The Current

by Tim Johnston

  You couldn’t say what?

  If there was anyone else in the park. It’s a big park. And it was dark.

  Sutter was silent.

  You didn’t see anyone else in the park, Danny?

  Danny resisted looking at the mirrored glass—the cops, the deputy, watching him. He’d seen the deputy, but that was outside the park, on the county road.

  No, sir, he said truthfully. I didn’t see anyone else in the park.

  Did any vehicles drive through?

  Danny wiped his hands on his jeans. Sutter watching him. There was a loud ticking but he saw no clock in the room and he realized it was Sutter’s watch. He could see the second hand moving with the ticks.

  I was pretty deep in the woods, chasing my dog.

  That’s not what I asked you, Danny. Did you see any other vehicles in the park while you were there?

  No, sir. I didn’t see any other cars. Not while I was there. And that was true too: he’d seen the headlights and he’d heard the motor but he’d never seen the car itself. And it might not have been Jeff’s car at all.

  Although he knew that wasn’t true.

  He pinched the square of cloth at its corner and it came away clean and he closed the textbook one-handed and set it flat on the shelf, and then he laid the bit of cloth on his open hand. Weight of a feather. Weight of a butterfly. Great square wing of a strange nightmoth. They’d searched his room and they’d searched the books, or at least had pulled them all from the shelves, but the cloth had hung on.

  And if it had fallen out when she moved the books, boxing them up and then unboxing them, years ago? Would she have put it back, not recognizing it? Or would she have sat there with it in the palm of her hand, knowing exactly what it was and what it meant. And then put it back anyway?

  He stared at the cloth where it lay on his own palm, of such thin stuff it stirred with his breath. Exactly the thing they’d been looking for when they came to the house. The thing that no one else knew was missing but them—and you, and no way for you to have it unless you’d taken it yourself. A memento. A keepsake to press in a book and find again one day, or to be found by someone else and wondered about. Sheer stupid luck that you’d seen it at all that night. Seen it before they did. Stupid luck that the dog got away from you and rolled himself in shit or else you wouldn’t have taken him to the front of the truck where the hose was and would not have been there hosing him down in the light your mother left on for you and would not have glanced at the license plate, you didn’t even know why, and then looked again because there was something there, a bit of white paper or something stuck between the plate frame and the bumper, fluttering in the wind.

  Then what happened, Danny?

  What do you mean?

  What happened next, after you got your dog and got back in your truck?

  Danny held the sheriff’s eyes. He knew what was coming next. What the sheriff already knew: the flashing lights in his rearview. The deputy with the bug eyes.

  I drove out of the park.

  You didn’t see Holly Burke then, on your way out?

  No, sir.

  You didn’t hit her with your truck—by accident? You were at Smithy’s and you were drinking, Danny. Cruising through the park, feeling that buzz . . . You didn’t come around a bend and there she was but you couldn’t stop in time? An accident, Danny? Sutter opening his hands like a man offering something. Or ready to receive it.

  No, sir. I never saw her.

  You never saw her—that’s why you hit her?

  No, sir, I never saw her and I never hit her either.

  And still holding the dog by the collar you set down the hose and tugged this bit of whiteness loose and stood there hunched over and looking at it in the light—a square of thin material, maybe silk, with tiniest threads like spiderwebs where it had been sewed on and it was the pocket of a girl’s top and you knew it, you recognized it immediately, because you had looked. You had looked at it when you’d seen it earlier that night and you could see right through it and you couldn’t help looking—even if it was just the quickest of glances, you’d looked, you’d wanted to see. And now here it was in your hand and you knew what it was and you knew in your gut, in your heart, that it could not be here except that something terrible had happened and maybe you’d been too drunk to know it. Was that even possible? Not see her? Not feel the impact?

  Or not remember it?

  Look more closely at the bumper. Look for the break in the plate frame, the bent plate, the dented bumper. The bit of blood and hair. Wrap the dog leash around the hosebib and get the flashlight out again and go over the tires, the treads, all the way around with the dying beam. The underside of the bumper. All the jagged parts of the undercarriage that might catch and snag and rip and hold on to—and was she out there still, lying there, alive? Go back, find her, call 911?

  But what if they were there already? What if someone else had found her and called the cops and here you come driving back to the scene, having already driven away?

  But what if she’s alive and lying there? Holly Burke, Gordon’s daughter, lying there cold and broken and trying to stay alive?

  It could’ve happened to anyone, Danny. Who would expect a girl to be walking through that park, that time of night? Maybe you thought it was a deer. You’d had a few beers and you were cruising along and then suddenly—wham. You hit something and you think, Holy crap, I hit a deer. So you stop and get out and walk back and there she is—holy shit, there’s a girl lying on the side of the road and she’s no deer and you know you hit her . . .

  Danny shaking his head, No, sir . . .

  . . . you didn’t mean to, she just came out of nowhere, and you tried to stop but you couldn’t. And now there she is and you can’t believe it. No life in that body, you think, and this is no dream, this is real and you’ve done it and you can’t go back five minutes, not even one minute, and not do it. It’s done. The girl is dead . . . and so are you—everything you’ve ever known or wanted. Your plans. Your degree. Your family. Your girlfriend, Katie Goss . . . You have hit this girl and she’s dead and you can’t take it back.

  No, sir . . .

  And so what do you do, Danny? Standing there in the cold and the wind, looking at her—what do you do? You’re not a bad guy, you’ve never been in trouble before, but you’ve been drinking and you’re not thinking straight, and all you know is that you want to live, you don’t want your life to end this way—because of an accident? Because of nothing but chance and bad luck?

  What if you were never here? you think.

  What if you’d not gone through the park at all?

  What if she just vanished and no one ever knew?

  No, sir, it didn’t happen like that.

  How did it happen, Danny?

  It didn’t happen.

  Why did you drive up to your cousin’s cabin, Danny, after you got home?

  To go duck hunting.

  At two thirty in the morning.

  Yes, sir. So we could get an early start.

  Could you get rid of the truck, a whole truck, just make it disappear—into the river, or into the lake far away?

  Don’t be stupid. Don’t be crazy. Take the hose and spray it all down, plate and bumper, tires and undercarriage. Uncle Rudy has a cabin up in the woods and Cousin Jer has the key and by the time you get up there, going over the dirt trails and across the stream and through the mud there won’t be anything left of anything you might’ve missed . . .

  But to not see her? Not feel the impact?

  And what if she’s still alive . . . ?

  Tell me about Holly Burke, Danny.

  What about her?

  What did you like about her?

  What do you mean?

  Sutter taking a last drag on his cigarette and mashing it on the heel of his boot and dropping the butt to the floor. You know what I mean.

  I’ve known her a long time. Our fathers were business partners.

  Did you ever date her?


  No, sir.

  Did you ever want to?

  And he thought then not of Holly Burke but of Katie Goss, and felt again that bang in his heart when the sheriff had asked to see his cell phone, hours ago, up at the cabin, because Danny had remembered then—only then—that Katie had called him when he was in the park, and he’d thought somehow that the phone would tell the sheriff where he’d been when she called, like some kind of tracking device, and he had not understood that what the sheriff really wanted to see was had he called Holly Burke, or had she called him. And now he could use that same phone to show the sheriff that not only had they not called each other—at least not on any cell phone—but that she was not even in his contacts!

  But there’d been plenty of time for him to delete every trace of her from the phone, the sheriff would point out, and anyway Danny had already told him he didn’t think he had to show his cell phone to anyone if he wasn’t under arrest, and the sheriff had said that was true, and at last he answered Sutter’s question, No, Sir, I never wanted to date her.

  Never?

  No, sir.

  An attractive young woman like that? Never thought about it—ever?

  And with the flashlight in one hand and the hose in the other you stood up then and you saw her, your mother—standing at the window and looking right at you, and how long had she been standing there, how much did she see? Where is the square of cloth?

  It’s in one of your pockets.

  Put the flashlight down and finish rinsing the dog. Rinse your hands. Take a good long drink of the cold water and shut the water off and take the dog inside and tell her you gotta go back out and help Jeff, he needs a jump and you gotta go and you’ll be right back. Just go back there and look, that’s all—the truck is clean, or as clean as you can get it, so drive back now, your heart pounding, and see from the edge of the park that there are no cops, no flashing lights, and drive all the way through the park and all the way back and no sign of her anywhere, and was it some kind of joke, that piece of cloth? A gag executed by drunk girls just to mess with you?

  Other scenarios, other possibilities, won’t even enter your mind until later, when you are driving north toward Cousin Jer’s, strung-out and seeing things—figures, young women, running out of the darkness into your headlights—and thinking you will never make it, that the lights will come up fast in the rearview and the colored lights will go off like bombs in the early morning darkness and that will be that.

  But that’s later. First—get back home and get your stuff and go, because you need to get away from here and you need time. You need time right now like you need the air to breathe.

  You can say it, Danny. She was a good-looking young woman and you desired her. You wanted Holly Burke.

  No, sir.

  You wanted her, and so you offered her a ride, cold night like that, her dressed like that, and she gets in. But then you try something in the park, you get grabby and there’s a fight, and she gets out and starts walking, and that’s when you hit her with the truck—maybe not on purpose, but you hit her. And you panic. You see her lying there and you think you killed her and you’re drunk and you panic. You need to get rid of the body—but how . . . ?

  No air in that little room, as if Sutter’s voice were using it up with each word, and that voice so thick in Danny’s head like smoke—expanding like smoke until his brain was swimming in it, spinning in it—

  . . . and next thing you know you’re lifting the girl in your arms, and you’re walking her to the riverbank and she weighs nothing, and all you can think is how cold she must’ve been, out here with no jacket, nothing but that blouse . . . and you lay her down again, and with a push you send her over, and down she goes, her face rolling once, twice to the sky before there’s the splash and the waves go rippling out and the body in its white, flimsy blouse lingers, the blond hair spreading, the body pulled slowly out into deeper water, stronger current . . . and the last you’d see is a pale shape of fabric on the surface of the water, air-filled, trembling in the wind like some living creature, before even that went under, sinking into darkness and you could not take it back you could never take it back and it was no nightmare, it was real, and you’d done it . . .

  No, sir, Danny heard himself say. Shaking his head, shaking off this vision.

  But you hadn’t killed her, Danny, Sutter said. She was still breathing when you pushed her into the water. And that right there—that’s not manslaughter. That’s not even vehicular homicide, Danny. That’s murder.

  Sutter watching him, no expression whatsoever on his face, in those blue eyes. The camera watching. The men behind the glass watching.

  The room spun. His stomach pitched. He thought he might be sick.

  Sutter picked up his pen again and tapped it twice on the notepad.

  Talk to me, Danny. Tell me about that night. Tell me what happened.

  The room came to rest. Danny took a breath and let it out slowly.

  I’m ready for that lawyer, he said. Either that, or I walk out of here right now.

  And in the few seconds you had before she stepped into your room—Danny, we had a deal!—you pinched the cloth up from your jeans pocket and opened up the textbook and laid the cloth flat between the pages and put the book up on the shelf and you can’t even say why. Just down the hall sat the perfect solution: a contraption that filled itself with water and emptied itself with gravity into a four-inch waste pipe as dark and forever as the bottom of the sea.

  Instead you put the thing in your textbook. Knowing full well it was the one thing that could end your life. That could flush you down some dark and forever hole yourself.

  Because, at the same time, in some new part of you that did not exist an hour ago, not even fifteen minutes ago, you knew that the same piece of cloth that might end you might also save you. If only you had the time to figure out how.

  39

  She slept and woke, slept and woke, through day and night, or many days and many nights. She might’ve been in the river again, but now there was heat—hours of heat that set her skin on fire, and then hours of cold so deep her jaw chattered, and she slept and woke and did not know one from the other because everything she saw in either state was equally vivid and equally unbelievable and equally ordinary. She saw glass beads swaying in a river of color and lights, and the colors smelled of fruits no one had ever tasted before and the lights played on the bare shoulders of three young women who stood on the bottom of a lake with their toes in warm sand and their hair rising and falling in cool passing currents of light. She saw a corona of light around dark curtains, the light pulsing and blooming like a living thing, and she saw the bedroom where she lay and it was not her bedroom and it was, and she knew everything she would find in the closet down to a pair of high black boots that zipped up the back and she knew if she got up and looked in the mirror she would see her new face, her new hair, and there was a silver brush on the desk and she knew how the brush would feel in her hand and how it would feel in her hair, and she felt a new heart beating in her chest and this heart broke just to feel all that it felt all at once, all its love and pain and want and fear all at once.

  She saw the curtains open on their own and a figure appear in the dark of the glass and she saw this figure put its hands to its face and peer in through the air bubbles and the tiny cracks and when it stood she saw the soles of its boots as it walked off into the night. Pale hair moved in the water like silky smoke, and she smelled smoke, and her father was sitting with her, Here, Deputy, drink this, and he raised her head with his hand and tilted the cool water to her lips, then he cleared the hair from her forehead and said, You have to help him now, sweetheart, and she said, Help who, Daddy? but he was gone.

  She saw the faces of boys she did not know all lined up in picture frames and they were all the same boy, and the images darkened and sank away until all she saw was their teeth like the grins of skulls. She watched a large bird like a hawk or an owl glide soundlessly across the
ceiling. She saw a man and a woman dressed in black climb stone steps, their heads high but heavy, so heavy, and they walked into a great hall that was washed in every color, because the river of light flowed through the great hall too and they walked hand in hand down the aisle and they looked down on the girl who lay there and the girl’s hair shifted colors in the light, dark to light and back to dark again, as if the shadows of great fish or boats were passing over her.

  She saw herself rise from the bed and walk through a wall of heat to the window and draw the curtains, the light so bright, and unlatch the window and raise it with pain shooting all through her and the air so cold flooding in and she saw the dark shapes of two men standing next to a truck and they were faced off and talking and she could hear every word they spoke as if the two men floated there outside the window, and as she listened she saw a man in a sheriff’s hat driving down a dark road and there was a girl sitting next to him but she could not see their faces and she was frightened, and then the car vanished and next she saw dogs, or wolves, running down the middle of the river chasing something she couldn’t see and the thing they chased howled and cried but the dogs themselves were silent as they ran, white smoke jetting from their snouts as from furnaces and no sound to them at all.

  40

  He carried the tray back downstairs and set it on the kitchen table and stood looking at the glass of orange juice, the bowl of soup, the soda crackers. Then he sat down and crumbled the crackers into the bowl and ate the soup. It was just past noon. The house seemed strangely quiet and after a moment he realized it was because there was no fire in the woodburner, because he’d not built the fire, because the heat from the fire would keep the furnace from kicking in and blowing heat into the upstairs rooms, exactly as it was supposed to do.

  A man could put a space heater up there and have his fire and his heated bedroom, both. Could, if he cared to burn the house down. That time the alarm went off in the middle of the night and it was the alarm in her room and he’d thrown open the door with his heart slamming and there she sat cross-legged on the floor with a candle on a cookie sheet, her eyes so wide, and she was blowing at the blackened feet of a Barbie doll like it was a birthday cake and you had to carry the doll dripping hot, pink plastic into the bathroom and put it under the tap, and when you got back she was facedown on her bed and the alarm still going until you stood on the chair and took it down and got the battery out, and only then did you hear her crying. And she would not turn over, she would not look at you and she was so small and she trembled and cried until her mother moved you away and scooped her up and held her sobbing against her chest as you stood there, as you did all you could think to do, which was to open the window and fan the air with the cookie sheet.