by Tim Johnston
And he thought of those two girls down in Iowa, Sutter’s daughter and her friend, the moment when they knew they were going through the ice but had no idea what that meant, no idea really that there was a second river under the river and how the water was so cold it would feel like fire, so cold all the blood would rush to their chests to keep their hearts from stopping.
They said Holly Burke was still alive when she went into the river. Said she’d been breathing but unable to swim. Unconscious or too broken from the impact of the vehicle. That was in October, when the river was just one river. Vehicle, they said—not car, not truck. If she’d died from the impact it might have been just manslaughter. An accident. Might have been. Unless you were drinking. Then you were looking at vehicular homicide. But if you moved her and put her in the river, well, that was a whole other deal, they said. That was murder.
Murder.
That word, spoken to you by men in uniform, real cops in the real world, was unbelievable. It couldn’t be happening. It was a word to take the life you knew and turn it instantly into something else. Which, all right, was nothing compared to what had been taken from Holly Burke. From her parents. But it was a kind of death. It was the death of how the world thought of you and even how you thought of yourself. You didn’t know that you had been happy, that you had been free and happy and that you had loved life until you heard that word. Only then did you know, but too late.
It was two steps down the bank to the ice and he put one boot down on the ice to test it, feeling for give, listening for pops, and after a moment he brought the other boot down and stood with his weight centered over his feet and his back to the bank. And then he walked. The snow bright and undisturbed except where small animals had passed, and if there were pops from the ice they’d be muted by the snow and obscured by the sound of it compressing under his boots, and he walked all the way to what he judged to be the middle of the river and there he walked onto a clearing of black ice and stood listening. No popping. No cracking. Just the sound of his own breathing. The strange vantage of the wide river before him, the banks far away to his left and right. Like walking on water. When he looked overhead for the moon behind the clouds he had to put his arms out for balance.
He got down on his hands and knees and smoothed a glassy place with the palms of his hands and shaped his hands into a diving mask and put his face to his hands and he made his heart cold with the thought of something bobbing into view out of the darkness, sudden and horrible, as it would in the movies—a face, blue and frozen in its last moments of terror. But there was nothing to see in the ice but darkness.
You want to kiss me, don’t you, Danny, she said to him once, in the woods behind her father’s house, in the winter, when they were kids. They were following the tracks of a fox, Marky up ahead of them ducking under the snowy branches. When she said it Danny had felt the heat go through him like stepping into a hot bath. A sudden weakness in his legs.
No, I don’t, he’d said.
Yes, you do.
How do you know?
I see you looking at me, Danny Young.
And though his face burned he looked at her then—her soft lips and her pretty eyes and the pink blotches on her cheeks from the cold. It’s OK, she said, I don’t mind, and she stopped, and he stopped. But then Marky yelled, C’mon Danny c’mon Holly, and Danny walked on. She followed, caught up with him. She swept snow from a pine bough and said, Maybe I’ll let Marky kiss me. He’s better-looking anyway, and Danny’s heart was suddenly pounding. He stopped again and she stopped too.
What? she said.
You leave Marky alone.
He saw the change in her eyes—the moment when play, teasing, fell away.
I was just kidding, she said.
I’m not.
She stared at him, and he saw the meanness coming. But ahead of it came the tears.
Like I’d let either of you retards kiss me, she said, and turned and ran—flat-out ran from him through the woods, and he’d stood watching her go, her red girl’s coat, her red knit cap, her winter boots kicking up snow, until she was nothing but small bursts of red in all that thickness of green and white.
The truck shrugged itself from the snow and rocked back onto the road and it was flinging snow to its undercarriage when he heard what sounded like a good-size rock striking the inside of the wheelwell, and he thought nothing about that, or even about the flash of light he thought he’d seen from deep in the trees, just a small splash of light in the darkness, until an instant later when his heart, his whole body jolted with fear and he ducked down low and floored the truck—all four tires shuddering in the tracks, and there was no one coming on the road ahead and he barreled down it cutting the turns so close to the snowbanks he sheared them off with the side of the truck, and when he reached the end of the park he didn’t slow down, he blew through the stop sign and the truck skated almost broadside to the road before the wheels caught and the truck heaved into line with the road, and he sped away down the county road with an oncoming car pulling over to give him room, this maniac, and his heart was pounding and all his blood was ice but there was no one coming, no one following, and after a mile or maybe two he eased off the gas and he remembered to shift back to two-wheel drive and he was all right, he wasn’t shot, he was all right.
38
He did not stop, did not pull over to look at the truck.
He thought of calling 911 or even driving to the police station but he had a vision of getting out of the truck and finding nothing there, no bullet hole, and the cops wanting to see his ID and looking him up, Daniel Young—that Daniel Young? and as he thought through these scenarios, and others, he arrived, as if suddenly, at the farmhouse and he slowed down well before he reached the drive, because parked just before it on the side of the road was a car—his own headlights picking up the rear lenses first, then the barlights on the roof, and lastly shaping out the man who sat behind the wheel—and his first thought was that there had been some report, that already they knew about the shot in the park and the officer had been dispatched to meet him.
But that made no sense—and anyway why wouldn’t the officer pull into the drive and knock on the door?
Then he understood, and he knew that he should not pass the officer and pull into the drive himself, but should instead pull over behind the cruiser and put the truck in park, turn off his lights, and wait, just sit there and wait, and he did each of these things in turn and only then, after perhaps another full minute, did the door of the cruiser open and the man step out putting on his hat and begin his walk to the truck, and Danny knew him before he put on the hat and before he stepped out of the cruiser even.
The deputy carried no flashlight this time and he walked up to the truck with no caution at all, his hands loose at his sides, and when he reached the window he stood square to it and put his hands in his jacket pockets and he was already shaking his head before the window was down.
“I was hoping I had the wrong information,” he said. “I was hoping you wouldn’t pull in here tonight but had gone back to wherever you came from.”
“I’m just here to see my family, Deputy.”
“That’s Sheriff, buddy,” he said, tapping his badge.
It was an Iowa badge, Danny saw. “Have I done something wrong?”
“You mean other than coming back here? I don’t know. Have you?”
“No, sir. In fact I think someone just took a potshot at me.”
“A potshot? What do you mean a potshot?”
“It sounded like my truck got hit by a bullet.”
“Sounded like.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You didn’t get out and see?”
“No, sir. I didn’t want to get shot.”
“Where was it?”
“I think in the back there,” he said and thumbed toward the truckbed.
“I mean where did it happen.”
“In the park.”
“Henry Sibley Park?”
The deputy—sheriff—stared at him. Danny could see the smug look in his eye and he thought, Go ahead and say it, smart guy: What were you doing in there this time?
But Moran didn’t say it. He stopped himself, and said instead: “Did you have your cell phone on you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
“I wasn’t sure. I wanted to be sure about it first.”
Moran shook his head again. “Well, come on out of there and let’s get sure about it.” He stepped back and Danny got out and walked to the back of the truck looking, running his bare hand over the fender, over the tailgate, while Moran followed along with his Mini MagLite, roving the little spot here and there. When Danny got to the opposite side of the truckbed he found it right away—a neat quarter-size indentation in the rear fender just above the wheelwell, a hole at its center not quite big enough for the tip of his index finger.
Moran leaned in with his light. The paint had chipped away, leaving a clean ring of bare metal around the hole. He put his finger to it and felt around as if this would tell him something.
“That’s a potshot all right,” he said. “Looks like a .30-30, wouldn’t you say?”
Danny couldn’t say. The only gun he knew was Cousin Jer’s Remington 20-gauge, and the only load they used was birdshot.
“Deer rifle, I expect,” said Moran. He stood and put his thin beam into the truckbed. “Didn’t come through here.” He got down on one knee on the pavement and put the beam up under the truck. “No telling what it hit under there or where it went but it’s for sure gone now.”
He stood again slapping the grit from his knee. He doused the MagLite and restored it to its place on his belt and then stood looking at the bullet hole.
“I guess the deer don’t have much to worry about from this feller, do they,” he said.
Danny said nothing.
“Else he’s a crack shot and was just trying to tell you something. That’s a possibility too. Pretty good one, maybe, right about now.”
“Right about now?” said Danny.
Moran turned to him. “You think I’m up here on a social visit?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“You wouldn’t, huh.”
“No, sir.”
“You wouldn’t know about Sheriff Sutter’s daughter going into the river with that other girl?”
“I heard about it.”
“You and everyone else. That’s my investigation, buddy. My witness. I got no other reason to be up here.”
Danny was silent. Moran staring at him.
“But then a man told me you were in town and I thought, now there’s a curious piece of timing, all things considered.”
He stared at Danny. Danny said, “I’m just here to see my family.”
“Yeah, you said that.” Moran turned to look at the house and Danny did too. Light in the downstairs windows and in one upstairs window. Marky’s room. Getting ready for bed. Moran sucked at something in his teeth and said, “Question is, are you doing them any favors.”
Danny stared at his profile. “Not sure I follow you, Officer.”
Moran looked at him. Then he turned back to the truck and he seemed to study the bullet hole once more. “No, sir,” he said. “I expect this was just some gomer out in the park with one too many beers under the belt, thinking he could poach him a deer maybe, and instead decided to put one in your fender just for shits and giggles.”
He turned then and walked back to the road, back toward his cruiser, and Danny followed, watching Moran’s back, the smooth patch of neck above the collar and Just keep your mouth shut, Danny-boy, don’t say another word, just get in the truck and get your ass into the house.
But Moran stopped in front of the truck door and Danny stopped too. Stood looking down at his own boots. The fraying laces. The scuffed and scarred-up toes.
“Folks talk,” Moran said. “They love to talk. But I’ll tell you one thing.”
When Moran didn’t go on, Danny looked up. The other man was looking up at the sky, the night clouds. No other cars were out, no headlights as far as you could see. Somewhere in the night a dog was barking but not at them.
“I hope,” Moran said, “I truly hope the next thing I hear about you is nothing, buddy. Just nothing at all.”
Later that night a wind came up to rattle the window in his room, and the rattling was the sound of the sheriff’s Zippo lighter rapping the metal table, and he could smell the smoke and he sat up suddenly in the dark room looking all around him, his heart pounding and a drop of sweat running down his chest. He’d just been here—the sheriff. The Zippo lighter rapping lightly on the tabletop. The cigarette smoke. The two of them caught in the mirrored glass . . . And with his heart still drumming he switched on the lamp and swung his legs out and sat on the edge of the bed, his bare feet flat on the old thin rug. It was not his old room but his new room in the farmhouse; she’d brought his things and arranged them as they’d been: his desk, his desk lamp, his chair, his bookcase. Going so far as to put the books back out because the empty shelves were just too much, she’d said, just too much.
He sat staring at his reflection in the rattling window. Awake now but that Zippo still rapping on the tabletop, the sheriff’s voice continuing on as it had in the dream, a voice he’d spent so many years pushing from his mind: And Holly Burke was at the bar too, at Smithy’s, when you were there with Jeff Goss?
Yes, sir.
Did you see her leave?
No, sir.
You didn’t see her leave.
No, sir.
You didn’t give her a ride?
No, sir. I had my dog with me.
So? The sheriff waiting, turning the Zippo slowly on the tabletop now, like he was trying to tune in a station. Up in the corner above the door a red dot of light glowed on the little camera.
You’re recording this?
We record all our interviews.
Something tells me I should ask for a lawyer.
The sheriff, whose name was Sutter, smiled, friendly. I already told you you’re not under arrest, Danny. Like I said, we’re interviewing everyone who was at Smithy’s. Who saw her there.
Did they have lawyers?
Who?
Everyone.
They weren’t under arrest either. Do you mind if I light one of these? It’s not allowed, strictly speaking, but I don’t want to keep you here any longer than necessary just so I can go outside and smoke.
Danny shook his head and the sheriff lit his cigarette with the Zippo and blew a cloud toward the ceiling. There was no fan, no vent, and the smoke hung in the air. The smell reminded him of his father, before they got him to quit.
Sutter gave him a nod: Go on, now. Continue.
Danny sitting on the edge of the bed, in the cold room, staring at the spines of the books. Titles going back to middle school, the Hardy Boys, Ellery Queen, on up to Raymond Chandler and the assigned books of high school: Hemingway, Salinger. Flannery O’Connor, who wrote the story about the killer, The Misfit, that he’d read more than once. Above these on the top shelf stood the textbooks from his one semester in college. As if he might come back and pick up where he’d left off. Classes. Equations. Exams.
He stood from the bed in nothing but the boxers he slept in and crossed the room, floorboards creaking, and he took down the largest book on the top shelf—Applied Structural Dynamics by Field and Leery, the hardback edition he’d bought used and already marked-up with highlighter pens—and standing there in the draft from the window he held the book faceup in his hands. The familiar dense weight of it and the familiar cover with the little doodle man still dangling from the underside of the bridge by his noose, hung there in permanent marker by a previous owner. When he opened the cover the spine crackled and the sound made his heart kick. The pages parted with the stickiness of old glossy pages that have sat too long with no parting, no airing, some of them sticking to each oth
er as if by glue, and maybe it was trapped in one of these pairings, the pages reacting to the foreign material in some chemical way as if to consume it, as if to digest it slowly over the years until there was no trace left, not even the shape of it. But then the book opened in another place and there it lay. Flat and square and white. Strange thin bookmark, or rare leaf pressed flat and delicate and so sheer you could read the text beneath it. The window rattling behind him. His skin goose-bumping from his neck all the way down.
All right, Danny. Where did you go when you left Smithy’s?
I went home.
You went straight home.
Sutter smoking, watching him with those blue eyes of his. Danny picking up the Coke and taking a drink and setting the can down again. He looked at the mirrored glass, as they always did in the TV shows. Who was behind there? More cops? The deputy who pulled him over? Drinking coffee and watching. Cop banter as they watched.
No, sir. I went into the park.
Sutter had been about to take a drag on his cigarette and stopped. Then took the drag and blew the smoke.
Henry Sibley Park? he said.
Yes, sir. The smoke was thick and Danny coughed.
Sutter tapped his ash on the floor.
Just to be clear, Danny, he said. After you left Smithy’s, you drove into Henry Sibley Park.
Danny wanted to cough again but fought it down. The sheriff was fucking with him now. Wasn’t he?
Yes, sir.
And why did you do that, Danny?
To walk my dog for a minute.
You didn’t follow Holly Burke into the park?
No, sir. I didn’t even know she was in there.
The sheriff watched him. Then he moved his notepad closer and wrote something down, studied what he’d written, then put his pen down and took up the Zippo again.
Was there anyone else in there—in the park?
Anyone else?
Yes.
Danny gave the Coke can a quarter turn on the tabletop. I couldn’t say, he said.