Last Angel Page 12

  A sign up ahead indicated a change of routes for Idaho. A small B-road.

  The road behind him was empty. Gabriel veered off without indicating, passing between a canopy of dark trees. It was unnerving, the way the overhead branches swept lower, sometimes scraping against the steel roof. He was grateful when the trees gave way to the moon-bleached fields and rocky hills.

  It ought to be raining, he thought, taking a left at the first crossroads and rejoining the highway.

  Gradually his head filled with memories, a layer of the senses, memories of good days spent behind the wheel of the Black Hawk, Sammy sticking his head out of the window and laughing infectiously as the wind rifled his hair, Francesca in the passenger seat clinging onto his waist for fear the boy might sprout wings and fly, fly away like the angel he was.

  It really ought to be raining.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  A whirlpool of dead leaves skittered down the centre of the quiet track, twisting and skipping on the rutted gravel. A crumpled sheet of old news took flight before the car, cavorting with the leaves before being thrown into higher air, up over the roof and away. A red sun was poking through the fissures of cloud, revealing row after row of bleeding, blunted crops and painting gory slashes across the firmament of sky.

  The sight of the sun’s bleak progress behind the black silhouettes of gnarled boughs, shrunken limbs and defoliated fingers renewed Gabriel’s feeling of anxiety; as if the Sun God’s fiery eye swept the ground, looking for his hiding place amongst the mangled husks. There was no need to search his soul for reasons. He already knew the answer:

  He was going home; the home he’d never had. No, that wasn’t true. It was still his heart’s home.

  Idaho.

  The Reservation.

  Gabriel looked at his dark eyes in the rear-view, looking for clues as to how he felt.

  The sound of gravel crunching under the roll of the Studebaker’s tires grated on his frayed nerves. The road deserted, he took a left; taking the car out of the oppressive weight of trees, onto the steep decline of Split Crow Road. The long straight plunge into the Reservation. Gradually, as the car sped lower, the distant silhouettes changed into racks of caravans and trailers, clusters of campfires and clothes lines, tents and plyboard shanties. The blacked out raven coop where Cry at the Moon cared for the sacred birds. Jeeps and pickups parked in the dirt, some carcasses of rust left out to feed the scavengers. Feathered dream catchers hung from trees ringing the valley, saving the dreams of his people from the White Man.

  The magic doesn’t work, he wanted to yell, to warn them, but they already knew. At least the gambling casinos hadn’t made it this far, with their feral noses scenting out Federal land. He slowed the Black Hawk, taking it all in. This was his heritage. Here he was, last of the savages, as he mocked himself, driving a piece of the Americana that had destroyed an entire civilisation with its creeping war of consumerism and plunder. Last rites and land rights, flintlocks and percussion pistols. His thoughts drifted back to the ageless women of Chinatown, locked stubbornly in their time warp, as he watched the hard skinned hands of a woman in blue jeans wring out a cotton blouse and hang it out to dry. There was no need to ask her who had won the war for her native soil, she was wearing the brand name on her buttocks.

  A bonfire was burning broken furniture and stuffed cushions. Kids played with sticks. A young girl sat on a caravan stoop, watching him openly as he drove slowly by. The ghettoblaster at her feet played some kind of funky saxophone he didn’t recognise. She smiled, sorrow seeds planted in her sad eyes as her fingers drew her skirt slowly up her thigh. He shook his head, sighed.

  Two rundown gasoline pumps sat in an island of sand, old fashioned, round-bodied pumps with heads like fishbowls and arrows for their smiles. A gecko had made its home in the belly of one, squatting in a bird’s nest of twigs and dead leaves as if it had every right to be there. The lizard followed Gabriel with its eyes, long tongue licking out as he passed behind a trailer and out of sight.

  Around the corner, an olive legged girl in blue jean cut-off’s was watching the world through the lens of a cheap-looking telescope; turned not to the stars but to the grit and the dust and the dirt of her own not so private Idaho. When the glass eye found him, Gabriel touched his fingers to his lips and blew a soft breath over them as if they were sharing a kiss over some great distance. She ran a hand through her hair. Gabriel had to imagine her smiling at the other end of the telescope.

  It really should be raining, he thought again, home now as he pulled up before a lightning split tree adorned with colourful feathers and a spiders web of dream catchers. The dreaming tree, focus of the Reservation, the Spiritual Heart. He got out of the Studebaker, facing west, dust blurring his sight as he watched the marriage of desert and sky on the horizon. Closer to home a cluster of squalling seagulls bickered over freshly filled garbage bins. Gabriel concentrated on their primitive dance, fascinated by their naked savagery, wondering what had brought the scavengers this far inland.

  He knelt, touching Mother Earth before smudging his fingers down the length of his nose and drawing parallel scars on both cheeks. Kissed his fingertips. Standing, Gabriel dusted his hands off on his Chinos.

  His father was standing in the shadow of the doorway, the old man watching someone else’s granddaughter play hopscotch in the dust in front of his trailer. His sleeveless JC Penny shirt was open on his huge barrel of a chest, the same spread-winged raven tattooed there, half-hidden by the shirt and the thick tangle of steel-grey hair. The little girl had dirt on her knees. He raised a clay pipe to his lips, drew in smoke and held his breath, held the smoke inside, as if he had no more need of air to breathe, and then let it leak slowly out of his nose. Slowly, he tilted his head, as if listening to the sweet whisper of the wind. Gabriel had seen his father in the self same position, on the trailer stoop, listening, or so he said, to the Spirits of the dead every day he was growing up.

  When he was ready, the old man walked down the steps to welcome his son. “Star That Travels has found his way home,” he said to the little girl, who giggled, and opened his arms.

  Gabriel smiled and touched a finger to his lips, as if keeping a secret. “Don’t tempt the Spirits, father. Don’t invite a stranger into your home when he could be nothing less than your death come to reclaim you for First Father. There is blood on all of our hands, father. The sooner you learn that lesson, the better.”

  “Always had a smart mouth, didn’t you, Star?” The old Black Foot said, remembering another time, another conversation, a parting instead of a greeting. Brushing aside the memory, he wrapped an arm around his son’s shoulder. “Whatever your reason for coming,” he gestured at the wide world with his clay pipe. “Welcome home, my son. Break bread with me. Tell me all of your stories.”

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  The men of the Black Foot sat stripped and cross-legged around the small fire. They had come to hear his story, mull it over and share their wisdom. It was the old way. A sharing of grief under the Sky River where First Father and The Great Spirit could hear and heal the pains of the world.

  Dusk was closing in over their heads.

  Gabriel sat between Iron Bear and Sky Dancer. Iron Bear was the size of a great grizzly and just as unbending, whereas Sky Dancer was a wisp of a man, lithe and lightning fast, like the snake that strikes with poison fangs. They were the extremes of the Black Foot tribe, brute strength and sheer speed. For both men these deadly virtues were reflections of the personalities given to them by First Father. Not simply names; they were their lives in words.

  They sat in silence, drawing strength from each other’s company without the need for words, the fire dancing like warm honey over exposed skin. Gabriel drew three circles in the dirt at his feet, one inside the other inside the other; the Trinity; the mark of the killer; the three that are one. It meant something. Something they were missing. He tried to catch hold of the thought but it was like one of those illusive Chinese finger
puzzles, the more he stared at it head-on the better it squirmed away from his understanding. He let his gaze settle on the flames, searching out a different kind of answer in their heat, but there was nothing, no secret lurking in the dancing fire.

  Gabriel’s father was the first to speak, his unlit clay pipe in his hand as he pointed across the flames at his son. “Star That Travels has found his way home with a story for us, my brothers.” The old man’s voice was deep, like the sound of hope being dragged across gravel. “A White Skin’s story of his new life away from his people.” Gabriel closed his eyes waiting for the same ugly words, the same prejudices, to spill like bile from his father’s lips. It isn’t only the White Men who nourish their hatred, he thought bitterly and bit down on the blackness rising up from his stomach. “He thinks that we should care. That we should share their hurts. After all the pain the White Skins have inflicted on our fathers, on our brothers and sons with their lies and their guns. Their words, their lies, have oozed like thick black tar across the soul of the land. They are killers; that is their only truth.” He let his words hang like smoke in the thick air. “That is the White Skin’s magic. Black tar lies that choke. And my son comes to us to ask for help on their behalf. I say we let the White Skins drown in the tar pit they have made for themselves,” The old man let it hang there for a second, stating a fact as if there was nothing left to say. No discussion to be had. “But it is my son’s right to talk for himself. We may live in a world of the White Skins’ lies, but we may rise above them. Star That Travels, tell your story so that First Father may judge its worth.”

  A pale skinned iguana scurried around the rim of the fire and scrambled up the bark of an ironwood tree, hanging upside down from one of its thorny branches. Somewhere in the distance, a train’s siren sounded mournfully, its call haunting the sands.

  Gabriel’s fingers brushed over the head of his own raven tattoo. “I won’t fight Wind Runner’s wisdom. He is my father, and in much he is right. White man did us harm, and will do us more, we all know the lies he has told us, but as my father himself said: we must rise above them. This is my story, hear it and offer your wisdom without prejudice. For it is a story for all people, not just the White Skins.” He looked at the faces ringing the fire, for a sign of friendship in a single pair of eyes, but he was alone. He closed his eyes for a second, pressing his fingers against his temples, massaging them while he searched for the words.

  Finally:

  “A White Man’s death is stalking me, my brothers. His name is Lamenzo and I was with the men that killed him.” Gabriel gave his words a second to sink in. He looked across the flames at his father, Wind Runner. The old man’s eyes were empty, no love, no hate, and no emotion that he could see in their brown depths. “The truth is; no story truly begins, as the story’s teller I can only tell you where I stepped into it and hope you see the truth in my interpretation.”

  They nodded, the faces surrounding the fire, accepting the universal wisdom. No river has a source; we simply find ways to slip our bodies into its fast running water and taste its power for the shortest time.

  It was no easier to tell the second time, to the doubting faces.

  “It was in a church, beneath the eyes of their God. The boy had run for his life but still they took it. He was part of a street gang that worked for the wrong kind of people. Hired muscle.”

  “What does this have to do with us?” asked Red Fox Hunting, keen intelligence glittering within the flames that were his eyes.

  “His last mortal act was the murder of a young girl.” Gabriel replied, not really answering Red Fox Hunting’s question. “He earned his death.” Gabriel stopped talking, looked for a voice that was in some small way still his. A voice fit to talk about miracles and resurrections. “But he didn’t die. Or rather he did die but an angel brought him back.”

  “How so?” Red Fox Hunting again, leaning forward intently.

  “The wooden angel stepped down from its crucifix prison and breathed its own black life into his empty carcass. The breath of an angel brought the child killer back.”

  “Again I ask what bearing this has on the Black Foot, Star That Travels?”

  Gabriel met the man’s eyes across the fretful fire, found himself surprisingly steady, almost relaxed, and resigned, as he said: “He recognised me. Read my soul. Left his fingerprints there, and his claws to dig and cut and hurt. This was three years ago, when the killing began. Three years when Lamenzo or whatever he became has walked in my dreams, tracking me, taunting me. I think… I think…” I think, somehow, he killed my son… “He has become the Angel of Death come to haunt me. I can feel him coming for me. Getting closer with each beat of my heart.”

  The gathered faces waited, giving Gabriel all the time he needed to focus the thoughts stacking up within his aching brain. He touched sensitive fingers to his temple again, feeling out the reassurance of blood, his pulse pumping, telling him he was still alive. He wanted to close his eyes but couldn’t for fear of seeing Sam, seeing the dark angel of Lamenzo’s shadow hovering over his dead son’s soul, seeing those cadaverous fingers sinking like hooks into his innocent spirit.

  “I do not fear for my own life,” he said quietly, unable to look up, to meet their eyes this time. “I am no coward that runs from First Father’s call. I fear the monstrosity that walks the streets of White Man’s finest creation. I fear the death of hope that trails in his wake. The end of all songs. All dreams. For he is death, not just to the White Skins. This angel makes no discriminations for colour. He dances to his own macabre tune. A plague bearer whose simple presence contaminates and kills. I have come home to seek the ancient wisdom of our people, to seek the magic that is my heritage, to find an answer, a way to fight this coldly stalking evil. I must. I cannot live through the nights he brings me, the sickness he stains my dreams with. I cannot deny my soul. I am Black Foot. I cannot stand and watch innocents die. I am Black Foot. It is my destiny to fight him. It is written in the Sky River.”

  “A disturbing story yours is, Star That Travels,” Red Fox Hunting said softly, scratching fingers across his breastbone. The old shaman considered his next words carefully. “But this evil is no threat to our People. White Skins and their gambling, their guns and their murdering ways are a threat to our lives. Are you hoping to move your people from the Reservation, Star That Travels? To have them take up arms and follow your folly into the sky touching houses of our enemy? To fight with them, side by side like blood brothers? Is that your wish? For that I cannot sanction. We are fighters no more. They have beaten the fight out of us, and that is the truth.”

  “I don’t know what I am looking for, wise one. Only that I am a seeker, as I have always been a seeker. I come in search of answers to questions I do not yet know.”

  “Then, child of the ancient Sky River, you have not told us what we need to know to help form your questions. We have only heard words that offer no glory to the Black Foot. Tell us about this man Lamenzo and his angel.”

  “He was no one,” Gabriel began again, trying to gather eveything he knew about The Trinity Killer. Everything important and not. “We made a pact, those of us that witnessed his rebirth. It didn’t happen. Not in our rational world. There was no room for this miracle. I think I had somehow forgotten about it because I didn’t want to see it, didn’t want it to be real, it was as if it had never happened.

  “After my… after I lost my… my wife and son… after they died I stopped thinking about many things. I wanted to die. My soul yearned for it. And then the dreams came. He wore no face inside my head, so at first I didn’t know him. But I knew his smell. It was on me. Marked me as one of his. But I didn’t know him. I lost myself in my work, taking photographs, following people…”

  He stopped talking and used his finger to scratch out the mark of The Trinity in the dirt.

  “This is his mark. He has been taunting us with it. He murders a victim and scars them, carving this symbol into their flesh. It is the mark of the Tr
inity. Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Only there is no salvation in his cutting. It is a joke. I know it is. A cruel joke. Just like his arrival, coming down from their holy crucifix, mocking White Man’s faith. But I don’t understand this joke… I took a photograph of a woman in a window… She had his mark on her cheek. Not when I saw her. Not when I took the photograph. The mark was in the actual print. A premonition of her death… I tried to warn her… To stop her… But she wouldn’t listen… They found her body the next day.”

  “Her death is not on your hands, my son,” Wind Runner said softly, reading the guilt in his son’s eyes. “People live their lives and earn the right to die their own deaths. She chose not to listen. It was her choice. Her death was written in the Sky River.”

  “But I could have stopped it.”

  “No. You tried but her life was not yours to save.”

  “No.”

  “But you still want to save her don’t you, Star That Travels, because you will be saving yourself. That is the story you have told us. If you could save her then you might live.” Wind Runner nodded at Red Fox Hunting’s words. “If she dies, then you die. And those around you die.”

  “But she is dead,” Gabriel said with a voice he had no right to own. A voice that had sacrificed the one thing he had clung to for so long; clung to since Frankie and Sam’s death. Hope.

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Father Joe was rotting, the stiffness falling from his flesh like motes of dust. His head had lolled to one side so it looked as if he were staring at the mousetrap beneath the table. Only the dead man couldn’t stare because The Watcher had taped a garbage sack over his head, bound it up with an entire roll of masking tape.

  The wet butt of a smoked out Cuban cigar sat in the ashtray next to the last of his 50 cent coins. The television was dancing to the colours and images of some pay per view porn flick. He couldn’t concentrate on all that flesh with a dead man in the chair beside him. The Watcher coughed another tubercular cough and spat out a wad of yellowed phlegm.