The Angel Of Darkness

CHAPTER 37

Miss Howard and I gave each other quick looks of what you might call horrified recognition, as the rest of the men hustled to their friend.

“What the hell’ve you done to him?” one of the men shouted: a question I’d heard before, and under similar circumstances.

I could only get out the words “Believe me, it wasn’t us-” before the men picked up their friend and began to hustle him away in terror.

“You get the hell out of here!” one of them called. “And you stay the hell out!” With that they disappeared back in the direction of the tavern.

Miss Howard kept hold of her revolver, as we both spun to look all around. “Where is he?” Miss Howard asked in a whisper.

“In this darkness?” I said, also whispering. “He could be anywhere.”We didn’t move for another minute, but kept listening and waiting, expecting some move out of our small enemy-if in fact he was our enemy, which I was beginning to doubt. But there was no trace of any activity on the road or in the shadowy trees and shrubs what lined it, and that was good enough for me. “Come on,” I said to Miss Howard, taking her arm.

She didn’t need much persuasion, by that point, and in another half minute we were aboard our rig and heading north again, the little Morgan stallion moving at a nice trot. As we passed by the tavern, I could see a few pairs of angry eyes following us, and the body of the man who’d been struck by the aborigine’s arrow was laid out on the bar: how long he’d be unconscious, or if in fact he was dead, I didn’t know, and I certainly couldn’t have said why Señor Linares’s servant had once again come to our assistance. The first time, during our bout with the Dusters, might’ve been laid off to his arrow finding the wrong mark; but this second incident made it clear that the strange little man who’d seemed to threaten me with death on Saturday night was trying to keep us alive.

“Maybe he just wants to kill us himself,” I said, once we’d gotten half a mile or so out of Stillwater.

“He’s had more than enough opportunities to do that,” Miss Howard answered, shaking her head. “None of it makes any sense…” She finally shoved her revolver back into its hiding place, then took a deep breath. “You don’t have a cigarette, do you, Stevie?”

I shook my head with a small laugh, feeling relieved that we’d made good our escape. “You’d think people would get tired of asking me that question,” I said, going for my pants pocket with one hand as I let the reins slack a bit with the other. Pulling out the packet of smokes, I handed them to her. “Light me one, too, if you would, miss.” She put a match to two cigarettes, then handed one over. After taking a few deep drags off her own, she put her head between her hands and began to rub her temples. “You got pretty hot back there,” I said.

She managed a chuckle. “I’m sorry, Stevie. I hope you know I wouldn’t put you in danger deliberately. But that kind of insufferable idiocy-”

“World’s full of men like that, Miss Howard. Can’t go telling them all where they get off, and not expect a few to get riled.”

“I know, I know,” she said. “But there are certain times… Still, I do hope you know that we were never in any real danger.”

“Sure,” I answered; then I took a few seconds to study my companion. “You really would’ve shot him, wouldn’t you?”

“If he’d touched either one of us?” she said. “Absolutely. Nothing like a bullet in the leg to make men mind their manners.”

I chuckled again, although I knew that she was perfectly serious. There probably wasn’t another woman in the world who was as comfortable with guns-or, for that matter, with shooting people-as Miss Howard. She had some very personal reasons for being that way, and it isn’t my place to recite those reasons here; she’ll take care of that job one day herself, if she’s so inclined. All that mattered to me that particular night was that when she said she would’ve shot a man to protect me, she meant it; and that knowledge allowed my nervous system to grow ever more calm, and my mind ever more inquisitive, as we traveled along the moonlit river road.

“How can she do it, Miss Howard?” I eventually asked, after smoking the better portion of my stick.

Miss Howard answered with a long, deep sigh. “I don’t know, Stevie. It’s the nature of people who are racked by feelings of powerlessness, I suppose, to try to exert power over whoever or whatever’s weaker than they are-and God help those weaker beings if they don’t play along. Drunken, frustrated men beat and kill women, women desperate to prove they can control something beat and kill children, and those children, in turn, torment animals… Remember, too, babies may look charming to those of us who haven’t got any, but there are plenty of mothers who lose patience with all the noise, the sleeplessness, and the plain and simple work of nurturing.”

I was shaking my head. “No, that’s not what I meant. The actual killing, that part of it I’ve begun to understand. I think. But the way she makes other people act. How does she pull that off? I mean, look at what we’ve heard-and seen, too. Some people who worked with her in New York thought she was a saint; other people, in the same joint, thought she was a murderer. That poor fool husband of hers treats her like she’s his sole salvation-but then she goes around the corner and gets the likes of Goo Goo Knox more lathered up than any moll or streetwalker what’s ever been through the Dusters’ front door. Then we come up here and find out that in Ballston Spa people first thought she was a hussy, then a good woman-and then she got ranked as a hussy again. Now, we go to this damned place-Stillwater-and find out that the whole town’s scared to death of her! How the hell does one person pull it all off?”

“Well,” Miss Howard answered, with a slight smile, “I’m afraid that question’s a little more complicated.” She held her cigarette up and puzzled with a thought. “Try to think about all the things you’ve just mentioned, Stevie-what’s the one quality that they have in common?”

“Miss Howard,” I said, “if I knew that-”

“All right, all right. Consider this, then: none of those personalities, those different ways that people see her, are complete. None of them is a description of an actual person-they’re all simplifications, exaggerations. Symbols, really. The ministering angel-the fiendish killer. The devoted wife and mother-the wanton harlot and brazen hussy. They all sound like characters out of a story or a play.”

“Like the-whatever-the ‘myths’ you talked about? That day outside the museum?”

“Exactly. And like those myths, what’s amazing isn’t that someone can come up with such characters-anyone crazy or just imaginative enough could do that. It’s that so many people-not just the citizens of towns like Stillwater but whole societies-actually accept and believe in them. And I’m afraid all that gets back to something that may be a little difficult for you to understand.” Miss Howard must’ve read something like injured pride in my face, because she put a quick hand to my arm. “Oh, I don’t mean because you’re not educated enough or smart enough, Stevie. You’re one of the smartest males I’ve ever known. But you are male.”

“Yeah?” I said. “And what’s that got to do with the discussion?”

“Everything, I’m afraid,” Miss Howard answered with a shrug. “It isn’t really possible for men to understand how much the world doesn’t want women to be complete people. The most important thing a woman can be, in our society-more important, even, than honest or decent-is identifiable. Even when Libby’s evil-perhaps most of all when she’s evil-she’s easy to categorize, to stick to a board with a pin like some scientific specimen. Those men in Stillwater are terrified of her because being terrified lets them know who she is-it keeps them safe. Imagine how much harder it would be to say, yes, she’s a woman capable of terrible anger and violence, but she’s also someone who’s tried desperately to be a nurturer, to be a good and constructive human being. If you accept all that, if you allow that inside she’s not just one or the other, but both, what does that say about all the other women in town? How will you ever be able to tell what’s actually going on in their hearts-and heads? Life in the simple village would suddenly become immensely complicated. And so, to keep that from happening, they separate things. The normal, ordinary woman is defined as nurturing and loving, docile and compliant. Any female who defies that categorization must be so completely evil that she’s got to be feared, feared even more than the average criminal-she’s got to be invested with the powers of the Devil himself. A witch, they probably would have called her in the old days. Because she’s not just breaking the law, she’s defying the order of things.”

I turned to give Miss Howard an uncertain little smile. “You want to watch it-you’re starting to sound like you look up to her a little bit.”

Miss Howard started to smile back, but stopped quickly. “Sometimes it seems that way, even to me,” she admitted. “And then I remember that picture of Ana Linares, and realize how desperately unaware of her own true motives-and therefore dangerous-Libby really is.”

“Okay,” I answered, trying to get Miss Howard perked back up by continuing our discussion. “So what about somebody like Goo Goo Knox? He knows Libby’s married to Micah Hunter and is playing the good wife to him, nurturing him-but he still wants to carry on with her.”

Miss Howard nodded vigorously. “It’s the same thing. Knox may be a gang boss, but he’s still a man-he still wants to slip women into convenient categories, to keep them from causing any problems. He doesn’t believe that Libby actually cares about Hunter. He assumes that in the deepest part of her soul she’s a libertine, a whore, and that when she performs for him, and with him, he’s seeing the real Libby. Yet what have we found out? That she’s persuaded Knox to place her home under his gang’s protection. His thugs are keeping watch over the very house where she’s constructed some sort of hiding place for the babies she’s still trying desperately to prove that she can care for. So for all we know, she loathes spending time at the Dusters’, but does it to facilitate her attempts to nurture.”

My hand went to my forehead, as if rubbing it would make my mind work harder. “So-then-she’s not the whore that Knox thinks she is?”

“She might be,” Miss Howard answered, confusing me again.

“But you just said she was doing it to take care of the kids-”

“She’s doing that, too.”

“So which one is the actual her?”I almost yelled, starting to feel a little dim and not much liking it.

“None of them, Stevie,” Miss Howard explained, slowing down a bit for me. “The actual her was broken to pieces a long time ago. And that’s what the different characters she assumes are-the broken pieces, separate from each other, no longer coherent. We don’t yet know the specific childhood context that made Libby into the killer she is. But we do know this much, especially given what we’ve seen and been through since we got up here: ever since she was just a girl, she was almost certainly told that there was only one way for her to be a full, complete woman.”

“To be a mother,” I said with a nod. “Which she wasn’t any good at.”

“Or which she may not, deep down, have even wanted to be,” Miss Howard said. “We don’t know. Again, all we do know is that the message girls get when they’re growing up-especially in corners of the world like this one-is that if you want to do something with your life other than raise children, not only will your road be difficult, but you’ll never really be a woman. You’ll just be a female, of some indefinite and not very appealing type. A harlot, maybe. Or perhaps a servant. Or, if you join a profession, a detached functionary. Whatever the case, underneath it all you’ll be a cold, unfeeling aberration.” With an angry flick of her finger, Miss Howard showered the road below us with sparks from the burning tip of her cigarette. “Unless you want to be a nun, of course-and even they don’t always get away with it… A man can be a bachelor, and still be a man-because of his mind, his character, his work. But a woman without children? She’s a spinster, Stevie-and a spinster is always something less than a woman.”

“Well,” I said, my brain working too hard at keeping up with her thoughts to worry about being tactful, “what about you, then?”

Miss Howard’s green eyes slid slowly sideways to give me a glance what said I’d better make my meaning a bit clearer.

“What I’m saying,” I added in a hurry, knowing how fast her temper could flare, “is that none of that business really goes for you. You’re not married, you don’t have any kids, but you’re-” I looked away, suddenly embarrassed. “Well-you’re as much of a woman as any mother I ever knew. If you see what I mean.”

That brought her hand gently to my arm again, and allowed the green eyes to open wider. “That’s the most decent thing anyone’s said to me in a long time. Thank you, Stevie. But remember, too, you’re still young.”

“Oh,” I said, grabbing at my own chance to get huffy, “so my opinions don’t count? Or they’ll change, just because I’ll get older?”

It was Miss Howard’s turn to squirm a bit. “Well,” she noised, “it does happen sometimes…”

“Okay,” I pressed. “What about the others, then? The Doctor and the detective sergeants and Cyrus-even Mr. Moore? They all feel the same way.”

Miss Howard shot me a doubtful look. “Hardly an average selection of American men. I’m sorry, Stevie. Of course I value and respect how you and the others feel-you may never know how much. But to the rest of our world I’ll probably always be that strange Sara Howard, the spinster detective lady-unless and until I have a family. Not that part of me wouldn’t like to, someday. If I ever feel like I’ve really made a difference with my work, I might consider children-it’s just that I object to the notion that I won’t be whole until I do. It’s a cruel standard-especially to the women who can’t achieve it. Libby couldn’t, and the failure broke her. Yes… for all her cleverness, she’s terribly broken. A little like your friend Kat, in that way. Clever, yet lost. Lost, and somehow-somehow-”

Suddenly Miss Howard’s face, so passionate while giving voice to ideas what I knew were as important to her as any in the world, went completely blank. Her words fell off with a quickness what let me know she’d caught sight of something-and there was only one “something” it could be.

“Where?” I said, whipping my head from side to side. “Where is he?”

Miss Howard put a steadying hand to my shoulder. “Just slow down, Stevie,” she whispered, “If I’m not mistaken, he’s right in front of us…”

I searched the dark road ahead; and there, to be sure, was the silhouette of a small person, the bagginess of the clothes and the bushiness of the hair giving away his identity. El Niño wasn’t moving, either away from or toward us; he seemed to be waiting for our rig to reach him, and as we got closer I began to make out that damned smile again.

“What the hell…” I mumbled. “Is he real, even? The mug gets around quicker than spit.”

“Oh, he’s real, all right,” Miss Howard answered. “The question is, what does he want?”

“Figure we should stop?”

She shook her head. “No. Keep going at a walk.” She pulled out her revolver and placed it in her lap. “Let’s see what happens.”