The River King

by Alice Hoffman

  He was still mulling this over when Glen Tiles pulled up a chair to appraise next week’s schedule, spread out in a heap on Abe’s desk. Glen didn’t like the look on Abe’s face. There was trouble brewing; Glen had seen it all before. If Glen had had his way, Abe would never have been hired in the first place. For one, there was his past to consider, and second, he was clearly still unstable, in the good old here and now. He’d work overtime for weeks, then not show for the hours assigned on the schedule until Glen called him to remind him that he was a town

  employee, not a duke, not a prince, and not unemployed, at least not yet. You never could tell with Abe. He’d let Charlotte Evans off with a warning when she burned leaves—even though as a lifelong village resident she should have been well acquainted with the town bylaws—then he’d slap some newcomers out in one of those expensive homes off Route I7 with a huge fine for doing the very same thing. If Abe hadn’t been Wright Grey’s grandson Glen would already have fired him for his moody temperament alone. As it was, Glen still considered that option on a regular basis.

  “I’m not so sure that boy from the Haddan School was a suicide,” Abe was telling Glen, which was the last thing the chief wanted to hear on a beautiful morning such as this. Outside, those birds who hadn’t migrated, the sparrows and the mourning doves and the wrens, were singing as though it were summer. “I’m just wondering if it isn’t possible that someone had a hand in what happened?”

  “Don’t even think like that,” Glen told him. “Don’t start a problem where none exists.”

  Abe himself was a man who needed proof, and so he understood Glen’s hesitancy. As soon as he wrapped up his paperwork, Abe went behind the station for the beat-up cruiser his grandfather used to drive, and headed to the river road. When he got out he could hear frogs calling from the sun-warmed ledges of rock. Trout splashed in the shallows, feeding on the last of the season’s mosquitoes, wildly active in the unexpected burst of heat.

  Abe liked the idea of all this life renewed on the banks just at the time when it usually faded away. Wrens fluttered past him, perching on the wavering branches of the Russian olives that grew here in profusion. In the coldest part of winter, the river froze solid, and it was possible to skate to Hamilton in under thirty minutes; a really good skater could make it to Boston in less than two hours. Of course, there was always the possibility of a sudden thaw, especially during the cold blue stretches of January and the fitful gloomy weeks of February. Disaster could strike any skater, as it had for those students from Haddan so many years ago. Abe had been only eight when it happened, and Frank had been nine. The roads were slick that day, but the air was oddly mild, as it was today; fog rose up from asphalt and ivy and from the cold, brittle front lawns. People could sense the world waiting beneath the ice; a taste of spring appeared in the form of the soft, yellowing branches of willows, in the scent of damp earth, and in the clouds of stupefied insects called back to life by the sunlight and warmth.

  It was a fluke that Wright chose to ride along the river that day when the ice cracked. The old man kept his tackle box and several fly rods in the trunk, always anticipating good fishing weather, and when it came, he was ready. “Let’s go looking for trout,” he had told the boys, but instead what they’d found were three students from Haddan screaming for mercy and going down in the icy depths, the skates still strapped to their feet.

  Abe and Frank stayed in the cruiser and didn’t move a muscle, precisely as their grandfather had instructed. But after a while Abe couldn’t sit still; he was the brother who could never behave, and so he climbed into the front seat to get a better look, pulling himself up to see over the steering wheel. There was the river, covered with ice. There were the boys who had fallen through, their arms waving like reeds.

  He’s going to be mad at you, Frank told Abe. Frank was such a good boy, he never had to be told anything twice. You’re not supposed to move

  But in the front seat, Abe had a much better view of the proceedings. He could see that his grandfather had gotten a length of rope he kept beside the fishing rods in the trunk and was racing down the icy banks, shouting for the drowning boys to hold fast. Two Haddan students managed to drag themselves to shore, but the third was too panicked or too frozen to move, and Wright had to go in after him. Abe’s grandfather took off his wool coat and threw his gun on the ground; he looked behind him before he dove in, thinking, perhaps, that this was his last view of the beautiful world. He spied Abe watching, and he nodded; in spite of Frank’s warning. he didn’t look mad at all. He appeared perfectly calm, as though he were about to go for a swim on a summer day when all that was waiting for him was a picnic lunch set out on the grass.

  As soon as Wright dove into the water everything seemed to stop, even though the ice broke beneath him, shattering into thousands of shards, even though the drowning boy’s friends shouted from the bank. Abe felt as though he himself were underwater; all he could hear was the sound of ice popping and the silence of the dark, still water, and then, with a whoosh, his grandfather was back, up through the hole in the ice, the boy right there in his arms. After that, everything was hugely loud, and there was a ringing in Abe’s ears as his grandfather called for help.

  Those Haddan School boys onshore were useless, too scared and cold to think, but luckily, Abe was a bright boy, or so his grandfather had always said. He had played in the cruiser often enough so that he knew how to place a call to the station asking for an ambulance and some backup. Afterward, Wright insisted that he would have turned blue on that riverbank with the foolish kid from Haddan dying in his arms, if his youngest grandson hadn’t been sharp enough to call for an ambulance.

  You didn’t do anything so great, Frank whispered to his brother later on and Abe had to agree. It was their grandfather who was the hero of the day and for once the people at the school and the residents of the village had something on which they could agree. There was a big ceremony at town hall at which Wright was presented with an award from the trustees of the Haddan School. Old Dr. Howe himself, the headmaster emeritus, near eighty by then, sat on the podium. The family of the boy who’d fallen through the ice made a contribution to the town, funds used to build the new police station on Route 17 later named in Wright’s honor. There in the crowd, Abe had applauded with the rest of the town, but for months afterward, he couldn’t shake the image of his grandfather rising from the water with ice in his hair. Didn’t affect me in the least, Wright always assured the boy, but from that day on, Wright’s toes were blue, as though cold water flowed through his veins, and perhaps that was why he was the best fisherman in town, and, in Abe’s opinion, the best man as well. Even now, if someone wanted to compliment Abe, all that needed to be said was that he took after his grandfather, not that Abe would ever accept such a statement as truth. He had the same blue eyes, it was true, and the height, and he chewed on his lip the way Wright always did when he listened to you, but never in his life could Abe be convinced he would be as good a man. Still, he wondered if he’d finally been given a chance at something with this boy they had found, a drowning of his own.

  On this rare and beautiful day when men were leaving work early to go home and make love to their wives, and dogs were straying far into the fields, chasing after partridges and yapping with joy, Abe walked along the river. He wished that his grandfather still lived out on Route 17 and that he had the old man to guide him. He thought about the dream he’d had, and the silver river made of glass. He went over all the things it was possible to break: a lock, a window, a heart. He didn’t come to it until he’d driven home, later in the day, when the sky had begun to darken in spite of the warm weather. He was parked in his own driveway too tired and hungry and aggravated to think about riddles anymore when he finally understood his own dream. It was the truth that was always as clear as water until it had been broken; shatter it and all that’s left is a lie.

  * * *

  PEOPLE IM THE VILLAGE OF HADDAN HAD LONG memories, but they usually fo
rgave transgressions. Who among them hadn’t made a mistake? Who had never run aground of good sense and simple reason? Rita Eamon, who ran the ballet school and was a well-thought-of parishioner at St. Agatha’s, had been so drunk at the Millstone last New Year’s Eve that she’d danced on the bar and flung off her blouse, but no one held it against her. Teddy Humphrey had been involved in a laundry list of mishaps, from accidentally targeting the gym teacher during archery practice back when he was in high school, to ramming his Jeep into his neighbor Russell Carter’s Honda Accord after he discovered that Russell was dating his ex-wife.

  Those who had called Joey and Abe hoodlums when they were young were pleased to note what upstanding citizens they’d become. Barely anyone could remember those times when the boys had ordered sodas and fries at the pharmacy with no money in their pockets, then had run for the door, half expecting Pete Byers to race after them with the hatchet he was said to keep by the register, in case of fire. Instead, Pete had merely waited for them to see the error of their ways. One morning, on the way to school, Abe had stopped by and paid off their debt. Several years later, Joey admitted he’d done the very same thing and the joke between them now was that Pete Byers was the one who’d wound up owing them money, with twenty or more years of interest tacked on.

  On the second day of the heat wave, Abe was thinking about the grace with which Pete had handled that situation when he dropped by the drugstore, as he often did, for old times’ sake and some lunch. There at a rear table, having tea and scones, were Lois Jeremy and Charlotte Evans from the garden club. Both women waved when they saw him. These two usually wanted something or other done for their precious club, which met every Friday at town hall, and Abe did his best to assist them. He felt particularly bad whenever he saw Mrs. Evans, from whose house he and Joey had once stolen three hundred dollars they’d found in a tin stored beneath the kitchen sink. The robbery had never been reported to the police or mentioned in the Tribune, and Abe later realized the money had been a secret kept from Mrs. Evans’s husband, a well-known bully and bore. To this day, Abe will not write Charlotte Evans a parking ticket, not even on those occasions when her car blocked a fire hydrant or when she parked in a crosswalk. He’ll go no farther than issuing a warning and telling Mrs. Evans to buckle her seat belt and have a nice day.

  “Something is wrong with the safety precautions in this town,” Lois Jeremy called from her table. “I see no reason whatsoever why we cannot have an officer posted outside the hall during our fund-raiser.” She treated Abe as she did all civil servants, as though they were her own personal hired help. “Main Street will be a disaster if there’s no one to direct traffic.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Abe assured her.

  As a boy, Abe would take offense at the mildest slight, but he was no longer insulted when people from the east side talked down to him. For one thing, his line of work had allowed him to see behind the facade on Main Street. He knew, for instance, that Mrs. Jeremy’s son, AJ, had moved into the apartment above her garage after his divorce because the police had been called in several times to quiet AJ down when he’d had too much to drink and was on a rant, scaring Mrs. Jeremy out of her wits.

  Pete Byers, whose own wife, Eileen, was well known for her perennial garden, although she had yet to be invited to join the garden club, gave Abe a sympathetic look when Mrs. Jeremy was done with him.

  “These ladies would be gardening if you set them down on the moon,” Pete said as he placed a cup of milky coffee before Abe. “We’d look up at night and see daffodils instead of stars if they were the ones in charge.”

  Abe took note of the new boy working behind the counter, a dark, intense kid who had the hooded look of trouble Abe recognized.

  “Do I know him?” he asked Pete Byers.

  “Don’t think so.”

  The boy was at the grill, but he must have felt the weight of Abe’s gaze; he looked up quickly, then, even more quickly, he looked away. On his face was the polecat expression of a boy who knew his fate hung by a thread. He had a scar under one eye, which he rubbed like a talisman, as though to remind himself of something he’d lost long ago.

  “He’s my sister’s boy from Boston,” Pete said. “Sean. He’s been living with us since the summer and now he’s finishing up his senior year over at Hamilton.” The boy had begun to scrape the grill, not a job anyone would envy. “He’ll be all right.”

  Pete knew Abe was considering whether he needed to keep his eye on the boy should one of the ladies from the garden club have her car stolen or one of the houses on Main Street be broken into late one night. After he’d studied the specials board above the grill, which on this day included tuna salad on rye and clam chowder, the soup of the day for the past eight years, Abe observed the boy as he drank his coffee. The coffee tasted strange, so Abe signaled to Pete’s nephew; here was reason enough to see what this kid was made of.

  “What’s this supposed to be?”

  “It’s a café au lait,” the boy told him.

  “Since when did the coffee here get so fancy?” Abe guessed Sean had gotten into trouble in Boston and that his worried relations had doled him out to his uncle in the country, where the air was fresh and the felonies less numerous. “What’s next? Sushi?”

  “I stole a car,” Sean said. “That’s how I wound up here.” He had that edgy defiance Abe remembered so well. Anything said to him would be defined as a challenge; any answer would be a variation of a single thought: I don’t give a damn what you say or what you think. I’ll live my life as I please and if I ruin it, that’s my choice, too.

  “Is this an admission?” Abe stirred his milky coffee.

  “I can tell from the way you’re watching me, you want to know. So now you know. Actually, I stole two, but I only got caught with one.”

  “Okay,” Abe said, impressed by the sudden integrity of such an answer.

  People could be truly surprising. Just when you thought you knew what to expect from another individual, there’d be a complete turnaround; compassion would be offered when acrimony was expected, charity where before there had been only indifference and avarice. Betsy Chase had been equally surprised by the differing points of view that were held when it came to the subject of Abel Grey. Some people, like Teddy Humphrey over at the mini-mart where Betsy bought her yogurt and iced tea mix, said he was the life of the party, and that down at the Millstone there was a barstool that practically had his name carved into the wood. Zeke Harris, who ran the dry cleaner’s where Betsy brought her sweaters and skirts, offered the opinion that Abe was a real gentleman, but Kelly Avon over at the 5&10 Cent Bank disagreed. He looks great and all, but trust me, Kelly had said, I know from experience: he’s emotionally dead.

  Betsy had not planned to refer to Abe as she ran errands in the village, but his name kept coming up, perhaps because she had him on her mind. She had been so disturbed by the photograph she’d developed, that she’d gone ahead and looked up Abe’s number in the Haddan phone book. Twice she had dialed, then hung up before he could answer. After that, she couldn’t seem to stop talking about him. She discussed him at the florist’s, where she’d .stopped to buy a pot of ivy for her windowsill, and had thereby discovered that Abe always bought a wreath at Christmastime rather than a tree. She had found out from Nikki Humphrey that he liked his coffee with milk but not sugar, and that as a kid he’d been crazy for the chocolate crullers that he nowadays eschewed in favor of a plain, buttered roll.

  Although Betsy had fully expected to discover more details about him when she walked into the pharmacy to buy the Tribune, she hadn’t expected to find the man himself there at the counter, drinking his second café au lait. It seemed to Betsy that she had summoned him by stitching together the facts of his life. By now, she knew as much about him as people who’d known him all his life did; she could even name the brand of socks he preferred, clued in by the clerk at Hingram’s.

  “There’s no point in hiding,” Abe called when he noticed her d
ucking behind the newspaper racks.

  Betsy came to the counter and ordered a coffee, black; though she usually took sugar and cream she felt the undiluted caffeine might help her maintain some degree of prudence. Luckily, she had her backpack with her. “I’ve got the photos for you.” She handed Abe the packet of perfectly ordinary prints she’d been carrying around.

  Abe leafed through the photos, biting down on his lip, exactly as Wright used to whenever he was deliberating.

  “I’ve got one other photograph that I took that day.” Color had risen in Betsy’s face. “You’re going to probably think I’m crazy.” She’d held the singular print back, afraid to present it, but now that she’d seen how thoughtful he was, she had reconsidered.

  “Try me,” Abe urged.

  “I know it sounds crazy, but I think I’ve got a picture of Gus Pierce.”

  Abe nodded, waiting for the rest.

  “After he was dead.”

  “Okay,” Abe said reasonably. “Show me.”

  Betsy had studied the photograph, waiting for the image to disappear, but there he was still, all these days later, the boy in the black coat. At the top edges of the print, flashes of light had been recorded. These weren’t errors in the developing process, which usually showed up in blotches of white, but a distinct illumination hovering below the ceiling of the room, as though a field of energy had been trapped inside. Betsy had always yearned to go beyond the obvious and reveal what others might not see. Now she had done exactly that, for what she believed she’d handed over was a portrait of a ghost.