The Trial of Fallen Angels

by James Kimmel, Jr.

  I knew it would be Luas when I heard the knock on the door. There had been no visitors during all those years. He would be coming to say I could no longer delay the presentation. Otto Bowles was waiting in the train shed for his case to be called, and God was waiting in the Courtroom to judge his soul.

  Luas said nothing about the change in my appearance. He only smiled—that knowing grandfather’s smile of his, the way he smiled at me when I arrived in Shemaya, as if to say: Yes, my granddaughter, you have suffered, and it is difficult, but I would only be making it worse by noticing. I offered him a seat on the porch. “How are you, Brek?” he asked.

  “I’d pull the switch again,” I answered. I spoke now in the quivering voice of an old woman, weak but defiant. “Until there was nothing left of him but ash.”

  The dark anvil of the thundercloud crossed the sky. I imagined how I would feel to be pulled hot from a fire and hammered against its flank.

  “Nero Claudius committed suicide,” Luas said. His face pinched as his hands groped through his pockets to find matches for his pipe. “Unlike Mr. Bowles, he cheated the world of its opportunity for justice.”

  “So God has a sense of humor after all,” I said. “Satan is a lawyer and carries a briefcase. What did we do to deserve all this?”

  Luas struck a match. It flared bright orange in the shadows. The white smoke from his pipe bubbled over the sides, too weak to rise into the wind.

  “I did cheer when they stoned Saint Stephen to death,” Luas said, “so I guess I had it coming. But this isn’t hell, Brek. The Judge must be certain of our fidelity and self-control. If we are impartial when presenting the souls we most despise, then the Judge can be certain we will present all postulants with dispassion. Our motives must be pure when we enter the Courtroom—we can show no favoritism or emotion. The judgment is Yahweh’s. He alone determines how Otto Bowles and Nero Claudius spend eternity.”

  A blue bolt of lightning flashed across the valley, followed by a loud clap of thunder. A doe and her fawn, tiptoeing through the band of deep white snow covering the meadow, lifted their ears toward the sky, confused by the sound of thunder on such a cold day in their part of Shemaya.

  Oh, take care, I wished the doe with all my heart, one mother to another. It’s not safe here. They’re after your baby, and they’re after you. Trust no one. Assume nothing. Run. Run!

  “I did everything I could to bring people to justice,” Luas continued. “But then one day I found myself blinded by this idea of forgiveness. I don’t know how it happened. Oh, it was quite a conversion; I started preaching it to the people and criticizing them for appealing to the law courts.”

  “You misled a lot of people,” I said.

  “Yes, I did,” Luas agreed. “I realized that when I met Elymas. When he threatened me, I couldn’t just turn the other cheek. I blinded him on the spot, just as I had been blinded. He still carries a grudge about it even though I’ve apologized a thousand times. I went back to the old law of an eye for an eye, Brek, and I can’t tell you how good it felt. But by that point, it was too late. The Romans imprisoned me as an enemy of the state. But I wasn’t about to give up without a fight the way Jesus did. I demanded my right to a trial as a Roman citizen. When it looked like I couldn’t get a fair hearing, I appealed to Nero Claudius. He had a good reputation in those days. Nobody knew he would turn out to be such a sadist. You know the rest. Now Nero and I meet again here every day in the afterlife. Even mighty emperors receive their just deserts.”

  The storm clouds cleared, revealing four moons in the nighttime sky: a quarter moon, a half-moon, a three-quarter moon, and a full moon, each set against the constellations appropriate to its season, hashing the sky into astronomical gibberish. The air cooled and I wrapped one of Nana’s shawls closer around me for warmth. Bats flickered above the trees, chasing after insects. In the distance I could hear a great horned owl and a whip-poor-will, and the bark of a lonely dog—the sounds I’d heard many nights on that porch as a child.

  “Ott Bowles can speak for himself in the Courtroom,” I said. “He made his choices. He doesn’t need a lawyer. He needs an executioner.”

  Luas tapped his pipe against the banister to empty it of ash. “Perhaps so,” he said, “but it is justice that needs our help in the Courtroom, Brek, not Ott Bowles. Presenters supply the distance that makes justice possible for the accused and the Accuser, the created and the Creator. Lawyers are the many colors in the promise of the rainbow as it fades into the horizon of eternity.”

  “I am the Accuser, Luas,” I corrected him. “There’s no need for a trial because I’ve already found him guilty. It’s time for justice to be served.”

  35

  I’m holding Sarah in my arm and waiting for a clerk to come to the counter of the convenience store. Sarah’s getting fussy and heavy, and I’m getting impatient.

  “Hello? Hello . . . ?”

  “Just a minute . . .” a female voice calls from the stockroom.

  The clerk finally pushes through the double-hinged doors. She’s a young woman in her early twenties, overweight, with too much makeup and a too tight shirt. Flicking back her hair, she apologizes for the delay. She smiles at Sarah, extending two thick fingers and tugging at her tiny hand.

  “How old are you?” she asks.

  I lean in close to Sarah like a ventriloquist. “Say, I’m ten months.”

  “What a big girl,” the clerk says. “I’ve got two little boys, one and three. They’d sure love to meet a pretty little girl like you. What’s your name, honey?”

  “Sarah,” I answer for her again.

  “Hey there, Sarah. ‘Sara Smile.’ That’s one of my favorite songs. You’re a cutie.”

  The clerk releases Sarah’s hand and touches her nose. Sarah responds by reaching out and touching the clerk’s nose, making us both laugh. I give Sarah a squeeze and a kiss on the cheek. The clerk pulls the milk toward the register.

  “Will that be all today?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Bag?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  I pay and we walk back out to the car, picking up where we left off with the song that’s been playing on the cassette: It’s almost six-twenty, says Teddy Bear, Mama’s coming home now, she’s almost right there. Hot tea and bees honey, for Mama and her baby . . . Sarah allows me to buckle her into her car seat without fussing.

  It’s dark and I need to use my high beams on the way home. We pass a couple of other cars heading in the opposite direction, but otherwise the road is empty until a single car appears in my rearview mirror and begins following us.

  Coming around a bend and picking up speed on a slight downgrade, we reach a long, deserted stretch of road with corn and hay fields on both sides. The high beams of the car behind us start flashing, and bursts from a red strobe light fill my rearview mirror, hurting my eyes. The red flashes come from low on the windshield. I can tell it’s an unmarked patrol car. Bo had warned me he’d seen a speed trap on this stretch of road.

  Determined to take advantage of my expensive legal training, I’m already planning my defense as I pull off onto the berm. The officer couldn’t have clocked me with radar while following me from behind, so he must be relying on his speedometer. I decide to request a copy of the speedometer certification at the trial—they’re usually expired, and it’s an easy way to get out of a ticket if you know to ask. But even if I did go over the speed limit, it couldn’t have been for long. They have to record it for at least a full one-tenth of a mile. I’ll come back tomorrow and measure the distance from the bend in the road to the point where he started flashing to pull me over, which looks like less than a tenth of a mile to me.

  By the time the officer opens the door of his car, I have all my insurance and registration documents in order. Sarah’s starting to cry now that I’ve turned off the music, but this could be a blessing. Maybe he’ll give me a break because of Sarah and my arm. I’m not above seeking sympathy.

  Against the
glare of the high beams I can see only the officer’s silhouette in the mirror with his revolver bulging at his hip. He’s short, thin, and slightly bowlegged—not the large, powerfully built patrolman you normally think of. I counsel myself to say nothing incriminating and roll down the window. Strangely he stops at the rear door and tries to pull it open.

  “Up here, Officer,” I say, always polite to the police, thinking he somehow mistook the rear door for the front.

  He inserts his arm through my open window and around the pillar to unlock the back door, then climbs in and slams the door shut.

  “What’s the problem, Officer?” I ask innocently, believing there must be some good reason for his behavior. Maybe he’s afraid of being hit by passing traffic if he stands at my door.

  A young male voice answers calmly: “Do what I tell you, Mrs. Wolfson, and nobody’ll get hurt.”

  How does he know who I am?

  I look in the mirror and see a gun pointing at my head. The kid holding the gun appears to be in his late teens or early twenties, with soft, downy whiskers on his chin, pale skin, and thin, almost feminine lips. His head is shaved and he’s wearing a camouflage Army shirt. I’ve never seen him before in my life.

  “Get out of my car!” I yell, outraged that he has the nerve to do something like this, not yet fully comprehending the gun or the reality of the threat.

  A savage smile darts across his face. He points the gun down toward Sarah. There’s a loud crack and a bright orange muzzle flash. Time slows like a rock falling through water. I feel myself screaming but my ears are ringing because of the concussion.

  “Sarah! Sarah!”

  I try to reach back to her, but the kid slams the gun into the side of my face, knocking my head forward. The heat from the barrel stings my cheek, and the bitter scent of gunpowder fills my nose. From the corner of my eye I see the hammer cocked to fire again. It’s an oddly shaped handgun, older, like something I’ve seen in World War II movies.

  “Drive the car!” he orders. “Now!”

  But I’m crazed with panic, and I’m still screaming, “Sarah! Sarah!” I force my head back against the gun, scraping the barrel across my cheek like a razor. I can see her now. There’s no blood . . . and . . . yes, thank God . . . she’s still crying! The shot must have gone through the seat beside her.

  The kid slams the gun into my face again, producing a stabbing pain through my sinus and a thin trickle of blood from my nose.

  “Drive!” he yells. “Now!” He rolls down the rear window and waves to the car behind us. The lights stop flashing, and it pulls out in front of us. “Follow him.”

  I try to move the gear selector, but I’m shaking so badly that the stump of my right arm slips off the lever. The kid reaches up and slaps it into place with a jolt, and I pull out onto the road. We drive to a stop sign and turn left onto Route 22. With each oncoming car, the kid presses the gun against my head, warning me not to do anything to alert them. I’m searching frantically for a police car, or a gas station where I can pull off for help. All the while, Sarah’s screaming at the top of her lungs, terrified from the gunshot.

  “Make her stop!” the kid shouts at me.

  “Please, just let us go,” I say, trying to reason with him. “You can have my car and my purse, whatever you want; just, please, let us go.”

  “This isn’t about money,” the kid says. “Keep driving.” He uses his free hand to cover Sarah’s mouth, which only makes her cries louder.

  “You’re hurting her!” I shriek, hysterical that he’s touched my baby. “There’s a bottle in the diaper bag on the floor. Give her the bottle, and let her go.”

  The kid finds the bottle and holds it in Sarah’s mouth. She drinks the stale formula left over from her afternoon feeding, cries out, drinks again, then finally begins to settle down.

  Everything is happening so fast that I have no time to think. We turn off a side road at Ardenheim and up an old dirt logging road into the mountains. The car we’re following shuts off its headlights, and I’m ordered to shut mine off too. We drive into the woods in darkness and stop. The driver of the car in front gets out. In the moonlight, I can see that he’s about the same age as the kid in back but taller and more muscular. His head is shaved and he’s wearing camouflage Army clothes as well. He’s carrying a gun in one hand and a videocassette in the other. He opens my door and yanks me out of the car, wrenching my left arm. The kid in back climbs out with Sarah and hands her to me, then takes the videocassette from the bigger kid, gets in the driver’s seat of my car, drops the videocassette in the rear footwell, and backs my car into a grove of pine trees until it’s covered with boughs and can’t be seen from the narrow dirt road. He reappears moments later and says to the bigger kid: “Okay, Tim, let’s get going.”

  The bigger kid, whose name I now know is Tim, shoves me toward the other car.

  “Please,” I plead with them, “you’ve got my car and my money. Please, just leave us here. I won’t tell anybody.”

  “Shut up,” Tim says, ramming his gun into my back.

  I begin to worry they’re planning to kidnap and rape me.

  “Please, please don’t do this,” I beg.

  “I said, shut up!” Tim yells, slamming me against their car, crushing Sarah between me and the window. She starts crying again.

  “I told you, Mrs. Wolfson,” the smaller kid says, “if you do as you’re told, nobody’ll get hurt. Now get in the car.”

  “You still want me to drive, Ott?” Tim asks.

  “Yeah.”

  Now I know the smaller kid’s name and that he’s the leader of the two.

  I climb in back with Sarah on my lap and try to comfort her. Ott sits beside us, digging his gun into my ribs. Tim takes the driver’s seat and backs the car down the logging road the way we came, switching on the headlights when we reach the highway. We head south to Route 522, then Route 322 east toward Harrisburg. Sarah calms with the motion of the car and me holding her close. I’m trying frantically to remember the next exits, and whether there are any police stations, and what I’ve heard about self-defense—how the worst thing you can do is to allow an attacker to drive away with you in a car. While cradling Sarah, I slip my hand around the door handle to be ready to leap out at the first opportunity for escape; if I were alone, I might have jumped while the car was moving, but I can’t take that chance with Sarah.

  The miles go by. Ott and Tim say nothing to each other, or me, as we drive. Their actions are disciplined, efficient, and well-rehearsed, suggesting this is not some last-second lark by a couple of teenage punks. I smell no alcohol on their breath and notice no slurring of their speech. Ott keeps checking to see if we’re being followed. Eventually Tim turns the radio on low, switching between country music stations, and Sarah finally falls asleep. I’m thankful she has no idea what’s happening to her. An uneasy peace descends upon the car. Ott relaxes slightly and sits a little less rigidly, but he’s always on alert, jabbing the gun into my side whenever we slow down.

  “I’ve got money in the bank,” I whisper to him. “Lots of it. You can have it all, just let us go. If you stop now, you won’t get in any trouble.”

  Ott says nothing. Five minutes pass, ten, and fifteen. We’re on a four-lane highway, driving farther south toward Harrisburg.

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask.

  “Why?” Ott replies, incredulous, without taking his eyes off the road ahead. “Because Harlan Hurley was sentenced today. He got fifteen years because of your Jew husband, that’s why.”

  “Harlan Hurley?”

  “Yeah, don’t you watch the news? Your Jew husband was there at the courthouse, gloating in front of his TV cameras.”

  Shaved heads, camouflage fatigues . . . I begin to understand.

  “You’re members of Die Elf, aren’t you?” I ask, more terrified than ever. I want to tell him my name is Brek Cuttler, not Brek Wolfson, that I’m a Catholic, not a Jew, and Sarah isn’t Jewish either because to be Jewish she
has to have a Jewish mother. But telling him this would be betraying my husband and my own beliefs. It would be betraying God. I wonder in that moment what I would have done if I were being questioned by the Nazis. Would I tell them I wasn’t a Jew to save myself and Sarah, and let them take Bo away?

  A state-police car pulls around us to pass on the four-lane. I don’t feel the gun in my ribs anymore and raise my hand to signal it. But Ott sees me and says, “Look, Mrs. Wolfson, your baby likes the new toy I gave her.” I look down and see that he has slipped the muzzle of his gun into Sarah’s hand. I abandon my attempt to alert the trooper.

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask again as the police car drives off ahead in the distance. “The government won’t release Hurley because you’ve kidnapped us, they don’t negotiate criminal sentences with anybody.”

  “Because somebody’s got to tell the truth,” Ott says.

  “About what?”

  “About the Holocaust . . . about my family.”

  “Are you Harlan Hurley’s son?”

  “No. I’m Barratte Rabun’s son. Amina Rabun’s godson. Do you remember them, Mrs. Wolfson?”

  Oh my God, this is the kid Bo had told me about on the phone earlier in the day. This isn’t about criminal sentences or making a political statement; it’s about revenge.

  We pass by Harrisburg and eventually Lancaster, finally turning off the main highway and heading into the rolling farmland of Chester County toward Delaware. Fifteen minutes later, we’re on a winding secondary road, rushing past signs with arrows pointing toward Kennett Square, Lenape, and Chadds Ford. The gnarled, old oak trees along the two-lane country road jeer at us, waving their limbs in the dancing shadows like the damned welcoming our entrance into hell. Leaves fall in eruptions of red, yellow, and orange flames as we hurl down the abyss. I’m nauseated with fear, and my mind is racing: How long will it be before Bo calls the police? He’ll expect us no later than eight, and he’ll probably call work and the day care to track us down. Maybe he’ll figure we’ve gone to the grocery store or the mall. Ten o’clock—nothing could keep us out that late. He’ll check first with my parents, then the television station to see if they’ve heard about any accidents, and then he’ll call the police. They’ll take the information, but they’ll probably treat it as a domestic dispute and wait and see. Who knows when they’ll start looking for us, probably not until tomorrow.