Archangel

by Paul Watkins

  “Here’s another coffee drinker.” Lazarus nodded at Gabriel while he rinsed out the thermos. “Seems like nobody ever wants to sleep in this town.”

  Gabriel had glanced at Madeleine when she walked in, but he had glanced away again. Now he turned to face her. He smiled uncertainly, embarrassed at the forced introduction.

  Madeleine stared at him. She did not smile back. She gave him a look that made it clear he was a stranger.

  Gabriel peered down into his coffee. He had noticed her intelligent face and the curve of her hips in her jeans, and he did not blame her for staring at him with the narrowed eyes and clenched jaw of someone who is suspicious. In her place, he might have done the same. Gabriel felt a tightness in his chest, and raised his head and saw his own tired eyes in the mirror behind the bar. He thought of all the avenues of possibility that he might once have imagined with this woman, even if it came to nothing more than a glance which showed that they both knew the possibility, no matter that it would remain a dream. He could have none of that now. All need for companionship had been replaced by the fear of discovery. Even if she did want to know, he could tell this woman nothing about who he really was. All he could do was envelop her in lies, and the closer he might come, the more lies he would have to weave around her. And the more he might care about her, the more he would detest himself for lying. He felt the trap in which he’d caught himself. If he liked her, he would not lie to her, and if he didn’t lie to her, she would have nothing to do with him.

  Gabrel knew what he was. He knew the destruction he would bring to the lives of people in this town. And he knew that the extremity of his beliefs and what he was prepared to do to act them out was only the first step in a long series of steps that he believed in absolutely. He had accepted the price of that, which was to become like a machine. Not feel loneliness. But far away inside himself was the old Gabriel, nameless now, and waiting patiently but always less patiently for the time when the two sides of this man might somehow merge.

  Gabriel was in a war. Any other name for it fell short. And part of the war was with himself, to keep in place the mask that he now wore. It seemed a fragile thing, and even the thought of being close to this stranger seemed to Gabriel to reveal in the bar’s mirror his old face. He hoped that no one else could see it.

  Lazarus filled the thermos with coffee and handed it back to Madeleine, who paid for it with a pocket full of change. Before she turned to leave, she looked at Gabriel again. This time she did smile, but it was a smile that gave nothing away.

  When Madeleine had gone, Gabriel gulped down the last of his coffee. He tapped the rim of the cup to show he wanted some more.

  Lazarus filled the cup and set the coffeepot down on the counter. The bar-top copper rippled blue from the heat. “You ought not to drink that stuff so late at night.”

  “I don’t sleep much, anyway.”

  “No,” said Lazarus, as if he had known in advance.

  Gabriel put a crumpled dollar bill on the counter. There was something in the old man’s voice that both bothered and comforted him. There was a softness to the way he spoke which Gabriel had not heard before. It was the first faint offering of acceptance of Gabriel’s presence here. But it bothered Gabriel, because Lazarus talked as if he knew more than he was letting on. Maybe Lazarus knew everything. Gabriel glanced up and caught Lazarus’s eye, searching for some blink of recognition, but it was too dark to tell. It’s just nerves, Gabriel thought to himself. It’s just the coffee jabbering in my head. But Gabriel knew it could just as easily have been himself out there in the woods that night and running for his life, instead of that poor man Wilbur Hazard.

  “Get home fast,” Lazarus told Gabriel as he walked out. “And lock the door and load up your gun if you have one. And make yourself another pot of coffee. It ain’t worth sleeping tonight anyway. By the time those boys are finished in the woods, this place will be hell above ground.”

  Before Coltrane knocked on Mackenzie’s door, he sat in his car across the road and smoked a cigarette to calm his nerves. It seemed to be the fastest-burning cigarette he had ever smoked. After only a few puffs, the butt had burned down so low that it looked as if he had made a fire by rubbing his thumb and index finger together. He flicked the cigarette out the window and then walked across the road. He rang the doorbell several times before Alicia let him in.

  “I heard you the first time,” she said, laughing, but her eyes were serious.

  Coltrane breathed in the beeswax-and-lemon smell of polished wood. “Dodge thinks he knows who did it,” Coltrane said. “The nail. He thinks he knows.”

  The expression changed on her face. It was no longer reservedly polite. Now her gaze was fixed. “I’ll get Jonah. Please do sit down.” She vanished up the stairs.

  Coltrane watched her go, silently admiring how out of place her gracefulness appeared in Abenaki Junction. She seemed to him like some rare and tropical plant growing in among the pines.

  Mackenzie came down wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. His skin was red from sitting in a bath. Alicia followed him with a bathrobe, but he shook it off. Steam curled up from his skin.

  Coltrane found himself looking down at his shoes in the presence of this mostly naked man.

  “Alicia says you found someone.” Mackenzie’s gray chest hair clung in tight, angry curls to his body. He squinted at Coltrane, asking him without words, What the hell are you talking about?

  “Well, Dodge saw him going into the Algonquin this evening. He’s going to try to find him and wants me to help.”

  “Who is it?” Mackenzie was pug-faced with indignation.

  “Wilbur Hazard. That city boy.”

  “Hazard?” Mackenzie looked as if he had bitten into a piece of rotten fruit. “Hazard?” he asked again.

  “I came right by to tell you. Tell you both.” Coltrane glanced at Alicia, to show he was talking to her as well.

  “And Dodge wants you to help?” Mackenzie raked his fingers through his chest hair.

  “I’ll go in there and help.” Coltrane stressed the word. He meant, I’ll go in there and fuck everything up on purpose, so nobody gets hurt.

  “I think Victor needs to set out as soon as he can, dear.” Alicia took hold of her husband’s arm.

  Mackenzie did not answer. He allowed himself to be led away upstairs. It never occurred to him that Alicia might know about him and Mary and the identity of Hazard’s father. He had never seen a flicker of suspicion on her face. But if he had looked her in the eye just then, he would have seen from the pity in her expression that she did know. She had known for a long while, and had forgiven him, although it had taken time. It was between him and Mary, this thing that had happened so far in the past. Alicia did not feel a part of it. Emotions had filtered down the way they always do in the end, and it seemed to her that each had made a separate peace. She pitied her husband now, because she knew he would never mention his pain to her and she could never tell him that she knew. Better to let it go. The punishment Mackenzie had dealt himself over the years had been hard enough to bear. No one judged Jonah Mackenzie more harshly than he judged himself, and if he thought she knew, the judgment would only be harsher. She did not want that. Didn’t want to hurt him, or for anyone to be hurt by this. In her mind, all debts had been paid. Alicia hoped it wasn’t true about Hazard spiking the tree. It would bring scandal to that fractured little family, which deserved it less than others she could name.

  Coltrane stood for a moment by himself in the hallway, not sure what to do next. Then he left without saying good-bye. Five minutes later, he met Dodge at the station and the two of them headed for the forest. Coltrane drove. Dodge knew he liked to drive the patrol car, feeling the power of its supercharged engine. So now Dodge sat beside him, slipping new .357 bullets into the chamber of his revolver. At first they didn’t speak. Then, a few miles down the road, Coltrane suddenly jerked the steering wheel to one side. The police car swerved onto the shoulder. Gravel and d
ust kicked up behind them. A truck with a gun rack behind its seat sped past, the driver craning his neck around to see why they had stopped so suddenly.

  “This guy could be anywhere in the Algonquin, in places nobody’s even seen before. It’s crazy going in now. We need to set out in daylight.” Coltrane looked out the car window. The darkness seemed almost solid, leaning with force against the glass.

  Dodge brushed a hand over the stubble of his end-of-the-day beard. “It probably wouldn’t hurt to get some troopers up from Skowhegan to help with the search. I bet they could send us a few.”

  “No,” said Coltrane hurriedly. “We know the Algonquin as well as any logger in the Mackenzie Company. You and I been stalking around there since we were kids. Longer than Hazard, any road. We’ll find him. We don’t need Skowhegan people for that. Ten men and the bear will hear you coming, but only two and you can come up close for the kill.” Coltrane flinched at a sudden and viciously returning memory. It was from years before, when he had shot a bear at a place called the Narrows, where Pogansett Lake flowed into Crescent Pond. The water ran fast there, and bears would sometimes come to scoop fish from the rapids. They were trout mostly, rainbows and browns. What jolted Coltrane was the image of the bear after his first bullet had struck. He shot the animal at fifty yards with a 30-06 hollow-point. The bear rocked from the hit and stood up, furious at the sudden pain. It was five feet tall. The pads of its paws looked to Coltrane like light-brown pillows in the black fluff of its fur. Then the bear looked down at its chest and saw, in the cold air, a jet of vaporized breath coming from the hole punched into its lungs. Coltrane saw all fierceness leave the bear’s face. Instead, there seemed to be a look of disappointment. That it had no chance to fight. That whatever had just happened was the end. Coltrane saw the dull downcasting of its eyes. He would never forgive himself for killing that bear. He did not know why. It was hunting season when he shot it. He had a license. It was legal. But this made no difference to the way he felt. The bear had not deserved to die, just as Hazard didn’t now. Tears jumped into Coltrane’s eyes and he wiped them away fast with his fur-tufted knuckles. He had not cried in years. Please God, he thought, don’t let that man get hurt.

  “Tomorrow, then,” Dodge said with a gravelly voice, “We’ll set out at six A.M. to track him down.” He knew he couldn’t find Hazard on his own, and Coltrane wasn’t going anywhere but home. He felt the kind of disappointment in his friend that was so bad he couldn’t even mention it.

  Coltrane swung the car out onto the road and headed back toward town. It seemed that each joint of his spine was in the grip of a small and angry fist. He knew what Dodge was thinking. The worst thing one man can think of another. The automatic gears changed smoothly as he stepped hard on the pedal. The two men sat in silence. Yellow road dividers slipped away under them like the musical torpedoes of the aliens, born and trapped and dying inside the plastic universe of their game table at the Loon’s Watch bar.

  Dodge dropped Coltrane off at his house. Then he got back out on the road but did not head for home. He had one more place to go.

  He drove to the house of Mary the Clock. He reached the royal-blue door and knocked on it with three heavy thumps of his fist.

  “Well, it’s Mr. Dodge,” said Mary, spying on him through the keyhole. “Mine eyes have seen the glory.” Then she opened the door and laughed. Happy to see him. She was still dressed, despite the lateness of the hour. Without inviting him in, she turned and walked back into the house. She moved with the steady poise of a girl who has been taught to walk with a Bible balanced on her head. Her eyelashes were so dark around her green eyes that it looked as if she wore makeup, but she didn’t. In a few years, her beauty would leave her. She would still be beautiful, but in the way that people would think of her as old first and beautiful afterward. For now, she kept her beauty in the bright green eyes and unwrinkled smile and the hair that ran halfway down her back. She did not have the leering grin Dodge would have painted on an imagined crazy person. Instead, her smile seemed absentminded, as if she were constantly off visiting happy memories. Dodge wondered sometimes whether people were so busy feeling sorry for Mary that they failed to see she was sorry for them, too. She seemed to hold some precious secret in her mind, something so valuable that even to hold on to it excused her from the logic of the crowd.

  Mary walked into the kitchen, which was mostly taken up by a table. It was draped with a red-and-white checked cloth, reminding Dodge of an Italian restaurant. Old Christmas cards still stood propped on a shelf above the fireplace. In the corner he could see the Christmas tree, its needles long since dead and the ornaments dangling on bare branches. Dodge knew it was a fire-code violation and he should have said something, but he let it go. He scanned the walls for signs of positive insanity. Pictures hanging upside down. Backward devil-writing in the dust on the windows. There was none of that.

  “Take your place,” she told him, and pointed to a metal frame chair with coarse red upholstery. Dodge sat down in it. The chair was narrow and uncomfortable. At the base of its steel-tube legs were holes for attaching it to the ground. There was an ashtray in one of the arms. Suddenly Dodge knew what this was—a chair taken from an airliner. He looked down and saw a printed plastic sign on the chair frame. YOUR LIFE JACKET IS UNDER YOUR SEAT. Dodge could not help bending down to peer under the seat and see if the life jacket was there. It was.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” Mary asked him, holding out an empty cup as if to show that this was where the drink would go. “I’m going to have some.”

  Dodge snapped upright, dizzy with the rush of blood from his head. “I’m OK for now, thank you.” He waited for a moment while the chips of light from his dizziness spun around like bumblebees in flight and then vanished. “Mary, you probably know why I’m here.”

  “Nope.” She smiled vacantly.

  “Do you know about your son spiking those trees in the Algonquin?”

  “Wilbur works at the restaurant.” Mary put on the kettle for tea. “All the livelong day.”

  “Yes, but he’s been going into the woods, Mary. And driving nails into trees, we believe. We told you a man was killed the other day. We came by asking about it. Do you remember?”

  “Yes.” She spoke as if she couldn’t quite be sure. “I want a pony.”

  “I saw your son running into the woods this evening. He didn’t stop when I asked him to.”

  “Yes.” Mary let the word sift into the air as if she were breathing out smoke.

  “So is there anything you can tell us that might help? Wilbur’s just going to get hurt if he keeps running away.” Dodge tapped his fingers lightly on the tablecloth, feeling the hard wood beneath.

  “No one would hurt Wilbur.” She laughed to show the stupidity of his suggestion. “He said he would come back, but I don’t know where from.”

  “When will he come home?”

  “When he’s ready.” Mary shrugged. “And we must reason not the need.” The kettle was boiling now. She started to prepare the tea.

  Dodge could not bring himself to be impatient with the woman. He wished he could tell her how much trouble Wilbur was in, but he doubted it would do any good. In the end, he thought, she might be better off not knowing.

  Dodge didn’t sleep that night. Instead, he stashed himself in a children’s playground across the road from Mary’s house. There was a swing set in the park, its chains rusted and creaking in the night breeze. Children had not played here in a while. Weeds climbed up through the sand. Dodge smoked a cigarette, hand cupped over the flame to hide it. He knew he had to be patient. Hazard will return, Dodge told himself. It’s the nature of the beast.

  Barnegat and Frampton met at the logging road. Each carried a rifle. There was no moon, only a vast fan of stars above the trees. The road was a pale river running into the blackness of the forest.

  “We split the money in half,” announced Frampton. Barnegat said nothing to disagree, so he assumed it was all right. He
had spoken only to break the silence, which seemed to pace around them as if it were alive. He knew the woods by day, but it occurred to him only as he stepped creaky-kneed from his car that the wilderness at night was part of a different universe. He thought back to his stool at the bar and the gum-fuzzing beer he had left in his mug, and he wished he hadn’t come along. But it was too late now to show fear.

  They walked up the road, the sound of their footsteps on the gravel drowning out everything but the running-water murmur of wind through the tops of the pines.

  As the minutes went by, they met nothing and felt braver. Their eyes grew used to the dark and now they could make out the individual pines instead of the tarlike wall of night that seemed to rise sheer from the edges of the road.

  Frampton held his rifle tight against his chest. The gun was the most valuable thing he owned. It was an antique Winchester 30-30 Goldenboy. For the past three years, he had been paying off the loan he took out to buy it. He saved money by not going to the dentist. Instead, he pulled three of his own rotten teeth with a pliers, having first glued pieces of leather to the gripping steel. Early in the year he had slipped while fly-fishing in felt-soled boots down by the railroad bridge that crossed a corner of Pogansett Lake. He trod between two rocks and fell, twisting his arm, which broke above the elbow. Too angry about the cost of a doctor’s bill to feel the pain, Frampton set his own arm right where he stood, waist-deep in the stream, fly rod clamped between his teeth. He still had that fly rod, teeth marks etched into the graphite. He didn’t go to a barber, figuring he had little enough hair to worry about anyway. Whenever it grew too long, he would light a candle and burn the ends. Then he would rub out the fire with his clawed fingers. Sometimes when he picked up the Goldenboy he wondered if it had been worth it. As he looked at the polished brass barrel and burnished cherrywood stock, he would remember the foul, metallic smell of his burned hair and the orangy crumbs that clung to his wool clothes like little spiders. “You figure Hazard’ll come quietly?” Frampton asked.