The Current

by Tim Johnston

  Moran shifted his weight and smiled at her. When she was young she’d thought him handsome in some manly, gum-chewing way. Now she wondered why. His lips were thin and his eyes were too far apart and a little bulgy, like a frog’s. Her head was clearing and she remembered that he was not the new sheriff here, he was not her father’s replacement, but had gone down to Iowa, just over the border, and after a few years down there had been elected sheriff. And now he’d come back up to his old turf to stand in his sheriff’s uniform next to her father, who was now a common civilian, and conduct his interview.

  As if confirming these thoughts her father said, “Your accident was down in Iowa, sweetheart. Pawnee County. That’s Sheriff Moran’s county, and I asked him to come up here just by himself for now. Dr. Breece said he thought you could handle a few questions—just a few,” he said pointedly. “But if you don’t want to right now, if you don’t feel up to it, you just say the word and the sheriff will come back another day.”

  She could see by Moran’s thin-lipped smile that he’d have liked to tell her father to stand down and let him handle this. And she could tell by her father’s voice, and the way he kept close to her, and the pressure of his hand on her forearm, that he’d rather not have his old deputy in the room at all; that it was too soon. Or maybe it was that he’d rather be asking the questions himself. In any case, she knew she could send the deputy away with one sentence, chomping his gum all the way back to Iowa, but he would only be more thin-lipped and more determined when he returned. And so she told him everything she remembered, from the boy who grabbed her at the gas station to the spinout on the road to the car behind them that failed to stop, that bumped the RAV4, to the fast ride down the riverbank and the spinning out onto the ice and the first sounds of the ice cracking.

  And then she told him what she didn’t know she remembered until she heard herself saying it, and even then she couldn’t be certain it wasn’t some dream from the time that she was underwater, from the days and nights of swimming underwater—she told him that the ice had cracked and the car had tilted and she’d let go of Caroline’s hand so they could open their doors, but the driver’s side went under first and Caroline couldn’t get out that way, and she herself was climbing out of her door right up onto the ice, but the ice was breaking under her hands, under her knees, and she knew how cold the water was but she didn’t feel it at all, and she turned back and saw Caroline climbing up through the car toward her and she reached for her hand again and grabbed it, but then the car began to roll over and the door closed on her own arm like a shark and twisted and she had to let go of Caroline, she had to let go, and the car rolled and it took her under with it, and it held her. It held her underwater and it began to wheel slowly around, upside down, in the current, and the tires or something must have been caught on the ice because it didn’t go under the ice, and there was nothing to see under there but the beams of light in the yellow water, nothing in the water but water and bubbles until, all at once, there was Caroline—she’d gotten out of the car on the driver’s side, or had been swept out of it by the water, and she was in the lights and she was in the current and she was trying to swim back, she was trying to swim back to the car, her sweatshirt rippling in the current, the hood gaping behind her head like the mouth of a fish, like the bell of a jellyfish, and the current had her and she was growing smaller, smaller, and then she passed out of the reach of the headlights—and she was gone, Daddy, she was gone.

  Her father held her good hand in both of his. Squeezing so hard it hurt. Something private, secret, burning behind his eyes.

  “Daddy—?”

  “What hand?”

  “What?”

  “What hand did that—boy put over your mouth.”

  “Tom,” said the deputy. The sheriff.

  She did not look away from her father’s eyes. “He was holding my right arm with his . . . his left, so it must’ve been his right hand over my mouth.”

  “His right hand,” he said.

  Moran standing there looking hard at her father, and her father finally relaxing his grip.

  He took a breath and sat back. “Go on, Sheriff,” he said.

  Moran shifted his weight. He adjusted his black, gadgety belt. “So you were underwater, Audrey, but then you got out.”

  The water so powerful and so deep and yellow in the lights. She saw hair, golden hair, sweeping in the current, or was it grasses from the floor of the river? The current pulled at her, wanted her too, but the car would not let her go.

  “How did you do it, Audrey? How did you get out of the water?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “The car was stuck on the ice and I was stuck on the car. I guess I must have climbed up. I must have gotten the door open far enough to get my arm out and I must’ve used the door to climb up on top of the car—on top of the underside of the car—and I must’ve climbed from the car to the ice. But I don’t remember that. All I remember is lying on the ice, on my stomach, and looking at the lights through the ice, the headlights, the way they were shining on the underside of the ice just as steady and clear as anything. Like I was underwater looking up at them from below. Like everything was upside down. The sky, the water. Everything.”

  13

  Holly Burke is dead, her mind kept repeating. Gordon’s daughter is dead. Rachel saw his face again . . . his shut-down eyes. Still breathing!

  She wanted to see her boys. Craved the weight of them in her arms as she had when they were babies. The smell of them. Her breasts aching for them once again.

  Momma guess what, Marky said when she returned to the Plumbing & Supply that afternoon. He was at the glass door, spritzing away smears and fingerprints.

  What, sweetie, she said, fitting her hand to the back of his neck.

  He shrugged off the hand and said, The sheriff was here Momma the sheriff and the deputies and they were all asking questions and all wanting to find Danny.

  Jeff Goss sat behind the counter, unsmiling, listening.

  Did the men talk to you, Marky? she said. Did they ask you questions?

  Yes Momma they asked me where is Danny and I told them he didn’t take me with him he went up to Uncle Rudy’s cabin him and Wyatt but he never woke me up he never told me anything he just went.

  She turned to Jeff Goss and he said, his eyes on Marky, or perhaps on the half-cleaned glass beyond him, They’re going around talking to people. Anyone who might’ve seen her last night.

  He scooped up some pink receipts and studied the topmost one. They talked to Big Man, Jeff said, but I don’t think they understood much.

  Did you? she thought to ask. But didn’t. Jeff had been around Marky long enough, had heard enough of Danny’s translations, that he’d acquired, without much caring one way or another, she believed, a passing comprehension of Marky’s meaning in any number of routine situations. But did he understand what Marky told the sheriff and his men? And understanding it, did he then translate? Uncle Rudy’s cabin, he’s saying, Jeff might’ve said. Do I know where it is? Sure I do, Sheriff . . .

  Jeff raised the receipt to study the one beneath it. Rachel standing there. Thinking. Trying to think. She’d come into the store intending to ask Jeff about last night—Danny had gone back out to give him a jump. But now she didn’t want to look at him again. She couldn’t seem to breathe.

  Holly Burke is dead. All night in the river.

  Marky, she said, get your jacket, please. We have to go now.

  Gotta clean the glass Momma.

  Tomorrow, Marky. Today’s a short day.

  At home she was barely in the door, had barely glanced at the answering machine—no blinking red light, no call from her son—before she saw the car outside, in the street: the sheriff’s white cruiser, parked as if it had been there all day, when she knew it hadn’t been there just seconds ago. Tom Sutter and one of his deputies coming up the walk in their tan jackets, their stiff hats.

  In the living room the TV went mute. They’re here Momma.r />
  I know, sweetie. He could not see the drive or the walk from where he sat, but he’d heard the car doors shutting and it was not the sound of Danny’s truck, or he’d seen some reaction in her at the window, or felt it—she’d stopped concerning herself with how he knew the things he knew a long time ago; it was just who he was. If you were sad, if you were missing your husband, for instance, he would find you and put his arms around you. If you stayed up waiting for his brother to come home, and Marky yawned and went to bed, then you knew you could go to bed too.

  Marky getting up from the couch now and coming to stand beside her. Her little man, so big now! Too big to send to his room, but she didn’t want the sheriff staring at him, asking him questions, upsetting him, and she said, Sweetie, go on up to your room, OK? Just for a little while. And he stood looking into her eyes like he understood perfectly—all her fear and all her love for him, and for Danny too—before he said, OK Momma I’ll go upstairs, and she put her hand on his face, and he turned and went up the stairs.

  The sheriff introduced himself and his deputy, then told her they’d like to speak to her son, they’d like to speak to Danny, watching her face as she explained that she didn’t know where he was, hadn’t seen him since last night, and the sheriff making sure she was aware of the unfortunate news regarding . . . while the other man, Deputy Something, brushed past her with his eyes, ransacking with his eyes all he saw beyond her in the house, working his wad of chewing gum. They were trying to learn as much as they could about the night before, Sheriff Sutter was explaining. They understood that her son Danny had been at the bar, at Smithy’s, where Holly Burke was last seen alive.

  Rachel wasn’t sure if this was a question, but she said she couldn’t say about that, she didn’t know where he’d been.

  The deputy stopped chewing, watching her with his buggy eyes, and resumed chewing again.

  After a moment—after Sutter asked—she let them in.

  14

  She’d shut her eyes for just a few seconds, she thought, but when she opened them again the room had changed: the bright, hard sunlight gone from behind the blinds, doctor gone, the smell of cigarette smoke stronger.

  “How long was I asleep?”

  Her father handed her the water cup. “Not long. An hour.”

  She sucked at the straw and swallowed the cold water. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, I am. We made you talk too much.”

  “It’s the drugs. Can you tell them to stop giving me the drugs?”

  “It’s for the pain, sweetheart. For your arm.”

  “I don’t care about that. Please, Dad.”

  “I’ll ask the doctor.”

  She turned to look at Moran then, who’d been standing back and staring at the floor, or his boots. Her father looked too, but when she said “Sheriff” both men turned to her.

  “Can I ask you something, Sheriff?” she said, and Moran stood straighter.

  “Of course, Audrey,” he said.

  “Where is Caroline now?”

  He glanced at her father, and her father said, “She knows. She’s asking about the body,” and Moran turned back to her.

  “She’s gone back home, Audrey. Her folks flew up to get her yesterday and they took her back with them. Mr. Price, her father, drove up here to see you but you were still . . . sleeping. He and Caroline’s mother wanted to get her back home and put her to rest.”

  Audrey looked away and the tears ran to her jaw and from there fell to her collarbone. She wiped her face with the palm of her good hand and turned back to Moran. He wasn’t finished with his questions, and she waited for the next one. He’d removed his jacket—they both had—and when he stepped up to the side of the bed she saw the sheen of sweat on his forehead.

  “I was hoping you could tell me more about those two boys, Audrey. From the gas station.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Did you get a good look at them?”

  “It was dark back there, and they were both wearing caps with, you know, bills, so their faces were dark.”

  “Were they black?”

  “Their faces?”

  “Were they African American.”

  “No, they were white boys. They smelled like car engines and beer. And cigarettes.”

  “How old were they?”

  “I don’t know. Twentysomething.”

  “Names?”

  Audrey shook her head. Then, as she remembered it, she said, “Bud.”

  “Bud?”

  “The one Caroline sprayed, the one on the ground—the other one called him Bud.”

  “As in the name Bud?” said Moran. “Or ‘bud’ as in ‘buddy’?”

  She thought about that. “I thought it was his name. But now I’m not sure.”

  Moran flipped open his notebook and wrote it down. The notebook was small and black and just like the one her father had used. “And the other boy?”

  “I never heard his name.”

  “Did you get their license plate?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you see what they were driving?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You didn’t see them follow you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you see who came up behind you at the top of the bank—who gave your car a bump?”

  “It wasn’t my car.”

  “Caroline’s car then. Was it those boys?”

  “I couldn’t see who was driving. The headlights were in our eyes.”

  Moran nodded. “You said, earlier, that Caroline pepper-sprayed those boys pretty good. They must’ve been mad as heck.”

  “So was Caroline.”

  “Do you think they were in any shape to drive?”

  “I don’t know, Sheriff. We didn’t stick around to find out.”

  Moran looked at her father, as if out of some old habit, but quickly turned back to her. “Did you see the vehicle that came up behind you, what kind of vehicle it was?”

  “The lights were real high, and I thought maybe it was some kind of truck.” Then she remembered something she’d forgotten, something she’d seen as Caroline’s car spun around and around on the ice.

  “It was a truck, Sheriff. I saw it from the river, when we were spinning around, before the ice broke. It was just sitting up there. And the next time I looked up, when I was lying on the ice, it was gone.”

  “Did you see what kind of truck it was?”

  “What kind of truck?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like a Chevy or a Ford or whatever?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have no idea. Plus I was, like, spinning around on a frozen river.”

  “Could you see the color?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Was it new-looking or old?”

  “I don’t know. It was just a truck, Sheriff.”

  “Audrey,” said her father gently. “The sheriff is only trying to help us here.”

  “I know he is. What did I say?”

  Moran stood looking at her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I’m sorry to badger you, Audrey. I know you must be upset about the accident. And about your friend. But I have to tell those folks down in Georgia what happened up here. I have to tell them what happened to their daughter. That truck that bumped you, that sent you and Caroline down the bank—do you have any reason to think it was intentional? That whoever was driving it meant to do you harm?”

  “No, sir. Only he didn’t do anything to help us either, did he. Or she.”

  She drank more water. Moran waiting, watching her. Her arm under the cast was throbbing like a heart.

  “I just have to ask you one more question and then I’ll get out of your hair,” he said, and she nodded. “If you saw those boys again, either one, together or separate, do you think you’d recognize them?”

  She thought about that. She tried to piece them together from her memory but it was like trying to climb onto the broken ice, and all she
found of the two boys were hands and shadows and caps and clouds of breath that stank of beer. She found the feel of his hand over her mouth and the oily smell of the hand and she found the muscles of his leg as he wedged it between hers.

  But then she saw the scene from another vantage too: she saw the boy pressing her against the wall with his hand over her mouth and she saw his leg forced between hers and she saw him holding her by her right wrist and she saw the scratches that ran under his eye from ear to nose, weirdly small lines like a bar of sheet music and the dark little drops of blood that were the notes. And she saw the second boy’s face clearly when he turned, the look in his eyes as he tried to understand what she was pointing at him, and she saw the first boy’s face again as he raised his arms to block the burst of pepper spray. She saw all this as clearly as anything she’d seen with her own eyes and she knew she was seeing the scene through her friend’s eyes, through Caroline’s eyes, and she knew how crazy that was and yet she knew it was true just the same and she knew she could never say it out loud to Moran, or even to her father. Not because they could never use it against the boys—they couldn’t—and not because they would never believe it—they wouldn’t—but because to say it out loud would be to lose it, the realness of it, forever.

  “I think I’d know them, Sheriff,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I would.”

  Moran nodded. “That’s good, Audrey. That’s real good. You rest now and take care of that arm, you hear?” He seemed about to pat her on the knee but thought better of it. Turned instead to her father and said, “Care for one last smoke, Tom?” and her father looked at her and she said without saying it, Go, and he gave her hand a squeeze and both men collected their jackets from the chair and left her alone in the room with her crazy thoughts and the beating of her arm under the cast.

  When he returned some minutes later her father smelled of smoke and the outdoors, but an outdoors that was much later in the day and colder, although when she thought about it she did not think a person could know the time and temperature of the day by its smells on a man’s clothes, and the moment she thought that, the smells lost their meaning and her certainty was gone.