Angel Landing

by Alice Hoffman

  “We were lovers,” I said to Lark.

  “Who?” Lark asked.

  “Michael Finn and I.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “I confessed on the stand.”

  “Confessed to what?” Lark asked. “Oh, no,” she said when I didn’t answer. “You didn’t?”

  I nodded.

  “You see what comes from keeping your emotions bottled up inside,” Lark said sadly. “You wind up doing something tremendously stupid.”

  “I go back on the stand in a few minutes.”

  “Do you love him?” Lark asked suddenly.

  “Well, yes.”

  “And he refuses to get involved,” Lark guessed.

  “That’s what he says.”

  “Well, if your testimony does one thing, it will certainly force the man to admit he’s involved with someone; he’ll have to when he reads about it in the newspapers.” Lark smiled.

  “Will he ever be able to forgive me?” I asked her.

  “Certainly he will.” Lark opened her door, and persuaded me to leave the station wagon and return to the court. “But if he doesn’t,” Lark said as we neared the courthouse stairs, “you’ll just have to forgive yourself.”

  I sent all the reporters, with their questions about my relationship with Finn, right over to Lark. By the time I had returned to the courthouse, Lark was surrounded; she dodged questions about me and set about convincing the crowd that EMOTE was far more interesting than a brief affair between a social worker and an accused bomber.

  My testimony was over in less than twenty minutes. At first, the people in the courtroom craned their necks and leaned forward in their hard wooden chairs. No one coughed, or fluttered or moved. But when the district attorney failed to ask for intimate sexual details, the crowd quickly grew bored. Only Reno LeKnight sat on the edge of his seat until I was dismissed. In the end, I confessed to little more than not being quite as objective as I had once been presented; and my relationship with Michael Finn caused a smile or two instead of a sensation. When asked if he wished to question me further on redirect, Reno LeKnight shook his head and turned to the crowd.

  “I think she’s already told us more than enough,” LeKnight said.

  As I walked away from the witness stand the courtroom had already turned its attention to Reno. The attorney tossed his head like a peacock as he prepared to call his next witness: the court psychiatrist who had met with Michael Finn for less than half an hour the day before. It seemed the only one who watched me get up and leave the witness stand was. Michael Finn. When I stopped at the doors, before leaving the room, Finn was straining to see me; one of his arms was thrown across the back of his chair, his forehead was wrinkled, his eyes were as careful and narrow as if he had been stalking a deer.

  For a minute I saw the confusion in his face, the pain beneath the borrowed blue suit and the white shirt which was buttoned up high. If we never saw each other again, he would still be easy to remember. He would be wearing the same borrowed clothing each time I imagined him, he wouldn’t change any more than a photograph, and I would carry him with me just as if he had been trapped on paper. For me he would remain as he was when he watched me cross the room just before I closed the courtroom door and hurried away as fast as I could.

  FIVE

  MY ANNOUNCEMENT AT the trial might have done some terrible damage, Reno LeKnight’s carefully planned tactics might have been thoroughly shattered, and I might have spent the rest of my nights tossing and turning, if it hadn’t been for a welder in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a man none of us in Fishers Cove had ever met.

  If I had known what was to happen, I might not have been so depressed when I returned to Minnie’s after the trial. I sat in the kitchen with my head in my hands, refusing to look my aunt in the eye.

  “So you screwed up,” Minnie told me when I finally confessed that I had broken down on the witness stand. “So what?” my aunt demanded. “When you let yourself get down in the dumps, you’re heading right down the road to high blood pressure.”

  “Finn will go to jail and I’ll be fired for unprofessional activities,” I said.

  “Are you breathing? Can you walk? Do you have food and a roof over your head? Consider yourself lucky.”

  “Minnie,” I said, “I’m not lucky.”

  “You can’t get yourself worked up over every mistake,” Minnie told me. “Relax. Stretch out. Chalk it up to experience.”

  “There’s something wrong with my life,” I said.

  “Please,” Minnie said as I got up from the table and grabbed my coat, “don’t be hasty. Let me mix a little brewer’s yeast into a glass of tomato juice for you.”

  But tomato juice wasn’t what I wanted, and I found myself walking toward the Modern Times. At the bar, I slipped off my coat and ordered a whiskey and water. I was prepared to spend the evening alone, until finally, fortified by whiskey, I would walk home. But before I had taken my first sip, the barstool next to me was pulled out, and I was joined by Carter Sugarland.

  “What are you doing here?” I cried. “You’re in jail.”

  “Correction.” Carter smiled, ordering a beer and stomping his Frye boots on the wooden floor to clean the heels of ice. “I was in jail. I am now out on bail. This was my eighteenth arrest. Disturbing the courtroom was worth a couple of hours behind bars.”

  “Really?” I said, thinking of Michael Finn standing on the wide green lawn of the Stockley School.

  “Minnie told me you were here. I came to cheer you up. I heard about what happened in court.” Carter took my hands in his. “The first time on a witness stand everybody makes mistakes.”

  “A catastrophe, not a mistake,” I corrected.

  “Have another drink. It’ll seem less like a catastrophe.”

  We sat at the far end of the bar, but all the same, we seemed to attract attention. The construction workers who eyed us might have only been looking at Carter Sugarland’s long hair, and his rimless glasses. They might not have known that I had been Michael Finn’s lover, they might not have recognized Carter from the photo on the front page of the Fishers Cove Herald that very same day. But all the same, I avoided their eyes, and looked upward, at the color TV which sat on a platform high above the cash register.

  “Self-pity,” warned Carter, “is a dangerous thing.”

  “Yup,” I said, “it certainly is.”

  “I’m glad you agree.” Carter took off his glasses and cleaned them with a cocktail napkin. “Now what do you plan to do about it?”

  “Do?” I said.

  “Well, you’ll have to find another job.”

  “I suppose so,” I agreed. Eventually I would be called into Claude Wilder’s office, eventually the board of directors would hear of my confession. “And there’s nothing to keep me in this town.”

  “Nothing?” Carter asked.

  “Are you serious?” I said. “Look what I did to him in court.”

  “If you did anything like that to me, I’d forgive you,” Carter said. “I’d forgive you in a minute.”

  “There were some jobs in the pamphlets you gave me,” I said. “In Florida.”

  “The one working with radiation victims?” Carter smiled. “I never thought you’d really be interested.”

  There would be palm trees and no winter; sleet would never touch the Florida streets I would walk. After my radiation group had filled out their grievance forms, we would all walk down to a local diner and order home fries and eggs. Instead of therapy, I would be in charge of finding a lawyer, dealing only with facts.

  “Florida,” Carter said thoughtfully.

  It was then that I happened to look up at the soundless TV hanging above us. In color, on a twenty-four-inch screen, was a power plant exploding. Iron and steel flew higher than birds, the sky was a deep orange color.

  “Look,” I said to Carter.

  “Angel Landing,” Carter said when he saw the screen.

  But there was no harbor bordering the power plant
, no sea gulls flew in the orange sky; the landscape that surrounded this explosion was not the one I had known for so many summers.

  “It’s someplace else,” I said. “It’s another explosion.”

  Carter sat up. “Jesus Christ,” he cried, and he grabbed the bartender’s shoulder. “Make that louder,” he demanded. “Turn the sound up.”

  All around the jukebox there were groans when the sound on the TV was turned up. But Carter and I didn’t listen to any complaints; we watched the screen above the bar, the falling iron and steel. We were transfixed, we saw nothing but the orange sky. Even after a TV reporter wearing a hard hat appeared on the scene, it took some time for me to realize that another explosion, just like the one at Angel Landing, had occurred in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

  “It’s another accident.” Carter shook his head. “Another fucking accident.”

  The reporter avoided the falling flames; he tried his best to interview the welder responsible for the accident. But the welder, who lay in the New Jersey dirt, had fallen from high atop a scaffolding when a faulty valve he had installed accidentally some days ago caused a weld to explode during today’s testing. Both his legs were broken, and he now waited for two ambulance attendants to lift him out of the mud and carry him away.

  Several construction workers had left their tables to join us at the bar and watch the TV.

  “Look at that,” one of them said, pointing to the welder on the TV screen. “Why the hell do they have to show him laying in the mud? Jesus Christ.”

  The reporter’s tone grew even more serious as he mentioned Michael Finn’s name and the TV screen above the bar flashed to the landscape I knew so well: the heavy purple clouds hanging above the gray harbor, the sea gulls flying in crazy circles.

  “This may make quite a difference to the ongoing trial of welder Michael Finn,” the reporter told us solemnly. “The question is: Just how common are accidents in nuclear power plants?”

  “Pretty fucking common,” Carter snapped. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell everyone.”

  “Just how important is the human-error factor in the construction of these plants?” the reporter went on.

  “Pretty fucking important,” Carter cried.

  “And what will this new explosion mean to the case of Michael Finn, already on trial for his error in installing a valve?”

  “What will it mean?” I asked, but the reporter had finished his story, and I turned to Carter for the answer.

  “It will mean that people may begin to realize how dangerous these plants are,” Carter said.

  “Everything is dangerous,” the construction worker to our right said. “Everything gives you cancer,” he went on. “The only way to avoid danger is to be dead.”

  “I disagree,” Carter said. “I for one am going to try and stop the danger.”

  “Good luck,” the man said, and he turned back to his friends.

  “What about Michael Finn?” I said to Carter. “What will it mean to him?”

  “I’m talking about a technology that could destroy the planet, and you’re concerned with Finn?”

  I hung my head.

  “I’m talking about millions of people,” Carter told me. “Billions.”

  He searched in his pockets for change, and then walked to the rear of the bar, to the telephone booths. He was calling the members of Soft Skies to mobilize a demonstration in Elizabeth, New Jersey. I drank the rest of my whiskey and glanced around the Modern Times. There were men in the room who probably knew Finn, who had worked with him; it was such a small town some of them might have even gone to Fishers Cove High School with him, or sat by his side in first grade at the old elementary school. Over by the jukebox, a young man sang along with an old song about loneliness. When he sang he closed his eyes; his face was pained, as if he meant every word. I pushed my glass away and followed Carter to the telephone booths. He was so filled with energy that the phone booth couldn’t contain him; he stretched the cord out into the hallway and gestured with his arms as he spoke with the New Jersey chapter of Soft Skies.

  “Can you lend me a dime?” I asked.

  Still talking, Carter reached into his pocket for change, and handed me a fistful of quarters and dimes. I sat down in the second booth, closed the doors, put in a dime, and dialed. I could still hear the song about loneliness, I could hear Carter talking about raising bail for the welder from New Jersey if he should be criminally charged. I waited, listening for the phone to be answered until, finally, on the fourth ring, Reno LeKnight picked it up.

  “I’d like to talk to Michael Finn,” I told the attorney.

  “Aren’t you too embarrassed to be calling here?” Reno LeKnight said when he recognized my voice. “Aren’t you even going to apologize for fucking up my entire defense?”

  “Will you let me talk to him?” I asked.

  “I certainly will not,” Reno LeKnight said.

  I had not really expected that he would, I was not even certain I wanted to talk to Finn, I only wanted to share the news that might free him. “Did you watch the evening news tonight?”

  “Listen, I’m not about to make polite conversation with you,” LeKnight told me. “I’m not going to make any conversation at all.”

  “There’s been another explosion.” I spoke slowly, flatly, for I was afraid that LeKnight might not believe a word I said.

  “What?”

  I could hear Reno LeKnight’s breath come through the receiver like soft expectant waves. “An explosion,” I repeated.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “Elizabeth, New Jersey.”

  “What’s the situation?” Papers rustled as Reno must have been reaching for a pad and a pen.

  “A lot like Finn’s,” I said. “A valve was installed wrong. Actually the welder fell and broke both his legs. Right now they’re calling it a mistake.”

  “My God,” Reno LeKnight said. “My God,” he crowed.

  “You don’t think he might want to talk to me?” I asked.

  “Do you know what this means?” LeKnight said. “I’ve got to get that other welder. I’ve got to subpoena him.”

  “He’s broken both his legs,” I reminded Reno LeKnight.

  “They may even drop the charges,” the attorney went on. “Of course, the dramatic impact of Finn’s case will be minimal if that happens. For all I know this case could set a precedent; it may end up in the lawbooks.”

  “Of course, if he doesn’t want to talk to me, I’ll understand,” I said. “I just wondered if he might.”

  “Finn won’t talk to you,” Reno LeKnight said. “Don’t take it personally; he’s not talking to anyone, he’s not even talking to me.”

  I sat in the phone booth after Reno LeKnight had hung up. I stayed there until Carter had finished making plans with the New Jersey group. When he hung up the phone in the other booth and banged on the doors, I went out into the hallway.

  “I’ve got to get to New Jersey tonight,” Carter told me. “The gas line in the MG is frozen, and I need a ride to the bus station.”

  “I’ll borrow Minnie’s car,” I said.

  “If you want,” Carter said slowly, “you could drive me to New Jersey. I’ll be back for the rest of the trial. We could stay at a Holiday Inn.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I think it’s too late for that.”

  We walked out of the Modern Times to go pick up Minnie’s Mustang. At the house, I went to tell Minnie and to open the garage door. Carter stood in a snowdrift at the side of the driveway. He stomped his feet and blew on his ungloved hands; he counted his change for the bus to New Jersey. I wondered if there was a minute, one second when Carter was not threatened by the dangers he saw all around him; even when he rode the Greyhound bus, when he checked into the Holiday Inn in New Jersey and prepared his speech for the Elizabeth demonstration, he would be shivering. When I pulled the Mustang out of the garage and Carter came to sit in the passenger seat, I threw my arms around him so suddenly that he
lifted his hands up to protect himself.

  “What’s this all about?” Carter asked when I had moved away from him and had begun to back the car out of the driveway.

  Until I had seen him shivering in the snow, counting his change, I had not realized how serious Carter was about the danger he spoke of, the danger he fought as if radiation and terror could be weighed on a scale as easily as a dragon. I had not realized I would miss him until I imagined him riding off on that bus to New Jersey and never returning.

  “I’ll miss you,” I said.

  “You will?” Carter said as we drove through Fishers Cove toward the bus station at the edge of town. When we got there, we sat in the car, with the engine turned on, waiting for the bus.

  “I hope everything turns out the way you want it to with Michael Finn,” Carter Sugarland said.

  “Oh, there’s no chance of that,” I said quickly. “But thank you.”

  We watched as the headlights of the bus appeared on the hill above Fishers Cove. Carter checked once more to make certain he had his notes, his pamphlets, his money, and a list of telephone numbers to dial in case of emergencies.

  “Good luck,” I said when he was ready to go. “I hope you close down the plant.”

  Carter got out, but he leaned in the open door. “Don’t do anything rash.”

  “I’m not jumping out of any windows.” I smiled.

  “No,” Carter said. “I suppose you won’t.”

  Still, he looked at me carefully as the engines of the Greyhound strained.

  “Honestly,” I said to Carter. “Don’t worry about me. I’m going home right now and mailing my résumé to Florida.”

  Carter nodded slowly, shut the car door, and walked to the bus. I watched as he got on; he moved to the rear, where he sat by a window that was coated with a film of frost. Carter couldn’t possibly see out that window, but I waited in the idling Mustang until the bus had shifted gears and rolled out of the parking lot, and then I drove slowly home. I would start a new life, I decided, deep in the sands of western Florida. I would drive home to Minnie’s, and later that night I would sit in the parlor and address a blue envelope to the agency in Florida. I passed through the familiar streets of Fishers Cove on the trip home, imagining that I was on my way to Finn. Any minute now I would see Finn’s white shirt sway in the wind and the long scar across his cheek. There he stood in the shelter of the already bleached piece of time that had unmistakably become the past.