The River King

by Alice Hoffman

  Once in the darkroom, Betsy was prepared for any oddities that might surface, but the film yielded only ceilings and doors, white walls and the single bed, unmade and unremarkable. That evening, when she met Eric for supper, Betsy was still wondering what she had done differently with that first roll of film. She found herself disappointed that another image had not appeared.

  “Do you ever think about what comes after?” she asked Eric at dinner. Because of the season, the kitchen was serving turkey soup and potato-leek pie. The dining hall had been decorated with pilgrims’ hats, which swung from the ceiling on strings.

  “Chair of the department,” Eric said without hesitation. “Eventually a university position.”

  “I meant after death.” Betsy stirred her soup. Bits of carrot and rice rose to the surface of the cloudy broth.

  “Luckily, we can both be buried in the Haddan School cemetery.”

  Betsy thought this over, then pushed her bowl away.

  “How did you know I was the right person for you?” she asked suddenly. “What made you so sure?”

  Before Eric could answer, Duck Johnson ambled over to join them, his tray loaded down. “Are you going to eat your fruitcake?” he asked, always hungry for more.

  “Guess who was invited to Bob Thomas’s for Thanksgiving?” Eric announced as he passed on his portion of dessert.

  “Congratulations.” Duck nodded cheerfully. “Atta boy.”

  Only the chair of each department was invited to the dean’s dinner; this year, when Helen Davis declined, Eric had stepped up to take her place. This arrangement, however, was news to Betsy, who had been planning a trip to Maine over the long holiday weekend. It would be good to escape, not just from the school, but from any possibility of running into Abel Grey as she went about her errands in the village.

  “We can go to Maine anytime,” Eric assured her.

  Betsy wished she wasn’t reminded of Helen Davis’s warning. Nonetheless, who didn’t have doubts every now and then? Every couple needn’t always agree or spend every moment in a delirium of happiness. Look at Carlin Leander, who should have been pleased that Harry McKenna was so enamored of her. The other girls at St. Anne’s followed him across campus like a flock of trained birds, but Carlin had begun to avoid him. She could feel Gus’s disapproval whenever she was with Harry and in time she began to notice the traits Gus had warned her about: the smile that could be turned on and off at will, the selfishness, the certainty that his own needs were at the very center of the universe. She pulled farther and farther away from Harry. If he brought her chocolates, she said she could not stomach sweets. If he came to call, she sent one of her roommates to inform him she was already in bed, far too tired or sick to see anyone at all.

  Harry, always so accustomed to getting whatever he wanted, only wanted her more when she withdrew.

  “He’s worried about you,” Amy Elliot told Carlin, for Harry had begun to confide in Amy, a good listener when it served her purposes. Amy had a little girl’s voice that belied her determination to get what she wanted, which in this case was Harry. Since Carlin already had him, Amy had begun to take on her roommate’s style, in the hopes that some of Carlin’s luck would rub off. She wore a silver clip in her hair, and her brand-new black woolen coat echoed the lines of Gus’s old coat. “What’s wrong?” Amy asked. “Because if you don’t want Harry anymore, believe me, there are plenty of us who do.”

  Girls like Amy believed they’d be granted whatever they wanted, if they only crossed their fingers or wished upon stars, but Carlin knew better. She carried her grief with her; she couldn’t let it go. Betsy noticed this phenomenon when she photographed the swim team for the alumni newsletter. As she developed that particular photograph, Betsy began to wish Abel Grey were beside her, so he might see for himself what had begun to appear in the tray of developing fluid. If anything, love was like light, illuminating what no one would have ever guessed was there in the darkness. Carlin Leander was at the far end of a line of smiling girls, her grim expression separating her from the group. Her arms were crossed and a frown tilted her mouth downward, but even though she stood apart from the others, Carlin wasn’t alone. He was right there beside her, leaning up against the cold, blue tiles, made out of equal parts liquid and air, a fish out of water, a boy with no earthly form, drowned both in this life and the next.

  * * *

  WHEN MATT FARRIS FAXED OVER THE REPORT from the lab the results were exactly as Abe’s father had predicted. The water was clean and clear, with only trace amounts of fish eggs and algae, nothing more.

  “Don’t bother me,” Joey said when Abe approached him with the report. “I’m writing up our monthly expenses.”

  Abe stood there, shirttail out, with an expression that might lead a person to believe he’d never heard of monthly expenses before. Ever since the night he’d looked through Betsy Chase’s window, he had been preoccupied and more than a little confused. He’d forgotten to take out the trash so often it was piling up in his back hall; he hadn’t once checked his mail, so that stray bills and circulars had begun to overflow from the delivery box beside his door. This morning, he had mistakenly taken one of his grandfather’s old suits from the back of the closet. Once having settled the jacket onto his lanky frame, he was surprised to find that it fit. He hadn’t thought he was as tall as his grandfather, but it turned out that he was, and because he was late, he’d worn the suit to work.

  “Nice suit,” Joey noted. “It’s just not you.”

  Abe placed the lab report atop the set of figures Joey was working on. Joey looked at the printout, then sat back in his chair.

  “So?”

  “So there’s human excrement in the kid’s lungs, but none in the Haddan River.”

  “I repeat.” Joey gulped down some cold coffee and shivered at the bitter taste. “So?”

  “Does it make sense to you?”

  “Not any more than the fact that I have to work as a security guard all weekend to bankroll a trip to Disney World. Nothing makes sense to me. Why should this? It doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “You asked for proof. Here it is. He didn’t drown in the Haddan.”

  Joey was looking at his old friend as though he were a crazy man, and maybe he was. Certainly, everything Abe had done in the past week would back up that assessment.

  “You know why you think that? It’s all because you haven’t gotten laid in a really long time and you have nothing else to do with your mind other than come up with these preposterous scenarios based on nothing.” Joey tossed the report back to him. “Let it go.”

  Abe wished he could simply file the lab report and stay out of affairs that weren’t his business, but that wasn’t the sort of man he was. At a little before noon, he went in to speak to Glen Tiles. It was bad timing on Abe’s part. Glen had high blood pressure and his wife was starving him with his best interests at heart; set out on his desk were a container of cottage cheese and a lone apple. Abe should have known that mealtime wasn’t the best hour to approach the chief, but he did so anyway. Glen surveyed the lab report, then gazed at Abe. “You want me to read about shit while I’m having lunch?”

  “I want you to read about the lack of shit.”

  Abe sat across from Glen, watching him read. When he was done, Glen handed the report back and immediately started in on his cottage cheese.

  “I don’t think the kid drowned in the Haddan River,” Abe said.

  “Yeah, Abe, maybe he was an alien. Did you ever think of that?” Glen ate like a famished man. “Or maybe this is all a dream. Maybe it’s my dream and you’re not really here at all, you’re just a participant in my dream. Which means I could make you do anything I want to. I could make you stand on your head right now and cluck like a chicken if that’s what I wanted to do.”

  “He could have been killed somewhere else, then thrown into the river,” Abe persisted. “I’ve talked this over with Ernest. You know he’d be the last person to agree with me, but even he thinks s
omething’s not right.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. Your father has grasped at straws before.” There was an awkward silence, and in the end, Glen had no option but to apologize. “Sorry,” he said. “That was out of line.”

  “This isn’t about Frank, you know. This is Gus Pierce, dead with shit in his lungs in a river that has been clean for more than twenty years. It’s probably the cleanest water in the whole damned Commonwealth.”

  “You may not be satisfied, Abe, but the Haddan School is very happy with our investigation. In fact, they sent a letter commending us, and what’s more, the alumni fund made a donation to the benevolent association. They think we did a good job and I agree. The kid drowned in the river. End of story.”

  Abe folded the report in half, stowing it in his jacket pocket, alongside the photo of the dead boy. “You’re wrong on this one. You’re wrong all the way around.”

  “Is that Wright’s suit you’re wearing?” Glen called when Abe was leaving. “Because, man, it’s way too big for you.”

  Abe went over to the mini-mart, where he picked up some lunch, then he kept on driving. He didn’t have to think when he rode around Haddan, he knew it so well he might as well have dreamed the town. He could eat a sandwich, think about sex and murder, and navigate the streets all at the same time. He went out to Route 17 to consider his options, heading to his grandfather’s house on instinct. Along with Wright’s suit, he’d found a thin, black tie in the back of his closet, which he realized was choking him; he loosened it and undid the top button of his shirt, breathing a little easier at last.

  This was the section of Haddan that had changed the most since Abe was a boy. Nowadays there were houses where there had only been fields, and a Stop & Shop market where Halley’s farm stand once sold yellow beans and cabbages. The rutted dirt road where Abe used to catch the bus to the high school had been paved, but at least the fields outside his grandfather’s farm were still the same. The deed was in Abe’s name and he couldn’t bring himself to sell the place to any of the developers who routinely put their feelers out, tracking him down and offering continuously escalating sums. Once he got to the property, Abe pulled over to finish his lunch and watch the songbirds that flew so low across the meadow their wings grazed the tall grass. On this day, Abe felt he was alone in the world. He had lived in the village all his life, had grown up with Joey and Mary Beth and Teddy Humphrey and all the rest, yet there wasn’t a single one among them whose counsel he cared to seek. He wished he could talk to his grandfather, that was the problem. A man could confide in Wright Grey. What you told him stayed put—he didn’t like people who aired their personal affairs in public or complained about their fate—and he certainly knew how to listen.

  Abe got out of the car and walked toward the field. The meadow grass, although brown, smelled sweet. The whole world seemed like a mystery to Abe at that moment, and he thought about all he hadn’t yet done. Wanting Betsy had unleashed a hundred other possibilities, and now he was a man at the mercy of his own longing. It was cold and Abe wasn’t wearing a coat; the wind blew right through his grandfather’s suit and Abe could feel it on his skin just as sure as if he’d been naked. There was a fence separating the road from the field, but Abe climbed to the other side. The grass reached his waist here, still he lay down in it, flat on his back. He looked up at the clouds and the sky above him. He could hear the north wind here, but he couldn’t feel it; it passed right over him. Abe felt lucky somehow, for the first time in a very long while. Nobody in the world knew where he was, but he was here in the grass thinking about love and how he had blundered into it, kind of late in life, and how grateful he was, how completely and utterly surprised.

  It wasn’t the season for love; the days were dark and nothing grew save for a few renegade cabbages left from the days when Haddan was still mostly farmland. Hingram’s Shoe Shop already had a display of winter boots in its front window, and all along Main Street the gardens were bare, with burlap hoods covering the most delicate plants, the rhododendrons and pink azaleas that were so susceptible to frost. With the long holiday weekend stretching out, the village grew quiet. Most Haddan School students had gone home for Thanksgiving and only a few remained, including Carlin Leander, who had decided against going to Connecticut with Harry in order to have dinner with Helen Davis. As for Harry, he didn’t like this choice one bit; he begged and he pleaded, but Carlin would not change her mind, and in the end Harry brought Amy Elliot and Robbie Shaw home for the holiday.

  By Thursday morning, there was no traffic on Main Street and the shops had all closed down, except for the mini-mart, which stayed open until midnight. Ever since his divorce, Teddy Humphrey no longer celebrated holidays. Instead, he was a guardian angel of sorts, ready and waiting should anyone run out of vanilla, or butter, or eggnog, all of which were readily available at twice the usual price.

  Abe wore Wright’s suit to Thanksgiving dinner at Joey and Mary Beth’s, in spite of the fact that he always got down on the floor to play with five-year-old Jackson and three-year-old Lilly, and usually wound up with clay or chalk in his hair. Mary Beth’s whole family was there, her parents and her two brothers and a cousin from New Jersey, a pretty blonde, recently divorced, who Mary Beth had thought would be a perfect match for Abe.

  “I’m not interested,” Abe told MB as he helped her load platters with turkey and the cranberry-apple stuffing that was her Thanksgiving specialty.

  “Come on. You’re always interested,” Mary Beth joked as she finished carving the turkey. When Abe didn’t laugh or kid her back, she held the knife in the air and studied him. MB was pregnant again, but she looked the same as she had when they were in high school, with her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and her face fresh, without any makeup. “You’ve already got someone,” she declared.

  “You’re wrong about that, Miss Mind Reader,” Abe told her.

  When dinner was over, the finale of pumpkin pie and vanilla ice cream was perfectly timed to coincide with the kickoff of the third televised football game of the day. While seconds of dessert were being served, Joey asked Abe if he wanted to get some fresh air. Abe assumed they were going for a walk and he hadn’t expected Joey to head for MB’s old station wagon. He got in amiably, scooping stray potato chips and raisins from the passenger seat. Joey put the car in gear and turned onto Belvedere Street.

  “We’re going to buy beer,” Abe guessed, wishing he had thought to bring some along to dinner, but they passed the mini-mart without pause, not stopping until they reached the Haddan School. They parked in the lot between the dean’s house and the headmaster’s house, now inhabited by old Dr. Jones, who had inherited the place from Dr. Howe in a long line of illustrious educators reaching back to Hosteous Moore. “Don’t tell me we’re robbing the headmaster’s house again.”

  “You could put it that way.” Joey left the car running and got out, leaving Abe to think things over. Mary Beth’s heater was on the fritz and before long Abe’s breath had fogged up the windshield. He turned off the ignition, then climbed out to stretch his legs. The trees were bare and there was a coating of ice on the path Joey had taken to the dean’s back door. This area was reserved for faculty housing, cottages set out in a row for married staff and their families. Bob Thomas’s was the first and the largest of these, a two-story Victorian with a double chimney and a wide back porch where the dean and Joey stood talking.

  Bob Thomas was a big man who enjoyed his dinner; he’d come to the porch without the benefit of a coat or a hat, while inside his house the festivities went on without him. Abe ambled closer, positioning himself beside a boxwood hedge where nuthatches were roosting, beating their wings to keep from freezing. He could see through the dining room window; quite a crowd had gathered. The meal had been cleared away, but guests were still enjoying the rum-enhanced eggnog and mulled wine.

  Abe couldn’t help but see Betsy; she and some man were there together. Abe figured this was the fiancé, for certainly, Betsy’s compan
ion looked as if he’d stepped out of an alumni bulletin. Crouching beside the boxwood in his grandfather’s old suit, in need of both a haircut and a shave, Abe felt himself burn with shame. What had he been thinking? If he knocked on the kitchen door, they’d surely slam it in his face. To be honest, he wished Betsy and her perfect fiance a miserable holiday. He hoped they choked on the petit fours Meg Thomas was now serving, sweet concoctions of chocolate and marzipan that could easily stick in a person’s throat.

  Abe waited in the fading light for Joey, his ill temper rivaling the disposition of those miserable Haddan swans. Just his luck, the pair nesting close by seemed interested in him; one had already begun to advance across the frozen grass.

  “Don’t come near me,” Abe warned the swan. “I’ll cook you,” he threatened. “I will.”

  At last, Joey finished speaking with the dean. When he returned, he was as jolly as Abe had ever seen him. Abe, on the other hand, felt his evil mood taking a turn for the worse. The sun was setting and crimson clouds fanned out across the hazy sky. That swan was still eyeing him and Abe knew from experience that these birds weren’t afraid to attack. He had been on duty on one such occasion, when a big male swan had wandered onto Mrs. Jeremy’s property. Her son, AJ, had tried to chase it off only to wind up with a dozen or more stitches in his forehead.

  “None too soon,” Abe said as Joey reached him.

  Joey’s color was good; he’d been invigorated by the cold air and the business he’d completed. He had an envelope in hand that he smacked against his open palm. “This will cheer you up.”