The Current

by Tim Johnston

  In the kitchen he washed down a handful of aspirin with orange juice, then fried up two eggs, and carried eggs and coffee to the living room. He hauled his chair closer to the fire and took up the old blanket from the sofa and shawled it about his shoulders. His face was hot to the touch, and yet he was so cold—the mug trembling when he lifted it.

  He cocked his ear to a noise above him. What day was this? School day? He thought to look at the paper but he would have to go out to the porch to get it. And he did not remember hearing it hit the porchboards, so was it Sunday? That would explain why that girl was still in bed. How late did she come home? Or did you fall asleep again waiting for her? A great clomping, thudding, music-playing, phone-yammering creature except when she chose not to be—quiet as a ghost in slippers then, able to pass soundlessly through doors, to float by you and up the creaky stairs without a creak and into the bathroom to brush the beer and smoke from her mouth, into her PJs and into her bed, late as hell again but safe, thank God, not out with some drunk boy driving, not in some accident but home, safe . . .

  Until one morning it’s a sheriff’s deputy who brings her home, drunk, high, something. Her license long gone. Her face puffy, her eyes red, wobbling in her shoes. You should just let her go to bed but you can’t. You can’t. It’s all out of control. A goddam sheriff’s deputy!

  Grounded? she says, and laughs. You can’t ground me, I’m nineteen.

  Hell I can’t. My house, my rules.

  Oh, really? Whatever happened to our house? Our home?

  If you spent more time here. If this wasn’t just a place for you to sleep it off.

  You want me to find somewhere else to do that? Is that it?

  You know I don’t. I want you safe.

  You want to control me. You’re ashamed of me, just like you were of Mom.

  Don’t say that. I’m not ashamed of you.

  Yes you are! And you—jabbing her finger at him—you think I don’t know about that grocery store woman, that Irene or whatever her name is? The whole town knows, Dad. The whole freaking town. So who’s ashamed of who, here—huh?

  By the time she comes downstairs in the morning, stretching and stumbling half-asleep, wild-haired and smelling of bed, all the anger will be gone from you like a bad night’s dreaming, forgotten in the light of day—home again—forgotten in the smell of her as she passes by—safe again—and you will get up, however sick you are, and make her those thick, half-burnt pancakes she loves.

  But then again, on such a morning, with the new sun spilling into the living room, with the flames rising and dropping in the woodburner, a man might hear, instead of his daughter’s footsteps overhead, instead of the clap of the bathroom door and the moments of silence and then the toilet flushing . . . he might hear instead the sound of car tires in the drive—at this hour?—and setting aside his breakfast he might get up from his chair and go to the window in time to see a man stepping out of a white sedan in the dawn and putting a hat to his head—stiff, wide-brimmed hat such as a sheriff or state trooper would wear, and then he’d recognize that the car is in fact a sheriff’s cruiser, and that the man putting the hat on his head is in fact the sheriff.

  The heart spins, the mind falls backwards as you understand that she is not upstairs in her bedroom at all—has not been there all night—and you look again at the cruiser, waiting for her to emerge: blond head of hair followed by a small frame followed by a too-short skirt and bare legs and shoes that say to you nothing but trouble, her head hung low in shame, you’d like to think, although more likely it’s the heaviness of whatever kind of high got her a ride home in the sheriff’s cruiser, in bad trouble maybe but safe, thank God, with the sheriff . . .

  And then, when no second figure appears, when you understand that the girl in the passenger seat is far too young, far too dark-haired—that the sheriff’s cruiser has brought only the sheriff and this little girl who is not yours—that is the moment your heart truly falls and somehow you are already on the porch when the sheriff, coming up the walking path, sees you, and does not pause but in some way flinches, as if you’ve drawn down on him with a weapon, and on he comes, and reaching the bottom step raises one of his hands to his sheriff’s hat and actually, what in the hell, takes the hat off—Don’t take your hat off, Sheriff, you son of a bitch, what is wrong with you?

  Gordon, says the sheriff.

  And some time after that, unremembered time, the sheriff’s cruiser is on the 52 South and the bright world is sweeping by and yet there is the sense of not moving at all, of the cruiser standing still while it’s the land, the trees, the wire fences that rush by. Like a fish holding its place in a stream.

  Just the two of them now, the sheriff having stopped at the station to drop off the little girl, and the sheriff driving ten miles over the posted limit not out of official urgency but out of decency maybe, or maybe the sooner to get his errand over with, and only when he comes up on drivers who slow him down on the rural two-laner does he throw his lights and give a short whoop of siren. Passing these drivers without a glance while his passenger looks hard at every face, every car, each one of them worth pulling over, questioning, searching. She’d been struck by a vehicle, the sheriff believed, her body pushed afterward into the river. A drunk in a panic. A kid or kids high and believing, in that moment, that the river would carry the evidence away like a bad dream and their lives could go on—college, marriage, kids of their own.

  Do you want a smoke, Gordon?

  The sheriff, Sutter, pushing his pack at him. Gordon can smell it, taste the smoke in his lungs, feel the nicotine speeding to his brain. He hasn’t smoked in years, not since Roger Young’s cancer. The cigarette would be good but who wants good. Who wants relief of any kind if it isn’t the relief that will last forever. He raises his hand no thanks and Sutter withdraws the pack, and it’s a long while before Gordon thinks to say, You go ahead, and Sutter goes ahead—lights up and draws the smoke deep and cracks the window and exhales into the rush of wind.

  Next he’s moving slow and heavy down a hospital corridor, the air reeking of sickness and ammonia and old burned coffee, Gordon a step behind Sutter, who pushes through a gray metal door saying authorized personnel only, and on the other side of the door the linoleum turns to concrete and the walls are cinderblock and the air is almost too cold for smell but not quite, smell of chemical fumes and the faint putrid stink of meat. A third man emerging now from somewhere, thin man dressed like a surgeon down to his surgical gloves, and this man leading them to the large stainless-steel what, refrigerator? A bank of three square doors side by side at waist level and each with a large latch handle. Rubber-gloved hand on latch, the unlatching echoing on concrete and cinderblock, the suck and gasp of rubber seal pulled from metal, the greased clicking of the large industrial glides as the bed—what else do you call it? slab? gurney?—floats from the dark square like a magician’s trick all the way into the room, into the light.

  Morgue man standing on one side of the floating bed, Gordon and the sheriff on the other. A body in the white bag, under the zipper. Shape of a female chest. Shape of a face. A nose. Sheriff standing back and Gordon stepping forward for the unzipping, the most terrible sound, and the breath of the river it releases.

  And there she is. Her hair tangled and damp. Her face blue. Lips a darker blue and slightly open, the white of her front teeth bright in the blue. Eyelids down over the curve of her eyeballs, tender thin lashes on her cheeks, washed of all makeup. Over these blue, unmoving features play living expressions, like projections, faces of her youth surfacing, rippling, sinking away again into the blue mask. Wake up, daughter. Wake up. Breathe. Placing his large hand over her forehead as if to take her temperature. So cold. Smooth, cold skin over a hard curve of bone, nothing more. Her bare blue neck, enough of her blue chest to see that she is naked in the bag—yes, Gordon nodding yes, it’s her, and the zipper makes its sound again.

  The morgue man wants a moment alone with Sutter but Gordon isn’t going an
ywhere. Hears his own voice in that place: Whatever you’re gonna say to him you can say to me. And the morgue man fusses with the fit of his gloves, pinching latex over his knuckles and letting go with sharp little snaps until Gordon wants to slap him, until Sutter says, Go ahead, Doug, and the morgue man, Doug, looks up and says, Well, Tom, there was water in the lungs. A good deal of water.

  Sutter standing there taking this in. Nodding. Gordon looking from one man to the other, his sight crossing over the body and back. Neither man speaks. Neither man will look at him—and then he understands.

  He stands staring dumbly at the white bag. The white shape of her. This body once tiny enough to hold in one hand. To lift over your head two-handed, a squirming, soft giggling little girl. To hold by her hands and spin her around until her skinny legs lifted from the earth and flew.

  A hand rests on his shoulder and the sheriff says, Gordon—and he shrugs the hand off.

  I know what he’s saying, he says, and turns and walks away before he has to watch the morgue man slide her back into the dark.

  11

  The story was going around, pushed along by the thumbs of girls: Holly Burke had been walking home from her boyfriend’s. No, she was walking home from the bar. She was alone. She was not alone. She’d been drinking. She was high. The girl had problems, no question about that—she’d lost her license to a DUI the year before; Rachel knew this from Gordon. The girl had been cutting through the park, along the river, and had fallen in. Jumped in. Been pushed in. She’d been in the water all night. Someone crossing the bridge on foot—the new concrete bridge, a good mile away from the park—had seen her, pinned up against the concrete piling below like driftwood.

  Rachel had left the mall and was in her car again, driving across town. A brilliant, cold blue day. The sun, the blazing trees, the silvered bend of river, all exactly as it should be on a day in October, a pristine day. She was trying to picture it: Holly Burke, this girl she’d known since birth, bobbing in the water with the branches. But all she saw clearly was the blouse, the one she’d given the girl on her nineteenth birthday, Gordon looking on uneasily: a smart silk blouse she’d spent too much on, even with her discount, all night in the river under the black sky, the fabric wetted to the girl’s skin except where air slipped in, raising white, trembling swells on the water . . .

  Gordon opened the door and stood blinking in the brightness. Startled, confused to see her. His gray face, the bruised, unfocusing eyes sweeping away anything she might’ve been ready to say. Not asking her in. Not even letting go of the stormdoor so she could put her arms around him. She wasn’t surprised—certainly not hurt. It had nothing to do with her; he had to handle things his own way, in his own time, like Roger, like every man she’d ever known.

  I’m so sorry, Gordon, she said.

  They took me to her, he said. The sheriff.

  Oh, Gordon. By yourself?

  He didn’t answer. He seemed to be listening, and she listened too: someone else in the house, on the phone. A man’s voice. A voice of calm male authority. She glanced at the extra car in the drive, a black, spotless Volkswagen sedan.

  Someone’s with you?

  Edgar, he said, and she said, That’s good. That’s good, Gordon.

  His brother Edgar, she remembered, was some kind of lawyer for the state. She’d met him once and had been struck by the cleanliness of his fingernails, a thing she was not used to in men.

  Can I do anything, Gordon, is there anything I can do?

  His roving eyes found hers briefly and moved on. He said, Meredith’s on her way. Her sister’s driving her down. I thought it was them when you knocked.

  Rachel nodded but couldn’t speak. She hadn’t seen Meredith in years, not since before the split-up. She remembered that night on the deck, with the wine—Mr. B., the art teacher—when her heart had filled with pity and love. They were going to be friends forever, old ladies, arm in arm in Mexico, Europe, after the kids were grown, after the husbands were gone.

  They think now someone did this, Gordon said.

  They—? said Rachel.

  The sheriff and them. He dug at the whiskers on his face. They think someone hit her with a car, or a truck.

  My God, Rachel said.

  They think this . . . person didn’t see her maybe, Gordon said. Then tried to cover it up by pushing her in the river.

  He looked off toward the woods as if he’d seen something, and she looked too, and for just a moment she thought she heard them—the kids, running through the woods, laughing. Holly in her purple Easter dress, searching for the poorly hidden eggs.

  She turned back to Gordon, but he was still looking into the woods and it was like watching the eyes of a sleepwalker; they did not register what he saw of the world or even what he was seeing in his mind. What could you say? What could you possibly say? A child. A daughter.

  If there’s anything I can do, Gordon, just anything, she said, and Gordon, looking beyond her with those shut-down eyes, said, Still breathing.

  What?

  When they pushed her in, he said. She was still breathing.

  Oh, Gordon. Oh no—Rachel reaching for him then, but before she could touch him the brother, Edgar, called to him from inside the house and Gordon turned and let go the stormdoor, and she stood watching her own reflection swing into view as the door bounced once on its cylinder, gave a long hiss, and clicked shut.

  12

  She awoke to the painful brightness of the room, and there were men in the room, looming over her like trees, and she immediately looked down at herself in the bed—but she was covered up, the thin sheet pulled neatly to her armpits, and beneath the sheet she wore a thin blue gown.

  Her right arm lay below the sheet and her left lay above, a clear plastic tube fixed to the crook of the elbow by strips of white tape, a plastic clip attached to the tip of her forefinger. The tug of the tape on that tender skin and the bite of the clip made her feel as though this arm had been left out so that other things might feed on it while she slept.

  One of the men was her father, and one was the doctor, and one was a man wearing a sheriff’s uniform like her father used to wear and she knew this man too; he’d been one of her father’s deputies. Deputy Moran. Ed Moran. He stood tapping his hat against his leg and trying to look confident that he belonged at the bedside of a young woman lying in her thin gown under a thin sheet. She herself was too foggy-headed to question his presence; he’d once been a regular feature of her life, joking and teasing her when she was little, growing quiet and awkward as she got older, and now here he was again.

  The doctor bent to look into her eyes and she smelled mint and the alcohol of hand sanitizer. The other smells, the outdoor smells of snow and smoke and car exhaust, came from her father and Deputy Moran. She seemed able to smell everything in the world, the way you would if you’d been underwater, truly, all this time. The doctor watched her eyes, then moved away to lower the blinds, and the room dimmed and she could see the men without squinting.

  The doctor returned to the bed and picked something up and the bed hummed, hinging her slowly at the waist until she was nearly sitting up. “Is that all right?” he said, and she nodded, and he said, “Good. How many fingers?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Try again.”

  “Four.”

  “Excellent.” He had a young face but his buzzed head showed the dark map of hair loss. He was looking in her eyes again. “How do you feel, Audrey? Are you in pain?”

  “No. But I’m thirsty,” she said, and her father was already lifting the cup and the straw to her lips. She raised her hands to take it from him—did he think she would let him hold it for her in front of the doctor and the deputy?—but only her left arm, with its tube and finger clip, rose from the bed. This was puzzling, but she was so thirsty she took the cup one-handed and sucked at the straw, water running coldly down her throat and coldly into her stomach, and only after she’d handed the empty cup back to her father did she say,
looking at the shape of her arm under the sheet, “I can’t lift my right arm.”

  “No,” said the doctor, “that arm is broken and we strapped it down to the bed.” He raised the sheet so she could see the cast—purple—and the white strap holding it down. “Can you wiggle your fingers for me—just the fingers? Good. Now the thumb.”

  “Why’s it strapped down?”

  “So you didn’t whack it against something in your sleep, like your head.” He pulled at the strap and there was the rip of Velcro, and her arm was free. She raised the cast and looked at it, turning it this way and that. It encased her forearm from the elbow to the middle of her palm, with a neat thick eyelet for the thumb. Now that she could see it she felt its weight and its pressure and its prickly heat, as if her eyes were all at once undoing the work her body had done to get used to it while she slept. She felt an itch she knew she would never get to and she remembered a blackened wooden backscratcher—phoenix, arizona—and she remembered the filthy old piss smell of a bathroom and the greasy stink of a hand over her face.

  “Do you remember breaking your arm, Audrey?”

  It was the deputy who spoke.

  “Ed,” said her father, and put his hand on her good forearm. “Audrey, you remember Ed Moran.”

  Audrey lowered the cast and looked from her father to the deputy.

  “Sure I do,” she said. “How are you, Deputy Moran?”

  Moran was about to speak again but her father was quicker: “It’s Sheriff Moran now, Audrey. Remember?”

  “Right. I remember. And there’s the badge and everything. I’m sorry,” she said. She was not ready to call the man Sheriff. Her father was Sheriff.