The Sleeping Night Read Free Page A

great dark eyes focused on the men, the crayon in his hand forgotten.
    “What’s wrong?” Angel asked him.
    He frowned in a puzzled way, his gaze fixed on his father. “I ain’t too sure,” he said in a soft voice. “Somethin’.”
    Parker glanced at the children. “Little pitchers have big ears,” he said, pursing his lips.
    “Well,” said Jordan, a gentle smile replacing the worry in his face, “so they do. You children done already?”
    Isaiah glanced at Angel quickly. If they said yes, then Jordan would stand up and hold out his hand for Isaiah. The evening would be over. “No, sir,” he said.
    “Whyn’t you come on over here, anyway. Let me tell you a story tonight.” He settled back in the chair to make room on his long legs for both children. They scrambled up and he looped an arm around each, slowly beginning to rock back and forth in the still night. Parker turned off the porch light, then lit a cigarette, ice clinking in his tea as he lifted the glass to his lips.
    Angel settled her cheek against Jordan’s shirt. Isaiah rested his head on his daddy’s shoulder. The gentle rocking made Angel sleepy and she yawned, closing her eyes as Jordan’s deep voice rumbled through his chest into her ear. “A long, long time ago .  . .” he began.
    Long as she could hear that velvety rich voice in her mind as she drifted off to sleep, Angel didn’t even care about the story. Isaiah shifted, his knee bumping hers, and she drew her legs a little closer to give him more room. She heard him take in a shuddery, long breath that turned into a hard yawn. Without opening her eyes, she smiled.
    Much later, she stirred, and found herself in her own bed. Foggily, she turned over. She listened for a minute, and sure enough, the sound of her daddy and Jordan talking came in through her window. She drifted away again.
    The next Saturday was the last of the month. Things had gone pretty much like always all day. Angel ran errands for her daddy, fetching lengths of cloth and keeping tea brewed to cool the lips of the customers. As she worked, she kept looking for Isaiah, who was always first through the door.
    The night grew later; the customers drifted away. Angel’s daddy told her to get the broom and start sweeping up.
    She was angling the old broom under the lip of a set of shelves when Isaiah burst through the screen door, letting it slam hard behind him. His face was dirty, his clothes askew, and his chest heaved like he’d been running a long way.
    An immediate hush fell over the voices of the remaining customers, voices that had, until that minute, been rolling easily about the long front room of the store. All eyes fell on the boy, including Angel’s. They knew, looking at that face, that whatever they heard wasn’t going to be good. Angel felt her stomach fall to her feet and she clenched the handle of the broom with fingers that would be full of splinters the next day. Isaiah’s eyes swiveled around the room, lit on Angel, and passed to her father, who broke the silence.
    “What is it, Isaiah? Speak up, child, speak up.”
    “Mama said come get you.” His voice was thin with horror. “They killed my daddy.” His lip trembled, his eyes wide and shimmering with terror. “They killed him—”
    At the remembered ugliness, Isaiah fell straight to the floor in a dead faint. Later, Angel didn’t remember doing it, but she ran to Isaiah, washed his face with a cloth she had wet with cool water, then helped him out to the porch to get some air when he came around with a jerk. By then there was hardly anybody else around; only a few women with a keening sound to their voices and a worry in their whispers.
    It didn’t make sense to Angel right away, about Jordan High being dead because it was the first time in her life (unless you counted her mama—and she didn’t remember her ) anybody she knew died. As she sat holding Isaiah’s hand in the darkness of the porch, she heard the rich sound of Jordan