Free Archangel by Paul Watkins Page B

the rivers and the air. It was not happening with the same intensity that he had seen in Kuwait. At home, the damage was more gradual, which made it seem all the more sinister.
    His life started to take on a different purpose, one that he would never have considered before. He wondered if it had something to do with how close he had come to dying. He had heard about peoplewho had been changed suddenly and permanently at the point of almost losing their lives. He could not trace his feelings to their source, the way his old self would have done, analyzing and rethinking until all facets of the issue were laid bare. All Gabriel could do was act on them. Not long afterward, he joined his first environmental activist group. He quickly used up his savings and his patience in peaceful protests. He attended meetings where philosophical discussions dragged on into the night. He stood on street corners and handed out leaflets to people who glanced at the words, crumpled the paper and threw the leaflets into the nearest garbage can.
    Then Gabriel heard about a man named Hannibal Swain, who operated a group out in the Gros Ventre Range in Wyoming. He heard them referred to as environmental terrorists. Others called them radicals. Extremists. There seemed to be any number of names given to this group, which specialized in the spiking of trees and the disabling of heavy logging and road-building machinery. They were the only ones Gabriel had heard of who had actually stopped logging projects from going through.
    In his frustration, Gabriel traveled out to Wyoming. For a while, he found it impossible to contact Swain’s people. He began to wonder whether they were just a myth. But in the end, they were the ones who found him.
    He had been with the group only two months when Hannibal Swain came to the restaurant in Jackson Hole called the Peppermill, where Gabriel had a daytime job. Swain was the man’s real name, unlike others in the group, who had chosen to give false names. The best camouflage, Swain had said, was not to hide at all. So far, at least, it had worked. Swain sat down at a table. When Gabriel came with the menu, feeling the veins in his neck thump with worry at the sight of the man, Swain told him, “Meet me out front at the end of your shift.” Swain had watery blue eyes, and the sun had withered his skin so that he seemed to be a decade older than he was. His blond mustache looked like threads of straw. Swain handed back the menu and stood up to leave.
    Gabriel knew that something terrible was about to happen. Only two days before, they had spiked three hundred trees and were just finishing up when a logging patrol heard the dull sound of their copper-headed hammers. The patrol came charging through thewoods and ran right past where Gabriel lay, covered with the earth he had thrown over himself. He realized then that he could not have been what he was now without first having been a soldier for the other side. None of the group had been caught that day, but they all knew it was only a matter of time.
    After the shift, Gabriel walked out of the restaurant into the glare of late-afternoon sun. He moved past the huge arch of elk horns at the entrance to the town square and found Swain sitting in a pickup at the corner. One arm, wrapped in the faded indigo of a jeans jacket, hung out of the window and down the glossy, tomato-red door of the truck.
    “Get in,” Swain said, and rapped his knuckles on the door.
    They drove out of town and over the pass into Idaho. Swain didn’t speak. For a long time, Gabriel waited to be told what was going on. He knew what a risk Swain had taken to meet him in broad daylight. To Gabriel, Swain was a man who often took big risks, but never without reason. Swain allowed no more drama into his life than he had to. He didn’t spend his time in philosophical discussions about whether he was breaking the law. If the subject ever did come up, it was in hope that the laws would be changed and