The Angels' Share

by James Markert

  “I’m only a journalist—”

  “At the grave I heard a voice. It told me to repent. And I did. I cleansed myself in the waters of my sins. It told me to go forth and spread the word. And that’s what I plan to do.”

  “Your sister doesn’t believe you can change.”

  “My sister is a witch.”

  “Have you ever wondered?” William took a chance. “Why you two are so different?”

  Tommy’s face softened. “You know she came out first. Her face was blue. The umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck.” Tommy laughed. “Maybe I tried to kill her—tried to wrap that cord around her neck even as we lived together in the uterus. And so we come to the main purpose of our conversation this evening.”

  Is that what this is? A conversation?

  “You will write about how I’ve changed since I allowed Christ in my life. God has forgiven all of my past transgressions. I wish to be left alone to spread the word.”

  “You think it will stop the authorities from looking for you?”

  “Don’t be a fool. Of course it won’t. But you’ll say I made a journey to Jerusalem. A pilgrimage of sorts. I can divert the bulls from my scent and begin anew.”

  “Is that where you’re going?”

  “Don’t test me.” He pointed to his thugs. “Not all of us have been baptized. I expect our interview in tomorrow’s paper.”

  “The scars?” William looked into Tommy’s eyes. “How many have you killed?”

  Tommy pointed to his left cheek. “The first was an accident when I was fifteen. Not an accident that I pierced his heart with a knife but an accident that my face got clipped by his. Right here on the cheek. So it became a ritual.” Tommy removed his jacket. “Count them yourself.”

  There were at least a dozen on each side of his face. “Which is for Dooly McDowell?”

  “Seeing as I didn’t kill him, there isn’t one. But I would have cut off an ear to put him in his grave.” Tommy was unbuttoning his shirt. “Look upon me.”

  Tommy’s chest was slashed with so many inch-long scars they’d be nearly impossible to count. Running parallel and perpendicular, north to south, east to west, diagonally and at tangents across his pectorals and abdominals, up around his powerful shoulders; and then he turned to reveal the same across his entire back. Some looked fresh.

  William averted his eyes, fought back the urge to vomit.

  Tommy slipped his shirt back on and tucked it into his pants, making room for Eva to approach William’s chair. She sat on William’s lap, straddling his waist, and gripped his face, forcing him to stare into her baby blue eyes. “You will do exactly as he says.” She kissed his forehead. Her breath smelled of smoke. Her lips were soft.

  “You’ve recently found first love,” she said, pinning him harder against the seat back, holding his face straight in her hands. “What a shame it would be for her to find these pictures.”

  One of Tommy’s men had a camera and William flinched when it flashed.

  She kissed his mouth, then moved to his right ear and licked the lobe. She caught the lobe between her teeth and bit down hard.

  William screamed and Eva stood, wiping blood from her mouth. She spat. He dry heaved and wheezed. Tommy had left the room, and now his men were sliding out into the darkness like rats, one after the next. And then finally Eva, after she’d whispered for him “not to tell,” straightened her tight skirt and disappeared into the night.

  William touched his ear and his fingers came back bloody. He hobbled to the open door and leaned against the frame. Then he labored down from the porch and made his way through the woods toward the main house. With each step taken, the throb in his ribs increased and his ear had taken on a beat of its own.

  But his wounded ear, he now realized as screams filled the woods and Klansmen thundered by on horseback brandishing torches, was the least of his worries.

  The distillery was on fire.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Through thick, billowing smoke William made out Max and Mr. Browder. Their faces were masks of rage. Max gripped a shovel and looked eager to use it. The near corner of the distillation house was blackened and smoldering. Twelve Klansmen circled on horseback; three held torches that flickered and hissed through the breeze-blown smoke.

  “Get on back to the cornfield,” one of the officers said. “Go on.”

  “We’ll burn the distillery down first,” said one Klansman, his voice muffled by fabric.

  “Don’t do it,” said one of the policemen, aiming his rifle.

  “Christ ain’t no Negro,” said another. “Ain’t I right?”

  The surrounding crowd watched, transfixed.

  Then a bullet knocked him off his horse.

  “Get the hell off my property,” Barley snarled, firing his rifle again into the air. He was flanked on both sides by his four armed men. Behind him William saw his mother, keeping a close grip on Johnny.

  The Klansman closest to Asher’s grave tossed his torch. Asher’s cross was immediately engulfed in flames. The horses whinnied, and one got so spooked he flipped his rider.

  William sprinted across the potter’s field, screaming, his ribs and his ear forgotten. He removed his shirt and started thwacking Asher’s cross with it until the flames died.

  Behind him was an all-out brawl. Three of the officers were on the ground; one was getting trampled by a panicked horse. Barley used the butt of his rifle, and Max was in there with the shovel, swinging and connecting but also taking hits. Mr. Browder was easily knocked down by a blow to the back of his head. Then Barley was on his knees, and William was leveled by a blind punch on his left. Two hands clasped his neck, and he recognized the eyes. The knowing gave him strength. He head-butted the man, gripped the hood, and revealed Lulu Bancroft.

  And then the crowd parted as Tommy Borduchi emerged from the trees.

  Tommy was followed by his three goons. He immediately began swinging his bat with complete control, connecting knockout blows. He doubled a Klansman with a shot to the gut and then broke his face with a swift upward swing.

  Barley grabbed a pipe and used it to knock another Klansman to the ground. Klansmen fell; several attempted to crawl away; the horses had fled.

  Bancroft was one of the crawlers. William allowed him the brief freedom of ten feet before stepping on his back. Bancroft looked up at William, pleaded for his life. William leaned down. “Advice? Don’t needle Barley McFee.”

  Bancroft made it to his feet and ran back toward the woods.

  In the middle of the potter’s field, Barley stood with a pipe in his hands next to Tommy and his Louisville Slugger. Around them were clusters of wounded men. Smoke from the smoldering fire floated like a fallen cloud. Barley looked at Tommy Borduchi and offered his hand. Tommy stared at Barley’s hand, then Barley’s face.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Do you think he recognized you?”

  After he washed Eva’s scent and the night’s blood away in a warm bath, William had wrapped his chest tightly and bandaged the lower portion of his right ear. He found Barley in the kitchen, drinking straight from the bottle. They had spoken to the police, the wounded had been removed, and the rest of the house was finally sleeping.

  “I know he did.” Barley was cut and bruised but he wore it well, and only winced when he took a drink. They both stared out the window. New policemen had been posted on all four corners, and Barley’s men were back at their posts.

  “Do you believe he’s found the Lord?”

  “I don’t know.” Barley took another drink. “Where’s Polly? I assume you don’t want her alone tonight.”

  “She’s safe. Staying with John Swell and his boy. But she’s not one to scare easily.”

  “You did good tonight.” He handed the bottle to William.

  William nodded, sloshed the bourbon. It was half full. He followed Barley into the living room, toward the stairwell. “Where you going?”

  Barley stopped with his hand on the rail. “To bed.�
�

  William looked at the recliner chair and the couch.

  “With your mother.” Barley winked.

  William wrote all night.

  He left for the city before his parents came downstairs for breakfast, and twenty minutes later he stood in the Courier-Journal building. Mr. Crone was stunned. He questioned him for an hour and then urged him to have his ear checked by a doctor and to try to get some sleep.

  William promised to do both and drove directly home.

  Barley and Samantha were working together inside the distillation house, where Max was replacing the scorched boards. William waited on the porch for Polly, remembering what she’d told him Asher had said the morning after Henry’s death. “I tried to stop him.”

  When she didn’t appear, William grew worried. He questioned each of Barley’s guards and none of them had seen Polly all morning. “Keep an eye out,” he told them, “and make sure my brother and sister don’t go into the woods today.” Just as William started down the porch steps, Samantha approached.

  “Honey, you doing okay?”

  William nodded, then jerked away as she reached for his bandaged ear. “It’s fine, Mother. Stings.” Despite the horror of the previous night, she glowed. “You?”

  “Yesterday I was doing the dishes,” she said. “The dog was curled at my feet. Your father, he walked into the kitchen. He said, ‘Do you want to go out?’ I knew he was talking to the dog, but I said, ‘Sure, Barley, I’d love to go out tonight.’ He stood there, shocked, I think. He said, in perfect Barley McFee fashion, ‘Well, okay then.’”

  “And so you went out.”

  “And so we went out,” said Samantha. “We had a wonderful dinner. And ice cream. We went to the picture show and watched Stand Up and Cheer! With that lovely little Shirley Temple, who completely stole the show, and your father actually sat through it all without complaining. He even took me dancing afterward. He was a fine dancer when we were first courting. Hasn’t lost too much. But then he said we needed to leave. Felt like something wasn’t right at the distillery.”

  “Good thing he showed when he did.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Does he know? That you know he was talking to the dog?”

  “I don’t know, William. Does it matter?”

  He looked out over the distillation and fermentation houses, looking for Polly but remembering the sounds from his parents’ bedroom last night. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

  A minute later Polly emerged through the trees, walking fast.

  William waited with Polly inside a sterile room with no windows, and fifteen minutes later Preston Wildemere took his seat and rested his cuffed hands on the tabletop. He didn’t look any better than the last time.

  William said, “You saw Asher carry my brother off the road. Was my brother still alive?”

  “He was still alive.”

  “How could you tell?”

  “He knelt over the boy.” Wildemere scratched his chin and his cuffs rattled. “Said something to him. I saw your brother nod, then reach his arms up to be held. Asher held him. Then he put your brother down and rested his arms on his chest. He was crying.”

  William tightened his jaw.

  “Took the shoes off his feet. Real respectful. One and then the other. Hung them around his neck. Then he looked at me.” Wildemere buried his forehead in his hands. “Your dad. When he came to . . . I’ll never forget his wailing when he saw the boy. That’s the sound that keeps me up at night.”

  “Mr. Wildemere,” Polly said. “I saw Asher the morning after the accident. He said something. ‘I tried to stop him.’ He said it twice. ‘I tried to stop him.’”

  William asked, “Who did he try to stop?”

  “Me,” Wildemere said softly, looking up. “He tried to stop me.” He looked at William. “About a quarter mile before the accident, I came up fast on a man standing in the middle of the road. It was so dark. I had to slam the brakes. I rolled down the window and yelled he was going to get himself run over. He looked at me like he’d seen me before. Asked if I knew who he was. I said I didn’t. He said he was Asher Keating, like it should somehow matter to me. It didn’t, so I gave him the hinky eye and started to coast along. But then he tried to talk me out of the car. Walked right along with it. Said I wasn’t fit to be behind the wheel. But I didn’t listen. He grabbed my side mirror, like he was going to stop me, but I was too drunk for reasoning. I thought he was a lunatic. Just another lunatic walking near Lakeland. They escape all the time. It’s a lunatic asylum.”

  “I know what it is,” said William. “It’s four miles from Twisted Tree.”

  “That’s where Asher said he was going. He was on his way to visit his mother.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Central Kentucky Asylum for the Insane, formerly known as Lakeland Asylum, rested in seclusion, nestled between acres of water maples and evergreens. Dr. Givens, a white-haired gentleman with thick eyebrows and outdated muttonchops, looked overwhelmed but relieved, for the moment, to be outside, where the air was crisp, and the sun was warm. “We’re carrying twenty-four hundred patients but only have room for sixteen.”

  Patients working on the grounds gathered leaves onto carts. He showed William and Polly to a wooden picnic table that bordered the egg-shaped lake that had once given the asylum its name. Ducks skimmed the surface, picking at the reeds, immune—as were the lunatics—to whistles from the nearby train depot.

  “Maryanne Keating rarely has visitors; in fact, her son was the only person to see her. About once a month. But when he came,” said Dr. Givens, “she liked to visit at this table, which was where I preferred they talk as well. The few times he went inside caused too much of a disturbance for the other patients.”

  “How so?” asked William.

  “They grew overly excited. I don’t know how to explain it really.”

  Polly asked, “Have you read the newspapers lately?”

  “What I’ve read is quite consistent with my thoughts on the man.”

  “Which are?” Polly asked, taking offense.

  “That he was delusional. And that he inherited his mother’s unfortunate illness. She’s what we call schizophrenic. She’s suffered a splitting of the mind—”

  “Asher was not mentally ill,” Polly interrupted. “I knew him well.”

  William asked, “How do you explain his miracles, then?”

  “Timely coincidences?”

  “You’re wrong.” William shook his head. “Every person we meet has a story.”

  Dr. Givens said, “Was Asher hearing voices? Abusing drugs and alcohol? Having grand delusions? Did he exhibit disorganized thinking and speech? Social withdrawal, poor hygiene, sloppiness of dress? All symptoms of schizophrenia.”

  “You’re wrong, Doctor.”

  Dr. Givens was professional enough not to argue with Polly, especially when patients roamed freely and liked to eavesdrop. Several had come closer to rake grass that had clearly been raked.

  “Forgive me. I’ve upset you,” said Dr. Givens. “That was not my intention. I only mean to prepare you for Miss Keating. You may ask about the weather and she’ll answer with her views on abortion or insist scaly brown creatures are trying to kill her with kitchen appliances. I’ll be back out with her in a few moments. Please enjoy the surroundings until I return. Our work-out patients take great pride in the grounds here.”

  “You said Miss Keating. Was she not married?” asked William.

  “To our knowledge, Miss Keating never married.”

  As soon as the doctor was out of earshot, Polly said, “He’s wrong. I mean, what he says is true. But he’s wrong too. Why does he think Asher excited the patients? Because they knew. They could tell.”

  “Asylums have been steering lunatics away from religion for decades.”

  Tall maples partially concealed the Tudor revival façade, but the checkered brick-and-stone edifice was visible, as were the twin turrets and white-painted porch. Flowering trellises a
nd colorful perennial beds flanked adjacent sidewalks. The American flag rippled from a pole.

  Dr. Givens escorted a petite elderly woman with long silvery hair wearing a sky-blue uniform across the grounds. She couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds.

  William squinted. “Are those hand muffs? Why would they need to muff such a tiny woman?” As she sat across the table from them, his first thought was: Asher Keating’s father must have been a giant.

  William and Polly introduced themselves and waited for Dr. Givens to give them privacy. The doctor leaned against a nearby tree to review charts and spy over his clipboard.

  “Miss Keating, I was close to your son.” Polly reached across the table. “I believed in him. Do you understand what I’m telling you? That I believed in him?”

  “The bearded man came up from the core and plucked his eyes out.” Her voice was thin but clear, still molded by an Irish accent.

  “Do you understand what’s happened to him?”

  “He’s dead, if that’s what you mean.” She nodded. “I was told that much by Mr. Boy over there.” She glanced at Dr. Givens. “Asher has moved on, but not away. The bearded man killed him, didn’t he? Asher told me the bearded man had been following him. Watching him. Was it him?” She looked at Dr. Givens and raised her restrained hands, hidden by what looked like oven mitts. “I need to scratch my nose. Do you know how hard it is to scratch my nose with these on?”

  “What did you do?” William asked. “To have those put on you.”

  Dr. Givens spoke from the tree. “She tried to scratch an attendant’s eye out.”

  Polly and William looked at each other.

  “I no longer need medication,” said Miss Keating. “I am no longer mentally ill.”

  Dr. Givens said, “She has moments of clarity. Don’t let it fool you.”

  “Only fools get fooled by fools. How long have I been in this place, Mr. Boy?”