The Angel on the Roof

by Russell Banks

  She decided to force the issue, to go back to the kitchen right now, before Gail left, while there was still a fairly large number of people in the dining room and the four guys at the bar, and if Noonan said what she expected him to say and did what she expected him to do, then she would walk out the door just like the LaPierre boys had, take off in her car, the doors locked and windows up, the wheels spinning, kicking gravel, and squealing rubber as she left the parking lot and hit the road to Lake Placid.

  Who the hell did he think he was, anyhow, coming on to her like that, him a married man, middle-aged, practically? Sure, she had been attracted to him from the first time she saw him, when he interviewed her for the job and had made her turn and turn again, while he sat there on the barstool and looked her over with genuine interest, almost with innocence, as if she were a bouquet of wildflowers he’d ordered for his wife. “Turn around, Stace. Let me see the other side.” She had actually liked his suddenness, his fearless, impersonal way of telling her exactly what he wanted from her, instructing her to wear a tight, white T-shirt and black jeans or shorts to work in and to be friendly with the customers, especially the males, because he wanted return business, not one-night stands, and men will come back and stay late again and again, if they think the pretty girl behind the bar likes them personally. She had smiled like a coconspirator when he told her that and said, “No problema, Mr. Noonan.”

  “Hey, you can call me Charlie, or you can call me Noonan. Just don’t call me at home, and never call me Mister. You’re hired, Stace. Go change the dress and be back here by six.”

  But all that was before she told him about having been struck by lightning. Until then, she had thought it was safe to flirt with him, he was married, after all; and he was so unlike the losers she usually hooked up with that she had decided it was harmless as well as interesting to be attracted to him, nothing could come of it, anyhow; and wasn’t it intelligent, after all, for a young woman to want a successful older man’s attention and approval? Wasn’t that how you learned about life and who you were?

  Somehow, this afternoon everything had changed. She couldn’t have said how it had changed or why, but everything was different now, especially between her and Noonan. It wasn’t what he had done or not done or even anything he had said. It was what she had said.

  A woman who has been struck by lightning is not like other people. Most of the time Stacy could forget that fact, could even forget what that horrible night had felt like, when she was only seventeen and thought that she had been shot in the head. But all she had to do was say the words, reestablish the fact, and the whole thing came back in full force—her astonishment, the physical and mental pain, and the long-lasting fear, even to today, that it would happen to her again. The only people who say lightning never strikes twice in the same place have never been struck once. Which was why she was so reluctant to speak of it.

  But Noonan had charmed her into speaking of it, and all at once, there it was again, as if a glass wall had appeared between her and other people, Noonan especially. The man had no idea who she was. But that wasn’t his fault. It was hers. She had misled him. She had misled herself. She checked the drinks of the customers at the bar. Then, to show Gail where she was headed, she pointedly flipped a wave across the dining room and walked back to the kitchen.

  When she entered, Noonan was leaning against the edge of the sink, his large, bare arms folded across his chest, his head lowered: a man absorbing a sobering thought.

  Stacy said, “What’d you want to tell me?” She stayed by the door, propping it open with her foot.

  He shook his head as if waking from a nap. “What? Oh, Stace! Sorry, I was thinking. Actually, Stace, I was thinking about you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. Close the door. Come on in.” He peered around her into the dining room. “Is Gail okay? She’s not crying or anything anymore, is she?”

  “No.” Stacy let the door slide shut behind her. The exhaust fan chugged above the stove, and the dishwasher sloshed quietly next to the sink, tinkling the glasses and silverware inside and jiggling the plates. On a shelf by the rear door, a portable radio played country-and-western music at low volume—sweetly melancholic background music. There was a calming order and peacefulness to the kitchen, a low-key domesticity about it that, even though the room was as familiar to her as the kitchen of her rented A-frame, surprised Stacy. She felt guilty for having been so suspicious of Noonan and so quick to judge and condemn him. He was an ordinary man, that’s all, a basically harmless and well-intended man; she had no reason to fear him. She liked his boyish good looks, didn’t she? and enjoyed his smoky, baritone voice and unapologetic northcountry accent, and she was pleased and flattered by his sudden flashes of intimacy. “What did you want to tell me, Noonan?” she repeated, softly this time, invitingly.

  He leaned forward, eyes twinkling, mischief on his mind, and looked right and left, as if not wishing to be overheard. “What do you say we cook that last lobster and split it between ourselves?” He gave her a broad smile and rubbed his hands together. “Don’t tell Gail. I’ll boil and chill the sucker and break out the meat and squeeze a little lime juice over it, and we’ll eat it later, after we close up, just the two of us. Maybe open a bottle of wine. Whaddaya say?” He came up to her and put his arm around her shoulder and steered her toward the door. “You go liberate the animal from its tank, and I’ll bring the kettle to a roiling boil, as they say.”

  “No.” She shrugged out from under his arm.

  “Huh? What d’you mean, ‘No’?”

  “Just that. No. I don’t want a quiet little tête-à-tête out here with you after we close. I don’t want to make it with you, Noonan! You’re married, and I resent the way you act like it doesn’t matter to you. Or worse, me! You act like your being married doesn’t matter to me!”

  Noonan was confused. “What the fuck? Who said anything about making it? Jesus!”

  She exhaled heavily. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right. I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, Noonan. Really. I don’t know why I said all that. I’m just… I’m scared, I guess.”

  “You? Scared? Hah!” She was young and beautiful and healthy, she was an athlete, a woman who could pick and choose among men much younger, more available, better-looking, and richer than he. What did she have to be scared of? Not him, that’s for sure. “Man, you are one screwed up broad, let me tell you.” He shook his head slowly in frustration and disgust. “Look, I don’t give a shit you don’t want to join me in a whaddayacallit, a tête-à-tête. Suit yourself. But I am gonna eat me some lobster anyhow. Alone!” he said, and he sailed through the door into the dining room.

  Stacy slowly crossed the kitchen to the back door, last used by the LaPierre brothers on their way to the parking lot and road beyond. It was a screened door, and moths and mosquitoes batted against it and swarmed around the yellow bulb on the wall outside. On this side of the restaurant, it was already dark. Out back, where the building faced west and the mountains, the sky was pale orange, with long, silver-gray clouds tinged with purple floating up high and blood red strips of cloud near the horizon. She decided she’d better return to the bar. There would be a few diners, she knew, who would want to take an after-dinner drink onto the deck and watch the sunset.

  Before she could get out the door, Noonan, his face dark with confused anger, strode back into the kitchen, carrying the last lobster in his dripping wet hand. The lobster feebly waved its claws in the air, and its thick, armored tail curled in on itself and snapped back in a weak, hopeless attempt to push Noonan away. “Here, you do the honors!” Noonan said to Stacy and held the lobster up to her face. With his free hand, he flipped the gas jet below the slow-boiling lobster pot to high. “Have you ever boiled a live lobster, Stacy? Oh, it’s a real turn-on.” He leered, but it was an angry leer. “You’re gonna love it, Stacy, especially the way it turns bright red as soon as you drop it into the boiling water. It won’t sink right away, of course
, because it’s still alive and will struggle to climb out of the pot, just like you would. But even while it’s trying to get out of the boiling water, it’ll be turning red, and then it’ll slow in its struggle, and you’ll see it give up, and when that happens, it’s dead and cooked and ready to be eaten. Yumm!”

  He pushed the lobster at her, and it flailed its claws in her face, as if it were her hand clamped onto its back, not Noonan’s. She didn’t flinch or back away. She held her ground and looked into what passed for the animal’s face, searching for an expression, some indicator of feeling or thought that would guide her own feelings and thoughts. But there was none, and when she realized there could be none, this pleased her, and she smiled.

  “It’s getting to you, right?” Noonan said. “I can tell, it’s a turn-on for you, right?” He smiled back, almost forgiving her for having judged him so unfairly, and held the lobster over the pot of boiling water. Steam billowed around the creature’s twisting body, and Stacy stared, transfixed, when from the dining room she heard the rising voices of the diners, their loud exclamations and calls to one another to come and see, hurry up, come and see the bear!

  Stacy and Noonan looked at each other, she in puzzlement, he with irritated resignation. “Shit,” he said. “This has got to be the worst god-damn night of my life!” He dropped the lobster into the empty sink and disappeared into the pantry, returning to the kitchen a few seconds later with a rifle cradled in his arm. “Sonofabitch, this’s the last time that bastard gets into my trash!” he declared and made for the dining room, with Stacy following close behind.

  She had never seen a black bear close-up, although it was not uncommon to come upon one in the neighborhood, especially in midsummer, when the mountain streams ran dry and sent the normally shy creatures to the lower slopes and valleys, where the humans lived. Once, when driving back to college after summer vacation, she thought she spotted a large bear crossing the road a hundred yards ahead of her, and at first had assumed it couldn’t be a bear, it must be a huge dog, a Newfoundland, maybe, moving slowly, until it heard her car coming and broke into a swift, forward-tilted lope and disappeared into the brush as she passed. She wasn’t sure she hadn’t imagined it. She stopped the car and backed up to where the animal had entered the brush, but there was no sign of its ever having been there, no broken weeds or freshly fallen leaves, even.

  This time, however, she intended to see the bear up close, if possible, and to know for sure that she did not imagine it. When she got to the dining room, everyone, Gail and the regulars from the bar included, was standing at the windows, gazing down at the yard in back where the land sloped away from the building, pointing and murmuring small noises of appreciation, except for the children, who were stilled by the sight, not so much frightened by the bear as in awe of it. The adults seemed to be mainly pleased by their good luck, for now they would have something novel to report to their friends and family when they returned home. This would become the night they saw the bear at Noonan’s.

  Then Stacy saw Noonan and several other diners, all of them men, out on the deck. They, too, stared down into the yard below the dining room and in the direction of the basement door, where Noonan stashed his garbage and trash barrels in a locked, wooden, latticework cage. The men were somber and intent, taut and almost trembling, like hunting dogs on point.

  Stacy edged up to the window. Behind the distant mountains, the sun was gloriously setting. Its last golden rays splashed across the neatly mowed yard behind the restaurant and shone like a soft spotlight upon the thick, black-pelted body of the bear. It was a large, adult male, over six feet tall on his hind legs, methodically, calmly, ripping away the sides and top of the lattice cage, sending torn boards into the air like kindling sticks, working efficiently, but at the bear’s own placid pace, as if he were utterly alone and there were no audience of men, women, and children staring down at him from the dining-room windows overhead, no small gang of men out on the deck watching him like a hunting party gathered on a cliff above a watering hole, and as if Noonan were not lifting his rifle to his shoulder, aiming it, and firing.

  He shot once, and he missed the bear altogether. He fired a second time.

  The bear was struck high in the back, and a tuft of black hair flew away from his chest where the bullet emerged, and the crowd in the dining room groaned and cried out, “He’s shooting it! Oh, God, he’s shooting it!” A woman screeched, “Tell him to stop!” and children began to bawl. A man yelled, “For God’s sake, is he nuts?” Gail looked beseechingly at Stacy, who simply shook her head slowly from side to side, for she could do nothing to stop him now. No one could. People shouted and cried, a few sobbed, and children wailed, and Noonan fired a third time. He hit the bear in the shoulder, and the animal spun around, still standing, searching for the source of this terrible pain, not understanding that he should look up, that the man with the rifle, barely fifty yards away, was positioned out of sight above him and, because of his extreme anger, because of his refusal to be impersonal in this grisly business, was unable to kill him, and so he wounded the poor creature again and again, in the chest, in a paw, and shot him through the muzzle, until finally the bear dropped to all fours and, unsure in which direction to flee, tumbled first away from the restaurant downhill toward the woods, when, hit in the back, he turned and came lumbering, bleeding and in pain, straight toward the deck, where Noonan fired one last shot, hitting the bear this time in the center of his forehead, and the bear rolled forward, as if he had tripped, and died.

  Rifle in hand, Noonan stomped in silence past the departing crowd, his gaze fixed rigidly on something inside, a target in his mind of a silhouetted bear. No one spoke to him or caught his eye as he passed; no one looked at his back, even, when he strode into the kitchen and the door swung shut behind him. The men who had stood with him on the deck outside were ashamed now to have been there. Making as little of it as possible, they joined their wives and friends, all of whom were lined up at the cash register, paying Gail, leaving cash on the table, or paying Stacy at the bar, and quickly heading for the parking lot and their cars. There were a few stunned, silent exceptions, older kids too shocked to cry or too proud, but most of the children were weeping, and some wailed, while the parents tried vainly to comfort them, to assure them that bears don’t feel pain the same way humans do, and the man who shot the bear had to shoot it, because it was damaging his property, and not to worry, we will never come to this restaurant again, no matter what.

  When everyone had left, Gail walked slowly from the dining room to the bar, where she took off her apron, folded it carefully, and set it on a barstool. “That’s it for me,” she said to Stacy. With trembling hands, she knocked a cigarette loose from the pack and lighted it and inhaled deeply. “Tell him he can mail me my pay,” she said. “The fucker.” She started for the door and then abruptly stopped. Without turning around, she said, “Stacy? Why the hell are you staying?”

  “I’m not.”

  In a voice so low she seemed to be talking to herself, Gail said, “Yes, girl, you are.” Then she was gone.

  Stacy flipped off the lights in the bar and dining room one by one, unplugged the roadside sign, and locked the front entrance. When she pushed open the door to the kitchen, Noonan, standing at the far end of the long, stainless steel counter, looked up and scowled at her. He had cooked the last lobster and was eating it, eating it off the counter and with his hands: broken shells and the remains of its shattered carcass lay scattered in front him. He poked a forefinger into the thick, muscular tail and shoved a chunk of white meat out the other end, snatched it up, and popped it into his mouth.

  “Eight fucking shots it took me!” he said, chewing. “That’s what I get for stashing that goddamn pissant .22 here instead of laying in a real gun!” He waved contemptuously with the back of his hand at the rifle propped against the counter, and with his other hand pushed more lobster meat into his mouth. His face was red, and he was breathing rapidly and heavily. “I mis
sed the first shot, y’know, only because I was so pissed off I didn’t concentrate. But if I’d had a real gun, that second shot would’ve done the job fine. By God, tomorrow I’m bringing in my 30.06!” he declared.

  Stacy picked up the .22 rifle and looked it over. She slid it into shooting position against her right shoulder and aimed along the barrel through the screened door and the fluttering cluster of moths to the outside lamp.

  “Is it still loaded?” she asked.

  “There’s four rounds left, so don’t fuck with it.” He yanked the spindly legs off the underbelly of the lobster and sucked the meat from each and dropped the emptied tubes, one by one, onto the counter in front of him.

  Slowly, Stacy brought the rifle around and aimed it at Noonan’s skull. “Noonan,” she said, and he turned.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  She closed her eyes and pulled the trigger and heard the explosion, and when she opened her eyes, she saw in the middle of Noonan’s broad, white forehead a dark hole the size of a dime, which instantly expanded to a quarter, and his large body jerked once as if electrocuted and flipped backwards, his astonished face gone from her sight altogether now, and she saw instead, the back of his head and a hole in it the size of a silver dollar. His body, like a large, rubberized sack of water, fell to the floor, spinning away from her as it descended and ending flat on its back, with Noonan’s wide open eyes staring at the pot rack above the counter. Blood pumped from the hole in the rear of his skull onto the pale green linoleum and spread in a thickening, dark red puddle slowly toward her feet.

  She lay the rifle on the counter beside the broken remains of the lobster and crossed to the stove, where the pot of water was still boiling, and shut off the gas flame. Slowly, as if unsure of where she was, she looked around the room, then seemed to make a decision, and perched herself on a stool next to the walk-in refrigerator. She leaned her head back against the cool, stainless steel door and closed her eyes. Never in her life, never, had Stacy known the relief she felt at that moment. And not since the moment before she was struck by lightning had she known the freedom.