Bill Pronzini - Acts of Mercy

Augustine reined the bay to a panting halt in the center of it, raised up until he was standing in the stirrups. The redwoods and the pines rose all around like guardians, and the high granite wall shone as smooth as marble in the moonlight, and far beyond the gorge the ridges and valleys glistened black and gold, and the ghosts of the vanished castle were grazing there, and the tips of the mountains pierced the sky and impaled clusters of stars. Splendor, symmetry, enormity. Such a long time since he had seen it like this; years, fifteen years, sitting up here with Claire on a summer night fifteen years ago, shedding their clothes and making love on the soft grass Claire.

A shudder ran through him. She’ll be sick when she finds out, she’ll hate me. Protect her from it, don’t let her find out. But it’s too late. Justice will tell her, implacable Justice. Oh Claire, I didn’t do it, I’m not a psychopath. Am I? Claire?

He swung out of the saddle and walked slowly toward the gorge. Beauty-and ugliness. Peace and chaos, life and death, sanity and madness. I wanted beauty like this for the world, and love and peace for the world, and instead I gave disruption and death. Only I didn’t. Only I did. I didn’t give enough and I gave too much.

He stopped near the precipice; the train-voice of the river was loud, loud, like a fast freight thundering through the Big Bend tunnel on the C amp;O line more than a hundred years ago. He stared at the mountain in the distance. Yes, the mountain: hammerin’ on the mountain and my hammer strikin’ fire. They said to me We believe this mountain’s sinkin’ in, and I said to them Oh my, it’s my hammer just a-hossin’ in the wind. That’s how it was in the beginning. Hammer strikin’ fire on the mountain. Me and John Henry, steel-drivin’ men. But not any more. Hammer striking men now-Briggs and Julius and Maxwell. Hammer striking flesh and bone.

The train-voice seemed to be calling to him. He moved still closer to the gorge, to where he could look straight down at the black water below. Rushing, rushing, old fast freight heading down the mountain, heading home. Heading home. Just too much hammerin’, that’s all. I drove so hard my poor heart broke. And I laid down my hammer and I Is that the answer?

I laid down my hammer and I died, Lawd, Lawd.

Yes. Heading home.

I laid down my hammer and I died.

Augustine took another step. And stood on the brink.

Justice was twenty yards from Lookout Point when the President came into his line of sight: standing at the very edge of the river gorge and leaning forward as if… Jesus, as if he were about to jump. Panic sliced at him; he reinslapped the mare, opened his mouth and bellowed, “Mr. President! No, Mr. President!”

Augustine seemed to go rigid, then to hunch forward even farther. But he did not move his feet, just kept on standing there, poised, as Justice battled the weary mare up onto the flat and flung himself to the ground. He thought of rushing across the thirty yards that separated them, grabbing the President and pulling him back; only the sudden aggression might startle him enough to send him toppling over the edge. Justice held his position, tension cording the muscles in his neck and back, the acidlike nausea eating away again at the walls of his stomach.

“Mr. President,” he said, forcing calm and reason into his voice, “come away from there so we can talk.”

Augustine was silent. His body appeared to oscillate, as if it were racked with a series of tremors.

Desperation clawed at Justice. He had to move; he couldn’t just stand there. He took a long cautious step forward and to his right, so that he was directly behind the President. Another step, watching the ground to keep from putting his foot down on something brittle. A third. A fourth. Twenty-five yards between them. A fifth step-Abruptly, without turning, Augustine said, “Go away, Justice. Leave me alone.”

Justice hesitated. The agony in those words scraped like sandpaper across his nerves. “I can’t do that, sir,” he said thickly. “You know I can’t.”

Another step.

Another.

“I’m so tired,” Augustine said. “I can’t hammer anymore.”

Another step. Twenty yards.

“Let me help you, Mr. President. I can help you if you’ll-”

And Augustine pivoted, a graceless one-hundred-andeighty-degree turn without stepping away from the edge. Justice came to a standstill, pulse racing-but the President only stood looking at him, fingers clasped in front of him now as if in an attitude of prayer. Justice bit his lip to keep it from trembling; bit it hard enough to draw the salty taste of blood.

“I wouldn’t hurt you, sir,” he said, “you know that. I only want to help-”

“Nobody can help me. It’s time to head home.”

Keep him talking! “Why did you run, sir? That’s all I want to know, that’s the only reason I came after you.”

“You think I’m a murderer.”

“No sir. I just want to know why you ran.”

“I was afraid. I’m sick, Christopher.”

“I’ll take you to a doctor-”

“It’s too late for that. But I didn’t do it, I didn’t kill them. Tell Claire that, tell them all.”

Justice stretched out his hand palm up, imploring. “Take my hand, sir-”

“I didn’t do it, Christopher,” the President said.

And unclasped his fingers and jumped backward into the gorge.

“I didn’t do it, Christopher,” Augustine said, and unclasped his fingers and jumped backward into the gorge, and the instant he became airborne and weightless, falling, he felt the terror and the upheaval leave him and he thought: I didn’t do it, I really didn’t do it! and because he was innocent and because he did not have to hammer anymore a kind of wild soaring joy, not unlike that of orgasm, came into him. No more pain, no more responsibility, no more pressure, just these few moments of soaring and then he would join the river train below and it would carry him down the mountain and carry him home; soaring and falling and impact and free.

Justice watched in horror as the President jumped, disappeared beyond the rim. He heard himself shout something and threw his body forward, onto his knees, onto his belly, and crawled to the edge and shoved his head out and looked down.

In time to see Augustine’s body turn over and over between the jagged black walls, a speck plummeting through moonlight and darkness, and strike an outcropping of granite with a sound that carried faintly up to Justice, like an echo of death, and fall again and finally vanish into the river.

He wanted to cry, to scream, to tear things with his hands; instead he pulled himself back and lay with his head cradled in his arms. Self-condemnation: I should have saved him, I should have saved him! Then there was grief, black and consuming. And then, after a long while, there was nothing at all-as though the defensive machinery of his mind had erected a wall to block off emotion.

I didn’t do it, Christopher.

The President’s last words. And they began to repeat themselves inside his head, slowly, steadily, like a liturgical chant. But he did do it, Justice thought. The denial had been a cry for relief, relief of guilt: he knew he was mentally ill, he couldn’t cope with his psychosis, and in the end the knowledge had become so intolerable that it had forced him into taking his own life.

I didn’t do it, Christopher.

Unbalanced, yes, no question of that-but suppose it wasn’t psychosis after all? Suppose it was a complete but nonviolent breakdown brought about by the enormous pressure and anxiety of the past few days? Suppose the shock of finding Harper’s body had unbalanced him so severely that he had half-believed he was guilty, run because of that? Suppose he had committed suicide only because he was sick and frightened?