Archangel (21 page)

In his frustration, he picked up a stick and whacked the fire, sending shreds of ember up into the trees. He raised his head to watch them and saw pine branches shimmering like copper above him. If I could only get to Mr. Mackenzie, he thought, I could explain it to him and he would understand. Mr. Mackenzie is fair. He’s a straight dealer. People will do what he says. He had never met Mackenzie before, but knew he was the most influential man in town. This was
Hazard’s only plan. As soon as it grew light, he would make his way to the mill and plead his case to the man who had everyone’s respect.

He didn’t hear Barnegat behind him. All he heard was the thump of the rifle butt striking the back of his head and the pain that closed around his face as if someone had put his hands in front of his eyes. He pitched forward into the fire and embers fell into his mouth.

Then a hand grabbed the material of his coat and yanked him from the blinding light and pain. Hazard smelled the bitter reek of his own torched hair. Burns laid raw his cheeks and lips and forehead. A man was standing over him. Hazard couldn’t see who it was, but he could see the raised gun, the brass butt plate aimed at his face. He tried to talk but couldn’t. His mouth was filled with blood.

“Time’s up,” the man said.

Hazard felt the slam of the rifle into his chin and blacked out. He couldn’t tell how long. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of seconds. When he opened his eyes, he saw he was still by the fire. Scrabbling through Hazard’s pain came the knowledge that this man was trying to kill him. He rolled over and began to crawl away. A gurgling moan pushed itself out of his throat. Then his legs were yanked out from under him and his nose hit the dirt and he felt pine needles digging into the opened flesh of his burns.

“I got him!” Barnegat yelled. He dragged Hazard a few feet back toward the fire, then stopped and rolled the man over with his boot. He shoved the barrel of the gun in Hazard’s face. “I swear to God, the only thing stopping me from killing you right now is I don’t even know what. You even fucking talk to me and I’ll shoot you.” Then Barnegat undid the top of Hazard’s rucksack, which was still strapped to his back, and began to empty out the hammers and small nails and newspaper-wrapped mason jars that Hazard had stored inside. “Look at all this shit!” He smashed the mason jars one after the other on top of Hazard’s head, hearing the glass break inside the paper wrapping. “What the hell got into you, boy? Didn’t your loopy fucking mama teach you any better? What did Pfeiffer ever do to deserve what you did to him? And worse than that, you could have fucking killed
me
!” He kicked Hazard in the stomach, feeling the man curl up around the blow. Then Barnegat shouldered his rifle, knowing there would be no more trouble from Hazard. He took hold of Hazard’s legs and dragged him back toward the tracks.

Frampton stood with his gun ready, wishing now that he had volunteered to go in Barnegat’s place.

“Look at this fuck!” Barnegat dragged Hazard the last few feet up the embankment and then dumped him on the tracks. He wiped the sweat off his face. “Fucking short-order cook!” He felt unstoppable. Part of him wished that Frampton would fight him now, because he would kill the old man with his bare hands.

Hazard rose up to his hands and knees. His head lolled down and he spat. His lips moved and he began to whisper.

“He’s saying something.” Frampton bent down, hands on his knees. “What are you saying, Mister?” He had drunk the last of the schnapps and felt the first flickers of uncontrollable anger igniting in his chest. He wanted to do something he could brag about later.

“I can explain,” Hazard whispered. His stomach felt loose and heavy, as if something had ruptured inside him. “It wasn’t me. I swear.”

“Don’t listen to him.” Barnegat shoved Frampton out of the way.

“Don’t push me!” Frampton walked up close to Barnegat. He had an inkling that Barnegat meant to keep all the reward money, which was what he would have done himself if he could have come up with half an excuse. “Don’t you push me, Barnegat!”

Barnegat stared at Frampton. Just give me an excuse, Barnegat was thinking. Just say something and watch what happens, you roly-poly motherfucker.

Hazard rose unsteadily to his feet. He tottered, hands held in front of him because he could barely see from under his swollen eyelids.

Frampton stood before Barnegat a moment longer. His lower lip began to curl. Then he wheeled around and knocked Hazard over with a swipe from his heavy boot.

Hazard rolled down the embankment, the sharp gravel digging into his palms and knees, and splashed into the oily ditch water. For a moment, he just floated. It seemed suddenly clear to him that he would never reach town alive. He had seen the guns they carried. He had heard the anger in their voices. There would never be a chance to explain. He knew that if he didn’t run now, he would die. While the two men were still shouting at each other, he slipped as quietly as he could through the reeds. When he reached dry ground, he stood,
holding his hand to his stomach, and began to run. The light of his fire still shimmered in the distance. He ran at an angle to the flames, so the two men wouldn’t see his silhouette. The looseness in his guts was agony.

It was only a few seconds before Frampton noticed that the water in the ditch seemed much too still. He didn’t wait. He lunged down the bank. His hips complained in sharp grinding jabs halfway up his back. The second he landed in the water, he knew that Hazard was gone. He swished his hands through the water and felt nothing but the pine needles that glued themselves to the tops of his hands and his wrists. He thrashed through the reeds and walked onto dry ground, then heard Hazard’s footsteps, irregular and plodding in the distance.

“What’s going on?” Barnegat called down from the tracks.

Without replying, Frampton ran after Hazard. He knew he could make up for not volunteering earlier and now with Hazard beaten up so badly, there wouldn’t be any more fight left in the man.

“What the hell’s going on?” Barnegat’s voice echoed through the trees.

Frampton sprinted after Hazard’s dark and hunchbacked shape. He could hear the pain in Hazard’s voice each time he took a breath.

Hazard knew he was being followed, but he couldn’t go any faster. There was too much pain.

“Stop,” Frampton wheezed at the bobbing shadow ahead of him. “Make it easy on yourself.” He was gaining on Hazard now.

The trees were getting thicker. Branches lashed at Hazard’s eyes. He heard the old man’s whispering close behind. His lungs blazed as if they had been filled with embers. He could not go on.

“Stop.” The whisper rushed past Hazard’s ears.

And suddenly he did stop. He wheeled around and drew back the heel of his palm and smashed it into Frampton’s nose before the old man had time to slow down.

Frampton fell wide-eyed onto his back. He had no idea what had happened. One second he seemed to have Hazard almost in his grasp and suddenly here he was looking up at the blurry sky and blood was leaking down the back of his throat. Over the rattle of his own half-choked breath, he heard Hazard running away.

“Billy?” It was Barnegat. “Billy, where are you?”

Slowly, Frampton raised one hand and touched it to his face. He felt the bulbous lump which had taken the place of his sharp, birdlike nose. He spat blood off his lips and breathed in and howled, “He killed me!”

Barnegat came running. He found Frampton on his back and lifted him into a sitting position.

“He killed me!” Frampton wailed and gripped Barnegat’s shoulders, as if they held him at the edge of life itself. He heard the familiar
clink-switch
of a Zippo lighter being opened and struck and then by the oily fire’s light he saw Barnegat.

“It’s not so bad. I think it’s just your nose.”

Frampton could smell the metallic peppermint schnapps on Barnegat’s breath. “Not bad for you, maybe!”

Barnegat stood over him, staring into the dark. He knew they wouldn’t find Hazard now. He imagined hundred-dollar bills sifting through his fingers as if blown by a great wind and fluttering away, completely lost across the wilderness. He had never been so angry and so sick with disappointment. For the first time in his life, he had envisioned money whose earning he could not check off on a watch as hourly wages. Each minute of his normal life had a dollar value. The value climbed with such miserable slowness over the years that he could no longer bear to calculate how much sweat he put into the slow drag of every minute passing. It wasn’t even that the money would have changed his life. Ten thousand was a lot, but not enough to let him quit his job. What the money meant to him was the chance to see his life differently, even if only for a while. Now he looked down on half-drunk Frampton and had to stop himself from the short, precise movements of chambering bullets in his gun and blowing off the old man’s head.

The next morning, the two men sat in orange plastic chairs at the police station, while Dodge made out his report. Frampton’s face was obscured by white bandages. The corners of his eyes showed purple-yellow bruises and his lips were scabbed and split. He also had a hangover. Schnapps always did this to him. He felt as if his brain had been squeezed like a sponge. Barnegat showed no sign of change. His
black watch cap was pulled down over his ears. He was gnawing on a toothpick which he had taken from a dispenser at the cash register of the Four Seasons. He switched it violently from one side of his mouth to the other.

“I’m a little stuck here, gentlemen.” Dodge’s voice was low and even. His patience had worn thin. “You say you went looking for him and
he
ambushed
you
?”

“That’s right.” Frampton’s voice was a plugged nasal hum.

“Why wouldn’t he just let you walk by?”

“Because he’s crazy. He’s a murderer.” It hurt Frampton to speak, each word another corkscrew twist into his hungover skull. But he had to talk. It was his fault that Hazard got away, since he’d kicked him into the ditch. The more distance and blame he put between himself and last night, the safer he would feel. “He’s Mary’s son. What else do you need to know?”

“Shut up, Billy.” It was Barnegat.

“You guys found him first, didn’t you?” Dodge shoved his typewriter out of the way. He would have to retype the whole report anyway once he found out the truth of what happened. “Did you ask him if he was the one who had spiked the tree?”

“Of course we didn’t ask him.” Barnegat sat back and thumped his shoulders against the wall.

“So how do you know it was him?”

“Because of all that stuff he was carrying! Because he didn’t stop when you told him to!”

“You beat the shit out of him, didn’t you?”

“Look what he did to me!” Frampton held his hands up beside his head.

“But only because he thought you were trying to kill him, right?” Dodge leaned forward across the desk. His face was creased with disgust. “Am I right?”

“The way we see it …” Frampton moved as if to stand. He felt the time had come to make a speech, although he didn’t know what he would say.

“Get out.” Dodge heaved his typewriter back to its original position.

Barnegat stood. “What are you going to do?”

“Go in there and find him myself if I have to.” Dodge wound a piece of paper into the typewriter. “Do you have any idea how hard that’s going to be now?”

“I should get that ten thousand dollars.” Barnegat didn’t care if it sounded like a threat.

“You should be going to prison for assault, Barnegat. And if Hazard presses charges, you
will
go.” Dodge waited calmly for Barnegat’s next move.

Barnegat walked out into the dusty parking lot. Frampton shuffled in his footsteps.

Dodge tried to keep typing, but he couldn’t see the keys. Instead, all he could see was an image of Wilbur Hazard cowering alone and in pain, out there somewhere in the wilderness.

Wilbur Hazard sat cross-legged on the dirt floor of his half-completed cabin and wept. Sunlight filtering down through the trees made beams through the mason-jar window. His eyes were swollen almost shut and everything he saw was obscured in the mesh of his eyelashes. The pain in his gut was a steady thumping nausea. He knew he needed a doctor. When he ran his nervous fingers across his stomach, he could feel bulges of torn muscle deep under the skin.