So Cold the River

by Michael Koryta

  Danny said, “Well, that’s what I was wondering. If what this guy told Grandpa is true, and he’s making a movie about somebody in your family, don’t he owe you something?”

  It was a fine question. A fine question. What right did strangers have to go wandering around asking about Josiah’s own blood? Let alone turn a profit from it?

  “You said these guys are headed down to see Edgar today?”

  “That’s right. I was going to go down there myself, make sure they wasn’t running some sort of scam like the ones you hear about with older folks, but you’d told me to come by…”

  Josiah finished his beer, crushed the can, and tossed it aside.

  “We’ll take my truck.”

  21

  ERIC LEFT ANNE IN the rotunda when Kellen called to say he was nearing the hotel, took the bottle back to his room, and then went outside to wait. He was feeling better after having the elderly woman confirm all of the things he’d seen in the bottle.

  Kellen pulled up outside the hotel in his Cayenne with the windows down and hip-hop music thumping from the speakers, old stuff, Gang Starr that had probably come out when Eric was in high school and Kellen was, what, seven? Eric had to suppress a smile as he got inside the car. A midthirties white guy like him sitting in a Porsche listening to rap—ah, this was almost like being back in L.A.

  “You feeling all right?” Kellen asked when Eric climbed in.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Look pale.”

  “I’m white.”

  “Knew there was something funny about you.” Kellen pulled away from the hotel. He was wearing jeans and a shiny white T-shirt made from one of those fabrics that were supposed to wick moisture, along with sunglasses and a silver watch.

  “Are you close to your brother?” Eric asked, looking around the Porsche and thinking about the source of it.

  “Oh, yeah. We talk about three, four times a week.”

  Eric nodded.

  “You’re wondering if it’s hard,” Kellen said. “Being his brother. Being the unfamous one.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” Eric lied.

  “Man, everybody wonders. It’s cool, don’t worry about it.”

  Eric waited.

  “I love my brother,” Kellen said. “I’m proud of him.” The fierceness in his voice seemed directed at himself, not Eric. “But the truth? No, it’s not easy. Of course not.”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “I was supposed to be a professional basketball player. That was my destiny. I was certain of it. By the time I was in eighth grade, I was six four, and I was an athlete, you know? In AAU ball I had coaches coming to see me from the ACC, Big Ten, Big East, all of ’em. This at fourteen.

  “I was a great student, too, reading books all the time. But you want to know why? This is the truth, man, I swear it—I was working on my image for when I joined the league. The NBA. I was going to be a paradox, you know, the professional athlete who was also a scholar. I had this plan for it, how in press conferences I was going to make comparisons between ball games and battles, coaches and generals, referees and diplomats. I would actually plan the interviews in my head, no lie. I would hear them, man, hear what these announcers would be saying about me, hear it like it was real.”

  Eric looked away, feeling embarrassment not for Kellen, but for himself. Kellen was describing a child’s fantasy. He was also describing Eric’s twenties. And, hell, most of his early thirties, when mythical movie reviewers had raved constantly about films he would now never make. Was just a matter of time, he’d known, until the fantasies became the facts. He’d been sure of that.

  “When you’re real young, all the coaches care about are tools,” Kellen said. “And, brother, I had them. Size, speed, strength. Didn’t have the feel for the game that some of the other kids had, but that comes with time, right? Well, it didn’t come for me. Ever. I was hearing the word focus so much it should’ve been my name, but I just couldn’t get into the flow the way I needed, could never lose myself in the rhythm of it. By high school, when other kids caught up in size, that was showing.”

  They were driving out through the hills south of the hotel now, winding country roads.

  “My brother feels that game,” Kellen said. “When he plays it, there isn’t anything else there. Nothing. He sees it all before it happens; even as a kid he was like that. He’d come down the lane on a fast break, go right to left, then somebody would step out to cut him off, and he’d see it just before they committed, and then dish… he was slick. No question. But he was a kid, too, and scrawny as hell. So it was no big deal.”

  Eric was silent, waiting.

  “My junior year of high school,” Kellen said, “I had a game in front of some major coaches. And I just butchered it. Scored thirteen and had eight rebounds but damn near double figures in turnovers, too. They had this small, fast team that ran a press the whole time and just rattled the hell out of me. I couldn’t handle it. Each time I’d make a decision on what to do with the ball, it was a half second too late. Just a disaster.

  “So that’s on a Friday night, and the next afternoon I go with my parents to watch my brother’s eighth-grade game. And Darnell, he just ran on ’em. That’s all. Not a soul on that court could even imagine playing at his level. He drove anytime he felt like it, got shots anytime he wanted them, made passes when he didn’t, stole the ball from the other team like they’d left the doors unlocked and ladders at the windows. It was filthy. I went out on the court after the game and I congratulated him, but it was stiff.”

  He ran a palm over the back of his head, leaned forward, close to the steering wheel.

  “That night, he’s sitting in the living room watching TV, and I walked in and changed the channel without saying a word. He got pissed, naturally, and I just went after him. Tackled his ass over the couch and hit him and had my hands around his throat when my dad came in and dragged me off.”

  He gave a small, wry smile. “My father, he is not a small man. He took me out in the yard, and he just whipped my ass. Knocked me up one side and down the other and then kept coming, and the whole time he’s doing it, he’s saying, Who you mad at? Who you mad at? Over and over in this real soft voice, Who you mad at? Because he’d been at my game and then at my brother’s, you know, and he understood what was going on. He understood it better than I did.”

  “Did you end up playing college ball?” Eric said.

  “No. I had scholarship offers to small D-1 schools, but nowhere elite, and if I couldn’t play at that level, I didn’t want to play at all. Some people would call that quitting. I call it understanding. Because I never quit playing, I busted my ass right up until the last second of my high school career. But basketball, it was not my game. And I came to understand that. I had this real high grade point average, which was supposed to be like a complement to my game, right? Well, that changed. I refocused. Got an academic scholarship and then a degree and then a master’s, and now I’m closing in on the doctorate. I am good at what I do, right? But it’s not playing ball. That’s not quitting, though. That’s changing. That’s growth.”

  “Good thing you’re a likable guy,” Eric said. “Because if there’s anything more obnoxious than a wise old man, it’s a wise young one.”

  “Man, it just sounds good ’cause I’ve had a lot of time to think on it,” Kellen said with a laugh, and then he hit the brakes and twisted the wheel, taking a hard turn off the road and down onto a rutted gravel drive. “Damn. Almost missed it.”

  This was a far sight different from visiting Anne McKinney. Instead of the well-kept two-story home on the hill surrounded by windmills and weather vanes, there was a small house with warped and peeling siding and a front gutter that hung about a foot off the roof at one end. An old aerial antenna was mounted at the peak of the roof, tilting unnaturally and covered with rust. There was a trailer set on stone blocks no more than thirty feet from the house and only one gravel drive and one mailbox.

  “You kn
ow which it is?” Eric said.

  “He told me to come to the house.”

  Kellen parked in front of the trailer and they got out and closed the car doors. When they did, a dog with long golden fur rose from the tall weeds that grew alongside the block foundation. Eric tensed, thinking this was the sort of place where bite might precede bark, but then he saw the dog’s tail wagging and he lowered his hand and snapped his fingers. The dog walked over with the stiff gait of arthritic hips and smelled Eric’s hand, then shoved its muzzle against his leg, the tail picking up speed.

  “You make friends fast,” Kellen said.

  It was a mutt, some blend of golden retriever and shepherd probably, and was friendly as hell. Eric scratched its ears for a few seconds before moving on to the house, the dog following at his side like they’d been together forever. Only the screen door was closed, and when they got there, Kellen called out a loud hello instead of knocking.

  “It’s open,” someone on the other side said.

  Kellen pulled the screen door back and the dog immediately started through. Eric made a grab at its neck but found no collar, and then the thing was inside the house, nails clicking on the old wood floor.

  “What in hell you go and let him in here for?” the voice inside shouted. “He’ll wreck this place faster than a hurricane.”

  “Sorry,” Kellen said, and then he stepped inside and Eric followed, seeing Edgar Hastings for the first time, an angular-faced, white-haired man in a blue flannel shirt, sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. The TV was on but the volume was off. He had a pack of cigarettes in the pocket of the flannel shirt, and a crossword puzzle on his lap. One word had been filled in. There were a half dozen juice glasses on the end tables around him, all of them partially filled with what looked like Coke that had gone flat.

  “I’ll get him out of here for you,” Kellen said. The dog was off in the kitchen now, regarding them from behind the table, and something about his expression told Eric those arthritic hips were going to get a hell of a lot looser when the dog wanted to avoid being caught and put out of the house.

  “Oh, don’t worry about Riley. I’ll get him out in time. Go on and sit on the davenport there.”

  Davenport. There was a term Eric hadn’t heard in a while. He and Kellen sat on the couch Edgar had indicated, a spring popping beneath Kellen, and Riley, as if aware that the threat of imminent eviction had passed, came back over and dropped to his haunches at Eric’s feet.

  “Nice dog,” Eric said.

  “My grandson’s, not mine. He lives in the trailer.” Edgar was regarding Eric with a harsh squint, skeptical. His face was spider-webbed with wrinkles, even his lips, and whiskers were scattered on his chin. “Now tell me why in tarnation you want to know about Campbell Bradford?”

  “Well, Eric here is interested in someone of the same name,” Kellen said, “but we’re not sure if it can be the same person. His Campbell is still alive.”

  The old man shook his head. “Not the right man, then. He’d have to be long dead. Who sent you down here to ask about him?”

  “A woman in Chicago,” Eric said. “She’s a relative of Campbell’s, but the one she knows is ninety-five now.”

  “Different man,” Edgar said flatly. “Should’ve made a phone call.”

  “Well, my Campbell says he grew up in this town. Left when he was a teenager.”

  “He’s lying,” Edgar said.

  “You claim to know everyone in the town?”

  “I know everyone has the name Bradford, and I absolutely know everyone has the name Campbell Bradford! Hell, anybody from my time would. Wasn’t never but one Campbell Bradford in this valley, so if somebody’s telling you otherwise, they’re lying. Why in hell they would want to do that, though, I have no idea. He wasn’t the sort of man you’d want to pretend to be. Campbell went beyond bad.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He was worthless as worthless gets, ran around with every gambler and crook ever came to town, didn’t pay any mind to his family at all. Used to keep a hotel room just for fornicating, drank all hours of the day, never met a truth he wouldn’t rather turn into a lie. When he ran off, he left his wife without a cent, and then she died and my parents had to take in the child. Those days, that’s what folks would do. My parents was Christian people and they believed that’s what they ought do, so that’s what they done.”

  He offered the last part like a challenge.

  “He doesn’t sound impressive, I’ll grant you that,” Eric said.

  “Campbell even went beyond all that,” Edgar answered. “Like I told you, that man went beyond bad. There was the devil in him.”

  “You’re telling me he was evil?”

  “You say that like it’s funny, but it ain’t. Yes, he was evil. He was, sure as I’m sitting here. It’s been damn near eighty years since the man left. I was a boy. But I remember him like I remember my own wife, God rest her. He put the chill in your heart. My parents saw it; hell, everybody saw it. The man was evil. Came to town in the middle of the high times, started in with the gamblers and the whiskey runners, made the sort of money doesn’t come from honest work.”

  Eric felt an unpleasant throb in his skull, the headache level jumping on him.

  “You told me Campbell didn’t have any family left but Josiah,” Kellen said.

  “That’s right. Josiah is Campbell’s great-grandson, last true member of Campbell’s line that there is, least as far as anyone around here knows. I’m as good as a grandfather to him myself, I suppose, though there’s plenty days when I wouldn’t want to claim that. Josiah’s got him a streak of difficult.”

  Kellen hid a laugh by coughing into his fist, looking at Eric with amusement.

  “I mean, we was all like family, you know, even though I’m not blood relation to that side,” Edgar Hastings said. “Josiah’s mother, she called me Uncle Ed, and I thought of her as a niece. We was close, too. We was awful close.”

  The room seemed smaller to Eric now, as if the walls had sneaked in on him during a blink, and he was more aware of the heat, felt perspiration worming from his pores and sliding along his skin. How in the hell could Edgar Hastings possibly wear a flannel shirt in here? He took his hand away from the dog’s head and got a whine in response, one that sounded less like a complaint and more like a question.

  “Like I told you, I just don’t know who’d want to bother with a man like that in some sort of movie,” Edgar said. “Not that I think most movies are worth anything anyhow, I got that TV set on from sunrise to sunup and don’t never find anything a normal person would want to watch.”

  That one seemed to amuse Kellen again, but the smile left his face when Edgar flicked his eyes over, and Kellen said, “Um, so there’s just no way the Campbell who left this town could still be alive up in Chicago?”

  “No. He left in fall of ’twenty-nine, and he was in his thirties then.”

  Eric said, “Could it be he had another son after he left? Gave the son his name?”

  “Hell, anything’s possible after he left.”

  “And is there any chance that he came back to town, or brought his son back…?”

  “None.” Edgar gave an emphatic shake of his head.

  “You met the man personally,” Eric said. “Correct?”

  “Yes. I was only a boy when he left, but I remember him, and I remember being scared to death of him. He’d come by and smile and talk to me, and there was something in that man’s eyes like to turn your stomach.”

  “You told me he was involved with bootlegging,” Kellen said.

  “Oh, sure. Campbell was supposed to provide the best liquor in the valley, and the valley was waist-deep in liquor during Prohibition. My father didn’t drink much, but he said Campbell’s whiskey made a man feel like he could take on the world.”

  “They still make booze that will do that,” Eric said with a grin that Edgar wouldn’t match.

  “I’ve seen liquor turn good men sour,” he said. �
�I used to have a glass or two, but truth is, I stayed away from it much as I could. It takes things from a man. You look at my grandson, he’s thirty year old and can’t even get off my property. Good boy, means well, but he lets the liquor take him. Wasn’t for me, who knows where he’d be now, though. My wife had the best luck with him but she passed nine years ago.”

  “So he was a bootlegger,” Eric said. “Illegal, yes, but not evil. I don’t see—”

  “Campbell saw to it that the law in town stayed bought off to certain enterprises,” Edgar said. “All the sorts that he was involved in. When they didn’t, they died. Was a deputy in town back then who was a cousin of my father. Good man. He wanted to investigate Campbell for killing a man had tried to run out on some debts. Wanted to charge him, thought he had the evidence. Told people in town he was going to nail Campbell to the wall. It’s a turn of phrase, you know. Figure of speech.”

  Nobody spoke when Edgar paused, staring at Eric with flat eyes.

  “They found that deputy nailed to his own barn wall. Literally. Had ten-penny nails through his palms, wrists, and neck. One through his privates.”

  The dog whined again at Eric’s feet. Kellen said, “Did anyone try to arrest Campbell for that one?”

  Edgar gave a small, sad smile. “I don’t believe so. Matter of fact, I believe it made things a little easier on Campbell. Those who had thoughts of crossing him, well, maybe they changed their minds.”

  At that moment, there came the sounds of an engine and tires plowing through gravel, and Eric and Kellen twisted to face the window as the dog barked and stood.

  It was an old Ford Ranger, two men inside. Came to a stop just behind Kellen’s Porsche and then the doors banged open and the men stepped out. A shorter, redheaded guy from the passenger side, and from the driver’s side a lean, dark-haired…

  “Oh, shit,” Eric said. The driver was Josiah Bradford.

  “Who is it?” Edgar said, pushing up from his chair and peering out the window. “Oh, hell, it’s just my grandson and Josiah. You might as well meet Josiah. Like I said, he’s the last of Campbell’s line.”