Archangel

by Paul Watkins

  He was just stepping off the track when he heard the thump of a footstep on a railroad tie. A shadow swooped over him. Then a huge weight crashed onto his back and he fell down the slope into the ditch.

  The assault had taken him so much by surprise that he still didn’t know what had happened when he lifted himself from the oily, knee-deep ditch water. He felt pain between his shoulder blades. As he stood, he saw a man just the other side of the ditch, and the shock that jolted him inside was as hard as the one that had thrown him down the embankment.

  Gabriel could see that the man was young. Maybe in his early twenties. He had short blond hair and wore a blue-jean jacket with a green canvas shirt. His trousers were tucked into socks and he wore a pair of hiking boots. He was wearing a shoulder holster and carried a large black automatic pictol under his left armpit. He had the level gaze of someone who was not afraid.

  Plainclothes police, Gabriel thought. Maybe even FBI. He wondered if it might be the one Lazarus had described. This man is no logger, anyway, thought Gabriel. It seemed to him that he could already hear voices echoing off the glossy painted concrete walls of a prison cell. But it was the man speaking, and Gabriel realized he had been more stunned than he first thought by the kick that sent him down.

  “I’ve been tracking you,” the man said. “You were doing good there for a while.”

  Gabriel saw no sense in denying who he was. The canvas bag in which he kept the nails was on the seat of the Putt-Putt. He had left his gun there, too, so the St. Johns crew would not see it.

  “Come here,” the man said, pointing to the narrow patch of ground between the ditch water and himself.

  “Who are you?” Gabriel took a step out of the ditch. “Am I under arrest?” Already, in the back of his mind, he was assessing everything he had done. Not the guilt or correctness of it, but whether he had been effective. Not whether it had been worth it, but how dearly he had sold them his captivity. Now would come a different kind of struggle. It would be the opposite of everything he had done so far. Whereas before he had kept his work a secret, now he would talk as much and show his face as much as he could, force Mackenzie and the loggers to defend themselves in public. He knew the names of the lawyers that Swain had told him to contact. Gabriel could feel things closing up on him, the helplessness of the prisoner.

  The man reached across and grabbed Gabriel by the collar of his shirt and dragged him away from the ditch water. His grip was powerful. “I’m not arresting you,” the man said. Then he punched Gabriel so hard in the stomach that he lifted Gabriel off the ground. Gabriel gasped, but drew in nothing and fell into the ditch and immediately the man had hold of him again and lifted him. Water coursed from Gabriel’s clothes. The man set Gabriel upright, then spun around in the tall grass and kicked him in the chest just below the throat. Gabriel flew back against a tree and slid down to the ground. He rolled onto his hands and knees, groaning and sucking in air.

  The man was walking steadily toward him, fists balled into knots of flesh and bone.

  Gabriel understood that he was going to die. He forgot about pain and launched himself at the man, who took the force of Gabriel’s head in his stomach. The man staggered backward and as soon as Gabriel had regained his balance, he smashed his elbow into the man’s nose, feeling the cartilage crunch with the impact.

  The man’s eyes closed and he doubled over, hands to his face. “You fuck!” he shouted through the bars of his fingers. Blood trickled out across his knuckles.

  Gabriel’s mind was racing so quickly that all movements seemed ridiculously slow. As the man raised himself up and drew back his fist, Gabriel kicked him in the balls with his heavy work boots and dropped him to his knees. Gabriel shoved him back and had him by the neck, reaching for the man’s pistol, when the man jabbed the knife edge of his hand into Gabriel’s throat.

  Gabriel staggered back and his hands clamped onto the pain as if to choke the life out of himself. But he could barely feel it. All knowledge of pain had disappeared now that he was fighting for his life.

  The man drew his gun. He pulled it in one fluid movement from its sweat-darkened holster and cocked it and aimed it at Gabriel. “You don’t think I’ll use this, do you?” The man walked forward, clumsy-footed from the nausea rising thick and congesting from his genitals. “Do you?”

  Gabriel steadied himself. He raised his hands uncertainly to the level of his shoulders, showing the empty palms.

  The man held the gun against Gabriel’s forehead, dragging the steel through his sweat. “I was going easy on you, you stupid bastard.” Blood from his nose had run down over his lips and now when the man spoke, he peppered Gabriel’s face red.

  “Get it over with.” Gabriel could barely speak. The jab to his throat had injured his windpipe.

  “You still don’t understand!” In one fast movement, the man raked the side of his boot down Gabriel’s shin.

  Gabriel crumpled, feeling the blood bead up out of the torn flesh.

  Then he took hold of Gabriel’s collar and held the gun to the side of Gabriel’s head.

  Gabriel closed his eyes.

  “Look at me!” The man shook Gabriel until he was watching him again. “You leave town. Do you understand? You don’t wait for someone to take over your job. You don’t pack up your stuff and take anything with you. You just leave. You do not go to the police. Go do whatever you do someplace else. I don’t give a damn. But you leave Mr. Mackenzie alone. Because you got no place to hide now. Not from me, you don’t. And you aren’t dumb enough to think I’d give you a second chance, are you?” He shook Gabriel again. “Are you?”

  “No,” Gabriel whispered. The adrenaline that had blunted all his nerves was fading now. He did not want to think about the pain he would be in when it wore off.

  “If you’re in town this time tomorrow, I’ll kill you. You understand? The only reason I’m not doing it right now is because I know you’re going to be smart, aren’t you?”

  Gabriel didn’t answer. He concentrated on his breathing, slow and rasping along the laddered walls of his windpipe.

  The man let go of Gabriel. “You aren’t listening to me, are you?”

  “I am,” Gabriel said.

  “You aren’t taking me seriously.”

  “I am,” Gabriel said again, and he saw that now the man was coming unhinged.

  The man shoved Gabriel down to the ground. His hand passed behind his back and when it reappeared, he was holding a large fighting knife, the steel bead-blasted to an unreflecting grayness.

  “No,” Gabriel said and held out his hands.

  The man slapped them away with the flat of the knife. “I said I wasn’t going to kill you,” said the man. His teeth were clenched. The man touched the blade against Gabriel’s stomach, then jerked it up through the buttons, sending them flipping into the air.

  Both men looked at the paleness of Gabriel’s chest. The fear had given him goose bumps.

  “Please,” Gabriel said. He could smell the man’s breath. He looked him in the eye and was surprised to find no anger there. The voice had been angry, but not the eyes. This man has killed people before, Gabriel thought.

  Then quickly, almost as if to avoid pain, the man pinched the skin of Gabriel’s right nipple and raised it and with one movement of his wrist sliced off the nipple, the blade passing through the flesh as if it had been nothing.

  As the scream rose in Gabriel’s throat, the man slapped his dirty palm down hard on Gabriel’s mouth.

  The man was out of his mind now. He was someplace else. He put the lump of flesh in his mouth and then he spat the meat into Gabriel’s face, the saliva rosy with blood. “That was easy,” the man said. “Did you see how easy that was for me?”

  Gabriel was deafened by pain. He shook his head from side to side, eyes clamped shut, and sucked in breath through his teeth.

  “All your lives are used up, Mister. You think about that when you’re driving out of town.” The man splashed Gabriel with his own
blood from the words spat into his face. Then he stood back, breathed in and punted Gabriel with the flat of his heel in the chin, bouncing Gabriel’s head off the ground and knocking him out.

  Shelby stood for a minute over Gabriel’s unconscious body. He was shaking, trying to stop himself from carving Gabriel apart with the knife. Part of his mind shrieked an order to slaughter the man. Butcher him the way livestock is butchered. Then Shelby turned and ran, before he could no longer help himself.

  When Gabriel opened his eyes, the man was gone. He may have been gone for some time. Gabriel hadn’t heard him leave, and there was no sound of fading footsteps. His hand was pressed over the wound and blood ran out from between his fingers. He rolled onto his side. Pain spread across the branches of his ribs. Eventually, he stood, then stumbled and fell. He landed on one hand, tried to raise himself again but gave up and slumped to the ground. Gabriel found he could not walk. So many points of pain had blossomed on his back and chest that he did not know where he could put his hands to dull the hurt. He crawled back to the Putt-Putt, then started the motor and drove home. All this time, he kept his hand over the wound, as much because he could not bear to see it as to stop being bathed in his own blood. The wind cooled his face. It ran its fingers through his hair. He walked the backstreets home and then poured iodine on the deep red place where his nipple had been. Then he touched at the edges of the wound with a silver nitrate shaving-cut stick until the blood began to slow. The pinched nerves began to clear his head. He soaked a towel in a bowl of warm water and baking soda. Then he wrung it out. Water, gritty with soda, trickled across the table. He set the towel, still twisted in a cable, around his neck. The wound would take a long time to heal. The man had probably known that when he did it. The scar would be ugly and the pain would take up residence in him for many weeks. But Gabriel knew that if he kept the wound clean, he would not die from it. This had only been a warning. Gabriel thought about the blond man’s threat. It was real. There would be no hesitation.

  He imagined himself packing and leaving, his thumb stuck out to every truck and car that passed, taking him anyplace, it would not matter where, as long as he was gone from Abenaki Junction. There would be no one to call him a coward. No numbers or addresses by which he could be tracked. His job as a railway repairman would quickly be swallowed up by someone else. All trace of him would vanish, just as it had vanished once before. Gabriel could tell himself that he had done the best he could. He had risked his life until the odds grew far too strong against him. And if there was ever any doubt, he would only have to undo his shirt and look down at the scar across his chest. The course of his life had changed today, as totally and irretrievably as it had done when he parachuted out into the Arabian night. Suddenly Gabriel wanted very much to stay alive. It was a feeling he had lost and now regained. Even breathing was a pleasure to him. His world of absolutes seemed a hopeless place in which to live. He had taken on too great a task and he had failed and the challenge that lay before him now was to accept it. In his mind, he was already gone, the miles of road unraveling beneath him. He felt the lightness in his heart that comes from setting out on a great voyage.

  Then a different idea barged through his head. You never know, Gabriel thought, whether you will stick to your brave words when the time comes to hold fast. You only know when you are there, and then the words don’t count for much. All that counts is what you do.

  The lightness left his heart. It was precisely the same feeling as when clouds come in front of the sun. That clamping down of gloom that was nowhere and suddenly was everywhere. It was only then that Gabriel knew he would not quit. There was no one to say he had been beaten except himself, and he could not bring himself to say it. In the past, he had imagined his greatest measure of sacrifice to be one final act which tapped out all his strength and took his life. In one sense, that was easy. It would surround and overwhelm him and he would be dead. Now Gabriel understood that his devotion would be tested not in this single moment, but in thousands of moments for the rest of his life. The sacrifice was to persevere, despite the threats and drudgery and loneliness that hollowed him out until he no longer knew who he was. Tomorrow he would go back into the woods and the day after and the day after. And he would bring the gun and use it if he had to. Gabriel knew that if Shelby was there waiting for him, he had slim chance of surviving. But he knew he could not quit and make himself believe the dream of his freedom and the preciousness of his life if he gave up what he had sworn to see through to the end.

  Shelby stood in the shadow of the trees until Gabriel had gone from sight. He was still nauseated from the kick to his balls. Shelby felt along his nose to see if the bone was broken, but it wasn’t. He would have two black eyes in the morning and this upset him more than pain because he knew he would stand out now, particularly to the police. Already Shelby was wondering if he had made a mistake in not killing Gabriel. He had hoped to avoid it, because killing always made for complications. Perhaps, he thought, I have misjudged that man’s commitment. Now I’ll have to kill him anyway.

  Shelby walked toward town, along the line of the tracks but keeping to the trees so he would not be seen. As he passed the Booths’ cabin, he saw a man and a woman sitting in chairs on the porch, looking out across the lake. They held hands. The woman’s long blond hair trailed over the back of the chair. Shelby was close enough to see the silver feather earrings that dangled down to the shoulders of her white T-shirt. The man said something, and on the path of the breeze Shelby heard an English accent. In the rustle of the breeze, Shelby moved on, and they knew nothing of his passing. They seemed so peaceful sitting there. Shelby hoped he would be that peaceful himself one day. But not today, because this wasn’t over yet. The warning not complete.

  The Forest Sentinel burned to the ground that night.

  The rear door to the office was forced open and a cylinder was placed in the wastebasket next to Madeleine’s desk. The cylinder contained a mixture of potassium chlorate and sugar, and had inserted into it a time fuze made from a glass vial. In the glass vial was battery acid, potassium chlorate and gunpowder. Just before placing the cylinder into the wastebasket, Shelby had turned the glass vial upside down and set it into the bomb. He knew he had about twenty minutes before the battery acid would eat through the paper stopper between the acid and the gunpowder. He removed the small fire alarm from the ceiling. He took the battery out and then put it back in the wrong way round, so the battery might still be found by investigators, although it would probably explode in the heat of the fire.

  Before Shelby left, he looked around the little office. The walls were covered with newspaper and magazine clippings—mostly about logging in the Pacific Northwest, but a few about saving endangered species like the greenback turtle and the Pacific spotted owl. Shelby didn’t know what to think of these people who opposed the logging. More trees could always be planted. Neither did he understand why others spent their lives trying to stave off the inevitable disappearance of these obsolete creatures. He imagined them to be like the obsolete creatures themselves—they too would soon be extinct. Shelby turned away from the corkboard walls and slipped out into the dark.

  Half an hour later, the explosion set off a fire that melted the glass from the office windows.

  Everyone in town was woken by the coughing roar of the fire-station horn.

  Men and women volunteers ran to their cars, still so asleep that only their memories knew what they were doing. They switched on the blue lights glued to their dashboards to mark them as volunteer fire personnel and drove to the fire station.

  Dodge lived opposite the fire station. The siren pulled him from the dark pool of his sleep and swung his legs out of bed. He stumbled across the room to find his clothes. As he dressed, he watched the cars of the volunteer brigade come skidding into the fire station parking lot. Half-dressed and undressed people shambled on bare and painful feet across the scattered gravel. Some had bedsheets wrapped around them. To Dodge, they looked
like dead people woken from the grave, hobbling on rigor-mortised joints. Dodge followed the fire truck in his police car. As he rode down Main Street, the fire truck’s exhaust reached through his car’s ventilation system and peppered his nose. The rising and then falling wail of the truck’s siren was deafening. He flipped on the Crown Victoria’s blue and red flashing lights. He prepared himself for the sight of a house reduced to shabby outlines, sketched black on a background of pumpkin-orange fire, and its owners either dead inside or crying naked on the sidewalk.

  By the time Dodge arrived, the fire had eaten so much of the building that not even outlines remained. It was like something out of a cartoon, where a tree is struck by lightning and for a moment the skeleton balances in place. Then, to some tinkling music, the whole thing falls into what looks like a pile of black pencil shavings. Dodge opened his car door.

  The fire crew held the leg-thick hose under their arms, ready to take the shock of rushing water. There was a great hiss as water struck the flames. The men and women lost their footing and then regained it. They looked like goblins under their yellow helmets and black coats.

  People wandered out of the dark toward the fire. Dodge recognized Madeleine. She had a coat on over her nightgown. Madeleine walked straight up to him. “How did it happen?” she asked.

  “I just got here,” he told her. “I don’t know.” The stench of burning was all around him. He stood with his arm leaning on the car door, looking down at a thin trail of water that pushed its way across the dry and gritty ground

  “It’s arson, isn’t it?” Madeleine dragged her heel through the stream of water. Its course changed to a dozen tiny rivulets.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  In twenty minutes, the fire was out. Smoke-bitter steam billowed around them. Loons made ghost calls on the lake.

  “That place was my whole life,” Madeleine said and turned away. Her hair brushed across Dodge’s face.