So Cold the River

by Michael Koryta

  Yes, this day was spinning away from him in an altogether unpleasant fashion. Hell, the whole weekend was. Had gone south fast and furious, starting last night. Things had been fine Friday morning, fine as they ever were, at least.

  That was the problem, though—things never were fine and never were going to change. Not unless he took some action. He’d be sitting on the porch drinking piss-water beer and matching wits with Danny for the rest of his pathetic life, till his reflexes went and he could no longer handle the truck with booze in his veins and he put it off the highway and into the trees just like his worthless father had before him.

  “Something’s got to change,” he whispered to himself, sitting there in the cab of the truck with sweat trickling along his neck and the beer warming in the sun while horses walked in circles at the Amish farm next door, turning some sort of mill wheel, their heads down the whole time, step after step after step. “Something has got to change.”

  He got out of the truck but didn’t want to go in the house, didn’t want to sit on the stained couch and look at the cracks in the wall and the sloped floor. The porch rail glinted under the sun, sure, but now he realized just how damn little the porch rail meant. The house was still a dump, with sagging gutters and a stain-streaked roof and mildew-covered siding. Sure, those things could be addressed, but it took money, and even then, what the hell was the point? Could only accomplish so much with polish on a turd.

  Instead of going inside, he took the beer and set off on foot, walked through the backyard and into the field beyond, picking his way through the barbed-wire fence that separated the properties. He’d walk up into the wooded hills, have a few more beers.

  He was halfway across the field, head bowed against the sun and the warm western wind, when he remembered the second half of his dream, the man waiting for him at the edge of the tree line. The thought was enough to make him look up, as if he’d see the old bastard standing out there. Wasn’t anything in sight, but the memory chilled him just the same, thinking of the way the guy had been shaking his head at Josiah as the day faded away and the night came on. Weird damn dream. And that after the one on the train, the same man standing in the boxcar with water around his ankles.

  We’re going home to take what’s yours.

  There were those who believed dreams meant something. Josiah had never been of that breed, but today he couldn’t help it, thinking about the man in the bowler hat. Take what’s yours, he’d said. Wasn’t much in the world that belonged to Josiah. Funny, though, him having a dream like that just when everyone was asking questions about his family. Who the hell would possibly care about Campbell at this point? Had been damn near eighty years since the thug hopped a train and disappeared.

  Hopped a train. An old-fashioned train, with a steam locomotive and a caboose, like the one in his dream.

  “Was that you, Campbell?” Josiah said softly, tramping across the field, and he smiled. A bunch of crazy, stupid thoughts, that’s what he was lost to today. Setting fires and stealing gems and seeing his great-grandfather in dreams? He was coming unhinged.

  The sun was hot and the beer cans clanged awkwardly against his leg as he walked, but he didn’t mind. His shirt was soaked with sweat and gnats buzzed around his neck but that was fine, too. It felt good to be outside, good to be moving, good to be alone. He’d grown up in the woods and fields out here, spent more time in them than in his home. Field runners, Edgar used to call him and Danny. Old Edgar had done well by Josiah. Josiah’s own family had been such a damned disaster that he’d as good as taken in with the Hastings instead. He and Danny had been close as brothers, and while Danny wasn’t much in the brains department, Josiah had never minded that so much as he did lately. Fact was, he’d always liked Danny fine, just looked down on him a touch. Danny was a good man, but not one who was going to do anything with his life. Even when they’d dropped out of high school on the same day, it had felt like Danny was playing out his fate while Josiah was making a choice. Josiah was the half of the pair who would accomplish something, the half with ambition.

  That had always been the notion in his head, at least. Now, though, he felt as if he’d sobered up and took a blink and realized there was nothing separating him from Danny at all, nothing that anybody else would see, at least, nothing tangible. They were both still in town, living in shitty houses and driving shitty cars and swinging weed eaters and hedge clippers and drinking too much. How in the hell had that happened?

  The place he was headed today was a spot he’d found when he was a kid, twelve years old and hiking alone. Well, not hiking as much as running, with the sting of the old man’s belt still on his back. They’d lived only two miles from where he did now, two miles separated by the fields he’d just come through.

  That day he ran until his lungs were clenched tight as fists and his hamstrings were screaming, and then he’d slowed to a stumbling walk, moved through another field and into the woods, and found himself scrambling across the face of a steep hill. It was a difficult climb, overgrown and pockmarked with slabs of limestone. He’d heard a gurgling noise and frozen, listening and growing progressively creeped out because the sound was coming from beneath him. From right under his feet, he was sure of that, yet there wasn’t so much as a puddle in sight.

  He’d followed the sound, fought down through the trees, and found a cliff face, a good hundred feet of sheer rock leading to a strange pool of water below that had an eerie, aquamarine glow. The pool was still as a farm pond, but all around it the gurgling, churning noise of water in motion persisted. Birch trees had tumbled off the ridge and lay half in and half out of the water, their ghostly white limbs fading into green depths. All along the top of the cliff face, root systems dangled free, hanging across the stone like something out of one of those slasher movies set in the swamps.

  The ridge ran around all sides of the pool, forming a giant bowl, and it took some effort for him to pick his way down to it. At the bottom the place seemed even more ominous than at the top, because here there was no getting out fast, and the wind picked leaves off the trees that rimmed the ridge and sent them tumbling down on you. Now and then one corner of the pool would seem to snarl, spitting water into more water, and beneath the rocks water trickled, always audible but invisible.

  Josiah had never imagined such a place.

  He’d risked another beating that night by telling his father about it, swearing the place was something magic, and the old man had laughed and told him it was the Wesley Chapel Gulf, or the Elrod Gulf if you were an old-timer, one of the spots where the Lost River broke the surface again, coughed up by the caves that held it.

  “You stay away from there in flood season,” the old man had warned. “You know where the water was today? Well, it’ll rise up thirty feet or more along that cliff when the underground part of the river fills up, and it’ll spin, just like a whirlpool. I’ve seen it, boy, and it’s made for drowning. You go there in flood season and I’ll tan your ass.”

  Naturally, Josiah had gone back to the gulf during the spring floods. And son of a bitch if the old man wasn’t telling the truth for once—the water did climb the cliff face, and it did spin like a whirlpool. There was a shallow spot in the bowl-shaped ridge that held it, and the water broke through there and found a dry channel and filled it, rushing along for a piece and then disappearing into one of the swallow holes only to resurface a bit farther on.

  It was one strange river, and it held Josiah’s attention for most of his youth. He and Danny traced the dry channels and located the swallow holes, found more than a hundred of them, some drinking the water down in thirsty, roiling pools, others spitting it back to the surface as if disgusted. There were springs, too, some of them so small as to be missed unless you were standing beside them, springs that put off a potent odor of eggs gone bad. They even found traces of old dwellings scattered along the river and through the hills, rotted timbers and moss-covered slabs of stone.

  The gulf became a regular spot f
or Josiah, but one he’d never hiked to with anybody but Danny until he was sixteen, when he brought a girl named Marie up to it one night. She’d bitched the whole way, said the place was creepy, then stopped him from putting his hand up her skirt and had been with another guy not a week later. After that, Josiah never took anybody else back.

  Sometimes people came by and dumped trash down the slope and into the pool, and that incensed Josiah in a way few things ever could. He’d hauled countless beer cans and tires out of there, once an entire toilet. When he was in high school, the national forest claimed the property, realizing it was something special, and they cleaned it out and put up a sign and took to monitoring the place.

  Today he climbed up to the east side of the ridge and picked his way down to a jutting limestone ledge that looked out over the pool below. He sat with his feet dangling off the ledge and cracked open a beer. It was lukewarm by now.

  If he were on the opposite side of this same hill and the leaves were off the trees, he’d be able to look out to the house he’d grown up in, what was left of it, at least. Place had been vacant for ten years, and last spring a tree had come down and bashed a hole in the roof above the kitchen, letting the rain come in. He was surprised the county hadn’t knocked the house down when they came to remove the tree.

  The gulf was within walking distance of his childhood home, and within walking distance of his adult home. He was all of two miles from the place of his birth.

  Two miles. That was how far he’d gotten in life. Two fucking miles.

  He drank another beer as the sun sank behind the trees and the air began to cool. Down in the gulf, long trunks of fallen trees weathered to bone white faded into the shadows, the blue-green of the water edging toward black. Now and then there was a churlish splashing at the edge of the pool as the Lost River gave up more of its hidden water, and the wet whispering of it moving through the stone below ground was always present. He opened one more beer but didn’t drink any, just set it beside him and stretched out on his back. He wanted to close his eyes for a piece. Try not to think about the man from Chicago or the one from the dream. Try not to think about anything.

  27

  ANNE McKINNEY ANSWERED THE door with bottle in hand. She smiled when Eric made introductions between her and Kellen but kept her hand on the door frame, too, looking less steady than she had earlier in the day.

  “It’s the same as yours, isn’t it?” she said, offering Eric the bottle.

  He turned the bottle over in his hand and nodded. Every detail was the same, but this one was dry and room temperature, felt natural against his skin.

  “It’s a perfect match.”

  “I don’t know who you’d ask to compare them. Maybe it was a foolish idea.”

  “No, it’s a great idea. Kellen knows somebody who should be able to help.”

  “Good.”

  “And you’re sure you don’t care? Because I’d hate to open this if I thought—”

  She waved him off. “Oh, it doesn’t matter. I’ve got more, and I doubt anybody will care much about them when I’m gone anyhow. I’ll leave them to the historical society, but they’re not going to miss one out of the lot.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How you feeling now?” she asked with what seemed to be genuine concern.

  “I’m doing fine,” he lied and then surprised himself by saying, “what about you?”

  “Oh, I’m a little tired. Did more than I should have today probably.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t you worry about that. It’s just been one of those days…” Her eyes drifted past him, out to the windmills that lined the yard and looked down on the town below like sentries. “Some strange weather coming in. If I were you two, I’d have an umbrella handy tomorrow.”

  “Really?” Kellen said, looking up at the blue sky. “Looks perfect to me.”

  “Going to change, though,” she said. “Going to change.”

  They thanked her again and went down the porch steps and back to the car. The chimes were jingling, a beautiful sound in an evening that was going dark fast.

  Kellen asked if he had a dinner preference, and when Eric said no, they ended up back at the buffet in the casino, because Kellen said he was “in a mood to put a hurting on some food.” By the time they got inside, Eric’s stomach was swirling and the headache had his vision a little cloudy, sensitive to the lights that surrounded them. All he needed to do was eat a little. Surely that was it.

  When they entered the long, wide, and brightly lit dining room, the smell of the food was strong and immediate, and Eric had to hold his breath for a second to ward off the surge of nausea the odor brought. They followed the hostess to a table out in the middle of the room, and he wished she’d put them somewhere else, a corner maybe, or at least close to the wall. When she took their drink orders, he barked out, “Water’s fine, thanks,” just because he wanted her to go away, wanted everybody in the damn room to go away until he’d had a chance to get himself together. But Kellen was already heading toward the serving areas, so he followed.

  The china plate felt heavy in his hands, and he grabbed at food without giving it much thought. He had a plate full of fruit and vegetables when he turned and found himself staring at the carving station, watching a heavyset man in a white apron work a massive knife through a roast. The knife bit into the meat and then the man leaned on it, using his weight to drive it through, and when he did, juice flowed from the meat and formed a pink pool on the cutting board and Eric’s knees went unsteady and a hum filled his ears.

  He turned fast, too fast, almost spilling the plate, and started for the table, which seemed miles away. His breath was coming in jagged hisses, and then the hum picked up in pitch and almost took his stomach with it. He got to the table, thinking that he just needed the chair, just needed to get off his feet for a moment.

  For a few seconds, he thought that might actually do the trick. He leaned on the table with his forearms and concentrated on slowing his breathing, and he was just starting to feel a touch better when Kellen returned and sat before him with a steaming plate of food. Then the hum returned and his stomach went into the spin cycle.

  Kellen was oblivious, chattering away while he set to work with a knife and fork, and Eric couldn’t even speak, knowing only that he needed to get out of the room fast.

  He lurched to his feet and bumped into his own chair but shoved past it, eyes on the exit and the hallway beyond, which seemed to be undulating, all the harsh white light in the room slipping into motion now as the hum in his ears turned to a roar. A warming sensation enveloped him and spread through his limbs and tingled along his skin as he passed the cashier’s stand and kept moving toward the hallway, thinking, I’m going to make it, just before the warmth exploded into a scorching heat and the dancing lights went gray and then black and he fell to his knees and the room vanished around him.

  A soft, sweet strings melody lifted him and guided him through the tunnel that led to consciousness. It was a beautiful sound, so soothing, and when it began to fade, he was racked with sorrow, hated to let it go.

  He opened his eyes and stared directly into a glittering light fixture. Then a face floated down and blocked it, Kellen Cage’s face, eyes grave. He was saying Eric’s name, and Eric knew that he should answer but didn’t want to yet, didn’t want anyone to speak, because maybe if it was completely silent, he’d be able to hear that violin again.

  The first coherent thought he had was of the cold. Where before the blackout his flesh had tingled with warmth there was now a deep cold, but it felt good. The warmth had been ominous, a harbinger of physical disaster, and the cold seemed to be his body’s reassurance that it could handle the ailment on its own—Don’t worry, buddy, we got those boilers turned down for you.

  “Eric,” Kellen said again.

  “Yeah.” Eric licked his lips and said it again. “Yeah.”

  “We got an ambulance on the way.”

  There w
ere other faces over Kellen’s shoulder, a security guard talking into a radio and then a cluster of curious onlookers. Eric closed his eyes, feeling the embarrassment of this now, realizing that he’d just fainted.

  “No ambulance,” he said with his eyes closed, and took a deep breath.

  “You need to go to the hospital,” said someone with a deep and unfamiliar voice.

  “No.” Eric opened his eyes again, then rose slowly, until he was sitting upright with his arms hooked around his knees for balance. “I just need some sugar, that’s all. Hypoglycemic.”

  The security guard nodded, but Kellen’s face said bullshit. A woman nearby murmured that her sister was hypoglycemic and then left to get him a cookie.

  He was on his feet by the time she got back, and though the idea of food was sickening, he had to stick to the lie now, so he took the cookie and a glass of orange juice and got both of them down.

  “You sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” the security guard said.

  “I’m sure.”

  They called off the ambulance then, and Eric thanked the woman and the guard and made some lame joke to the rest of the onlookers about being happy to provide dinner theater. Then he told Kellen he wanted to head back to the hotel.

  They went out and walked down the sidewalk in silence and crossed to the parking lot. When they were halfway out to the Porsche, Kellen said, “Hypoglycemic?”

  “Sure. Didn’t I mention that?”

  “Um, no. Left that out.”

  They walked to the car and Eric stood with his hand on the passenger door handle for a few seconds before Kellen finally unlocked the doors. Once they were inside, Kellen turned to him.

  “You really should be going to a hospital right now.”

  “I just need some rest.”

  “Just need some rest? Man, you don’t even know what went on in there. One minute you were sitting at the table, next you were passed out in the hallway. Something like that happens, you don’t rest, you talk to a doctor.”