The Trench Angel

by Michael Keenan Gutierrez

  Well, when we got to my hideout, I opened the basement shutters, and then followed Tillie down into the lamp-lit room. The Mexican girl was holding her shoulder and sweating something fierce. Her brother sat vigil beside her. And this is when I figured the trouble would start, because right then out of the backroom came Mattie.

  Your sister, sharp as she is, knew right off what the story was.

  —So you’re the other woman.

  —I was here first.

  Mattie’s sensitive to a fault, Cowboy, but she knew not to let my daughter push her around.

  —You look like your father.

  —Can’t help that, now can I?

  —Thanks for coming and not snitching. It’s a kindness.

  —I’m a regular Florence Nightingale.

  —Ladies, we can save this for later, I told them. I’m awful tired after my heroics and I think this poor girl could use some help.

  —Is he always so cocksure? your sister asked.

  —Like a regular Buffalo Bill.

  After that they got on swell. Can’t say I wasn’t nervous, but as long as you channel a woman’s scorn toward something other than your own woman, it all comes out right as rain.

  Tillie placed her doctoring bag down by the bedside and took hold of the girl’s body. She looked her over carefully, and then said something I should tell you.

  —You haven’t dragged poor, helpless, lost, misbegotten Neal into your messes? He’ll just get himself killed.

  I think she meant it in a kind way. I really do, Cowboy.

  —No, I told her. He doesn’t know anything.

  I hadn’t planned, originally, on telling either of you of my arrival. I hadn’t planned on staying into November, but then things changed and I couldn’t get at Seamus quite like I wanted until tonight and then it seemed best to stick around to see what mischief I could make in the meantime.

  As the sun rose, the girl lay asleep and healed beside her brother. Tillie had stitched up the girl with expert care and I was pleased about her finding such a noble calling. I know you have no children, Cowboy, so you can’t understand what that kind of pride feels like but it’s something fierce and exhausting. After I drove Tillie back to her house, I followed her into her home to use her toilet. Afterwards, I saw her crying and I remembered I’d left the files in my satchel and she’d gone through it and seen your mother had died the way she had and I felt evil for letting her find it. I held her and told her I was sorry and I was because I felt like a widow, and I had no right to that feeling.

  But I felt it.

  And I realized what I had done so many years ago, fleeing like I did because I was ashamed of shooting Big Hank, but it wasn’t the only reason, because I was no good as a father anymore and I truly believe that—even if you don’t—and I was never much of a husband to a woman like Pearl who had a certain idea of how a man should be and I couldn’t masquerade as that sort of man anymore. Because before I met your mother I was an anarchist, me and Mattie, but she got pinched for what seemed like life and I needed to move on and become someone new and that’s why I fell in with your mother and her ilk. Pearl was a good woman but she never knew who I was and I couldn’t tell her because that meant jail. I’ve been an anarchist since the day I was born and I found Mattie and she made me right and when she went to jail I was never really right again, not until she showed up in New Sligo a few months before Big Hank died and while I told her to go away, she kept pestering me because she knew I was acting. I was different with your mother. It’s confusing. What I mean is, well, I believed I was an upstanding man at that time. I really did, but I wasn’t. I was the same man who’d robbed banks with Mattie, but I was playing another man and I believed it and I liked it because it was comfortable and safe and I liked the money and the horses and the power.

  What about Big Hank? I’m getting there.

  So when Big Hank came into the office that day, I believed I was a very different man than before I knew your mother.

  No, Big Hank didn’t have a gun. We planted that. The newspapers had a lot of stories about what happened, but it wasn’t quite right because Big Hank didn’t go mad, but was as calm as a Lutheran when he dropped a thick envelope on Seamus’ desk and said he knew all our secrets and he wanted more money. He knew about Mattie. He knew Seamus had gotten cheap ditch pine to put up in the mines and it had killed a lot of men and maimed Clyde and that if the miners found out, he’d be hanging from a post in Pioneer Square by sundown. I never knew how he knew it. He said we were bad men and he knew he could ruin us so all he asked for was a good contract and more bribe money, but that was just the beginning, because it meant he owned us, and neither Seamus nor I could abide that. So after I wrote a check and gave it to that son of a bitch, Seamus pulled a little pistol from his desk, but he was as slow as a train going uphill, so him and Big Hank struggled over the gun. And what did I do?

  Nothing, not a damn thing.

  Just stood there and watched because I knew if either got killed it would be better for me, so when the gun went off and Seamus fell back with a bloody shoulder and then screams ‘shoot him’ and I knew I had to do something to keep my fortune, to keep my secrets and family intact, so I knocked that big son of a bitch to the ground and took his gun and shot him in the head just so I could keep myself in soft suits and a big house, so I could keep riding fine horses and drinking good whiskey, but I might as well have put a second bullet in my own head for all the good it did.

  The epiphany I spoke of happened partly then and it happened partly when I saw your sister and I realized that I had been wrong abandoning Mattie because it was her I owed my allegiance, but I’d been too scared to bust her out, or too unsure of myself, or too afraid to just live like a monk and wait, and I knew if I stayed in this town I’d die without being happy, or at least living a just life, and all I’d do was be a bad husband and a bad father. When I saw your sister days ago, I realized I’d been right. I doubted myself over the years, but I was right to leave you all.

  What am I back for?

  I’m here to make it right. Seamus has got something that needs to go to the men, a fortune that needs to be returned to the people, money made of men turned into slaves and now it’s time to be returned. He’s imprisoned a fortune and I’m here to liberate it.

  —30—

  The car trembled in the wind. I closed my coat and wrapped my arms around my body. “Are you going to kill Seamus?”

  “Not unless I have to,” my father said. I wasn’t sure if he was lying, but I thought he might be. “No, I’m going to take what he holds dear.”

  My father drove back to town with care, leaning over the steering wheel, peering out at the slippery road.

  The streets appeared abandoned, the stores bolted, the horses put away, and the cars stowed in auto barns. Jesse drove down Tenth until he parked beside an old, decaying storefront that had once housed a candlemaker.

  “You sure you want to do this?” he asked. “I can let you out here. You can’t turn back once you’re with me.”

  “I’m sure.”

  The front door swung open and Mattie strode out into the snow. She wore a black coat with a black hood and she seemed sure and happy.

  “Neal’s going to come along for the night.”

  “Good to hear,” she said. “We finally got some luck. The Militia’s blocking all the roads out of town.”

  “How’s that good luck?” I asked.

  “Means they ain’t at the museum, Cowboy.”

  —31—

  I hid behind the car, holding a crate of dynamite, counting the steps of the museum guard, counting my own breath, because you can’t understand the fear that comes with larceny until you’ve done it once or twice. I looked up at the museum—granite walls and ornate columns and my mother’s name under the dedication—and it looked the same it always had, but now I n
oticed the cracks in the granite, the fading of the paint. Seamus wanted it to last centuries, but I already had the feeling it wouldn’t make it through the night.

  In snow lit by the dull streetlight, Mattie danced up to the security guard and Jesse had the ether on the boy’s mouth before he could even say “Evening, ma’am.” He slipped to the ground and Jesse pulled the boy’s keys and opened the door, dragging the ethered guard inside.

  “Come on, Cowboy. Don’t be meandering.”

  I walked the dynamite across the street, taking care not to slip.

  “Hurry it up,” he said. “We’ve got ten minutes tops.”

  I wasn’t going to rush this: dropping nitroglycerin wasn’t how my story should end. I looked down at the crate, then back up at the museum. There were maybe twenty sticks of dynamite inside. “I don’t think it’s enough to take the building down.”

  Mattie laughed. “It’s not for the building, honey.”

  We stopped in the grand hall. Mattie locked the doors while Jesse dragged the security guard behind a kiosk.

  “Get a load of this place,” Mattie said. “Who’d think a two-bit cow-town could afford these digs.”

  “It’s a fucking grift,” Jesse said. “Skimming dimes from those poor bastards underground to build a goddamn collection of false idols to Royal buggery.”

  Mattie put a finger to his lips. “Language, dear.”

  The grand hall’s vaulted ceilings rose to a skylight covered in snow. On clear days you could tell the time based on how the sun dripped into the room, but now the museum seemed like a relic.

  “Christ, I hate this place,” Jesse said. “It has the stench of corruption seeping through its walls.”

  He knocked on a wall and the noise echoed throughout the hall. “Reminds me of the first time I broke into Versailles. Had to spend two days hiding from some Parisian detective who fancied himself a regular Auguste Dupin. Once I got clear, I bathed myself three times a day for a week to get that filth off my skin.”

  “So if we’re not dynamiting it, what the hell are we doing?” I asked.

  Jesse smiled. “Like I said, liberation.”

  The museum had a few important items—a couple of old Renaissance paintings, a Knight’s armor, some old Bibles, and even a few Celtic artifacts from the Pagan ages—but nothing that struck me as particularly meaningful, nothing so symbolic it seemed worth losing my life over. And then I saw it: overhead a banner advertised the Shakespeare Quarto. My uncle’s prized possession, worth nearly a hundred grand, an artifact he’d been craving for years.

  “Shit,” I said.

  “What is it, Cowboy?”

  “I don’t think it’s here yet.” I pointed at the banner. “Tomorrow, I think. Hamlet’s being delivered tomorrow.”

  Jesse and Mattie exchanged glances: I was missing the point.

  “What do I want with some cribbed copy of a too-long play about a spoiled rich kid?” Jesse said. “Not like I could fence it.”

  “I like that play,” Mattie said. “It’s funny.”

  “All right, Ophelia,” Jesse said. “There’s a guard in the west gallery. You know what to do.”

  Mattie pulled out a gun and disappeared into the dark halls of the museum.

  “Come with me, Cowboy.”

  I followed with the dynamite, taking care to watch my step. He headed toward the backrooms and I tried to stay close, but he moved quick, like a cat or a leopard or some other damn animal instinctively suited for hunting at night.

  “If we’re not stealing the book,” I said. “What the hell are we doing here?”

  “Quiet.”

  I pressed myself against a wall, besides a painting of Napoleon at Waterloo. The General looked worried.

  We waited. I lowered the dynamite to the floor and reached for my gun.

  Footsteps came around the back. My father took out the ether, dampening the rag. A guard walked by; my father put the rag to the guard’s face; he held on as the guard’s arms flailed, but eventually the guard’s legs went slack and his weight fell on Jesse; the two of them collapsed to the ground, but even as he fell, my father had a grace about him, a sort of sureness, and, though I could see he was scared, somehow he pushed through, concentrating on the details.

  “Poor bastard,” Jesse said. “He’s gonna have a hangover not even Tom Paine could imagine.”

  “I know.”

  “Stay here,” he said. “If he wakes up, knock him on the forehead with your gun.”

  He started toward the back offices and I grabbed his coat. “Where are you going?”

  “Relax, Cowboy. Don’t do anything brave.”

  He disappeared toward the museum’s guts, while I leaned against the wall and lowered my hat and tried to look tough without spewing on my shoes. I could hear my own breath, so I paid attention to it like some sort of Buddhist, and, after a while, I just held my breath because the loudest place in the world is that space where you’re trying to be absolutely silent. I could hear the patter of snow against glass and the gasping of the walls and the doped wheeze of the unconscious guard. The kid was no more than twenty years old and it didn’t seem fair to knock him out, but he carried a gun for a dollar an hour and he was probably proud of his power and he’d grow old telling stories of how Jesse Stephens tanned him.

  The wind slapped the museum and the bricks creaked and sighed. A cry behind a pedestal made me reach for my gun, but it was just a field mouse abandoning its hideout.

  “Calm the fuck down.” I hummed the Marseillaise, a trick I’d learned that first winter on the front.

  The only noise left was the sound of my pacing boot heals: Mattie and my father stalked like ghosts through the building’s bowels. The boy began to stir. His breathing quickened and you could hear a little groan, the beginnings of a cough. I turned the gun around; the butt facing his forehead. I aimed, rocking back and forth, like a batter awaiting his first pitch.

  “Stop it,” said a voice in the dark.

  I scampered across the floor.

  Mattie put her finger to her lips. “He’s just dreaming,” she said. “Relax. We’re almost done.”

  She took out a pair of handcuffs and a handkerchief from her handbag and then bound and gagged the boy.

  A knock at the front door sent us behind a pedestal. I looked through the Grand Hall, but could only see a shadowy figure on the other side of the glass door. A relief guard? A Pinkerton? My uncle? I couldn’t tell, not in the dark. I knew, though, if someone didn’t open the door, the stranger would call the cops. And our car was out front.

  “Why’s our getaway car, out front?” I asked. “That’s ridiculous. Shouldn’t we have hid it in the back or behind some hedges or—”

  She put her hand to my forehead, and then swept it through my hair. She was petting me like some Schnauzer. It did, however, calm me.

  Jesse snuck behind us. “Found it,” he said. “Just two sticks.”

  Mattie pointed her gun at the door. “Visitors.”

  “If he hasn’t opened it yet,” Jesse said. “It buys us about five minutes.”

  Jesse grabbed two sticks of dynamite and told me to leave the rest—no use carrying it anymore—and we followed him into the back, the click of his heels leading us through the dark maze of halls and dust, and into Seamus’ office, where my uncle sat handcuffed to his desk chair, bleeding from his mouth.

  “Old Seamus here,” Jesse started. “Burning the midnight oil trying to catch me and all he had to do was look up and there I was, the magnificent Jesse Stephens, in the flesh.”

  Seamus tried to say something to me, but he couldn’t find the words. I bent toward him.

  “You shouldn’t have killed all those men,” I said.

  “Yep, you old bastard, and now we’re going to pay you back,” Jesse said, patting my uncle’s tensing shoulder. “Old Sea
mus here put up a little bit of a struggle, but he was always a hundred pound man masquerading in a two hundred pound body.”

  “You’re going to hang,” Seamus said. “All of you.”

  My father pulled off the wall a painting of Queen Elizabeth, revealing a safe. “It’s an old model,” he said. “Won’t take much.”

  “What’s in there?” I asked. “Treasure? Secrets?”

  “Something like that, Cowboy.”

  “If you steal—” Seamus said.

  “Why are we blowing it?” I asked. “Why not just get the combination from him?”

  “I wouldn’t tell you if you put in a gun in my mouth.”

  “We could try,” I said.

  “Ain’t a road we need to walk down yet,” Jesse said. “Besides, I stole all this dynamite and it would be a shame not to use it.”

  Mattie coughed. “Who stole it?”

  “I meant the collective I, as in you and me form one I.”

  “Sure you did.” Mattie kneeled before a display case and pointed at a painting of Thomas More, who was shown with wide, protruding eyes, the eyes of someone realizing the imminence of his own execution.

  “I think I knew him,” she said. “I think he tried to make love to me once.”

  “So this is your whore?” Seamus asked.

  I looked at my father, but he didn’t seem to hear it, or at least care.

  “I prefer mistress,” Mattie said. “It’s got a much more sophisticated ring to it.”

  Jesse smirked. “Tape,” he called out.

  Mattie tossed him a roll and Jesse fastened the dynamite to the safe’s combination lock. He backed away. “Should do it.”

  “You think?” Mattie asked. “Might need another one. Remember Budapest.”

  “Don’t you ever forget anything?” Jesse said. “That wasn’t my fault.”