Down River

by John Hart

  The cops.

  They’d left their cars on the drive above me, and were on foot, almost to the cabin. They moved like I thought cops would move, bent at the waist, weapons low. Five of them. Their shapes blurred into one another, separated. They accelerated across the last gap, reached the car, divided. Two moved for the door. Three split for the back. Close. Damn they were close. Black on black. Part of the cabin.

  I waited for the sound of splintered wood, forced myself to breathe, and saw something wrong: a pale face, motion. It was by the shed at the edge of the woods, someone peering around the corner, then pulling back. Adrenaline slammed through me. The cops were pressed against the sides of the door and one of them, Grantham maybe, had his pistol in a two-handed grip, barrel at the sky. And it looked like he was nodding. Like he was counting.

  I looked back at the shed. It was a man in dark pants. I couldn’t make out his face, but it was him. Had to be.

  Danny Faith.

  My friend.

  He ducked low and turned in a dead sprint for the trees, for the trail that would lead him away. I didn’t think. I ran, down the edge of the clearing, toward the shed, the gun in my hand.

  I heard cop sounds at the cabin, voices, crashing wood. Someone yelled “Clear!” and it was echoed.

  We were alone, the two of us, and I could hear him thrashing through brush, limbs snapping into place behind him. I made for the tree line, the shed coming up; then I was there, and I saw the glow of fire shining through the cracks of the door and through the dirt-smeared windows. The shed was on fire. Raging on fire. I was next to it when the windows blew out.

  The concussion threw me into the dirt. I rolled onto my back as flames poured skyward and turned night to day. I could see everything to the edge of the woods. The trees still guarded their blackness. But he was out there, and I went after him.

  I was at the edge of the trees when I heard Grantham shout my name. I saw him at the cabin door, then plunged into the trees, half-blind. But I’d grown up in woods like this, knew them, so that even when I fell I popped up like I was on a spring. But then I went down hard and the gun spun out of my hand. I couldn’t find it, couldn’t waste the time, so I left it.

  I saw him on the trail, the flicker of his shirt as he rounded a bend. I was up to him within seconds. He heard me, turned, and I hit him in the chest at a dead run. I landed on top of him, and saw how wrong I’d been. I felt it as my hands went around his neck. He was too thin, too brittle to be Danny Faith; but I knew him, and my fingers ground deeper into the withered neck.

  His face showed his own bitter hatred as he struggled beneath me. He twisted to bite me, couldn’t reach, and I felt his fingers on my wrists as he tried to force my hands away. His knees rose up; his heels drummed the hard-packed clay. Part of me knew that I was wrong. The rest of me didn’t care. Maybe it had been Danny. Maybe he was at the cabin, arrested and in cuffs. But maybe we’d all been wrong, and it was not Danny Faith that had raped my Grace. Not Danny, but this miserable old fuck. This sorry, worthless, undeserving motherfucker kicking in the dirt as I crushed the life out of him.

  I squeezed harder.

  His hands left my wrists and I felt them fumbling at his waist. When I felt something hard between us I realized the mistake I’d made. I rolled off of him as the gun hammered away, two enormous concussions that split the dark and blinded me. I kept rolling, off the trail and into the dampness under the trees. I found a wide trunk and put my back to it. I waited for the old man to come and finish the job. But the shot never came. There were voices and lights, badges glinting, and shotgun barrels as smooth as glass. Grantham was standing over me, his light in my face. I tried to stand, then something crashed into my head and I was on my back.

  “Put this cocksucker in handcuffs,” Grantham said to one of the deputies.

  The deputy grabbed me, flipped me onto my stomach, and slammed his knee into the center of my back.

  “Where’s the gun?” Grantham demanded.

  “It was Zebulon Faith,” I said. “His gun.”

  Grantham looked around, shone his light down the trail. “All I see out here is you,” he said.

  I was shaking my head. “He set the fire and ran. He shot at me when I tried to stop him.”

  Grantham glanced at the river, at the slow roll of water that looked like sucking black tar, then upslope, to the oily glow of the burning shed. He shook his head and spat in the dirt.

  “What a mess,” he said, then walked away.

  CHAPTER 9

  They stuffed me in the back of a cop car then watched the shed burn to the ground. Eventually, firemen put water on the smoking debris, but not before my arms went numb. I thought about what I’d almost done. Zebulon Faith. Not Danny. Feet drumming clay and the fierce satisfaction I’d felt as the life began to fade out of him. I could have killed him.

  I felt like that should trouble me.

  The air in the car grew close, and I watched the sun rise. Grantham poked through the soaking ash with a white-haired fireman. They picked up objects and then let them fall. Robin’s car rolled out of the trees an hour after dawn. She passed me on the cratered road, and lifted a hand from the wheel. She spoke for a long time with Detective Grantham, who pointed at things amid the ruin, then at the fire marshal, who came over and spoke some more. Several times they looked at me, and Grantham refused to hide his displeasure. After about ten minutes, Robin got into her car and Grantham walked uphill to where I sat in his. He opened my door.

  “Out,” he said.

  I slipped across the seat and put my feet on the damp grass.

  “Turn around.” He made a motion with his finger. I turned and he removed the handcuffs. “A question, Mr. Chase. Do you have any ownership interest in your family’s farm?”

  I rubbed my wrists. “The farm is held as a family partnership. I had a ten percent interest.”

  “Had?”

  “My father bought me out.”

  Grantham nodded. “When you left?”

  “When he kicked me out.”

  “So, you have nothing to gain if he sells.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who else has an interest?”

  “He gave Jamie and Miriam ten percent each when he adopted them.”

  “What’s a ten percent stake worth?”

  “A lot.”

  “How much is a lot?”

  “More than a little,” I said, and he let it go.

  “And your stepmother? Does she have ownership?”

  “No. She has no interest.”

  “Okay,” Grantham said.

  I studied the man. His face was unreadable, his shoes black and destroyed. “That’s it?” I asked.

  He pointed at Robin’s car. “If you have questions, Mr. Chase, you can talk to her.”

  “What about Danny Faith?” I asked. “What about his father?”

  “Talk to Alexander,” he said.

  He shut my door and walked to the driver’s side; turned the car around and drove back into the trees. I heard the car bottom out in a rut, then I walked down to speak with Robin. She did not get out, so I slid in next to her, my knee touching the shotgun locked to the dash. She was tired, still in last night’s clothes. Her voice was drawn.

  “I’ve been at the hospital,” she said.

  “How’s Grace?”

  “Talking a bit.”

  I nodded.

  “She says it wasn’t you.”

  “Are you surprised?”

  “No, but she didn’t see a face. Inconclusive, according to Detective Grantham.”

  I looked at the cabin. “Did they find Danny?” I asked.

  “No sign.” She stared at me. When I turned back, I knew what she was going to say before the words left her mouth. “You should not have been here, Adam.”

  I shrugged.

  “You’re lucky nobody got killed.” She peered through the glass, clearly frustrated. “Jesus, Adam. You don’t think right when you get like this.�
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  “I didn’t ask for this to happen but it did. I’m not going to sit on my hands and do nothing. This happened to Grace! Not some stranger.”

  “Did you come here to do harm?” she asked.

  I thought of Dolf Shepherd’s pistol lying out there in the leaves. “Would you believe me if I said no?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Then why bother to ask. It’s done.”

  We were both stripped-down, nerves exposed. Robin had her cop face on. I was getting to recognize it pretty well. “Why did Grantham let me go?” I asked. “He could have made my life hell.”

  She thought about it, then pointed at the pile of black ash. “Zebulon Faith was running a methamphetamine lab in the shed. He was probably using the money to cover the debt on the property he’s bought. He had it rigged to burn. He must have known that the police were coming in. We’ll find something to that effect. A motion sensor up the road. A phone call from one of the trailers you pass on the way in. Something that told him to get out. There’s not much left.”

  “Enough?” I asked.

  “For a prosecution? Maybe. Juries are fickle.”

  “And Faith?”

  “He’d have disappeared completely, with nothing but circumstantial evidence linking him to the lab.” She faced me, pivoting in her seat. “If it goes to trial, Grantham will need you to put Zebulon Faith at the scene. He weighed that into his decision to cut you loose.”

  “I’m still surprised he did it.”

  “Crystal meth is a big problem. A conviction will play well. The sheriff is a politician.”

  “And if Grantham thinks I had something to do with Grace’s rape? Would he sell her out, too?”

  Robin hesitated. “Grantham has reason to doubt that you were involved with the assault on Grace.”

  There was a new tension in her face. I knew her too well. “Something’s changed,” I said.

  She thought about it, and I waited her out. Finally, she relented.

  “Whoever attacked Grace left a scrap of paper at the scene. A message.”

  Cold filled me up. “And you’ve known this all along?”

  “Yes.” Unrepentant.

  “What did it say?”

  “‘Tell the old man to sell.’ ”

  I stared at her in disbelief.

  “That’s what it said.”

  My mind went red, and I got out of the car, started walking.

  I should have killed him.

  “Adam.” I felt her hands on my shoulders. “We don’t know that it was Zebulon Faith. Or Danny, for that matter. A lot of people want your father to sell. More than one person has made threats. The ring could be a coincidence.”

  “I somehow doubt that.”

  “Look at me,” she said. I turned. She stood on a depression in the earth, a low place, and her head barely reached my chest. “You got lucky today. You understand? Somebody could have been killed. You. Faith. It should have ended worse than it did. We will handle this.”

  “I don’t owe you any promises, Robin.”

  Sudden bitterness twisted her mouth. “It wouldn’t matter if you did. I know what your promises are worth.”

  Then she turned, and as she left the darkness beneath the trees, the day fell upon her shoulders like a weight. She disappeared into her car and threw dirt from her rear tires as she slewed the car around. I stepped onto the road behind her, watched her taillights flare as she slammed her way out.

  It took half an hour to find Dolf’s gun, but eventually I saw it, one black patch among the millions. I found the path next, and followed the river, my feet soundless on the soft earth. The river moved, as always, but its voice was hushed, and after a time I ceased to hear it. I put the violence behind me, sought some kind of peace, a stillness that went beyond mere numbness. Being in the woods helped. Like memories of Robin in the early days, my father before the trial, my mother before the light winked out of her. I walked slowly and felt rough bark under my fingers. I rounded a bend in the trail and stopped.

  Fifteen feet away, its head lowered to drink, was a white deer. Its coat shone, still damp from the night air, and I saw a quiver in its shoulder, where it took the weight of its thick neck, and of the antlers that spanned five feet from tip to tip. I held my breath. Then its head came up, turned my way, and I saw those great, black eyes.

  Nothing moved.

  Moisture condensed around its nostrils.

  It snorted, and some strange emotion stirred in my chest: comfort shot through with pain. I did not know what it meant, but I felt it, like it could tear me open. Seconds rolled over us and I thought back to the other white deer and how I’d learned, at age nine, that anger could take away pain. I reached out a hand, knowing that I was too far away to touch it, that too many years had passed to take that day back. I stepped closer, and the animal tilted its head, scraped an antler against one of the trees. Otherwise, it stood perfectly still and continued to regard me.

  Then the sound of a shot crashed through the forest. It came from far away, two miles, maybe. It had nothing to do with the deer; but still, the animal rose. It leapt out and arced above the river, the weight of its antlers pulling it down by the head; and then it hit, surging across the current, lunging as it drew near the opposite bank. It powered up the slick clay, and at the top, it stopped and turned. For a moment, it showed one wild, black eye, then it tossed its head once and slipped into the gloom; a pale flicker, a slash of white that, in places, looked gray. For no reason that I could explain, I found it suddenly hard to breathe. I sat down on the cold, damp ground, and the past filled me up.

  I saw the day my mother died.

  I didn’t want to kill anything. I never had. That was my mother in me, or so the old man would say if he knew. But death and blood was part of what it took to go from boy to man, no matter what my mother had to say about it. I’d heard the argument more than once: quiet voices late at night, my parents arguing over what was right and wrong in the raising of their boy. I was eight, and could drill a bottle cap from sixty yards out; but practice was just practice. We all knew what was out there.

  The old man killed his first deer when he was eight, and his eyes still went glassy when he talked about it, about how his own father had dragged hot blood across his forehead that day. It was a baptismal, he’d say, a thing that stretched through time, and I woke on the designated morning with a stomach full of cold and dread and nausea. But I geared up, and met Dolf and my father outside in the dark air. They asked if I was ready. I said that I was, and they flanked me as we climbed the fence and set out for the deep and secret woods.

  Four hours later we were back at the house. My rifle smelled of burned powder, but there was no blood on my forehead. Nothing to be ashamed of, they said, but I doubted their sincerity.

  I sat on the tailgate of my father’s truck as he walked inside to check on my mother. He came down with a heavy step.

  “How is she?” I asked, knowing what his answer would be.

  “Same.” His voice was gruff, but could not hide the sadness.

  “Did you tell her?” I asked, and wondered if my failure might bring her some rare joy.

  He ignored me, began to strip down his rifle. “She asked me for a cup of coffee. Take her one, would you?”

  I didn’t know what was wrong with my mother, only that the light had died out of her. She’d always been warm and fun, a friend on the long days that my father worked the land. We played games, told stories. Laughed all the time. Then something changed. She went dark. I’d lost count of the times I’d heard her crying, and was scared by the many times that my words to her had fallen into a blank-eyed silence. She’d wasted down to nothing, her skin stretched tight, and I feared that one day I might see her bones if she passed before an undraped window.

  It was scary stuff, and I knew what none of it meant.

  I entered the quiet house, smelled the coffee my mother liked. I poured a cup, and was careful on the stairs. I spilled none of it.
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br />   Until I opened her door.

  The gun was already against her temple, her face hopeless and white above the pale pink robe she wore.

  She pulled the trigger as the door swung wide.

  My father and I never talked about it. We buried the woman we loved, and it was like I’d always known: death and blood was part of what it took to go from boy to man.

  I killed a lot of deer after that.

  CHAPTER 10

  I found Dolf on the porch, rolling a cigarette. “Morning,” I said, and stood against the rail, watching his deft and busy fingers. He studied me as he licked the paper and ran the cigarette between his fingers one last time. He took a match from his shirt pocket, struck it with a thumbnail. His eyes settled on the pistol still tucked under my belt. He blew out the match.

  “That mine?” he asked.

  I pulled out the pistol and set it on the table. The sweet tobacco smell surrounded me as I bent, and his face looked etched in the sharp light. “Sorry,” I said.

  He picked up the gun and sniffed the barrel; then he laid it back down. “No harm done.” He leaned back in the chair and it creaked beneath him. “Five years is a long time,” he said casually.

  “Yep.”

  “Guess you came home for a reason. Want to tell me about it?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe I can help you.”

  It was a good offer. He meant it. “Not this time, Dolf.”

  He gestured downriver. “I smelled the fire. Thought maybe I could see the glow, too.”

  He wanted to talk about it, wanted to know, and I didn’t blame him.

  “Sound travels down the river.” He took a drag. “I can smell the smoke on you.”

  I sat in the rocker next to his and put my feet up on the rail. I looked once again at the gun and then at Dolf’s coffee cup. I thought of my mother and of the white deer.

  “Somebody’s hunting the property,” I said.

  He rocked slowly. “It’s your father.”

  “He’s hunting again? I thought that he’d sworn it off.”

  “Sort of.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “There’s a pack of wild dogs hanging around. They showed up after the first of the cattle was shot. They smell blood from miles off. Find the carcasses at night. They’ve got a taste for it now. We can’t seem to drive them off. Your father is determined to kill every last one of them. It’s his new religion.”