The Current

by Tim Johnston

  He stood at her bedside but seemed far away. His eyes a faint blue down in their shadows.

  “What did he want to talk to you about?” she said.

  “I think he just wanted to let me know he had it under control. So I could rest easy, and stay with you.”

  “So you wouldn’t get any ideas about going down there yourself and getting all sheriffy.”

  He smiled. “Maybe.”

  She watched him. “You weren’t very nice to him.”

  “I wasn’t?”

  She just looked at him, and he shrugged.

  “I guess I didn’t care to see him in my daughter’s hospital room.”

  “Him—?”

  “Any lawman.” He placed a hand on her wrist and she flinched, and he removed his hand again. “I’m sorry—”

  “It’s OK. It’s just—your hand is so cold.”

  He cupped his hands and blew into them. “I can’t ever seem to get them warm anymore. It’s like they’re dunked in ice water all day long. Although I guess you’d know more about that than I would.” His smile was uncertain and she reached for his hand.

  “I barely felt it, Sheriff.”

  “I don’t know how long you were underwater, but you were on that ice a long time. The EMTs had to chip you free with ice scrapers.”

  “They did not.”

  “Honest to God.” He smiled at her smile, but it didn’t last. “If that old man hadn’t driven by and seen the lights, the headlights, under the ice—”

  “What old man?”

  “The old man who called in the accident.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I wish I knew. He declined to give his name. Said he was just driving by and was too old to go down there and help. Felt real bad he couldn’t help, Ed says. But didn’t give his name and didn’t stick around.”

  She looked off and said quietly, “Poor old feller. Didn’t they get his number from the call?”

  “He called from a pay phone.”

  “At the gas station?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Now who’s getting all sheriffy?”

  She held his eyes. Outlasted him.

  “The old feller is a dead end, Deputy,” he said. “Called and vanished. But thank God he called.”

  They were silent. Then he looked at her and said, “What is it, sweetheart?”

  She shook her head. She wouldn’t cry again. If you tell him you wish you’d never asked Caroline Price to loan you bus fare you are just telling him that the only reason Caroline Price is dead is because you were coming home to see him, because he’s so sick. Because he is dying. All of which he already knows.

  She gripped his hand tighter. “I just wish I’d never left, Daddy. That’s all. I wish I’d never gone back down there after Christmas.”

  “Sweetheart, I never could’ve let you do that. I needed you to be in school. You should be there now.”

  “But we don’t have time, Daddy. There’s not enough time.” Now came the tears. She couldn’t stop them.

  “Sweetheart. We’ve had lots of time. Your whole life. And they have been the best damn years of my life. Hell, I wouldn’t trade another hundred years of living if it cost me one day of knowing you. Do you believe that?”

  “No. You’re exaggerating.”

  “The hell I am.”

  He watched her. Then he smiled, and patted her hand again. “Can I get you anything? Aren’t you hungry?”

  “No, thank you.”

  She looked at the cast, looking closely at the purple surface of the plaster, the edges of the individual strips where they’d been layered and shaped by another person’s hands before they dried into this hard shell. She wiggled fingers that did not look like her fingers so much as the pink legs of a creature that lived inside the shell. She said, watching the wiggling legs, “I thought of something when I was under the water, Daddy. Something I hadn’t thought of in a long time. Someone, I mean.” She didn’t look up. She could feel him waiting. Could feel his tightening heart between the dying lungs. “She was blond, wasn’t she,” she said. And now she looked at him.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Long blond hair.”

  “Yes.”

  “I remembered that when I was in the water.”

  “You were just a little girl then. You shouldn’t have known about such things.” He turned his head to cough. “I never should’ve had you in the car with me.”

  “That didn’t make any difference, Daddy. We all knew. We’d stand around on the playground and say her name: Holly Burke.”

  She saw the effect of this name in his eyes, darkening the blue like a cloud over water. He’d not found the girl’s killer—or had not found the evidence the law required. Had never given her that, given her family that, and now he never would.

  “She seemed so old to us then,” Audrey said, “so grown-up and mysterious. But she doesn’t seem old now. She seems young. Even younger than she was.” The beautiful hair, that long fine girl’s hair, lit up and swaying in the current, in the lights.

  He squeezed her good forearm. “I wish you wouldn’t think about that.” He patted her—kept patting until she looked at him and he stopped.

  “There’s something I didn’t tell the deputy—the sheriff,” she said, and the moment she said it she felt him grow tenser yet. She felt his heart begin to slide.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “It takes time, sometimes, to remember things. The brain just kind of . . .” His mind was running to the worst, she knew: What hadn’t she told him about those two boys, what they’d done to her?

  She shook her head. “It’s nothing like that, Daddy. I just didn’t want to tell the sheriff something I wasn’t sure about. And I’m not sure I didn’t just imagine this.”

  He waited. Watching her run her fingers up and down the purple cast.

  “What is it, sweetheart? Tell me, and I’ll tell the sheriff if I think he ought to know. I’ll tell him you’re not sure—how’s that?”

  She nodded. Then she told him about the scratches on the one boy’s face, the one who grabbed her. The scratches were fresh, but she knew they didn’t come from her own fingers; they ran small and neat across his face, ear to nose, like the scratches from a cat.

  “Did Caroline do it?” her father said, and she said, “No. I did it. I must have done it with the backscratcher.”

  He looked at her. “The backscratcher?”

  “The backscratcher,” she said. “From Phoenix, Arizona. The lady at the gas station will show you. Can I have that, please?”

  He handed her the cup and she sucked at the straw and handed the cup back.

  “I must’ve hit him with it,” she said. “But then he took it away from me and I stopped. I stopped fighting, Daddy.”

  He squeezed her hand hard. “Sweetheart, don’t—”

  “Caroline fought, Daddy. She fought them so good. She fought them so beautifully.”

  15

  There wasn’t much she could tell them, as there wasn’t much she knew, and just a few minutes after they left she had trouble remembering what they’d said, what they’d asked, trouble believing they were ever there at all.

  She tried to call Danny again. Kept trying until, in the space between dialings, the phone rang and she answered, —Danny? But it was Rudy, her brother, telling her that everything was all right, Dan was all right, they’d found him up at the cabin, and there was no trouble and he was in custody.

  In custody? Rachel said.

  Not arrested, her brother said quickly. Not charged.

  But in custody, Rachel said.

  There’s a gray area, he told her, and he went on reassuring her, but Rachel’s mind was reeling. She was at the kitchen window, as she’d been the night before. Two yellow eyes looking in, the twin smiley-faces. Water, she remembered. The dog had rolled in something. She saw her son’s face, the look on his face when he saw her in the window.

  There was nothing out there now. No truck. No son.

&
nbsp; In custody.

  It was dark when tires crunched in the drive, and she quickly turned off the TV. A car door slammed, tires crunched the gravel again, and in walked Danny. Rachel was up from the sofa but everything about him said Stop, don’t touch me. Marky lifted him in a bear hug until Danny said, Put me down, idiot.

  Danny, Rachel said.

  As if he hadn’t heard her, as if she weren’t there, he headed for the stairs.

  Hey Danny where’s Wyatt? Marky said.

  I had to leave him up there, with Jer.

  Marky put his hands to his head, but he said nothing. He stood like that watching his brother.

  Danny, Rachel said, talk to me—and he stopped on the stairs. Then turned back to her.

  Why are you even here, Ma?

  She stared at him.

  Why aren’t you on your date?

  Danny, she said again, but then faltered. His eyes so hard, so cold. What had she done?

  They stood that way for a while, he on the steps above and she below, before he turned again and continued up the stairs. Marky watching him go, turning back to Rachel, and finally going up the stairs too.

  She moved woodenly from room to room then, locking the doors, drawing the curtains. It crossed her mind to pull the phone line from the wall, and at that second the phone rang. Rudy again. There was nothing for her to worry about, he told her, he’d been talking to the lawyer . . . telling her other things she hardly heard, something about physical evidence, the phrase erratic, troubled girl, and Rachel mechanically took down the number of the lawyer.

  There was a silence, and then she said, Do you think he knows?

  Who? said Rudy.

  Gordon Burke. Do you think he knows, about Danny?

  You haven’t talked to him?

  Yes, earlier. Briefly. He wasn’t—He . . . She didn’t finish.

  He’s a good man, Rach, Rudy said. And he’s been good to those boys. But what he’s going through right now . . . Hell, I don’t even want to imagine.

  She waited for the sheriff to return, but he didn’t—not that night, not all day Friday.

  She waited for Gordon to call, although she knew that wouldn’t happen either. And then it was Friday night, Halloween—Danny emerging from his room at last, on his way to Jeff Goss’s waiting car, and off they went. Rachel sitting at home with Marky, who sat in his Vikings helmet and jersey ready to dish out candy for kids if any came, and then announcing after a while that none were coming. And none did; not one. It was a bad night for it, a bitter wind blowing, so no wonder.

  Later, after Marky had gone to bed, something sailed through the living room window, puffing out the curtains and dropping with a light thud to the carpet. A small stone out of the sky. Surprising, what a clean, small hole it made in the glass, with only a few slender shards to pick up. The pieces were still in her hand when the phone rang.

  Hello? she said. Hello—?

  Hello? Mrs. Young?

  Mrs. Young! The blood went out of her. She steadied herself on the counter. It wasn’t him, it wasn’t Gordon. It was his brother, Edgar.

  Rachel managed to give her sympathies, then listened while Edgar explained that Gordon wasn’t going to open the store tomorrow, so the boys should plan on staying home.

  She saw the scene over there, at Gordon’s house: Edgar at the phone and Gordon beyond him, heaped in a chair, staring into his coffee. Meredith on the sofa, and their daughter, their only child, laid out somewhere in some cold, awful place, dead.

  —under the circumstances, Edgar was saying, they should plan on staying home until further notice.

  After he hung up, Rachel kept the phone to her ear, listening to the strange silence there, a sound from outer space, an eerie wind. She stood frozen in it, her chest hollow. There’d been a day, years ago, when something happened, or nearly happened, between her and Gordon Burke. A gray afternoon, the windowpanes ticking with bits of ice. She’d come out of a bath and felt weak and had sat down on the bed. Before her was the cheval glass that had belonged to her grandmother, then her mother, now her. Who would she give the mirror to, this girly keepsake?

  Rachel—?

  A man had come into the house, downstairs. There was the sound of his footfall across the living room, and then her name again, lobbed up the stairs. A stair tread creaked and she reached for her robe but stopped.

  Two days ago they’d buried Roger. This afternoon, Gordon had picked up the boys and taken them to a movie so Rachel could sleep. Now they were back.

  Rachel—? he said from around the corner.

  Yes, she answered. That was all. He came anyway, into the frame of the door.

  Oh—he said. His big face filling with the sight of her there, on the bed. I’m sorry, he said.

  She heard the kids in the yard, already into some kind of contest. Holly could be mean but Danny would keep things fair and good for Marky.

  Brought the boys back, Gordon said, not looking away, looking her in the eye. He reached up and worked the flesh under his jaw with a coarse, sandpaper sound. He was a man who was sure before he acted, who didn’t operate by guesswork or even intuition, but who held in his head all the hard facts of mechanical things. Over the years there had been moments, yes, when she’d wondered what it would be like to be with him instead of Roger, to simply switch. Innocent, helpless thoughts such as every wife must have.

  He took a step, then came certainly toward her. In the wash of movement she smelled the outdoors, the steely clouds and the wet, moldering leaves. Her heart was beating in her breast. She turned to the mirror and the picture there was incredible: this naked, wet-haired woman, this man beside her dressed for cold.

  Rachel . . . , he began, and in the next instant Holly’s voice, cold as a queen’s, penetrated the room.

  Hands off, retard.

  Out there in the cold, Danny said something low, and there was silence.

  Gordon’s face had gone red. His jaw muscle jumped.

  She knows better, by God, he said.

  It’s all right, Rachel said.

  The day was going dark. In the mirror she saw Gordon’s arm drift toward her shoulder, then beyond it. She saw the robe rise up like a phantom, felt it brush her skin. In the mirror, as in the flesh, he got the robe over her shoulders and over her breasts without quite touching her.

  There was glass in her hand, Rachel had noticed standing at the sink. Slender fragments pressed into her palm, and after a moment she remembered the broken window, the strange little stone. She dumped the glass in the trash and rinsed her hand under the faucet. She had wanted to tell him something, that day—something true and unafraid, such as how she’d often felt, her secret thoughts. Holly’s voice had stopped her.

  And if it hadn’t? If everything had gone just a little bit differently? Meteors, they said, were on their way, right now, crossing billions of years of chance. The smallest bump changed everything. If Holly had not spoken and Rachel had—would things be different? Would Holly be alive?

  It was late, almost midnight. Wind was moaning in a gap somewhere. She began locking doors, switching off lights. She was halfway up the stairs before she remembered that Danny was still out, but she didn’t go back down to turn on the light. In a few weeks, he’d be gone. Taking off one day while she was at work, leaving just a note saying he’d gone down to Saint Louis, to work construction with a friend of his. Leaving the dog behind. His classes. His girlfriend. When Rachel would try to call, a message would tell her the number was no longer in service. There’d be a postcard, the Gateway Arch—they’d gone once when Roger was alive, Marky terrified to go up until Danny explained the mechanics of the thing, the strength of arches!—and a few sentences on the back saying he was fine, he was working, he’d be back in a month . . .

  But he wasn’t. Two months and he wasn’t back. Six months. One day she’d see that Gordon Burke had finally changed the sign on the side of the Plumbing & Supply building, whitewashing out the hyphen and everything after—and that’s wh
en she’d decide to go too. Her father still had the farm and there was room for her and Marky and the dog. It was a place, a life, she’d left behind. But you never do, and the first time she cooked for him, at the old stove, her father wept. Two months later he too was gone, laid to rest next to her mother and her father’s parents, Grammy and Granddad Olsen, those dusty souls, those ghosts.

  16

  Tom Sutter stood just outside the shelter, alone and listening to the sounds of his own smoking, the faint cracklings of tobacco and paper when he inhaled, the sighs of his breath when he exhaled. He smoked the cigarette down and dropped it to the concrete and crushed it under his boot toe before he remembered the receptacle with its long plastic neck. He thought of Gordon Burke—the pain, the anger in those eyes all these years later. Of course still there, of course—where would it go? And he thought of Danny Young, nineteen back then, Gordon’s daughter’s age. Audrey’s age now. What had become of him? Would you even recognize him if you passed him on the street?

  Of course you would.

  Sutter looked up at stars, the billion stars—far more than that, sending light from distances you could never imagine. Coldness and silence and total indifference as to himself or anyone else alive now or ever alive. He looked into these so-called heavens and said: “Well, what have you got to say about it?” And stood listening.

  “That’s about what I thought,” he said. Then he walked to the parking lot and got into his car and began the long drive home. He’d not slept in his own bed for two nights and they wanted to keep her for one more night at least; she was out of danger but they didn’t like her temperature, and they would know more tomorrow.

  On the highway, the sedan up to speed, he lit another cigarette and left it to burn between his knuckles. After a while he said, “Why don’t you just say it?” But she stayed quiet. Sometimes he would smell her lipstick. Her skin. The whole complex scent of her. Would see her hands in the corner of his eye. The flash of the diamond he’d put on her finger, years ago.

  You don’t need to hear it from me, she said finally. You already know it.