Archangel (9 page)

He had been with the group only two months when Hannibal Swain came to the restaurant in Jackson Hole called the Peppermill, where Gabriel had a daytime job. Swain was the man’s real name, unlike others in the group, who had chosen to give false names. The best camouflage, Swain had said, was not to hide at all. So far, at least, it had worked. Swain sat down at a table. When Gabriel came with the menu, feeling the veins in his neck thump with worry at the sight of the man, Swain told him, “Meet me out front at the end of your shift.” Swain had watery blue eyes, and the sun had withered his skin so that he seemed to be a decade older than he was. His blond mustache looked like threads of straw. Swain handed back the menu and stood up to leave.

Gabriel knew that something terrible was about to happen. Only two days before, they had spiked three hundred trees and were just finishing up when a logging patrol heard the dull sound of their copper-headed hammers. The patrol came charging through the
woods and ran right past where Gabriel lay, covered with the earth he had thrown over himself. He realized then that he could not have been what he was now without first having been a soldier for the other side. None of the group had been caught that day, but they all knew it was only a matter of time.

After the shift, Gabriel walked out of the restaurant into the glare of late-afternoon sun. He moved past the huge arch of elk horns at the entrance to the town square and found Swain sitting in a pickup at the corner. One arm, wrapped in the faded indigo of a jeans jacket, hung out of the window and down the glossy, tomato-red door of the truck.

“Get in,” Swain said, and rapped his knuckles on the door.

They drove out of town and over the pass into Idaho. Swain didn’t speak. For a long time, Gabriel waited to be told what was going on. He knew what a risk Swain had taken to meet him in broad daylight. To Gabriel, Swain was a man who often took big risks, but never without reason. Swain allowed no more drama into his life than he had to. He didn’t spend his time in philosophical discussions about whether he was breaking the law. If the subject ever did come up, it was in hope that the laws would be changed and that their work would eventually become redundant.

They passed through smoke from a burning leaf pile in someone’s garden. For a moment, as the smoke stung Gabriel’s eyes, he heard again the roar of blazing oil spigots. Then suddenly it was gone.

After an hour, they pulled up outside the Painted Apple Ranch Café in Victor. The dust of the parking lot blew past them. The rolling plains of Idaho reached out to the horizon. It was more than just a different state. It looked like a different country from the forested hills they had been in only a short while before.

“I’m about to get arrested,” Swain said in a deadpan voice, as if he had been saying it to himself all the way over the pass. He didn’t look at Gabriel as he spoke. He had his gaze fixed on the giant red-apple sign of the café. “Federal agents have traced me to the last spiking we did in the Gros Ventre Range. Traced me and all but one person in the group.” Swain swung his head wearily to face Gabriel. “And you’re it. And you have to get out of here now.”

Gabriel said nothing. The shock had silenced him.

Swain settled back in his seat. He seemed calmer now that he had
told the news. Resigned to it. “You weren’t on the Feds’ list. A friend of mine found out. He tried to warn me about the others, but it’s too late.”

“How did my name get left off the list?” Gabriel asked.

“There used to be someone in the group before you arrived. He disappeared one day without saying good-bye. It’s not the first time that’s happened. He looked like he could take care of himself. I didn’t think too much about it.” Swain passed his callused fingertips across his chin, rustling the bristles. “But I guess he was working for the police. That’s what I was told. He got the names of everyone in the group at the time. You weren’t with us yet.”

“I should go home and get my stuff.”

“No, you shouldn’t go home. You should get the hell out of here before they start making arrests and another member of the group gives up your name.”

“But they wouldn’t do that.”

“You never know what people will do.” It was hot in the truck. The windshield seemed to magnify the sun. The dusty air gave no relief. “You can’t stay here. You’ll have to go south or east or up to Canada.”

“But how much good can I do on my own?”

“There is one place where one person could get something done, but it’s on the other side of the country.” Then Swain told Gabriel about the Algonquin and how it was due to be cleared.

As Gabriel listened, he felt pressure building in his head. It pushed at his eyes from behind. He had not told Swain about growing up in Abenaki Junction, or that his father had been fired by Mackenzie.

“It’s a long shot,” Swain said.

“I’ll do it,” Gabriel told him. He explained that he had grown up there.

Swain got out of the truck. His chisel-toe boots stirred the dust. He had to move around. Nervous energy was sparking inside him. “When’s the last time you were there?”

“It’s been years.”

“Where are your parents now?”

“Oh.” Gabriel shook his head. “My father died in a car crash a year after we left. He sailed over a bump on a dirt road and hit a telephone
pole. It split the car in half. The police said there was no explanation for the accident.”

“Maybe it was suicide.”

“Maybe so,” said Gabriel. You never did soften your words, did you? he thought “Mackenzie made it so that my dad couldn’t find work with any of the other logging companies. I think that part of it broke him.”

“And your mother?”

“She runs a bed-and-breakfast in Stonington, Connecticut. She’s never been back to Abenaki Junction either. She won’t even say the name.”

“In some ways, that’s good. They won’t be looking for you. But still, you’ll probably be caught,” Swain said. “If you believe in luck, you can bet you used up all you’ve got right here.”

Gabriel didn’t answer.

Swain pulled off his cowboy boot and shook out a pebble. “I’m driving east tomorrow. It would be too dangerous for you to come with me, but I could drop off some supplies for you, if I get that far, and if you tell me where to go.”

Gabriel gave Swain the directions, using an AAA road chart and then drawing his own map for the last mile. He chose a safe place in the ruins of a cabin down by Pogansett Lake. He hoped the old house was still there.

“Good enough.” Swain pulled on his boot again. His jeans were tattered at the cuffs.

“Where are you going from there?”

“Washington. I’ll turn myself in after I’ve talked to the press. I figure it’s where I can do the most good before they shut me away.”

Gabriel thought about the Navajo Indians, who were imprisoned by the whites and died in a very short time. It wasn’t the prison that killed them. It was the idea of not being free, so alien to them that they could not survive it. Swain might be the same way, thought Gabriel, and suddenly he knew he would never see the man again.

“I have to go now.” Swain walked back to his truck and climbed inside.

“Why don’t you run?” asked Gabriel. “You don’t have to turn yourself in.”

Swain lowered his head slowly until it was resting on the steering wheel. “The truth is I am tired. I’m all tired out. My luck is all gone. And the most good I can do now is hope the newspapers will print what I say in the courtroom. I’ll still go to jail, of course. I never tried to pretend I wasn’t a criminal. But you know”—he raised his head from the steering wheel—“I believe that history will absolve us. The same way it absolved the people who ran the Underground Railroad to free the slaves in the Civil War. Or the people who blew up Zyklon-B gas chambers in Germany in World War Two.” He had one last thing to say: “You’ll be on familiar ground in the Algonquin. You must be careful. No fight is more vicious than the one for your home ground. They’ll fight you with everything they’ve got. They’ll kill you if they think they can get away with it. And the question you have to ask yourself is whether you are prepared to kill them. It’s all about knowing how far you are prepared to go. And don’t expect people to understand why you would risk your life for a bunch of trees. If you have to explain to them why the wilderness is important, with all the information that’s out there, they’re already part of the problem. The time for reasoning is past. But you have to be careful not to lose your humanity in all of this. What use is it to fight for humanity if you lose your own in the process?” Swain started the engine. He reached into the glove compartment, took from it a small manila envelope and flipped it to Gabriel. “It’s forged ID. Driver’s license. Social security card. Everyone in the group has a set of these. Do you have any money?”

Gabriel tapped his belt buckle. It was a money belt. He had $2,200 in rolled-up hundreds inside. He opened his mouth, but Swain spoke first.

“You trying to think of a way to say good-bye?” He had to shout over the rumble of the engine.

Gabriel nodded.

“Well, I guess we just did.” Swain smiled. He nodded one last time, lips pressed tight together. Then he knocked the truck into gear and drove out of the parking lot.

Gabriel watched the truck until it vanished into the hills. For a while he could hear the whine of its engine as it changed gears. Then that faded, too. That afternoon, Gabriel hitched a ride up into Canada. Then he took a series of buses across the Trans-Canada Highway.

Now that Gabriel had arrived in the Algonquin, the more he thought about stopping the clear-cutting, the more of a long shot it seemed. He knew he was walking toward a conflict in which there could be no middle ground. To prepare for it, he had stored away a vast reservoir of strength, a cavern deep inside himself, packed to its stalagtite rafters with weapons for the war. He knew he would probably be caught and what would happen to him then, but it was as Swain had said—the time for reasoning was past. After all he had been through already, Gabriel did not know how much of his humanity he had left, but he was in too deep to care.

CHAPTER 4

W
hen Mackenzie saw Marcus Dodge walking across the compound toward the company office, he knew something had gone terribly wrong.

Dodge strode up the stairs and into Mackenzie’s office without knocking. He held something behind his back. People in the workroom outside Mackenzie’s office could see what Dodge was holding. They kept their eyes fixed at the level of his black gun belt, with its spare flat-headed bullets in loops along the small of his back, the handcuffs in their pouch and the slot for his nightstick, which he had left down in the car. Mackenzie saw mixtures of shock and fear and puzzlement on the faces of his employees. He did not have time to wonder what this new disaster could be. All he felt was the onset of dread.

Dodge swung his arm around and held out the bridge nail. “I dug this out of the tree.”

Oh, thank God, thought Mackenzie. Nothing’s gone wrong after all. In fact, it’s all going according to plan.

Dodge set the spike down on the desk. It was the same color as a galvanized tin bucket. The head of the spike was as thick as a man’s thumb and had been dented with the half-moon shapes of hammer blows. Dodge pointed to a shiny gash in the nail. “This here’s where the chain saw struck it.”

Mackenzie stared at the nail. He imagined the news spreading through Abenaki Junction like a drug through blood. No stopping it now, he thought. No, by God. Now this thing has a life of its own. It left him with a feeling of being swept downstream by a great river, and no way to pull himself out.

“It’s a killing, Mr. Mackenzie. This morning it was just a death and now it’s a killing.” Dodge picked up the nail and set it down a little closer to Mackenzie. “You got any ideas who could have done it?”

It sounded to Mackenzie like an accusation. Perhaps Coltrane had talked. It was just a question, he told himself, trying to stay calm. A question Dodge had to ask anyway. After a minute of quiet, with no other sound but the creaking of Dodge’s leather belt as the man shifted from one foot to the other, Mackenzie stood, leaning hard on his desk to hoist himself upright. “I have no idea who could have done this.” For the first time, he looked Dodge in the eye. “Ten thousand dollars for information that leads to an arrest.”

“Ten thousand.” Dodge scratched the back of his neck, a look of disagreement on his face. “That could cause more trouble than we’ve got already.”

“Well, that’s what I’m offering. I’ll post the reward. Spread the news around.” Mackenzie kept his eye fixed on Dodge, trying to detect any sign of suspicion. But he didn’t see Dodge. Instead, the ripped face of James Pfeiffer appeared behind Mackenzie’s eyes, blinding him to everything outside. The face was gray like dirty snow, and cold and bloated with death. Get away from me, Mackenzie thought. Get the hell back in your grave.