Angels of Destruction

by Keith Donohue

  7

  Try to remember, walk back to when it began. Paul at crack of day, eyes heavy, coffee, oatmeal, stocks and sports, her note on the counter. Childish hand, like his own mother's: “Test today, off early. Remind Mom about staying the night—Erica.” And when Maggie asked, he could not recall the name of the family where she was staying. One of her friends from school, the chewing-gum girl. When pressed for details, he could not picture a face. Exasperated, Margaret went to bed without him. And then the cycle begins, walking through his day, steady stream of patients at his practice, moving from examining room to examining room. A chart. Eyes, ears, throat, say aah, take a deep breath, good, another, so many beating hearts begin to sound alike. A day like every day, people anxious to tell or hide their problems, bodies moving through time, the bright advance, the dark decline. When does it break down, this getting old, when do we rest from our aging?

  Paul sat in the darkened living room counting remembered patients, hours after his wife had fallen asleep. Like sheep, children by the dozens, earaches passed among classmates, or sibling to sibling, a river of bacteria. One punctured eardrum as rank as death. Baby with colic, young mother worn and jumpy. Fear for that child, that woman. He remembered a boy who every semester came to school all black and blue, bruised as overripe fruit. The father and mother taking turns. The nuns who brought him in wanted the parents arrested but those days were so different. Farmer with shingles, a constellation on his back. Salesman who could not outtalk cigarettes. Mrs. Day and her migraines and nightmares. Miss Jankowski: this small lump, here doctor, feel it. Nothing more than a milk gland, but still, a referral to ease her mind. Breast no bigger than an apricot. Eve Fallon worried that she was infertile, trying for years, frightened that he might leave if they don't get that baby so long awaited. Arthritic woman his own age, nothing to be done, the inevitable. And I seem to be forgetting the simplest things, he says to himself, but not the past. Just the other day he thought, for the first time in decades, of the playhouse in the woods where his sister Janie and he would hide and use the doll's china dishes. Pinecones and needles on the plates, water drawn from a cold stream and served in fragile porcelain cups small as thimbles. And he could easily call up the face of a little girl dying in Japan at the end of the war. But where have I put my glasses, the keys, the grocery list, my new friend's name? Where have I put my mind?

  His own father, born of another, more stalwart century, spent most of his life clenched and stoic, but the end, the end in madness. Senility. Did not recognize anyone in the last days, brothers and sisters around the bed, the June birds singing at daybreak, look of sheer terror at the strangers in his room. His own children. Am I going this way?

  Paul could not remember what his daughter had said. I'll be spending the night tomorrow at… what was the name? A color, yes. Red, no, nobody's last name is Red. Brown? White? Black? Try to form her face as she says it. Nothing but a jaw working the chewing gum. Sometimes he cannot remember what Erica looks like as a teenage girl, cannot reconstruct her features in the haze of his imagination. How long had it been since he had really looked and taken in all the changes, the woman she was becoming? Much better when they are young, when love is so much clearer. Too hard these days, and it comes back to him, her head bent, lifting, hair parting, her eyes, her smile. Had she smiled at him when she said the name? Yes, Green. Joyce Green, that's it. He uncapped his fountain pen and wrote the name on a prescription pad so that he would remember it in the morning and not forget to tell Margaret. Must talk with Erica when she comes home, about the boy, maybe I am being too harsh.

  The windows rattled. He pried himself from the easy chair and went to look out, peering past his reflection at the waxing quarter moon floating in the cloudy sky. A cold front had been promised, and here it was, pushing high winds ahead, bending treetops and scattering leaves. “Hold on to your feathers,” he said, just as he had repeated for so many years when the wind blew up in Erica's company. Not lately, but when she was young, she would laugh each time, neither of them certain of the maxim's meaning or significance. He could see her now, in his arms a child of two or three, the happy surprise of the wind startling her as she breathed it in, the flushed cheeks, delight in her eyes, and she burying her face in the crook of his neck. “Hold on to your feathers,” he said, “or you will fly away.” Paul Quinn took one last look at the moon, the stars, and the streaming clouds before climbing the stairs one by one to his bed.

  8

  In the parking lot of Bearden High School in west Knoxville, they watched the juniors and seniors drive back from lunch. Wiley had already switched their Pennsylvania tags with a set from Tennessee, which he held in his lap, tapping his nails against the raised metal letters. They waited for some student to make a mistake. From the passenger seat, Erica noticed the boys in their Bulldog jackets, the girls neat and perfect, walking like fashion models back to their classes. Or gaggles of friends excitedly sharing the latest gossip, goofballs horsing around, hoods smoking joints or cigarettes. A pair roared in on a motorcycle, the boy in black leather, the girl's long brown hair trailing like a horsetail.

  “Look at them,” Wiley said. “Clueless rich kids.”

  “I remember the first time I saw you in high school. Squirt, always had your head in a book.”

  “Come the day, they won't be ready.”

  “What'd they call you? Little Mao? ‘Dare to struggle, dare to win.’ “

  His shoulders sank, and his expression darkened.

  “You're not upset, are you? ‘Cause look at you now. Big strong man.” She wrapped her fingers around his biceps and waited for the anger to pass. The traffic slowed to a few stragglers, the last of these a blue and white Plymouth Duster that inched into the space fronting their car. “You've got to time this right,” Erica said. “Not before she gets out, not after she closes the door, but just as she steps out.”

  He honked the horn, startling the driver exiting her car—a teenage girl in a denim vest and white peasant blouse, beads spangling to her navel—who froze when Erica pushed open her own door. “Hey there. I'm Nancy. Nancy Perry.” Erica came around, stopped at the bumper, flashed the peace sign.

  The girl let go of the door and took three steps in their direction, intrigued by the sudden disruption of her routine. Peering over the top of her sunglasses, she moved forward, bell-bottoms dragging along the asphalt, the eagle feathers that hung from her belt stirring with each step. “Nancy Perry?” Despite her uncertainty, the girl let Erica approach. She jumped nervously when the driver's door clicked open, and Wiley stepped from the car, grinning and showing her his teeth. His appearance must have spooked her, for she tensed for flight.

  “My boyfriend,” Erica said. “He's a freshman at Tennessee.”

  “Looks like you're the last one back from lunch. No hurry to get to class?”

  “Gym,” she said, and shrugged her shoulders.

  He was nearly upon them both. “Hey, nice belt.”

  The girl blushed, bowed her head.

  “I haven't seen you around,” Erica said. “Thought I knew all the cool kids.”

  She shielded her eyes and tried to remember if she had seen them before. “I kinda keep to myself.”

  “Oh really?” Wiley moved closer. “What's a girl like you doing all by yourself?” He reached out and flicked at a feather on her belt. “Maybe you want to come for a ride with us, angel?”

  The invitation surprised all three of them. For a moment, the bo-hemian girl mulled the offer, her eyes glistening as she ran through its connotations, wicked with excitement, but then she looked away to the building. Erica waited for the answer too, wondering at his intent, and when the girl waved shyly and went on her way, relief replaced anxiety. “See you in school,” she hollered after her. Once the girl was out of sight, Erica smacked Wiley on the shoulder and arched her eyebrows.

  “Never mind that,” he said. “It worked, didn't it? Scared so stiff, she forgot to lock the door. I'll see if I can get it s
tarted.”

  In their glove compartment, there were a dozen yellowed mimeographed sheets emblazoned with the AOD logo: “How to deal with the Pigs,” “How to free the Masses from American Imperialism,” “How to beat Big Business,” “How to buy a Gun under an Unassumed Name,” “How to hot wire a Car.” Wiley unfolded the page, and by the time Erica had screwed on the new plates, he had brought the Duster to life, popping up behind the steering wheel full of unbridled pride. They wrapped the guns in the Steelers blanket and threw them in the back with their gear, and then took off to find the western highway. In the ashtray were a half dozen joints, which they lit up and smoked one after another, leaving Knoxville behind in a reefer cloud.

  They spent the night in a ten-dollar motel near Nashville, where the night manager begged them to listen to his latest song, crooning sad lyrics and strumming an out-of-tune guitar, painted cobalt with a dozen flaking white stars. Everyone had a dream to sell, some story about what had gone wrong. The man with the blue guitar reminded Erica of her long-gone Pap, her mother's father, who used to strum an old ukulele and make up ditties for her delight. She had not thought of him since he passed away, when she was nine.

  Thrilled by the first of their crimes, Wiley was a terror in bed, starting up again just as she began to doze, and a third time after that, which left them famished and light-headed near midnight. She pushed her foot against his bare back. “Get us something to eat, would you? Something real. A burger and a shake.” He rolled over and lifted his eyelids to see her stretched out naked as a concubine on a seraglio couch. “Chocolate,” she said.

  From the moment the flimsy door banged shut behind Wiley, Erica savored the quiet and her privacy. She picked up his dirty socks and underwear, threw them in the sink with a dollop of lavender shampoo, and washed as best she could, wringing out the clothes and hanging them from the shower-curtain rod. His white briefs reminded her of holiday bunting. The domestic ritual brought an ease to her thoughts; she hummed a few bars from “Get Down Tonight” and waggled her hips in time. He hated that kind of pop disco, but she liked to secretly dance to its insistent rhythms. The song was company, but not enough. Tired of her own voice, she clicked on the television and lay on the rumpled bed.

  Some old movie in black and white, all shadows and crazy angles, quick crosscut shots of men looking for someone: a man runs through a series of dark tunnels, a storm drain beneath city streets. The police are chasing him, shots are exchanged. Wet down there. Like a cornered animal, he looks fearful and desperate. Disembodied German voices echo from all sides. A staircase appears at his shoulder, and he looks up to freedom, climbing as fast as he can—is he shot?—till he reaches a grate above his head. Pushes but it stays stuck, and then on the darkened street, a miasma of mist and shades of cold gray. A wind howls. His hands unclench from the iron grid, fingers emerge through the holes, stretching, reaching for the salvation that will not come. Mere hands reveal the heart.

  Outside, a car pulled into the gravel parking lot, diverting her from the story, so she went to the window, fussed with the double curtains to peer into the night. A man emerged from the car, lurched as he stood, then staggered right to her window. Through the glass, he looked straight into her eyes. Old enough to be her father, but younger than the real thing. A shot rang out from the movie, distracting her for an instant, and then the man at the window had disintegrated. She checked again the bolted door, the latched chain. Heart pounding, Erica slid into bed and tried to refocus on the movie.

  Two men ride in an open jeep, chatting amiably, and pass by a stylish young woman who refuses to acknowledge them.

  “Let me out.”

  “There's not time,” the man in uniform says.

  “One can't just leave. Please.”

  The driver stops. “Be sensible, Martins.”

  As the man grabs his suitcase and leaves the jeep, he says, “I haven't got a sensible name, Calloway”

  A sensible name, Erica thought, and laughed over her inspired choice of Nancy Perry. The girl in the high school parking lot had no clue that the real Nancy Perry was martyred for the cause in a shoot-out with the police in Oakland, California.

  Martins leans in a nonchalant manner against a cart parked by the road to wait for her. The camera locks on the approaching woman, cool and elegant and beautiful, walking along a gallery boulevard lined with glorious leafy trees. Crazy music begins to play and Erica wonders what on earth can make such a weird noise, somewhere between a harp and guitar but with vibrato. Angels on acid. The man waits and waits. The woman walks by, passes him, walks on without even glancing in his direction; she wants nothing to do with him. Walks past him, right past the camera, and out of his life, and he just stands there and watches her go, that mad music the only sound till he flicks away a match, and then “The End” in white letters on black.

  Daddy would have known what that music was, would have told her all the trivia connected to the film, the other movies the actors appeared in, the name of the man with the expressive hands, and the meaning of it all. Too late. Suddenly cold, she pulled the blanket over her legs. Had she the courage to ask her father, he might have explained, too, the reason behind Wiley's invitation to the girl back at the high school. Come along for a ride. The thought of another creature in their bed swept over her like a winter storm, and the room began to shrink and close in on her. She turned on all the lights. The wet clothes in the bathroom dripped against the porcelain tub. That drunk would be coming any minute now to burst through the locks and chains to abduct her. She plucked out a thread from the covers, unraveled a stitch. Mother will be furious. Leaping from the bed, she pressed her ear against the door to listen for footsteps.

  9

  As he tucked the pistol in his waistband, Wiley flinched when the cold barrel brushed against his bare skin. Careful to leave the car door unlocked, he crossed the empty parking lot to the restaurant, adjusting his gait so that the gun would not slip to the ground or peek out from behind his denim jacket. A bell tinkled when he opened the door, and the clerk behind the counter glanced up from his paperwork and nodded. The menu along the wall displayed a raft of choices, but Wiley kept his head down as he approached and did not look at the man, focusing instead on the handle of the pistol bulging against his jeans. “Two burgers, no, make it three. And a large fry.”

  The clerk, a thin white man with a regular boy's haircut, sighed and straightened his stack of papers, taking time to staple a cash register tape to the topmost page. “We're closing.”

  “Sign outside says open to midnight, and by my watch, that's another ten minutes.”

  The man glanced over his shoulder at the leftover items on the warming rack. Wiley followed his gaze, spying through the service opening another employee, a young black man in a white apron, intent on scraping the flat grill. “Looks like your lucky day,” the counterman said. “How about a ham and cheese, a junior roast beef, and two fries? I'll charge you the same.”

  “You serve plain hamburgers, don't you? I mean, fella comes into your establishment should be able to order anything off the menu, as long as you're open. That's your business, right?”

  The counterman leaned forward, his lank hair falling across his brow. He looked older, maybe late twenties, wrinkles foreshadowed around the eyes, with the kind of pallor that comes from too much time under fluorescent light. “Listen, bud,” he said. “We're out of cheeseburgers. Now, I can give you what we have, or you can just split and go somewheres else. There's a McDonald's up the highway, may be open if you hurry.”

  “I was just saying—”

  “You want what we got, or not?” The man raised his voice, and from the kitchen, the cook wiped his hands on the apron and marched toward the front, disappearing from Wiley's view for an instant, then crashed through the swinging doors, glowering.

  “Sure, sure,” Wiley said. “I'll take whatever you got.” He laid a five-dollar bill on the counter, and the cook and counterman grinned simultaneously at some inside joke
. Wiley took the bag of food and his change and started to leave, then remembering, he turned on his heels. “Oh yeah. Two large shakes. Chocolate.”

  “Shake machine's closed,” the cook said.

  “We're closed,” the counterman said. “Why don't you go on now?”

  Wiley approached them, face red with anger. “Look, man, all I want is—” He flinched when the cook slapped his hands upon the Formica. “My girlfriend had her heart set on a chocolate shake.”

  “Ain't that funny, Carl,” the counterman said. “Girlie boy says he has a girlfriend.”

  No conscious choice registered in the seconds it took to put down the bag and draw the pistol; rather, the movement, which he had practiced so often in the mirror, was accompanied by a strong sense of déjà vu. The gun leapt into his hand. The two men behind the counter, surprised as Wiley, did not know what to think or how to react other than to twitch in recognition that they, too, had been in this scene before, played out in their imaginations, and could remember what to do: when the bad guy pulls a piece you reach for the sky, like in a cartoon, and that is how they found themselves, hands in the air, a pistol waving madly back and forth between them, waiting for their cue, hoping he would not shoot. But he did not speak, this long-haired boy with fury in his eyes. He seemed stunned, too, by the suddenness of the moment and the dangerous act. They waited, mumbling prayers.

  He debated which one to shoot first. If the counterman, the cook might panic and jump him, and from his size and demeanor he appeared the tougher of the two and more likely to make a move and perhaps disarm him. Of course if he shot them both, no one would know which had been killed first, although the sequence would matter in his own conscience. He imagined the pull of the trigger, the flash, the bullet through the brain leaving a clean hole in the skull, and then the body's surprised collapse. Then the other one—he had decided by then that the counterman would go second—the other man would cry out in shock and have an instant's panic before he, too, would snap alert at the report of the pistol and flinch as his soul flew homeward. A cool trickle of sweat ran down his spine.