The River King

by Alice Hoffman

  It was not until the bus pulled into the parking lot at Haddan, gears squealing, engine straining, that Carlin awoke. She came back with a start, arms flailing, the way the girls on the team had been taught a drowning person’s might, and a wave of panic moved through the bus. At that point, Carlin was making a gurgling sound in the back of her throat, as though she were already past any rescue, but thankfully, Ivy Cooper had a cool head; she quickly handed Carlin a paper bag, into which Carlin breathed until her color returned.

  “You’re freezing,” Ivy said when their hands touched as Carlin gratefully returned the paper bag. “Maybe you were in the water too long.”

  Carlin reached for her black coat and her gym bag, ready to rush off, then realized that most of the girls had turned their attention to a car parked on the grass in front of Chalk House. In spite of the drizzle and the late hour, Bob Thomas was out there along with some other man none of the girls recognized.

  “What’s happening?” Carlin asked.

  “Where have you been?” Ivy Cooper stood beside her. “They’re kicking Harry McKenna out of school. They found a midterm exam in his room. There was a hearing last night, and he couldn’t talk his way out of it. I heard he broke into Mr. Herman’s quarters to get the exam. He smashed the window and everything.”

  Sure enough, the trunk of the parked car was filled with suitcases and a heap of possessions tossed in hurriedly. Everything Harry owned was there, his sweaters, his sneakers, his books, his lamp. Some of the girls from the swim team had begun to file out of the bus and were already running through the rain toward St. Anne’s, but Carlin stayed where she was, gazing out the window. At last Harry came out, as though he were in a hurry to get somewhere. He was wearing a sweatshirt with a hood, so that it wasn’t possible to see his fair hair, or even to manage a good look at his face.

  He flung himself into the passenger seat of his father’s car, then slammed the door shut. Carlin got off the bus, the last to leave. She could still see Harry from where she stood in the parking lot, but he didn’t look at her. The dean and Harry’s father didn’t bother to shake hands; this was not a friendly parting. Dartmouth had been informed of Harry’s expulsion and his admittance there had been retracted. He would not be attending college in the fall, nor would he graduate from high school this year, as he’d been asked to leave before the end of the semester. Carlin followed along behind Harry’s father’s car as it slowly traversed the speed bumps in the parking lot, then turned onto Main Street. She walked along through the rain, which was falling harder now, hitting against the roofs of the white houses. The car was a luxury model, black and sleek and so quiet most people in town didn’t even notice it on the road. Once it had passed the inn, the car began to pick up speed, splashing through the puddles, leaving a thin trail of exhaust that drifted down the center of town.

  It was after curfew when Carlin sneaked into her room, and although the hour was late, Amy Elliot was up in bed, sobbing.

  “Now are you happy?” Amy cried. “His life is ruined.”

  Carlin got into bed, fully dressed. She wasn’t happy at all; Harry’s departure wouldn’t bring Gus back. Gus wouldn’t rise from the river in the morning to retrace his steps; he wouldn’t wake in his bed, ready for school, eager for his life to go on. When the morning did come, Carlin didn’t attend classes. It was the harsh end of the month and torrents of rain were now falling, none of which prevented Carlin from going to the bank to speak to Mike Randall, then taking the bus to a travel agency in Hamilton where she used her funds from Miss Davis to buy a plane ticket. She rode the bus back to Haddan late in the day, going directly to the pharmacy, where she sat down at the counter. By then it was after three and Sean Byers had reported for work. He was at the sink, rinsing out glasses and cups, but when he saw Carlin he dried his hands and came over.

  “You’re drenched,” he said, his voice a mixture of longing and concern.

  Puddles of water had collected on the floor around Carlin’s stool and her hair was plastered against her head. Sean poured her a hot cup of coffee.

  “Do you ever feel like you want to go home?” Carlin asked him.

  Although the pharmacy was usually busy at this hour, the heavy rain seemed to be keeping people off the streets and out of the stores. Sam Arthur from the town council was the only other customer in the place; he was going over the plans for the ground-breaking celebration for the new medical center, muttering to himself and enjoying a strawberry milkshake, an item that was definitely not on his diabetic diet plan.

  “Is that what you’re thinking about doing?” Sean asked. He hadn’t seen Carlin much since Christmas vacation, at least not as much as he would have liked. He still sneaked into the pool, late at night, hoping that she’d be there, too, but she never was. It was as if the time they’d had together existed separately from the rest of their lives, like a dream that’s in danger of dissolving as soon as the dreamer awakes. “You’re running away?”

  “No.” Carlin was shivering in her wet clothes. “I’m flying.” She showed him the one-way ticket.

  “Seems like you’ve already decided.”

  “They kicked Harry out of school,” Carlin told Sean.

  “Nah. Guys like that never get kicked out of anything.”

  “This one did. Late last night. He was expelled for cheating.”

  Sean was gleeful. He did a little victory dance, which made Carlin explode into giggles.

  “You’re not pretty when you gloat,” she told him; all the same, she laughed.

  “You are,” Sean said. “I just wish you weren’t such a coward.”

  A group of ravenous Haddan students had braved the rain on a mission for hamburgers and fries and Sean was called to take their order. Carlin watched as he tossed meat patties onto the grill and started the fryer. Even here in the pharmacy, Carlin felt as though she were stuck underwater. The world outside floated by—Mrs. Jeremy with her umbrella, a delivery truck of hibiscus pulling up to the Lucky Day, a gang of kids from the elementary school racing home in rain slickers and boots.

  “I’m not a coward,” Carlin told Sean when he returned and refilled her cup with steaming black coffee.

  “You’re letting them chase you off. What do you call it?”

  “Wanting to go home.”

  Because of his extremely dark eyes Sean Byers had the ability to hide most of what he felt inside. He’d always been a good liar; he’d talked himself out of situations that would have landed anyone else in jail, but he wasn’t lying now. “This is what you always wanted. Why would you leave if you weren’t being chased off?”

  Carlin threw down some money to pay for her coffee, then headed for the door. The potatoes in the fryer were sizzling, but Scan followed her anyway. He truly didn’t care if the whole place burned to the ground. The rain was falling in such torrents that when it hit against the asphalt it sounded as if guns had been fired or cannons discharged. Before Carlin could plunge onto the sidewalk, Sean pulled her back beneath the pharmacy awning. He was crazy about her, but that’s not what was at stake here. The rain was coming down harder, yet Carlin could hear Sean’s heart beneath the fabric of his shirt and the rough white apron he wore. All the world out there was liquid, all of it enough to pull her down, and so, for this brief time she held on tight and did her best not to drown.

  * * *

  A TENT HAD BEEN SET UP IN THE FIELD behind town hall and above it a flag had been raised to wave in the wind so that no one in town would fail to notice the ground-breaking celebration. The Becker construction company had been retained by the town council and Ronny Becker, Doreen and Nikki’s father, had already bulldozed a level area that allowed the tent to be set up on flat ground; it certainly wouldn’t do for any of the older guests such as Mrs. Evans, who’d recently been in need of a cane, to tumble over the ruts and break a hip or a leg.

  The Chazz Dixon band played that afternoon, and two dozen of Mr. Dixon’s violin and flute students from the elementary school were al
lowed to miss their last class in order to attend. Thankfully fully, even though it was the rainy season, the afternoon was clear and sunny with a brisk, rather enjoyable west wind. Just to be safe, portable heaters had been set up inside the tent, to ensure that those in attendance could enjoy the salmon sandwiches and cream cheese puffs that the staff of the Haddan School cafeteria served on large silver trays. It came as no surprise to anyone that while people from town tended to congregate over by the bar, the staff and faculty of the school gathered around the hors d’oeuvres table, gorging on deviled eggs and clam cakes.

  A motion had already been passed by both the board of trustees at the school and the town council to name the health center after Helen Davis and a bronze plaque with her name etched upon it had been set into the cornerstone. The dean had asked Betsy Chase to commemorate the occasion with a photograph, and she was there to preserve the moment when Sam Arthur shook hands with Bob Thomas, each man standing with one foot balanced on the cornerstone. Betsy was then asked to photograph the doctors who’d been wooed away from an HMO in Boston, along with the center’s new administrator, Kelly Avon’s cousin, Janet Lloyd, who was delighted to be moving back to Haddan after eight years of exile at Mass General.

  On the way over, Betsy had noticed the cruiser Abe drove, one of dozens of cars left at the curb along Main Street, where the no-parking signs had been covered with burlap hoods. In spite of herself, Betsy found herself looking for him, but the place was crowded, filled with people Betsy didn’t know, and she didn’t see Abe until the Chazz Dixon band was playing its final set. He was standing beside the makeshift cloakroom, a direction Betsy needed to go toward anyway, in order to retrieve her coat.

  “Hey,” she said as she approached. “Remember me?”

  “Sure I do.” Abe raised his drink to her and said, “Have fun,” then quickly moved on. He had decided that he was finished getting hit over the head with rejection, so he made his way to the bar to get himself another beer. In spite of all the initial hoopla, people were managing just fine without Abel Grey on the police force. Mrs. Evans, for instance, had taken to phoning Doug Lauder about the raccoon that came into her yard to eat her bird-seed and rattle her trash cans. A new uniformed cop had been hired and in the mornings he could be seen at the crosswalk in front of the elementary school. On days when the garden club met, he was posted outside town hall, directing traffic and gratefully accepting the thermoses of hot chocolate Kelly Avon had taken to delivering. Residents who had invited Abe into the most personal moments of their lives—Sam Arthur, for instance, with whom Abe sat vigil when his wife, Lorriane, was in that head-on collision while visiting their daughter in Virginia, and Mrs. Jeremy, who had wept while Abe talked AJ out of jumping out a second-story window one horrible spring night, a leap that probably wouldn’t have done any more than rattle a few of AJ’s bones considering how drunk he’d been—now seemed startled when they ran into him, embarrassed by all the secrets he’d once been privy to. Actually, Abe himself didn’t feel that comfortable with most people, what with Joey and Mary Beth clearly avoiding him and all those busybodies from Haddan School who’d reported him for harassment keeping an eye on him.

  The only reason he’d shown up at the festivities was to pay his respects to Helen Davis. He’d already had two beers in honor of her memory and he figured a third wouldn’t hurt. He’d have a couple of drinks and get out, no damage done, but when he turned he saw that Betsy had also come to the bar. She was asking for a glass of white wine, and looking his way.

  “There you go, following me again,” Abe said, and he was surprised when she didn’t deny it. “Give her the good stuff, George,” Abe told the bartender, George Nichols from the Millstone.

  “The school’s footing the bill,” George said. “Trust me, there is no good stuff.”

  “I heard you got fired,” Betsy said as she moved aside to let AJ Jeremy get to the bar.

  “I prefer to think of it as a permanent vacation.” Abe looked past AJ and signaled for George Nichols to add only a small amount of vodka to the double vodka tonic AJ had ordered. “Looks like they roped you into being the inquiring photographer,” he said when Betsy stepped back to take a shot of Chazz Dixon, wailing on his saxophone with a fervor that shocked many of his music students. Betsy turned and found Abe in her viewfinder. Most subjects were shy, they tended to look away, but Abe stared back at her with an intensity that flustered her and made her snap his picture before she was ready. It was those blue eyes that were to blame, and had been from the start.

  “My turn,” Abe said.

  “You have no idea how to take a decent picture.” Betsy laughed as she handed over the camera.

  “Now you’ll always remember this day,” Abe told her after he’d taken her picture. “Isn’t that what they say about a photograph?”

  It was a big mistake not to just walk away from each other and they both knew it, but they stood together awhile longer and watched the band.

  “Maybe you should hire them to play at your wedding,” Abe said of the musicians.

  “Very funny.” Betsy drank her wine too fast; later in the day she’d have a headache, but right now she didn’t care.

  “I don’t think it’s funny at all.” He was reaching toward her.

  “What are you doing?”

  Betsy was so certain that he was about to kiss her, that she found it difficult to breathe. But instead, Abe showed her the quarter he’d pulled from behind her ear. He’d been practicing, and although the trick still needed work, in his many free hours he’d discovered that he had a gift for sleight of hand. Already, he’d finagled close to a hundred bucks out of Teddy Humphrey, who still could not figure out how Abe always discerned which card Teddy picked from the deck.

  “You’re good at that,” Betsy said. “Just the way you’re good at breaking into places.”

  “Is this an official investigation or a personal accusation?”

  Betsy swayed to the music. She refused to say more, even though as soon as she’d heard about the robbery at Eric’s, her first thought was of Abe. Even now she wondered if the student they’d expelled, Harry McKenna, might have been innocent of that particular crime. “I think it’s too bad Helen Davis couldn’t be here.”

  “She would have hated it,” Abe said. “Crowds, noise, bad wine. ”

  “They’ve found someone to take her place.” As the new head of the department, Eric had been on the hiring committee. A young historian fresh out of graduate school had been chosen, someone too fresh and insecure to question authority. “They wasted no time replacing her.”

  “Here’s to Helen.” Abe raised his beer aloft, then finished it off in a few gulps.

  Betsy had a dreamy look on her face; lately she had been especially aware of how a single choice could alter life’s course. She wasn’t used to drinking wine in the afternoon, and maybe that was why she was being so chummy with Abe. “What do you think Helen would have changed if she could have chosen to live her life differently?”

  Abe thought this over, then said, “I think she would have run off with me.”

  Betsy let out a yelp of laughter.

  “You think I’m kidding?” Abe grinned.

  “Oh, no. I think you’re serious. You definitely would have made an interesting couple.”

  Now when Abe reached for her he really did kiss her, there in front of the Chazz Dixon band and everyone else. He just went ahead and did it and Betsy didn’t even try to stop him. She kissed him right back until she was dizzy and her legs felt as though they might give out. Eric was over by Dr. Jones’s table with the rest of the Haddan faculty and might easily have seen them had he looked behind him; Lois Jeremy and Charlotte Evans were walking right past, chattering about the good turnout, and still Betsy went on kissing him. She might have gone on indefinitely if the drummer in the Dixon band hadn’t reached for his cymbals and startled her into pulling away.

  Some of the crowd had decided to create a dance floor, up beyond the coatroom,
and several locals were letting loose before the band packed up. AJ Jeremy, who had managed to get looped despite his mother’s watchful eye, was dancing with Doreen Becker. Teddy Humphrey had taken the opportunity to ask his ex-wife to accompany him to the dance floor, and to everyone’s surprise Nikki had agreed.

  “Well,” Betsy said, trying to compose herself after their kiss. Her lips were hot. “What was that for?”

  She looked up at Abe but she couldn’t see his eyes. So much the better, for if she had she would have known exactly what the kiss was for. At least she was smart enough not to watch when Abe walked away. She told him once there had never been anything between them, now she just had to convince herself of the very same thing. She ordered herself another glass of wine, drank it too quickly, then got her coat and buttoned it against the changing weather. Above the tent, the flags snapped back and forth in the wind, and the late afternoon sky had begun to darken, with clouds turning to black. It was the end of the celebration, and by then Eric had found her.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, for her face was flushed and she seemed unsteady. “Not feeling well?”

  “No, I’m fine. I just want to go home.”

  Before they could leave there was the sound of thunder, rolling in from the east, and the sky was darker still.

  “Bad timing,” Eric said. Through the fabric of the tent they could see a fork of lightning. “We’ll just have to wait it out.”

  But Betsy couldn’t wait. She could feel little bits of electricity up and down her skin each time the sky was illuminated, and before Eric could stop her, she dashed out of the tent. As she made her way along Main Street, the sky rumbled, and another line of lightning crossed the horizon. The storm was moving closer, and there were several large oak trees on Main Street and on Lovewell Lane that were particularly susceptible to a strike, but that didn’t stop Betsy on her way back to the school. Before long, fat raindrops had begun to fall, and Betsy stood with her face upturned. Even with the rain washing over her, she continued to burn; she hadn’t talked herself out of anything.