Two Songs This Archangel Sings

got his jaw broken in a challenge match with Veil, he got four of his buddies to go after Veil and try to arrest him. Veil beat up all four of them. Then he was arrested by the State Police. Everyone in three counties, including the State Police, knew about the challenge matches, and the judge had a pretty good idea of what had really happened. He sympathized with Veil, but also-justifiably-considered Veil to be an increasingly dangerous man. The charges were dropped in exchange for Veil's agreeing to enlist in the army. Veil did, and two weeks later he left. I drove him to the bus station. It was the last time I ever saw him.'

'Did he ever write to you, Jan?' Garth asked.

'Once, early on while he was still in basic training. It was to say he loved me, but also to say good-bye. He wrote that, for better or worse, the army was the only chance he had for a new life, and he was putting everything in the past behind him. He was setting me free.'

Now Jan Garvey abruptly crossed the room and turned on the lights. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, but dry. 'I don't know whether all my talking has helped you,' she continued in a firm voice as she poured more bourbon into our plastic cups, 'but it's certainly helped me. All these years; I guess I never realized how much these memories of Veil have haunted me. There was, and is, nobody like Veil, and I guess it was those memories that broke up my marriages. I had such mixed emotions when I started reading about his growing success as an artist. I hated him for leaving me behind, for forgetting about me, and I realized at the same time that I still loved him. Then I knew I was happy for him. He'd finally found another way to fight his demons; his painting was a new kind of salvation.' She paused, sighed, sipped at her bourbon. 'Now, you say somebody is trying to kill him.'

'Yes,' I said. 'Jan, Veil was very successful in the army. He was most certainly an outstanding combat soldier, because somewhere along the line he was made an officer-probably a field commission. And he was promoted steadily, to the rank of full colonel. What you've told us helps us to understand better a lot of things about him, but there are still too many important gaps missing. Something happened to him toward the end of his career in the army, and somehow we have to find out what it was. Please think very carefully. You told us he only wrote you that one letter. Can you think of anyone, anyone at all, he might have written to regularly over the years?'

'I doubt he wrote to anyone,' the woman said distantly, in a voice so low I could hardly hear her, 'but Gary probably knows what happened to him.'

'Gary?'

Once again there was a prolonged silence, and Jan Garvey seemed cut adrift on a sea of thought and memory. 'Forget I mentioned that name,' she said at last. 'Gary can't help you; he can't even help himself. All Gary will do is kill you.'

Suddenly I thought I had a pretty good idea what had upset Matthew Holmes when we'd first mentioned that we were looking for someone in connection with arson and murder. There also seemed a good possibility that Garth really had seen a fire in the storm. 'Jan,' I said, 'earlier you talked about the madness in Colletville. You were talking about Veil, of course, and yourself. Then you said that you'd come back here because you'd defeated the madness, but that somebody else may have come back because he was defeated by it. Did you mean Gary?'

'Yes,' the woman replied softly. 'I shouldn't have said that; I had no right. I have a big mouth.'

'Why don't you have the right? Why is it wrong to talk about Gary?'

'I told you he can't help you.'

'I don't understand. You said that he may know what happened to Veil. Why wouldn't he want to help?'

'It's not that he won't; he can't. I mean that literally. Gary Worde is quite insane, and very, very dangerous.'

'Jan,' Garth said, rising to his feet and setting down his cup, 'where can we find this Gary Worde?'

'You can't,' the teacher answered softly. 'Nobody knows where to find him, and you mustn't try. It can only bring harm to you, and perhaps to Gary. Leave him alone.'

'We have to try, Jan,' Garth said, a slight edge to his voice. 'Remember that there are lives at stake here.'

I rose, went to a window and stared out into the darkness. A cold draft blew in my face. 'Jan,' I said, 'all over America there are so-called 'hidden veterans'-men who came home from the war with very deep emotional wounds they found they just couldn't handle. They can't, or won't, function any longer in our society, and so they go off to live by themselves wherever they can find solitude. They go into wilderness areas where they can live off the land, with as little contact with other people as possible. Is Gary Worde this county's hidden veteran? Is he up in those mountains?'

Turning away from the window, I saw Jan Garvey nod. 'Gary has no contact with anyone at all,' she said quietly. 'At least none that anyone around here has heard of, and we would hear.'

'How does he get food and clothing?' Garth asked.

'Nobody knows. I suppose he could get food by trapping, but clothing and other things …?' She finished with a shrug.

'How long has he been up there?'

'Almost nine years. Sometimes you'll see a campfire up there at night, and then you won't see another one for a long time. You think maybe he's dead, but then one night you'll see another fire, in a different place. I think he must move around a lot; there's a great deal of wilderness around here.'

'How do you know the campfires aren't set by hikers or hunters?'

'In summer, maybe. But not in winter-not in those mountains.'

I asked, 'Why would this man know what happened to Veil in the war? Southeast Asia's a big place.'

'He might know. Gary was Veil's closest friend, besides me. They enlisted together. Gary had his problems, too, and so he decided to go off with Veil. I know they went through basic training together, in the same unit. Gary used to write home fairly regularly, and his family shared the news with everyone.'

'When Gary came home, did he talk about the war?'

Jan Garvey shook her head. 'Never. Everyone knew right away that Gary was in a lot of trouble. Later, we found out that he'd spent six months in a V.A. mental hospital before he'd been discharged to come home. He'd gone away an overweight kid, and he came back looking like an old man who'd been in a concentration camp. Everyone tried to help as much as they could, and for a while he lived in a little converted room over his parents' garage. He suffered from night terrors; sometimes, you could hear him clear across town screaming in the middle of the night. Then, after a time, I guess he started suffering from the same terrors during the day. He couldn't work, because he'd just drift off in the middle of doing something, squat down, and cover his head. Then he'd start screaming.'

'It sounds like classic postcombat stress syndrome,' Garth said to me, raising his eyebrows slightly. 'Severe.'

I nodded in agreement, looked at the woman. 'Jan, why didn't his family, or the authorities, have him committed to a V.A. hospital?'

'His parents were going to. Gary had begun to fantasize that the Viet Cong were waiting just outside town and were going to come in after him. Everyone knew he was psychotic, and people were afraid he was going to explode and kill himself, or somebody else. The problem was that Gary was as terrified of going back to the mental hospital as he was of his phantom Viet Cong; apparently, his experiences there were as much a nightmare for him as whatever happened to him in the war. We all felt a responsibility toward him. This is a close-knit community. The feeling was that we'd sent him off to war as a kid of seventeen, and he'd come back … worse than dead. Nobody wanted to cause him any more suffering. We wanted to take care of him, but we just didn't know how. Finally, Gary solved the problem for all of us. One day in August just before sundown, nine years ago, he came out of the room over his parents' garage, walked down the middle of the street to the edge of town, and just kept going up into the mountains. That's where he's been ever since.'

Garth shook his head. 'Hasn't anyone from around here ever gone up to look for him?'

Jan Garvey nodded. 'Yes; once. And one of the men in the search party almost had to have a leg amputated after he walked into some kind of mantrap Gary had set. After that, everyone has just left Gary alone. There may be a lot of traps like that up there; Gary's still fighting the war in his mind.'

'I'd think he'd be a danger to hunters and hikers,' Garth said, still visibly upset.

'Oh, he most certainly is. The county has posted the entire area, and everyone around here stays well away from any of the sites where fires have been spotted. Also, we try as best we can to warn away strangers; a few years ago, one man came back with a story about how a wild man had almost killed him. So far, obviously, we've