Down by the River

by Robyn Carr

  “How would I know, Frank?”

  “Why am I here? Because I get in fights! I get in fights because my dad beat us all up for my whole life and finally my mom killed him. You think there’s anyone in Grace Valley wants to hook up with someone like me?”

  “I don’t know, Frank. Maybe it’s not the history so much as the attitude. Maybe you keep people back with all that rage.”

  Yeah, he was thinking, sweeping up behind the grill and the ovens. People better stay back. ‘Cause if they stay back where they belong, they don’t get hurt.

  The shadows outside were getting long. Most people were home for dinner. Leah waited tables all day, then went home to be there for the younger boys before dark. When the weather was wet and cold, George took Frank home. When it was decent George might let him go early and he rode his bike the five miles.

  George didn’t keep regular hours at the café. Rather, it served the town in a way. He’d watch to make sure the regulars either had their meal or weren’t looking for one. He’d check to see if the lights were off in the clinic, church and police department, then he’d lock up. If there was a town meeting, a big game or a town fair, George would make a bunch of extra pies, put on the coffeepot and open up for business, because he was pretty much the only game in town. Summers he stayed open later. In winter, when people were driven inside by the dark and cold and wet, George went home unless he was needed. Tom and June, and now John Stone, all had keys to the café in case they needed anything, like a big load of ice to tend to emergencies.

  There were only two people in the café besides Frank and George, and they were close to leaving. Sam and Harry Shipton had had some dinner, their plates almost empty when George gave them each a second cup of coffee. Frank grabbed the trash from the biggest compactor and dragged it out behind the café in the soggy, wet night. He heard a cat wailing a high-pitched scream. Cats fighting in this weather? Not too bright, he thought. He heard it again, but it sounded more like a woman than a cat, so he looked around, but didn’t see anything. The rushing of the swollen river behind the café made it hard to hear anything clearly.

  He opened the door to go back inside when he heard it again—children crying and someone yelling—so he let the door fall closed and sprinted down the street, past the church and around the corner. He didn’t even think about what he was doing, he was simply compelled to find out who was yelling. His shoes hit each mud puddle with a huge splash that wet his jeans up to his thighs, but as he heard that sound—a sound familiar to him—he ran faster. Two blocks. Three.

  There it was. Jurea Mull and her son were yelling and banging on a door they couldn’t get open. In front was that old broken-down truck he’d seen at Sam’s station. It was him, the guy they all believed had robbed George. He’d come back, and by the sights and sounds, he was making trouble at the house where Sam had put up the wife and kids.

  Frank felt his heart hammering in his throat. All the beatings came back to him and he remembered how his daddy, once tanked up, didn’t care how small a kid was. His mom had taken the brunt of it all those years, keeping him away from the kids. Frank’s legs moved so fast down the street back to the café he could’ve set a new record. He crashed inside, slamming the door against the wall.

  “It’s him!” he said to the men within. “That guy that robbed the till! He’s back, he’s beating on his family, sounds like.” Then he grabbed the only thing handy and took off again. He wielded a large umbrella.

  Frank could hear the footfalls behind him and knew that the men had come to help. When he got to the house he yelled at Jurea. “Get back! I’ll kick it!”

  “No!” she screamed. “There’re little ones! They might be at the door!”

  He hadn’t noticed that Clinton wasn’t there till he came back with a crowbar. Clinton limped up on the porch of the little house and, without a word, applied the crowbar to the large plywood square that covered the window. Once a few nails were loosened, he grabbed the wood, gave a tug and tore it off the window frame, exposing the occupants inside.

  Something happened to Frank. He began drifting in and out of reality. At first he saw Conrad, skinny in his baggy pants and thick-soled shoes, with his young wife up against the opposite wall while the little children huddled in a corner away from them. Then suddenly Frank saw his father beating his mother. The two little girls became five little tow-headed boys, shivering in fear, cowering from Gus Craven. But reality shifted again and Frank saw himself beating a woman while the babies cried and clung to one another. He stood frozen. He looked through that open picture window as if it were a movie screen that showed him the past, the present and the future all at once, the images shifting.

  While he stood, not knowing quite what he saw, Sam and Clinton crawled through the window and grabbed Conrad, pulling him off his wife. Conrad yelled at them to mind their own business, that she was his wife. Frank had heard that very thing so many times growing up while Tom Toopeek or the deputies dragged old Gus out of the house.

  Erline, her face bleeding, ran to her children to comfort them. That, too, was the same. Was there no other script for these beaters and their families? He heard the familiar sound of a siren and realities blended again as he feared they would take away his daddy, then feared they wouldn’t, then knew in his heart they were coming for him!

  He felt a gentle but callused hand on his face and saw it was Jurea wiping tears from his cheeks. “There now, son. It’s going to be all right now. You can see she ain’t hurt real bad, the babies are okay, and now the police is—”

  Frank, in a state of panic, turned away from her and ran.

  Ricky pulled up in front of the house and got out of his car. He glanced at the fast-departing Frank Craven, ready to give chase, when Sam yelled from the porch, “Ricky! In here!”

  Within the little house he found Clinton, a large boy and plenty able despite being an amputee with a prosthetic leg, sitting on top of the wriggling Conrad while Sam crouched over Erline, trying to assess the damage. Harry was rocking the baby. It took Ricky only a second to replace Clinton with a pair of handcuffs. “What’s up with Frank Craven?” Ricky asked.

  “Don’t know,” Clinton said. “Was Frank who brought help. Mama and me, we heard that old truck pull up, then heard Erline scream for help.”

  “That boy had tears all down his face,” Jurea said. “I think what he saw scared him to death.”

  Ricky jerked Conrad to his feet. What Frank saw, he’s seen too much of, he thought.

  “I think we ought to take this young woman to the hospital,” Sam said.

  “I’ll be all right. He didn’t hurt me that bad.” She looked up at Ricky. Her lip was three times its original size on one side and her nose was bleeding. “It probably looks a lot worse than it is.”

  Ricky frowned blackly. An abusive marriage had sent his mother, Corsica, first seeking shelter for her and her only son, Ricky, then eventually getting her degree in social work so she could help women in the same straights. There was a reason Ricky was his mother’s best deputy and assistant. “Give me one minute to put this guy in the car and we’ll take care of Erline.”

  Grabbing the handcuffs on the chain that held them together, he lifted upward, putting the strain on Conrad’s shoulders, and steered him toward the now-opened door. Except Ricky was a little bit off and Conrad’s head nearly hit the door frame. Ricky had to pull him hard right to keep him from hitting it.

  “Hey! You son of a bitch!” Conrad shouted. “You did that on purpose!”

  “If you’d stop squirming around, this would be easier,” Ricky said. “Here, let’s try that again.”

  This time he did hit the door frame and Conrad let out a wail.

  “Jesus,” Ricky said. “I’m all thumbs.” He pushed him through the door. “I’m awful sorry, Conrad,” he said, steering him out the door successfully. But then poor Conrad, completely of his own accord, didn’t see the step and tripped, landing right on his face. He rolled over and glared up at R
icky.

  Ricky shrugged. “Hey, accidents happen, pal.” Without much concern for gentleness, Ricky got him to his feet again.

  Just as Ricky was putting Conrad in the back of his police car, George came down the street, half jogging, half walking. George had a pretty good gut on him and, it was fair to say, was not in nearly the shape seventy-year-old Sam was in.

  “Did Frank go back to the café?” Ricky asked him, shoving Conrad in and slamming the door.

  “No. I locked up. He’s not here?”

  “He took off like a scalded dog. Where you think he went?”

  “Got me.” George shrugged. “I’ll look around for him. Maybe call Leah, make sure he’s okay. Why you reckon he ran off?” George asked.

  “He might’ve been upset with what he saw—young woman with little children getting beat up. He’s got a history with that.”

  “The poor kid,” George said. “You gonna arrest this scum?”

  “Oh, yeah. Consider him arrested.”

  “You like him for the burglary of the café?” George asked as they were going back into the house.

  Ricky stopped short. “Like him?” he asked. “George, you been watching NYPD Blue again?”

  His face went a little red. “Bet he did it, though.”

  “Very likely,” Ricky said, but he couldn’t help chuckling.

  Erline didn’t appear to be badly hurt, but you could never tell when there was more to an injury than there appeared to be. Ricky agreed that she should go to the emergency room and be looked over, so Sam was designated to drive her while Jurea watched the children.

  “He wanted money,” Erline said as she was leaving. “He just wouldn’t believe I didn’t have any.”

  “But you let him in,” Ricky said.

  “I didn’t think he’d hurt me,” she said.

  “He has before, hasn’t he?”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  “What about today was different, then?” he asked her.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I was stupider than usual,” she said.

  Frank ran, and while he ran there was a movie reel of beatings going on in his head—those he had endured, those he had dished out. The tears streamed down his cheeks as the face of the victim and aggressor changed. He saw himself as the small boy who shrank away from his brutal father. He saw himself at the bus stop, pummeling a kid for saying something that pissed him off. He saw his mother trying futilely to ward off Gus Craven’s fists. He saw himself as he slapped his girlfriend across the face.

  There was a demon inside of him and it had come from his father.

  He ran past the café, down the street, past the police department and turned off Valley Drive. He was running for his life and he was so scared.

  A dim light shone deep within the little yellow house where Jerry Powell lived, where he kept his counseling office. There was nothing welcoming about that light. In fact, it looked as if no one was home. A walk led to the side door where he kept his office and saw his clients for counseling, but Frank threw himself against the front door and began hammering. It was a long time before lights started to come on in the house. Finally Jerry opened the door.

  “Frank?” he asked.

  “God,” Frank cried. “I just saw the worst things! You gotta get me out of this!”

  Calmly, slowly, Jerry led Frank around the front of the house to the office doors. He tried to keep his personal life and his professional life separate. He didn’t mind that clients often came to the door of his residence, but each time he would take them to the office. It was there that he worked. It was one of the ways he managed to keep what he heard at work from giving him nightmares.

  They sat down in chairs opposite each other while Frank described hearing the screaming, getting help to free the young woman from her abusive spouse. Then he described the changing shapes and identities as he saw, or imagined he saw, his father and himself. And himself becoming his father.

  “Am I losing my mind?” he asked Jerry.

  “No, Frank. Finding it.”

  Jerry and Frank spent a long time talking about his reaction being the turning point he’d been needing. Once Frank saw the total picture of the cycle of abuse and understood it on an emotional level, there was true hope he could overcome it. Frank had been damaged by abuse, and part of the long-term effect was his inbred helplessness to rage.

  “And that means I can’t control it,” he said in a defeated tone.

  “No, Frank. It means that, until you understand what makes you vulnerable, you can’t control it. But now, knowing what you know, understanding what kind of life you don’t want anymore, now you have as good a chance as anyone.”

  Tom joined Ricky at the police department to interrogate Conrad, who was now in custody.

  “What brings you back to the valley, Conrad?” Tom asked him.

  “My wife,” he said.

  “She’s not your wife,” Ricky said.

  “Common law,” Conrad said. “Them’s my kids. At least I think they are.” And he grinned meanly.

  “So? You come back just to knock her around?”

  “Jesus…”

  “Well? I don’t think I get it—”

  “Money! The old man gave her money!”

  Tom and Ricky looked at each other, then back at Conrad. “Did she give you money before, Conrad?”

  “Before what?”

  “The last time you came to town?”

  “What time? I just came today. All these years I took care of her, gave her whatever money I had, you’d think she could give me a couple a—”

  “No, Conrad, the last time you came to town.”

  “What time?” he asked, agitated. “I told you, I just came today! What are you talking about?”

  “We think you were here before. A couple of weeks ago, maybe.”

  Conrad’s expression changed and a slow smile spread on his mouth. Even though he’d spent years trying to kill off his brain cells, he hadn’t succeeded in becoming totally stupid yet. He realized what they were getting at. Something had happened in town, some crime, and they were going to lay it on him. He started to laugh. He laughed till he had to hold his sides.

  “Sure am curious about what’s so damn funny,” Tom said.

  “You are! You think you’re going to hang something on me and you are just shit outta luck! I been in jail! I been in jail for almost three weeks! At the county!”

  Fourteen

  Harry could see from the parsonage when George arrived at the café. He didn’t have a stitch of food in the house, naturally, and he was starving. Being unable to sleep all night made him all that much more aware of his lack of food and his gnawing hunger. He gave George just enough time to get the coffee on.

  “Good morning,” Harry called into the café. “Am I too early?”

  “No! Come on in! I was just making myself some breakfast. Can I throw on a couple of eggs for you?”

  “That would be wonderful, George.” He leapt up on a stool at the counter. “I could eat a horse. I didn’t sleep a wink all night, worrying about Erline.”

  “I called Sam last night—she’s back at home.”

  “Thank God! But what worries me is that young man, coming back, hurting her again.”

  George brought Harry a cup of coffee. “I think he’s going away for a while. Don’t you, Harry?”

  Harry shrugged and looked into his coffee. George took a thoughtful sip, then turned back to his bacon and eggs, giving each a flip onto a plate. The toast came up right on schedule, and in what seemed mere seconds, he put a plate in front of the preacher.

  “Besides, Harry, I’d bet anything he took what was in my till.”

  “You think?” Harry asked, looking up.

  “Who else?”

  “Indeed,” Harry said. He buttered his toast. “Maybe it was someone real needy, George.”

  George just shrugged and got his own breakfast. “It wasn’t losing the money that upset me, Harry. It wasn’t enou
gh to get upset about. I’d’ve given just about anyone who asked for it two hundred bucks. Maybe not that Conrad fella, I admit. But then again, if he’d of asked real nice and promised to get some food laid in for the wife and little ones, I’d of probably given it to him. If he’d asked real nice.” He messed up his eggs with his fork and dipped his toast into the yolks, taking a big, sloppy bite. “It’s just that I’d give almost anyone a loan, a meal, a job. You know? I open the café early, stay late and try to take good care of people. So why they got to go and wreck the damn door? Now it’s more than the money, it’s the hardware and time and all sorts of things.”

  The bell on the door tinkled as Leah came in, shaking her slicker outside the door to remove the moisture from it. “Morning, Pastor. Morning, George.”

  “Leah, how’s old Frank doing this morning? He going to be all right?”

  “He’s fine, George. It shook him up a little, seeing that mean young fella beating on his wife.” She stashed her coat and got a cup of coffee. “The truth is, it reminded him of his daddy, and it threw the fear of God in him. Frank has a hard time controlling his temper. It terrifies him to think he can’t help but turn out as mean as his daddy was, God rest his soul and forgive me.”

  Harry smiled a sweet smile and touched Leah’s hand. “Leah, when you asked, it was so. And I’ll give a little extra time in my prayers for Frank, since you worry about him.”

  “I have to say, Harry, that most reverends wouldn’t be so easy around a woman once tried for murder.”

  “We’re none of us perfect,” Harry said.

  While he ate his breakfast, a meal he wouldn’t offer to pay for and that George wouldn’t bill him for, he felt he was at the end of his rope. He didn’t know how long he could go on letting the people of this town down like he did. He was dishonest with them and they had no idea. He knew he didn’t deserve their respect, but they gave it unflinchingly. Here was a good woman, who had killed only in defense of her own life and her children’s, standing before him with shame, when it was he who should be shamed before her.