The River King

by Alice Hoffman

  But what about the boys who didn’t get caught, that’s what Abe wanted to know as he fished peanuts from a bowl on the bar. Those boys who were so guilt-ridden they broke out in hives or started spitting blood, but who managed to get away with their wrongdoings, how did they live with themselves?

  “Where’s George?” Abe asked the new bartender, who hardly looked of age to drink himself. “Out fishing?”

  “He’s got some physical therapy appointments. His knees are giving up on him,” the new bartender said. “Decrepit old bastard.”

  When Abe got up from the barstool his own knees didn’t feel so great. He went out and blinked in the sunlight. He couldn’t shake the feeling of being a stranger in town; he made two wrong turns on his way to the mini-mart and couldn’t find parking on Main Street when he went to pick up one of Wright’s sport coats at the dry cleaner’s. Why, he didn’t even recognize anyone at the cleaner’s, other than Zeke, another old-timer who had a fondness for Abe due to the fact that his grandfather had stopped the town’s only armed robbery on record thirty-five years earlier in this very establishment. That there had been only fourteen dollars in the cash register didn’t matter; the robber had a gun pointed straight at Zeke when Wright happened to walk through the door, arriving to pick up some woolen blankets. For this reason Abe was given a twenty percent discount to this day, though in fact he rarely had anything to dry-clean.

  “Who are all those people?” Abe asked, when the line of customers before him had thinned out and he could pick up Wright’s coat.

  “Damned if I know. But that’s what happens when a town starts growing. You stop knowing everyone by name.”

  But for now, it was still Abe’s town and in his town it was not against the law for a taxpaying citizen to wander across Haddan School grounds. If there had been such a law, local people would have been incited to riot before the ink on the edict had dried. Imagine Mrs. Jeremy’s son, AJ, being kicked off the soccer field when he arrived with his golf clubs to work on his short game. Imagine the yoga club, meeting on Thursday mornings for more than ten years, thrown off the quad as if they were common criminals rather than practitioners of an ancient discipline. Abe was pushing his luck, he knew that, but all he needed was a little more time before Nathaniel Gibb broke down. He began to track the boy again.

  “Just talk to me,” Abe said as he trailed after Gibb.

  By now, Nathaniel was panicked. “What are you trying to do to me?” he cried. “Why won’t you leave me alone? ”

  “Because you can tell me the truth.”

  They were on that same path beside the river where before long fiddlehead ferns would unfold; there really was nowhere for Nathaniel to run.

  “Just think about it,” Abe went on. “If you meet me here tomorrow and tell me you don’t want to talk, then I won’t bother you anymore.” It was the time of year when those Haddan boys had needed to be rescued by Abe’s grandfather, the season when the ice on the river appeared thick to the inexperienced passerby, but upon closer inspection the surface revealed itself to be clear rather than blue, the way river ice is right before it begins to break apart.

  “It wasn’t me,” Nathaniel Gibb said.

  Abe did his best not to react; he was not about to scare this boy off, even if his head did feel as if it were about to explode. “I know that. That’s why I’m talking to you.”

  They arranged to meet early the next day, at an hour when the blackbirds were waking and most students at Haddan were still asleep in their beds. The sheen of spring was everywhere, in the yellowing hark of the willows, in the cobalt color of the morning sky. Though the season would soon change, it was brisk enough for Abe to keep his hands in his pockets as he waited. He waited for a long time, there on the path to the river. At eight o’clock, students began to appear, on their way to breakfast or the library, and by nine most classrooms were full. Abe walked over to Chalk House, tinkered with the lock—an easy push-button type any rookie could get past—and let himself in. There was a directory in the hallway. Abe was not surprised to see that Harry McKenna had what appeared to be the best room, nor was he surprised that Gibb’s room was up in the attic.

  “Hey, there,” Eric Herman called when he saw Abe on the stairs. Eric had just finished compiling his exam for the following week’s midterm and was rushing off to class, but he took the time to stop and look Abe over. The dean had made an announcement asking to be informed if anyone who didn’t belong was found on campus. “I think you’re in the wrong place.”

  “I don’t think so.” Abe stayed where he was. He’d never before been face-to-face with his rival. What had he imagined? That he’d challenge Herman, that a fight would result, with punches aimed to inflict the most damage? What he found was that he merely felt he and Eric Herman had something in common, they were both in love with Betsy. “I’m looking for Nathaniel Gibb.”

  “You’re out of luck. He’s in the infirmary.”

  Abe could tell from the way Eric was glaring at him that he wouldn’t get any more information out of him, but fortunately Dorothy Jackson was a regular at the Millstone, and much friendlier when Abe approached her; in spite of the dean’s warning not to speak to Abe, the nurse let him visit the infirmary.

  “He’s had a bad accident at hockey practice. Five minutes,” she granted Abe. “No more.”

  Nathaniel Gibb lay on his back on the cot nearest the wall. Both his arms had been broken. He’d been driven by ambulance to the hospital in Hamilton where X rays were taken and casts had been fashioned, and now he was awaiting his parents, who were on their way from Ohio to bring him home. For months, he would have to be fed and dressed, as though he were an infant once again, and it was somehow fitting that he had also lost the ability to speak. Whether this development had been caused when he bit down on his tongue, nearly severing it as the group of boys at hockey practice rammed him into the wall, or whether the words had simply been scared out of him really didn’t matter. He could not speak to Abe.

  “I don’t know what you want from this boy,” Dorothy Jackson said when she brought up a glass of ginger ale with a straw. “But he probably won’t be able to talk for a month. Even then he’ll need speech therapy for some time.”

  Abe waited for the nurse to leave, then went over to Nathaniel and lifted the glass so that the boy might quench his thirst. But Nathaniel wouldn’t even look at him. He would not drink even though his tongue, stitched together at the emergency room by a resident who had never before performed the procedure, was throbbing.

  “I’m sorry.” Abe sat down on a nearby cot. He was still holding the glass of ginger ale. The infirmary smelled of iodine and disinfectant. “I was probably wrong to get you involved. I hope you can accept my apologies.”

  The boy made a guttural sound that might have been a laugh or a snort of contempt. Nathaniel peered over at Abe, hunched on the metal cot across from his own. Sunlight poured in through the windows and the dust motes whirled into the shape of a funnel. In only a few hours Nathaniel Gibb and his belongings would be loaded into his parents’ car, ready to drive far from this place. Here was one boy who would never again have to set foot in Massachusetts or go through another of its wicked winters. He would be miles away, safe in his home state, which is why he forced himself to open his mouth and move his tortured tongue, straining to utter an initial, the letter of the alphabet that hurt him most to recite, a clear and single H.

  * * *

  BY THE FOLLOWING MORNING ABE HAD BEEN released from duty, the first officer in Haddan ever to be asked for his resignation. Abe wasn’t even dressed when Glen Tiles arrived on his front steps to tell him the news. What had he expected, really? A dozen or more of the staff at Haddan had seen him stalking students, helping himself to food in the dining hall, bothering the faculty with questions. And then there’d been Eric, who’d wasted no time in contacting the dean.

  “You had to push it,” Glen said. “You couldn’t take my advice. I had the attorney general’s office cal
l me on this, Abe. Somebody over there is an alum.”

  The two men stood there facing each other in the cold; bright light. They had measured each other against Wright’s legacy, and neither believed the other would ever come close to the old man’s stature. At least now they wouldn’t have to see each other every day. By lunchtime, everyone in town knew what had happened. Lois Jeremy and her friend Charlotte Evans had already mobilized, but when they tried to reach Abe to inform him they had started a petition to have him reinstated, he didn’t answer his phone. Over at Selena’s, Nikki Humphrey made up the sandwich Abe usually ordered for lunch and had it waiting for him, but he never showed up. He didn’t even bother to get dressed until sometime past noon. By then, Doug Lauder had been told that he was being promoted to detective, and truthfully, Doug deserved it; he was a decent guy and he’d do a good job, although the job would never mean as much to him as it had to Abe.

  Toward the end of the day, Abe went out for a drive. He still had Wright’s old cruiser, and he figured he might as well make use of it in case they came to repossess it. He spotted Mary Beth in the park with her children. Even though the new baby was due in a few weeks, MB still looked great, and both girls on the swings, Lilly and Emily, the eldest, resembled their mother, with dark hair and wide-set hazel eyes. Abe knew nothing about children, but he knew they had big expenses, and that Joey would want to provide them with all that he could and more. It was the more that was the problem. Abe got out of the cruiser and went to greet Mary Beth.

  “Hey, stranger,” she said, hugging him.

  “You look great.”

  “Liar.” MB smiled. “I’m a whale.”

  A person could really learn to hate February living in this part of the world, although the kids surely weren’t bothered by the gloomy weather; they screamed with glee as they went higher and higher on the swings. Abe remembered exactly what that felt like—no fear. No thought of the consequences.

  “Not so high,” Mary Beth called to her children. “I heard about what happened at work,” she said to Abe. “I think it’s just crazy.”

  Joey and MB’s son, Jackson, was a maniac on the swings; he went as far into the sky as possible, then came rushing down to earth, breathless and hollering out loud. Joey was crazy about this kid: on the day he was born, Joey had thrown open the doors of the Millstone, inviting everyone to have a drink, charged to his tab.

  “I heard about it from Kelly Avon. Joey didn’t even tell me. What’s happened between you two?” Mary Beth asked.

  “You tell me.”

  Mary Beth laughed at that. “Not possible. He talks to you more than he talks to me.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Maybe he just grew up.” Mary Beth put one hand over her eyes in order to keep watch over her children in the dwindling sunlight. “Maybe that’s what happens with friendships. I think he sees the kids getting older and he wants to spend more time with them. If this was before, he’d be planning a fishing trip with you over the Easter break, now we’re all going to Disney World.”

  A vacation such as that was an expensive proposition for Joey, who in the past had often needed to borrow from Abe to pay off his monthly mortgage payment. As he thought this over, Abe noticed that Mary Beth’s wreck of a car had been replaced by a new minivan.

  “Joey surprised me with that,” Mary Beth said of the van. “I’ve been driving around in that old station wagon for so long I thought I’d be buried in it.” She took Abe’s hand. “I know it’s not the same between you, but that won’t last.”

  She’d always been generous about their friendship; she’d never complained about including Abe in their lives or griped about the time Joey spent away from her. She was a good woman who deserved a minivan and a whole lot more, and Abe wished he could be happy for her. Instead, he felt as though they’d both lost Joey.

  “I hope you’re going to fight to get reinstated,” Mary Beth called when he headed back to his car, even though it was clear to them both that it would be pointless for him to do so.

  Abe drove to the school out of habit, like a dog who insists on circling the same plot of land, certain there are birds in the grass. Because he stood a good chance of being arrested if caught venturing onto private property, Abe parked down by the river and walked the rest of the way. He could feel his heart lurching around in his chest, the way it used to when he and Joey took this route. They didn’t have to talk back then; they knew where they were headed and what they meant to accomplish. He went past the place where the violets grew in spring and along the dirt trail to the rear of Chalk House. He didn’t even know what he wanted until he came to a window through which he could see Eric Herman’s living quarters. He could feel something fill up his head, blood or lunacy, he wasn’t sure which. He was wearing gloves, because of the chill in the air, or maybe a break-in was what he’d intended all along. Either way, he didn’t have to protect himself when he put his fist through the window, shattering the glass, then reached in to unhook the latch.

  He pulled himself over the ledge; it wasn’t as easy as it once was, he was heavier, for one thing, and there was his bad knee to think of. He was breathing hard by the time he was in Eric’s living room. He brushed the glass off and began to take a look around. A thief could decipher a great deal from observing a person’s lodgings, and Abe could tell that Betsy would never be happy with the man who lived there. He could not imagine her in this tidy room, beneath the sheets of the perfectly made bed. Even the refrigerator revealed how wrong Herman was for Betsy; all he had was mayonnaise, bottled water, half a jar of olives.

  Whenever Abe burglarized a house he could always sense where he would find the best loot, he had a natural ability to zero in on treasures, and as it turned out he hadn’t lost that knack. There it was, in the living room, the midterm for Eric’s senior history seminar, five pages of questions on Hellenic culture. A typed class list had been paper-clipped to the exam. Quickly, Abe looked down the page until he found what he was looking for. Harry’s name.

  He rolled up the exam and kept it inside the sleeve of his jacket as he went through the door that opened into the hallway of the dormitory. It was the dinner hour and except for a few boys who were ill, no one was around. It was easy enough to walk down the hallway, and easier still to discern which room was Dr. Howe’s old office: there was the mantel into which so many lines had been carved, there were the golden oak floors, and the woodwork that was dusted by the hired maid every other week, and the desk, into which Abe deposited exactly what Harry McKenna deserved.

  * * *

  CARLIN WAS ON HER WAY HOME FROM A SWIM meet in New Hampshire when she felt him beside her. She had claimed a double seat on the bus for herself, throwing down the black coat, not wanting to be forced into making polite conversation with any of the other girls on the team. It was just as well that the seat next to her was vacant, for now there was room for what was left of August Pierce to settle in beside her, drop by watery drop.

  Although Carlin had performed well at the meet, it had been a generally disappointing evening and the bus was quiet, the way it always was after a defeat. Carlin hadn’t even bothered to shower before she dressed; her cropped hair was wet and smelled of chlorine, but the droplets of water that now rolled down the plastic seat weren’t from her hair, nor from her soaking bathing suit, stowed away in her gym bag. Carlin glanced to see if a nearby window had been left ajar, for there was a fine drizzle falling outside, but all the windows were shut and there were no leaks in the roof of the bus. The liquid Carlin noticed wasn’t rainwater; it was murky and green as it spread out over the seat, a watermark that had both weight and form. Carlin could feel her heart racing, the way it did when she pushed herself to the limit during a race. She looked straight ahead and counted to twenty, but she could still feel him beside her.

  “Is that you?” Carlin’s voice was so small no one on the bus took notice; not even Ivy Cooper in the seat right behind overheard.

  Carlin moved one hand to t
ouch the black coat. The fabric was soaking and so frigid to the touch she immediately began to shiver. She could feel the cold moving up her arm, as if ice water had been added to her veins. The bus had already entered Massachusetts and was headed south on 93, toward the Route 17 exit. Outside, it was so dark and damp everything disappeared into the mist, fences and trees, cars and street signs. Carlin reached her hand into the pocket of the black coat to find it had filled with water. There was silt there, too, in among the seams, the grainy mud from the bottom of the river, along with several of the little black stones so often found when the bellies of silver trout were slit open by fishermen’s knives.

  Carlin glanced across the aisle to where Christine Percy was dozing. In Christine’s hazed-over window, she could see Gus’s reflection. Inside the black coat, he was as pale as tea water, so translucent his features evaporated in the glare of oncoming headlights. Carlin closed her eyes and leaned her head against the seat. He had appeared beside her because she had wanted him to. She had called him to her, and was calling him still. Even when she fell asleep, she dreamed of water, as if the world were topsy-turvy and everything she cared about had been lost in the deep. She plunged through the green waves with her eyes wide open, searching for the world as she’d known it, but that world no longer existed; everything that had once been solid was liquid now, and the birds swam alongside the fish.