So Cold the River

by Michael Koryta

  “That’s pretty wild,” Eric Shaw said, and Anne smiled.

  “Everything that built these towns came up from underground. I walk into those hotels and just shake my head, because when it comes right down to it, they wouldn’t be there except for a little bit of water that bubbles out of the ground around here. If you don’t think there’s a touch of magic to that, well, I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “That’s what Pluto was supposed to represent, right?”

  “Right. He’s the Roman version of Hades, which isn’t all that pleasant a connotation to most folks now, but there’s a difference between Hell and the underworld in the myths. My father did some studying on those myths. Way he understood it, Pluto wasn’t the devil. He was the god of riches found in the earth, found underground. That’s why they named the company after him, see? Thing my father always found amusing was that in the myths all Pluto was in charge of, really, was keeping the dead on the banks of the River Styx before they crossed it to be judged. So Pluto was essentially an innkeeper. And what followed the water in this town?”

  She waved her hand out across her valley, the springs valley. “Inns. Beautiful, amazing inns.”

  She laughed and folded her hands, put them back in her lap. “Daddy probably overthought a lot of these things.”

  They were quiet for a time then. Her visitor seemed to have something else on his mind, and she was content to sit and watch the windmills spin, listen to the chimes.

  “You said you were around the water a lot,” he said eventually. “Think you could recognize a bottle if I brought one to you? Tell me when it might have been made?”

  “I sure could. In fact, I’ve got a bunch of them upstairs, labeled with the years. Might be able to find a match. Where are you staying? French Lick or West Baden?”

  “West Baden.”

  “I head down there in the afternoon and have myself a little sip. If you have the Pluto bottle, you can just bring it down. I’ll be there in a half hour or so.”

  That seemed to please him, but he’d looked unsteady over the last few minutes, a fierce bit of worry clearly going on in his head, and she wondered what it was had him so concerned. Maybe he’d harbored hopes of using a lot of nonsense in his film, hallucinations and eerie cold bottles and such. Well, rare was the storyteller who got trapped by reality. She imagined he’d find his way around it easy enough.

  He thanked her and got into his car and drove off down the hill, and she stayed on the porch with her hands folded in her lap. He’d come by and sparked memories on a day when they were already warm. She’d been thinking about her son, Henry, that tumble he’d taken off the porch. Then this Shaw fellow arrived and said he was from Chicago and her mind had jumped right off that porch and onto a passenger train. Harold had let her have the window seat and she’d sat with her hand wrapped in his and her eyes on the rolling countryside, the wheels on the track offering a soothing noise, light and steady, clack-clack-clack-clack. He’d helped her to her feet when the train got to Chicago, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her long and hard, and someone on the train had whistled and she’d blushed red as the Monon car that carried them.

  Spring of ’thirty-nine, she’d told Eric Shaw. Spring of? ’thirty-nine.

  Now she wanted to chase him down the road, pull him out of his car and shout, Yes, it was the spring of ’thirty-nine but it was also yesterday. It was an hour ago, don’t you understand? It just happened, I just took that ride, just tasted those lips, just heard that whistle.

  The train had seemed faster than anything to her that day, dazzling in its speed. There were race cars that went faster than the train, though, and planes that went faster than the cars, and rockets that went faster than the planes, but what still blew them all away was time itself, the days and months and the years, oh yes, the years. They went faster than anything man had the capacity to invent, so fast that for a while they fooled you into thinking they were slow, and was there any crueler trick than that?

  The day Henry fell off the porch rail and broke his wrist, she’d scooped him into her arms and carried him up the steps and into the house before calling the doctor, doing it easily, without a thought. Today, though, she’d gone down the stairs one at a time, dragging the laundry basket behind her and clutching the railing.

  She got to her feet and went inside in search of her car keys, ready to go to the hotel, a place that time had forgotten for a while and then remembered and returned to her.

  18

  I DO BELIEVE IT would be fatal.

  Shit, what an encouraging statement that had been. Eric was past the casino parking lot and the old Pluto Water plant when his foot went heavy and hard to the brake pedal and a car behind him honked and swerved to avoid a collision. The driver shouted something as he went outside the double-yellow and passed, but Eric didn’t turn. Instead, he pulled slowly to the side of the road and into a parking space, staring out of the driver’s window.

  Sitting there on a short rail spur in the middle of town was a white boxcar with a red Pluto devil painted on the side. According to the sign nearby, this was the French Lick Railway Museum, and as far as Eric could tell, it consisted of an old depot and a handful of decrepit train cars. Only one of which had caught his eye today.

  He shut the engine off and got out. Might as well have a look. The wind came at him right away, warm and heavy, as he walked over to the station. When he entered, an elderly man wearing an engineer’s cap and bifocals looked up.

  “Welcome!”

  “Hey,” Eric said. “Yeah, look… I was just wondering…”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s the story on that Pluto boxcar?”

  “Good-looking devil, ain’t it?” the man said and laughed as Eric felt a tide of liberation break through him. This train car was real.

  “Sure is,” Eric said. “You know how old it is?”

  “Oh, fifty year, maybe. Not one of the originals.”

  “Okay. You mind if I take a look?”

  “Shoot, no. Go on and climb inside if you’d like, but watch yourself. Them cars are taller than they look. Can fall right out of one. Say, you want to go on the next ride? Got a train runs up the valley, locomotive driven, just like the old days.”

  “Locomotive driven,” Eric echoed. “They happen to run that in the evenings?”

  “I’m sorry, no. Daytime only. Next ride in forty minutes. You want a ticket?”

  “I don’t think so. Don’t really like trains.”

  The old man looked at him as if Eric had just called his daughter easy.

  “I’ve had some bad experiences with them recently, that’s all,” Eric said. “Thanks a lot.”

  He closed the door and went back out into the heat and over to the Pluto car. The door was shoved most of the way shut and barely moved when he pushed on it. The size of the thing was impressive—they never looked that big from behind the wheel of a car. Had to be twelve feet tall, and the steel couplers on either side looked invincible, as if you could bang on them all day with a sledge and never do a bit of damage.

  There was a ladder on either end of the car, as well as a few iron rungs on the front. He reached out and wrapped his fist around one of those, leaned on it, and that was when he saw the splotches. Glistening stains on the crushed stone beneath the car.

  Water marks.

  While he watched, another drop of water fell onto the stone, and he saw that it was coming from inside the car rather than from underneath it. When he stared through the door, though, there was nothing but old, dry dirt on the floor.

  He tightened his grip around the rung of the ladder and hoisted himself up, swinging his left foot up and over the side. Hung there for a minute, peering into the shadowed interior, and then slid through.

  The boxcar was heavy with trapped heat, the air smelling of rust. The car seemed far larger on the inside than on the outside, the opposite end lost in darkness. The rippled steel walls seemed to drink in the light, holding it all to the th
in shaft in the center.

  The floor beneath his feet was dry, but he could hear water now, a gentle sloshing sound. He took a hesitant step forward, out of the light, and felt cold moisture seep through his shoes and socks and find his skin.

  He bent down and reached with his hand, dipped his fingertips into the water. About an inch deep, frigid.

  Another step toward the sloshing sound, which had an even, constant beat. Water covered the floor throughout the dark portions of the boxcar, and he wanted to move back to the dry boards and the square of sunlight but kept shuffling forward into the darkness despite himself.

  He was ten feet from the door and still moving when the silhouette took shape.

  It was all the way at the back of the car, lost to the darkness except for the distinctive outline of a bowler hat.

  Eric stopped where he was, the water like a winter creek on his feet, and stared down the remaining length of the boxcar, watching the silhouette take starker shape, first the shoulders and then the torso. The man was sitting in the water with his back against the wall and his knees drawn up, and he was tapping a slow, steady beat with the toe of his right shoe, slapping it into the water, which rose almost to his ankles.

  “An elegy,” he said, “is a song for the dead.”

  Eric couldn’t speak. It wasn’t just from fear or astonishment but from an almost physical thing, a limit he didn’t understand and couldn’t do anything about. He was a spectator in this car. Here to watch. To listen.

  “I can barely hear it,” the man said. His voice was a sandpaper whisper. “What about you?”

  The violin music was back, soft as a breeze, as if it couldn’t penetrate the walls of the boxcar.

  “Been waiting a long time to get home,” the man said. “Longer ride than I’d have liked.”

  Eric couldn’t make out his face, couldn’t see anything but the form of him.

  “People ’round here seem to have forgotten it,” the man said, “but this is my valley. Was once. Will be again.”

  His voice seemed to be gathering strength, and the features of his suit were now showing, along with his nose and mouth and shadowed eye sockets.

  “Ain’t but a trace of my blood left,” he said, “but that’s enough. That’s enough.”

  The man dropped his hands into the water then, two soft splashes, and pushed off the floor. His silhouette rippled as he stood, like a water reflection pushed by wind, and something that had been unhooked in Eric’s brain suddenly connected again and he knew that he had to move.

  He turned and stumbled back for the streak of sun that represented the door, slid on the wet floor but righted himself, and then banged off the wall, groping with his hands. He got out of the water and onto dry floorboards and then had his hand around the edge of the door, shoved his shoulder through and lunged into the light.

  His feet caught and he was free but falling, landing on his ass in the dirt and stone.

  “Now, what did I tell you!” someone shouted, and Eric looked up to see the old man in the engineer’s cap standing just outside the depot, shaking his head. “I said watch your step coming out of there!”

  Eric didn’t answer, just got to his feet and brushed the dirt from his jeans as he moved away from the train car. He took a few steps before turning to look back at it. After a few seconds he walked all the way back and dropped to one knee below the door.

  The water marks were gone. The stones were pale and dry under the sun.

  “You ain’t hurt, are you?” the old man yelled, and Eric ignored him again and took hold of the edge of the big cargo door, leaned his shoulder into it, and grunted and got it moving. He slid it all the way back as the old man yelled at him to go easy on the equipment, then stepped aside and looked in.

  The sun caught the corners now, and there was nothing in sight, neither man nor water. He leaned in and stared into the far end, stared at the emptiness. Then he bent and picked up a small stone and tossed it inside, listened to it skitter off the dry floor.

  The wind picked up and blew hard at his back then, swirling dust around the old boxcar. There was a high, giddy whistling as it filled the car, as if it had been working on the door for a long time and was delighted to find someone had finally opened it the rest of the way.

  19

  HE CALLED ALYSSA BRADFORD from the car, sitting with the air-conditioning blasting and the vents angled so the cold air blew directly into his face. The old man from the railway museum was leaning against the door frame, watching him with a frown.

  “Alyssa, I did have a few follow-up questions I forgot to ask,” Eric said when she answered. “The bottle of water you gave me…. Can you tell me anything about it at all?”

  She was quiet for a moment. Then said, “Not really. That’s why I wanted you—”

  “I understand what you wanted. But I need a little help. It’s the only thing you brought me that first day. The only artifact of any sort you gave me. No photos, no scrapbook, just that bottle. I guess I’m wondering why you thought it was so special.”

  He was staring at the Pluto boxcar, at the grinning red devil.

  “It’s strange,” she said eventually. “Don’t you think it’s strange? The way it stays cold, the way it… I don’t know, feels. There’s something off about it. And it is the only thing—and I mean the only thing—that he had from childhood. My husband told me that he kept it in a locked drawer in his bedside table, and said the bottle was a souvenir from his childhood and that no one was allowed to touch it. As you can see, it meant a lot to him for some reason. That’s why I’m so curious.”

  “Yes,” Eric said. “I’m curious, too.”

  “When I talked to you at Eve’s memorial service,” she said, “and I saw how you intuited the importance of that photograph, I knew I wanted to give you the bottle. I thought you might see something, feel something.”

  That damn photograph was why she had hired him, why she’d sent him here. He could have guessed it from the start but instead he’d chosen to believe her hollow assertions of being impressed by the film. Claire wouldn’t have been fooled.

  “I think I need to talk to your husband,” he said.

  “What? Why?”

  “Because he’s the one who’s actually related to the guy, Alyssa. It’s his family, and I need to ask him what the hell he really knows about his father. What he’s heard, what he thinks. I need to ask—”

  “Eric, the entire point of this film was that it would be a surprise for my husband and his family.”

  I don’t care were the words that rose in his throat, but he needed to keep any touch of hysteria down, and he was close to shouting now, close to telling her that something was very deeply wrong with Campbell Bradford, and once he got started on that, it’d be rolling downhill faster than he could control, stories of phantom trains and whispering ghosts coming out, and then his reputation in Chicago would be crushed just as completely as the one he’d had in Hollywood.

  “I’d like to ask you to rethink that,” he said. “I believe I’m going to need to find out a little more from him to make any progress.”

  “I’ll consider it,” she said in a tone of voice that made it clear she would not. “But I’m heading out right now and I’m afraid I have to let you go.”

  “One more thing, Alyssa.”

  “Yes?”

  “Is there any chance your father-in-law played the violin?”

  “Yes, he played beautifully. Self-taught, too. I take it you’re having some luck finding out about him, after all.”

  Eric said, “I’m learning some things, yes.”

  “Well, I’m amazed you learned that, because he hated to play in front of people.”

  “Really.”

  “Yes. As far as I know, he would only play when he was alone, with the door closed. Said he had stage fright and didn’t like to be watched when he played. But he could play beautifully. And there was a quality to it… maybe it was because of the fact that I never saw him play and onl
y heard it, but there was something about the sound that was absolutely haunting.”

  He drove back to the hotel then, leaving the Acura beneath one of the few trees in the parking lot for shade and avoiding the bright light of the rotunda, sticking to the perimeter hallway. The headache was showing itself again but not yet at full strength, a scout party sent ahead of the battalion.

  The first thing he saw when he opened the door to his hotel room was the shattered camera on the floor. The cleaning people had been in here, but they’d left the camera on the floor, clearly unsure of what the hell to do with what was obviously expensive equipment, even if destroyed.

  He’d never even wanted to use that damn camera, a gift that felt like a taunt from his father-in-law, a reminder that the days when he’d used first-rate studio equipment were long gone. A reminder of his failure.

  “Claire tells me you’re going to be doing something on your own,” Paul Porter had said. “Thought this would help.”

  He’d emphasized the something, two unspoken questions—what and when?—clear in the word. And Eric had to thank him with false gratitude and put on a show of marveling at the camera, Claire standing beside him, watching it all with a smile.

  She’d been on his ass for months, prodding him along when all he needed was some patience, and if she thought he missed the connection between all that and her father’s gift, she was crazy. Ever since they’d left L.A. she’d been after him for his plans, and though he’d satisfied her with them at first—write a script himself, get some financial backing, direct his own indie film and use that as a springboard back to the big time—it wasn’t long before she was dissatisfied with his efforts.

  His efforts. In truth that wasn’t the best phrase, maybe. He hadn’t done all that much. Had not, for example, directed the film or sought financing or even written the script. Started the script, for that matter. It wasn’t something you could rush right into, though, you had to have the right idea first, and it was going to need to be a big idea, with the right scope and ambition, and then you had to let it gestate for a time…