Flight of the Stone Angel Read Online Free PDF Page B

attentive and patient. Now the man smiled broadly, and his hands said, “I’m not deaf – only mute.” And then he laughed in silence as though this were a great joke, and Charles supposed it was.
    “Sorry.” Charles spoke aloud this time. “I shouldn’t have assumed – ”
    “Everyone does,” signed the mute. “People in town have been assuming that for sixty-five years.” He went on to explain that he didn’t mind, because people would say the most amazing things when they believed he couldn’t hear them. “ I live in an eavesdropper’s paradise.”
    When the conversation came back to Mallory, Charles said, “I don’t want to alarm her by barging in with no warning. She might be afraid I’d given something away to the sheriff.”
    Actually, she would just assume he had done that. Mallory knew she had wasted her time tutoring him in the sister arts of lies and poker. Despite his freakish IQ, she regarded him as learning disabled.
    “So, would you prepare her for my visit? You could tell her Augusta will back up the story that I’m working for the estate. Will you help me?”
    The sculptor used both hands, upturned and open, alternately moving them up and down, weighing one thing against another to say, “Maybe.” He went on to say he might speak with Mallory, perhaps tomorrow – but only if it could be done without the sheriff asking questions, and that was unlikely. He did not enjoy the idea of lying to a man he had known for so many years, and Charles should not count on his help. Then his hands dropped back to his sides and hung there with nothing more to say.
    Charles’s hands rose, as though to speak, but instead, they splayed wide in helpless frustration. He lowered his eyes and nodded. “I understand.” Of course he did. This man had no reason to trust him, to help him or lie for him.
    Henry Roth shrugged to say that he could offer nothing more solid. And then his hands explained that he had work to do, and he must get on with it.
    Charles followed the sculptor to the door and watched him unfold a metal ramp, extending it over the stone stairs to the back end of the truck. Now Roth unhinged two metal legs to level the ramp. He moved a rolling pallet in place near the open truck gate, and began to work the large canvas-covered shape from the flat bed, patiently rocking the massive stone and pulling it toward him.
    Charles guessed, by metallic sounds, the pads beneath the stone must ride on ball bearings. Still, it was a tremendous weight, and this would be slow work for a man not much over five feet tall. Now he grasped the sculptor’s problem of weight, balance and leverage. In a moment, he had doffed his suitcoat and rolled up his sleeves. “Allow me, please.”
    Henry Roth stood aside, and Charles pulled on the block until half of it jutted out from the bed of the truck. He eased it into an incline, and the bottom edge of the stone was sliding down toward the rolling pallet. As it touched the edge of the pallet, quickly, with one foot, he moved the rolling platform underneath it. Braced against the truck bed, the block was leveraged into an upright position. Next, he put his shoulder to the stone and pushed it along the ramp until it was housed inside the sculptor’s studio.
    The man smiled his thanks, then signed, “It takes me an hour to unload a block that size.”
    Roth locked the doors, and the two men walked away from the chapel and back toward the house. Now the sculptor made a firm date to meet at the town square in the morning, for he had thought of a way to avoid the sheriff and his questions.
    Charles was still smiling as his Mercedes pulled out of the driveway. He traveled back along the dirt road, circling around the cemetery. Near the bridge was a signpost topped by a board in the shape of an arrow and weathered to blank, gray wood. All that remained of its lettering was an ironic y at the edge of the board. The mystery arrow pointed down a side road, a dark and narrow