Despite the bells and screams and gunshots, the rest of the house felt just as still, nearly as holy. I found him in the bedroom, a cigarette hooked to his lips.
“Stephens is that you?”
“Forest, I’m sorry.”
“For what, kid?”
Maybe it was my lack of nerve, but I didn’t answer honestly. I pointed at his cigarette. “For getting you started again.”
He didn’t say anything. I sat by the window and looked out at the rutted, snow damp street.
“They’re coming for you.”
“Don’t I know it. Whole fuckin’—”
“For killing Clyde, Forest,” I said. “They’ve got you for killing Clyde.”
The cigarette bobbed from his lips and he seemed to disappear into his head. It looked like guilt shrouding his face, but it was just acceptance. Like I’d told him he had to get a tooth pulled.
“What’s the kindness for?” he asked. “Didn’t think you cared.”
“My father did it, but you’re going down unless you make a run for it. I can get you to Denver and from there, you’ve got trains that can take you anywhere.”
“Should I get a disguise? What getup would make a huge Jew fucking blend in? Maybe I could wear a goddamn dress and join the fucking circus?”
Gunfire, closer and crisper, burst a few blocks south. The gray, diffused light draped his face. He lay back on the pillow; the bedsprings breathed and settled.
“They’ve got the check.”
I expected him to look nervous, or at least go pale, but he just sat there and took it.
“Big Hank, that fucking turncoat.”
“My father was paying him.”
“Until Clyde lost his eye and then Big Hank wanted blood, fucking blood. Probably went to your father’s office fixing to kill him but it never went right for Big Hank. Not once in his miserable life did he do a damn thing right. Couldn’t even go crooked right. It was always me cleaning up his messes even after he’d died—had to pay Clyde a shit ton to keep it quiet. You know what the boys would think?”
They’d think Forest was in on it. They’d think Forest sold them out. I understood.
“You’ve got to run.”
“Stop it, kid. I’m not fucking leaving.”
He put out his cigarette and lit another.
“You know I probably did kill Clyde in a way,” he said.
I stuck my hands in my pockets, felt my notebook, but didn’t take it out.
“It was me who sent your father up there. Told him not to shoot Clyde like he did. Should have known better.”
“How long has my father been working with you?”
“Months,” Forest said, his voice quick like a falling cleaver. “Since July, when we figured a strike was coming. He showed up like some crazed St. Nick teeming with bags full of dough saying he’d get us through it.”
“And you believed him?” I asked. “Even though he killed Big Hank?”
“Because of that.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, kid. Your old man was never right after Hank died. Not at all. It ate at him,” he said. “When he came to me in July, I saw he wasn’t right in the mind.”
“And you trusted him?”
“He was here seeking a pardon. Figured I could use it.”
“What about Tillie?”
“Seamus won’t hurt her,” he said. “He’d never do that to your mother.”
“My mother’s dead. You’ve got to run, run until you’re across the ocean.”
“You feelin’ guilty, kid, for that shit you wrote?”
I peered out onto the smoky street, the light dimmed so it seemed like I was standing in the dark. The fire bell rang and rang, gunshots coming quickly.
A caravan of police and militiamen stopped opposite Forest’s house: Seamus, Jacob, and a dozen militiamen armed with rifles and holstering Billy clubs. Another car pulled up. Gertie awaited us, her fellow Pinkertons close behind.
“Forest,” I said. “Out the back.”
Forest tucked in his shirt, then put out his cigarette. “Time I go talk to that Irish bastard.”
I followed him onto the dark, simmering street, which smelled of burnt pine and dead animals. The ground shook from the caravan of trucks and the march of refugees. Tobias leaned against the mule cart, while Ruth and her child looked on from beside him. Forest tipped his hat to Seamus.
“Mr. Rahill,” he said. “You bring enough thugs?”
“Forest,” my uncle said. “Let’s not make a fuss over this.”
“No, sir. Wouldn’t want no fussing.”
With his hat pressed low on his forehead, my uncle appeared like a monastic highwayman, but he was out of sorts. Anyone could see that. Sure, he carried a gun, but he was a man more inclined to boardrooms than street fights. This was Forest’s turf and my uncle sensed that. It’s why he’d brought along so many gunmen.
Seamus glanced at Jacob. “Should you read the warrant aloud?”
“Ain’t reading it. Just get this done,” Jacob said. “Forest, come on.”
Smoke funneled between the houses, the militiamen shielding their eyes behind handkerchiefs like soldiers during that first gas attack. They gripped their rifles, feeling for their triggers. I wrapped Miss Constance’s strap around my wrist to keep her from slipping into the mud.
Jacob stepped toward us and Forest glanced at Tobias and the other miners, backing them off. He didn’t want to get them killed, not like this. Instead, he stretched out his hands, awaiting Jacob’s handcuffs. I raised Miss Constance, then snapped Forest’s picture.
As Jacob took Forest to the truck, I swerved toward my uncle, who stood proud, a good distance from his prisoner, but I wasn’t interested in Seamus’ picture—I had plenty of those on file. Instead, I focused in on the guards, all those boys in uniform, who’d never left home until they’d been hired on to break strikes, and they were from towns no bigger than New Sligo, and now they looked scared during this, their first taste of war. I then trained Miss Constance on Gertie, snapping the lady Pinkerton’s picture. Behind her stood her two cohorts—Burnsides and Booth—guns in their palms.
As Jacob helped Forest into the truck, the platoon of militiamen and Pinkertons scattered throughout the street. I went to Tobias. “Get her out of here.”
“I was thinking the same,” he said. He put Ruth’s boy in the cart, and then gave Ruth his hand to help her up. I started moving the rest of her boxes into the cart, under the din of screams and gunshots and boots stomping. I thought of Matheson, the boot baron bragging about beating me up. It already seemed like a long time ago, by then.
It wasn’t until the boots were right on me that I bothered to turn around, finding Pinkerton Booth, Billy club raised over his head. I reached out, but I was too slow. The club drove Tobias into the dirt, his limbs sprawled like a man crucified.
I dove into Booth’s legs, the Billy club falling into the mud. Booth hit my back, pushing me into a puddle, filling my lungs with coal water. I gasped, heaving him off of me. I got to my knees, wiped the mud from my eyes. Tobias was still, Ruth holding his head.
Booth pulled out a knife. It shined in the firelight.
“Leave him be,” Jacob said, pointing his revolver at the Pinkerton. “Get up, the both of you.”
The Pinkerton took Gertie’s hand, standing.
“What did I say about stabbing people?” Gertie said.
“Can’t touch a white woman.” Booth still held on to his knife. “Not in this country.”
Burnsides dragged Tobias toward the truck, where he lifted, then pushed the miner in beside Forest. Gertie followed, waving Booth away.
“You’re bad,” she said. “You stay here. I’ll come get you later after you’ve thought about what you’ve done.”
Booth pulle
d the mud from his moustache, while studying my throat. “Try that again.”
I pointed Miss Constance at him, firing.
“Fuck you,” I said.
He gave me his best assassin’s smile.
As the truck carried Forest away, I found Alma Lind beside me. She looked on curiously. “You got to stop picking fights, Jack Johnson,” she said. “We should go.”
She was right. Beneath the volley of intermittent gunfire and within the cascading clouds of smoke, the guards shimmied like scarecrows, their fingers clasping their rifles. Standing in a circle with their backs to one another, they listened to a slow rumble growing louder, as pine ash fell like snow and Rahillville no longer smelled like burnt coal and smelting fumes, but incinerated wood and melting tin.
“Wait a sec,” I told her. I raised Miss Constance at a militiaman, a boy with acne running down his cheeks. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen. “Son, look over here.”
He raised his rifle like an adolescent Pancho Villa, then screamed “Ole!” The other soldiers laughed and a couple of them even raised their own rifles. Everyone had seen too many films, even back then.
More shots fired. A bullet whisked past my shoulder, pinging a tin roof. The bell rang and rang, the fire closing in. The rumble echoed through the cavernous street and I felt it in my boots like the day the French army marched east only to fall prey to my camera. Through the smoke, in all her color, Ruth materialized like a gypsy ghost, petting her son. She seized the cart handle, lifting it onto its wheels, dragging it toward the gate, toward the rumble. Her kerchief fell from her head, disappearing beneath the wagon.
I started toward her, but Alma grabbed my shoulder, stopping me. Her face went hard and she pointed—
From out of the smoke, scores of soot-stained miners stood in soldierly stances gripping makeshift weapons and appearing in a line like medieval knights who’d lost their steeds. Maybe it’s the trick of memory, or maybe it’s because I’ve read their obituaries, but it seems like I knew all of them. There was Joey McKinney, a boy of fourteen who was Cleveland McKinney’s son, and he wore his white communion gown and carried his mother’s hand mirror; and Ray Costas holstered a well handle and wore the same black skullcap he’d got in the Navy for he felt shame over his bald head; and Leon Keenan wore all three of the suit jackets he owned, all brown, all faded at the elbows and he fastened two screwdrivers to his sleeves like he was afraid of falling through thin ice; and the Scott brothers with their identical red beards and their dual cases of consumption held serrated kitchen knives; and Paul Wilkes, at least seventy, the oldest man in the mines, who hadn’t the teeth to chew meat anymore, nevertheless held a pickaxe; and it went on and on: hands gripped coal picks and blackjacks, plungers and hammers, logs and stones, until all the names of all the men I had forgotten fused together as one. I raised Miss Constance and snapped a picture.
“Oh my God,” Alma said.
A scream sent the miners at the guards and a shot sent me to the dirt. I took Alma down, shielding her. Glass exploded, sending shards to my back, my neck. A shot hit the mud before me, blinding me for a moment. Boys screamed. More shots. Pinkerton Booth fired into Leon Keenan; his jackets dulled the bullet’s thump. The acned soldier fell under Joey McKinney’s hand mirror, landing hard on his chest like he’d fallen from the sky.
Rahillville burned. Smoke engulfed the street, turning all but the fattest guards invisible, just shapes shifting in the smoke. The fire seemed close enough to skewer my boots. Soldiers fired into the dark, dropping miners and their kin. A guard tripped on Alma, falling on to me, his rifle firing into the sky. I turned him over, punching him in the neck until he couldn’t breathe. My fist hurt and my hands shook. My shirt was drenched in mud and blood. I looked about, unable to see Alma’s car in the smoke. The fire was closing in from the north. The gates would be manned. I didn’t know how I’d get out.
“Al!”
A burst of color materialized from the black smoke and Ruth sat in the dirt, the leg beneath her right knee shredded, her dress soaked in blood and bone and muscle. She cried out for her son as her mule cart lay in three pieces, her husband’s clothes scattered about the dirt. Paul Wilkes dropped his pickaxe, and then gripped Ruth under her arms, lifting her. I looked at Alma, her mouth covered in dirt, hair matted with blood. She nodded. I went for Ruth.
I stood, a knee thumping my ear. It all went dark.
The firelight woke me, my back hot. The ground spun and I held on to the mud. I was bleeding, but I wasn’t sure how much or from where. Alma pulled me up and I saw that Paul lay atop Ruth’s lap and both were limp with their eyes open and plainly dead.
“Neal.” Alma pointed behind me.
Ruth’s boy, swinging a pan, his face glazed with ash, cried beside the mule cart, so I stood, my balance suspect, Miss Constance’s case swinging from my shoulder and I made my way toward him, skirting a dead militiaman, my boots sinking into the mud, and I picked up the child, heavy like a sack of sand, and saw, nearby, Ruth bent in an unnatural way like she’d been broken then reassembled by a blind man, so I turned the boy around, pushing his face into my coat.
“Stephens.”
Booth leveled his gun, firing. I fell against the mule cart, my back cracking against something hard and blunt. I held onto the boy, but he felt light and wet. When I raised him, his head hung limp and his guts poured out of him and into my hands, my fingers straining the boy like a sieve. I dropped to the ground, my head clouded and my nose filled with smoke and my ears aflame. I pushed the boy beneath the cart, out of the way, like a dead opossum off the road.
When I turned, the Pinkerton had disappeared behind a shield of wood smoke.
“Neal, hurry.” Alma pulled me through the smoke and I lifted her over a dead hog and into Forest’s house. She pushed me behind a wall. The window exploded. Glass fell onto her hair. She swept it away, slicing her hand.
I looked at her, trying to speak, but I kept coughing.
Bullets chipped away at the remaining glass. Through the bedroom window, I saw the fire was only a house or two away. My suit was soaked with the child and I tried to wipe it off. Alma held my shoulder. Blood stained her forehead and her dress was torn. I looked up and down her, searching for bullet holes, but saw none.
“Where’s your car?” I said.
Another explosion shook the ground, this time from the south. She coughed and wheezed. There was nothing left to breathe. I took off my tie and wrapped it around her mouth. A man fell through the door, cracking a floorboard. One of the Scott brothers. He held his shoulder and cried out, pushing and kicking into the house. A man wearing a black suit stopped in the doorway, and fired a shot into the miner. I jumped the shooter, throwing him to the ground. We rolled across the room, stopping beside the furnace. I reached for a weapon, finding a bowl. It was clay and heavy and I swung it into the man’s face and he tumbled off of me. I grabbed his throat and looked in his eyes and saw it was Booth. I squeezed.
Booth’s shoulder jutted up; my arm went limp and I fell to my side. He steadied his knife, but hesitated when an explosion sounded in the room. He keeled to his side, dead. Alma stood in the smoke, holding a revolver.
She handed over Miss Constance’s case, then led me out the back door. I cranked the car engine, the flames nearly on us, and when it turned over, I got in and she gassed it through the smoke, running over chickens and pot holes and blackjacks and rifles until she was beyond the houses and blood and bullets, past the gates, which were now just a mound of smoldering iron, and onto Cleary Highway where she drove west as fast as that car would take us.
—22—
We dumped her gun in a part of the Platte River that ran deep and slow. I didn’t know that section of river existed and I’m sure the gun is still there, rusting into the riverbed. She drove me home; I didn’t give her directions; she knew the way. I tore off my shirtsleeve and wrapped my arm,
then wrapped the other sleeve across my forehead. Nothing hurt yet, but it was momentary and I’d need a bed soon.
When we got to my house, she reached under her seat and pulled out another gun—she seemed to have a stockpile—then told me to stay put. She went inside and stayed there for a minute, and then came out and said it was safe and she helped me inside and over to the sofa. She went back to her car, returning with a bottle of whiskey, a jug of water, bandages, and a sewing kit. I reached for the whiskey.
“It’s for your arm.” She poured the alcohol along the gash.
She took out a spool, then thread the needle. “The cut’s not too deep.”
She sewed my arm and bandaged the cut beneath my eye. She gave me water.
“Thank you.”
She went to the phone. “It’s dead.”
“My father cut the line.”
“Damn fool,” she said.
“Are you hurt at all?”
“Just a bruise or two,” she said. “My ribs are sore, but my head stopped bleeding.”
Fire bells rang from town, the sound traveling across the still lake of the prairie. I thought I could hear the talk of my neighbors, the moans of the wounded, the chants of the miners like they were all sitting in my kitchen, a hungry, tired symphony of sorrow, but that was just the knock on my head because I realize now that I was too far away to hear anything.
A car rolled up the road. She went to the window, the shadow of her gun cutting across the floor.
“Is it snowing hard?”
“It’s ash,” she said. “You can still see the moon.”
I pulled myself upright and looked over at her quick, sure movements and her hard, prisoner eyes and sighed.
“Have you even been to Sweden?”
“Once or twice.”
“Is it Madeline or Mattie? I don’t want to presume.”
“You should sleep.”
“You’re waiting for my father, aren’t you? I waited fifteen years,” I said. “Sometimes he doesn’t come home. He’ll do that to you someday.”
The Trench Angel Page 14