It took him a long time to work his way down until he was directly across from the van. Twice the blue light appeared and disappeared, and he decided that whoever was inside was checking the time. Impatient, wondering where the hell Josiah was. Waiting on him.
Ideas tumbled through his mind, endless options. He could walk right up and knock on the door, call this son of a bitch outside. Could pick up one of the large loose stones from the ditch and use it to bash the windshield in. Could sneak home and get his shotgun. One way or another, he’d get this asshole out and answering questions.
That should have been his desire, at least. Find out who this was and what in the hell he was doing following Josiah. Funny thing was, Josiah was having trouble bringing himself to care. Those questions he should be asking, they didn’t seem to matter anymore. All that mattered was the fact that someone was here watching his home. The hell with answers—Josiah wanted punishment. Wanted to crawl under the car, puncture the gas tank, set the thing on fire. Watch it blow this nameless son of a bitch sky high in a cloud of orange flame, teach him there were people to be fooled with and people not to be fooled with, and Josiah Bradford was absolutely of the latter set.
He dropped his hand into his pocket at the thought and wrapped his fingers around his cigarette lighter, actually tempted for a minute. But no, those answers were important, and if he blew up the van before the questions had been asked, he would surely regret it. So the dilemma was how to get the man inside the van out of it and willing to talk. Well, the cigarette lighter might help with that after all.
He pulled off his T-shirt and felt around the bottom edge of it until he found one of its holes. Worked his fingers in and tugged and then the cheap cotton tore, the sound loud. He went slower, quieter, tearing again and again until he had five separate strips of fabric. When he had the shirt torn up, he crammed the strips into his pockets, patted around the ditch with his hands until he found a large stone—felt like the broken-off corner of a cinder block—and then dropped to his belly, the weeds and gravel tearing at his skin as he crawled up onto the road and toward the van.
Slow, patient going, stopping occasionally to catch his breath and adjust his position. The ditch on the other side of the road was deeper, and it came to an end right where the van was parked, had a steel culvert that ran from one end of the dirt farm lane to the other. It was packed with dry leaves. Josiah waited for a moment, hearing nothing, and then he slid right under the van.
He left the cinder-block chunk behind, pushed across the gravel on his stomach until he was beneath the front of the van, and put his hand back in his pocket and took out the strips of T-shirt and the lighter. Then he sparked the lighter’s wheel and got the flame going and held it to the end of one strip of cloth and then another. When he had them both going, he reached out and tossed them down into the ditch, which was filled with leaves and grass and was dry from days of sun and wind. Wouldn’t do anything but burn itself out, but all it had to do was burn.
He had a third strip of shirt out, ready to light another, but the fire had already caught some fuel down in the ditch, so he dropped the cloth and slid backward, under the van again.
It was a good thing he’d moved when he did, because the man in the van spotted the fire when it was still in its infancy. Josiah heard a murmuring from inside and then the door slid open and someone stepped out, said, “What in the hell?” under his breath, and then walked down into the ditch and began stomping at the fire. When he did, Josiah slid out from under the van on the other side, screened from view, and crawled around to the back, kneeling and grabbing the chunk of cinder block.
He stood up just as he came around the back, maybe ten feet from the man, who was still stomping at the grass, the fire already gone. Josiah was intending to just bounce the chunk of stone in his hand and tell this boy it was time to talk. When he came around the van, though, he saw that the man had a gun in his hand, thought, Well, good thing I didn’t just knock on the door, and then jumped into the ditch and swung the hand with the cinder block.
The guy was fast, got turned and had the gun half lifted before the stone caught him flush on the side of the head, caught him with an impact that jarred Josiah’s shoulder and made a wet crunch in the silent night, and his knees buckled and he was down in the ditch with dark blood dripping into the grass and his gun loose at his side. It was over then, over, and Josiah knew it, but for some reason he jumped down there and hit him again, even harder this time, and the sound the stone made on the man’s skull was terrible, a hard-to-soft shattering.
For a moment Josiah stayed where he was, crouched above the guy, who hadn’t so much as twitched. Then he reached down and put his fingertips on the man’s chin and turned his head to the side, and even in the shadows what he saw made him hiss in a breath between his teeth. He took his lighter from his pocket and flicked the wheel and lowered the flame toward the man’s head and said, “Oh, shit, Josiah, oh, shit,” and then he snapped the lighter off because he didn’t want to look anymore.
30
ERIC SLEPT SOON AFTER drinking Anne McKinney’s water. Slept deep and restful, stretched out on his back on top of the covers. When he woke, his first thought was one of relief, an immediate recognition that the terrible pain was past, that he was whole again.
It was cold in the room—he’d cranked up the air in an effort to combat the fever sweats—and he’d been above the covers and below the air vent. Too cold for sleep.
He swung his feet to the floor and sat on the bed for a moment, breathing deep and testing his physical sensations, looking for a chink in the armor. Nothing. His throat was a little raw, his lips dry, but other than that, he felt almost normal.
Over on the table, the Bradford bottle still glowed, though the glow seemed fainter to him, almost like a reflection from some light source he couldn’t see. He got to his feet and went to the thermostat and turned the temperature up, then reached down and touched his toes and stretched his arms above his head, feeling liberation at the ability to move without pain.
The heavy curtains had been pulled to block out any trace of the lights that fueled his headaches, but now he crossed the room and shoved them back, looked down on the rotunda below. Beautiful. At night the massive pendulum that hung from the center of the dome was equipped with colored lights that shifted every few seconds. He unlocked the door to the balcony and stepped out, braced his hands on the railing, and looked down.
Empty and still. No one in the atrium or out on one of the other balconies. It was his world right now, his alone.
He knew he should go back to bed, that his body would demand plenty of sleep after the gauntlet he’d just run it through, but he didn’t want to. Instead, he propped the door open and dragged the desk chair out onto the balcony, sat and put his feet up on the railing, and watched the colors change on that incredible ceiling. Purple, green, red, purple, green, red, purple, green…
The colors faded on him then, shifting to darkness broken by small points of white light, and then the ceiling and the hotel were gone and he was someplace else entirely.
It was a cloudless night, the sky a splendor of stars, and beneath a gleaming half-moon stood a shack that appeared unmeant for habitation. There were torn strips of cloth plugging holes in the shingles, and the front door was separated from its frame at the bottom, hanging from just the top hinge. Of the three windows in the front of the house only two panes of glass remained. Beyond the house was a tilting shed and an outhouse with no door.
Somewhere in the dark, soft but sweet, a violin played. There was no living thing in sight, neither man nor creature, just that sad, shivering song.
Another sound soon caught the violin and overran it, the strong purring of an engine, and headlights lit the filthy gray front of the house as a roadster with wide running boards appeared and pulled right up to the sagging edge of the front porch. The door to the shed banged open and a man stepped out and peered at the car. He was tall but stooped, a bare chest showing
under his open shirt, tangled gray hair hanging down over his ears and along his neck. He had a cigar pinched in one corner of his mouth.
“That you, Campbell?” he hollered, squinting and shielding his eyes.
“You get many other visitors?” came the chill-voiced reply.
The old man grumbled and stepped farther out from the shed as Campbell Bradford advanced, pushing his bowler hat up on top of his head. He’d left the car running and its headlights on, and the light came up from behind him and spread his shadow large across the front of the shed.
“You’s late,” the old man muttered, but he extended his hand, friendly.
Campbell didn’t move his own hands from his pockets.
“I don’t want your handshake, I want your liquor. Step to it now. Don’t want to spend any more time in this den than I have to.”
The old man edged backward, grumbling but not raising his head. Maybe because he didn’t want to look into the lights; maybe because he didn’t want to look into Campbell’s eyes. He turned and went in the shed. There was a lantern lit inside, casting flickering golden streaks about the walls. In the middle of the shed stood a rusting cistern. Then the door swung shut and it was hidden from view.
Campbell Bradford remained outside, shrouded by the headlight beams, shifting his weight impatiently and looking around the wooded hill with distaste. He took the bowler hat from his head and scratched at his scalp and then put it back on. Removed a pocket watch from inside his suit and flicked it open, twisting it to catch the light, and then his shoulders heaved with a sigh and he snapped the watch shut.
It had been quiet since his arrival, but now the violin began again. Softer even than before. Campbell looked once toward the house and then turned away, uninterested. The music played on, though, and at length he cocked his head to the side and stood stock still, listening.
The old man reappeared with a jug in each hand. He set them at Campbell’s feet and turned to go back in but Campbell reached out and caught his arm.
“Who’s that fiddling?”
“Oh, it’s just my sister’s boy. She passed with the fever a year back and I’ve had him at my damned heels ever since.”
“Bring him out here.”
The old man hesitated, but then he nodded and shuffled past Campbell and through the weeds and into the dark house. A moment later the music stopped and then the broken door pushed open again and the old man returned, a tall, thin boy behind him. He had pale blond hair that caught the moon glow, and a violin in his hands.
“What’s your name, boy?” Campbell said.
“Lucas.” The boy did not look up.
“How long you played?”
“I don’t recall, sir. Long as I’ve known.”
“How old are you?”
“Fourteen, sir.”
“What was that song you were playing?”
The boy, Lucas, chanced a look up at Campbell and quickly dropped his head again.
“Well, it don’t have a name. Just something I made up myself.”
Campbell Bradford leaned back and tilted his head in surprise. When he did it, the headlights caught him full in the face, and his dark eyes seemed to swirl against the brightness like water pulled toward a drain.
“You wrote that song?”
“Didn’t write nothing,” the old man said. “He can’t read no music, just plays it.”
“I wasn’t speaking to you,” Campbell said, and Lucas tensed. “What kind of song is that? I ain’t never heard the like of it, boy.”
“It’s what they call an elegy,” he said.
“What’s that mean?”
“It’s a song for the dead.”
It was quiet for a moment, the three of them standing there in the headlights, silhouettes painted across the weathered boards of the whiskey-still shed, a mild wind waving the treetops that surrounded them.
“Play it for me now,” Campbell said.
“He don’t play for nobody,” the old man said, and Campbell turned on him fast.
“Am I speaking to you?”
The old man took a few quick steps backward, lifting his hands. “I ain’t meaning to interrupt you, Campbell, I’m just warning you. He won’t play in front of nobody. Won’t play at all ’cept by himself.”
“He’ll play for me,” Campbell said, and his voice was darker than the night woods.
The old man said, “Go on and play, Luke,” in a jittery voice.
The boy didn’t say anything. He fidgeted some with the violin but did not lift it.
“You listen to your uncle,” Campbell said. “When I tell you to play, you best get to fiddling. Understand?”
Still the boy didn’t move. There was a pause, five seconds at most, and then Campbell stepped forward and struck him in the face.
The old man shouted and moved forward to intercede, but Campbell whirled and struck again and then the old man was on his back in the trampled weeds. Campbell leaned into the boy, who now had a trickle of blood dripping from his lip, and said, “Let’s try this again.”
Down in the grass, the old man said, “Luke, just shut your eyes. It’ll be like playing in the dark, nothing to it. Shut your eyes and play, boy!”
Lucas shut his eyes. He brought the violin to his shoulder and then the bow, which shook violently in his hand, and began to saw across the strings. At first it was a terrible wreck of a song, no note clear for the shaking, but then his hand steadied and the melody stepped forward and rang out into the night.
He played for a long time, and nobody said a word. The old man got to his hands and knees in the dirt and then crawled hesitantly to his feet, watching Campbell, who snapped his head in the direction of the shed. The old man went inside and came back out with more jugs, eight in total, and then he carried them down to the car and loaded them inside. All the while the boy played, eyes closed, facing away from the light.
When the old man had made his final trip, Campbell said, “Enough,” and the boy stopped playing and lowered the instrument.
“How’d you like to make a dollar or two doing that?” Campbell said.
“Aw, Campbell,” the old man said, “that really don’t seem like a good idea.”
Campbell turned and looked at the old man and whatever argument might have come died a quick and trembling death.
“I got a liking for that song,” Campbell said, “and I’m going to bring him down in the valley to play it.”
He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a handful of money and passed it over to the old man.
“There. Five extra dollars in it for you. Satisfied?”
The old man rubbed the money with a greasy thumb and nodded and put it in his pocket.
“You play that song,” Campbell said to the boy, “and you play it right, and there’ll be some dollars for you, too. Go on and get in the car.”
“When you bringing him back?” the old man asked.
“When I get tired of the song,” Campbell said. “Why’s he still standing there?”
“Listen to Mr. Bradford,” the boy’s uncle said to him. “Go get in the car.”
The boy left them and went to the car without ever speaking a word. When he walked into the headlights, he took on a strange, shimmering glow, and there were colors in the light now, purple and then green and then red and…
The ceiling of the dome was back in front of Eric’s eyes, and he was on the balcony. There was no more car or house in the woods or boy with a violin. No more angry blows from a man he’d just heard called Campbell. The past was gone from him now. He sat up slowly and looked around him. Twisted his head right and then left and saw the whole room was empty again, and quiet, and above him the dome changed colors, a beautiful silent sentry to it all.
31
THE WIND PICKED UP while Josiah crouched in the ditch over a man he knew was dead, watching the flow of blood from the wound slow, a thick pool of it all around now, spreading so much that Josiah had to move back to keep it from hitting his sho
es.
It was dark and silent and no cars would come along the road at this hour, but all the same, decisions needed to be made, and fast, because this man was dead.
The stone was going to be a problem. It would have blood on it and maybe hair and flesh and for damn sure would have Josiah’s fingerprints. He felt around in the ditch until he relocated the chunk of cinder block and then he held it and hesitated for a moment, considered tossing it into the field but decided against that. They’d bring dogs out here and find it no problem and then they’d have his fingerprints, and Josiah had been arrested enough times that matching those prints wasn’t going to be a problem.
What to do, then? What to do?
Now that he thought about it, this whole ditch was filled with evidence—there were pieces of Josiah’s shirt down there beside the dead man—and there wasn’t any way in hell he’d get all of it cleaned up. He could load the man into the van and drive him off somewhere, but that didn’t get rid of the blood in the ditch, and odds were somebody would’ve known his location anyhow.
Odds were, somebody would’ve known he was watching Josiah.
No good way to clean up this mess, then, but he could leave more of one behind. Burn this place, scorch it all, and let them sift through the ashes for evidence.
He wiped the rock down carefully on his pants and then set it on the edge of the road and, dropping onto his back, slid under the van and found the gas line and jammed his pocketknife into it. First few times it glanced off the metal, and once his hand slipped down and across the blade and opened his flesh up. First his fingerprints, now his blood. He drove the knife at the gas line again, drove it with the fury of fear and anger, and this time the blade popped through and gasoline spilled out and onto his bare chest.
The idea of trying to tip the van into the ditch and create an accident scene ran through his mind but he discarded it. There wasn’t enough time, and it probably wouldn’t work anyhow. He wrapped his hand in one of the torn pieces of shirt he still had and then opened the driver’s door and climbed inside. There was a leather case on the passenger seat, and all the way in the back he found a digital camera. He took them both—after all this risk, might as well get something out of it, and maybe it would help if the scene had the look of a robbery. Then he went down into the ditch and patted through the dead man’s pockets and found a wallet and took that, too, dropped it into the leather case as the gasoline ran through the gravel and dripped into the ditch behind him.
So Cold the River Page 19
