned back the sheet and slipped his pants on over his undershorts. He rapped on the chair with his knuckles and she turned back. His eyes twinkled like little red stars as he put on his shirt and shoes.
“The bathroom’s back there,” she said, tilting her head in its direction, “if you need to wash your face.”
Evelyn slowed the car and looked at the burned-out Wonder Show in amazement. The sheriff and a bunch of others poked through the soggy rubble, searching for the charred bodies. She reached behind her and touched Angel, crouched in the back seat. He eased up enough to see. Worry clouded his face. “What do we do now?” Evelyn whispered.
He sank back in the seat and shrugged in bewilderment.
Just then Louis stepped from Haverstock’s wagon and looked at her. She quickly shifted into second and sped away. Louis watched the car bobble over the railroad tracks and cross the bridge. His lips twitched into a smile.
Evelyn drove slowly on the wet road, splashing through still standing puddles, and looked at the wheat. It was bowed and damply motionless, but didn’t appear damaged. A few days of hot sun would dry it out and stand it back up again. She knew what a heavy rain with hail could do, how the wheat could be battered to the ground in a matted carpet, impossible to harvest.
Angel leaned on the back of the seat, his chin on his crossed forearms, looking at everything as if he had never really seen it before. She turned her head and smiled at him. He smiled back like a little kid on Christmas morning. She explained to him about the wheat and the rain and the hail, not because she thought he was really interested, but because she liked to talk to him. He watched her face as she talked, a contented little smile on his lips.
The car skidded briefly in the mud as she turned into the lane too quickly. “Duck down,” she said. He dropped behind the seat. She parked the car near the barn and spoke to Angel without turning her head.
“Wait until I get in the house and then scoot into the barn. I think I’d better see which way the wind blows before I tell my parents about you. I’m not sure what they’ll think about all this.” She laughed nervously.
Her parents and Harold met her on the porch, their faces flickering from anger to relief and back again.
“Where have you been?” Bess demanded, her voice strained. “We’ve been worried sick all morning.”
“Young lady,” Otis said sternly, “you’d better have a good explanation.”
“This isn’t like you at all,” Bess said, her hands fluttering on her apron.
Evelyn looked at them in complete bewilderment. “What’s the matter?” she asked, wide-eyed.
“Where have you been all night?” Otis’s hand shook slightly from released tension. “Rose said you weren’t at her house.”
“Then we heard about poor Francine…” Bess sniffled and twisted her apron into a knot.
“I was just about to take the truck and come look for you,” Otis interrupted his wife.
“We called central and even Reba didn’t know where you were.” Bess was working herself into a state. “Reba said you called Rose…”
“What happened to Francine?” Evelyn demanded, wishing they would quit fussing and explain.
“You haven’t heard?” Harold asked and raised his eyebrows.
“No!”