The Current

by Tim Johnston

  And heard the deputy say, “You tell me.”

  Mr. Wabash shaking his head, then looking at the deputy and saying, “You look like you had a pretty rough night all around, Ed.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Looks like somebody took a hammer to your ear there, for one thing.”

  The deputy touched his ear. “That was a goddam drunk. Sucker punched me.”

  Mr. Wabash shook his head again. “When it rains it pours, I guess.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “Let me call up Tony, see if he has it.”

  “He does. I stopped and picked it up from him. Just need you to put it in.”

  Mr. Wabash nodded. “How come you don’t do it down there?”

  The deputy turned to look at him. “If you don’t want to do it, Dave, just say so.”

  “Not sayin that, Ed. Heck, we can get her done if you don’t mind waiting.”

  The deputy looked past Mr. Wabash and said, “I see your loaner’s out.”

  “Yeah, Gordon Burke’s got her.”

  The deputy nodded. “Well,” he said, “how long, you think?”

  “Twenty minutes, half hour tops.”

  “All right. I’ll walk on down to Irene’s and get a cup.”

  Mr. Wabash looked toward the garage then and saw Marky standing there. They both saw him.

  “What’s up, Marky?” said Mr. Wabash.

  Keep your eyes on Mr. Wabash don’t look at the deputy, don’t look at his eyes looking at you.

  “I can do it Mister Wabash.”

  “You can do what.”

  “I can fix the headlight.”

  Mr. Wabash kept looking at him. Then he turned to the deputy and said, “That work for you, Ed?”

  “What?”

  “Letting the boy fix the headlight.”

  “Can he do it?”

  “Course he can do it. Do it in his sleep.”

  The deputy’s ear stuck out big and purple and there was crusty blood on it. He was looking at Marky and he was a bad man, anyone could see it, it was in his eyes, but you have to look at him now, you have to look at him so he knows you can do it, so look at him and don’t look away.

  “Hell,” said the deputy, “I don’t care who does it, just so they hop to it.”

  “He’ll hop to it,” said Mr. Wabash. “Let me drop you at Irene’s. I’m goin out on a call anyways.”

  Jeff pulled the deputy’s Escape into the other bay and Marky lowered the bay door and the two of them stood looking at the shot-out headlight.

  “What the hell’s he doing up here anyway?” Jeff said. “Ain’t his goddam jurisdiction no more.”

  “I don’t know Jeff maybe it’s because of that girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “That girl Audrey who went into the river down there.”

  “Audrey?” said Jeff. “Oh, that girl. The sheriff’s daughter. The old sheriff,” he said, bending closer to the headlight and touching the broken glass with his fingertips. “Who do you reckon would shoot out that gomer’s headlight up here?”

  “I don’t know Jeff.”

  Jeff stood straight again and then just stood there, staring at the headlight.

  “There’s a deer rifle in the back seat,” he said. “Not locked up or anything.” He looked at Marky. “Pretty goddam careless for a sheriff, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I better get started on this Jeff.”

  “All right. You need a hand?”

  “No thanks Jeff.”

  “All right. You holler if you do.”

  “OK Jeff thanks.”

  60

  Her heart beat, it pumped, urging her to go faster, get moving, but her body did not want to do it—begging her to stop this, get out of these clothes, go back to the sofa, go to your bed, fill a tub with hot water and lie in it until you sleep and when you wake it will all be just a dream, I promise you . . . and all the while her head, or the voices in her head, told her what a bad idea it was—the scene of the crime. The biggest mistake you could make.

  But which crime? Whose crime? Self-defense, all right, but how do you prove it? If he’s alive he denies it and if he’s dead there’s no other witness but you. Just get the damn car, Audrey. The car is yours so just go get it and you can think about the rest later . . . and in this manner she got dressed—old clothes, old winter jacket and old winter boots she’d last worn when she was in high school—and she got herself out the door, and slowly down the porchsteps, slowly down the drive and slowly along the sidewalk, all the way to the corner where the cul-de-sac began and there she stopped and shut her eyes, the world so bright even with the sunglasses, and drew the cold air into her lungs.

  Not too late to call the cab guy. If you had a phone. Her father’s was still on the front seat of the car. Or it wasn’t.

  The only thing was to keep moving, just take it one block, one street at a time, and already she felt a little better, movement itself working the pain from her body, the morning traffic such as it was rushing by and no one paying any attention to a young woman just walking along normally, just going from here to there, and she’d gone four blocks and was well into her fifth when the cruiser pulled up alongside her.

  She kept walking. She would not look over. Her heart banging. She took hold of the .38 in her jacket pocket and kept walking. The SUV crawling along, matching her speed and she would not look, until finally she did. Nothing to see but her own reflection in the passenger window, the aviators on her face, and below that, on the door, the Minnesota sheriff’s emblem.

  Not Moran, at least. Not that bug-eyed goon, back from the dead.

  She let go the gun and took her hand from her pocket as the passenger window slid down. Sheriff Halsey behind the wheel, watching her from behind his own aviators. Watching and saying nothing.

  She stopped, and he stopped, and she walked up to the open window. No one honked. Traffic flowing calmly around him.

  “Where you headed?” he said.

  “Just walking.” Her voice sounded strange. Her throat still raw. “To the market.”

  “You’re gonna freeze before you get there. You hurt yourself?”

  “No, sir. I’m all right.”

  He watched her. “Hop in,” he said. “I’ll give you a lift.”

  “That’s OK.”

  “Get on in here.”

  She opened the door and got in. The window rose. She drew the seatbelt and, latching it, felt the shape of the gun in her pocket. Halsey signaled and pulled into traffic and got the cruiser up to speed.

  “I was on my way to see you when I saw you,” he said.

  She sat with her hands in her lap, her fingers laced. Watching the road.

  “I imagine you’re curious to know why,” he said.

  “Social visit?”

  “Not hardly. I know what you’ve been up to.”

  She did not look over at him. The world she saw through the windshield was nothing she recognized. Buildings and cars and snow.

  “I haven’t been up to anything, Sheriff.”

  “Yes, you have. You’ve been up to Rochester.”

  Now she looked at him. “Rochester—?”

  He gave her a look. “She told me herself you were there.”

  Her mind doubled back—found an entire new branch of thinking and went stumbling down it.

  “Katie Goss—?” she said.

  “Didn’t I ask you to stay out of matters that don’t concern you? Matters that are matters of law enforcement?”

  She unlaced her fingers to scratch at the skin under the cast—damp and cold under there. “Did she call you?” she said.

  “No, she didn’t call me. I went up there myself.”

  “Why?”

  “What?”

  “Why did you go up there if she didn’t call you?”

  Halsey looked at her. “What part of mind your own business did you not understand?” He looked away again and she watched him, his face in profile. He drove one-handed, check
ing his mirrors, studying the other cars. Watchful. His sheriff’s hat lay in the space between them.

  “Let me ask you something,” he said.

  “All right.”

  “When you came to see me, why didn’t you tell me about Danny Young going out to talk to Gordon Burke? Why didn’t you tell me about that piece of cloth?”

  Audrey was silent, filling in the blanks: Katie Goss had told him about Danny Young and Gordon Burke. About the piece of cloth.

  What else had she told him?

  “Did you hear me?” said the sheriff.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “I guess I figured you needed to hear it from Danny himself.”

  Halsey watched her. He seemed to be thinking on that—seemed about to say something. But then he turned back to the road and drove on in silence.

  Audrey watching the drab winter buildings, the black trees drifting by.

  “Are you going to arrest him?” she said.

  “Arrest who?”

  “Moran.”

  “Sheriff Moran?” He glanced over. “I think you know it doesn’t work like that.”

  It took her a moment. “Because he’s out of state.”

  “Not that we’re having this conversation. Again, I would ask you, as a personal favor, let’s say, since actual authority doesn’t seem to—”

  “But Sheriff,” she said. “What if he wasn’t out of state?”

  The sheriff glaring at her now. Squeezing the wheel in his big hand. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning,” she began, and hesitated, her mind dividing once again along two separate paths . . . because once you say it you can’t go back, but if you don’t say it now and he’s dead then they’ll say why did you wait to say it . . . but if he’s not dead he’ll deny everything and—

  “Audrey,” said the sheriff, startling her.

  “I think he might be here in town, Sheriff. Right now.”

  “And why would you think that?”

  “Because I saw him.”

  “You saw him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You saw him this morning?”

  “No, sir, last night.”

  “You saw Sheriff Moran last night, here in town.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And where was this?”

  “In the park. Henry Sibley Park.”

  He didn’t ask her what she was doing in the park at night. He was putting it together for himself. He looked at her again—looking this time for some sign of trouble, of harm.

  “What makes you think Sheriff Moran is still in town this morning when you saw him last night in the park?” he said, and she stared at him. The bright morning sky beyond him. Her heart drumming in her chest and in the bones of her forearm under the cast.

  “Sheriff,” she said. “I think it might be better if I showed you.”

  61

  The deputy returned at 8:45 and he walked into the office and he looked through the glass door into the garage and then he walked right in—walking past Jeff under the Dodge and coming up to the second bay and bending to look at Marky where he stood hunched under the chassis of the Ford Escape.

  “What in the hell are you doing?”

  Marky looked at him. “I’m working on your vehicle Deputy.”

  “I bring this in for a busted headlight and you put it up on a lift?”

  “Yes sir you got a leaky oil pan and I put it up in the air to show you that’s all.”

  “What? Don’t understand a word you’re saying. Where’s Wabash?”

  “Leaky oil pan,” Marky said again.

  “Leaky what?”

  Marky pointed, and the deputy, muttering, removed his hat and ducked under the chassis to look and Marky stepped away to give him room. The oil was dripping steadily into a pan on the floor, plink, plink, plink.

  “What is that?” said the deputy. “Is that the oil pan? This car isn’t old enough to have a bad gasket.”

  “You threw a bolt Deputy.” Marky had come out from under the SUV and was standing beside it.

  “I what?”

  Marky was looking out the bay door windows.

  “Hey—” said the deputy, and Marky turned back to him, there under the SUV. Then he looked out the windows again.

  “Son,” said the deputy, “I haven’t got time for this shit. Where is that other one, your little buddy?”

  Marky stood beside the lift and when he turned back to the deputy once again he could see the meanness in him, meaner with every second that you don’t answer him, every second you stand here looking at him under the cruiser. And then he saw the moment when the deputy saw that Marky was standing so close to the lift release lever, and he saw more than meanness come into the deputy’s eyes, and it was like the deputy was seeing him for the first time, and for a long while it was just the two of them staring at each other. But then someone else went, “Whoa whoa whoa!” and it was Jeff coming out of nowhere and bending for a look at the deputy and saying, “Officer, you can’t be under that vehicle like that,” and then to Marky, “Marky, what the hell? What’s this vehicle doing up on this lift?” and the two of them turning to look at the deputy again, who was stepping out from under the SUV at last, moving calmly. Putting his hat back on his head.

  “Marky,” said Jeff, “what did you put the sheriff’s car up on the lift for?” But Marky was watching the deputy, the deputy watching him.

  “Leaky oil pan,” the deputy said.

  “Leaky oil pan?” said Jeff.

  “There’s a bolt missing Jeff,” Marky said, and Jeff looked at him, then stooped under the chassis for a look. He looked for a while and then he came out again.

  “There’s a bolt missing, Sheriff,” Jeff said. “You must of thrown it.”

  “Yeah, I got that. Can you replace it?”

  “Pretty standard bolt, Sheriff. We should be able to scare one up.”

  “Well, how about you do that, hey? How about you scare one up and right quick?”

  “Absolutely, Sheriff, we’re on it. And I’m sorry about this, Sheriff. I take full responsibility. When it’s just the two of us here, then I’m in charge and I didn’t see what was going on. It ain’t his fault, Sheriff. He doesn’t know any better.”

  The deputy looked at Jeff and said, “Relax, Goss. I’m not gonna tell your boss. Just get my goddam vehicle down and get me on my way.” He looked from one of them to the other. “Christ. You boys. You boys and your bullshit. We should’ve locked up the lot of you ten years ago and thrown away the key.” He eyed them a moment longer, then he walked past them and pushed back through the glass door into the office.

  Jeff ran both his hands through his hair and held on to the back of his neck, his elbows up in the air, saying nothing.

  “I’ll go find a bolt now Jeff.”

  Jeff shook his head, and from between the wings of his arms he said, “Yeah, OK, Marky. You do that. And maybe Wabash won’t fire both our asses.”

  62

  She rode in the passenger seat and it was like she was the deputy again, except that the sheriff at the wheel was not her sheriff, and the cab did not smell of his cigarettes. And although she was not this sheriff’s prisoner, not under arrest, the feeling was closer to that than anything else. A bright and sunny day and the blackbirds were hopping in the bare branches and a man in black leggings and big winter gloves was jogging through the park and he was not under arrest and his life would not be spent in jail, and this is how it would feel if you were the criminal and you were caught and the sheriff was taking you in and it was all over—your freedom, your life. Suddenly and forever done.

  Moran’s cruiser was not there, and neither was the Ford—no sign of either car, but the sheriff knew the place and he pulled over short of where the cars had been and put his cruiser in park. He cut the engine and sat looking out toward the wide, frozen river, and you could see it from here in the gap between the pines: the small dark hole in the ice where she’d fallen through.

  “You stay put,” he s
aid and got out, hatless, and shut the door behind him. She watched him walk up the road with his eyes on the pavement. He looked at the place where Moran’s cruiser had sat, then he got down into a squat, then stood again and crossed the road toward the river. He stepped through the pines wide of where she and Moran had walked and he stopped at the bank and stood looking out at the ice. He looked again at the snow at his feet, then squatted again and looked more closely. After a while he stood and came back across the road.

  The cruiser rocked with his weight and the door whumped shut and there was the smell of the pines and the snow on him. He looked at her and said, “Are you sure you’re OK? There’s blood in the snow.”

  “It’s his,” she said, and raised the cast to remind him.

  He looked at the cast. Then he turned and looked at the river again. Drumming the wheel with his fingertips.

  “It’s gotta be a quarter mile from here to that spillway,” he said.

  He turned to look at her, and she held his eyes. Either he believed her or he didn’t. She saw the ducks again, rising into the sky. She’d frightened them by coming up alive, and if she hadn’t been alive, if she hadn’t been able to swim, she’d have gone over the spillway maybe and continued on, under the ice again, all the way to the concrete bridge where Holly Burke had come to rest, and from there all the way down to Iowa and the other bridge where Caroline had gone under . . . all way to the Mississippi, all the way to the ocean.

  “—and you didn’t get their last names?” the sheriff was saying. “Either one of them?”

  It took her a moment. “No, sir, it never occurred to me. Hannah and Eric, that’s all I know.”

  “And none of you thought to call 911.”

  “I asked them not to. I asked them to take me home. They were just kids.”

  “And why’d you do that? Why’d you ask them not to call 911?”

  “Because a cop just tried to kill me.”