Archangel (20 page)

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Mary asked him, holding out an empty cup as if to show that this was where the drink would go. “I’m going to have some.”

Dodge snapped upright, dizzy with the rush of blood from his head. “I’m OK for now, thank you.” He waited for a moment while the chips of light from his dizziness spun around like bumblebees in flight and then vanished. “Mary, you probably know why I’m here.”

“Nope.” She smiled vacantly.

“Do you know about your son spiking those trees in the Algonquin?”

“Wilbur works at the restaurant.” Mary put on the kettle for tea. “All the livelong day.”

“Yes, but he’s been going into the woods, Mary. And driving nails into trees, we believe. We told you a man was killed the other day. We came by asking about it. Do you remember?”

“Yes.” She spoke as if she couldn’t quite be sure. “I want a pony.”

“I saw your son running into the woods this evening. He didn’t stop when I asked him to.”

“Yes.” Mary let the word sift into the air as if she were breathing out smoke.

“So is there anything you can tell us that might help? Wilbur’s just going to get hurt if he keeps running away.” Dodge tapped his fingers lightly on the tablecloth, feeling the hard wood beneath.

“No one would hurt Wilbur.” She laughed to show the stupidity of his suggestion. “He said he would come back, but I don’t know where from.”

“When will he come home?”

“When he’s ready.” Mary shrugged. “And we must reason not the need.” The kettle was boiling now. She started to prepare the tea.

Dodge could not bring himself to be impatient with the woman. He wished he could tell her how much trouble Wilbur was in, but he doubted it would do any good. In the end, he thought, she might be better off not knowing.

Dodge didn’t sleep that night. Instead, he stashed himself in a children’s playground across the road from Mary’s house. There was a swing set in the park, its chains rusted and creaking in the night breeze. Children had not played here in a while. Weeds climbed up through the sand. Dodge smoked a cigarette, hand cupped over the flame to hide it. He knew he had to be patient. Hazard will return, Dodge told himself. It’s the nature of the beast.

Barnegat and Frampton met at the logging road. Each carried a rifle. There was no moon, only a vast fan of stars above the trees. The road was a pale river running into the blackness of the forest.

“We split the money in half,” announced Frampton. Barnegat said nothing to disagree, so he assumed it was all right. He had spoken
only to break the silence, which seemed to pace around them as if it were alive. He knew the woods by day, but it occurred to him only as he stepped creaky-kneed from his car that the wilderness at night was part of a different universe. He thought back to his stool at the bar and the gum-fuzzing beer he had left in his mug, and he wished he hadn’t come along. But it was too late now to show fear.

They walked up the road, the sound of their footsteps on the gravel drowning out everything but the running-water murmur of wind through the tops of the pines.

As the minutes went by, they met nothing and felt braver. Their eyes grew used to the dark and now they could make out the individual pines instead of the tarlike wall of night that seemed to rise sheer from the edges of the road.

Frampton held his rifle tight against his chest. The gun was the most valuable thing he owned. It was an antique Winchester 30-30 Goldenboy. For the past three years, he had been paying off the loan he took out to buy it. He saved money by not going to the dentist. Instead, he pulled three of his own rotten teeth with a pliers, having first glued pieces of leather to the gripping steel. Early in the year he had slipped while fly-fishing in felt-soled boots down by the railroad bridge that crossed a corner of Pogansett Lake. He trod between two rocks and fell, twisting his arm, which broke above the elbow. Too angry about the cost of a doctor’s bill to feel the pain, Frampton set his own arm right where he stood, waist-deep in the stream, fly rod clamped between his teeth. He still had that fly rod, teeth marks etched into the graphite. He didn’t go to a barber, figuring he had little enough hair to worry about anyway. Whenever it grew too long, he would light a candle and burn the ends. Then he would rub out the fire with his clawed fingers. Sometimes when he picked up the Goldenboy he wondered if it had been worth it. As he looked at the polished brass barrel and burnished cherrywood stock, he would remember the foul, metallic smell of his burned hair and the orangy crumbs that clung to his wool clothes like little spiders. “You figure Hazard’ll come quietly?” Frampton asked.

“I hope not,” Barnegat said. “I hope he puts up a fight, so we can fuck him up and pay him back for Pfeiffer.” Barnegat had not liked Pfeiffer and had never spoken to him except with the condescension
of an old hand talking to a newcomer. But none of that mattered now.

The two men began to turn their thoughts from money to vengeance. They unshouldered their guns and slid bullets into the breeches. They sensed the particular never-to-be-mentioned thrill of men who feel justified in bringing violence to a weaker enemy. The more they thought of Pfeiffer, the more angry they became. Barnegat had seen the way he died, and Frampton had seen other accidents, which he assembled in his head until they matched the level of atrocity that Barnegat described.

Frampton reached into his pocket and took out a half-crushed packet of Camels. He shook it until a cigarette slid from the end and put it in his mouth. He was just reaching for his lighter when Barnegat slapped the white stick from between his lips.

“I can tell you don’t know shit about hunting.”

“I been hunting all my life.” Frampton talked back with as much bluster as he could manage against a man he almost loved.

“And I seen how much you get each season, too. Alls you do is sit there in the bushes drinking peppermint schnapps and catching cold. That cigarette will show up like a flashlight in the dark.” Barnegat ground the fallen cigarette into the road as if it were burning and he needed to put out the fire.

“What do you know about it anyway?” said Frampton, angry to have been humiliated. “I know about killing. I shot a man once. It was the only man I killed in World War Two. I fired at a lot of people, but this one I know I got. It was a German who at first I thought was dead. He was lying in a ditch and he was wounded. All bloody in the legs from some machine-gun burst. He pulled a pistol as I was walking past along a muddy road. I don’t know if he meant to shoot me or not. But I saw the gun and I let him have it with my Thompson. Then saw it was no man at all. It was just a kid. Maybe seventeen years old. It was some Waffen SS recruit in dappled sniper camouflage. But I was crazy angry at the time. I ripped the zinc identification disk from around that boy’s neck. And I still got it.” Frampton reached into his shirt and pulled out the tag, which hung around his neck on an old leather cord. “I went home and put it on before I came out here. I can still read his name: Sebastian Westland.” Of all the hauntings he had
brought home from the war, the sight of that young man haunted him the most. Now Frampton wore the disk as a talisman against the fear that had clouded his thoughts.

Barnegat snorted. He was fed up with Frampton. His usual eleven beers made him jovial, but having only four had sharpened his temper. He had been wondering if there was any way he could get out of sharing Mackenzie’s reward money once they had got hold of Hazard. That was why Barnegat stayed up front, so he could be the first to track him down. And he decided that, for Hazard, there would be no coming quietly. That had been dismissed without discussion. Both men planned to beat Wilbur Hazard close to death, and then drag him into town like a shot deer and make sure everyone saw what vengeance they had taken on the son of Mary the Clock.

They passed the yellow police tape around the place where Pfeiffer had been killed. It rustled in the breeze as the men moved quickly by. After an hour, they reached the railroad tracks. They sat down on the creosote-smelling slabs of the track spacers and rested their guns against the rails. The sweat began to cool on their backs.

Frampton had given up hope that they would find Hazard. One by one, he snuffed out the daydreams of all the things he would buy with his share of the money, far more than his share ever could. The truth was he cared less about the money than the adventure. Lately, he had felt himself drifting apart from Barnegat, and he saw it as only a matter of time before Barnegat’s jokes about everyone else in town would include him. He would be fuel for all Barnegat’s private chuckling and then there would be nothing for him but to leave. This walk in the night had saved him. Even if they came out empty-handed, Frampton knew they would be brothers again, the way it had been in the beginning. He needed Barnegat’s friendship more than he could ever admit without ruining it. Frampton had no other friends in town. Everyone else had grown tired of his drinking and the way it made him crazy. He wished he were drunk now, as he didn’t feel like taking a swing at Wilbur Hazard, least of all with precious Goldenboy.

It was as if Barnegat had read Frampton’s mind. He leaned across with a pewter drinking flask in his hand.

Frampton took Barnegat’s hand in both of his and slapped the back of Barnegat’s palm in thanks. Frampton carefully unscrewed the pewter cap and let it dangle on its tiny chain. Then he took a slug and
felt the taste of peppermint schnapps run stinging across his tongue. It was like liquid candy cane, and he knew he would need to drink the whole flask and then more if he was to feel the hypnotized rage he needed to face Hazard. At least it might be enough to take the pain of walking from his joints. Frampton had not complained about the length of the walk and the weight of the rifle, but his hipbones were so sore that he doubted whether he’d be able to stand again when they decided to move on. Instead, he’d been worrying about Hazard. He didn’t trust Barnegat to be any good in a fight, and he didn’t know Hazard well enough to feel sure that two of them against one of him would put the odds in their favor. The son of a crazy lady, he was thinking. I never did like the look of him. Frampton quietly envisioned a massacre, with himself as one of the victims. He stared at his boots and prepared to die.

Barnegat walked to the other side of the tracks. A moment later came the rough sputter of him pissing on the pale stone track bedding. Then the noise stopped. “Hey!” he whispered.

“You get something caught in your fly?” Frampton didn’t look up from his boots. He reached across and took another drink of the schnapps.

“It’s a light!” Barnegat rasped. “Someone’s got a fire going.”

Frampton felt his heart jump in his chest. He closed his hands around the dew-smeared stock of his gun, and crawled to where Barnegat crouched.

The fire was a bubble of marmalade light deep in the woods. Trees between the fire and the men seemed to shift in the sway of the flames. Someone stirred the ashes. Sparks rose into the sky.

“We’ll make too much noise if both of us go in.” Frampton could no longer hide his fear. He rested his forehead on the cold iron of a rail and in his mind he cursed his cowardice.

“I’ll go.” Barnegat was not afraid. He suddenly felt more brave and ready for a fight than he ever had before. He had no idea where his courage had come from, but suddenly it was there like a transfusion running through him. He fanned his eyes across the cowering man and thought, When this is over, nobody’s getting any money except me. And there’ll be no more bowing down to you and hearing about how you could pop my eyes out if you wanted to. When we get back to town, things will be different, and they will stay that way. Then he
crawled down the embankment, through the oily water in the ditch and into the woods, carrying his rifle in the crook of his elbow.

Wilbur Hazard sat as close to the fire as he could, arms around his knees, rocking slowly back and forth. The cold had sunk into his bones. Beside him was his backpack, in which he carried a hammer, nails, a saw and three glass mason jars. For the past few weeks, he had been sneaking into the Algonquin and cutting down trees to make himself a cabin. He didn’t know who the land belonged to. He only knew it wasn’t his, and so he had to keep his cabin a secret. That was half the thrill of building it. It would be his hideaway. He had studied a book about cabin building and learned how to notch the logs so they would fit together. Instead of windows, he was going to cut a window space but fill the gap with old mason jars, which he could bring into the woods a few at a time. He would caulk the jars and logs with moss and dirt and pine sap, the way prospectors had done in Alaska in the last century. He had gently lifted the moss from rocks on the crest of Seneca Mountain and set it right side up on the wood so it could continue to grow. For this he used a long-bladed Gerber knife, which he kept in a sheath at his waist. With the Gerber, he could reach into each crevice of the stone. The cabin was three-quarters built. The only thing it didn’t have was a door, and the windows still needed a few more jars.

But now that policeman had ruined everything. He had run from Officer Dodge with no sense of where he was going. Only to get away. He wished now that he had stayed, because in the past few minutes of sitting by the fire it had finally occurred to him that Dodge was looking for the tree spiker, not for him. Hazard had first assumed that someone had found the cabin and reported him. He didn’t know how he could get himself out of this mess, and he didn’t know if they would believe him, even if he told the truth. I’m the son of a lady everyone thinks is crazy, thought Hazard.