The River King

by Alice Hoffman

  They drove out of town, past the new housing developments, past the mini-mart and the gas station and the fields of everlasting. They went on until they reached the road that led to Abe’s grandfather’s house. The day was so bright Betsy thought about putting on sunglasses, but the sky was too beautiful and too blue to miss. In the woods, the violets were blooming, and hawks swooped above the meadows. They got out when they reached the farm, slamming their doors shut, so that the blackbirds took flight all at once, weaving above them as if cross-stitching themselves onto the sky. Bees were rumbling around the lilacs beside the porch and although the farm was miles from the marshy banks of the river, there was the call of spring peepers. Abe went out to pay his last respects with a bunch of wild irises he’d stopped to pick alongside the river road. Aside from the fence, no one would have any reason to believe this was anyone’s final resting place; it was just another stretch of land where the grass grew high and turned yellow in the fall.

  Watching him, Betsy ignored the urge to reach for her camera, and instead she stood there and waited for him to come back to her. The grass he walked through was new and a sweet smell clung to his clothes. There was blue dye on his hands from the wild irises. These were the things Betsy would always remember: that he waved to her as he made his way back through the field, that she could feel her own pulse, that the color of the sky was a shade that could never be replicated in any photograph, just as heaven could never be seen from the confines of earth.

  For a time they stood looking at the old house, watching as the shadows of clouds settled onto the fields and the road, then they got back into the car and drove west, toward the turnpike. It was days before anyone realized they were gone, and Carlin Leander was the first to know they’d left town. She knew long before Mike Randall at the 5&10 Cent Bank received a notice to sell Abel’s house and wire him the money, before the Haddan School understood it would be necessary to find someone to take over Betsy’s classes. She knew before Joey Tosh used his key to check inside Abe’s house, where he was surprised to find that the kitchen was tidy and neat, as it never had been before.

  Carlin had traveled home for the Easter break, as most students did, the difference being she had no definite plans to return to Haddan. Sean Byers had borrowed his uncle’s car to drive her to Logan Airport and he’d noticed that she had more luggage than most people had when they were going away for only a week. She had packed a tote bag of books and brought along the boots she’d bought at Hingram’s, even though there’d be no need for such things in Florida. In spite of his fears that she might not return, Sean kept his mouth shut, which wasn’t easy for him. His uncle Pete had taken him aside that morning and told him that when he got older he’d understand that patience was an unappreciated virtue, one that a man would do well to cultivate even when he was the one who was being left behind.

  And so, instead of going after her, Sean had sat in his uncle’s parked car and watched her leave. He was still thinking about her when she walked out into the bright, humid Florida afternoon, instantly dizzy in the heat.

  “Are you crazy, girl?” Carlin’s mother, Sue, asked, as she greeted Carlin with a huge hug. “You’re wearing wool in April. Is that what they taught you up in Massachusetts?”

  Sue Leander was polite about Carlin’s cropped hair, although she did suggest a visit to the hair salon up on Fifth Street, just to give her daughter’s new hairstyle a little oomph with a perm or body wave. As soon as they got home, Carlin stripped off the sweater and skirt she’d bought at the mall in Middletown in favor of shorts and a T-shirt. She went to sit on the back porch, where she drank iced tea and tried to become reacclimated to the heat. She’d been cold for so long she’d gotten used to it somehow, that crisp Massachusetts air that carried the scent of apples and hay. Still, she liked hearing her mother’s voice through the open window ; she liked seeing the red hawks circle above her in the white-hot sky. When she told her mother she wasn’t sure about going back, Sue said that would be just fine, she wouldn’t be letting anyone down, but Carlin knew that she and her mother had always seen things differently and that the only one who might be let down by such a decision was Carlin herself.

  One afternoon, the postman brought Carlin a package, mailed from the post office in Hamilton. It was a Haddan School T-shirt, the sort they sold in the notions aisle of the pharmacy, along with a Haddan coffee mug and a key ring, all of it sent by Sean Byers. Carlin laughed when she saw the gifts. She wore the Haddan shirt when she went out with her old friend, Johnny Nevens.

  “Boola boola,” Johnny said when he saw the shirt.

  “That’s Yale.” Carlin laughed. “I’m at a boarding school. Haddan.” She pointed to the letters across her chest.

  “Same difference.” Johnny shrugged. “Little Miss Egghead.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  Carlin slipped on a pair of sandals. For the first time in her life she was worried about the snakes her mother always said came out after dusk, searching for insects and rabbits.

  “I don’t get it,” Johnny said. “All these years you’ve been telling me how smart you are, and now that I’m finally agreeing with you, you’re pissed.”

  “I don’t know what I am.” Carlin raised her hands to the sky as though pleading for answers. “I have no idea.”

  “But I do,” Johnny told her. “And so does everybody else in this town, so you can relax, smarty-pants.”

  They went over to the park on Fifth Street, the only hangout in town other than the McDonald’s on Jefferson Avenue. It was a gorgeous night and Carlin sat on the hood of Johnny’s car and drank beer and looked at stars. She’d spent the past few months tied up in knots, and now she felt herself get loose again. The cicadas were calling as if it were already summer, and there were white moths in the sky. The moonlight was silvery, like water, pouring over the asphalt and the streets. People were nice to Carlin and several girls she’d known in grade school came over to tell her how great she looked, in spite of the haircut. Lindsay Hull, who had never included Carlin in anything, went so far as to invite her to the movies on Saturday with a group that went to the mall together on a weekly basis.

  “I’ll call you if I’m still in town,” Carlin told Lindsay.

  She wasn’t certain if she was looking for a way to get out of the invitation or if in fact she had not yet made up her mind whether or not to stay. Later, she and Johnny drove down to the woods, to the place where they had once had the misfortune to confront an alligator. They were just kids and to Johnny’s enduring humiliation, he’d been the one to run. Carlin, on the other hand, had hollered like a demon until the alligator turned tail and headed back to a pool of brackish water, moving quicker than anyone would guess a creature that big could manage.

  “Man, you stared him right in the eye.” Johnny was still proud of Carlin’s long-ago encounter. He talked about her at parties, referring to her as the girl who was so willful and mean she could scare a gator back into the swamp.

  “I was probably more terrified than you were.” The night was darker here than it was in Massachusetts, and much more alive, filled with beetles and moths. “I was just too stupid to run.”

  “Oh no,” Johnny assured her. “Not you.”

  All that week, Carlin sat in front of the TV, addicted to The Weather Channel. The sky in Florida was clear, but in New England a series of spring storms had passed through and Massachusetts had been hit especially hard. Sue Leander appraised her daughter’s expression while she took in this news, and Sue knew then and there that Carlin would not be staying. In the end, Carlin went back to school a day early, arriving on the empty campus after the worst of the storm damage had already been done. She had sprung for a taxi from Logan, using money from the travelers’ fund Miss Davis had arranged. It was a luxury Carlin hardly enjoyed once they arrived in Haddan and she saw how much devastation there had been in her absence. Streams that had been running high from melting snow had overflowed and the fields were now green with water rather
than cabbages and peas. Several silver trout had been stranded on the road, their luminous scales crushed into the blacktop, and anyone traveling this route needed sunglasses, even on the cloudiest of days.

  “Spring squalls are the worst,” the taxi driver told Carlin. “People are never prepared for them.”

  They had to bypass Route 17 entirely, for a five-foot-deep puddle had collected beneath a highway bridge. Instead, they drove along the long, loopy road that passed farm stands and several of the new housing developments. There was still a bite in the damp, green air, and Carlin slipped on Gus’s overcoat. She’d brought it with her to Florida and kept it in her closet until her mother had complained of water seeping onto the floor. Carlin had thought she’d leave what had happened behind when she left school, but in Florida she had continued to find black stones, on the back porch, in the kitchen sink, beneath her pillow. She felt Gus’s presence whenever she stepped out of the sunlight, like a splash of water. Every morning, she had awoken to find that her sheets were damp, the fabric gritty, as if sand had drifted over the cotton. Carlin’s mother blamed the humid air for soaking the bedclothes, but Carlin knew that wasn’t the cause.

  When at last the taxi drove through the village, Carlin took note of the storm damage. Several of the old oaks on Main Street had been split in two and the eagle in front of town hall had been permanently tumbled from its bronzed perch. Some of the big white houses would have to be reroofed, but the Haddan School had been hit with the most severe damage, for the river had risen four feet above its highest level, flooding the buildings, which had fortunately been emptied of residents during spring break. Now, the sopping carpet in the library would have to be torn up and removed, and the parking lot behind the administration building was still being drained with a sump pump belonging to the department of public works. Worst affected had been Chalk House, built so perilously close to the river. The house had tilted and lurched as the river rose; at last whole sections of the foundation were swept away. When Billy Bishop, the town building inspector, was called in, he announced there was nothing to do but take the whole mess down before it fell down. It was an emergency situation, with the real possibility of structural collapse, and the house was razed during vacation. Two afternoons and some bulldozers did the trick, and people from town not only gathered to watch, they applauded when the timbers came crashing down, and several local children swiped bricks to keep as souvenirs.

  Students returning from the holidays came back to a hole in the ground, and although several boys from Chalk House did not return after vacation, stricken still with that dreadful flu, those boys who did come back were sent off to live with local families for the rest of the year, until a new dormitory could be built. Some of these boys grumbled about their new circumstances, and two were so offended by their lodgings they left school, but the rest settled in, and Billy and Marie Bishop grew so fond of their boarder, Dave Linden, they invited him to spend the summer with them and in return, he mowed their front lawn and clipped their hedges for the next three years.

  Without Chalk House in the way, Carlin now had a view of the river. She was up in her room admiring the expanse of water and willow trees, when the black cat climbed the trellis to her window ledge. It was the hour when the sky turned indigo and shadows fell across the grass in dark pools. Carlin could tell from the way the cat came inside and the proprietary manner in which it settled on her blankets that it had come to stay. Cats were sensible that way: when one owner left, they made do with whoever was at hand, and sometimes the situation worked out just fine.

  When the cat moved in, Carlin knew that Abe had left town, and after going downstairs to find there was no answer at Betsy’s door, she was pleased to discover that Miss Chase had changed her mind. Not long afterward, the photograph Betsy had taken in Cus’s room arrived in the mail. For quite some time, Carlin kept it in a silver frame beside her bed, until the image began to fade. She still thought about Gus when she swam laps in the pool and once she felt him there beside her, matching her strokes, cutting through the water, but when she stopped to tread water she found she was alone. In time, the weather grew too warm to wear his coat, and nothing surfaced in the pockets anymore, not silver fish or black stones.

  In the height of the fine weather, Carlin began swimming in the river, at the hour when the light was pale and green. There were days when she swam all the way to Hamilton and when she made her way back to Haddan, the sky would already be dark. But soon enough dusk held off until seven-thirty, and in June the evenings were light until eight. By then, the fish had grown used to her, and they swam along beside her, all the way home.