The Trial of Fallen Angels (7 page)

“I’ll get you back for this, Cuttler,” he said.

I stood my ground defiantly with my fist clenched. He knew better than to mess with me anymore and walked away.

That left Karen, Lenny, and me. Apparently thinking Wally’s defeat meant he was somehow exonerated, Lenny started stepping out of the river, but I stopped him.

“Get back in that water, Lenny Basilio,” I warned him. “You’ve been sentenced to life.”

Lenny stepped back obediently. He had just seen what I had done to Wally and wasn’t going to try his luck.

I sat down beside Karen on a log. My knuckles ached from slamming into Wally’s teeth. Karen and I didn’t talk. What happened was too traumatic. We just looked at the river and Lenny.

After about five minutes passed, Lenny got bored and fidgety. He started skimming rocks across the water and kicking and splashing around idly. When these activities no longer entertained him, he began inching his way down the river, hoping I wouldn’t see him. I ordered him back. He complied but turned right around and tried it again. Soon it turned into a sort of game. But when I ordered him back for the fourth time, he made a break for it. Unfortunately for Lenny, he slipped on the riverbank mud and gashed open his knee. I caught up with him and dragged him back into the water by his wrist. He tried to free himself, but my grip was too strong. I held him in place until he stopped squirming.

“How long are you going to keep him in the river?” Karen called to me from the riverbank.

“For the rest of his life,” I said, tightening my grip on him. “He’s got to pay for his crime. The crayfish deserve justice.”

“Then you’re going to have to stay there the rest of your life too,” Karen said. “He’s just going to keep trying to get out.”

She was right, of course, but I was determined that Lenny serve out his sentence. I was wearing a fabric belt with a sliding loop buckle. I looked around for something to tie him to, but there were no tree branches close enough to the water. Then I got an idea. I took off the belt, lashed it around my arm and Lenny’s, and cinched it tight with my teeth. Now we were bound together, prisoner and guard. He had no chance of escape. As long as I stayed in the river, Lenny would stay in the river. I looked back at Karen proudly. She shook her head, amused.

There we stood in the water, Lenny and me. He struggled every once in a while to get free, but it was no use. When he whimpered or protested, I told him to shut up. When he splashed or caused me to stumble, I elbowed him in the side. He would receive no more mercy than he had shown the crayfish. This went on for nearly half an hour, but it felt like all afternoon. It was getting late. We would normally be heading back home. Karen finally got up and said she was leaving.

“Wait,” I said. “You can’t go. You’ve got to stay here and keep me company.”

“No thanks,” Karen replied, climbing up the riverbank.

“But you’ve got to,” I said. I was furious. She had betrayed me during the trial, and now she was doing it again.

“No, I don’t,” Karen replied. “I didn’t do anything to the crayfish, and it wasn’t my idea to put Lenny in the river. I’m going home.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?” I said. “Stay here all night with Lenny by myself?”

Lenny looked mortified.

“I guess so,” Karen replied. “If you want to keep him in the river for the rest of his life. Have fun.” She started walking away.

“Wait,” I pleaded. “What am I supposed to do? I’ve got no choice. The crayfish deserve justice.”

Karen stopped and gazed back at me in disbelief. I must have looked as miserable and pathetic as Lenny. Then she turned and waded out into the water. She seemed almost angelic coming toward us, her face glowing radiantly in the afternoon sun, her blue eyes sparkling from the reflection of the stream. When she reached us, she tugged on the belt that bound Lenny and me together.

“You can’t bring the crayfish back, Brek,” she said tenderly. “But you can set yourself free. It’s not about Lenny anymore. It’s about you. How long do you want to wait in the water?”

9

I
inserted the golden key Luas had given me into the lock of the massive wooden doors leading into the Courtroom. Suddenly the doors and the entire train shed itself vanished, leaving me standing beside Luas in an immense space bounded only by energy. The walls were translucent and electric, and if they could be said to have had a color, glistened like water in a crystal decanter on a sterling silver tray. It was a room like no other, a room where time and space merged. A room in eternity.

At the opposite end of the Courtroom, the energy condensed itself into a triangular monolith several stories tall, seemingly working Einstein’s theorem in reverse. The slab was both dark and luminescent, composed of what appeared to be the finest sapphire, with a triangular aperture near the top through which light entered but did not exit, allowing nothing of the interior of the slab to be seen. A semicircle of pale amber light radiated outward from the base of the monolith in a broad arc, and this light formed the floor itself. At the center of the floor stood a simple wooden chair, absurdly out of scale in substance and size. Behind this chair, but beyond the circle of light and exactly opposite the monolith, sat three more chairs. Luas ushered me toward them and insisted I take the one in the middle. He took the left chair and, after seating himself, placed his hands on his knees, closed his eyes, and said to me: “Tobias Bowles will be presenting the case of his father, Gerard.”

A moment later, another person arrived, standing in the same spot where we had been standing, a golden key like mine still turning in his fingers. He was only a young boy, perhaps eight or nine years of age. His skin was dark and his features Middle Eastern, with soft brown eyes that seemed to have seen and understood too much for his years. He wore his hair long and unkempt. A cream-colored robe draped from his shoulders to the floor. Luas rose to his feet when he saw him, looking disappointed.

“Oh, it’s only you, Haissem,” he said, scowling. “We were expecting Mr. Bowles . . . Well, here we are anyway. Haissem, this is Brek Cuttler, the newest lawyer on my staff. Brek, this is Haissem, the most senior presenter in all of Shemaya. I must say, Haissem, she’s arrived not a moment too soon. We just lost Jared Schrieberg and now, it seems from your appearance, Mr. Bowles as well.”

Jared Schrieberg?
I thought. Odd. That was Bo’s grandfather’s name.

Haissem reached out to greet me with his left hand—a perceptive gesture, as most people reached by instinct for my right hand and were embarrassed to come up with an empty sleeve.

“Welcome to the Courtroom, Brek,” he said, bowing politely, his voice high and prepubescent. “I remember sitting here to witness my first presentation. Abel presented the difficult case of his brother, Cain. That was long before your time though, Luas.”

“Quite,” Luas agreed.

“Not much has changed since then,” Haissem sighed. “Luas keeps the docket moving even though the number of cases increases. We’re fortunate to have you, Brek, and you’re fortunate to have somebody like Luas as your mentor. There’s no better presenter in all of Shemaya.”

“Present company excepted,” Luas said.

“Not at all,” said Haissem. “I only handle the easy cases.”

“Few would consider Socrates and Judas to have been easy cases,” Luas replied. “I’m just a clerk.”

Haissem winked at me. “Don’t let him fool you,” he said. “Without Luas, there would be no Shemaya.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, bewildered. “Cain and Abel? Socrates and Judas? What are you talking about? What’s the joke?”

Luas turned to me impatiently. “Do you believe theirs were clear cases about which there could be no doubt?” he said.

“I, I guess not . . .” I said. “I really have no idea, but my point is that you couldn’t possibly have— Well, what happened to them, then? What was the verdict?”

Haissem patted Luas on the back. “I must enter my appearance and prepare myself,” he said. “I trust you’ll explain everything.” Haissem reached again for my left hand, and for an instant his eyes seemed to focus on something inside me that was much larger than me. “We will meet again, Brek,” he said. “You’ll do well here, I’m certain of it.” He walked toward the chair at the center of the Courtroom, and Luas motioned for us to take our seats.

“We present only the facts,” he whispered as we sat down. “Our concern here is not with verdicts.”

“But if they were really put on trial, then surely you must know—”

“Nothing,” Luas interrupted. “We know nothing about the outcomes. The Judge never speaks. One might speculate, of course. There are instances when a presenter feels the result should go one way more than another, but it is strictly forbidden. The consequences for a presenter who attempts to alter eternity last all of eternity. We must not seek to influence the result.”

I watched him, trying to see through him, behind him, still unwilling to believe, still clinging to life as it used to be, searching for explanations for what was happening. Nothing made sense. “The surgery isn’t going well, is it doctor?” I said. “You’re making me worse. I’m becoming even more delusional.”

“Nonsense,” Luas replied. “Look, Haissem has taken his seat. You’ll see things more clearly after he presents his case.”

Haissem sat on the chair at the center of the Courtroom, adopting the same position as Luas, hands on knees, eyes closed, waiting. I kept my eyes open, watching. Suddenly, a powerful tremor rocked the triangular monolith, rippling its smooth surface. From the center of the monolith, from its solid core, emerged a being like the one on the animated sculpture in the hallway, human in shape and size but without hair, face, or features, dressed in a charcoal gray cassock. Haissem maintained his position and the being stood before him for a moment, then returned to its dark home without a sound. When the tremor subsided, Haissem rose from the chair and, standing at the exact center of the Courtroom, raised his arms up from his sides in a broad arc. The energy of the walls and floor pulsed violently and surged toward him from all directions, seemingly compressing the space around him like an imploding star. The shock wave struck Haissem’s body, instantly vaporizing him, leaving behind in the vacuum only his voice, detonating like a great cosmic explosion: “I PRESENT TOBIAS WILLIAM BOWLES . . . HE HAS CHOSEN!”

The Courtroom went dark. No light. No sound. No motion. Then the Courtroom vanished altogether.

What came next left me shaken to my core. I did not merely witness the trial of Toby Bowles’s soul. Instead, by merging with his memories, I became Toby Bowles. I relived his life exactly as he had lived it. As had happened when I walked among the souls in the train shed, Brek Cuttler ceased to exist.

—

I FIND MYSELF
crossing a dirt road in a World War II military encampment. My body feels heavy, tired, anxious. My face feels thick and rough, covered with whiskers and grime. My mouth tastes unfamiliar, like a first kiss. My arms, two of them now, feel powerful but detached, as though I am operating a machine. There is an aggressiveness I have never felt before, a heightened wariness of my surroundings and other people. My thoughts and reactions are accelerated, more analytical; my emotions and ability to comprehend subtleties are dull and unused. I reek with body odors that seem both comfortable and unpleasant. My head aches from a hangover.

I am wearing a filthy green Army uniform and new black boots. This is my second pair of boots this month—a fact that I know implicitly but don’t know how I know. I know too that I can have as many boots as I want, that there are enough boots at my disposal to outfit two armies. They’re nice boots, shiny, black, and warm, but they can’t be kept clean here in Saverne—another fact I know: the location of the encampment. The dust takes the shine off the boots as soon as you put them on, and there is nothing here but dust, darkening the sun and fading the colors. Everything is dust brown: the clothes, the tents, the once white requisition forms. In Saverne, the food tastes brown, the water washes brown, the stars sparkle brown, the air smells brown, and, when the dead arrive at the morgue here, they bleed brown onto the brown ground, ashes to ashes, brown to brown. I even dream in brown. The only thing not brown in Saverne is greed, which tints the eyes and fingertips a vibrant glossy hue of green.

Crossing the dirt road, I’m debating in my own mind whether to lowball the medical supply chief or give him a fair offer and make him think I’m doing him a favor by selling his extra supplies on the black market. But when I reach the middle of the dirt road, somebody yells, “Toby, look out!”

From the corner of my eye, I see an olive green Army truck racing toward me at breakneck speed, plowing a tantrum of brown dust into the air. The dust looks startled for a moment, as if it has just been awakened from a nap. I leap out of the way, spinning a pirouette in my new black boots and giving Davidson a thank-you slug in the shoulder for the warning.

“You gotta be more careful, Toby,” he says. “You’re gonna get yourself killed.”

“Me, killed? No way,” I tell him. “Not by no goddamned truck anyway. It’ll take a French maid to do me in.”

Davidson guards the entrance to a brown tent that was once olive green. Dirt blown from the road piles into drifts against the canvas, re-creating in miniature the blowing and drifting snow in the mountain passes to the south that make the Alps impenetrable at this time of year. Early winter cuts crisp and cold over the peaks and down into the French valleys, pruning the wounded and diseased from the battlefield and encampments, villages and cities. A mountaineer lucky enough to reach the summit of the Alps would see war on the horizon in all directions.

The tent is warmed by a well-stocked wood stove and insulated with boxes of medical supplies stacked from floor to ceiling with dusty red crosses painted on their sides. Each box is worth $200 on the French black market, making the tent into a bank vault. They form an aisle through to a desk at the center. A kerosene lantern hung on a tent pole produces a thin drizzle of light. Behind the desk sits a lean, powerful-looking black man. His left chest bears the name Collins and his shoulder the stripes of a corporal. We are of equal rank. He crushes the cigarette he’s been smoking and lights another without offering me one.

“Scuttlebutt says Patton’s crossing the Rhine near Ludwigshafen,” I say. “Two Divisions are moving up from southern Italy to join the party. Price of boots and gloves just tripled.”

Collins’s mouth curls. “Where are they?” he asks.

“Keeping warm in a chateau.”

“Don’t be playin’ no games wit’ me, Bowles,” he says. “I ain’t got no time for it now.”

My stomach churns a sour broth of hash and coffee up into the back of my throat.
I’m finally gonna get a piece of the action,
I keep telling myself. Just a piece of what everyone else has.
I didn’t want to come here. I wanted to stay home and work on cars. That’s all I ever wanted. I got a right to a little comfort, and I’ll be damned if any black guy from Kentucky is gonna get more than me.
They assigned me to the quartermaster after I played up an asthma attack during basic. It beat carrying a rifle.

“Somebody’s got to keep guys like you happy, and it might as well be me, right Collins?” I tell him. “What do you want, I got it all: uniforms, tents, food, booze, utensils, tools, radios, movies, office supplies, sundries.” It’s all true. As a corporal in the quartermaster, I’m a walking department store and everybody’s my best friend. As soon as the bees figure out where the clover is, they swarm to get it. Officers, GIs, locals—they’re nicer to me than to the docs who cure their syphilis. They shake my hand and talk to me about me: Where’d I come from? Got a girl? Sure, good-lookin’ guy like you’s got a girl. Ten of ’em, and pretty too, I bet. They show me pictures of their girls, mothers, fathers, and kid brothers and sisters. I’m just a regular guy like you, they’re all sayin’, and us regular guys gotta stick together if we’re gonna make it. Got any extra whiskey stashed back there? Helps me sleep better at night.

“You ain’t got nothin’ I want, Bowles,” Collins says. “I’m the one who’s got what you want. You’re standing in my personal piggy bank, and my man Davidson out there, he’s the guard. Now do you wanna sign for a loan, or do I tell Davidson to throw your ass out of here?”

I stand there for a minute, deciding whether to lowball him. I know Collins just came in with the Surgeon General’s command. He’s got no connections in the area, but he knows he’s sitting on a fortune because medical supplies for the French population have become scarce and they’ll pay almost anything to get them. I came in behind the invasion force and worked up some relationships with a few French doctors who have backers all the way south to Marseille. I decide to lowball him to see how he’ll react.

“Twenty-five a box, unopened, and I’ll throw in a crate of boots and gloves for every two medical.”

“Davidson!” he hollers. “Get this lump of dog shit out of my office!”

“Look, Collins,” I counter, backtracking a little. “You couldn’t move this stuff if you set up a booth under the Eiffel Tower. I’ll give you three boots and gloves for every two medical. I can’t go any higher.”

“One-fifty a box, Bowles, and you can keep your damn boots.”

“Fifty.”

“One-twenty-five.”

“Seventy-five.”

“Hundred.”

“I got costs, Collins,” I tell him. “No way you’re comin’ out ahead of me. Seventy-five, take it or leave it.”

“I’ll need a deposit.”

“How much?”

“Thousand.”

“What?”

“You ain’t the only one interested, Bowles. You the third white guy been sniffin’ round here today. One thousand in cash, final.”

“I got five hundred on me,” I say, reaching into my pocket. “I’ll give you the rest tonight.”

Collins thinks it over. “You know,” he says, his thick lips parting into a toothy greed-green smile, “I like you, Bowles. Get the rest here by eighteen hundred.”

I give Collins the money and walk out of the tent doing the math in my head. I can move at least a hundred boxes a month. At two hundred bucks a box, that’s twenty thousand gross, twelve-five net, minus grease money for the motor pool and perimeter patrol, maybe a thousand max. I just made eleven grand!