by William Hawkins
We’re on our way to Disney World when an angel flies out from a ditch. It never stood a chance. The windshield rattles but doesn’t crack. You can hardly see the road for its wings. Dad slams the brakes and yells a word we’d be punished for yelling. Mom just says, Oh, Oh, Oh! and flaps her own arms as if she were the one flying off instead. Dad pulls up on the shoulder, which where we’re driving mostly gravel. He tries the windshield wipers, but the angel is good and stuck. A car passes us; there is a great whooshing. Careful, Mom says, as Dad opens the car door. They go outside together to peel the angel off. One of its wings is stuck in the fold of the wiper: Dad has one hand on the joint and the other on the feathers of the wingtip and pulls, his face ugly with effort. Mom helps by pulling on the white gown of the angel — now sullied — but keeps losing her grip. The angel’s face rises and falls into the glass, its kaleidoscope eyes blank in death. I look out the back window of the van; I can see where its halo fell on the road. When the angel’s wing is finally wrested free, the whole car shakes. From the back seat where she had been sleeping my little sister announces that it’s bad luck to kill an angel. I tell her to shut up. It doesn’t mean anything more than a lovebug splatter. Though as far as I know, angels usually roost in mountains and churches. What could it have been doing, in the tall grass of Alabama, on the way to Disney World? My parents return to the car — Mom to the driver’s seat, now, Dad to the passenger’s. Mom looks back with a put-upon smile and says, That just about scared the daylights out of me. Dad says, You don’t usually see angels around here. Mom backs up the car a little, then returns to the road. Not one of us looks back.
William Hawkins has been published in Granta, ZZYZZYVA, and TriQuarterly, among others. Originally from Louisiana, he currently lives in Los Angeles. Read more of his writing at oncetherewas.substack.com.
Hawaii Pacific Review 