So Cold the River

by Michael Koryta

  It has a cap. You open it, take a sip, put the damn cap back on. Who’s to know?

  He felt like a young boy standing in front of the liquor cabinet, pondering his first taste of the sauce. Drink some of it down, then fill it up with water—maybe apple juice for color—and they’ll never know. What the hell was his problem? It was a bottle of old mineral water. Why did he want to know what it tasted like? It tasted, no doubt, like shit.

  Scared of it. For some reason, you’re scared of it, you pussy.

  It was true, he realized as he stood there staring at the bottle, it was true and it was pathetic, and there was only one way to slap that fear down. He forced the old wires up and loosened the stopper. It was a terrible thing to do—he’d probably just cut the bottle’s value in half by opening it, and it wasn’t even his bottle—but after the whiskeys and the bad conversation with Claire and the realization that for some inexplicable reason he was frightened of this bottle, he no longer cared about that. He just wanted a taste.

  There was a sulfuric smell to the water, and he felt mildly repulsed as he lifted the bottle to take a drink. He was almost unable to bear the smell of the stuff; how had so many people actually ingested it?

  The bottle hit his lips and tilted and a splash of the contents sloshed over the rim and into his mouth and found his throat.

  And Eric gagged.

  Dropped to his knees and spat the foulness onto the carpet, the taste more corrupt than anything he’d ever experienced, a taste of rot, of death.

  He set the bottle on the floor, spat onto the carpet again as he took a shuddering breath through his nose, and then felt another gag coming on and knew this time it wasn’t going to be so clean, made it halfway into the bathroom before vomiting violently onto the floor. The whiskey scorched through his throat and burned his nostrils and he fought his way to the toilet and hung on to the bowl and emptied again, felt his temples throb and saw his vision go cloudy with tears from the force of it, the terrible exertion.

  The next bout was worse, an awful wrenching from deep in his stomach, like somebody twisting a wet towel until the fibers screamed with strain. When he finished, he was facedown on the floor, the tile cold on his cheek.

  It was an hour before he left the bathroom. An hour before he felt strong enough to stand. He got out the mop and a bucket and some disinfectant spray and went to work. When the bathroom was clean, he returned to the living room, avoiding the clock that announced it was four in the morning, long past the hour that decent people had found their beds, and picked up the Pluto bottle. The smell rose again, and he clenched his teeth as he fastened the cap, holding his breath until the bottle was in his briefcase.

  Curer of ills, indeed.

  4

  THE NEXT DAY HE took some Excedrin and drank about a gallon of iced tea and waited until evening to eat, and that night he did not allow himself so much as a beer or a glass of wine.

  There were no other jobs in play, just the Bradford project, so he spent the rest of the week on research and equipment shopping, considering spending Alyssa Bradford’s advance check on a new camera. He wanted to upgrade partially for the quality improvement and partially to stop using the camera Claire’s father had given him as a present after things bottomed out in L.A. and Eric followed Claire to Chicago. That pretentious bastard. His latest novel had just come out this week. Eric wouldn’t read the book, that was for damn sure, but if he heard of a bad review, he’d absolutely read that.

  He didn’t talk to Claire again before his meeting with Campbell Bradford. By the morning after their last phone call, which he awoke to with a headache that clearly intended to linger for a few hours, he wished that he’d told her more. It would’ve interested her, and she would’ve listened. One thing about Claire, she always listened.

  But he didn’t call, and she didn’t either. He checked the caller ID every day, and that ritual became maddening—she was his wife, and here he was, checking to see if she might have called.

  His wife.

  He stopped by the apartment to pick up his equipment the night of his interview with Campbell Bradford and saw the message light blinking on the answering machine, thought perhaps Claire had called, then hated himself for such hopefulness. He didn’t allow himself to even check the message, ignoring the machine while he picked up his camera and tripod and briefcase. When he opened the case to put his recorder inside—always good to have an audio backup—he saw the pale green bottle and felt a wave of nausea. He started to remove the bottle, then changed his mind. Maybe he’d show it to old Campbell and see what sort of response it triggered.

  Alyssa Bradford had told him to go by the hospital around seven. He went through the building as quickly as he could, long, fast strides, the camera bag banging against his leg. He hated hospitals, always had. When he found the right room number—712—he discovered the door was closed. Rapped lightly on it with his knuckles.

  “Hello?” he said, pushing it open, poking his head inside. “Mr. Bradford?”

  There were two beds in the room, but only one was occupied. The man in it turned to look at Eric, one half of his face lit by a small fluorescent lamp above the bed. Otherwise the room was dark. The sheets were pulled up to the man’s neck, and the face above them was weathered and gaunt, with sunken blue eyes that announced his sickness even more than the hospital room itself. Loose skin hung off a jaw that once would have been hard and square, and though the hands resting on top of the sheets were thin and brittle, they were large. Would have been powerful, once.

  “Mr. Bradford?” Eric said again, and the old man seemed to nod.

  “Your daughter-in-law said she told you I’d be coming,” Eric said, crossing to the foot of the bed and pulling up a plastic chair. “I hope I’m not here at a bad time.”

  No answer. Not a word, or a blink. But the eyes followed Eric.

  “I think Alyssa told you what I was going to be doing?” Eric said. He was reaching into his camera bag now, rushing things along because the old man’s unresponsive stare was unsettling.

  “I was hoping I could hear some of the stories you’ve got to tell,” he continued as he removed the camera. “Alyssa promised me you’ve got some good ones.”

  Campbell Bradford’s breath came and went in soft, barely audible hisses, and when Eric became aware of the sound, he wanted out of the room, cursed himself for forcing this suggestion on Alyssa in the first place. This man was dying. He was not months away, or even weeks away. Death was close. He could hear it in those little puffing hisses from Campbell’s nose.

  It hadn’t been so many years ago that Eric could be in the presence of an old, sick person like this and feel sorrow. Now he felt fear. The buffer zone of years was thinning too fast. He’d be here soon.

  “I’ll just let you talk as much as you want, and whenever you’re ready for me to go, I’ll get lost,” he said, unfolding the tripod and fastening the camera to it. When he stole a glance at Campbell, he saw the same blank face and thought, Well, this isn’t going to take long. The man was not going to be able to talk to him. Then Eric took the lens cap off and dropped his eye to the viewfinder to check the focus and felt his next words die in his chest, pulled down by a cold fist of fear. In the viewfinder Campbell Bradford was watching him with an entirely different expression, the blue eyes hard and penetrating and astonishingly alert. They were the eyes of a young man, a strong man.

  Eric lifted his head slowly, turned from the camera to the man in the bed and felt that cold fist in his chest open and flutter its fingers.

  Campbell Bradford’s face had not changed. The eyes looked just as dim, just as unaware. Eric looked at the door, wishing now that he’d left it open.

  “You going to talk to me?” Eric asked.

  A slow blink, another hissed breath. Nothing else.

  Eric looked at him, then thought, Okay, let’s try it again, and lowered his eye to the viewfinder. There was Campbell, still in the bed, still watching him, still with alert blue eyes tha
t looked nothing like the ones Eric had just been staring into.

  He wanted to look up again but didn’t, kept his eye to the camera instead. Give Paul Porter credit—he might be an asshole, but the man bought one hell of a camera. It was amazing, the way the thing picked up the life in Campbell Bradford’s eyes.

  “Are you going to talk to me tonight?” Eric asked again, this time with his eye to the camera.

  “Yes,” Campbell Bradford said, voice clear and strong.

  Eric jerked his head up, bumped the tripod with his knee, and nearly knocked the camera over. Campbell looked back at him, face empty.

  “Great,” Eric said, steadying the camera and facing Campbell. “Where would you like to start? What would you like to tell me?”

  Nothing.

  What in the hell was this about? The old bastard spoke only when Eric was looking at him through the camera. He waited, and still Campbell was silent. Eric pursed his lips, exhaled, shook his head. Okay, Gramps, I’ll look away again. He put his eye to the viewfinder and said, “I’d like to ask you about your childhood. Is that okay?”

  “I don’t really have much to say about that,” Campbell Bradford said. His face was unchanged in the camera, the skin still loose and sallow, the sickness still clear. In fact, nothing had changed except the look in his eyes. For the first time, Eric considered that the old man could be screwing with him. That blank-faced look could be forced.

  “Can I ask you something off topic?” Eric said.

  “Yes.” The voice was clear enough, but not youthful. It was an elderly man’s voice. A sick man’s voice.

  “Are you going to talk to me only when I’m looking through the camera?”

  Campbell Bradford smiled.

  “That,” Eric said, “is one wicked sense of humor.”

  He lifted his head again, and Campbell went back to the vacant expression, and Eric laughed.

  “Okay, I’ll play the game.” He moved the camera over and flicked the viewing display open so he could look through the camera without having to keep his eye to the tiny viewfinder. “Why don’t you want to talk to me about your childhood?”

  “Not much to say.”

  The old man was good. He could time it right, speak just as Eric dropped his eyes to the display, stop just as he flicked his eyes up. What a case.

  “Tell me about the town, maybe. West Baden, isn’t that it?”

  “Nice town,” Campbell said, and his voice seemed tired now.

  “Did you live by the hotel?” Eric said and waited a long time on this one, staring right at Campbell, waiting for him to crack. He didn’t, and Eric dropped his eyes to the camera, and Campbell said, “Sure.”

  Shit, he wasn’t going to give it up.

  “How long did you live there?” Eric said, eyes still on the camera.

  “A while.” The fatigue appeared to be taking Campbell quickly, and Eric wondered if the game he’d played had sapped his strength.

  Show him the bottle, maybe. Tell him the way that shit had tasted, see if he could get a laugh or a response of any depth. Eric took the bottle out. Damn but that thing was cold.

  “Alyssa gave me this,” he said, pushing it into the old man’s hand, and for the first time Campbell’s face changed while Eric had his eyes away from the camera, went drawn and lined with concern.

  “You shouldn’t have this,” he said.

  “I’m sorry. She brought it to me.”

  Campbell’s long, ancient fingers opened and he lifted his hand from the bottle, found Eric’s forearm and squeezed with surprising strength.

  “It was so cold,” he said.

  “The bottle? Yeah, I know. Weird stuff.”

  “No!” Campbell’s eyes were wide now, full of emotion, the game forgotten.

  “What?”

  “Not the bottle.”

  “Well, I thought it was plenty cold. When I touched—”

  “Not the bottle.”

  Eric said, “What, then? What are you talking about?”

  “So cold.”

  “What was?”

  “The river.”

  “What river are you talking about?”

  “It was so cold.”

  Eric wanted to say something about Bradford’s sense of humor again, wanted to give him some credit for this unnerving and inventive-as-hell prank, but he couldn’t get the words out, couldn’t even get them formed, because he was staring into the man’s face and unable to believe that any drama school on earth had ever produced a talent like this. He wasn’t acting. He was lost in some frozen memory. One that terrified him.

  “So cold the river,” Campbell Bradford repeated, his voice now dropping to a whisper as he lowered his head back to the pillow. “So cold the river.”

  “What river? I don’t understand what you’re talking about, sir.”

  Nothing.

  Eric said, “Mr. Bradford? I’m sorry I brought the bottle.”

  Silence. The amazing job of blank-faced posing he’d done before paled in comparison to this.

  “Mr. Bradford, I was hoping to talk to you about your life. If you don’t want to talk about West Baden or your childhood, that’s fine with me. Let’s talk about your career, then. Your kids.”

  But it wasn’t going to work. Not anymore. The old man was stone silent. Game or not, Eric wasn’t going to wait all night. He let five minutes pass, asked a few more questions, got no response.

  “All right,” he said, removing the camera from the tripod. “I think you were messing with me earlier, and I hope you are now. I’m sorry if I upset you.”

  That got a languid blink. When Eric picked up the bottle from the bed and put it back in his briefcase, Campbell followed it with his eyes but said nothing.

  “Okay,” Eric said. “Take care, Mr. Bradford.”

  He left the hospital and drove back to the apartment, opened a beer and leaned against the refrigerator while he drank it, holding the bottle to his forehead between sips. What a weird guy. What a weird night.

  It was the sort of story he’d have shared with Claire once, and that thought reminded him of the message he still hadn’t checked. Maybe it was her. Hopefully, it was her. If she’d called, he was justified in calling her back. It would give him the excuse.

  When he played the message, though, it wasn’t Claire’s voice.

  “Eric, hey, I hope this catches you! This is Alyssa Bradford, and I’m calling to tell you not to waste your time driving to the hospital tonight. My father-in-law took a turn for the worse this week. I went down there yesterday and he couldn’t say a word, would just look at me and stare. The doctors said he hasn’t spoken since Monday. I’m so sorry it won’t work out. I wish you could have talked with him. He had such a sense of humor. I guess the last time he spoke, it was to tell the nurse she needed to get a new outfit. That was just like him. If those were his last words, at least they were a joke.”

  She wished him luck in West Baden and hung up. Eric finished the rest of his beer in a long swallow and deleted the message.

  “Hate to tell you, Alyssa,” he said aloud, “but those weren’t his last words.”

  5

  IT HIT NINETY ON the first Friday of May, and everyone Anne McKinney spoke with commented on the heat, shook their heads, and expressed disbelief. Anne, of course, had seen this coming about six weeks earlier, when spring arrived early and emphatically. It had been in the high sixties throughout the third week of March, and while the TV people were busy talking about when it would break, Anne knew by the fourth day that it would not. Not really, not in the way of a normal Indiana spring, with those wild swings, seventy one day and thirty the next.

  No, this year spring settled in and put up its feet, and winter didn’t have much to say about it, just a few overnight grumblings of cold rain and wind. There had been five days in the eighties during April, and the rain that came was gentle. Nurturing. The entire town was in bloom now, everything lush and green and unpunished. The grounds around the hotel were particul
arly stunning. Always were, of course—full-time landscapers could do that for you—but Anne had seen eighty-six springs in West Baden, remembered about eighty of those pretty well, and this was as beautiful as any of them.

  And as hot.

  She couldn’t avoid the weather conversations even if she’d wanted to; it was her identity in town, the only thing most people could think to mention when they saw her. Sometimes the topic came up casually, other times with genuine interest and inquiry, and, often enough, with winks and smiles. It amused some people, her fascination with weather, her house on the hill filled with barometers and thermometers and surrounded by weather vanes and wind chimes. That was fine by Anne. To each his own, as they said. She knew what she was waiting for.

  Truth be told, there were times when she thought she might never see it either. See the real storm, the one she’d been counting on since she was a girl. The last few years, maybe she’d let her eye wander a bit, let her interest dim. She still kept the daily records, of course, still knew every shift and eddy of the winds, but it was more observation and less expectation.

  But now it was ninety on the first Friday of May, the air so still it was as if the wind had lost its job here, headed elsewhere in search of work. The barometer sat at 30.08 and steady, indicating no change soon. Just heat and blue skies and stillness, the summer humidity yet to arrive, that ninety more tolerable than it would be in July.

  All peaceful signs really. Anne didn’t believe any of them.

  She went into the West Baden hotel at three and sat in one of the luxurious velvet-covered chairs near the bar and had her afternoon cocktail. Brian, the bartender, gave a wink to one of his coworkers when he fixed Anne’s drink, as if she didn’t know he put only the barest splash of Tanqueray in the tonic before squeezing the lime. A splash was all she needed these days. Hell, she was eighty-six years old. What did the boy think she was coming down here for, to end up three sheets to the wind?