by John Larison
“What happened?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. All of a sudden you were on your back and the oar was gone and we were broadsiding into the cliff. Everything was fine, and then it was like so fucked.”
“You got us out of there.”
She was looking at his wound, not his eyes. “You’ll need stitches.”
He’d been knocked silly by oars before and he’d been razored open a time or ten too, and this would be fine. He just needed a few minutes here, in the sun, to shake out the remaining clutter.
“Was there someone else with us?” he asked. “I feel like there was someone else with us.”
“We need to get you to a doctor.”
“No doctors.” He could feel blood dripping from his elbow now, and he looked to see if he’d been cut there too, but he couldn’t find a wound.
“It’s coming from this laceration,” she said, pointing at his ear. “Listen. We need to get you to a doctor.”
*
“LEFT HERE.” HE pointed at the gravel driveway with the hand that wasn’t holding a shirt to the wound. Annie was driving. She had loaded the boat too, only requiring the slightest guidance. Now, she fumbled with the gears—grinding, roaring, a jolt—and they rushed up the steep hill. The nausea was still there. Not concussion nausea, he knew that well enough, this was different. It wasn’t how-the-fuck-did-I-get-here nausea, it was the-stars-are-creeping-closer nausea. He hadn’t eaten lunch, and now he’d lost a lot of blood.
Rita was coming out the door before the truck was even stopped. Slung over her shoulder was a blue case with yellow reflection strips on it. “Nice work, Hank.” She was smiling, which meant this couldn’t be too bad. “Take my hand. Let’s sit you right here. You dizzy?”
Annie had explained everything on the phone on the drive down. She’d brought that BlackBerry after all.
Rita was flashing a penlight across his eyes. “What day is it, Hank?”
He waved her off. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Really. It’s just a cut.”
“Well then, tell me what day it is.”
He told her.
“Can you tell me the time of day?”
He had to think about it. But he could see the sun through the trees. “Around three.”
Rita pulled on a pair of purple gloves. “You’re going to need sutures. Probably seven or eight of them.” She told Annie to grab a glass of water. “Cabinet above the sink.” After Annie had left, “So where did this happen?”
Rita had this way about her, this calm voice that was like aloe to a sunburn. It had been that voice, and the unflinching confidence behind it, that had attracted him so profoundly all those years before. And there, clearer than anything, was the look on young Bridge’s face when he showed up that night to have it out over what had happened. “You were running a hard boat through the Falls? With Annie?”
“I’ve made mistakes, Rita.”
She was pulling back the suture’s foil packaging. “I’d say.”
Somehow they’d gotten through it. Somehow, Rita and Bridge had worked it out, and Bridge forgave him. How had that happened? How had they gotten to where they were now?
“How do I fix this?” If anyone would know, she would.
“No, Hank, I do the suturing.”
There was a sharp pain, then another one. The needle and painkiller. “How did we fix what we did?”
Rita held a gauze pad to the wound, and leaned so that she could see his eyes. “You’ll be okay, Hank.”
“No, I know. I mean. You know, between you and me and Bridge. How did we fix that? How did we get here?”
She went back to the laceration, and he could only see her shoulder, her silver hair riding the breeze. “I haven’t thought about that in decades.”
Annie was coming through the door with that glass of water. “That’s what I mean. I need to know.”
“Maybe we didn’t fix it. Maybe we just moved on. Who knows? Maybe we decided we were too valuable to lose.”
*
AFTERWARD, ANNIE INSISTED on driving. “I’m not putting my life in the hands of a dizzy man.”
“I’m not dizzy anymore.” His head was pounding now though, and the gauze wrap was pulling hairs every time he turned to look at her. “Give me the keys.”
She was holding open the door for him, not saying any more. Like her mother, she knew the best way out of an argument was to stop talking.
They were already on River Road and halfway home when he said, “I’m sorry, Annie. I shouldn’t have taken us there. It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have put you in that position.”
She was quiet for a long minute, and he didn’t know if she would ever talk to him again. Then she said, “There is something else I want to say.”
From the tone of her voice, he understood this was serious. “If I say it to you, I won’t be able to pretend it didn’t happen.”
“I’m here,” he said, turning to see the tears on her cheeks.
“I did it even after I saw what it did to Mom. Does that make me worse? It does, I know it. Some ethicist.”
He wiped her cheek with the back of his fingers. “What happened?”
“I cheated on Thad. I did it. I connected with someone and cheated because I knew it would sabotage everything.”
It was Danny she had cheated with; he knew as much without even asking, though it hardly mattered. “You’re wrong,” he said. “You’re not worse. But now you should tell Thad, and you should tell him why you did it.” He’d learned that much, if nothing else.
*
THEY SAID GOODBYE where they’d said hello, under the rustling oaks in his driveway. It would be a hot day tomorrow; these breezes weren’t wet coastal northwesters, but dry southerlies. He told her as much, said, “You’re lucky to be leaving tonight.”
She was freshly showered and dressed again in long supple pants and fancy flip-flops and oversized sunglasses—she looked cut from a fashion magazine he would see in the checkout of the grocery store. “I always trusted you had your reasons for not calling or coming.” A tear slipped loose under those glasses. “I just hope it wasn’t something I did.”
“No, not it at all.”
“For years when we spoke, I walked on eggshells, afraid to say the wrong thing and drive you farther away. Even when I got here, I was so nervous.” She laughed, though there was no humor. “I vomited in the airport.”
He took her in his arms because he trusted his arms. “This isn’t a good answer,” he began a moment later. “It isn’t an answer at all. But it’s the truth. I put off calling you after you left here the last time because I regretted what happened between us. Then I regretted not calling you, which only made me put off calling you longer. It’s no excuse, but that is what happened. Regret, maybe, is the strongest current.”
And he thought then of his own father, escaped into his death, escaped from all Hank had to say to him, and all he was owed in return. A simple “I should have been the man you needed” would have gone so far. Just eight words might have set him free.
He took Annie’s hand in his and tried to say a million things, but all he could muster was, “You deserved better. You’ve always deserved better.”
“I was so cruel the last time I was here,” she said.
“You were seventeen.”
He reached into his pocket and handed her a worn photograph, the very photograph he’d kept on his person for twenty-something years: the two of them together on a sunlit beach, her five years old and river tanned and gleaming wet and holding a crawdad to the camera, and him lean and brown-not-gray and beaming at his little girl—buoyant and hopeful at the promise of all the years together to come. “I want you to have this.”
She seemed hesitant to touch it, but she finally did, holding it to the light. “Do you have a copy?”
He put a hand to his heart. “Right here.” Maybe she would cherish it as he did, or maybe she would tuck it away and never look again. Either way, he wanted her to have
it; he wanted her to remember. “You’ve always been here with me.”
A moment passed with them standing just out of reach, and he realized this was it.
She checked her watch. “I should—”
“Of course.”
But she hesitated. “Daddy?”
“Annie?”
She looked to the ground between them. “I’m sorry about the ring.” He smiled. “It never fit you right.”
“Maybe it was a little big, but you couldn’t have known my size. I’m sorry.”
He extended his hand and said, “Here.”
She looked and muttered, “How … when did you … ?”
“Do you want to know? I’ll tell you if you do.”
She touched the ring in his palm as if it might be made of vapor. Then she checked for the inscription. “When alone, remember these arms reaching.” He’d had it made months ago for Caroline, but now he realized he’d written this inscription for Annie.
“Don’t tell me,” she said, sliding it on her thumb. “I might be a grown woman, but I still need magic.”
They both turned toward the sound of a truck climbing the driveway, Caroline’s green Tundra. He’d left a message on her answering machine inviting her to come say goodbye, but he wasn’t sure if she would show up. He wasn’t sure if she would ever come again. But there she was, slamming the door behind her and holding a Tupperware container. “Just some smoked salmon and filberts and stuff. Figured you could use some grub on the flight.”
Annie thanked her with a hug and a kiss to the cheek, and said, “Take care of my daddy, will ya?”
Caroline smiled and took Hank’s hand in hers. They stood shoulder to shoulder now, and watched as Annie put the food and her purse in the rental car. “She’s so beautiful,” Caroline whispered.
Hank turned to see Caroline’s eyes welling up, and he knew what she was missing, out there in the world somewhere. “She is.”
Annie said, “Well?” and stepped toward him and they embraced. She wasn’t letting go and neither was he. “You’ll do better,” he whispered, and she pressed her tear-wet face against his neck.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
HANK SCRATCHED AT the patch stuck to his arm as he drove up River Road, the shotgun in back. It was a Winchester Camp Defender, a short-barreled twelve-gauge with an improved choke. He’d bought it used years ago, to ward off bears when he, Rosemary, and baby Riffle lived up Rock Creek, in the hippie house. He’d only shot it at the quail that frequented the hilltop, often hitting three or four with a single blast. They’d eaten a lot of quail in those days.
Walter was out front at the picnic table tying flies. His glasses were low on his nose, his cap tipped back on his head, and he was looking withered and white, and Hank was pretty sure from the look of him that he hadn’t slept much the night before. He didn’t look up from the vise when Hank approached. Instead, he said, “I nailed it, finally. Look at this fucker.” He cut the thread and dropped the fly from the vise and tossed it to Hank. He’d wrapped the moose hair so densely that it felt like a solid object, and he’d trimmed it to produce a concave nose. “It’ll cast easy with that small head, but it should chuck water like the best of your poppers. Took ten years, but I got it.”
Hank leaned the shotgun against the table and studied the pattern. It was a spectacular tie.
Walter only glanced at the shotgun. “You and your curiosity theory. I was a hard sell, wasn’t I? Not true, I guess, what they say about old dogs.”
Hank pinned the pattern to the table’s wood. “When are we going to fish it?”
Walter handed him a fly box—his fly box, the wooden one he’d carved himself as a young man. In it were twenty-five or thirty of the flies in two colors and in two sizes. “Stayed up most of last night tying. Fish them, tell me how it goes.” He nodded toward the shotgun without looking at it. “Did you bring me any shells?”
“Sorry.”
Walter spit. “That was mighty selfish of you.”
Hank had two old bricks of double-ought and a newer box of sixes, but he’d left them in the closet, and not because he thought he’d someday use them.
“I’m sure I can round one up,” Walter said. “Better not take two.”
Hank flinched away, this was all too much. Walter’s drift boat was pulled out, and dozens of rods were slanting up from it, their tips fluttering in the hot midday breeze. “Did you fish today?”
“Take that shit, Hank. I want you to have it.”
Hank scoffed. “Come on, Walt.”
“I don’t have no use for it. Sure as shit ain’t oaring that old beast again. You better not leave here without it.”
“I’m not taking your tackle. Come on. We got to get you up and on the water.”
“Don’t get your waders in a bunch. I kept out my seventy-one fifty-two. I’m done grocery shopping, but I ain’t done fishing.” He maneuvered a leg out from the picnic table, cringing against the pain as he did. “If something there don’t meet your highfalutin standards, give it to Danny. That kid knows quality when he sees it.”
Walter started to stand from the table, but sank back before he’d come up halfway. Hank slipped his arm under Walter’s and helped him rise and lift his other leg over the bench. It was then that he saw Walter had pissed himself. The rate of Walter’s descent left Hank without words.
Walter swung around the wading staff and leaned onto it, and pushed back at Hank. “Get off me. I ain’t feeble.” Walter didn’t seem to notice the urine on his pants, that or he was pretending not to.
Hank stuttered. It was all he could do.
“Help me to the truck. Bring that thing.” He gestured at the shotgun.
Together they walked, Walter leaning on his wading staff while Hank kept him steady, across the yard to Walter’s old pickup. “I named Mindy my heir. Only seemed fair that she get this house after all I put her through. Not that there’ll be much left after the mortgage is settled. But I want you to have the truck. Sell it if you want, but don’t let her get her hands on it. I got my reasons, old reasons. Don’t let her have it. You hear?”
“Yes sir.”
“I got the title all signed over to your name. Put your squiggles on it, and send it on to the DMV. Do it today.”
Hank looked out over the valley. In this moment, he felt like a stranger here, felt like he’d never really known this man named Walter. Part of it was how fast he was failing, how fast death was taking him. But there was something else too.
Last night, Bridge had shown up at the house, coming by to check on Hank and make sure he was doing all right with that head wound and all. They’d shared a couple beers on the porch, listening to the river between the road noise, Hank talking a little about Annie, about her life back East, then about Walter, about how suddenly this cancer was getting him. Bridge sighed, “Fucking shame.” For a long few moments, they’d been quiet, sipping together and considering. Bridge had been the first one to speak. “Not sure if you know this or not, but my daddy always had his suspicions about Walt, you know, that maybe he was the one who shot Jackson up at Altitude Ramp.” He seemed to think better of this topic after he’d voiced it, but Hank pressed and Bridge eventually went on to say, “He was the one that found the body and all.” Which was news to Hank. And which seemed like the kind of detail Walter would have mentioned. Should have mentioned.
“What is it, Hankle?” Walter now said. “Pull that broom out your rear and speak your mind.”
Hank put his arm under Walter’s, gestured toward the truck. “Let’s get fishing.”
“Fuck off. You only look like that when you got something to say. Speak up, don’t got time for your pussyfootin’.”
“It’s nothing.”
Walter swung his wading staff and clocked Hank’s shin, hard enough to leave a weeklong bruise. “Man up, son. You’re running out of chances.”
Hank reached for a cigarette, and only then remembered the carton in the trashcan, the goddamn patch on his shoulder. �
�Jackson’s murder. When you told me about it, you didn’t say you were the one who discovered his body. Seems like a detail you’d relate.”
Walter shrugged, hawked up some phlegm, and spit. “Long time back.”
“True enough.” He shouldn’t have asked. He didn’t really want to know. He’d known Walter forty-something years, and he had a clear sense of the man, and he wanted it to stay that way.
Walter was poking at the ground with that wading staff.
Hank tried to bail him out. “Should we hit Red Gate?”
But Walter didn’t look up; he was chewing his cheek and cursing under his breath. Finally he muttered, “He’s the one giving me cancer. I know it.”
“Who?”
Walter was shaky now on his wading staff, too shaky to be standing. “I didn’t go up there planning on anything. I just went up there to stop him from snagging those fish, that’s all. It was a warm day and I knew the winter fish would be on the redds. You know the day, short sleeves in March. And there that bastard was, throwing trebles.”
“Here, sit down, Walt.”
Walter didn’t move, he just kept teetering there. “I’ll tell you because I know you’ll stick by. I only ever told Mindy.”
“You don’t have to tell me.” He didn’t want to know, and yet he did, more than anything.
Walter took a breath, and stared hard at a point in the dust like he was aiming to snap-shoot it with a pistol. “We’re pushing at each other, that’s how it starts … and I got my rifle out, shouldn’t have done that, but there’s the rifle …” He was breathing hard now, like it was happening at this moment. “I don’t know how, but there it was, and we’re pushing and pop, the thing goes off. We were pushing at each other, Hank. I didn’t mean to, I just meant to scare him, if I meant anything at all. And that’s god’s truth.”
Walter staggered a couple steps and sat on the tailgate of the truck. It was there that he seemed to change, the wide eyes narrowing into cold slits, the heavy breathing replaced by calm, almost imperceptible inhalations. His voice changed too, flatter now. “You’d be surprised what a man’s body does when he catches one in the neck. You’d be surprised how the sight of that stays current.”