Carol O’Connell - Stone Angel

He could well believe the theory that the dinosaur had not died off, but had taken wings and lived on in the smaller form of modern birds. A memory of majesty must survive in this one, for it looked upon Charles as no threat whatever – merely a man, an upstart creature in the scheme of time on earth.

He watched the black bird fly off toward the low-riding sun, and now he noticed that all the graves and monuments were aligned east to west. Perhaps local custom arranged the dead to face the sunrise, ancient symbol of resurrection.

Only one tomb was facing north.

Curious.

He went back to the rim of the cemetery and walked around this structure to stand before a door gated with intricate designs of ironwork and flanked by narrow windows of exquisite stained glass. At first, he placed the tomb in the colonial period, for it was showing the wear of ages: corners rounding and fissures running through the walls. And then he realized that it was constructed with a soft, porous stone. Given the fine craftsmanship of the tomb, this use of shoddy material made no sense at all.

Above the door was the bas-relief carving of a man’s face, minus the nose which had crumbled to dust. The stone eyes were gazing through a break in the trees which allowed a view of Trebec House. The first name engraved over the door was lost to erosion, and the surname was barely legible. Trebec? Yes, that was it. Well, what would Mr. Trebec think of his ruined mansion now?

Charles walked around the tomb and headed for the path back to Henry Roth’s house. Before leaving the ring of trees, he remembered one more anomaly and turned to Cass Shelley’s monument, visible through a narrow alley of tombs. The stone angel was facing south. And what was she looking at?

A gust of wind came ripping through the trees, tearing leaves away, and sighing off with them to the other end of the cemetery. The soft racket of thrashing branches stopped suddenly, as though the wind had closed a door behind it. The air was colder now and unnaturally still. No sound of insects, no birdcall. The stones were casting their longest shadows toward the close of day.

He felt a light breeze on his skin, as though someone unseen had just walked by, caressing his face in passing. His involuntary shiver was delicious.

Oh, what Cousin Max could have done with a stage like this. Cemeteries were primed for the illusionist’s art. The atmosphere alone would have done half the magician’s work for him.

As Charles left the circle of trees and drew closer to Henry Roth’s yard, he heard the sound of an engine. His own car sat in the wide driveway, its silver metal gleaming, throwing back light from the sunset sky. There was no other vehicle in sight. He approached the front door, already sensing the stillness of no one home. The sound of the engine stopped now, but suddenly, not tapering off down some road in the distance. It must be close by.

He followed the curving driveway as it wound around the house and past a large chicken coop attached to an empty garage. The meandering road led him into the trees and ended at the heart of a grove. A brace of heavy branches concealed the upper portion of an old chapel made of large, rough-hewn blocks of gray. Only the religious arches of the windows and the open doors were not obscured by leaves. A large and blocky tarpaulined shape lay in the bed of a red pickup truck parked in front of the building.

Charles rounded the truck and walked up a short flight of steps. He paused on the threshold and peered inside. Two massive skylights were set into the steep pitch of the high ceiling. Slow floating clouds of pink and gold seemed within grazing distance of the glass.

The vast room was full of day’s end shadows. The pews and religious trappings were gone. At the back of the church, ghostly shapes in white drapes formed a circle on the raised floor where the altar had been. Uncovered sculptures stood about the room in a more casual arrangement and varying states of emergence from granite and marble. Many of these figures had wings and appeared to be flying out of their uncarved sections.

A small, delicate man came out of the shadows to dance with the tall statue of a woman. The strange couple glided past a long worktable, and now Charles could see the feet of the man and the wheeled pallet beneath his stone partner as he rolled her to the wall.

Charles would have called out, but remembered that Henry Roth only conversed in sign language and written notes. He came up behind the man as he was arranging a drape around the statue. With no hint of surprise, the sculptor turned to face his uninvited guest. Charles assumed the man had felt the warning vibrations of approaching footfalls on the wooden floorboards.

This person was neither white nor black, but a stunning new race of golden skin and light brown eyes with sparks of green. His hair was pure white and tightly kinked about his crown. The sculptor truly belonged in this company of angels, for his smile was charming and gentle as he spread his hands on the air. His face was an open question.

Charles fumbled for a moment, but the movements came back to him quickly enough. As a toddler, he had signed his words before he had ever spoken aloud. This was his first language, though he had abandoned it over the twenty years since his father’s death. With broad gestures and finger spelling, his hands said, “My name is Charles Butler. You are Mr. Roth?”

The man nodded. Charles made more signs, his hands curving and pointing. When memory failed him, he spelled what he could not sign in a fluid movement. Here and there, he made a slip of the fingers and erred, but all the intricate nuances of tense and adverb were coming back to him as he stabbed the air and danced one hand in a circle. Facial expression gave depth to his feeling when he described his relationship to Kathy Mallory, whom Henry Roth would remember as young Kathy Shelley. He raised his brows to punctuate with a question mark when he asked for help. He tightened his lips for the sense of an emphatic exclamation point when he explained his dire need to see her again.

Only the ignorant believed that sign language was dumb show, simple mime. This graceful three-dimensional voice of hands flying through space, this was the true art of conversation. One gesture flowed smoothly into the flight of a bird, and then he finger-stepped across the stage of midair to describe the details of Augusta’s ruse with Lilith – his role as Augusta’s agent. And then, after one last plea for aid, Charles’s hands fell silent.

Throughout the long and involved explanation of events, Henry Roth had been extremely attentive and patient. Now the man smiled broadly, and his hands said, “I’m not deaf – only mute.” And then he laughed in silence as though this were a great joke, and Charles supposed it was.

“Sorry.” Charles spoke aloud this time. “I shouldn’t have assumed – ”

“Everyone does,” signed the mute. “People in town have been assuming that for sixty-five years.” He went on to explain that he didn’t mind, because people would say the most amazing things when they believed he couldn’t hear them. “ I live in an eavesdropper’s paradise.”

When the conversation came back to Mallory, Charles said, “I don’t want to alarm her by barging in with no warning. She might be afraid I’d given something away to the sheriff.”

Actually, she would just assume he had done that. Mallory knew she had wasted her time tutoring him in the sister arts of lies and poker. Despite his freakish IQ, she regarded him as learning disabled.

“So, would you prepare her for my visit? You could tell her Augusta will back up the story that I’m working for the estate. Will you help me?”