Surrender (19 page)

The sight halted me. The streaked walls, the splattered floor, the ruby beads dropping insistently from the table to a chair. I considered the scene, chewing a nail. I opened a cupboard and rummaged through an array of cleaning fluids. From the laundry I fetched a mop and bucket.

Afterward I had to lie down on the couch. I felt tired and full of old sorrow. The harsh cleaning liquids had scalded my hands. I had opened the windows to let out the smell and from where I lay on the couch I could hear the kitchen’s blinds tremble and clatter with the breeze. Toward evening the telephone rang but I didn’t answer it, having nothing to say.

I may have slept; I’d been awake a long time. Since Dockie May had knocked on the door at dawn.

When night arrived and the air, though warm, was much cooler, I took a torch and went out to the shed in search of the mattock and shovel. The mattock, in particular, was vital — only it could reliably break the ground.

Even so, it was draining, digging a hole.

I took a sheet from the linen-press and used this as a shroud. I wept as I pushed the earth on top of him.

When I was finished, it was well after midnight. My work was far from done.

My father’s preference for heavyset vehicles proved a blessing — the boot of the car easily held the gardening tools and other items. I worked in darkness, struggling alone, cursing, and it was hard work. Eventually, though, everything was packed. I had taken more sheets from the linen-press. Mother would have been furious.

I started the engine, hoping Mulyan slept tight. I debated whether or not to turn on the headlights — the need for secrecy seemed to suggest not. In the end I left them off until I’d passed the sign that said
Welcome to Mulyan, population 2014
, and had turned the car toward the forest, to the dark and unfindable unknown.

Then the next day, of course, everything went wrong. There was banging and banging on the front door and I’d dragged myself down the hall before I knew where I was or what I was doing — and when I slid back the bolt there stood Constable McIllwraith, spruce as a daisy. “Anwell!” he said.

I squinted at him. Daylight made him radiant. “Good morning, Mr. McIllwraith.”

“Good afternoon, you mean.”

I shrugged and smiled. I meant nothing.

“I just wanted to check that you’re all right.”

“. . . All right?”

“After yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

“That business at Evangeline’s house.” The Constable shuffled. “That can’t have been pleasant for you.”

I thought about it. “No,” I agreed. “But I’ve known worse.”

I laughed, rattly as an old cage. McIllwraith looked curiously at me. I looked at myself. My fingers, which curled around the edge of the door, were strawberry-black with yesterday’s blood. The policeman asked, “Are your parents home, Anwell?”

I didn’t reply. I just sighed and held the door open and let him come inside.

McIllwraith went through the house, searched the rooms, crouched to inspect cracks in the linoleum and asked question after question. I hung back, trying to be helpful. Finally he said, “You have to come with me, Anwell.”

“Where to?”

“Somewhere you’ll be safe. Somewhere away from here. Somewhere you can rest.”

“Rest?” I said. “What for? I’m not ill.”

But that was four years ago, and they told me for so long that I’m ill that now, indeed, I am. They put me in this small white room and brought Sarah here to care for me and I’ve been waiting ever since: waiting for Finnigan to crash through the ceiling, waiting for the bones to rise. Waiting for Evangeline to remember our friendship, but she never has.

Not a word of it makes me blink. Another time I might have savored the details; now, I’m impatient to get to the end. First, though, there’s something I have to say. “That damn McIllwraith, that traitor. After everything we did for him.” I think of him lying on the floor of his loungeroom, growing cold and stiff now, the flames guttered in the fireplace, the perfume gone from the air. “He should have minded his own business.”

The angel’s looking dreamy at the ceiling. “He used to give us cake. Remember? When we went to the station and told him where the vigilantes were going. He’d give me a slice of cake.”

I ignore these ramblings. I’m thinking about the blood in the cracks of the lino floor. “
Why
did you do it?” I ask, and what I mean is not
why
, but
why then?
I know
why
. The question is why not sooner.

He speaks like wood: “There was nothing left to lose.”

I nod at this, like I care. There must be an edge for everyone, over which it’s possible to be pushed. My angel’s pride had been trampled, his endurance worn thin. A small town is nothing but eyes and gaping maw; it pecks at its own like a flock of vicious birds. The angel must have felt cornered as a fox in a woodpile. Speaking of hiding: “You should have asked for my help. The forest’s my friend. If I had given it something to hide, the forest would have kept it hidden. It wouldn’t have let the rain wash away the dirt. Only moths and bats would’ve known the bones were there.”

Gabriel smiles glassily; he’s pondering his hands. He coughs unexpectedly and I think we’re going to be delayed forever while he splutters and gags. I glare, and after a short while he manages to control himself. He breathes infirmly, wipes his chin on his shoulder. His blue gaze stalks the bed to me. “You’ll remember the circumstances,” he says, lordly as a king. “I didn’t think you’d oblige, if I asked you for help.”

I shrug, unruffled — I remember. I remember standing in the forest with Surrender at my heels and the angel staggering off through the trees, tilting like a gravestone. I remember thinking,
You’ll regret this
. “Listen!” I bark;I resent his accusatory tone. “You’re in trouble, Gabriel. The bones are found. The police are coming — they’re already on their way.”

I shut my mouth with a snap: I frown at him, he looks at his hands. “Yes,” he says eventually, as if we’re talking about the weather.

I refrain from tearing at my hair. Dignified as a river I say, “They’ll want to hear your version of events. If you’re not careful, they might decide this nice little room is too nice for you.”

He smiles again, gives a short hitched laugh. I peer across the blanket tundra, trying to get under his skin. I hear the wheeze in-and-out from his lungs. His lungs are dark and dripping as ancient dungeon cells. I squeeze the bed frame so fiercely it bends, say, “I know why you’re dying, Gabriel.”

He looks at me with shards of curiosity.

“You’d rather die than live with everything that’s happened. The hatchet. The humiliation.”

Still he looks at me like I’m something in a jar. I wait for him to reply — he doesn’t. Rancorously I suggest, “You’re hoping they’ll take pity on a dying boy. You’re trying to look like butter wouldn’t melt.”

He asks, “And would it?”

I clamp my teeth. I crush the bed. I stare at the wall until I am calm. I won’t let him win. Finally, after minutes, I can look at him. I edge nearer; the bed creaks.

“You can stop dying now, Gabriel. There’s no need for you to die. I’m your friend, like I always said — even when you didn’t believe me. Now I’ve come to save you.”

He watches me, asks, “How?”

I say nothing, letting him hang. Then I lean closer, slinky as a cat. “Blame McIllwraith,” I say. “Tell them
he
did it. He had reason. Your father tormented him for years. The whole of Mulyan witnessed it. No one could deny that old Maccy had the motive. And — I promise you — he won’t be able to say a word.”

I sit back, confident; the angel looks at me. Even in the gloom I see my eyes in his own. A muffled sound treads past the door, someone restless in slippers: we hold a cautious silence as the noise slides down the hall.

The bed isn’t warm, this close to him.

“But McIllwraith is our friend.”

“He was treacherous at the end.”

“He did what he had to do.”

“Just
saying
it won’t hurt him.”

“He’s been a truer friend to me —”

“He won’t be hurt! Aren’t you listening!”

“— than you have ever been.”

I stare steelishly at him. “I’m trying to help you,” I growl. “That’s all I’ve ever done. That’s what I’m here for — I’ve told you before. You’ve never understood.”

“There’s a word for your kind of help,” he replies.

I smile bitterly; I won’t be drawn. There’s no time for sticks and stones. I look away, take my image from his eyes. We’re different, me and he. I am stone and timber; he is water and feather. It charms me, how frail he is, but it also aggravates me. I won’t tolerate his willful expiring. If he dies or does anything, it will be when I say he can. “Agree, Gabriel,” I order. “They’ll be here soon. There isn’t time to muck around.”

Abruptly he throws into my mind an image of a mongoose and cobra. “I like your plan,” the angel says tranquilly. “It might have worked, too. McIllwraith would be another victim, but what would that matter, when there’s been so many? What difference just one more? But the thing is — you guessed wrong, Finnigan. I’m not dying from shame or for sympathy or to forget what I’ve done. None of that matters to me. I’m dying to kill you.”

He pins me with his mongoose eyes: it’s exactly as I feared.

I thought it would be difficult, even impossible, to will oneself to die; I’ve discovered that it’s not. The body is a faithful servant: it knows when it’s not wanted. There’s nothing wrong with me — nothing found in a textbook, anyway. My illness comes from the time of chivalry and towers, of armor and sunken swords. It’s a close relation to the fatally broken heart. Life is a skittish sprite — but it can be caught and tied down. It can be muzzled and deprived until its light begins to fade.

I have said,
My will be done
.

I feel no regret. Why would I? Angels are remorseless. We have one-track minds.

Finnigan is pacing the room. He is agitated. I can hear his thoughts scrabble over rocky terrain, trying to discover where he took a wrong turn. His hair is shabby as wolf’s pelt; his stolen clothes don’t fit. A smell rises from him — tree sap, algae. His bare heels squeak on the floor when he turns.
“Why?”
he asks plaintively. “Why would you do that? I’ve been such a
good
friend — what have I done wrong?”

I can tell he isn’t genuinely confused — the serpentine master of the dodge and weave, he is trying to trick or trip me. A moment of uncertainty is all he needs, to plunge under my skin. But if he wants to know, I’ll tell him.

“You remember that last afternoon, when I knelt on the floor in Evangeline’s room? You remember the disturbance to the party — the voices, the interruption, the music turning down?”

“. . . Time’s ticking, Gabriel.”

“I thought it was you. When I heard footsteps coming, I thought it was you. When the door opened, I thought it was you. I’d never known such terror; my heart never beat so hard. And when I saw it was my mother,
not you
— it was a relief. I was more afraid of you than of her. And I hadn’t thought it was possible, Finnigan, to fear someone more than I feared her. It was, though — it was you. After that I started to wonder what good you are, if any. After that, I started to see that you shouldn’t be here.”

He stands motionless, gray as stone. The noise from outside is quieter now. No car sweeps by on the wet winter road and no frigid wind, ballasted with snow, wrestles in the chimney. For a moment there’s peace, a gravid pause. Flatly he says, “But it wasn’t me.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does. It wasn’t me at the door.”

I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter.”

He seems to spangle with rage. “You’re killing me for something I didn’t do!”

I will not be drawn. He understands perfectly why this must happen — after all, he is the spruiker of fear. He is the shadow in the cupboard and the whisper in the wall. Fear is Finnigan’s currency, his daily wine and bread. Now he’s made the mortal error of drowning himself in it. “I can’t live in terror of you,” I say.

“You shit,” he snarls.

I’m serene. “You always underestimated me. You thought you made me harmless when you gave angelhood to me. You forgot that some angels are warriors. Where there’s warriors, there’s war. I will fight to the death. It’s my duty. I am not afraid.”