by Tim Johnston
“I know it’s none of my goddam business, Sheriff,” Gordon said.
Sutter shook his head again. “There’s just nothing I can tell you, Gordon. Like I said, she’s hardly been awake two minutes. I’m not sure she even knows where she’s at yet. I don’t think she knows about her friend. I called in some favors just to keep the cops off her a while longer, until she’s out of the woods. And I tell myself it doesn’t really matter right now anyway. Tell myself that all that matters is that she’s going to be OK.” He looked to the sky. “And I tell myself that all that matters to those folks down in Georgia right now is that they get their daughter home so they can begin to do what they have to do. But I don’t know. I don’t know what they need from me. I don’t know what they need from my daughter.”
“Hell, Sheriff,” said Gordon, “you’re not even close to knowing.”
Sutter watched him. “Meaning?”
Gordon shook his head. His heart was thumping in his neck vein. He thought he could put his fist through something.
“Meaning,” he said, “grief is just about the smallest part of it, Sheriff. Meaning if it turns out there’s some person out there who had something to do with this, and that son of a bitch just goes on living his life—?” Gordon swallowed. He was choking. Sutter standing there watching him.
“That man down in Georgia,” Gordon said, “that girl’s father? Hell, he ain’t even the same man anymore, Sheriff. He’s already some other man.”
Sutter had not looked away as Gordon spoke, and Gordon saw a light come on in those eyes, bluer than before. Brighter. But whatever was behind the light, whatever he was thinking about saying, Sutter said nothing.
You don’t have to say it, went Gordon’s own mind. You can just turn around now and go back home. Saying it won’t change a God damn thing for anyone and you know it.
“Tell you one more thing, Sheriff,” he said, “and then I’ll let you get back up to your girl.”
Sutter waited.
“The things I called you when you let that boy go, when you just let him walk away? Those words weren’t nothin compared to what I wanted to happen to you. I knew you’d lost your wife. I knew you knew something about loss. But this thing that happened to you here, with your daughter—I wished it on you. I wanted you to know what that was like. I’m sorry I wished it, and I’m glad your girl’s OK—but I did wish it, back then.”
Sutter was silent. Then he said, “I have to say you picked one hell of a time to tell me that, Gordon. With my daughter lying in that hospital room and that other girl in a box on her way to Georgia.”
“When would be a good time?”
“How about never? Did you think about that?”
“I did,” Gordon said. “I thought about it hard.” He looked down at the concrete, the crystals of salt. He ground at them with his bootsole, and the gritty crushing sound was the only sound. “But I just kept asking myself: What would Sheriff Sutter do differently now, if it was his girl instead of that other one who didn’t make it? What would he do for himself that he didn’t do for me?”
He looked up again and the two men stood watching each other, their breaths smoking between them.
“If you’re waiting for an answer to that,” Sutter said, “you’re gonna wait a long time, Gordon. All I know right now is my daughter’s OK. She’s alive. Jesus Christ—” he said, but then looked away. He took a breath and blew a long white cloud into the stars, as if to rid himself once and for all of whatever it was inside him—his cancer, maybe. The poisonous little cloud drifting through space with all the other gases and junk up there.
“I’m just as sorry today as I was back then, Gordon,” he said finally, like a man done talking. “I never stopped being sorry and I never will. There just wasn’t a God damn thing I could do.”
“I know,” said Gordon. “That’s what you told me ten years ago.”
Gordon offered his hand then, and Sutter stood looking at it.
“I just came up here to tell you I’m glad she’s OK, Sheriff. I’m sorry as hell about that other girl, but I’m glad your girl’s OK. I mean that.”
Sutter said nothing. Finally he shook Gordon’s hand. Then he stood watching as the man walked off toward the parking lot, as he climbed into his van and turned over the engine and backed out of his spot. He watched until the red taillights had disappeared into the darkness, and when he was alone again he got another cigarette to his lips, and he fished up his Zippo and he stood turning it in his fingers, the old familiar weight of it, before at last flicking it open and flicking the flintwheel once and raising the flame to his face.
8
It doesn’t take long for the drug to find the dog’s bloodstream, his heart, his brain, and she carried her tea to the living room and sat in her chair so he would find his spot under her legs, turn an unsteady circle on the rug, and sleep. Usually she would get him upstairs and into the bedroom before the drug took effect, but she was not ready to go up there herself, not ready to be alone in that bed with nothing but her thoughts of those two girls, and anyway it was easier for both of them, her and the dog, to carry him up when he could not feel all the pain of being carried.
She aimed the remote and turned on the TV, looking for something, anything, but it was all that late-night noise—jokes and bands and studio audiences and famous people talking to famous people and all the happy beauty of a wealth you couldn’t even imagine, and she turned it off again and picked up her novel and found her place and began to read. But the page never turned, and in time she understood she wasn’t reading, she was listening for signs of Marky upstairs, his heavy tread on the hardwood floor as he passed from his room to the bathroom, the sound of him at the toilet, the heavy stream of a grown man and not her little boy, a sound she’d never gotten used to. What did he do with that body when she wasn’t around? What did he think about? What did he think when he saw a good-looking girl—or woman? What did he feel? The boys had both stopped talking to her about such stuff when they turned twelve. Like some switch had been thrown. Danny would never tell you what was between him and Marky, but they must’ve talked about it; there must have been much that Danny, who even then never lacked for the attention of girls, could’ve told Marky about how the world worked. Men and women. Sex.
What could she herself have told him? Not much. A virgin when she married, she’d carried that innocence well into adulthood. Surprised, shocked, by the things other women knew. The things they said.
Oh, honey, Meredith Burke said one night, I could tell you stories.
And Rachel, surprising herself, had answered, I dare you to.
Meredith had refilled Rachel’s glass, then her own, and looked toward the house and listened. Gordon had taken Roger to the basement to talk about turning it into a playroom for the kids, and she and Meredith sat alone on the deck with the wine. The babies all sleeping in the playpen just inside the screen door, the twins and little Holly. The bellies of insects pulsing green in the pinewoods. It was Rachel’s second glass and Meredith’s third, not that Rachel was counting . . . although if Meredith didn’t slow down she’d begin to get that look in her eye, that edge in her voice that said the night was over, that it was time to go home.
When I was a junior in high school I slept with one of my teachers, Meredith said, and Rachel felt as if a notorious man had just grinned at her.
What kind? she said. Of teacher.
Art, said Meredith. Mr. Beckman. Mr. B. He’d thought Meredith had talent. She thought he was a fairy. Everyone did. He passed her one day in his car, an Oldsmobile. She was wearing her best skirt.
Meredith was quite a bit smaller than Rachel—had snapped back to her original size after pregnancy—and she had the most beautiful skin. At sixteen—Lord, Rachel could not even imagine.
They talked about Dalí, Meredith said. They parked. He had a mustache that tickled. He wanted to see her again. He stood behind her in class, as she drew. He began slipping her these little drawings—very good, very d
irty. An artistic fever, he said into her ear. She showed the drawings to just one person, her best friend, but that was enough. Two days later a substitute teacher came to Mr. B.’s art room and stayed. The halls hummed with low voices, with stories. Meredith’s father heard it at the plant from some other kid’s father, came home and slapped the living crap out of her.
My God, Meredith. Rachel put her fingers on her friend’s bare forearm.
Her dad had all these brothers, Meredith went on. One of them, Uncle Terry, was a piece of work. In and out of jail, drunk at Christmas, fuck this and fuck that. One day, about a month after the Mr. B. scandal, in the middle of a snowstorm, Uncle Terry came by the house. He was there just a minute, barely said hello, and the next day they found Mr. B. walking down the middle of the highway. His head was cracked. His teeth were busted. All his fingers were broken.
Laughter came to them from the house, from the basement, making them both turn to stare. Meredith lifted her glass again and Rachel heard it clink against her teeth.
She waited for the cops to come, Meredith said, resuming. She stopped eating. She couldn’t sleep. She typed a letter at school and sent it anonymously, but no one ever came. Mr. B. was in the hospital a long time but he couldn’t recognize you, they said, so what was the point of going up there? His parents came and took him away, finally, like a child.
My God, Meredith, Rachel said. She could barely see her friend in the dark. Her heart was beating with pity and love. After a while she said, What do you do with that?
Meredith was silent. A long, unnatural silence. Fireflies like little bombs going off in the pines and spruces. Men coming up the stairs, loud and huge, forgetting about the babies. Finally Meredith lifted her wine and said, gazing at Rachel over the rim of the glass, Not a God damn thing, honey. That’s what you do with that.
Such thoughts, such memories, as Rachel gathered up the drugged old dog in her arms and carried him up the stairs.
The next morning, driving back to the farmhouse after dropping Marky off at work, she searched the radio but there was nothing but music and DJ jabber and ads, nothing about the accident, nothing about those two girls. The drive was ten miles coming and going—south and then north along the Upper Black Root, crossing it twice on the old trestle bridges, and why not just drive up there? Why not drive up to Rochester, leave some flowers with the nurses at least? But the thought of running into Tom Sutter, those eyes of his, those lawman’s eyes, made her shudder, and she drove on toward the farm.
Ten years. Like yesterday. A cold, clear day like today. She would’ve been going in the opposite direction then, five miles almost exactly from the Plumbing & Supply to the Edendale Mall, where she worked. Looking forward to seeing Gordon Burke later that night. Thinking about Danny, the way he’d taken off in the middle of the night. Hunting with Cousin Jer? What the heck was that all about? Mysterious boy! The morning at the store passing like any other: Rachel in the back room tagging sweaters to the muted bursts of ringtone from the jackets and purses of the salesgirls. At ten o’clock she’d walked to the far end of the mall, to the building’s—maybe the world’s—last pay phone (the cell phone Danny and Marky had given her for her birthday—Look, it takes pictures!—sitting dead in a kitchen drawer, next to the dead camera). She intended to call Gordon, tell him the new plan, but at the last moment she dialed Danny’s cell phone instead, got his voicemail. She asked him to leave her a message at home, just to say he’d arrived at Cousin Jer’s OK, then she hung up and began the long walk back to the store. She would call Gordon later, on her lunch break. It was Thursday, and they had a date.
But back at the store something had happened. Leslie stood alone on the sales floor, her thin arms folded over her thin stomach. Fifteen years younger than Rachel, she would talk about things like chakras and third eyes and orgasms. Now she came toward her as if Rachel were some teenager with a hundred-dollar blouse stuffed up her shirt. In the door of the back room Rachel saw two salesgirls, heads down and thumbing feverishly at their phones.
There’s been an accident, said Leslie, and the store rolled and Rachel pitched backwards, sickly, into a scene on the highway, Danny’s truck upside down on the shoulder, wheels to the sky . . .
No, no, Leslie said quickly. Not that, not one of yours. It’s Holly Burke, she said. Gordon Burke’s girl. They found her this morning in the river.
9
She went under. She went under and she swam those cold yellow waters for days and days, tumbling in the river’s underworld, its constant current, constant deep pull, the lights of the car spinning through the yellow water and lighting up the hair of the other girls who were down there with her, so many girls, or maybe just one girl passing again and again through the lights, the way this girl’s hair moved in the lit-up currents like the hair of a mermaid, like seagrass, the way the light caught the whites of her eyes, and her teeth when she smiled. How smooth her face when she reached out and brushed the girl’s cheek with the back of her hand, how soft her lips when she kissed them, how warm and thrilling the breath this girl blew into her own empty lungs . . .
And when she surfaced at last and drew her first breath in the new world, the new life, she was not cold, and she was not wet, and she was not in the river at all, and a man was sitting next to her, and after a few spinning, blurry moments she saw that it was a man who looked like her father, only older, thinner-faced, his hair gone white and wispy on his head, but those same blue eyes that she’d looked into all her former life.
Holding her hand, this man, and she lay in a bed in a room she didn’t know and there was a window and it was early morning, or late in the day, and something hard and annoying was up inside her nose but she could not lift her right arm and there was pain all up and down her body as if she’d been pounded on by fists as she slept.
That you, Sheriff? she thought—only she must have said it aloud, because he smiled and gripped her hand more tightly and said, “It’s me, Deputy. I’m right here, sweetheart.”
“Where are we?”
“We’re in Rochester. The hospital in Rochester. You’re OK. You’re going to be just fine.”
She ran her tongue over her lips and swallowed thickly. “Thirsty,” she said.
With his free hand he brought the plastic cup and the straw to her lips and she drank. She drank and drank. All that time in the river, drowning, and now all she wanted was water—there would never be enough of it for her thirst! She emptied the cup and kept sucking noisily at the air of the cup.
“Easy, easy,” he said. “I’ll get you more in a second. I’m gonna go get the doctor now so he can look at you.”
“Don’t go. Please.” Gripping his hand, or trying to. She was so weak.
He smiled. How thin his face was! She felt the tears on her cheeks and watched as he wiped them with his thumb, his good big old thumb.
“I drowned, Sheriff.”
“No, you didn’t, sweetheart. You’re right here with me. You’re just fine. The doctor—”
She squeezed at his hand. “I did, though. We both did. Caroline and me, both together. But it was all right, because we were together. And also—”
He waited. “Also what, sweetheart?”
She rolled her head and looked up at the ceiling, and the tears ran from the corners of her eyes. She shook her head.
She turned back to him, to his eyes. Nothing but love and worry in those eyes.
“Did they find her?” she said.
“You rest, sweetheart.”
“Daddy.”
He swept the hair from her forehead.
“I saw her go under, Daddy. I saw her go. The current got her and carried her off under the ice.”
“OK, but not now. You just—”
“Did they find her? Did they find Caroline? That’s all I’m asking.”
He nodded. “Yes, sweetheart. They found her at the dam. At the power plant in Riverside. The water never freezes there. That’s where she was.”
Audrey watc
hed his face, his eyes. “How far?”
“How far what?”
“How far from where we went in.”
He frowned. He shook his head.
“Daddy.”
“Two miles. Maybe three.”
All that way in the dark, under the ice. Beautiful, strong Caroline.
She turned and looked at the ceiling again. Her body was so sore. She could not lift her free hand, her right arm. As if it were frozen to the ice. The bed. She felt profoundly and forever drugged. Her eyes would not stay open—But stay awake, she told herself. He is sick and he needs you with him. How much time? How much did you waste by sleeping? Stay awake!
“You used to take me fishing there, Sheriff. Remember?”
“That was another dam,” he said. Then he said, “Of course I do. In the summertime.”
“The trout like it behind the dam.” Her heavy lids lowered. Her hand relaxed in his.
“Hush now, Deputy,” he said from far away . . . don’t spook the fish.
“The water’s so cool and deep there, behind the dam. We’d . . . we’d stand on the bank and cast and . . . the bait just . . . down to them in the current.”
10
He was awake and out of bed while the house, and the woods all around the house, were still in darkness, with only a lesser shade of darkness in the east-facing windows, and that shade a good ways farther along than he cared to see in his windows before he was shaved and dressed and downstairs for coffee, but he’d slept poorly, passing in and out of a nagging dream in which he walked and walked, like the last man, over a burned land, and when at last he got up from his bed and walked to the bathroom his legs were all rubber and ache, and there was a thickness in his head and a drainage at the back of his throat that he kept swallowing like a sour rope, and by the time his coffee was brewing he knew he’d taken sick, as his mother used to say, and only then did he remember his trip to the hospital the night before: Tom Sutter coming out to meet him, standing outside in the cold so Sutter could have himself another cancer stick, then the long drive home with no heat in the van and his entire body shivering, until at last he was under his covers and shivering there too until he slept and then shivering in his strange dream of walking. He’d gone out into the world and taken sick and brought it home.