Angel

by Shawn Michel de Montaigne

  Calliel’s bladder and colon strained for release. He glanced at the bucket. It was still under the mirror. He lowered the nearly empty pitcher to the floor and stood with a groan. When the world stopped swimming, he stumbled to the mirror and gazed into it.

  He could barely recognize himself. His face was like a fruit that had been caught in a combine. Cracks of dried blood ran down his left cheek to his neck. His nose wasn’t broken, but it was swollen purple-red at the bridge. His left eye was a grotesque bulbous yellow-black-green mass. It looked like someone had glued a rotting lemon to his face. His forehead was scraped and cut and his chin gashed, the meat under it red-raw and pulled to one side, despite the stitches. He was one massive ache, so much so that he could almost ignore the worst of the injuries he’d sustained, as they tried to cancel each other out for want of his attention.

  He licked chapped lips and, moaning, bent and righted the bucket. He pulled open his breeches and relieved himself. With Jegudiel’s steady gaze on him, he finished and dropped his pants past his knees. But when he squatted over the bucket to shit, his bruised ribs and strained gut stopped him. They hurt so badly that he couldn’t go. After the fourth attempt he glanced angrily at the old man and said, “You some sorta pervert? You enjoyin’ this little display?”

  Jegudiel shook his head without speaking. His eyes held compassion in them, and that angered Calliel even more, making him forget about his pain and frustration. He went to say something, but then that odd, disconnected inner voice cut him off.

  You need some sort of brace or support. I got it: put that bucket up against the bars and lean your back against it. The bars are smooth and won’t scratch you, unlike that stone wall. Slowly lower yourself over the bucket. Don’t worry about how far down you can go, just go when it comes. Do it!

  It came from inside his head, so he knew they were his thoughts. The voice was coldly analytical and solved the problem instantly. When it did, he felt a dark and alien satisfaction steal through him. Problem-solving was a good thing …

  Do it, Calliel!

  He pulled up his trousers, held them closed with one hand, and then bent over with a grunt and picked up the bucket. He carried it to the bars and lowered it against them, then released his grip on his trousers and then turned and leaned against the bars after straddling the bucket. Slowly, he lowered himself. It still hurt like hell, but not nearly as much as squatting unsupported did by the mirror. He felt his bowels contract, and a moment later he heard the splashes. He finished up, hoping he hadn’t splashed on his pant legs, but not really caring if he did. He needed to wipe, but there was nothing in reach to wipe with. His cell was rich with the odor of his efforts.

  “Damnit,” he muttered. He glanced around at the straw. That’s what it was for.

  Pillow case, cowboy. It’s made of thin cloth. Tear some of it off and wipe. You won’t have to bend too much that way.

  “Thank you,” he muttered.

  “Thank me for what?” said Jegudiel.

  Calliel, pulling up his trousers, ignored him. He slumped to his cot, grabbed his pillow. The cloth tore easily. He ripped off as little as he thought would help and stumbled back to the bucket. He lowered his trousers once more, bent over as far as he could, and wiped. It hurt as badly as anything he’d been through to this point. When he dropped the cloth into the bucket, he couldn’t keep from whimpering. It sounded pathetic, but that was that. He buttoned up and eased himself back to his bunk, which he fell on. He closed his eyes and curled into a ball.

  “I killed a man,” he murmured through his arms. “I ain’t worth savin’. I’m ain’t nothin’ but a puddle of piss. I ain’t worth the contents in that bucket. That’s how I know you’re a liar, old man. God wants nothin’ to do with me. He let that bastard take my poppa’s ranch. And now He’s gonna let them string me up.”

  ~~*~~

  Deputies hauled him up the stairs two days later. The day before they had ordered him to strip naked. They took his filthy clothes and boots and departed after leaving a basin of warm, soapy water and a washcloth behind, with orders to use them to clean up. When they returned later that evening, his clothes had been washed and pressed, his boots cleaned and shined up. He had cleaned himself up as told, spending the rest of the day wrapped in the thin woolen blanket of his cot. He dressed as they departed, knowing that something was up.

  The sun speared hotly into his head when he stepped outside, making his eyes water. He looked down, keeping them open only as far as was necessary. A deputy shoved him. “Move, dead man.”

  The chains shackling him allowed only small steps. Squinting, he glanced up. Across the courtyard men were readying a gallows. They stopped to watch him pass, their faces expressionless.

  “We’re just waitin’ on Calabis’ family to arrive, dead man,” said the same deputy. “They wanna watch you swing. They wanna watch real bad.”

  Calliel didn’t respond, not even when the man slammed the butt of his rifle between his shoulder blades. He passed under an archway and down a short corridor that led to another courtyard, this one very pleasant, with a Grecian fountain surrounded by palm trees and cactus. He stumbled over cobblestones around its circumference towards another corridor. Halfway down it he was ordered to stop. There was a door to his left, which a guard opened. “In,” the lawman ordered.

  Calliel shuffled through into an opulent office. The marshal sitting at the desk wore a finely tailored black suit and hat and a gleaming gold badge pinned over his left breast pocket. He glared up at him, then motioned shortly over his shoulder with his thumb before looking back down at the paperwork on his desk. Calliel had learned only the very rudiments of reading and writing; still, he recognized his name at the top of the form the marshal was working on.

  The men pushed him to a closed door. One knocked.

  “Come,” said a muffled male voice beyond.

  A deputy opened the door. “Move your ass, dead man. It’s time to face your final judgment.”

  Keep your head, cowboy. They’re not going to hang you today. This is the day they dot the i’s and cross the t’s on the execution order.

  Was it fear that made him feel disconnected from himself, or was that calm, rational voice inside his head some spirit or angel?

  Was the old-timer right? Was he worth saving?

  An older man with a large moustache and neatly waxed and parted silver hair grimaced in his direction from behind a bulky, ornate oak desk. He too wore a finely tailored black suit. The monocle in his left eye gleamed like the marshal’s badge.

  “Thank you, gentleman. Please close the door behind you. Mister Hiccum, if you would please step forward to this desk. Thank you.”

  The deputies stepped out, closed the door. Calliel rattled and shuffled his way to the desk. The monocled man stared up at him. “My name is Judge Ernest Mott,” he said. “I’m the judge for this territory. You understand me, young man?”

  Calliel nodded.

  “We’re meeting today because I’m required to speak to you before declaring your sentence.”

  Calliel waited.

  The judge sniffed impatiently, glanced down at papers. “You’re accused of attempted murder, which was witnessed by four deputies and two common lawmen; and you’re accused of the murder of a rancher in Nevada. I can hang you without trial in the first charge; if you come clean with me regarding the second, I’ll see to it that your file is expedited so you won’t have to wait long for judgment to be executed. You want that, and I’ll tell you why. The deputies can do whatever they want to you in that cell down there. Let me assure you, young man, you don’t want that. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Calliel nodded again.

  “Good. Did you murder a man in Nevada?”

  Once again, and with no hesitation, Calliel nodded.

  “No, son, that won’t do. You need to speak up. I’ll ask again: Did you murder that rancher in Nevada?”

  “Yes,” said Calliel.

  “That’s all
I needed to hear.” The judge checked a box on the topmost paper. “Make your mark here—” he turned the paper around and pointed with a pen, which he handed to Calliel—“and also on another form which will be brought in shortly.”

  Calliel made his mark—an X over a signature line—and dropped the pen on the paper and straightened up. His stomach muscles were still strained, and his head still ached. He grunted off lightheadedness as he righted himself.

  This asshole puts the ‘r’ in railroaded.

  The judge took the papers and stamped several. He seemed to forget Calliel’s existence. He continued writing for a while; then: “Time was you could hang a man the same day he was caught. But the boys in Sacramento say that’s not good enough anymore. They want forms, infernal forms. They want Bodie and all these territorial shitholes to be treated just like the fine folks in San Francisco and Los Angeles are treated. They call that ‘due process.’ Personally, I don’t get it.” He looked up. The gold light from the ceiling lamps caught the maledictious glare of his monocle and magnified it. “Men like you don’t deserve that kind of bureaucracy. You’re not worth a penny in a pisspot. But they’ve forced me out here to deal with your type because they want to set an example for the rest of the Union. Look how civilized we are! Look how Christian!”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Come!” barked the judge.

  The marshal strode in, files in hand. He handed them to the judge, who opened the topmost one and pulled out the single sheet of paper inside and slapped it down in front of Calliel.

  “This is an Order of Execution by Hanging. It states that you’re to be hanged by the neck until dead a week from today at six in the morning. Do you have relatives we can send your belongings to?”

  Calliel’s two older sisters had married and moved back east. He wasn’t particularly close to them, and so he said, “No.”

  “No mother or father? No wife? No siblings?”

  Jeb Hiccum, his father, had died of a heart attack shortly after Calabis forcibly took his ranch. Calliel’s mother had died giving birth to him. And the woman he was courting …

  “No,” he said.

  “Do you have any special requests for the preacher? Any particular prayers or Bible verses you want said on your behalf?”

  “No.”

  The judge pointed with the pen and said, “Make your mark here.”

  He dropped the pen on the Order. Calliel picked it up and made his mark, then dropped it and righted himself.

  “You’ll be fed steak and potato for your last meal, along with one glass of beer. May God have mercy on your soul. Take the condemned back to his cell.”

  Calliel turned and followed the marshal out of the office to the deputies waiting in the hallway, who pushed and prodded him back to his cell.

  ~~*~~

  They locked him in and left. He sat resignedly on his bunk. It was then that he noticed Jegudiel was gone.

  Had he been released? What did he do to get thrown in here? Was he facing the judge right now, who was declaring sentence on him? Was he gonna hang too, or was he nothing but a crazy old fool, a zealot, a drunk, released once more to the dusty, wide streets of Bodie?

  They hadn’t exchanged ten words in two days. Calliel had done his best to ignore him; and Jegudiel, to his credit, let him. Now he was gone, Calliel felt a yawning emptiness split open in him.

  There was nothing to do but wait. In seven days they’d descend and shackle him back up, then march him up to the gallows and hang him. There would be a crowd. Calabis and his family would be among them. They’d cheer when he fell through the trap door and his neck snapped. That would be the last thing he’d ever hear in this life.

  Fuck ‘em, cowboy. You aren’t alone.

  He worried that he was losing his mind. “I am.”

  You aren’t. It feels that way, but you aren’t. I’m with you.

  “Who are you?”

  I’m that part of you that knows better.

  “The part of him that knew better” didn’t speak so much as convey distinct feelings that somehow felt like words. Instead of making him feel like he was going crazy, those feelings consoled and reassured him.

  He didn’t cower before the consequences of his actions. He had killed a man in a range war, and then chased the bloated pig responsible for starting it here, where he tried to kill him too. He got caught, and that was that. He wasn’t a man to beg, especially before lesser men.

  They dress themselves up and assume positions of power to shield themselves from their own weaknesses, and to push those weaknesses on others, which they call strength.

  “I ain’t ashamed of what I done,” said Calliel. “I’d do it again if I had to.”

  The man he had killed—Jazzle Starrett—had sold Calliel and his men down the river. As a result, thirteen good men perished in an ambush. They were men fighting against entrenched and wealthy ranch owners who preyed on the lesser among them. “I’d do it again if I had to,” repeated Calliel. “If the good Lord deems that a sin, then a sin it was. I’d sin again.”

  Damn straight, came the feeling-voice.

  “Damn straight,” said Calliel. He closed his eyes.

  ~~*~~

  He woke shivering. He struggled to sit up, then to stand. Once on his feet, he pulled the thin blanket off the bed and wrapped it around his shoulders.

  It was almost pitch black down here. At the bars he looked down. The pitcher was just next to his right foot; next to it was a plate of food. He could barely see them.

  He hadn’t heard the deputy leave them. He’d slept like a dead man. He thought that funny, and chuckled as he lifted the pitcher for a drink, and again as he picked up the plate of food and carried it back to his bunk, where he ate. A rat or two had picked at it ahead of him; he spied tooth marks in the hard heel of bread when inspected up close. He didn’t care. He ate what they left him, then gulped down the rest of the water. He stood and put the pitcher and plate by the door, then used the bucket, which had been emptied. His stomach muscles weren’t complaining so much now, and he noticed that his left eye could open slightly. He fingered the stitches at his chin and knew the gash was infected. It hardly mattered.

  He looked across to the other cell, which was invisible due to darkness. “Old-timer,” he called out. “You there?”

  No answer came back. He stood and went to the bars adjacent to the next cell. He couldn’t tell with any certainty, but it looked like the other bunk was empty. Sometimes inmates were released so they could be put to work laying track or grading roads or digging dump pits. It was possible the crazy old fart who thought he was an angel of death had been released, or perhaps he had been strung up already and his body buried out in the cactus. Calliel hadn’t heard a crowd gather, but then a lot of men met their ends without anyone watching save lawmen and the hangman.

  In any case the old fart wasn’t in his cell.

  Calliel was alone.

  Not alone, said the feeling-voice.

  He let that odd sense of comfort fill him, then went and sat back down on his bunk. He wasn’t tired. He knew if he tried to sleep again he’d do nothing but toss and turn. He had nothing to occupy his thoughts save his upcoming execution, and if he thought of that too much, he’d go as crazy as the old man. He sighed.

  The feeling-voice spoke.

  You think this cell is twelve by fifteen, right?

  When Calliel didn’t respond, the feeling-voice said: Right?

  “Right.”

  His lone response sounded strange, especially in the dark.

  How much is that? What is twelve multiplied by fifteen?

  In the end, the wicked and greedy win. In the end, good folks like Poppa are trampled under by …

  HOW MUCH IS THAT?

  “All right! All right!” He tried concentrating. “Let’s see. Ten tens is a hundred. So ten dozens must be …” He added. “That’s a hundred twenty. Five more dozens is … sixty, so fifteen dozens is a hundred twenty added to s
ixty. A hundred eighty.”

  A hundred eighty what? Answer me! Stop thinking about your sorry self and answer my question!

  “Damn! Fine! A hundred eighty, uh, square feet!”

  So your cell and the one next to yours … how many square feet is that total?

  His voice sounded lonesomely out in the dark. “Uh … three-sixty.”

  A hundred eighty goes into three-sixty, so what else goes into three-sixty? C’mon, cowboy, think!

  “Uh … sixty. Sixty does. Sixty goes into three hundred sixty.”

  Sixty. Sixty times six is three-sixty. Tell me something about the number sixty.

  Calliel thought for a bit. “We had sixty head of cattle on the ranch one year.”

  And you ran into a cactus as a little boy and your old man pulled out sixty needles from your palm, remember? He counted them!

  “I remember. That hurt like hell.”

  I bet. Sixty times what number again is three hundred sixty?

  “Six.”

  Six. Is there anything times five that equals three hundred sixty?

  He thought of his father. He thought of Calabis …

  Get your mind back on my question, cowboy.

  Calliel angrily pushed Calabis’ fat, smirking face out of his mind.

  “What times five is three-sixty? I don’t know, but it has to be somethin’, ‘cause three hundred sixty ends in a zero.’ Lemme think …” He fought with himself. It came to him that he had stood and was pacing back and forth. “Damn. Seven fives goes into thirty-six … carry the one … Seventy-one? No, wait! Seventy-two!”

  Seventy-two, that’s right. Seventy-two plus eight is eighty. Eighty plus one is eighty one. Is there anything special about eighty-one?

  He couldn’t think of anything special about eighty-one. He stalked about his cell like a caged lion. Whenever he’d think of Poppa, or Calabis, or the deputies or the gallows, the feeling-voice would interrupt him, sometimes very gently, sometimes very pointedly. After a few more of those interruptions he muttered, “Okay. Okay! A dozen dozens is a hundred forty-four.”

  And—?

  “So …” He shook his head in an effort to force the matter in it to calculate. “Ten tens is a hundred …”