The Last Thing the Angel Said
Coming soon from Auctus Publishers, my long-in-the-making novel of post-war Pennsylvania blues and the skewed mores and magic of older, darker times.
Bronia Chambers lives in a Pennsylvania town riven with sabotage, larceny and the superstitions and broken magic its citizens brought from the fringes of old Europe. While her dreams are set on gawky athlete Milo Galitzki, all his fix on racing his bicycle in the biggest race in the world. To make their dreams come true, Bronia has to navigate through fake friends, manic rivals, nihilistic artists, masked delinquents and war-damaged bikers to distract Milo from the scars left by a spiteful act that broke the community, and his encounter with a very unorthodox angel.
Bronia Chambers lives in a Pennsylvania town riven with sabotage, larceny and the superstitions and broken magic its citizens brought from the fringes of old Europe. While her dreams are set on gawky athlete Milo Galitzki, all his fix on racing his bicycle in the biggest race in the world. To make their dreams come true, Bronia has to navigate through fake friends, manic rivals, nihilistic artists, masked delinquents and war-damaged bikers to distract Milo from the scars left by a spiteful act that broke the community, and his encounter with a very unorthodox angel.
'Milo never dreamed of angels, only of bicycles.'
Friends and Angels - an excerpt from chapter 1
From the ramparts of Balz’s fort, Mr Galitzki and his kids were mesmerized as the fog enclosed Lucy Ephraim. The Glass Beach flagpole was gone, and there she was in space, turning.
Milo said, “She’ll fall.”
“Not her,” Milo’s dad said with an air of the wise guy.
Milo knew he ought to pray that Lucy didn’t fall, but something stopped him. Mila would pray, anyhow. He asked his dad, “But if she did?”
“Then… nobody could help her.”
“Not even her friends?”
“Your friends are the last people who’ll help you.”
Milo’s dad joined his son in thinking of his own little friends. Wire-headed long-nosed kid that reminded Witold of an animal that chewed through people’s things. Straw-haired kid with broad cheeks, sized the world up all the time with urgent, insolent eyes, and his kid brother, his eyes friendly but empty. The weasel-faced twins belonging to that insufferable Peterlejtner guy who had the grocery store. Child with long hair of the richest brown and an unearthly smile that didn’t hide some deep feminine misery. Bible-quoting neighbor kid born the same time as Milo, head of sprouting gold flames, with her matricidal kid brother. That pitiful Michael kid. There was the fat kid, too, the hirsute fat kid, the hirsute fat fatherless kid, eyes deeper and darker than those of a Kolinsky mink.
Milo changed tack without his dad able to anticipate it, asked, “How about angels?”
Mila clapped her hands. It hurt to know it, but she had been aware since the day Sister Adelheid died that angels couldn’t even help themselves. She had on a brown wool coat buttoned up to the neck, and sported a white angora beret. Milo thought she looked like a rum baba. He put his tongue out at her.
“Angels?” Mr Galitzki let fade those pictures of his kids’ friends. Friends didn’t mean a thing. In the Galician village in which he’d been raised, soldiers in the Tsar’s livery had marched men into forests and shot them in the backs of their heads. They’d been pointed out as Bolsheviks by people they’d sat in school with, with whom they’d shared jokes and first cigarettes and slugs of vodka, peeks at girls undressing at the swimming hole and all the startling watery mischief of Easter Monday. A few years later the finger-pointers were denounced as Tsarists to the Bolsheviks, by other friends. Witold Galitzki had decided he wouldn’t make any more friends in his life, would support neither Tsars nor commissars, nor make peace with God, and wouldn’t believe in God’s angels. “There are no angels.”
For an agonizing second the sight and smell and sound of Sister Adelheid came back to Milo. “But Pa,” he began.
“No angels.” Milo had the oddest feeling that his dad was mostly in a daydream, his head full of workmen raising towers and gantries and whistling at women passing below. “And if there were, they wouldn’t come and help you out.”
“There are so angels.” Mila tugged her dad’s hand.
Witold barely knew his daughter, the child who came to light once the first enervating spark of love had passed. He gathered her into his arms. “Our children,” he declared into her ear, “though conceived in a bitter age, may build better than their fathers. Hey.” He found his engineer’s voice again for Milo. “Why did Ulysses do all that stuff?”
Milo said, “Because he wanted to go home.”
“What?” Mila turned her head from one to the other of the men in her life.
“Home.” There was a pause, as if their dad was trying to work out what the word meant. Then he put Mila down and herded the pair together with his long arms. He set them walking. “Here we go.”
From the ramparts of Balz’s fort, Mr Galitzki and his kids were mesmerized as the fog enclosed Lucy Ephraim. The Glass Beach flagpole was gone, and there she was in space, turning.
Milo said, “She’ll fall.”
“Not her,” Milo’s dad said with an air of the wise guy.
Milo knew he ought to pray that Lucy didn’t fall, but something stopped him. Mila would pray, anyhow. He asked his dad, “But if she did?”
“Then… nobody could help her.”
“Not even her friends?”
“Your friends are the last people who’ll help you.”
Milo’s dad joined his son in thinking of his own little friends. Wire-headed long-nosed kid that reminded Witold of an animal that chewed through people’s things. Straw-haired kid with broad cheeks, sized the world up all the time with urgent, insolent eyes, and his kid brother, his eyes friendly but empty. The weasel-faced twins belonging to that insufferable Peterlejtner guy who had the grocery store. Child with long hair of the richest brown and an unearthly smile that didn’t hide some deep feminine misery. Bible-quoting neighbor kid born the same time as Milo, head of sprouting gold flames, with her matricidal kid brother. That pitiful Michael kid. There was the fat kid, too, the hirsute fat kid, the hirsute fat fatherless kid, eyes deeper and darker than those of a Kolinsky mink.
Milo changed tack without his dad able to anticipate it, asked, “How about angels?”
Mila clapped her hands. It hurt to know it, but she had been aware since the day Sister Adelheid died that angels couldn’t even help themselves. She had on a brown wool coat buttoned up to the neck, and sported a white angora beret. Milo thought she looked like a rum baba. He put his tongue out at her.
“Angels?” Mr Galitzki let fade those pictures of his kids’ friends. Friends didn’t mean a thing. In the Galician village in which he’d been raised, soldiers in the Tsar’s livery had marched men into forests and shot them in the backs of their heads. They’d been pointed out as Bolsheviks by people they’d sat in school with, with whom they’d shared jokes and first cigarettes and slugs of vodka, peeks at girls undressing at the swimming hole and all the startling watery mischief of Easter Monday. A few years later the finger-pointers were denounced as Tsarists to the Bolsheviks, by other friends. Witold Galitzki had decided he wouldn’t make any more friends in his life, would support neither Tsars nor commissars, nor make peace with God, and wouldn’t believe in God’s angels. “There are no angels.”
For an agonizing second the sight and smell and sound of Sister Adelheid came back to Milo. “But Pa,” he began.
“No angels.” Milo had the oddest feeling that his dad was mostly in a daydream, his head full of workmen raising towers and gantries and whistling at women passing below. “And if there were, they wouldn’t come and help you out.”
“There are so angels.” Mila tugged her dad’s hand.
Witold barely knew his daughter, the child who came to light once the first enervating spark of love had passed. He gathered her into his arms. “Our children,” he declared into her ear, “though conceived in a bitter age, may build better than their fathers. Hey.” He found his engineer’s voice again for Milo. “Why did Ulysses do all that stuff?”
Milo said, “Because he wanted to go home.”
“What?” Mila turned her head from one to the other of the men in her life.
“Home.” There was a pause, as if their dad was trying to work out what the word meant. Then he put Mila down and herded the pair together with his long arms. He set them walking. “Here we go.”
'Mila never dreamed of bicycles, only of saints.'