The Angels' Share

by James Markert

  Dr. Givens stepped away from the tree. “Twenty years, Maryanne.”

  “Yes, around the time my Asher turned fourteen. Or was it ten? He was alive, I know that much. The poor boy was in and out of orphanages until he enlisted. Beaten at one. Kept in a closet in another. For a month with only bread and water, mind you. He healed a young girl’s leg and they accused him of being perverted, so they put him in a closet. And, Mr. Boy, have you ever known me to be this chatty and understandable?”

  “This is very positive, Maryanne, which is why you should be taking—”

  “Can we have our privacy back, please?”

  Dr. Givens stopped. “Why, yes, of course, Maryanne.” He retreated to the tree.

  “Thank you.” She looked at William. “Where was I? Oh yes. You believe and so do I, and I no longer have schizophrenia. Asher visited me two days ago, you know. Or maybe it was three. But he put his hands on my head and told it to be at peace. He commanded it. I was sure he was a delusion, as Mr. Boy over there would have me believe, but I felt the weight of the Holy Spirit on my hair, so it had to be true. And I would have touched him back had I not been bound by these dang oven mitts. But they didn’t rake the leaves, and so act one was a disaster,” she whispered. “And then the brown men with scales tried to rip that man’s nipples off with a soup spoon.”

  “You see?” said Dr. Givens.

  William ignored him. “You believe your son came to you after his death?”

  She leaned forward, pounded her bound hands on the table. “He visits me every night. And what is it you want from me, Junior? Why can’t he heal himself? Did Jesus Christ heal Himself on the cross? No, He most certainly did not. Although He could have had He wanted to.”

  William asked, “Miss Keating, do you know why your son wore shoes around his neck?”

  “To keep warm.” She banged the table again, unraveling before their eyes.

  “Miss Keating.” William hated seeing the illness take over. “Your son had my brother’s—”

  “Keep your hands off of me, you monster,” she hissed at William. “I’ll run this knife from throat to belly. You will not treat me like cattle. Only he has ever touched me there, and no one shall ever touch me again. I’m with child and you force me into steerage with the wolves? With a bastard in my belly! How dare you!” Miss Keating was screaming now, startling the other patients. “Stay away from me. All of you. Stay away from my baby!”

  Three attendants corralled her, one for each arm and the third grabbed her feet. But they were delicate in how they lifted her. They’d done it many times before, William could tell. She was crying when they carried her away.

  “He wore them to make sure,” Maryanne Keating shouted back to them. Her voice faded into the wind that circled the lake.

  “I’m sorry you had to witness that,” said Dr. Givens. “Perhaps it was a mistake to allow visitors this close to her son’s passing.”

  Miss Keating’s last words, “He wore them to make sure,” replayed in William’s mind. “Please give Miss Keating our apologies,” William said.

  Polly touched the doctor’s arm. “Dr. Givens. Her words were not senseless. She feared for her life when she was pregnant. She said only he has touched her there, and no one shall ever touch her again. She referred to the baby as a bastard.”

  “What do you know of Asher’s father?” William asked.

  “Very little, I’m afraid.” Dr. Givens paused. “She came over on a steamer from Ireland, with no male companion. Full term and alone. From what I’ve gathered she was running away from something. Someone perhaps. But I’ve learned not to venture too deep into Miss Keating’s past. It’s not a pleasant place to go.”

  “Was Asher born on the steamer?” Polly asked.

  “No. But soon thereafter. It was a White Star Line ship from Liverpool. Twelve days at sea. Docked at East River pier. From there the steerage and third-class passengers were transported by ferry to Ellis Island for legal and medical inspection. That’s where she gave birth to Asher. On the floor of the Registry Room at Ellis Island, the Great Hall, they called it, right there in New York Harbor.”

  “Immigrants without a home,” William said, thinking aloud.

  “Yes,” Dr. Givens said, as the likeness to Christ’s birth dawned on William. “Yes indeed.”

  “Doctor, when was Asher born?”

  “In October, I believe, 1901. Why?”

  William’s knees buckled as sweat broke out across his brow. “Same age.”

  “Same age?”

  “Asher,” said William. “He and Jesus. They were both thirty-three when they died.”

  Barley was smoking on the porch steps when they returned from the asylum. William approached, having prepared how to tell him what they’d learned from Wildemere and Maryanne Keating.

  “He finally dug deep enough.” Barley stood and forced a newspaper into William’s chest.

  William unfolded the Post to the latest Bancroft article. HIDDEN IDENTITY REVEALED. BARLEY MCFEE Is DOOLY MCDOWELL.

  Barley showed a cool lack of concern. “Three Klansmen invaded one of our hidden warehouses back in ’26. Tried to set fire to our inventory. Me and the Micks were there. It got bloody; mostly theirs. Bottom line is the Klansmen died and they were friends of Bancroft. He’s been looking for dirt ever since.”

  “That’s why he started snooping around our church?”

  “And your mother.”

  “You knew about that?”

  Barley nodded. “I like to keep my enemies close.”

  “Wait . . . Are you saying Mother knew too?”

  “She knew what Bancroft was doing. She knew what not to say.”

  William skimmed the article. Bancroft revealed that Barley McFee had lived an alternate life during Prohibition, the life of the recently found dead man on Rose Island, Dooly McDowell. Two pictures were displayed next to the text: one of Dooly’s identification and the other a more recent photo of Barley punching the racist drunk man in the woods.

  William lowered the paper, handed it to Polly, who began reading. “You think this could bring him back? Borduchi?”

  Barley exhaled cigarette smoke. “He looked me clear in the eyes, William. He knows.”

  “And claims a fresh start.”

  Barley dropped the cigarette to the gravel and squashed it with his shoe. “Can’t trust a man with that many scars.” Barley turned toward the front steps. William and Polly followed him into the house, nodding to the guard on the porch just as Barley had done.

  William closed the door.

  Barley removed his hat, placed it on the table next to his recliner, and reached for his bottle of Old Forester.

  Polly looked into the dining room and let out a quick scream. William and Barley turned to find a curly-haired man dressed in full military uniform sitting at the dining room table with his arms folded and a pistol on his lap, waiting.

  “I came in through the back door. House was empty.”

  The man lit a cigarette and exhaled toward the ceiling. His brown hair was a corkscrew bushel, his eyes dark marbles.

  “You don’t find him; he finds you.” William asked, “Oliver Sanscrit?”

  The man nodded. “William McFee.”

  Barley said, “We’ve been looking for you.”

  “I know. I’ve been following you.”

  The four of them sat at the dining room table to talk.

  Oliver Sanscrit was a private detective, budding, he said after thinking on it. His true profession was lawyer. He “only dabbled in the clandestine.” (“How did I get past the guards? I told them who I was.”) He admitted that on many levels he didn’t exist, and that he’d done his due diligence and knew more about William and Barley than he probably should.

  “How close were you and Asher?” William asked.

  Sanscrit gulped his steaming coffee like water after a hot day in the fields. “Friends, I’d say, although we were not without our squabbles. About whether or not he should be in the a
sylum.”

  “And you decided not?”

  “I decided it wasn’t my decision.”

  “As his legal counsel?” Barley said.

  “I only give advice. He had enough believers down to the very core, gentlemen, who would have run me out of town on a pike had I continued to pursue it. But I was acting out of love. I feared for his life. There was a growing number who wished him dead.”

  William asked, “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Four weeks ago, perhaps five.” Sadness crept into Sanscrit’s face. “He was never afraid to die, but he did fear dying alone.”

  Polly said, “I was with him, Mr. Sanscrit. He didn’t die alone.”

  Sanscrit finished his cigarette, smashed the butt against the tabletop. “I’ve seen you.”

  Polly said, “And I’ve seen you.”

  William waited for the quick give-and-take to expand, but it didn’t. Sanscrit wasn’t one to embellish. “Why did he not have protection?”

  “He didn’t believe he needed it. He believed he was something, but he didn’t believe he was that. Others put that on him, the stuff about him being Jesus. The last argument I had with him was about just that—protection. He gave me a lecture on loving thine enemies. His apostles . . .” Sanscrit rubbed his temples, gave Polly another glance. “He didn’t call them that, but they did. They created a ring that made him a little less vulnerable.” Sanscrit finished his coffee, stared out the window, watching the potter’s field and Asher’s charred cross. “Is that it?”

  “It is,” William said. “The visitors are allowed five minutes.”

  Sanscrit slid the empty coffee cup between his hands. “I miss him.”

  Barley removed a bourbon flask from his vest. He offered it to Sanscrit, who declined. “Asher ended up with my dead son’s shoes. Why did he wear shoes around his neck?”

  Sanscrit smiled, scoffed at the same time. “We met as Marines, in training. Became friends overseas. When we returned home, we made a pact not to let what we’d lived through change who we were. Made a pact to get real jobs and become successful members of society. I thought Asher was on a good path at Ford. Cars were booming. But then . . . he started talking.”

  “About?”

  “About God. About Jesus, the Bible. He’d always been reverent, holier than whoever was around. It wasn’t in a condescending way. It’s just the way he was. Very soft-spoken for a man his size. He wore a cross around his neck, on the outside of his uniform. Kissed it before he went into battle. Kissed it when he closed his eyes at night. Some of the men called him Father Keating, jokingly, you know, but he was honored. He was comfortable with who he was.”

  “And who was he?” William asked.

  “Just a man. A man who did some things that defied logic or explanation, but just a man. He did his business in the trenches like the rest of us. He took to the streets after he left Ford. I tried for years to get him other jobs, but he refused. He lost the apartment he’d been living in. I offered for him to stay with me until he could get back on his feet. ‘Am I not already standing, Oliver?’ He kissed me on both cheeks and went back to the hovels and coke ovens, back alleys and street corners, sleeping under bridges. I offered him money. ‘Give it to those in need, Oliver.’ That’s what he’d tell me as he stood there in rags, clothes that smelled of filth. ‘Give it to those in need.’ I stood as his lawyer on three separate occasions when he was arrested for being stoned. There were other times he was arrested for stealing food in order to feed the poor. The food didn’t appear out of a hat, gentlemen.”

  “You’re not a believer?”

  “Do you truly believe Jesus caused the blind to see? Turned water into wine? You lived the horror of the war, Barley. Any hope of God that I had was left overseas.”

  “Yet you survived,” Barley said. “And my little girl went from crippled to walking.”

  “Believe in something wholeheartedly and your mind can make it so.”

  “My mind had nothing to do with it.” Barley pointed at Sanscrit. “He declined your every offer of help. Yet you remained steadfast. Why the obligation to him?”

  “Because I owed him my life. We all did. I would do anything for Asher Keating.”

  “Quit running around the barn then,” Barley said. “And start helping us.”

  Sanscrit slid his empty coffee mug toward Barley, who added a shot. “We were a fresh unit. Full strength at ten thousand men. In late May of 1918, Germany’s Spring Offensive penetrated the Western Front. They’d reached to within forty-five miles of Paris, dangerously close to the Reims. General Black Jack Pershing ordered a counteroffensive on June 6 to drive the Krauts out of the Belleau Wood, a former hunting preserve northwest of the Paris-to-Metz. By the time we arrived it was a jungle of cut-up fields and half-blown trees, and the French had begun to retreat. There was a suggestion that the Marines join them. One of our captains shouted retreat. Retreat? Hell, we just got there!

  “Black Jack Pershing was known for costly frontal assaults, but he won battles. Under Pershing’s order, General Harbord led the Second Division Marine Corps against four German divisions. We first captured the ridge overlooking Torcy and Belleau Wood. But our men missed a regiment of Kraut infantry, a dug-in network of artillery and machine-gun nests. Taking Hill 142, the First Battalion lost nine officers, and of three hundred–plus men, most got cut to pieces. We continued across an open wheat field stained with blood, every inch covered by Kraut machine-gun fire. Men dropped left and right. Those who made it through were immediately engaged in hand-to-hand combat.

  “We’d never lost so many men in one day. I was grazed on my left shoulder. Hit again in my right thigh. Asher made it through unscathed. He never shot to kill. He’d blow off arms if he needed to, but I never saw him go for the kill shot. On his run through that field, he didn’t fire a bullet. Didn’t even lift his gun. Just ran. Ran through the field like it was some Olympic race and he came out clean.”

  Sanscrit drank the bourbon fast. Barley refilled without being asked. “Once the shock of being shot wore off, I realized a hot shell casing had landed inside my right boot, and my ankle was on fire. I unlaced that boot as bullets zipped overhead. And when I got that one off, I unlaced the left as well. I was delirious by that point and couldn’t tell which foot was burning. Asher spotted me. I shook my head no, but he ran back through that wheat field! Lifted me on his shoulders. He saw my boots. He squatted down with my weight across his back, tied the boots together, and draped them over his neck. He ran with me toward the woods. Men were dropping all around us, cut up with machine-gun fire, but we didn’t get touched.

  “He placed me on the ground, surveyed the carnage, and then took off running. Came back a minute later with another soldier and placed him beside me. Kid had his arm blown off and was half out of his wits. His eyes weren’t focused, looked like he was seeing something magical that nobody else could see.

  “‘Walked on the shoulders of angels,’ the boy said to me. ‘Walked on the shoulders of angels . . .’ Then he closed his eyes and died. Asher crossed that field all day long, my boots bouncing against his chest. He carried at least a hundred wounded men to the tree line. Most lived to see the next day.”

  Sanscrit shook his head. “That night I thanked him. He just smiled. The most peaceful smile I’d ever seen. Jerry Jones, another man from our unit, was one Asher carried. Had his left knee blown. Came over on crutches. Asher still had my boots around his neck. Jerry handed over his, already tied at the laces.

  “After that, it became a thing. The wounded gave Asher their boots while they convalesced. For good luck, you see. They wanted to walk on the shoulders of angels. If Asher wore their boots, even for a night, it would protect them. That’s what they believed. And dang if most of those boys didn’t make it back home. We expelled the Germans from Belleau Wood after twenty days of fighting, and we captured the villages of Vaux and Bouresche. Belleau Wood and the Battle of Château-Thierry ended the last major German offe
nsive. The French renamed the wood Bois de la Brigade de Marine.”

  Barley said, “Wood of the Marine Brigade.”

  “In honor of how fiercely we fought over those three weeks.”

  “You earned the name Devil Dogs.”

  Sanscrit nodded. “After Belleau Wood and Château-Thierry, we ended up in the battle of Saint-Mihiel. Asher entered no-man’s-land like you’d go to the kitchen for a cup of water. Recovered bodies from the barbed wire and the scorched battlefield. Risked his life claiming the wounded. Did the same thing at Meuse-Argonne, Blanc Mont Ridge—every battle. If he got hit, it never clipped his skin; or if it did we never saw him bleed, although his uniform was seared with the blood of others. He received every medal of honor bestowed on a Marine.”

  William said, “We didn’t find any medals in his bindle.”

  “He sold them. Used the money to buy food for the poor. He still wore shoes around his neck. But by then he only wore those of the recently deceased. ‘As an escort into heaven,’ he said.” Sanscrit paused to let this sink in, like he knew exactly where it was hitting them. “So they could walk on the shoulders of angels for a few days. To get acquainted with things.”

  Polly said, “He wore Henry’s shoes for months.”

  “That boy’s death hit him hard. Rattled some things loose in his brain.”

  “Why did he keep some?” William asked. “There were two other pairs in his bindle when he died.”

  Sanscrit spoke like he didn’t believe what he was about to say. “He kept those that belonged to the ones who were extra touched by God. Whatever that meant.”

  “Then who did the other shoes in the bindle belong to?” Polly asked.

  Sanscrit shrugged. “Mind if I use your bathroom?”

  William knocked after twenty minutes but didn’t get an answer. He opened the door to find the window was open. He returned to the living room, and Barley pointed out the window toward Asher’s grave.

  Sanscrit’s boots dangled over the horizontal arm of the charred cross.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The heavy barrel shot out of the distillation house like a bullet. Barley walked along one side, his son’s shoes dangling around his neck, and William accompanied it on the other. They’d learned all they could about Henry’s shoes, and the finality of it made him melancholy. He’d been shadowing Barley most of the day. They hadn’t spoken about Sanscrit’s visit, but they had shared a brief look at Henry’s grave that said they were ready to move on.