So Cold the River

by Michael Koryta

  The tires spun as he turned onto the uphill road that led to Anne McKinney’s house, but then the car corrected and he was almost there. A moment later he could see lights on in the windows, and out in the yard the windmills spun in silver flashes.

  He missed the drive when he pulled in, felt the tires churn through wet soil instead, slammed on the brakes and brought the car to a stop and then threw it into park and popped the door open with the engine still running. He ran through the rain to the front door, and when he got to the steps, his shoe caught and he tripped and fell to his hands and knees on the porch. Then the door opened and Anne McKinney looked out at him, her face knit with fear, and said, “What’s wrong?”

  “I need some water,” he said. “I need some of your water, fast.”

  “Pluto Water?” she said, and she pushed the door back until it was open only a few inches, allowing her to peer out, as if she were afraid of him.

  “Please. I’m sorry, but I need it. I’m getting sick. I’m getting very sick.”

  She hesitated only a moment, then swung the door open, blinking against the rain that blew in her face, and said, “Get in here, then.”

  Most days she’d have been down at the hotel at this time, but it was a Sunday, and on Sunday afternoons she stayed home. The rain that blew in made her glad of that, because it came down in gales, and she was no longer fond of driving in foul weather.

  She’d been studying the skies when he arrived. What thunder there was had some courage to it, and the lightning flashes were brilliant, but beyond the quantity of rain it seemed a very ordinary storm, which both surprised and on some level disappointed her. The weather radio—or weather box, as her husband had always called it, a small brown cube that broadcast only the National Weather Service updates—crackled with the usual warnings, but there was no mention of tornadoes or even severe storms or supercells, no spotter activation. She kept watch on the clouds all the same—she never had required spotter activation, thank you—and didn’t see anything of note.

  She’d been expecting more, and probably that was why the crashing arrival of Eric Shaw on her porch didn’t surprise her as much as it should have.

  She left him on the floor and went to the stairs, and when she took the first step, pain flared in her back and her hip. Then she looked back at Eric Shaw and saw the anguish in his eyes, blended pain and terror, and she bit down against her own aches and got moving up the steps, going just as fast as she could.

  The box with the water bottles was still out in the middle of the floor because she wasn’t strong enough to replace it, and now she was grateful for that. It took but a few seconds to grab a full bottle and remove the wrappings and start back down the stairs, clutching the rail with her free hand and taking careful steps, getting her foot down firm and flat each time. Eric had crawled back to the door, was sitting with his back against it and his head in his hands.

  “Here you go,” she said, and she was almost scared to hand him the bottle, scared to touch him. Whatever was going on in his body and mind wasn’t right. Wasn’t natural.

  He took the bottle from her and opened his eyes to thin slits, just enough to let him see the top. He was mumbling something, but she couldn’t make it out.

  “What’s that?”

  “Lights,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Turn them off, please.”

  She leaned over him and hit the wall switch and plunged the room into darkness. That seemed to give him some relief as he drank from the bottle. Years she’d saved those bottles, unopened, some of the only original Pluto Water in the valley, and now he’d gone through two in two days. Oh, well, wasn’t Christian to worry about a thing like that, sort of condition he was in.

  There was still a light on in the kitchen, so she walked over and turned it off, too, and now the whole house was dark. She came back into the living room and stood with her hand on the back of a chair and watched him as the rain hammered the windows and another bolt of lightning lit the room briefly. He was sitting with his knees pulled up and his head down, and after a moment’s pause he drank again, just a few swallows.

  I should call a doctor, she thought. He’s sick with something fierce, and the last thing that’s going to cure it is Pluto Water. I’ve got to call him a doctor.

  But he was coming back. It was astonishing, really, the speed of it. He was recovering while she watched, his breathing easing back to normal patterns and color returning to his face and the tremors ceasing in his hands and legs. Across the room the grandfather clock Harold had made back in ’fifty-nine began to chime, and Eric Shaw lifted his head and looked at the source of the sound, and then he turned and looked at her. Smiled. Weak, but it was a smile.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “You’re feeling better,” she said. “That fast.”

  He nodded.

  “I mean to tell you, I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said. “Shape you were in… I was standing here thinking I’d have to call for the ambulance, and then I took but a blink and you looked better.”

  “It works quick when I get it.”

  “And when you don’t?”

  He closed his eyes again. “Gets pretty bad.”

  “I could see that. Go on and finish it.”

  “Don’t need to,” he said. “Doesn’t take much.”

  He put the top back on the bottle, which was now about two-thirds full, and added, “I’m sorry. First of all to come crashing in your house in the rain like this; second for ruining more of your water.”

  “Don’t you worry about that.” She went over to the hall closet and got a couple kitchen towels out, brought them over and handed them to him. “Go on and dry off.”

  He dried his face, neck, and arms and then used the towels to mop up some of the water from the floor. While he was doing that, she noticed that his car was still running out in the yard, lights on and driver’s door open. She went outside and down the steps into the wet yard. The storm was dying down now, but the thunder still had a menacing crackle to it, like a dog snarling and snapping its jaws as it retreats. Thing about a dog like that—it always comes back.

  When she got to the car, she leaned in and turned it off and took the keys in her hand. The interior was soaked, water pooled on the leather seat. She closed the door and then went back into the house and handed him the keys. When he finally stood, his legs looked steady. Anne told him to take the wooden rocker and she sat on the sofa.

  “I’ve come across plenty of stories about that water,” she said, “but I never did hear of anyone needing it like you did. It’s almost like you’re addicted to it.”

  “A lot like that.”

  “Well, it doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know what would be in it that would—”

  She stopped talking when she saw his eyes. They had shifted suddenly, warped into something flat and unfocused.

  She said, “Mr. Shaw? Eric?”

  He didn’t answer. Didn’t seem to have heard her, even, was staring at the old grandfather clock, but she wasn’t certain he was seeing that.

  “You all right?” she asked, her voice a whisper now. He was in some sort of trance. Could be a seizure, could be something for that ambulance she’d considered a few minutes ago, but for some reason she didn’t think it was, didn’t think she ought to go for the phone.

  Give him a minute, she thought.

  And so, as the thunder continued to roll, softer now, pushing east, and a light, fading rain pattered off the porch and the windows, she sat there in the dark living room and watched him slip off into a place where she could not follow.

  37

  IT WAS TWILIGHT, the treetops lit by a gray gloom, and long shadows beneath, and the shack on the hilltop was creaking under the force of a strong wind. Stray raindrops splattered the ragged boards of the porch and plinked off the big roadster parked in front. Both doors opened and the two occupants stepped out—Campbell Bradford and the boy.

  “Hold on there,
” Campbell snapped, and then he took the violin case from the boy’s hand and flicked up the latches and opened it, lifted the instrument out. He handled the violin roughly, and the boy winced. Inside the case were a few handfuls of bills and coins. Campbell took all of the bills, folded them, and put them in his pocket. Then he dropped the violin back in on top of the coins and latched the case.

  “There. What’s left is yours. Now go on and get your uncle. I need a word.”

  Lucas took the case and went to the front door, stepping carefully around one gaping hole in the porch floor. A moment after he went inside, the door opened again and the old man stepped out, clothed in the same dirty overalls and with a hat on his head. The hat had holes in the brim.

  “I don’t got no liquor for you tonight,” he said.

  “I know it. Now come on down here so I can speak without shouting.”

  The old man didn’t seem to like that idea, but after a hesitation he walked slowly down the steps and out into the yard.

  “I wish you wouldn’t drag the boy down there with his fiddle,” he said. “He don’t like playing in front of folks.”

  “He makes some money at it, and so do you,” Campbell said. “So kindly keep any more such thoughts unspoken. I like the sound of his playing.”

  The old man frowned and shifted his weight but didn’t answer.

  “I got a business dilemma,” Campbell said, “and you’re the cause of it. You ain’t given me but eight jugs in a month. That’s not enough.”

  “It’s alls I had.”

  “That’s the problem. What you have is not enough.”

  “There’s other places for ’shine, Campbell. Lars has a still not two mile from here. Then there’s them boys from Chicago, they’d bring you down booze in barrels if you was to want it.”

  “I don’t want their damn swill,” Campbell said. “Ain’t none of it the same as yours, and you know that.”

  The old man wet his lips and looked away.

  “How do you make it?” Campbell said, voice softer. “What’s the difference?”

  “Make it same as anybody, I suppose.”

  Campbell shook his head. “There’s something different about it, and you know what it is.”

  “Figure it’s the spring water, maybe,” the old man said, shying away from Campbell’s stare. “I found me a good spring. Small one, but good. Strange. Water don’t look right coming out of it, don’t smell right either, but it’s got a… quality.”

  “Well, I want more of it. And I want it fast, hear?”

  “Thing is”—the old man shifted again, moving away from Campbell—“I’m not going to be able to help you much longer.”

  “What?”

  “I’m fixin’ to move. The boy needs to be somewhere else. I got a sister—not his mother, but another one—who got married and moved out east. Pennsylvania. Wrote and said he should be somewhere he could get music schooling. I don’t know about that, but this place… this place ain’t fit for raising a child. I ain’t fit.”

  Campbell didn’t speak. Night was coming on quickly, shadows lengthening, and the wind howled around the home and the shed that housed the whiskey still.

  “This valley’s drying up,” the old man said. “I’ve heard the talk, everybody losing their savings, banks closing. Won’t be anybody down here spending money on gambling and liquor anymore, Campbell. You ought to think about getting out yourself.”

  “I ought to think about getting out,” Campbell echoed, his voice a thousand-pound whisper.

  “Well, I don’t know what your plans are, but I’m going to try to get the boy east. Get him to somebody will see to him in the right way. Figure I’ll probably come back, this is the only home I know. But—”

  “This is my valley,” Campbell said. “You understand that, you old shit-heel? I don’t give the first damn about what’s happening to banks and stocks, and I don’t give the first damn about what’s happening with your bastard nephew and your whore sister. This here is mine, and if I tell you to keep on making liquor, you damn well better take heed.”

  The old man kept shuffling backward, but he lifted his head and dared to meet Campbell’s eye.

  “That ain’t how it works,” he said. “You ain’t my master, Campbell. Run people all over here like you was, but the truth is, you’re just another greed-soaked son of a bitch. I’ve made money selling liquor to you, but you’ve made it back tenfold at least, so don’t tell me that I owe you a damn thing.”

  “That’s how you see it?” Campbell said.

  “That’s how it is.”

  Campbell reached into his jacket, pulled out a revolver, cocked it, and shot the old man in the chest.

  The gun was small but the sound large, and the old man’s eyes widened and his hands went to his stomach even though the bullet had entered high on his chest. His tattered hat fell from his head and landed in the grass a half second before he did. Blood ran thick and dark from the wound and coated the backs of his hands.

  Campbell switched the gun to his left hand and walked over to him. His stride was brisk. He looked down at the body and spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the wound. The old man gurgled and stared.

  “This world breaks many a man,” Campbell said. “I’m not one of them, old-timer. It’s a matter of the strength of your will. You ain’t never seen any strong as mine.”

  The door to the shack banged open and the boy stood there, hands at his side, hair tousled. Campbell gazed at him without reaction. The boy looked at the body, and then at the gun in Campbell’s hand, and he did not move.

  “Get down here,” Campbell called.

  The boy made no response.

  “Son,” Campbell said, “you best think about your future right now. You best think fast and hard. Ain’t going to be but this one chance to make the decision.”

  The boy, Lucas, came slowly down the steps. He walked across the grass toward his uncle’s body. There was no motion from it now, no trace of breath. When he reached the body, he looked up at Campbell. He said not a word.

  “You are facing,” Campbell said, “a key moment in your life, boy. Seminal is the word. Now look down at your uncle.”

  Lucas gave the body a flick of the eyes. His knees were shaking and he’d squeezed his fingernails into his palms.

  “Look,” Campbell said.

  This time he turned his face down, stared right at the corpse. There was blood in the grass on both sides of it now, and the muscles of the dead man’s face looked stricken and taut.

  “What you see there,” Campbell said, “is a man who had no appreciation for strength. For power. A man who could not take heed of ambition. What you have to decide now is, are you such a man?”

  Lucas looked up. The wind was blowing hard and steady, bending the treetops and whipping his hair back from his forehead. He did not meet Campbell’s eyes, but he shook his head. He shook it slowly but emphatically.

  “I thought not,” Campbell said. “You been up here for a good while. You’ve seen him at work. Do you know how to make that moonshine?”

  Lucas nodded, but it was hesitant.

  “Whatever you’ve forgotten about it,” Campbell said, “you’d be advised to start remembering.”

  He put the gun away and then dropped his hands into his pockets, hunching against the wind.

  “Time for you to find a shovel, boy. I’d hurry, too. Feels like rain.”

  Eric’s hearing returned before his sight. He was dimly aware of the chiming grandfather clock before the room appeared around him, vaporous at first and then hard edged, and he found himself looking into Anne McKinney’s fascinated and fearful eyes.

  “You see me again,” she said. It was not a question.

  “Yeah.” His voice was a croak. She went into the kitchen and poured him a glass of iced tea and brought it back and watched silently as he drank the whole thing down.

  “You had me a little nervous,” she said.

  He choked out a laugh. “Sorry about that.�
�

  “It was plain to see you’d gone somewhere else,” she said, and then, leaning forward, added, “Tell me—what were you seeing?”

  “The past,” he said.

  “The past?”

  He nodded. “That’s the best I can describe it. I’m seeing things from another time…. They’re from this place, and they are not from this time.”

  “This place,” she said. “You mean my home?”

  There was something so excited in her voice, so hopeful, that he was taken aback.

  “No. I mean the town. The area, I guess. But not your house.”

  “Oh,” she said, disappointment clear. “Is it scary, what you’re seeing?”

  “Sometimes. Other times… just like watching a movie.”

  “You always have the visions when you drink the water?”

  “I seem to,” he said. “They’re different when I have your water. Then I’m nothing but a spectator. When I drank from the other bottle… then it was more like seeing a ghost right here with me. I wasn’t seeing the past, I was seeing something out of it that had joined the present.”

  She was quiet, considering what he’d said.

  “Do you know the name Campbell Bradford?” he asked.

  She rocked back. “That’s not who you’re seeing?”

  He nodded.

  “Oh, my. Yes, I know the name. Haven’t heard it in years, but he was the talk of the town when I was a girl. There’s plenty of folks who thought he was evil, you know. Or became evil, that’s the way I remember my daddy telling it. He said Campbell was just another mean man at first, but then something dark took hold of him and pushed him beyond mean. Pushed him until he wasn’t even himself anymore.”

  “Something dark?”

  “You know, a spirit. A lot of folks believed that sort of thing in those days.”