Acts of Mercy (25 page)

From what? From what?

The smells of dust and pine and horse sweat assailed his nostrils; the staccato beat of the bay’s hooves was like thunder in his ears. His heart skittered wildly. The sensation of speed was almost exhilarating: moon-drenched meadowland flashing past them, forest slopes rushing closer and beckoning sanctuary. Oh yes, he was in his element now; Justice couldn’t catch him now.

I want him to catch me, I didn’t do anything.

He twisted his head to look over his shoulder. And Justice was there, just coming through the gate on one of the smaller horses, coming after him. One-man posse. Relentless. Justice on the prod.

Augustine pulled his head around again, into the wind.

When the mare stretched out into full gallop Justice clung to the reins with one hand and to the saddle horn with the other; he had never ridden at this speed before; he was afraid of being jarred out of the saddle. More than a hundred yards still separated him from the President, and there were less than a hundred yards between Augustine and the northeast slope. The horse he was riding was Casey Jones, and Casey was bigger and faster than the mare: Justice knew there was no hope of catching up to him before he reached the trees.

And what would he do once he was into them? The trail forked halfway up the slope, Justice remembered; the main path went up along the river gorge to Lookout Point, and the branch hooked back to the south and eventually wound down again to the meadowland. There were no other trails up there—but the President was an expert horseman, he would probably be able to break a path through the trees if he chose to. And yet even then he would have nowhere to go. You couldn’t get from the ridge into the rangeland valleys farther east because of high rock walls and impassable undergrowth; the slope was a kind of mountain cul-de-sac.

Should he draw his gun, fire a warning shot? Surreality again. Law officer chasing a desperado on horseback, a scene from a thousand Western movies; only the desperado was the President, he could not fire a shot in pursuit of the President—

A new thought struck Justice: Suppose I catch him and he refuses to give up? Suppose he tries to fight me, forces me to use my weapon? No. I couldn’t do it. Even if he’s guilty, even in self-defense and the performance of my duty, I couldn’t shoot him.

How could I shoot the President of the United States?

At the base of the slope, where the trail began its climb into the trees, Augustine automatically slowed Casey Jones and gave the animal his head, letting him make the transition from level to ascending ground at a safe pace of his own. The horse surged upward, snorting, chest heaving. Augustine tightened the reins again then, used his heels—and they were into the woods, darkness and shadow closed around them and the moonshine was gone except for random beams glowing like spotlights on the forest floor.

Into the woods, but not out of the woods. We’re not out of the woods yet.

It was hushed in there, so still that the muffled rhythm of Casey Jones’s hooves seemed to echo from tree trunk to tree trunk: dull hollow axlike thuds. Low-hanging branches seemed to reach for him as he sped past; he saw them as fingers, the groping fingers of Justice, and ducked his head and flattened his body forward to avoid them, resting his cheek on the wet leather that had formed on the horse’s neck. Receding below, the trail appeared to him then as a tunnel, long and dark and unfamiliar, alien, leading him—where? Where?

For God’s sake help me.

He closed his eyes, but as soon as he did that he saw the blood residue on his hand, saw Harper’s shattered skull. He popped them open again, and they were wet with sweat—or was it tears? No. A President does not weep; he must never weep. Not even to mourn his dead. Not even to mourn himself.

The trail fork loomed ahead, but he did not slow Casey Jones this time, had no impulse at all to veer off onto the branch path. Lookout Point, that was where he was heading. Not by choice, by happenstance. Wasn’t it? Lookout Point. I was up there yesterday with Maxwell, but Maxwell is dead; somebody murdered him, but it wasn’t me. Lookout Point. High ground, the high place.

Why?

And there was bright moonlight ahead, and the trail began to curve out of the trees to parallel the rim of the gorge, and he heard the low rumbling voice of the river. Like a train, it sounded like a train. Faster! He kicked at Casey Jones’s lathered flanks, sent the animal through the curve to where he could see the high ground above. The horse began to balk, laboring near exhaustion. Don’t quit on me now, old engineer, we’re almost there, almost up the mountain. He held Casey’s head steady, heeled his flanks again, and they went up, up—out at last onto the grassy flat of Lookout Point.

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&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?