Archangel

by Paul Watkins

  “I know,” said Dodge, and rested his hand on her shoulder. “But you can start it up again. Promise me you will.”

  “I promise,” she said. “I was wrong about you.”

  “Wrong in what way?” he asked.

  “Ways you don’t even know about.” She stood in silence for a moment, watching as the last shreds of fire were put out. Then Dodge drove her home.

  She opened the chipped and blistered green paint of her screen door and asked him inside. She didn’t want to be alone just then.

  Dodge made them both cocoa from a packet of Carnation mix. They sat down on the carpet in the living room until the kettle whistled.

  “Will the insurance cover the damage?” he asked.

  “It should.” Madeleine looked so pale, as if her skin had turned to rice paper.

  “People will chip in.” Dodge hunted for optimism. “They’ll help you get started again.” He fetched the cocoa from the kitchen, handed it to her in a white tin mug.

  “I have something to tell you,” she said, staring at Dodge through the steam over the rim of the mug, never letting her glance slip from his face. “I thought I was supposed to be with someone else,” she said. “All this time, I—”

  “You don’t need to say it,” he said.

  “But I want to.”

  He leaned across the carpet and kissed her. Their teeth brushed together. Kissing for the first time. Her hand was on the back of his neck, still cold from outside. He heard the click of her fingernails as she undid the buttons of his shirt. Her warm hands swept across his chest. She pulled off her nightgown and he felt her breasts against him. He breathed in the warm dryness of her body. His short nails raked across her back and down the smooth curve of her thigh. Vertigo whirlpooled his mind. He kissed her, and her teeth were clamped together. Her face was so serious. He almost didn’t dare to say her name; then before he could say it, her shut-tight eyes popped open. They stared into his and then slowly closed again. He followed the line of her neck in the dark and felt with his lips the deep noise in her throat. Her hair fanned out like seaweed in the tide. The smell of his sweat sifted through her body like smoke. The cold night air pushed through the screen door, but he could not feel it and he sensed himself falling, as if off the precipice of sleep, and he thought if he fell any deeper, he would never wake up. And then he was not falling anymore. The cold reached him again, except for where her hands pressed hot against his back. As Dodge held her to him, he felt a ringing emptiness and clarity and the room came back into focus. For the first time in a long while, he thought only of her and not about the work that lay ahead.

  CHAPTER 14

  Coltrane had suspicions. They invaded his mind. He was thinking so hard that he barely saw the woods around him as he bumped along the logging road, driving a dirty yellow CAT backhoe. He reached a place that was out of sight of logging crews and slowed the engine to a stop. Then he engaged the backhoe and raised it up and down. The shovel operated, but not the way it should. Its movements were uneven and the controls felt watery in his hand. Coltrane wrapped his right hand around the black ball of the gearshift stick and put the engine in neutral. He climbed down and examined the joints of the hoe, but couldn’t find anything wrong.

  Then he climbed on again and put the engine in reverse. He backed up fast, and something was wrong here, too, in the high-pitched whine of the machine. The engine was not handling properly. It slipped. The gears were grinding.

  Coltrane stopped the backhoe once more and got out. He stood before the machine, kneading the rough pads of his fingers deep into the bristle of his chin. An idea spread like wings behind his eyes and he breathed out slowly, hoping it wasn’t true. He went to the oil-distributor cap and checked the oil level. The oil was fine, the amber color not yet turned coffee brown with dirt. He pulled the dipstick, wiped it on his sleeve and checked the oil again. This time the stick had picked up some flecks of white grit. Carefully, he put the rod back into the distributor and closed the cap. Then he took out a penknife and dug gently into one of the zerk points on the backhoe. He gouged out some of the joint-lubricating grease and rolled it in his fingers. He could feel the grit in there, too.

  There was no expression on Coltrane’s face. His eyes were unfocused. He wiped the grease onto his brown Carhart jacket and unclipped the walkie-talkie from his waist. He raised it to his mouth, then sighed and lowered it for a second. His lips moved without sound as he rehearsed what he was going to say. Then he began to speak. “Barnegat? Barnegat, can you hear me? This is Coltrane.” He let go of the red TALK button and static purred in his ear.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Are you with the road grader right now?” Coltrane could smell old smoke on the mouthpiece of the walkie-talkie.

  “Ya.”

  “Well, tell the driver to quit working on it until I get there. All right? Tell them to quit now.” Static punctuated his words.

  “We already did.”

  “You did? Why?”

  “Something wrong with it.”

  Coltrane’s arm dropped to his side and he stared for a while without seeing at the wall of trees before him.

  Barnegat’s metallic-fuzzy voice came back to him. “What’s going on?”

  “They got us good this time, Barnegat.”

  “But I can’t find anything wrong with the machine.”

  “Check the grease in the zerk points. Then check the oil a bunch of times. See what comes up.”

  “You’re kidding me. Somebody silted the oil?”

  “Worse than that. They used silicone grit. A real thorough job, by the look of it.”

  “Then I guess we’re out of business, Mr. Coltrane.”

  Coltrane shut off his walkie-talkie. He clipped it back onto his belt. It was hot now, so he took off his jacket and set it on the ground where the bulk of the machine formed shade on the road. Then he sat down in the shadows, with his back against the huge tire of the backhoe. The rubber was warm and Coltrane felt the heat soak through his shirt. He knew that if a couple of machines had been damaged, then probably all of them had. If the grit had been in the engines for more than a few days, they would have to be junked. Coltrane doubted it would be possible to get hold of equipment from another logging company, not since Mackenzie had put all the local ones out of business. It would take months for any insurance claims to come through, and Mackenzie could not afford to buy new machines, not at such short notice and with so much money sunk into the Algonquin deal. Maybe he could rent more stuff, Coltrane thought, but what company is going to rent its gear out to a mill whose operation is being sabotaged?

  For the first time in his adult life, Coltrane was sure he would be fired from his job. It was not the nightmare he had once imagined. In fact, he felt relieved. With the burning down of the Forest Sentinel, the last arguments of support for Mackenzie among the loggers had begun to come apart. It wouldn’t be long now before they called a general strike. Wind hissed through the tops of the trees. Coltrane folded his hands on his chest and closed his eyes, taking his last calm breaths before he faced Mackenzie again. It was only then he realized that, all through the forest, the sound of the chain saws had quit.

  It took three days for flatbed trucks to tow away the last of the Mackenzie Company’s machines. Mackenzie ordered the cutting to continue, saying the logs should lie where they fell.

  The sawmill was down to one cutting blade, and new blades were on order.

  First Mackenzie had told Coltrane he was fired. Then he called Coltrane back into the office and told him he was hired again. “It’s got to be somebody’s fault!”

  “It would be the fault of whoever had the authority to post guards on the machinery.” Coltrane spoke in a low and even tone.

  “And who’s that?”

  “You, sir.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, Coltrane.”

  “No, sir.”

  Mackenzie launched himself out of his chair and went to stand by the window. “People are starting
to say I’m whipped, aren’t they?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what the hell are they saying? I never heard so much whispering in all my life.”

  “They’re wondering if you had anything to do with the newspaper burning down.” That’s it, Coltrane thought to himself. I just went too far. I’m going down the pipe just like that other foreman did.

  “And where’s a piece of news like that come from?”

  “Well, it’s hard to say.”

  “Fucking wilderness people. Madeleine was just in there smoking marijuana and torched the fucking place. Of course they’re going to blame me! Everybody always does!”

  “But is it true, sir?” Coltrane waited for Mackenzie to turn around. He was tired of staring at the back of the old man’s head.

  “What?”

  “About the fire?”

  Mackenzie was staring at his hands, the way the veins zigzagged under his skin. “Let’s just get hypothetical here for a moment. What if it was true, Coltrane? I always treated you right. I let you do your job and you let me do mine. Now, I always think of my employees first. That newspaper was getting in the way of our industry. It’s jobs we’re talking about here. Jobs and opportunity. Jesus Christ, we’re living out the American Dream here, aren’t we? It doesn’t matter who burned that paper down. The only thing that matters now is that it’s gone. So get out there and start cutting those trees. I don’t care if they’re lying on the ground six months. I don’t care if we have to dig them out of the snow this winter. If we cut them, they’re ours. Now tell everyone to get back to work.” He walked over to Coltrane and gave him a slap on the shoulder. “We’ll still show them. By the first snowfall, there won’t be a single tree standing!”

  Coltrane turned around and walked out.

  “OK!” Mackenzie called after him, the way a coach calls out to a player going onto the field. Then he walked back to his window and looked down into the yard.

  A small crowd had gathered there. Cigarette smoke rose from the jumble of khaki jackets and frayed work shirts and baseball hats.

  Coltrane spoke to them, shaking his head. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged. Then, as a new thought occurred to him, he pulled his hands out and shook them to make his point. It looked as if he were shaking change from a piggy bank.

  As Coltrane spoke, the mill workers looked up at Mackenzie’s office.

  Mackenzie’s first instinct when he saw them look his way was to duck from their line of sight. But he stayed where he was, because he knew he couldn’t hide.

  Coltrane was shrugging again.

  “Tell them it’s about jobs,” Mackenzie muttered. “Make them see.”

  Coltrane held up one finger and then another, listing off points.

  “Tell them it’s legal,” Mackenzie whispered.

  The men began walking toward the gates. They talked among themselves.

  Mackenzie felt bile spill into the back of his throat. He stumped downstairs and out into the yard. From behind the tinted windows of his office, he had not realized how bright it was outside. Now he was almost blinded in the glare.

  The men were walking to their trucks. Doors slammed and engines coughed into motion.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Mackenzie shouted at the workers. “You taking a fucking holiday?” Then he spun around to face Coltrane, walking stick raised as if to jab him with the nickel tip. “You better do something about this!”

  The tough hide of Coltrane’s face was red from all the talking he had done. “It isn’t right, what you’re doing in the Algonquin. Not with it being declared a preserve. And people feel you are responsible for the newspaper burning down. They just need some answers from you, sir.”

  “And who are you? The fucking pope all of a sudden? Eh? Are you afraid to go back in the woods?” He gave Coltrane a shove and then immediately wished he had not. It was one of those short shoves that start fights, and Mackenzie knew Coltrane would not fight him.

  Coltrane stepped backward from the shove. Then he steadied himself. Now it’s you who went too far, he thought.

  But Mackenzie hadn’t finished. “You’ve got enough wilderness in this state already. It would take you weeks even to hike through it all. How much more do you want? And what the hell do you care about a beatnik who is trying to take away your jobs with her fucking newspaper?”

  The lumbermen stood watching in silence, cigarettes burning unsmoked in their hands.

  Mackenzie’s voice rose to a howl. “One of these days, you’ll realize that everything I did, I did for you! If this mill closes, I’m still set for life. I don’t have what I don’t need. But what about you? If you go out those gates, I don’t want you coming back. You think hard about this. Because one way or another, those trees are coming down. I’ll bring the Canadians down. I’ll bring the Japanese in here if I have to. One way or another, gentlemen!”

  They drove away in the dust.

  Mackenzie turned to Coltrane, his face twisted with anger. “So what did you tell them?” Before Coltrane could reply, Mackenzie shouted, “I don’t even want to know. Just get the fuck out of here.”

  “You’re falling apart,” Coltrane said quietly.

  A memory returned to Mackenzie. It was a picture of his father. The thought came rolling like a bowling ball down the corridors of his mind until it seemed to crash into his skull behind the eyes. His father had told him never to explode in anger. To take it home and sleep on it and see in the morning if it was worth the trouble that explosions always cause. Mackenzie could not recall the exact words his father had used, but he remembered the lesson, and with it came a strange light that he knew belonged in his father’s study, the sun glancing off the coffee-dark mission-oak furniture. Before the memory retreated again, Mackenzie saw his father at his desk, turned sideways and staring at the bookshelf, his eagle-beak nose profiled against the blurry diamond panes of his study window. His hands were raised, fingertips touching. That was the picture. Those were the words that came with it. Then it disappeared, and Mackenzie found himself gone from staring deep inside himself to staring outward, into the hard light of the lumberyard.

  Coltrane was walking away, jacket slung over his shoulder. He clicked open his lighter and lit a Lucky Strike.

  “Fuck all of you,” Mackenzie said, without bothering to raise his voice. He walked across to his car and drove out into the wilderness down the empty logging roads. He drove until the road ended in a berm of dirt and stacked white birch trees, rotting in the sun. He climbed out and moved along the side of the car, hands sweeping through the film of dust, dragging the heel of his artificial leg. He fetched a chain saw from the trunk of the Range Rover and carried it into the woods. He jammed the blade against the ground, using the saw as a walking stick, until he was under the trees and the air was still and cooler than it was near the road. He pulled the cord and started up the chain saw, diving the blade into the nearest pine. Mackenzie had not cut down a tree since the night he lost his leg. Now he dared it to fall on him, the way the last had done. The tree began to creak and then it fell, swishing through the branches of other pines until it thumped against the earth. He didn’t wait, but attacked another tree. His street shoes barely gripped the soil. The saw was heavy in his hands, drawing sweat from his palms and splashing down from his armpits across his ribs and soaking into the band of his underwear. The blond spray of sawdust blinded him, and he had to keep stopping to gouge it out of his eyes. The smell of spilled sap was all around him. He wore no ear protectors, and the roaring of the saw made him deaf. He watched another tree fall, the last pale splinters giving way and throwing pine needles into the air like green confetti. Tree after tree he dared to fall on him. He dared the chain saw to break and snake back and rip up his head as it had done to Pfeiffer. He challenged the one talisman that had shielded him through his life: that he had once gathered from somewhere inside him the strength to mutilate himself so horribly and crawl to safety, past all barriers of
pain and shock, only to stay alive. Never far from his thoughts was the idea that he could do it all again if he had to, and if he’d been able to saw off his own leg, he did not need to fear anything. Not even death. Mackenzie had never spoken this aloud. Never dared to put it into words, because it was the last ditch of his power and to speak it would have been to diminish the great hold it had on him. Sweat was still running off him. It trickled out of his cuffs. He was powdered with sawdust. What frightened him now was that his talisman might fail him, that the great reservoir of strength in which he had believed had long ago dried up and left him weak. After the seventh tree, he swung around, not even bothering to watch the pine fall, and his smooth-soled shoes slid out from under him. He dropped and the saw bounced off the ground, its jagged chain still spinning, and when Mackenzie hit the ground he closed his eyes, because the last thing he saw was the blade and his hands stubbornly gripping the handle. He lay there for a second, the air thick with sawdust all around him, and he realized he was safe. The saw had bounced away from him and lay at the end of his arm, still clasped in his bloodless, knotted fingers.

  Mackenzie rolled onto his back in time to see an eagle fly over, cast its shadow on the polished green hood of his car and then swerve suddenly, wide wings flexed, and swoop past where he lay. As it passed directly above him, Mackenzie swore it was no bird, but some man cloaked in wings—the unforgiving angel who had watched him all these years and judged him as harshly as he judged himself. He craned his neck to see where the bird had gone, but could see only the highway of blue sky in the path he had cut through the forest.

  It was then that Jonah Mackenzie had a vision of his own death. Not one concrete image. Instead, it had a quality of light. White. Yellow. It dropped from the clear sky like crystalline splinters of sun, broken into the hard lasers of each primary color. It was a feeling of certainty. The experience was strangely familiar, as if this news had been brought to him long before but somehow he’d forgotten it. From the silence that followed, stilling even the breeze through the tops of the pines and the razzing hum of cicadas, it seemed to Mackenzie as if every living thing in the forest had felt the shock of this vision and was hushed by it. Even the forest itself, for which Mackenzie had shown no pity in his life, seemed to be pitying him. Death walked toward him at a steady pace, and as it drew closer Mackenzie felt the swirling emptiness that surrounded it.