Stone Angels

by Michael Hartigan

  Shoddy tugged again and turned the corner of the store—paper out of sight. He was still griping.

  “What kind of state is this? Don’t these people shit and piss at night or is it strictly a day job down here? What state are we in, anyway? Maybe if we wait a few minutes for the sun to come up the store will wake up and let us in to go the bathroom.”

  He was groggy and grumpy and thankfully had forgotten or forgiven our little altercation at the first Mo’s gas station. He released my sleeve.

  “I’m gonna go over there and piss behind that hut,” he said.

  I looked around and saw a small, tattered shed that would afford him some privacy. There weren’t many other options except past the shed the ground rose a bit into an embankment. Over the embankment looked to be a small clearing that skirted the edge of some looming, dense pine trees. With the sky slowly but steadily lightening with each passing moment, the cover of darkness may not have been enough to just go drop trough out in the open. The embankment would have to do.

  “OK, I’ll head over there on the other side of that embankment,” I said.

  Shoddy shrugged and disappeared behind the collapsing shed.

  I walked away from him and hesitated for a moment at the grassy hump before scrambling up. At the top I immediately slipped on the slick grass and landed hard on my ass.

  “Dammit.”

  I gathered my composure, what little of it was left, and willed myself upright. I was brushing blades of grass from my pants when I noticed some shadows moving around inside the gray Explorer windows far away across the parking lot. Someone was awake. The cabin light flicked on and I slouched a little behind the embankment, suddenly embarrassed by what I was there to do.

  Just as suddenly, a small red Honda pulled in from the main road and parked opposite the Explorer. The driver had a clear view of the shed, the embankment and the college kids about to urinate.

  “Dammit,” I repeated again, louder.

  I moved towards the trees. The patch of foliage was less thick than it looked from back in the parking lot. I easily maneuvered past the frontline of shrubbery and picked my way into the woods, turning back a couple times, the Explorer less visible with each look.

  But that wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted it totally hidden from sight. I was being driven less and less by my bladder—although I still really had to pee—and more by a sudden desire to completely ditch the car, everything and everyone that came with it. I wasn’t just walking away from prying eyes. With every step, with every crushed leave and snapped twig, I escaped further from all the prying minds unknowingly waiting to hear the truth, the confession I promised myself I would reveal.

  I turned one last time and then didn’t look back again. I walked for at least five more minutes, focusing intently on picking a path through the thinning trees.

  Where did I think I was going? I did not know. I knew I’d have to go back sometime. I couldn’t escape it forever. But no matter how hard one part of me tried to steer back, my feet—my cold feet—kept moving away. I wasn’t ready to go back.

  Directly ahead, between the last two thick, black tree trunks, a sliver of gunmetal gray shimmered in the increasing dawn.

  I brushed past a few branches, sap sticking to my fingers, and stumbled into a small copse of saplings running downward to a clearing.

  A thrush of birds broke away from the last sapling I brushed by. I followed their silhouettes upward.

  With the sky overhead cleared of the monstrous pines, I could see that the night was waning but it wasn’t going away without a fight. It was not as light as I had thought and a lavender darkness nestled comfortably over the clearing and the sliver of gunmetal that lay before me, shrouded in mist.

  I was entranced by my surroundings, staring blankly into the mist. Daylight increased timidly and dawn’s striptease gyrated with every layer of night that fell off. As another article slipped away the mist lifted, dissipating along with the purple darkness, leaving behind a blue-gray haze and revealing the gunmetal sliver—a narrow, slender lake that materialized in front of me. It was about the size of a football field, flanked on all sides by thick gatherings of tall pines, which loomed like sentinels protecting some forbidden treasure.

  Dawn ramped up her exotic dance, slipping off a stocking, letting an auburn glow permeate the air. I could see the lake clearly now. No movement. The surrounding trees still stood pat, black as pitch.

  I felt a tickle in my gut and was reminded of why I entered the woods in the first place. I did still have to pee.

  I looked down, my mind torn between mental surrealism and physical necessity, and started fumbling with the button and fly of my pants.

  A flick and a splash broke the silence. I snapped my head to the lake, caught a jagged shadow spin across the water through the ripples and took a step backward. My right foot caught on a rock. Balance was a lost cause and because my hand was still on my pant waist, I went down without a brace, falling backward onto the slightly inclined embankment. My pants, however, had dropped to my ankles leaving me sitting on wet undergrowth in boxer shorts.

  The rising auburn glow and the waning darkness exposed me—the exact thing I first came into this forest to escape from.

  I sat in my own foolishness, embarrassed because of it and then angered because I was embarrassed. My pants were half off, I was in the middle of a forest and I was totally alone. It was one of those moments where your only choice is to take stock of your life, have an epiphany or something like that.

  I adjusted my eyes to the growing reddish light and I saw a frog stroking her way elegantly across the lake away from me. She must have leapt from the shore, got caught in a spear of light and cast a shadow. I forgot about being angry with myself for being embarrassed and watched her swim away, feeling almost voyeuristic in the half-light, half darkness of the near dawn.

  Even when I could no longer make out the little frog body, the ripples still moved toward the other end of the lake. I watched them, following them one hundred yards to the far bank. My eyes moved up from the water, over the dark bank and onto the far away trees.

  From behind them a fiery ball was just starting to blaze, the auburn of the air was giving way to a bright pink. The fireball grew hotter and bigger, scorching the black pines that stood like prison bars. Almost immediately they were rendered thin black sticks, then dust and ash as the shards of red burst through them. Intense flame shot into the clearing, roared around the lake, setting the entire forest aflame. The fireball grew. The fire grew. It was an inferno, then, everything completely ablaze, crackling and spreading at breakneck speed around the lake, up the trees with flames licking the sky.

  As the sun peaked over the treetops one hundred yards away the white heat shot straight across the lake, turning the water into a burning mirror, reflecting the firestorm that had engulfed the trees, the frog, the sky and soon would overtake me.

  I dared not get up—I couldn’t even if I wanted to. All I could do was sit upright, still exposed, and gawk. I took great deep breaths but it was as if the cherry-red flood surging towards me was consuming all the air.

  Then, with a silent but deafening explosion, a soundless sonic boom, the sun broke from behind the far trees, screamed upwards as a hungry, purging, blazing crescent scythed across the clearing, swallowing everything and smashing into my chest. I felt myself yell, slammed my eyes shut, threw my elbows up futilely and was sent reeling onto my back. The hot light pierced painfully right through my eyelids.

  The scarlet blaze washed over me. I put my hands behind me and arched my back upwards, craned my neck and opened my eyes. I was staring directly upward at a blood-streaked sky—darkness was gone, crimson waves rippled through the wispy clouds and that thrush of birds darted past.

  The pain behind my eyes vanished, evaporated even while I gazed at the sky for a millennium.

  It was beautiful. The wild, untamed red streaks that flowed effortlessly across the heavens—they comforted me, warmed me. E
ven though my pants were around my ankles, I was no longer exposed. Emotions I hadn’t felt in at least a year crept into my throat and burned with a sweet, acidic flare.

  I don’t know how long I sat there gazing into dawn’s masterpiece. But I did until Shoddy found me. It must have been quite a sight—me, lying at the edge of a secret lake, my pants around my ankles, bathed in scarlet morning light.

  “Hey, Shaw!” Shoddy yelled as he slapped away branches from the small copse of trees. He emerged but I didn’t even flinch.

  “Jesus Christ. What the hell? How bad did you have to go?”

  He helped me up and then when I didn’t pull my gaze from the sky, he hesitantly aided in pulling up my pants.

  I fumbled hypnotically with the zipper and button.

  “Hello,” he said, waving his hand in front of my face.

  I barely heard him. My mind, a place that was so recently a cold, crumbling barrier struggling to conceptualize and reconcile the notions of truth and forgiveness, nestled itself into a warm, comforting and perhaps a bit quixotic blanket. The wall was gone. There was no more hammer. All of it vanished, dissolved by the potency and power of a magnificent scarlet sky.

  And then I was moving. At first I thought the painted red clouds had found some velocity. But then my feet stumbled on a root and I knew it was my body picking its way up the bank, away from the silver lake.

  “Auggie. Hey, Shaw,” Shoddy tried again. “Did you get attacked by zombies or something? What’s up with you?”

  His voice was just noise. When I didn’t answer this time, he resorted to navigating us silently through the trees to their edge where the embankment, the dilapidated shed, the parking lot and the Explorer waited.

  A blur shot past my sight line; then again, backwards.

  Shoddy waved his hand past my face a few more times.

  I did not want to stop looking at the sky. We broke through the tree line; I kept my gaze directed upwards. Wisps of dark red morning poked through the treetops.

  “I’m driving, bro. I don’t even want to know what happened down there. All I know is, you’ve had a long night. So now I’m driving.”

  He snapped his fingers violently an inch from my face.

  “Wake up, bro. I need you to come to and climb over this embankment,” he said. “It’s time to go.”

  With one final gulp, I took in the scarlet locks that swept across the sky and finally turned my gaze downwards to Shoddy.

  I studied him. He had a look made up of equal parts concern, confusion and relief, like I had just come out of a coma. He tried to grin. It came across his face as more of a crayon scribble.

  “Thank you,” I said to him, so quiet I wasn’t sure if I actually said it.

  “What?”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. I guess.”

  “No really. Thank you.”

  “What the hell is this, some sort of Good Will Hunting moment? I swear to God, if you hug me and start telling me it’s not my fault, I’m going to hit you.”

  The concern and confusion drained from his face, refueled by sarcasm and testosterone. There he was. His defense mechanisms kicked in right on time. Back to normal Shoddy, exactly where I needed him. No more worrying about me, there would be no time for that in Providence.

  “Come on,” he said and nudged me toward the embankment. “Get up over that thing you weirdo and let’s get the fuck home.”

  I smiled and nodded. He nodded and smirked back.

  We clambered over the top and skidded down to the parking lot like kids at a playground.

  I remembered seeing someone moving around in the Explorer. One of the girls would be awake: all the better.

  But when we reached the Explorer, the car bathed in the sun’s reddish glow, the two girls were still fast asleep inside. The only difference was that Lindsey had moved to the backseat—my seat.

  “Hey look at that,” Shoddy said. “I thought I saw one of them awake when I was pissing. I thought she was just trying to get a glimpse of the goods.”

  “She would’ve needed the Hubble telescope to see anything from there,” I retorted, taking a big step back toward reality.

  “Oh ho! There he is. I was wondering if you were still in there.” He playfully tapped a finger on my forehead. “Jump in the front seat. Let’s get going. But be quiet. I don’t want to wake up the girls. Those two are horrible first thing in the morning.”

  I knew Emily and Lindsey would probably wake up soon after we got back on the road. They would see the dirt on my clothes and make fun of me for rolling around on the ground or whatever they assumed happened to me.

  But I was glad they would. I knew I wasn’t dirty; I was purged and fresh. Their forthcoming girlish jokes would be refreshing, a clean distraction from the hours of solitude that swathed the past night.

  Shoddy jumped in the driver’s seat and before I joined him on the passenger side, I glanced back over the embankment. I knew that just beyond the now illuminated pines, a lakeside habitat was awakening to a gorgeous, red-maned morning. Then I checked on Mo’s storefront: still no activity inside. The only movement was a crumpled piece of trash dancing around the pavement, urged along by a soft morning breeze.

  “Shoddy, hold on one second,” I said. I pushed back from the Explorer and ran over to the storefront. The crumpled trash bounced across my toes. I snatched it up, unfolded it and nodded at the confirmation of my suspicion. I hurried back to the car and hopped in before Shoddy could ask what I was doing.

  Shoddy adjusted the seat and mirrors and I nestled into the copilot’s chair.

  I stared down at the red piece of paper, wrinkled and torn and covered in mystery stains. But clearly legible was the black printing. Number five as bold and bright as the North Star.

  Five: Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.

  “What was that about?” Shoddy whispered. He hadn’t started the car yet. He reached across the center console and tapped the paper on my lap with the car keys. “Picking up other peoples’ trash now, Augustine?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Since when did you care?”

  “Since right now.”

  He tilted his head and tried reading the list.

  “What is that, some sort of cult credo? God, these people down here are whacked,” he said. Without waiting for an answer he popped the keys in the ignition and turned them as silently as possible.

  “They’re not as crazy as you might think,” I said as we pulled out of the parking lot, Mo’s latest fueling station engulfed by the sunlight, a haloed glare in the rearview mirror.

  Shoddy just shrugged with his two hands on the wheel. He had already lost interest.

  I reached into the center console and removed a small leather-bound journal. A black pen was tucked inside. I opened the journal to the pen’s page. It was blank. I refolded the red paper and switched it places with the pen then slid the pen easily under the journal cover’s leather strap.

  I shifted the book onto my lap and relaxed back into the leather seats, keeping one hand on the journal. I closed my eyes. Sleep was coming hard and fast.

  In the penultimate moments of consciousness, sporadic visions flashed. My parents stood in front of my home. Lily popped in and out of shadow; Shoddy and Emily in my dorm; Lindsey was in my bed. In my visions the people all smiled, even the crippled body of Duncan with a trickle of crimson blood under his nose.

  They were giving me their blessing, their permission to inform their earthly alter egos of all the sins I committed against them. I could write my confession. The sleep I was about to enjoy was their gift, my reward. When I awoke I would write. I anticipated filling the entire journal. It wouldn’t take me long.

  When we arrived in Providence, I would first give the confession to Shoddy to read. Much of it would be redundant to him; would simply confirm his suspicions that were borderline fact already. But he was the brightest grammatical mind I knew and could
be my editor. If I were to go to jail I’d at least go without any spelling errors.

  Then the clean copy would go to Lindsey and Emily. When they looked at me in disbelief, as I was sure they would, I’d verbally tell them everything about Lily. Then before the tears got too heavy, I’d recount the night behind Primal, about how I beat Duncan and then watched the life leave his body.

  I hoped they would understand. After all, part of it was self-defense. He had lunged at me with a wooden stake. Ironically, he harbored the intention to kill, not me.

  I hoped they would forgive me for hiding the truth for so long. I hoped they would forgive me for not feeling bad about it for so long.

  I’d have to talk to Lindsey alone. I needed to thank her and to apologize. If she hated me, I’d understand. If she still loved me, a sentiment I did not deserve, perhaps I could love her back. Inside me was newfound potential. But I wouldn’t tell her that. She would be free of me soon, free of everything I came with, free to move away and to move on. There was no need to re-muddy those muddy waters, especially since I’d probably be going up the river.

  That would depend on what the cops did. I decided I would go alone to the police station at the edge of campus and hand them the confession. I hoped they, too, would have mercy—but not as much as I hoped my friends would.

  There was one person who needed to hear my confession first before we even reached Rhode Island. She was the last stop before Providence. I had to kneel at her feet, on top of the soil and the dozen white lily bouquets, dried but never removed, and read aloud the confession I was to pen.

  “Hey Shoddy,” I said, with sleep tugging gently on my eyelids. “Do me a favor. Wake me up in an hour.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “You look pretty tired, man. Maybe I should let you sleep the rest of the way home.”

  “No, definitely not. Wake me up in an hour. I have some writing to do and I want to get it done before we reach Connecticut.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when we reach Connecticut I want you to let me drive. We have to make a quick detour. One more stop. I know the quickest way there.”