The Trench Angel

by Michael Keenan Gutierrez

  “I’m awful taken by you.”

  “You need to stop drinking in the morning.”

  When the first day of spring arrived on a Saturday, it felt hot enough to melt wax, Lorraine said. She didn’t have an office to clean, so we picnicked in a park and read English newspapers, and then stayed out late in a café. I walked her back to her apartment.

  “You want some tea?” she asked.

  I followed her inside and stood in the middle of her room for a long time before I noticed she wasn’t making tea but gazing toward the bed where a new camera lay wrapped in a red bow. Even from ten feet away, I could tell it was an Eastman Kodak Folding Pocket Brownie. A few months earlier, I’d shown it to her in catalog, but she’d misunderstood me. It was a tourist’s camera, something you gave to a mother to photograph her children. It was nothing a serious photographer would carry. Yet, I can’t remember thinking that when I saw it on her bed.

  “It’s good, right?”

  I wanted to chastise her. I could buy a hundred such cameras and still survive the summer, whereas she must have skipped meals, but I didn’t scold her because she was so proud of it. She waited, her arms crossed.

  “Say something.”

  “Miss Constance.”

  “What?” she asked. “Who’s Miss Constance?”

  “My seventh grade teacher.”

  I sat on the bed and held the camera above me.

  “She was sturdy with a wide bosom and I was horribly in love with her.”

  She kneeled beside me and rubbed my calves, then took my boots off, sighing at my blackened feet.

  “You need to wash these.”

  She fetched a bucket and filled it with water. When she returned, she took hold of my feet, but I stopped her, running my hand through her hair.

  “I’m not leaving,” I said. “I’ll never go back to America.”

  She rested her head on my thigh.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I promise. I’ll never go back.”

  The night before our wedding, I stayed in my own flat. I packed my clothes into satchels and my books into crates. I flipped through Thoreau’s Walden, my father’s copy and his favorite book. In the margins, I saw the words “yes” or “why?” I placed it beside my mother’s King James Bible. I opened the Bible where I found, bookmarking a page in Matthew, my return ticket to New York. I’d forgotten it but when I looked at it again, I knew I should throw it away and I did and it stayed in the trash for a few minutes before I put it back in the Bible because I thought, “What harm is it?” At the very least I could sell it to some poor refugee when the time came. I wasn’t going back to America. No one believes me, but I never intended to ever go home.

  But it’s the day after our wedding I remember best, our last day of peace before the battlefields and their trenches, before the brief leaves and rushed goodbyes. It was the day the boots marched east, the day the war ignited on its fast burn toward standstill.

  The boots, brand new Normandy-manufactured leather boots, slammed in a two-beat rhythm through the city, toward Belgium. They were beautiful boots, black and stiff, freshly laced and fitted with two healthy feet living in them. I counted those boots from our bed.

  Lorraine slept on my chest, her hair draped across my neck, her hand locked with mine, our wedding bands welded together. I rolled her over. She pressed the pillow over her eyes. She dreamt, I imagined, of some home we’d not yet built. I went to the window. Beneath the rows of electric lights, a crowd cheered on the soldiers, singing the Marseilles and lighting effigies of the Kaiser.

  This was the third day of the nationalist demonstration. Fireworks smoke drenched the sky and the streets were stained from spilled wine. The people who spoke English were convinced they’d see soldiers celebrating victory by Christmas, and I agreed, unable to imagine another ending, not with our collective idealism, not with our technology. It would be our new guns, our new engines that would make us victors in this first and only great battle of the new century.

  But I didn’t know the truth then. What I knew was this: the war was my moment to become an artist of the people, a man who could illuminate the last days of the grotesque through his camera, so that later, after the war cleaned away the filth of society and erased men like my father from our shores and sidewalks, I could display evidence of the past’s disgracefulness to a purer mankind.

  Lorraine thought I was mad. She’d spent her summers working on her grandmother’s chicken farm in southern Missouri near old slave quarters, ones disintegrating from summer storms and winter wind. One summer, her grandmother paid a man to photograph her in front of her old slave home. Lorraine asked why she’d wanted something like that, something best forgotten. Her grandmother smiled, then said, “So your own granddaughters believe you.”

  I just knew she was wrong. Yet I was grateful to her. She’d given me Miss Constance and she’d given me herself, and her trust. I aimed Miss Constance at Lorraine, the last sun falling across her face—Woman after Day of Marriage.

  Another lost photograph.

  She threw her pillow at me and then I crawled in beside her and kissed her and she took my hand and examined our wedding bands, one’s she’d picked. Silver symbolized a shield, she’d said. It withstood fire and brimstone.

  I buried my face in her hair. She rolled atop me, then laid a breast atop my eye, and pressed.

  “Evening,” she said. “You from around here, stranger?”

  “If I’m ever blinded, and God help us if I have to learn a new profession, I hope to be blinded by your beautiful bosom.” I rolled onto her in one romantic, ill-conceived gesture that threw her into the wall, shaking a framed photograph of the prairie outside New Sligo.

  “Clumsy bastard.” She kissed my forehead and pressed against me. Her breath was warm and sweet and smelled of mint and wine.

  “I see you were playing with Miss Constance, earlier,” I said. “Shame on you.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “A man always remembers the exact position he places his camera before he takes a women to bed.”

  “Even if that woman is his wife?”

  “Especially then,” I said. “Whores might steal a camera, but they’re rarely jealous of it. Now a wife might find my relationship with Miss Constance unseemly.”

  “I do.” She picked up the camera. “I don’t understand how you can love a thing.”

  “Thing, hardly.” I said. “This is a truth machine, cheaper than liquor and more reliable than morphine. With it I can capture the essence of any given moment in time. All I have to do is aim and fire. Don’t look at me like I’m telling a tale. I’m quite serious. This here, this is power. While a gun might kill a man, a camera can save him.”

  “Now you’re talking nonsense,” she said. “Damn thing can’t stop a bullet.”

  “Not literally, but it can make a man not want to fire it off in the first place.”

  “Look here.” She pulled the frame from the wall. “What do you see?”

  “Home, hearth, health. I see my mother and sister picking flowers. I see cornbread and warm cider.”

  “I see loneliness and people who will never like me.”

  “I like you.” I kissed her. “A whole lot.”

  “I know,” she said. “Just don’t try stopping a bullet with that camera.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “I’m not brave. I come from a long line of cowards. That’s why the Stephens have persevered for so long.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I would never. Not Neal Stephens. Never lied to a woman in his life. Besides, I got too much to live for now. All those men, those heroes, they had nothing. The Light Brigade, Custer, Pickett, they had miserable shrews to return to, women as frigid as nuns and as limber as corpses. Me, I like my wife.”

  She went to the window.
“It’s bright out there,” she said. “Flaring like a fire before it dies.”

  “Don’t be so grim.”

  She turned, naked, silhouetted by the street lamps. “Not grim. Scared. I’m more scared then I’ve ever been in my life. Almost.”

  “Almost?”

  She nodded. “Almost.”

  “It’ll work out.”

  “We should run. Run as far from here as we can get. Run and hide.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  “You’re wrong, Neal. You’re more wrong than you can possibly know.” She took my hand to her chest. “If something happens. If it all goes wrong. Go to the sea. Go north. You’ll find me there.”

  And what did I do? I laughed. I called her Lady Macbeth and I called her Jenny Lind. I teased her until she laughed then we made love again. Then we slept.

  But that wasn’t the whole story.

  In the morning I packed: clothes, film, Miss Constance, a pocketknife, a raincoat, spare boots, and my Bible.

  —10—

  St. Nicholas’ stood on the western edge of Pioneer Square and there isn’t much to say about it except that it was built of granite and bare of ornamentation and seemed like the type of place preferred by men like Jonathan Edwards, Oliver Cromwell, or other blowhards of their ilk. It was positively Protestant, eschewing stained glass and the sort of ostentation the men from Rome preferred. But my uncle loved it.

  Across the street, I leaned against the pedestal propping up the statue of Gerard Rahill, my long-dead grandfather, the town’s founder and the source of the town’s creation myth. Like all Rahill men, Gerard was a notorious jackass, and the statue observed this familial trait: Gerard held a rifle while standing on top of a dead Indian, with the old pioneer glaring triumphantly west as if he was seeking worthier adversaries. Even worse, the statue was like a marble daguerreotype of my face. Gerard shared my short nose and wide jaw. His eyes shined an inherited conceitedness, a reminder that I was forever a Rahill.

  I pulled out a flask and then ducked into the shadow of the pedestal. When I rose, my sister stood before me, sunset draping her eyes, and she was holding herself impatiently like I’d stood her up for a date.

  “Where have you been all afternoon?” she asked.

  “Around town,” I told her.

  She reached toward me, stealing my handkerchief, smelling it. Her face contorted like she’d fallen into a manure heap. “How long were you at McGuffey’s?”

  “Not long,” I said. “Mostly I was out talking to Forest or avoiding Pinkertons.”

  “I know,” she said. “A Neanderthal in a black suit called on me and asked if I had murdered Clyde.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I simply smiled and asked if he’d like to donate his brain to medicine, so, once and for all, we can prove that phrenology is nothing more than a Victorian pseudo-science.”

  “He must have been confused.”

  “It proved my point,” she said.

  The crowd swelled around St. Nicholas’: mostly miners in their dark church suits and their wives and children holding close by.

  “They can’t possibly believe I was the culprit,” she said. “I don’t even own a gun.”

  “Clyde was blackmailing you.”

  “He was blackmailing you, too.” She gave me a sort of crooked wink that made me step back. More than anyone in town save my uncle, I didn’t want Tillie knowing about Lorraine. My sister’s ideas about the world—her science—couldn’t reconcile with the facts of my marriage. “I can only imagine about what. You must have done something incredibly dumb.” She took a second look around, then whispered, “Did Seamus hire them?”

  I didn’t bother answering because we both knew it was a silly question. If my relationship with Seamus was often strained, it was nothing in comparison to Tillie’s. They’d hardly spoken in five years, ever since Tillie returned from college to open her pharmacy, a practice Seamus thought was the devil’s work.

  “You should be flattered.”

  “Why? I don’t believe the Pinkerton fancied me.”

  “No,” I said. “They’re treating you like any other man—shitty.”

  “You are a constant source of hope, a proverbial optimist in these days of cynicism.”

  I took her arm and walked her across the street, past the miners, stopping at the entrance, where I saw, carved into a granite cornerstone, my mother’s name. It had been put there ten years earlier, yet the granite was still polished, still shined in the leftover sun.

  “Neal, please,” Tillie said.

  We went inside, where I led her up front, to the only open pews, because most had chosen to sit in back in case something awful happened.

  Tillie slid into the pew. “How do I look? Tired?”

  She looked brittle and powdered.

  “You’re lovely.”

  A racket erupted in the back and I turned to find a stampede crashing through the doors, Forest at the head. They chanted, “We don’t need Rahill! Rahill needs us!”

  I thought of raising Miss Constance, but the evening light was already too dim.

  “Not quite Shakespearean, is it?” Tillie said.

  “Don’t be like that.”

  “You and your lost causes.” She shook her head, and then smoothed out her dress. “We can’t let them run themselves. They’ll burn it all to the ground like children with matches. It’s our job to care for them.”

  “Be careful. You might be my next lost cause.”

  “I’m innocent. Don’t you know me better than that?”

  “Just stay here,” I told her.

  “Fine, but at least have the decency to take your hat off.”

  She was right; I’d forgotten. But I wasn’t the only one. The managers, the town elders, and even the tradesmen held their hats in the laps, but most of the miners, save a few of the more pious folk, kept their bowlers and flatcaps on. It made sense to me because the pews were divided like some sort of industrial wedding: management—along with Tillie and I—on the right, miners on the left, each solidly aligned with the bride or groom. Most of the coal diggers hadn’t been inside this church in years, and maybe they didn’t believe it as sacred as they once had.

  I found Jacob near the doors, ostensibly standing guard, but mostly trying to stay out of the way.

  “Why are you sending the Pinkertons after Tillie?” I asked. “If you want to ask her something, then ask.”

  He looked at me like I’d accused him of infidelity. “Just shut up, would you?” he said. “Haven’t seen any Pinkertons and didn’t send any after Tillie. You ought to know better.”

  “Why are you mad at me?”

  “If you don’t know then I ain’t saying.”

  “Did we get married today? We didn’t drink that much at McGuffey’s.”

  “Finally got drunk enough to read that shit paper of yours. See you’re saying Forest and your pa plugged O’Leary,” he said. “That isn’t what I think and I’ll bust your jaw if you keep on saying it. If people think I sold Forest out and—”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I don’t. Just got to walk through Rahillville without getting blackjacked. You know that. Besides, it’s a lie and if you keep on saying I—”

  “Stop it,” I said. “No one’s going to think you’re pinning it on Forest. They’ll think it’s me or my uncle and if anyone asks I’ll say you think my father killed O’Leary on his own.”

  “You’ll do that?”

  “I promise,” I said. “Just promise me you won’t let no one railroad Tillie.”

  “Guess I’ll see what can be done, though can’t imagine your uncle being screwy enough to send his own niece up, even if he don’t like her.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “For hurting your feelings.”

  “Didn’t make me cry or
nothing.”

  I made my way back toward Tillie as a slow murmur of awe and disgust filled the room. I turned to find my graybeard uncle striding down the aisle carrying a briefcase and his derby, while his revolver remained visible beneath his coat, a corporate gunslinger. As he approached the front, I noticed a young woman by the old man’s side—Gertie.

  It was a sight that would make you cry mercy, like a wife and a mistress striking an unexpected friendship. I figured she wouldn’t mention anything, but the thought of it still scared me, especially since the two looked, in Gertie’s word, simpatico. As she passed, she held out her hand and brushed my shirt with her fingertips.

  “Nice girl,” I said. “Quite sharp.”

  “You’re a fool,” Tillie said. “Your loins are going to ruin the lot of us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just don’t understand you, Neal.”

  On the stage, Seamus and Forest stood like two pugilists listening to their coaches. I went to them, camera in tow. There was a spot, near the west end of the stage, where a stream of sunset broke through the windows.

  “Would you two mind stepping over here, please?” I asked.

  Both gave me the sort of annoyed look, like I was begging for a nickel.

  “Is this necessary?” Seamus asked. “It’s getting late.”

  “He’s your kin, Mr. Rahill,” Forest said.

  “Roosevelt’s orders,” I said. “Now, just step into the light.”

  They did so, reluctantly, almost feeling like they had no choice.

  “Just stand near each other and hold still, please,” I said. “I’m not asking you two to dance.”

  They remained about a foot apart, while the middle of the frame was filled in by the wall. I thought it was going to be a bad shot: it would look like some metaphorical shadow between them and maybe that was more honest, but it wouldn’t look right.

  “Okay, like that,” I said.

  Seamus and Forest stood still as corpses for nearly thirty seconds as Miss Constance sucked in the dying light. You do this for enough years, you get a feel for how long a picture will take. Back then, you took long exposures or you used a flash pan, and if you used a flash pan, it looked like you’d drawn the men on the paper. It made the subject look frightened. That’s why Riis was a genius and a liar: it was the flash rather than the squalor that made those poor folks look so scared. That’s what I believed back then. It wasn’t until much later, when I looked back at my work during those last few days in New Sligo that I saw in that picture of Seamus and Forest the origins of my new style. Both men looked right at the lens, appearing just as they wanted to be perceived: tough, tired, and ready to die.