The Current

by Tim Johnston

  “I know, buddy. I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

  “It’s OK Danny I wasn’t either I was at work.”

  “He was a good dog, wasn’t he, buddy.”

  “He was good dog Danny. He was our dog.”

  “Yes, he was. But you took care of him.”

  “Yeah but he missed you Danny. He was always missing you.”

  “I know. I was missing him too. Now make room for your old mom here.”

  “Oh, Danny.” Her arms tight around him, Danny stooping so she could press her wet cheek to his unshaved jaw. The familiar good mom smell of her out here in the cold. Smell of the farm and the smell of Minnesota in the cold winter dusk.

  33

  He’d had nothing but coffee for the last twenty-four hours and he didn’t like tea so she made him hot chocolate, and Danny sat at the table and watched as Marky helped her put the groceries away, then they all sat around the old table as in the old days when the boys were boys, and he answered their questions about Texas and New Mexico and the jobs he’d held since he’d seen them last. He told them about some of the men he’d worked with, like deaf Billy Ramos who could fix any broken thing you put before him. Told them about New Mexico and the old adobe ruins and he told them about the coyotes you heard at night right outside your windows.

  “Wild coyotes?” said Marky.

  “Is there another kind?”

  Marky sat thinking about that.

  Danny sipped his hot chocolate.

  “Is that the only jacket you own?” he said, and his brother looked down at his mechanic’s jacket. He brushed at the oval where his name was stitched.

  “What’s wrong with it Danny?”

  “It’s Sunday.”

  “So?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with it,” said their mother. “Your brother is cranky from his long drive, that’s all.” She put her hand on Marky’s jacket sleeve. “Do you want to take your shower before dinner, sweetie, or after?”

  Marky chewed on his lower lip and began to jiggle his right leg. He didn’t want to leave, but his habit was to take his shower before dinner and he did not like to break his habits.

  “Go,” Danny said finally. “You won’t miss anything.”

  “Don’t go anywhere Danny,” he said, and Danny said, “I just got here, knucklehead,” and Marky said, “You’re the knucklehead Danny,” and he scooted back his chair, and rose from the table, and took his leave—all very impressive until he reached the stairs, and Danny’s mug began to chatter on the table with the speed and force of his brother’s climb.

  Their mother stood and went to the stove, shaking her head. “He’s just so excited to see you.”

  He watched her adjust the flame under the pot. She looked smaller than he remembered her. Grayer. Older.

  “He’s the same old Marky, isn’t he,” he said. “Just bigger.” He turned the heavy mug on its base. “What does Doc Keogh say?”

  She was stirring a wooden spoon in the saucepan and she went on stirring, as if she hadn’t heard him. Then she shrugged and said, “What can she say? He’s healthy, he’s happy.” She rapped the wooden spoon on the rim of the pot and turned back to the refrigerator and said from behind its door, “What do you prefer, broccoli or cauliflower?”

  “French fries.”

  “Broccoli it is.”

  Overhead there was the squeak of the shower faucet and then the sound of water running in the pipes in the wall. When they were growing up there’d been the hospitals. The specialists. The surgeries. These things came with being Marky, and the two of them, he and Marky, had never known any other kind of life. Then, when they were thirteen, she’d sat Danny down alone and told him about statistics. Genetic anomalies. Life expectancy. Their father had been dead for a year by then and Danny knew that a long life was not assured, but as for Marky, it was not even a safe bet.

  Twenty-nine now, and there’d been advances, and no one was making predictions anymore, least of all their mother.

  “How did he take it?” Danny said to her back. “With Wyatt, I mean.”

  “He was heartbroken, of course. We both were. Are. You keep expecting to see him lying there, or under your feet.” She shook her head.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here, Ma. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help with that. And with Marky.”

  “Marky was so brave, Danny. He was much braver than me. Even before I could tell him he had his arms around me. ‘It’s OK, Momma,’ he said. ‘It was time for him to go.’”

  She looked at Danny with wet eyes, smiled, and turned back to the stove, and he turned to the window again. Nothing to see there now but his own reflection, and beyond that the snow—big white flakes tumbling in the shallow light from the kitchen.

  “It must have been a job, thawing out that ground,” he said.

  “Yes, well, that was one of the strangest things,” she said, and she told him about the pickax, the ground under the snow like concrete, and Gordon Burke showing up, just—out of nowhere.

  Danny had raised the mug halfway to his lips and stopped. Then he sipped and set the mug down again.

  It was Gordon’s idea to build the fire, she said, to thaw the ground. She didn’t know what she’d have done otherwise.

  He watched her at the stove, stirring a column of steam at its base so that it rose circling like a twister before her.

  “But why was he here?” he said.

  “Why was he here?”

  “Why did he come out here in the first place?”

  She shrugged. “He said he’d seen Marky at the garage that morning. At Wabash’s. He said it made him think of us. If we might need any help out here.”

  Danny watched her. “And when was the last time he did something like that?”

  She frowned. She shook her head. “Never. Not since your grandfather was alive and needed some work done on the septic.”

  Danny stared into the last of the chocolate in the mug, the sludgy remains. Suddenly he could smell the Plumbing & Supply, the cab of Gordon Burke’s van. He remembered sweating copper in someone’s musty basement. Hauling an old sloshy toilet out to the van and hauling the new one in.

  “Well, that’s just curious as hell if you ask me. After all this time.”

  She looked at him, then turned back to the stove. “I suppose so,” she said. And said something more, but he wasn’t listening, he was staring at the floor. At the blankets there where the dog would lie. As if the dog were still there.

  Then he got up and walked over and scooped up the blankets and said, “Do you mind if I get these out of here, Ma? I mean, why are they still lying here like this?”

  She looked at him. “Oh, Danny. I just didn’t . . . I just didn’t want to clear everything out like he was never here.”

  “It’s been over a week, Ma.”

  “I know.”

  “Is it OK now? Can I throw them out?”

  “Don’t throw them out, I’ll wash them. Just toss them down the stairs for now.”

  “You’re gonna wash them.”

  “Yes.”

  He went to the door and opened it and stood at the head of the stairs looking down. Smell of earth and damp concrete and musty old things passing over him like air from a tomb. Like stale ghosts escaping. The blankets stank of the old dog, but nothing like that stink from that night in the park—dumb-ass dog jerking free and taking off into the park and nothing to do but go after him on foot with the flashlight. The jingling of the tags. The eerie moons of his eyes in the beam of the flashlight. The stink of him when you finally got hold of his leash, some kind of animal shit all over him, Dumb-ass dog, I oughta just throw you in the river, you know that?

  Danny standing there holding the dog’s blankets in his arms, his mother watching him, until finally he pitched them down the stairs like she’d asked him to, shut the door again, and went back to the table.

  When they pulled into the lot the next morning the cars all lay under fresh coats of snow—all but one, and he knew thi
s car right off. Once a Camaro man, always a Camaro man, Jeff Goss liked to say, and apparently it was true.

  “That’s Jeff’s car Danny,” Marky said as they walked by the car. “That’s a nineteen ninety-four Chevy Camaro Z28 with a three-fifty pushrod V-8 engine and oh boy is it fast.”

  They walked up to the glass door in the morning cold as they’d done when they were young, but the smell that hit them when they stepped inside was not the smell of the Plumbing & Supply at all but a trapped smell of grease and rubber and gasoline. No one around in the outer office and no lights showing in the glass door that opened onto the mechanic’s bays, but then they heard his whistling and the lights stuttered to life in there and the glass door swung open and Jeff Goss stepped through and saw them and stopped whistling. Stopped walking. Like he’d stepped into a room that was not the one he’d expected.

  “Hey Jeff look who’s here,” Marky said, pumping his thumb over his shoulder. “It’s Danny.”

  Goss’s eyes pinged back and forth between their two faces, then he shook his head in a cartoonish way and said, “Thank Christ. I thought I was seeing double.” And he stepped forward and Danny stepped forward and they clapped their hands together soul-shake style and half embraced and stepped away again, grinning, shaking their heads. Danny at the sight of a boy he’d known since they were both six, standing now in his mechanic’s blues, blond whiskers on his chin, and his blond hair, once so thick and shaggy, cut back and thinning on top, and his face the face of any nearly thirty-year-old man you’d see anywhere, including a mechanic’s garage.

  Did anything bring home the meaning of time like the human face? And did Jeff see the same, looking at you? Or was he used to your older face because he saw it every day on your brother?

  “You’ve upgraded the Camaro,” Danny said, and Jeff said, “Yeah, one piece of shit for a more expensive one. If I wasn’t a mechanic I’d be broke. You still got that Chevy?”

  “He’s got a two thousand and one Ford F-150 XLT with a V-6 engine Jeff.”

  “He does, does he?” said Jeff. “Well, that’ll get you here and there.”

  “It has so far,” said Danny.

  They all three stood looking at each other. Then Jeff said, “And so what the hell, Dan? You just visiting, or what?”

  “Danny came home because Wyatt died Jeff and he came to see where Momma buried him in the backyard and say good-bye.”

  Jeff watched Marky’s lips as he spoke, then looked to Danny.

  “Old Wyatt died,” Danny said.

  “I got that part. He already told me and I was sorry to hear it. He was a good old dog.”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “A good old dog,” said Marky.

  “I thought I’d come home and see how things were going with Ma and the knucklehead here.”

  “You’re the knucklehead Danny.”

  “Yeah, I know it. I stayed away too long.”

  “Well, God damn,” said Jeff. He glanced at the clock on the wall behind the counter, old yellowed Pennzoil clock with its light gone out. “I wish we could stand here shooting the shit all day, but Wabash is gonna walk through that door any second now and for some goddam reason he likes to see us working when he walks in, doesn’t he, Big Man.”

  “Mister Wabash could give you a job too Danny and we can all be working together again like we did at the Plumbing Supply.”

  “I doubt it, buddy. I better let you get to work here. Good to see you, Jeff.”

  “You too,” said Jeff, and Danny stepped out into the cold morning again, but the glass door did not shut behind him, and he turned back to see Jeff holding it open, squinting against the glare of snow and sunlight.

  “Shit, Dan,” Jeff said. “Are we gonna grab a beer or something, or what?”

  Danny nodded. “Yeah, sure. Let’s do that.”

  “What about tonight?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Why not? The Gophers are playing.”

  They agreed to meet at the Hilltop Tavern at eight o’clock, and Danny was just climbing back into the truck when a black sedan pulled into the lot. It was an old Ford cop car repainted all black and it turned off to the side of the office and parked next to Jeff’s Camaro. Danny started up the truck and put it into reverse, but Wabash had seen him and was walking over. Short and round and wearing a black winter jacket with a woolly collar like a cop’s jacket. And cop-like Wabash rolled two fingers in the air for Danny to lower the window, and Danny lowered the window. He left the truck in reverse, his foot on the brake.

  “Morning, Mr. Wabash.”

  Wabash returned his hand to his jacket pocket and there it stayed. No handshake. He said, “I pulled up I thought I saw Marky getting ready to drive this truck.”

  “No, sir. It’s just me.”

  “I see that now. Up close and all.” He roamed his eyes around the inside of the truck and then leaned back to look from hood to tailgate. “Two thousand one?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How do you like her?”

  “She gets me from here to there.”

  “That’s more than some or I’d be outta business.”

  Danny nodded. “Well,” he said.

  “So which is it then?”

  “Sir?”

  “Which is it then? Here or there?”

  Danny looked into the eyes behind the lenses. Pale, watered-down eyes looking back.

  “I’m here now,” he said. “That’s all I know.”

  Wabash sniffled. “I guess there ain’t no law against it,” he said. “Is there.”

  “Not that I know of.”

  Wabash turned and leaned and spat with care, straightened again and drew a knuckle along the underside of his mustache.

  “I guess you heard about Tom Sutter then,” he said. “Sheriff Sutter.”

  “I heard he passed away, yes, sir.”

  “Heard about his daughter going into the river down there in Iowa.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That other girl too, from down south.”

  “Yes.”

  Wabash staring at him. Shaking his head. “Folks around here,” he began, but didn’t finish. As if he could not put such thoughts into words.

  Danny sat with both hands on the wheel. The truck idling. No other sound in the lot, in the new cold day, until from within the garage there came the shrilling of the pneumatic lug wrench, a short burst followed by the clunk of a lug nut dropped in a tin pan, or an old hubcap. Another burst of the wrench and another dropped lug.

  “Well,” said Wabash. As if he were finished. But he wasn’t. “I ain’t one to stick my nose in other folks’ business,” he said, “but I run a small garage in a small town and your brother in there’s an employee of mine and so it ain’t exactly not my business either.”

  Danny looked toward the garage, then back to Wabash. “I guess I’m not following you, Mr. Wabash. I don’t see how he has anything to do with it.”

  “With what?”

  “With whatever it is you’re saying.”

  “Not saying nothin here. Just standing here talking with a feller.”

  Danny nodded. “Well,” he said. “I ought to get going.”

  “Will say this one thing though,” said Wabash. “Maybe you already know it, maybe you don’t.” He nodded in the direction of the garage. “But when I hired them two in there I was pretty hard up for help. I’d lost one man to retirement and another just run off heck knows where and the cars were stacking up. Didn’t need no geniuses, just needed hands on deck. Even so I wasn’t too keen on hiring them two after all that happened, and one of them being the way he is. But a man asked me to do him a favor, and I’d known that man a long time so I done it. And I ain’t been sorry. They’ve been good workers and they’ve stayed on where others have come and gone. But even so. Even now I guess I could still be sorry I done it.”

  He squared himself in his black jacket and waited for Danny’s response.

  Danny said, “Yes, sir. I know how mu
ch my brother loves this job. And how much it means to my mother. To our family.”

  Wabash sniffed and looked away down the road. He shook his head and said, “It’s a small town, mister, that’s all I’m saying here. A real small town. I’d think a man would want to keep that in mind, that’s all.”

  He looked back at Danny and when he did Danny said, “Yes, sir, I’ve kept that in mind. I’ve kept that in mind quite a lot.”

  34

  The day after she’d come out to his house, Gordon drove to hers, or the house that had become hers, but when he saw the unshoveled snow on the drive he stopped short of it and sat there, his hands on the wheel. Snow on the Ford sedan too, bumper to bumper, and no fresh tiretracks or even foot tracks in the snow on the drive and none on the porchsteps either. It was already three o’clock in the afternoon. A snow shovel stood on the porch, propped against the house like something no one seemed to know the use of. All the curtains were drawn. No smoke from the chimney, no steam even from the exhaust tubes in the roof. He didn’t want to go packing down the snow with his own tires before she got a chance to shovel, and then he remembered the purple cast and shook his head and cut the engine and got out.

  He went up the porchsteps and stood before the door, listening. No sound inside. No one around on the cul-de-sac that he could see, no one to wonder at an unmarked white van parked in front of the sheriff’s house. Ex-sheriff’s house. No dogs barking at him from the neighbors’ windows.

  He cleared off the steps first, then he shoveled the walkway and then he shoveled the drive, working around the sedan, and in the fifteen minutes this took she did not come out, did not come to a window, not that he saw anyway.

  He got back in the van and backed into the drive alongside the sedan, cut the engine again and got out and opened up the rear double doors. It was a quarter-face cord, give or take, and it took him twenty minutes to get it all stacked on the porch, turning each piece for fit, and when he was finished he set the bundle of kindling in its belt of twine on top of the stack, then stood brushing the bark chips from his jacket sleeves. Then just stood there, looking out over the houses of the cul-de-sac, as the man must’ve stood a thousand times, smoking his cigarettes, a full day of law enforcement before him or behind him. Of the half dozen driveways, hers was the only one that had not been shoveled, and when he looked at the house two doors to the right a curtain fell shut. Yeah, you should hide your face, buddy. Can’t shovel the drive for a girl with a busted arm. With a dead father.