The Angels Will Not Care

by John Straley

  “Do you remember me, Mr. Standard? I’m Cecil Younger. I spoke to you the other day back at the Hubbard Glacier?”

  Mr. Standard paused and I could tell he was trying to think back a lifetime, his dead son’s lifetime, yet it had only been two days. He furrowed his brow and pulled at his hair absently.

  “Yes. Of course. Come in.” And he gestured into the room.

  I entered a sitting room that had an oak table for six and a leather couch near the wet bar. There was a globe in a wooden stand next to a bookshelf and near the window was an antique brass telescope with a heavy counterbalanc­ing arm. Forward and to the starboard were floor-to-ceiling windows. I paused to look up the valley where the miners of the Klondike had once struggled up the pass.

  “I’m sorry to hear about Paul,” I said as I walked to the couch. Mr. Standard sat on the opposite end. He sat with his shoulders hunched and his hands down between his knees.

  “I was expecting it, of course,” he said and then he said nothing more. Far up the valley we heard a train whistle echo off the mountain walls. Helicopters came and went like dragonflies.

  “He had said he would see me in the morning. Paul said he would see me in the morning. I knew what he wanted to do . . . But I wasn’t ready . . . I don’t think Paul was ready either but . . . I don’t know.” Mr. Standard’s voice quavered. He opened his mouth and he tried to speak, but nothing came out. Then he started to cry.

  There was a pile of papers on the table in front of us. Sobbing, Mr. Standard leaned forward and grabbed them and held them up to show me.

  “That doctor gave me these. That morning he gave me these. Legal papers. He had them right there in his room. They are papers Paul signed absolving the doctor of any problems for his treatment that might result in his own death. These papers are very explicit. Paul wrote that the doctor could administer any medications in dosages that the doctor felt reasonable, even if they resulted in death.”

  I cleared my throat. “Mr. Standard, I’m sorry but right now we have to think about you, not Paul or the doctor. I think you are in serious trouble.”

  Mr. Standard drew in his breath and wiped away tears with the flat of his hand. “I am in trouble, aren’t I?”

  He looked at me beseechingly, then he drew a breath as if he were about to start the story of his life. I interrupted him.

  “Listen, Mr. Standard, there’s no time. We’re both in trouble. Please tell me what you remember about the night Dr. Edwards went overboard.”

  Standard made a gesture with his hands as if he were erasing a terrible vision in front of him. He shook his head. “I was drinking that night with some of the people from the travel club, friends of Paul’s. They were telling stories and laughing. We were drinking wine. I think some of them had been taking drugs. I don’t know. It was late. I had gone to bed. I remember one of them came in and told me Paul was dead. The doctor had pronounced him dead a couple of hours earlier. I was furious. I told you, Paul was going to see me tomorrow. We were talking through things. We hadn’t done that, you know. We hadn’t talked about his life. The people he loved. We were talking through all that. So I went to Paul’s room. The door was locked. I went to the clinic and no one was there. I finally got a crew person to tell me where the doctor’s cabin was. The doctor was in his cabin. He apologized and he showed me the papers. Then I started shouting. I guess the walls are thin because he told me we had to go somewhere else. So we stepped out on the deck, the crew deck, where they tie the lines and have the hoists and anchor winch.”

  Mr. Standard squeezed his eyes shut. He held his hands out in front of him as if he were groping along a hallway in the dark.

  “He was sorry, the doctor said. He said he could feel my pain, for Christ’s sakes.” Mr. Standard shook his head bitterly and went on. “But the doctor said there were many considerations, insurance costs, something about the needs of his other patients. He said it was what Paul wanted. He kept talking about the papers Paul had signed and what Paul had wanted and I kept getting more and more angry . . .” Tears were running down Mr. Standard’s unshaven cheeks. “I realize now I was furious because I wanted to talk about my feelings. I knew my son was dying. I knew he was leaving me. I was furious, and that damn doctor kept talking about Paul’s feelings, as if I had never considered my own son’s feelings.” His shoulders moved with his sobs. I waited.

  “I was all twisted up in my own feelings. Of course I wanted my son to die with dignity. Of course I wanted him to be free of pain. I just didn’t . . .”

  Mr. Standard paused. He gathered himself, then went on. “I shook the doctor by the shoulders. I screamed at him. I remember pushing him against the rail. I did want to kill him, I will admit that. He hit me. He pushed me down. I remember falling and rolling on the deck and I remember standing backup and being alone. He was in the water. I saw him waving his arm up in the air. I remember throwing the life ring over the side. I called out for help.”

  “Did help come?” I asked.

  “There was someone there immediately. A black crew­man. I don’t know his name. He was Caribbean. He sat me down and he went away. Then the ship’s officers came and the alarms sounded. It seemed to take a long time but frankly I don’t remember how long it took.”

  “Did anyone else see this happen? See the doctor go over?” I asked him.

  Mr. Standard started to speak. Then he snapped his mouth shut. “No.” There was a pause. “No. There was no one else.”

  “What are the ship’s officers telling you now?” I asked and gestured around his cabin.

  “They say they want to handle it internally. They say they will do everything they can to avoid turning me over to the authorities here in Alaska. I told them I wanted to talk to the police but they said I would be charged with the doctor’s murder. They told me to stay in this cabin. I don’t know. I don’t know.” He buried his head in his hands.

  The door to the cabin opened and the same steward who had taken the cart out came back into the room. He bowed slightly at the waist and said to me, “Excuse, sir. But there is someone who wants a word with you.” He gestured to the door behind him. “Forgive me, Mr. Standard,” the steward said and then waited for me to stand and follow him.

  Cyril stood in the hall. He had on civilian clothes, a lightweight jacket and new athletic shoes. He was holding his knife in his hand.

  “Please, sir. What are we doing now?” He unfolded the knife. “You need to come with me then.” And he turned me around holding my right elbow and putting the blade of the knife just under my ribs.

  13

  The Capital City

  I could feel the knife slicing through the fabric of my shirt as Cyril pushed the button for the elevator. Like a dope I watched the letters above the door lighting up in turn. I listened to the rattling hydraulics inside the shaft. I saw lights rise up around the edges of the metal door and the clunk of the elevator car coming to a stop. Cyril pressed the knife harder and pushed me toward the opening door.

  “Cecil! There you are! Oh thank goodness. I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

  Rosalind was standing inside the elevator. She was wearing a white chiffon scoop-necked dress. Her curly hair was piled on top of her head like a carnival hat. She had a string of gumball-sized faux pearls around her throat. She waved gaily and I think she might have even blown a kiss over my shoulder and then pushed me out of the elevator. The knife was gone from my back.

  “It’s tonight!” She was jumping up and down. She put her hands on my waist. Cyril stood in the elevator and held his hand on the button, keeping the door open, waiting for me to step in.

  “The seventies dance revue! I knew you hadn’t for­gotten. I found you a suit. It’s perfect!”

  I didn’t say anything. Cyril waited. Rosalind stopped bouncing and she looked worried.

  “You are going to be able to come, aren’t you? I mean, if yo
u can’t . . . I understand, but I . . .”

  “No, no, no.” I smiled and waltzed her away from the door.

  “That’s okay,” I called over Rosalind’s shoulder to Cy­ril. “You don’t have to wait.” Cyril scowled at me as if I were threatening his life. “Really,” I said in a cheerful voice. “I’ll get the next one.” The elevator door closed and Rosalind blew me another kiss.

  “So you didn’t connect up with anyone?” I asked her.

  “Oh.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I did. I did and you know him, too.” She stared at me as if I were going to start guessing and when I didn’t she rushed on. “But he can’t come.” She watched me expectantly. “But you can, right?”

  “I was just thinking . . .” I said down into Rosalind’s up­raised face. “That I didn’t . . . know what I was going to wear.”

  And I walked with her down the hall listening to the rat­tle and hum of the elevator dropping away with Cyril inside.

  The Westward unmoored from Skagway in the after­noon. Passengers came back from the train trip to the moun­tain pass talking of the scenery and the history they had been passed along. I went to Rosalind’s cabin and tried on the white suit she had borrowed from the ship’s theatrical com­pany. It was tight in the shoulders and the bell bottoms hung well above the tops of my shoes making my ankles look like strange white clappers. I tried to add up all of the different people on the Westward who may have been interested in my whereabouts and then I tried to think of how best to avoid them. But I needed to see Jane Marie and Todd, and when I mentioned this to Rosalind she seemed pleased.

  “Oh, they are going to be at our table for dinner. I’ve got it all arranged.” And she hopped up on one foot slightly. Then she went off on a search for a red satin shirt, leaving me alone in her cabin.

  Rosalind’s creative block seemed to have lifted in the past few days because her notebook was full of sketches. On top of her table she had a few finished paintings. They were done with ink and oil paints, and she appeared to use blood for some lettering just as the old iconographers had done. She had created images of angels hovering above mountains and the fjords. Sad angels with gold flocking and blissful an­gels with vaguely East Indian features. All the angels were reaching out beyond the edge of the painting but there were no humans in the frame. I sat on Rosalind’s bed and studied the image she had titled “The One Who Cannot Be Denied.” The angel’s robes were textured green and flowing out be­hind its body. The wing feathers were black, as was the skin. The eyes were brown and widely set. I stared at the paint­ing. The angel’s expression showed some kind of compassion. But the image was more human than I was comfortable with. There was something irritatingly familiar about it as well.

  The door opened and Rosalind came in holding a shiny red shirt. She held it up to me. “Fabulous. Don’t you think?” And I agreed.

  Soon there was a knock on the door and Rosalind opened it a crack. She whispered with Jane Marie for a moment and then let her in.

  Jane Marie was in her black dress. The night we’d spent together on the beach had been washed away. I set the angels aside and she sat next to me on Rosalind’s bed.

  “What’s going on, Cecil? The police only asked me a few questions. They kept referring to the doctor’s drinking out on deck and kept talking about the ‘accident.’ Nothing was said about Mr. Standard and nothing was said about you.” Jane Marie looked at me as if I were a feverish child. “Sonny Walters kept the whole conversation to finding the doctor’s body on the beach this morning. Sonny told me specifically they didn’t want your name brought up at all.”

  “I think I’m a problem for them.” I touched the flat of my hand to her cheek.

  “And I don’t know how many times they’ve asked me about your whereabouts since the ship left port. They are tearing the place up looking for you. I was lucky to get here.” She kissed my hand.

  “Where’s Todd?” I asked her.

  “They’ve got him up in some fancy stateroom on Ho­rizon Deck. They said we could stay there. Todd’s in heaven. He’s taking pictures of every square inch of the room and is drinking every soda in the refrigerator. But I don’t think they are going to let him out of that room.”

  “No. I don’t think so,” I said and ran my hand across the silky red fabric of tonight’s shirt.

  Now the truth is I’m not a very good sneak. I’m too self-conscious to be very effective skulking around, and besides, if I were caught skulking anywhere on the ship I felt almost cer­tain I would be feeling some steel slicing through my skin. So after weighing my options I decided we were bound for the bright lights of the Great Circle Lounge. Slitting my throat during the seventies dance revival would surely risk ruining someone’s vacation.

  At dinner we sat with Rosalind and a very funny cou­ple from Pakistan. The man bought our wine and did bits from Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Rosalind drank almost a bottle of white wine and laughed with her mouth wide open. Jane Marie and I drank soda water while our Pakistani host threatened to cut down the largest tree in the forest with a herring.

  The waiters smiled at me deferentially as they brought my porterhouse steak. I noticed a thin black man step out of the kitchen and point to our table. Rosalind followed my eyes there. When she saw the thin black man pointing she reached under the table and squeezed my hand.

  In the Great Circle Lounge the mirrored ball sprayed light into the room like a sprinkler. The Bee Gees whee­dled and thumped as we lunged around the room twisting, pointing into the ceiling and thrusting our hips awkwardly to the beat. I was feeling liberated. I had finally made it to the party and was going native along with the rest of my ship­mates: women in strange dresses, clumsy, bouncing and to­tally unself-conscious, men in tight suits, their guts spilling out over their belts. I knew with a force of certainty that these were my people.

  I danced with Rosalind and Jane Marie. Sweating and laughing, we mugged and flirted, completely foolish and beautiful. Outside, water fell from the steep rock walls down into Lynn Canal. Seabirds flew back to their rookeries and the great warm-blooded mammals came up for air.

  Werdheimer was there, too, wearing the most god­awful gold chains and doing a kind of nonchalant tough-guy routine. His outfit was not helped by the pack of gauze band­aged across his nose or the cotton sticking out of his nostrils. He circled the room staying on the outside of the dancers, watching me. I stayed in the middle of the floor and Jane Marie danced past him as if he were part of the furniture.

  The ship’s plan was to party our way down Lynn Canal and to moor in Juneau so that we could dance out into the after-hours parties on the narrow streets of the city. In the morning we could shop.

  I didn’t have much of a plan. I was hoping Mr. Worthington might be able to help me. I was not going to bump into Cyril on the dance floor so I needed a way to escape down into Freetown.

  The dance judges were moving through the dance floor, tapping certain couples on their shoulders and asking them to sit down. I wheeled Rosalind in an old country dance move called the eggbeater and nearly dislocated my shoulder. Jane Marie spun away from me and took Word’s hand and pulled him in close to her body. Peter Frampton was making his guitar talk in that interminable passage of his old hit song. Jane Marie held Word tight and stared into his eyes with a conviction that made me want to stick around and see what was coming next. Jane Marie danced so close that she had to move her thigh up between Word’s legs. She pressed his head down into the warm cleft between her neck and shoul­der and he pulled back, gently protecting his battered nose. Rosalind and I spun to the edge of the dance floor and out of the Great Circle Lounge.

  In the stairwells of Freetown it was always the same time of day. The weather was of machines and work. Metal rattled and diesel and cigarette smoke clung to everything. We ran down the circular staircase. I held Rosalind’s hand. I took her with me as a witness, still thinking it would be hard
for any of the crew to murder a perfectly healthy paying customer. But I had to admit this hope was starting to dim the closer I got to the belly of the ship, where I hoped Mr. Worthington was working on his boilers.

  “I know someone who can help,” Rosalind said behind me. I did not answer and I did not turn. I wasn’t sure just where I was going: I was just trying to remember the turns in the maze that would lead me to Mr. Worthington.

  Voices called out somewhere above us and there were shouts. Shoes clattered on the metal of stairs. Metal banged on a pipe overhead. I heard a man’s voice calling, “That way! There!” And I ducked as I heard that metallic footfall again and again.

  I saw a metal door and grabbed the knob. The door opened and I pushed in, dragging Rosalind behind me.

  It was Mr. Worthington’s door, but he was clearly not there. His children peered at us from their tiny photographs. His sooty coveralls were piled in the corner and there was a damp towel smudged black hanging across the chair.

  The voices rattled down the hall, men calling and breathing hard as they went past the door. Rosalind stood with her back pressed against the door. Her face was flushed and her hair had fallen in loose strands touching the soft skin of her shoulders.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said breathlessly, and lunged out of the room before I could grab her. Then she was around the corner and was gone. I heard the men’s voices double back and their footsteps coming toward me. I ducked back into Mr. Worthington’s room.

  The voices faded. I locked the door and sat on his bed. On the shelf on the wall was a small tape recorder and propped against it was a Bible. He had tapes, all neatly la­beled, of his children reading different stories. On the one counter space was a stack of papers with information about the medical services offered at the Mayo Clinic. Under the bed was a red toolbox. On top of the box was a short saw with a squared-off blade and fine teeth, the type of saw I associated with finishing woodwork.