Archangel

by Paul Watkins

  “Wealth dies,” Mackenzie found himself muttering, eyes tightly shut. “People die. The only thing that never dies is the verdict on each person dead.”

  The vision slowly faded, as if whatever it was had traveled through him and past him and carried away with it the savage waking-dream. Mackenzie climbed to his feet, one metal and one bone, and staggered back to his car. Then he drove home and got drunk by himself in his study on the smoky burn of Islay whiskey, staying up until late in the night. He offered no explanation to Alicia. If he did not mention it, the thing might not be real. But even if the promise of it had not been true, the vision itself would never leave him. Not even in the pendulum rocking of his skull as he raised the decanter to his mouth and drank the fiery liquid, blue night winking off the crystal.

  Coltrane put in a call to New York. It was the first time he had used his phone in months. He had made up his mind what to do. Days had passed since he walked out of the Mackenzie mill. Each morning at five, he swung himself out of bed and got halfway to the sink to shave before he remembered that he didn’t have a job. The perfectly rationed energy that had seen him through the days began to smolder in him. He sat confused in a chair in his kitchen, watching Clara go about her day and fuss over him, but he was beyond any help she could give. Slowly his confusion began to distill. He knew what had to be done, as much for himself as to put right some of what had happened.

  He made an appointment to see Linda Church, producer of a television program called Focus America. Her assistant was clipped and rude on the phone, the way people are rude to door-to-door salespeople. On the day, Coltrane put on a pair of Florsheim shoes and a jacket and a tie, none of which he had worn in years. The shoes were so old and out of use that they had curled up at the toes and made him walk as if he were on rockers. He told Clara where he was going. He had expected that she might try to talk him out of it, but she did not. She seemed to have a better idea than he did about what he would accomplish with his trip. Coltrane took the bus to Portland and from Portland down to Boston. Then he boarded an Amtrak train and headed south.

  Eight hours later, Coltrane left the train at Penn Station in New York. It was his first time in the city. He walked out through the low-roofed corridors, past a gift shop where mechanical toy dogs yipped and wandered around the dirty floor as if they were looking for something. Past one man wearing the pink plastic wristband of a hospital patient. The man was dressed in army-surplus clothes and stalked invisible enemies, shooting them down with a gun made from his fingers. Others stood beside closed shops, talking to themselves and swinging their heads from side to side. Coltrane rode up the escalator, past a flower seller and a legless Vietnam vet holding out a paper cup for change. “I suffered for you,” the man said. “I suffered for all of you fuckers.”

  Before Coltrane stepped into the cab, he stood looking around at the chinks of blue sky above the buildings and the cars and the sky-reflecting windows. He was trying to figure out how he would explain this place to Clara. Not just describe it. Explain it. It would not be enough to talk about the legless man or the way he found himself taking shallow breaths so as not to cough on the fumes. There was something else. Some discord that he felt beyond all senses he could name. He realized it would be hard to explain to these people what was being lost in the place he had come from, because it was already gone from here. He understood then that this was the source of the discord, not all the things that were here but the things that were not. It would not make a difference if they drove out to a forest for a week or so each year. The thunder of the city would not have left their bones by the time it came to leave again. If Coltrane had known this in advance, he would not have come to the city. He would have lived out his life feeling like a coward for not having tried, but he had come this far and he had nothing left to lose.

  Ten minutes later, Coltrane climbed out of a cab at the entrance to the Focus America studios on Forty-fourth Street and went inside. The guard at the front desk called his name upstairs. He was on time, but was made to wait in a little room with seafoam-green walls and magazines fanned out like playing cards on glass tables. Eventually, an assistant showed him in. She was petite and wore a short cherry-red dress. He followed her past many booths with papers stacked on desks and phones ringing, to a room with a view.

  A bald man with an earring walked out carrying a file and Coltrane stepped back to let him pass. Then he found himself looking at a very tall, pale-skinned woman, whose silvery hair was parted severely down the middle. She wore a dark blue suit with gold buttons. This was Linda Church. Focus America uncovered scandals and schemes, people jailed unjustly and cases of political corruption. On the TV at the Loon’s Watch, Coltrane had seen people run away from Linda Church as she and her camera crew ambushed them outside office buildings and chased them down streets in a flurry of trenchcoats and wiring, bawling out questions as she went.

  “Mr. Coltrane.” She cleared some papers off her desk, as if to find a place where she could rest her hands. She told him with her movements that she had no time for chat.

  “Yes, that’s right.” He undid the front button on his jacket and sat down in the chair opposite her desk. The toes of his shoes were still curled up. He planted his feet hard on the floor.

  “So you have a story for us.” She talked almost without moving her lips.

  “I believe so.” For days, Coltrane had thought about little else but the moment when he would explain his story to her. Now that he was here, his words and everything around him seemed pillowed in an anesthetic fuzziness.

  She tipped in her chair. It looked for a moment as if she was about to pitch backward out the window and into the crawling traffic ten floors below. “We normally have a policy about doing stories that involve personal vendettas.”

  “It’s always personal,” said Coltrane. He had become uneasy in the waiting room, but now he began to gather himself together. “If it weren’t personal, I wouldn’t be here. And if it weren’t more than personal, you wouldn’t be talking to me.”

  The black dots of her pupils seemed to freeze. “I suppose you could see it that way,” she said.

  Coltrane explained the Algonquin deal, and told her what would be left of the wilderness by the time Mackenzie had finished with it. She took some notes with a fat black Mont Blanc fountain pen on a yellow legal pad. Not looking up. Lips pressed bloodlessly together. Then she sat back and set the pen down on the desk. “I don’t believe a person would put himself in danger just to save a bunch of trees.”

  “It’s not just the trees.” Coltrane allowed his voice to rise in the soundproofed white walls of the office. “It’s the wilderness. It’s where you come from,” he said. “And when it’s gone, even if you haven’t ever seen the wilderness, a part of you goes with it.”

  “Really.” She smiled at him. It was the kiss-off smile. “I just don’t think it has the kind of appeal that we’re looking for.”

  Coltrane nodded, to say thank you and good-bye. He stood and felt a hard pinch in his stomach where his scar was still healing. A quiet groan worked its way out of his throat. He pressed one hand to the scar and with the other he propped himself up against the desk. “Jesus,” he whispered.

  “Are you all right?” Linda Church stood. “Do you want me to call someone?”

  “No.” It hurt to talk. “I got stabbed a while ago and sometimes when I stand too fast, the hurt comes back.” He looked up, straining his neck to meet her eye. “It goes away in a bit.”

  “My God, who stabbed you?”

  “It was out in the forest. It was a guy some people thought was spiking trees. But it wasn’t him.”

  “What happened to the man?”

  “My best friend shot him in the face. After that, he got hit by a train, but by then I think he was already dead.” Coltrane lowered himself back into the chair. “If I could just sit here for a minute.”

  Linda Church also sat. She unscrewed the cap of her pen and made another note. “And have there be
en any other deaths?”

  “Ayuh. There was James Pfeiffer. That was what started it all.”

  “What happened to him?” She was writing it down.

  “Chain saw.”

  The phone rang. Linda Church picked up the receiver, listened for a second and then said, “Not now.” She hung up. “Chain saw, did you say?” Her eyes were narrowed almost shut.

  Coltrane nodded. The pain was going now.

  “Mr. Coltrane, I think maybe we could work with you on this. Now tell me again from the start.”

  One hour later, Coltrane walked out into the street. Linda Church had said she would be looking into it further. She had made him promise to go on camera with what he had said and Coltrane had agreed. He took the next train north. It was night when he left New York. For a long time, Coltrane looked out at streetlamps rushing past like fireflies. As he watched the lights go by, Coltrane thought back to when he watched the fireworks exploding over Pogansett Lake every Fourth of July. The glittering and falling stars always amazed him, as if he were witnessing the creation of another universe. He felt the same sense of wonder at being involved in something that was larger than he was, something he could never fully understand and was not meant to. He kept his face pressed to the window, not wanting to miss a single light, and the train carried him on into the dark.

  When Mackenzie arrived back from work at his office the next morning, Alicia had just finished writing him a message on a pink piece of While-You-Were-Out notepaper. She wore a white dress printed with tiny red roses.

  Mackenzie smiled at her. “You look good,” he said. He was feeling better today. Some of his workers had returned. He felt sure that the rest would follow soon. He would find someone to replace Coltrane, and when Shelby had finished his work, the mill could get back to business as usual. The mill would survive. The town would survive. It was one of those days when he felt sure that he had saved himself a place in heaven.

  Alicia tore the piece of notepaper from the pad and stuck it on his chest. “I think you’re about to be famous,” she said.

  “Why’s that?” He tried to talk and read the note at the same time. It said that Linda Church had called. There was a number for him to call back. For one confused moment, Mackenzie felt pride balloon in his chest. First, he imagined himself in front of a camera outside the Mackenzie mill, walking with Linda Church down one of his logging roads, both of them wearing trenchcoats and deep in discussion, followed by the camera crew. More pictures lined up, like anxious students, arms raised and hands waving. Then suspicion snapped him out of it. “Did she say what she wanted?”

  “To talk to you about the Algonquin.” Alicia touched her dress, as if to pick the printed roses from the cloth. “Should I just call them back and say you don’t want to talk?”

  “No.” The spit had dried up in his mouth. “They’d find someone else to talk to.” Mackenzie walked upstairs to his study. He went in and kicked the study door shut as he dialed the number, calling Linda Church collect.

  Linda Church was polite, in a way that threatened not to be polite. She told him who she was, with the springy voice of someone stating a fact that everyone should already know. “Mr. Mackenzie, we are just fact-checking for a story.”

  “Yes,” Mackenzie said. His thoughts were roller-coastering.

  “Is it true, sir, that you signed a deal for logging rights to an area of forested land called the Algonquin Wilderness?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” There was the sound of a phone ringing in the background. “What we also need to know is whether you were aware that the Algonquin Wilderness is scheduled to become a protected area one month after your logging rights expire? In effect, sir, that the area in which you have disrupted or destroyed all wildlife is to become a sanctuary for what no longer exists?”

  Then Mackenzie went from having no plan to having the only plan there was. “The government called me and made the offer. They said it was to become protected, but they were the ones offering me clear-cut logging rights. I assumed they would have a good idea of what they were doing.” Now he laughed. It was a deliberate and dreary chuckle. “I mean, if the wilderness-management people don’t know how to handle the wilderness, who does? You see, ma’am, my job is to cut the trees down. I have all this on paper if you need to see it.”

  “Well, that’s very kind.” It was not a voice with any gratitude or trust. “Would you be prepared to talk with us about this on camera?”

  “Of course. How soon can you get up here?”

  “Well, perhaps within a few days. What we’re interested in, Mr. Mackenzie, is whether you see any kind of unethical conduct here.”

  “I’m a businessman. I was made an offer by the government. Like I said, it was a good offer, and if I had turned it down, someone else would have picked it up. The only thing you can be sure of, ma’am, is that these trees will fall. There’s too much money in it. Too many jobs. And no amount of terrorism is going to change that.” He was angry now. The veins were thumping in his neck. “I’m the victim here!” Mackenzie shouted into the receiver. He realized in the silence that followed that she was still listening to him. He knew he might still be able to win her over to his side. Suddenly he was no longer worried. He saw the whole thing turning toward him, like a great ship coming about. “The law is being broken up here in the North Woods, Ms. Church,” he said, his voice a conspirator’s mumble, “but it’s not me who’s breaking it.” The sweat was running down Mackenzie’s face. He gripped the receiver hard. “I am grateful for the opportunity to bring this story to the American people.”

  When Linda Church hung up half an hour later, Mackenzie felt the breathless stun of someone living purely off instinct. Slowly he breathed out. Then he called Ungaro’s answering service.

  Ungaro called him back ten minutes later. “Hello, Jonah.” Ungaro sounded impatient. An echoing voice in the background announced a flight departure. “I’m just getting on a plane. What do you need?”

  “I was wondering if you had any way of getting in touch with our friend. I had some news for him, but he’s a little hard to find.”

  “Well, that’s what he’s good at.”

  “So, ah, do you have a number or something?” Mackenzie scanned the racks of unread books along his study shelves.

  “No. I wouldn’t even know where to start, Jonah. That whole situation is kind of on autopilot right now. It’s in motion. There isn’t anything you or I can do to stop it. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it, Jonah?”

  “I just had some information that I thought would be useful.” Mackenzie sighed out the words. He wanted to call the whole thing off. He didn’t mind losing the money. Not at this stage of the game.

  “Don’t you worry, Jonah. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

  “No.” Mackenzie sighed again, and in the pause that followed, he realized that Ungaro had already hung up. “No, indeed,” he said, as the dial tone buzzed in his ear. If he could have cut his losses then and walked away, he would have done so. But the talk with Sal Ungaro had confirmed what Mackenzie feared—that it was all far beyond his control. He thought of the way Ungaro had said the word “autopilot,” of how confident he had sounded. Mackenzie felt none of that confidence. To him, the Dutch Boy had become a vast wrecking force, like a train off the rails with no way to stop except to lose momentum in the path of its destruction.

  Mackenzie walked downstairs and told his wife what had happened. “What the hell am I going to do?” he asked her.

  “Perhaps you should wait and see how many people show up for work today.”

  “Once those TV people get through with me, it won’t matter how many show up because I’ll be finished. Besides, it was probably one of them that blew the whistle on me. What am I supposed to do? Go around to each of them and apologize? And for what? For getting them jobs they can keep? I am in the right, Alicia!”

  “Are you?”

  Mackenzie folded his arms. “You don’t believe me, do you?
”

  “I think there might be a difference between being in the right and in doing the right thing.”

  “That’s just talk, Alicia. I have legal papers that say I can cut that land, which is what I intend to do.”

  “By yourself?”

  Mackenzie screwed up his face. “There’ll be people to cut those trees, even if I have to drag them in from some no-name third-world country. I don’t need this town. It’s them who need me and even in your cynical mood today, Alicia, you know that’s the truth.”

  “You could hold a town meeting. Give people a chance to air their views. Give you a chance to talk back to them and make your point. Get things straightened out one way or the other. At least you would know where you stood.”

  Mackenzie stayed silent for a while, trying to find something wrong with the suggestion. It would make me look good, he thought. Answer their questions before they have time to ask them. “Yes,” he said eventually. “I think that’s what I’ll do.”

  The next day, he drove to the mill at his usual time. A crowd had gathered at the gates of the Mackenzie Company. Some of the people who had walked out were there, but they did not go inside the gates. Only a few lumbermen had gone to work. They moved uncertainly around the yard, as if no longer sure what jobs they were supposed to do.

  A TV crew was there. Mackenzie saw two city cars. Continentals. As his Range Rover rumbled over the potholed company road, Mackenzie caught sight of the red-white-and-blue license plates on the Continentals. New York. The Focus America people had arrived even sooner than he’d thought they would. He saw a man with a camera lodged on his shoulder and a sound technician with a giant foam-covered hot-dog-shaped microphone. He was fiddling with dials on a box that he carried strapped to his waist. Then Mackenzie saw the reporter, coiled microphone line in one hand and the gray mike in the other. He recognized her. Linda Church. It was too late to panic.