December 23rd- Minor Characters Project: Chapter 4 — Texas Longhorn: The Angel by Verlaine

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Click here to read Chapter Two
Click here to read Chapter Three

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. See you, too. Trouble comin’ to my door every day and twice on Sunday. Just enough smack in my veins I don’t care much now.

Don’t be lookin’ at me like that, white bread. Was a day when you’d have been happy to get a smile from The Angel. Oh, yeah. Fifteen years, baby. I would’ve stopped your clock.

A long way from home . . .

Naw, that’s all gone now. Should burn those old pictures. Nothin’ left but memories, and those don’t buy me any smack, do they? Don’t pity me, honey. I had good years. I made some bad choices, but in the good years I filled the cup and I drank it down to the last drop.

So what you want with The Angel?

Another rape, another murder. There were half a dozen on this block alone in the last couple months. Why should I care some rich white gal got herself killed? Ridin’ around in a fancy Cadillac car, wearin’ a necklace worth more than some people make in a year—what was she thinkin’ would happen? So many folks without any way to get from one day to the next, not just us junkies.

Why should I help the police force? All of us down here just one step away from the end of the line anyway. You want me to make it easier to take a couple of brothers down? I need a better reason than just Huggy Bear’s say-so.

Awful young though, even if she was married. Little bitty blonde thing, she never stood a chance. They must’ve hurt her so bad before she died. Lemme tell you, I know what it’s like. I’ve been on the road alone too, and men thinkin’ they had a right to me just ’cause I was there and they felt like it. Nobody to help me, nobody to hear me cryin’ to the Lord . . .

Poor little girl. All alone out on the road in the dark.

I’ll tell you what you wanna know. You watch out for the devil in those two. Brown bread, he just a regular hype, sold his soul to the needle and goin’ down fast. But white bread, with the tattoos? He don’t fear God or man. For him, the sunset is coming, and he wants to watch the world burn while the sun goes down. When you catch him, he’ll try and take you out first.

Sunset’s coming.

A long way from home . . .

You wanna watch that man of hers. He’ll be hurtin’ and he’ll be raging. He’ll feel hollow inside, with nothing but pain left to fill him up. Might be he takes it out on himself, might be he hits out at somebody else. Man loses his woman that way, it curdles his soul. My granddaddy was never right . . .

Poor baby girl. Nobody to help her.

A long way from home . . .