How Like an Angel

by Margaret Millar

  His own feelings of guilt were strong, too, but they were assuaged by the hardships and austerity of the life he led. Oc­casionally, in rare moments of insight, he wondered whether he had chosen such a life in order to make his guilt more bear­able. On being awakened each morning by the scurrying rats in the hay or the sharp bite of a flea, the sting of cold or the pangs of hunger, he did not resent any of these things, he used them as excuses to an unseen, unheard accuser: See me, how miserable I am, see the circumstances I live under, the pain, the hunger, the loneliness, the privation. I have nothing, I am nothing. Isn’t this penance enough?

  His long wait for the future had become a way of life to such an extent that he was afraid to think beyond it and re­luctant to repeat the past. Though desperate for companion­ship, he didn’t want the members of the colony to come back. The only ones he had really liked would not be coming back anyway: Mother Pureza, whose wild flights of fancy amused him, and Sister Blessing, who had looked after him when he was ill. He did not miss Sister Contrition’s querulous whining, Brother Steady Heart’s boasts of his success with the ladies, Brother Crown’s sour self-righteousness, or the Master’s harangues with the devil.

  As time passed, his memory began to fail about certain events. He had only a dim recollection of the colony’s last day at the Tower. His mind had been numbed by the sudden shock of seeing Haywood again and realizing that all the care­ful planning and the long wait had been for nothing. He had not intended to kill Haywood, only to reason with him.

  But Haywood wasn’t reasonable. “I’m going to stay here, I’m going to hound your footsteps every minute of every day until I discover where you’ve hidden the money.”

  He was too dazed even to attempt a denial. “How—how did you find me? Alberta told you?”

  “I followed Quinn’s car from Chicote. No, Alberta didn’t tell me, lover-boy. I give her credit for one thing, anyway, obstinacy. Once a month for over five years I’ve coaxed and bullied and nagged her to tell me the truth so I could help her. I suspected something right from the first, ever since she told me she’d given some of my clothes to a transient. She gave them to you, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “You couldn’t take the chance of buying a new set of clothes that might later be reported as missing from your ward­robe. Oh, you two were very careful, all right. Everything was thought out in advance, everything went into the great scheme except plain ordinary common sense. Her planning must have begun months in advance. She started going out alone every night, to the movies, lectures, concerts, so that when she went out in her car that particular night no one would think anything of it. She started to buy the Racing Form, always from the same newsstand, laying the ground­work for the gambling story in case she was ever caught em­bezzling and questioned about where the money went. All that planning, and for what? The poor woman sits in a prison cell, still dreaming great dreams. Only they’re not going to come true.”

  “Yes they are. I love her, I’ll wait for her forever.”

  “You may have to.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” Haywood said, “that when her parole hearing comes up in a few weeks, some people aren’t going to believe her story of gambling away the money any more than I be­lieve it. And if they don’t believe it, if they consider her uncooperative, she’ll have to serve her full term. This is where I enter the picture. I want that money. Now.”

  “But—”

  “All of it. When I have it, Alberta will know the game’s up and she’ll be forced to tell the parole board the truth and make restitution to the bank. Then she’ll be a free woman, free of prison and free of you, too, I hope to God.”

  “You don’t understand. Alberta and I—”

  “Don’t start prattling about love and romance. Big romance. Big deal. Hell, I don’t even think you’re a man. Maybe that’s the reason behind the whole thing: Alberta isn’t quite a woman and you’re not quite a man, so you decided to play the star-crossed lovers’ game. The game had a big advantage for both of you. It kept you apart for the present while allowing you to believe in a future of togetherness.”

  He couldn’t remember pushing Haywood over the railing, but he remembered the sight and sound of him as he fell, a great gray flapping bird uttering its final cry. He didn’t wait to see Haywood land. He hurried back to his room at the third level of the Tower where Brother Steady Heart had sent him to rest after hoeing in the vegetable garden. He waited until Mother Pureza ran out and the Master went after her. Then, walking like a robot that had been given orders, he went directly to the barn to get the rat poison.

  He had only one vivid recollection of Sister Blessing’s death, her scream as the first pain struck her. Sometimes a bird made a noise like it and the bearded man would turn numb and fall to the ground, as though he believed Sister Blessing had re­turned to life as a bird to haunt him. These were the worst times, when he doubted his own sanity and imagined that the creatures of the forest were human beings. The mockingbird, arrogant and loud-mouthed, was Brother Crown. The tiny green-backed finch, clowning among the tall weeds, was Mother Pureza. The crow, strong and hungry, was Brother Light. The band-tailed pigeon, haughty in a treetop, was the Master. The mourning dove, sounding the sorrows of the world, was Sister Contrition, and the scrub jay was Haywood, criticizing him, taunting him.

  “Creep!” it squawked.

  “Shut up.”

  “Cheap creep.”

  “I am a man.”

  “Cheap creep.”

  “I am a man! I am a man! I am a man!”

  But the jay always had the last word, creep.

  One morning he was awakened in the hayloft by the rustling of wood rats on the roof. Even before he opened his eyes he was aware that during the night a change had taken place: the colony had returned.

  He lay still and listened. He heard no voices, no bustle of activity or familiar coughing of the truck engine, but there was another sound he used to know well, a quick, spasmodic drumming. It was Karma playing with the typewriter in the storage shed.

  Forgetting for once his ritual of self-effacement, he climbed down the crude ladder and ran between the trees toward the storage shed. He was halfway there when the noise stopped and an acorn woodpecker flapped out of a sugar pine with a flash of black and white.

  He shook his fist at it and cursed it, but his rage was for himself and the trick his mind had played on him. He realized the typewriter wasn’t in the shed, the sheriff’s men had taken it away along with a lot of other stuff. Well, it wouldn’t do them any good, they couldn’t prove it belonged to him, they still didn’t know he was the one they were looking for, they still—

  “Karma.”

  He spoke the name aloud and there was more of a curse in it than what he had screamed at the woodpecker because this time the anger was aggravated by fear.

  He went numb as he remembered something he had for­gotten about the last day at the Tower, Karma following him out to the shed.

  “Are you taking the typewriter with you, Brother?”

  “No.”

  “May I have it?”

  “Stop bothering me.”

  “Please, may I have it?”

  “No. Now leave me alone. I’m in a hurry.”

  “When I go to my aunt’s house, I can get it all fixed up good as new. Please let me have it, Brother.”

  “All right, if you’ll shut up about it.”

  “Thank you very much,” she said solemnly. “I’ll never for­get this, never in my whole life.”

  I’ll never forget this. They were simple words of gratitude, at the time. Now, recurring to his mind, they were enlarged and distorted. I’ll never forget this had become I’ll tell every­one the typewriter belonged to you.

  “Karma!”

  The name ra
ng through the trees, and through the trees he followed it.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The long-distance call came just before noon on Saturday. Quinn was puttering around his apartment waiting for Martha to arrive from Chicote. He had arranged to spend the day on the beach with her and the two children, swimming and sunning. But a high thin fog obscured the sun as efficiently as a layer of steel, and from his window Quinn looked out on a deserted beach and a grim gray sea. He was trying to decide on an alternate plan when the phone rang.

  Half expecting that Martha had changed her mind about coming, he picked up the phone. “Hello.”

  “I have a person-to-person call for Mr. Joe Quinn.”

  “Quinn speaking.”

  “Here’s your party. Go ahead, please.”

  Then Karma’s voice, tremulous and quick. “I said I wasn’t ever going to phone you, Mr. Quinn. I even tore up your card, but I remembered the number on it and—well, I’m scared. And I can’t tell my aunt because she’s not here, and even if she were I couldn’t tell her because I want the message from my mother and my aunt won’t let me have anything to do with her anymore.”

  “Take it easy, Karma. Now what’s this about a message from your mother?”

  “Brother Tongue called me a few minutes ago and said he had a very important message for me from my mother and that he wanted to deliver it in person.”

  “Where?”

  “Here at the house.”

  “How did he find out where you were?”

  “Oh, he knows about my aunt. I often mentioned her. Any­way, I told him he couldn’t come here because my aunt was home, which was a lie, she’s working on her garden-club dis­play for the flower show. Chrysanthemums and pampas grass with a hidden electric fan to keep the grass blowing. It’s going to be very pretty.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Quinn said. “Why didn’t Brother Tongue just give you the message over the telephone?”

  “He said he promised my mother he’d see me personally. To report on how I am, etcetera, I guess, though he didn’t say that.”

  “Was his call a local one?”

  “Yes, he’s in town. He’s coming to the house this afternoon at four o’clock, I told him my aunt would be away by that time. I thought I’d better phone you about it because you said if anything at all happened involving any member of the colony I was to let you know.”

  “I’m glad you did. Listen carefully now, Karma. Does it seem likely to you that your mother would choose Brother Tongue to deliver an important message to you?”

  “No.” After a moment she added, with a child’s candor, “I always thought they hated each other. Naturally we weren’t supposed to hate, but some of us did anyway.”

  “All right, let’s assume there is no message, that Brother Tongue has an entirely different reason for wanting to see you. Can you guess what it might be?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps it’s something quite trivial to you but not to him.”

  “I can’t think of anything,” she said slowly. “Unless he wants his silly old typewriter back. Well, he can have it. My aunt bought me a brand new portable for my birthday last month. It’s a gray and pink—”

  “Wait a minute. Brother Tongue gave you an old type­writer?”

  “Not exactly gave it to me. I talked him out of it.”

  “It belonged to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he kept it in the storage shed?”

  “Yes. I used to go out there and fool around with it until the ink dried up and the ribbon broke and I didn’t have any more paper anyway. I was a mere child then.”

  “Why are you so sure it belonged to Brother Tongue?”

  “Because it was how I first met him. We were living in the San Gabriel Mountains and I was exploring around when I heard a funny noise like a drum. Brother Tongue was on the back porch of his shack, typing, only he wasn’t Brother Tongue then. It’s funny, if it hadn’t been for me hearing his typewriter he would never have become Brother Tongue.”

  Quinn heard the front door of his apartment open and Martha’s quick light step as she crossed the room, he spoke hurriedly into the phone: “Listen, Karma. Stay right where you are. Lock the doors and don’t open any of them until I get there. I’m driving right down.”

  “Why?”

  “I have some questions to ask Brother Tongue.”

  “Do you think that maybe my mother really gave him a message for me?”

  “No, I think he wants his typewriter back.”

  “Why should he? It’s so old and broken-down, he couldn’t use it for anything.”

  “No, but the police could. That typewriter was in the back seat of O’Gorman’s car the night he was murdered. I’m telling you this because I want you to realize he’s a dangerous man.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “You don’t have to be scared, Karma. When he comes at four o’clock I’ll be in the house with you.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “I believe you,” she said gravely. “You kept your other promise about the acne lotion.”

  It seemed to Quinn, as he hung up, a very long time ago, in a different world.

  He went into the front room. Martha was standing at the window, looking out at the sea the way she always did when she came to the apartment, as though the sea was a miracle to her after the parched earth of Chicote.

  She said, without turning, “So it’s not ended yet.”

  “No.”

  “Will it go on forever, Joe?”

  “Don’t talk like that.” He put his arms around her and pressed his mouth against her neck. “Where are the kids?”

  “Staying with the neighbors.”

  “They didn’t want to see me?”

  “Yes, they did. It was a real sacrifice for them to miss a day with you on the beach.”

  “And just what was the sacrifice for?”

  “Us,” she said with a faint smile. “Richard got the idea I would like to be alone with you for a change.”

  “And would you?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s a very perceptive boy, our Richard.”

  She turned and gazed earnestly up into his eyes. “Do you really feel that way, that he’s our Richard?”

  “Yes. Our Richard, our Sally.”

  “You make it sound as though we’ll all live happily ever after—”

  “We will.”

  “—without any problems.”

  “With lots of problems,” he said. “But with lots of solu­tions, too, if we love and respect each other. And I think we do, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Doubt was evident in her voice, it always was, but each time they met, the doubt was becoming weaker, and he believed that eventually it would disappear entirely.

  “There are times,” he added, “when you’ll think of O’Gor­man and I won’t measure up.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yes. And other times when the children will resent any discipline or advice from me because I’m not their real father. There will be disagreements, money problems—”

  “Don’t go on.” She pressed her finger tips against his mouth. “I’ve thought of all those things, Joe.”

  “All right then, we both have. We won’t be walking into marriage with our eyes closed. Why do you hesitate?”

  “I don’t want to make another mistake.”

  “Are you telling me O’Gorman was a mistake?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because it’s true or because you think I want to hear it?”

  “It’s true,” she said, and her shoulders beneath his hand went suddenly tense. “Hindsight’s not as good as foresight but it serves a purpose. The marria
ge was my idea, really, not Patrick’s. My nesting instinct was so strong that it smothered my rationality. I married Patrick in order to raise a family, he married me because—well, I suppose there were lots of reasons but the main one was that he didn’t have the strength to oppose or displease me. Now that I know he’s dead, I can be more objective, not only about him but about myself. The basic fault of our marriage was too much interdependence on each other. He was dependent on me and I was dependent on his dependence. No wonder he loved birds, he must often have felt like a caged bird himself. . . . What’s the matter, Joe?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But there is, I can feel it. Please tell me.”

  “I can’t. Not right now, anyway.”

  “All right,” she said lightly. “Some other time.”

  He wished some other time would be a long way off, but he knew it wouldn’t. It was waiting around the corner and he could already see its shadow.

  He said, “I just made a pot of coffee. Would you like some?”

  “No thanks. If we’re to be in L.A. by four o’clock, we’d better start now in case we run into a traffic tie-up.”

  “We?”

  “Well, I didn’t drive all the way down here just to see you for ten minutes.”

  “Listen, Martha.”

  “I’ll be listening but I won’t hear, not if you’re going to try to stand me up.”

  “It’s not a question of standing you up. Karma’s phone call took me by complete surprise. I don’t know what’s behind it. Perhaps nothing, perhaps Brother Tongue actually has a message for her from her mother. But in case things aren’t going to be that simple, I’d prefer not to have you around.”