The Chill

by Scott Carson

  But they never got it done. You didn’t win reelection by fixing out-of-sight, out-of-mind problems. The constituents wanted something new, not repairs to something old. They certainly didn’t want to spend money on the bastard-child lake of the great New York City water supply, either, the only real blemish on its remarkable reputation, the reservoir that had been built yet never tapped.

  While Ashokan had just received nearly a billion dollars of retrofitting and improvements, and Gilboa hundreds of millions, and while Water Tunnel Number 3 trudged toward a completion that would offer New York the best water supply of any major city in the world, the Chilewaukee had been forgotten, both its dream scenarios and its nightmare scenarios lost to time.

  He walked down the road, tracing above the tailwaters, which offered a soft but powerful soundtrack to his otherwise silent tour. The water was roaring out at… how many gallons per second? He remembered Arthur Brady telling him that, but he couldn’t remember the exact figure. Couldn’t remember much at all.

  I’ll see a doctor before I tell Lori, he thought. She’ll be terrified if I tell her I spent a full day in a blackout, and that’s not fair to her. Get some facts before scaring her. Even if the facts are awful, even if it was a stroke or if there’s a tumor growing in my brain, she deserves to be presented with facts. The unknown is worse.

  A break in the trees loomed to his left, and he followed it, stepping off the asphalt and starting through the woods, the damp leaves slick underfoot. He moved quickly, wanting to be hidden from the road. He didn’t expect traffic out here at this hour, but he also didn’t want to have to explain himself. You see, I’m the engineer trusted with inspecting this dam, and I spent the day in a waking blackout, so I’ve come back in the night to sneak onto the property and do the job right. You’re welcome, Torrance County. Sleep well!

  The slope was steep. Mick was physically fit, but he’d never been an athlete, never had the coordination or grace. As a kid, he’d always been chosen early in pickup basketball games if the captains were strangers. Once they got to know him, though, he plummeted down the list. He could shoot well, but so many times he bungled things before the shot. Missed a pass, dribbled off his foot, fumbled the ball before he could get into motion.

  It didn’t take him long tonight to prove that the old gracelessness still lurked. He misjudged a step, missed the grab at a tree, and then stumbled and fell and skidded down the hill on his knees, plowing furrows into the mud.

  Clumsy. Once he’d have been irritated by this, but tonight it didn’t register. Clumsy wasn’t a concern when crazy was in the mix. He fought to get back to his feet and stumbled on, remembering now, only after falling, to turn his body sideways and lean back, which prevented gravity from taking every advantage it could. If you gave gravity a chance, it brought you down. There was something admirable about the totality of its rule on earth. Even when it knocked him on his ass or sent him skidding through the mud on his knees, Mick appreciated the consistency of gravity’s dominance. It could be trusted.

  As he approached the rushing water below, he considered using the flashlight app on his phone but decided against it. For reasons he couldn’t fully articulate, he wanted his presence to be as unobtrusive as possible.

  He recalled his drive down to Torrance in the morning’s rain, getting lost, and arriving late. He recalled his exchange with Arthur Brady, and he knew that he’d been short with the man because he was in a hurry to focus on the job. He recalled telling the man to put on a raincoat.

  No, wait. That hadn’t been Brady. Had it? Was it the kid? Had he actually spoken with the sheriff’s son?

  Damn it. Here was where the blackness slipped in. There was a vague memory of fear, more like a general anxiety than a specific problem. He knew that he’d looked into the water and seen something that bothered him.

  But what?

  He came to the bottom of the slope. Here the night air was redolent with damp earth and pine needles and filled with the sounds of the relentless water whispering along the banks and gurgling past the rocks. The rain had stopped and it was cool and peaceful and should have felt quite wonderful.

  The hairs on his arms and neck had risen, though, and there was a spider-crawl sensation along the base of his skull.

  He stared at the dark water, and suddenly he was very afraid.

  Bubbles, he thought. I saw bubbles, and I knew—

  Something flashed to his left, a pale glow within the moonlit water, and when he looked that way he saw for the first time that there was a column of stacked stone winding up out of the water and into the shadows. It was ancient rock, hand-laid and hand-split. Brutal, backbreaking work.

  He stepped closer. It was an old retaining wall. The wall extended out into the tailwaters with a slight right-to-left curl, and each span was slightly higher than the next. The spans ran in seven- or eight-foot increments, and then the height rose by one block, creating a graceful stair-stepped wall of bluestone. Those thin but strong sheets stacked atop one another were pure Catskill Mountain product. They’d once paved the sidewalks of New York with Catskill bluestone, that particular rock being preferred because of its natural sheen and the way it handled water—bluestone was coarse enough to provide traction even in the worst rains.

  They’d quarried it out of here for years, millions of tons of the stuff, Boss Tweed himself part of the great excavation game, plundering the mountains to pave his city. That was before concrete came along, of course, and then Catskill bluestone went from a boom business to a cottage industry, artisan work for rich people’s patios.

  How haven’t I noticed this old wall before? he wondered. All of these visits, and I missed this beautiful old wall?

  He’d always approached from the other side, of course. That must be it.

  He stepped out onto the wall. The first few blocks were clear enough in the moonlight for him to place his feet with confidence. The rock was firm underfoot. He couldn’t see the end of the wall. It seemed to run out there forever. There was no way that it spanned the tailwaters completely. That was impossible. That would make another dam, in fact. A floodplain disaster.

  How is the water getting around it, then?

  He paused in the dark and listened. All around him was the sound of moving water, but the water on either side of the wall was as placid as a pond. Was there a drain below? No, he’d have seen that before. It would be on the maps and old blueprints. Really, it should be, anyhow. The wall was enough of an obstacle to warrant mention. He couldn’t believe that he’d missed it until now.

  He took another step. Now he was at the end of the first segment, and his next step would require moving higher. A treacherous choice for a clumsy man in the dark above a churning current.

  There is no current. How is there no current?

  He didn’t feel so clumsy now, either. That ancient bluestone gripped the soles of his shoes as if determined not to let go.

  He stepped up.

  He was higher above the water now and could hear the current but still couldn’t see it. The moonlight showed the next three blocks of stone, and the rest faded into darkness. Funny, the way the moonlight showed only enough to keep moving ahead but not enough to illuminate the destination.

  Two more steps.

  He knew this was dangerous, but it didn’t feel dangerous. He felt secure, and he was curious how far this thing extended. He stepped onto the next level, and even while he knew that the old wall should have been blasted away decades ago, Mick could understand the desire to preserve it. It was beautiful, built so carefully and so efficiently. He could only imagine the man-hours that had gone into it, cracking rock, hauling it, cutting it, then stacking and mortaring… What a feat. How easily people took modern construction methods for granted—took modern everything for granted, with their heads down and their phones in front of their faces. Tech was a remarkable achievement, yes, but the world was, too, and why couldn’t they just look up and appreciate it! Why didn’t they care how much effort h
ad gone into—

  “Water, sir?”

  The voice came from his right side, so close that it seemed to be spoken into his ear, and Mick screamed and staggered away and then fell from the wall.

  He braced for the splash and shock of cold, rushing water.

  There was none. He landed on his ass in high, dry weeds. He felt as if he’d fallen from a great height, and yet there was no jarring pain of impact.

  He was facing a boy who couldn’t have been more than ten years old, clothed in coveralls and an old-fashioned watch cap. In his left hand was a metal pail; in his right, a dipper with a long handle. He gave Mick a smile that was torn between sympathy and embarrassment.

  “Apologies, sir. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Mick pushed backward. The dry weeds crackled beneath his hands. Where was the water? The wall? He wanted to look back, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the boy, who was still regarding him with pitying curiosity.

  “Sir?”

  “What… what are you doing?” Mick whispered.

  “My job,” the boy said. “You’ve toiled all day, haven’t you?”

  Mick gave a small nod. The boy smiled, as if pleased that he was finally getting through.

  “Well, you can’t do that without developing a thirst. Water?” He lowered the dipper into the pail, the sound of metal on metal loud in the silent night, and then he removed the filled dipper and advanced on Mick, extending it toward him.

  Not real, Mick thought wildly. He is not real, and you made a very bad mistake coming back here. You needed to go home. Home to Lori and then to the doctor, because you are not just forgetting things now, you’re seeing things. This is very bad, Mick, very, very bad.

  Then the dipper was at his mouth. The metal cold against his lips. The water glistening in the moonlight.

  “Go on and drink, sir. I’ve got to be moving along for the others.”

  The others? For some reason those words chilled him more than the sight of the boy. Who were the others?

  Mick closed his eyes. The boy vanished from sight, but the cold press of the metal dipper didn’t leave his lips.

  I will call Lori, he thought numbly. First Lori and then an ambulance.

  He opened his eyes when the water splashed over his lips. The boy’s grimy face was blank and indifferent, like some zombie version of Oliver Twist. He’d tilted the dipper so the water ran into Mick’s mouth. The water was cool and delicious even as Mick tried to spit it out, choking and sputtering.

  “Get away,” Mick whispered. “Please, get away.”

  “You’ll want me back when the thirst comes,” the boy said, and then he sank the dipper into the pail and walked on, passing Mick without a look back. Mick turned to watch him go, and that was when he saw the road.

  The tailwaters were gone and in their place a road carved through the valley.

  “No,” Mick said, almost reasonably. He knew that his fear should be accelerating, knew that he should run or scream—no, run and scream… and yet he did not. Could not.

  The next voice he heard was deep and authoritative.

  “Shall we have a look at the work, Mr. Fleming?”

  He turned slowly, and a man stood before him in an old-fashioned black suit and black overcoat, a white shirt gleaming beneath, and on his head was a black hat with a white hatband that glowed silver in the moonlight.

  “Who are you?” Mick asked softly.

  “Anders Wallace, sir. I’m the foreman.”

  “The foreman,” Mick echoed. “Of what?”

  Anders Wallace looked disappointed in the question. “Time’s wasting, Mr. Fleming,” he said. “Shall we begin our walk?”

  No. I must run, not walk. I must run and I must scream, I must do those things until someone hears, until someone finds me, saves me.

  “The crew has been busy,” Anders Wallace said, “but there’s much yet to be done. They need a surface engineer, sir.”

  Mick parted his lips, and although he remembered that he needed to scream, it no longer seemed an option.

  “I am an engineer,” Mick said.

  “That was my understanding. We’ve been waiting.”

  “But my expertise is in dams.”

  “Indeed.”

  “You said a… surface engineer? I don’t know what that means.”

  Anders Wallace’s chest rose and fell as he took a deep breath, as if searching for patience.

  “I think you do, sir. You came here for a reason, did you not?”

  “To have a look,” Mick said weakly. “To have a look and…”

  “And?”

  “Remember what I forgot.”

  “Precisely, sir. Let’s get to it now.”

  Mick rose and walked to meet him, his feet crunching through the dry, wilted weeds. Ahead of them, the boy with his dipper and pail was receding into the shadows along the road. A horse whinnied somewhere in the distance, and a dog barked as if in answer.

  “It’s quite a dilemma we’re facing,” Anders Wallace told him. “The task is not easy. You’ll see. It’s a matter of getting the math right. We’ve got to balance the pressure or the whole system will fail.”

  And with that, the fear was gone entirely. For many frightened hours, Mick Fleming had needed a problem that could be solved with a clear head and clear numbers.

  “I’ll figure it out,” he told Anders Wallace, and the man smiled.

  “That’s what we’re counting on, Mr. Fleming.”

  Together, they started down the moonlit road.

  19

  Aaron lay in his childhood bed and stared at the television. Usually he’d be deep into a marathon session of Call of Duty or Halo by now, the endless hours that were a constant source of friction with his father, but tonight the games seemed too demanding. SportsCenter was recapping playoff baseball and looking ahead to the weekend football matchups. He watched idly, head against the pillows, hoping for sleep. After the day he’d had, surely his body was exhausted enough for sleep.

  His mind wasn’t, though. As they’d promised in rescue swimmer school, the mind was a far more potent force than the body.

  So that others might live.

  The old sign was still taped to the inside of his door. It was yellowing and curling in at the edges now, the old masking tape going brittle. There had been at least a thousand occasions since he’d returned home when he intended to rip it off the door and throw it away.

  His mother’s memory kept him from doing that.

  He’d done the meticulous lettering and then sketched a poor imitation of the rescue swimmer coat of arms beneath, but it had been his mother who found the tape, and the two of them had stood inside the narrow room together when the sign went up.

  Just tear it down, he would think, but he’d never gone so far as actually touching the paper.

  Funny, how much harder it was to discard your own dreams if someone else had once shared them with you. When someone else listened to your aspirational talk with sincerity and support, it became harder to pretend those aspirations no longer mattered.

  On the nightstand, beneath a phone charger, two empty Corona bottles, a one-hitter, and some rolling papers, was a slim paperback book titled The Rescue Swimmer Mindset. The subtitle promised that the book would let you “unlock the psychological edge of the Coast Guard.”

  The book he’d taken so seriously at fourteen seemed absurd a decade later, with all of its platitudes about the mental edge that separated winners and losers, the things a boy could believe and a man shouldn’t. Yet he kept it here on the bedside table like a Bible.

  His mother had given him the book the week after he—they—had hung the sign on the door. On the inside cover, in her elementary teacher’s penmanship, was the inscription:

  To Aaron,

  May you always bring light to dark waters,

  Love,

  Mom

  June 24, 2012

  The book, unlike the sign, he’d never considered throwing out. Not even on
the worst, drunkest night since his return to Torrance had he considered harming the book.

  He picked it up now, less out of intention than emptiness. He was used to reaching to the nightstand for his phone, finding distraction there, but his phone was still in his father’s truck, which was still parked down at the Chill. The truck he’d refused to go get in the dark, like a frightened child, which was surely what his father was thinking of him now.

  He flipped through it, skimming, trying to find amusement in the portions he’d once read with such earnestness, thinking he’d been given some incredible gift.

  May you always bring light to dark waters.

  Well, it had been a gift, beloved and cherished. But it was not a gift in the sense that he’d imagined back then, when he’d seen it as the Holy Grail, an advantage given to him. It was simply a book, words on pages; anyone could hold it.

  It had felt so personal to him once, though. So damned personal.

  He remembered some of the numbers cited in the book. At the time of the writing, there were 1,800 billionaires and 1,800 players on NFL rosters and about 1,800 students in the Harvard Business School each year, and yet less than a thousand people had passed the Coast Guard’s helicopter rescue swimmer school… ever.

  How remarkable that had seemed to him once. How enticing.

  He stopped flipping when he reached the page where the author urged his reader to write down a goal. “By writing down your intentions, you now have something to look back on when times are difficult… It is important to answer this for yourself, it is the strongest evidence you will be able to provide yourself when you are in chaotic challenges that will make you question your decision.”

  Aaron laughed. Well, now, if ever there was a time of chaotic challenge, tonight seemed to qualify. He’d thought he was a murderer; it turned out he was just insane. A chaotic challenge indeed! Let’s see what words of wisdom his fourteen-year-old, hyper-focused, ultra-confident self had left for such a moment!