Christopher Hebert - Angels of Detroit

R.J. crinkled his eyebrows at her in disappointment. “My sister Samantha says what’s wrong with people is they don’t read the papers. That’s why they’re going out of business. People don’t know what’s going on anymore.”

The sky had turned purple. Rain was lashing at the window. April stood up on unsteady legs. In her stomach, she thought she could feel the tires start to skid. She reached into the overhead compartment, removing a book from her bag.

She blew through an entire page before realizing she’d finished even a paragraph. The words came and went like passing cars. Somewhere in the back of the bus, a man was talking so loudly it seemed he must have wanted everyone to hear. Pages vanished like the words themselves. The man in the back of the bus accused the driver of being drunk. April wondered whether the man himself was drunk. He grew louder and louder, until April could no longer hear the scratching.

“If this was a boat, we’d be on the bottom of the sea!” the man hollered. “If it was a plane, we’d all be wearing life vests!”

The clouds and the rain had grown so thick April could no longer see the highway on the other side of the median. Hazy lights swam past unattached to anything. The bus had slowed, as had the traffic surrounding them. Everyone around her was holding on to something, everyone but R.J.

“Afraid of a little rain,” the man in the back snickered. “Worse thing you can be when you’re driving is afraid.”

“Please keep your voice down,” a weary voice crackled over the loudspeaker.

April clenched her book to keep herself from standing and yelling at the man to be quiet. She couldn’t understand why nobody else, nobody sitting back there with him, hadn’t already told him to shut the fuck up.

“Say the word, and I’ll go up there and take over. If not me, somebody, anybody. I’ll send my eighty-year-old grandmother up there. Blind in one eye, but I’d sooner trust my life to her.”

“Please keep your voice down.”

“Look up, ladies and gentlemen!” the man in the back of the bus thundered, his voice carrying the fever of a revivalist preacher.

“Look up into the sky above you! You can’t see them, but somewhere above the clouds rich people are coasting along with their feet up, munching on complimentary peanuts!”

“If you don’t shut up, I’ll throw you off the bus.” The loudspeaker fuzzed and then went dead, a much less measured tone this time.

April started another chapter without realizing she’d finished the previous one.

“He’s right,” R.J. said after a long silence. “If I died right now, I’d be pissed. I mean, if you’re going to die, shouldn’t it be for something good? I want to die doing something fun, but it almost never happens that way. I mean, we could die right now. Look at it out there.”

She was better off not seeing.

“Where are you going?” R.J. said.

“To visit a friend,” April said curtly. “But right now I’m going to try to get some sleep.”

“And if you ended up dying on your way to see this friend, how would you feel? I mean, wouldn’t that suck? Or maybe you wouldn’t mind. I mean, maybe this is a good friend, and you have to die sometime, right? But what if you’re driving to the store for like bread? I mean, can you imagine dying for a loaf of bread? Maybe if you’re starving, it would be different. I’m going to see my sister Beatrice. I don’t even like Beatrice. Maybe if I had to choose, I’d rather die before I went. At least that way I wouldn’t have to stay with her. She bakes sugarless cookies and reads books about Jesus. Her husband can’t talk about anything except what a great baseball player he almost was. I’d hate to think the last thing I ever did was something I didn’t want to do. My mother died of cancer, but there was nothing anybody could do about that. For a couple of years, she couldn’t even leave her bed. But my father — I mean, he died when I was little. He’d always wanted one of those little trees. You know the ones I mean? The little miniature kind. So one year my sister Phyllis got him one for his birthday — she had to order it from like, I don’t know — and then he died of a heart attack before she could give it to him.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” R.J. said. “The tree died too.”

April had no brothers or sisters. She’d barely known her own father. But hearing R.J. talk about his family made April think about Fitch and Holmes and Myles. In the months since they’d gone their separate ways, they’d e-mailed every once in a while, but it was hard to know what anything they said really meant. They had jobs in Portland. At least Holmes and Myles did. Holmes was pulling espresso. He was seeing somebody, a guy who did PR. Someone stable, professional. Myles was working at a bookstore. A manager. Shiny, clean new books this time. And Fitch was assembling a new band and living off his parents. Until he got “settled,” as they called it, which they were still willing to believe might happen someday. The three of them talked about the weather, the food, the music, the people. Everything about Portland was fabulous. But it was the things they didn’t say that made her wonder. No regrets, no mention of McGee. April knew all those years together couldn’t be so easily forgotten, no matter how much they wanted to put Detroit behind them.

But she was guilty of the same sort of silence. She’d told them about Inez; school hadn’t even started yet, and Inez was working so hard that April rarely saw her. About herself, though, there was much less to say. She was doing freelance stuff when she could, websites mostly. She hadn’t told them she was going to see McGee. Maybe she was afraid they’d try to talk her out of it.

In her e-mails, she always left out how much she missed everyone. Not because she didn’t want them to know, but because every time she caught herself bringing it up, she couldn’t help sounding nostalgic, as if she wished things could return to the way they’d been before, the five of them together again. And in a way, she truly did wish this, but she understood it was no longer possible. And anyway, she knew no one else would agree.

They’d started out wanting to save the world. Then they’d scaled back, settling for saving the city. But they couldn’t even do that. Maybe they’d gone about it the wrong way. April wasn’t sorry they’d tried. But then again, for her the cause had always been the smallest part. She’d believed in McGee more than she’d believed in politics. The five of them could have organized a bowling league and April would’ve been satisfied, as long as they did it together.

Whenever she caught herself thinking this way, April tried to tell herself that missing the past didn’t mean she regretted having chosen to leave with Inez. But sometimes she couldn’t help feeling Inez was unhappy with her — as if, having won April away from her friends, she’d come to discover the prize was less enjoyable than the fight.

And was that why she was on this bus now? April wondered. Not for McGee but to force Inez to fight for her again?

A commotion woke her, a screech and a shudder. April looked outside. It took a few moments to understand they were at a bus station.

“Where are we?” she asked.

R.J. had turned to face the back of the bus. “Police.”

With a start, April spun around. There was a cop standing at the last row.

“Up,” he was saying, “now.” He was gesturing at one of the passengers, his other hand hovering at his hip, just above his holster.

At the front, another cop, a woman, was talking to the driver. Quietly, impossible to hear over the chatter of her radio. Suddenly the female cop looked up, meeting April’s eye.