Free In the Matter of Fallen Angels: A Short Story by Jacqueline Carey Page A

was a large, fenced lot.  At the far end it bordered Foxglove Creek and was shady and green.  The area right behind the General was barren dirt sporting a barbecue pit, two picnic tables and, this morning, the recumbent form of a fallen angel.
    "I'll be damned," Old Man Stoat was saying as Quinn followed Bobby out the back door.  It sounded as though he were saying it for the fiftieth time already that morning, which he was.  Garrett Ainsworth had his hands shoved deep in his pockets and wasn't saying anything, but then he was always more of a listener than a talker.
    The angel at first glance looked like a toppled statue, except for the wings.  It was lying on its side and would have been facing them, only its left wing covered its face so they couldn't see it.  It was not moving.
    "What the hell is it?" Quinn asked.
    "Can't be sure," said Garrett Ainsworth, "but it looks like an angel."
    This was true.  It looked exactly like, and like nothing but, an angel.  
    "Is it alive?" asked Quinn.
    "I think so," Garrett said.  He also wore a very peculiar expression on his face.
    Except for a length of dazzlingly white cloth artfully girded about its loins, the angel was naked.  Its contours were heroic and masculine.  Its flesh possessed the hard translucency of marble and its hair was a bronze that glowed like a Greek shield in the light of the morning sun over the plains of Marathon.
    "Maybe I'd better fetch Reverend Plunkett," said Bobby MacReary, and disappeared into the General.  The angel did not move at the sound of the screen door banging shut.  Its wings were a thousand shades of white, from the snowy whiteness of its down feathers to the ivory of its massive pinions, which were dove-grey at the shaft.
    "I'll be damned," said Old Man Stoat again and spat tobacco juice into the dust.  The angel's ribcage rose and fell slowly, steadily and almost imperceptibly, the way marble would if it could breath.  Quinn's knees turned to water faster than a priest can transubstantiate wine and he sat down in the dirt.
    "This is not happening," Quinn said very calmly, and as everyone knows did not say much else for quite some time.
    Bobby MacReary came back with Reverend Plunkett, who was puffing heavily from hurrying.  His black hair shone with Brylcreem and his cherubic mouth shaped an O of surprise when he saw the angel.
    "How did this get here?" he demanded. 
    Garrett Ainsworth shrugged and looked at the sky.   “ Fell, I guess.”
    After this things began to get a bit out of hand.  At the insistence of Reverend Plunkett, because it was a fallen angel, Bobby MacReary went to the lumberyard to buy chicken-wire and 2 x 4s to construct a coop around the angel.  He told everyone he saw and by the time he had built the coop, a good-sized crowd had gathered in the General's backyard, where the angel had not stirred and Quinn still sat in the dirt and stared unbelieving.  Everyone was very nice about it and careful not to bump into him, recognizing what a difficult time Quinn must be having with this as an atheist.
    The Utopian Chapter of the League of Women Voters decided to put aside their opposition to supporting stereotypical views of feminine domesticity and brought sandwiches and lemonade.  Doc Hayward brought his stethoscope and listened gingerly to the angel's heartbeat, said it sounded fine and wouldn't do anything else.  Bobby MacReary, who liked running errands, went to fetch Doc Farnsworth, who was the county veterinarian, but Doc Farnsworth was drunk and wouldn't believe him, which everybody said was just as well.
    At around 11:00 a.m. the Reverend D.J. Breedlove and most of his congregation showed up.  The two Reverends got into a shouting match, which always happened anyway.  The choir from Mount Zion Baptist Church, which was accustomed to doing without its spiritual leader whenever he and Reverend Plunkett encountered one another, sang a couple gospel hymns which really got the backyard rollicking