John Connolly - The Wrath of Angels

The loss of his wife was the second such blow that Harlan would receive in less than a year. Shortly after she passed away, Paul Scollay, Harlan’s oldest and closest friend, had sat on a bucket in the little woodshed at the back of his cabin, put his shotgun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. The cancer had been nibbling at him for a while, and now had got a taste for him. He put an end to its feeding, as he had always told his friend that he would. They had shared a drink earlier in the day: just a beer or two at the pine table beside that very woodshed with the sun setting behind the trees, as beautiful an evening as Harlan had seen in many a year. They had reminisced some, and Paul had seemed relaxed and at peace with himself, which was how Harlan had known that the end was near. He did not remark upon it, though. They had simply shaken hands and Harlan had said that he would see Paul around, and Paul had replied, ‘Ayuh. I guess so,’ and that was the end of it.

And though they spoke of many things in those final hours, there was one subject upon which they did not touch, one memory that was not disinterred. They had agreed years before that they would not talk of it unless absolutely necessary, but it hung between them in the last of their time together as the sun bathed them in its radiance, like the promise of forgiveness from a god in whom neither of them believed.

And so it was that at the time of his dying, at the day and the hour of it, Harlan Vetters summoned his son and his daughter to his bedside, the woods waiting beyond, the god of tree and leaf moving through them, coming at last to claim the old man, and he said to them:

‘Once upon a time, Paul Scollay and I found an airplane in the Great North Woods . . .’

2

Fall was gone, vanished in wisps of white cloud that fled across clear blue skies like pale silk scarves snatched by the breeze. Soon it would be Thanksgiving, although it seemed that there was little for which to be thankful as the year drew to its close. People I met on the streets of Portland spoke of working second jobs to make ends meet, of feeding their families with cheap cuts of meat while their savings dwindled and their safety nets fell away. They listened while candidates for high office told them the answer to the country’s problems was to make the wealthy wealthier so that more crumbs from their table might fall into the mouths of the poor, and some, while pondering the unfairness of it, wondered if that was better than no crumbs at all.

Along Commercial Street some tourists still wandered. Behind them a great cruise ship, perhaps the last of the season, loomed impossibly high over the wharves and warehouses, its prow reaching out to touch the buildings facing the sea, the water supporting it invisible from the street so that it seemed a thing discarded, marooned in the aftermath of a tsunami.

Away from the waterfront the tourists petered out entirely, and at the Great Lost Bear there were none at all, not as afternoon melted into evening. The Bear saw only a small but steady stream of locals pass through its doors that day, the kind of familiar faces that ensure bars remain in business even during the quietest of times, and as the light faded and the blue of the sky began to darken, the Bear prepared to ease itself into the kind of gentle, warm mood where conversations were hushed, and music was soft, and there were places in the shadows for lovers and friends, and places, too, for darker conversations.

She was a small woman, a single swath of white running through her short black hair like the coloring of a magpie, with an ‘s’-shaped scar across her neck that resembled the passage of a snake over pale sand. Her eyes were a very bright green, and, rather than detracting from her looks, the crow’s feet at their corners drew attention to her irises, enhancing her good looks when she smiled. She looked neither older nor younger than her years, and her makeup was discreetly applied. I guessed that most of the time she was content to be as God left her, and it was only on those rare occasions when she came down to the cities for business or pleasure that she felt the need to ‘prettify’ herself, as my grandfather used to term it. She wore no wedding ring, and her only jewelry was the small silver cross that hung from a cheap chain around her neck. Her fingernails were cut so close that they might almost have been bitten down, except the ends were too neat, too even. An injury to her black dress pants had been repaired with a small triangle of material on the right thigh, expertly done and barely noticeable. They fitted her well, and had probably been expensive when she bought them. She was not the kind to let a small tear be their ruination. I imagined that she had worked upon them herself, not trusting in another, not willing to waste money on what she knew she could do better with her own hands. A man’s shirt, pristine and white, hung loose over the waist of her pants, the shirt tailored so that it came in tight at the waist. Her breasts were small, and the pattern of her brassiere was barely visible through the material.

The man beside her was twice her age, and then some. He had dressed in a brown serge suit for the occasion, with a yellow shirt and a yellow-and-brown tie that had come as a set, perhaps with a handkerchief for the suit pocket that he had long ago rejected as too ostentatious. ‘Funeral suits’, my grandfather called them, although, with a change of tie, they served equally well for baptisms, and even weddings if the wearer wasn’t one of the main party.

And even though he had brought out the suit for an event that was not linked to a church happening, to an arrival into or departure from this world, and had polished his reddish-brown shoes so that the pale scuffing at the toes looked more like the reflection of light upon them, still he wore a battered cap advertising ‘Scollay’s Guide & Taxidermy’ in a script so ornate and curlicued that it took a while to decipher, by which time the wearer would, in all likelihood, have managed to press a business card upon you, and inquire as to whether you might have an animal that needed stuffing and mounting, and, if not, whether you felt like rectifying that situation by taking a trip into the Maine woods. I felt a tenderness toward him as he sat before me, his hands clasping and unclasping, his mouth half-forming slight, awkward smiles that faded almost as soon as they came into existence, like small waves of emotion breaking upon his face. He was an old man, and a good one, although I had met him for the first time only within the hour. His decency shone brightly from within, and I believed that when he left this world he would be mourned greatly, and the community of which he was a part would be poorer for his passing.

But I understood too that part of my warmth toward him arose from the day’s particular associations. It was the anniversary of my grandfather’s death, and that morning I placed flowers upon his grave, and sat for a time by his side, watching the cars pass by on their way to and from Prouts Neck, and Higgins Beach, and Ferry Beach: locals all.

It was strange, but I had often stood by my father’s grave and felt no sense of his presence; similarly for my mother, who had outlived him by only a few years. They were elsewhere, long gone, but something of my grandfather lingered amid the Scarborough woods and marshes, for he loved that place and it had always brought him peace. I knew that his God – for each man has his own God – let him wander there sometimes, perhaps with the ghost of one of the many dogs that had kept him company through his life yapping at his heels, scaring the birds from the rushes and chasing them for the joy of it. My grandfather used to say that if God did not allow a man to be reunited with his dogs in the next life then He was no God worth worshiping; that if a dog did not have a soul, then nothing had.