"Is that an offer?"
"Nope, it's just an observation. You take care," I began to walk away, but she reached out and stopped me by placing her hand on my arm.
"No, you be careful, Bird," she said. "He hasn't forgiven you, and he won't."
"Has he forgiven you?" I asked.
There was something in her face as she spoke, something that reminded me of that first afternoon we spent together and the warmth of her skin against mine. "I didn't want his forgiveness," she said. Then she smiled sadly and left me.
I spent the next hour wandering around the stores in Dark Hollow, showing Ellen Cole's photograph to anyone who'd take the time to look. They recalled her at the diner, and in the drugstore, but nobody had seen them leave and no one could confirm whether or not they left with another man, or speculate as to whom that person might have been. It grew colder and colder as I walked, my coat wrapped tightly around me, the lights of the stores casting a yellow glow on the snow.
When I had exhausted every avenue of inquiry, at least for the present, I went back to my room, showered, and changed into a pair of denims and a shirt and sweater before pulling on my overcoat and preparing to meet Angel and Louis for dinner. Angel was already outside the room, drinking coffee and blowing puffs of white breath into the air like an unhealthy steam engine.
"You know, it's warmer out here than it is in that room," he said. "I lost a layer of skin from my feet, the tiles in the bathroom are so cold."
"You're too sensitive for this world. Who would have thought it?"
He snorted unhappily and stamped his feet while alternating the coffee cup from hand to hand, each time putting his free hand under the opposite armpit.
"Stop," I said. "You're going to make it rain. Any sign of activity out at Meade Payne's place?"
He came to a relative standstill. "None that we could see without knocking on the door and asking for cookies and a glass of milk. Caught a sight of the young guy and Payne eating supper, but they were alone, far as we could see. You have any luck with Jennings?"
"No."
"You surprised?"
"Yes and no. He's got no reason to help me, but this isn't about me. It's about Ellen and her boyfriend, but I could see in his eyes that he would use them to get at me, if he could. I don't understand him. He's suffered. I know he has. His wife took up with another man behind his back, a man ten years younger than him, but he's still with her, and it's hell for both of them. It wasn't as if Rand was old, or cruel, or impotent. He had what it took; or, maybe, he had it according to his own definition of it. I took something away from him, and he won't ever forgive me for it. But how can he not feel for Ellen Cole, for Ricky, for their families? No matter how much he hates me, they have to matter." I kicked idly at the dirt on the ground. "Sorry, Angel. I'm thinking out loud."
Angel tossed the remains of his coffee into a mound of frozen, compacted snow. I could hear the soft hiss as it hit the ice, as the coffee corrupted the whiteness of its crystals one by one.
"Suffering isn't enough, Bird," said Angel softly. "So he's suffered: big fuckin' deal. Get in line with the rest of us suckers. It's not enough to suffer, and you know that. What matters is that you understand that others suffer, and some of them suffer worse than you could ever do. The nature of compassion isn't coming to terms with your own suffering and applying it to others: it's knowing that other folks around you suffer and, no matter what happens to you, no matter how lucky or unlucky you are, they keep suffering. And if you can do something about that, then you do it, and you do it without whining or waving your own fuckin' cross for the world to see. You do it because it's the right thing to do.
"From what you say, this Rand Jennings doesn't have a compassionate bone in his body. All he feels is self-pity, and he doesn't understand any suffering but his own. I mean, look at his marriage. There are two of them in it, Bird; whatever you may have felt for her, she's stayed with him this long, and if you hadn't turned up like a fire in February then everything would be just the way it was. He'd be unhappy and she'd be unhappy and they'd be unhappy together, and it seems like they've set their own boundaries on what is and is not going to happen to change that situation.
"But he's selfish, Bird. He only thinks of his own hurt, his own pain, and he blames her for it, and you, and, by extension, the world. He doesn't care about Ellen Cole, or Walter, or Lee. He's all full up pissing and cursing at the bum hand he thinks life has dealt him, and that hand ain't never gonna change."
I looked at him, at his unshaven profile, the wisps of dark hair curling out from under his dark wool hat, the empty coffee cup forgotten in his hand. He was a mass of contradictions. It struck me that I was taking life lessons from a five-six semiretired burglar whose boyfriend, not twenty-four hours earlier, had executed a man against a brick wall. My life, I reflected, was taking some strange turns.
Angel seemed to sense what I was thinking, because he turned to me before he spoke again. "We've been friends for a long time, you and me, maybe even without either of us realizing it. I know you and, for a time, you weren't far off becoming like Jennings and a million others like him, but I know now that's not going to happen. I'm not sure how things changed and I don't think I want to know most of it. All I know is that you're becoming a compassionate man, Bird. That's not the same as pity, or guilt, or trying to pay off some debt to fortune or to God. It's feeling other people's pain as your own, and acting to take that pain away. And maybe, sometimes, you have to do bad things to do that, but life doesn't balance easy. You can be a good man and perform bad actions, because that's the nature of things. People who believe otherwise, well, they're just timeservers, because they spend so much time wrestling with their consciences that nothing gets done, and nothing changes, and the innocent and the defenseless, they just keep getting hurt. In the end you do what you can, maybe what you have to do, to make things better. Your heart isn't going to be weighed against a feather in the next life, Bird. My guess is they use something heavier, otherwise we'll all end up in hell."
He smiled at me, a small, wintry smile that said he knew the cost of following that philosophy. He knew, because he was following it himself: sometimes with me, sometimes with Louis, but always, always according to what he believed was right. I wasn't sure that what he said could be applied to me. I made moral judgments in what I did, but I didn't believe that I was always entitled to do so and I knew that I had not yet managed to purge myself of the guilt and grief I felt. I acted to ease my own pain and, in doing so, I sometimes managed to ease the pain of others. That was as close to compassion as I thought I could get, for the present.
From the far end of town came the sound of sirens, gradually drawing nearer. Red-and-blue lights flashed across the buildings on the main street as a cruiser tore around the corner and headed in our direction at high speed. It screeched a hard left at the intersection and drove by. In the front seat of the car I could see the figure of Randall Jennings.
"Must be a doughnut sale on," remarked Angel.
A second car came down the main street, spun on its rear tires as it made the turn, then headed after the first vehicle.
"With free coffee," he added.
I tossed my keys in my hand, then nudged Angel off the hood of the Mustang, where he had just taken up a position. "I'm going to take a look. You want to come along?"
"Nah. I'm a-waitin' for Black Narcissus to finish making himself lovely for us. We'll hold off for you, burn some furniture to keep warm."
I followed the lights of the lead cars as they glanced against the trees, the branches like hands outstretched over the road. After a mile I caught up with the cruisers as they headed up into the forest through a private logging company road, the wooden barrier thrown to one side to enable the cars to pass. Beside the barrier stood a man wearing a wool hat and a parka. A path wound down behind him to a small house on the edge of the company land. I figured that maybe it was he who had made the call to the police.