The angel weeps in the rain. What dreams the carved stone? Is there sight in those eyes? May those wings spread and soar? Silent, the rain runs down the smooth face, the cold cheeks, the hard, thin lips.
“Is it death, then?” I asked, raising my voice over the murmuring rain.
The hard face that met mine seemed a clear enough answer. I did not recognize him, but I was never much involved in that side of the business, until now.
“It’s not right,” I said as the silent figure neared. “We dream, we fight, we live for something, and we die.” He was reaching into his jacket now. “You think it doesn’t matter, you think it won’t be you? Well, I’m telling you it will.” I gazed up to the angel. “God’s messenger always comes, in the end.” I turned back and could see only the gleaming knife.
“Do-un’ may tisss har’, guv.”
I couldn’t place the accent. I understood enough of the broken English, though, and shook my head. The appeal was… appealing: to close my eyes, to wait, to accept, but I was not built of stone.
I swung the silverplated head of my walking stick at his hand, and the knife sailed through the air. He growled, an animal growl. His bared teeth were sharp—inhuman—like the spiny mouth of a barracuda.
He leapt at me, and I brought the cane between us, holding the shaft across his neck as his chomping maw snapped at me.
“Devil,” I groaned, letting one arm give as I sidestepped the snarling monster. He stumbled forward, and I snapped the silver handle a glancing shot across his head. He grunted, falling to his knees. I struck again, bringing the head of my stick down hard. The silver sunk into his skull.
He fell, face down, into a muddy puddle. A green slime oozed from the wound, but the rain was already washing the silver clean.
Glancing back up at the marble angel, I nodded. The silent watcher offered no judgement, merely wept. It made little difference. His knife or another, death would come. By bullet, a needle, or a bomb; be it a car suddenly climbing the sidewalk or even, in some strange improbable twist, a slow passing in some forgotten ward in some far off year, an old man dying in bed, I knew my angel would come, but for now it was not this thing, this ill-made thing from the wharves. For some reason, I was grateful for that.
I clutched my stick. It was death, it was always death, the judgement come down since the days of Adam. It was the same for all men. I at least had the benefit of knowing. I marched off into the rain, wondering how I would disappear.
The angel weeps in the rain over the hunched, dead thing that was not completely a man. When the body was reported, when a detective came, he said:
“Murder?”
“Right, sir. A murder ‘ere. ‘E was struck in the back o’ ‘is ‘ead, sir.”
“That’s his knife,” the detective answered, pointing to the forgotten weapon. “I know the kind. If this was murder, he would have been knifed. No, he pulled the knife, and then someone, either there at the time, or the one he meant to stab, got in a lucky shot. Back of the head, so probably someone who saw the man with the knife and interfered. An avenging angel, if you will,” the detective observed, glancing up at the marble figure.
“Still’s murder by the law, it is.”
But when the corpse was turned over, when the patrolman saw the face of the victim, he began to think it was the act of an angel after all.
Tale Told 