Silence on Cold River

by Casey Dunn

  MICHAEL Chapter 22 | May 2, 1992 | Tarson, Georgia

  THE BUZZING I FELT IN my palms from the girl’s vocal cords straining past the pressure of my hands lingers now, even though I washed my hands clean in the river. And I do feel clean—despite the crust of sweat on my face, the smell of the woods in my hair. I feel clean. I feel… new.

  I saw the world in that girl’s eyes, a flash of last light like the universe spinning around the sun, her last sound, soft and pure. I heard it over the rushing water; I hear it even still.

  Maybe Mother was right. Maybe I am destined for more, saved by the river, and I must go. I must leave this town. I must find my fate.

  Mother may have taught me that, but she won’t let me leave if she’s awake. It’s the leaving that hurts her most. So I will spare her that pain and be gone come sunup.

  In the dark, I stuff my backpack with clothes and all the cash I can find in the house. On my way out, I press her door two inches ajar. From her outline, I can tell she’s lying on her back, rigid even in sleep.

  Lady Fate requires patience, a skill Mother’s never mastered. Even if she did, Lady Fate demands obedience, and Mother answers to no one. I once considered that trait an asset, a line I might possibly reach only once Mother was dead and chilly. Now I see how it limits her, and I cannot allow her limits to stifle me.

  I retrieve my father’s walking stick from the hall closet, slip through the front door, and lock it behind me. The night is quiet and black and still. Then a wind picks up, sudden and warm, and the trees bordering the left side of our yard and the boundary of Tarson Woods sway. Branches saw against one another, and in the grind I hear my father whisper my name.

  I stumble down the three steps of our front stoop and into our narrow yard, dry grass crunching underfoot.

  Michael.

  I run into Tarson Woods, zigzagging between boughs and ducking under low hanging branches.

  Michael.

  Louder now. Cold River roars ahead, the fallen tree still balanced between two banks, sagging in the middle.

  Michael.

  I reach the river’s edge. Timmy stands on the opposite bank, pointing at my feet with a skeleton finger, blood matted in his red hair, eye sockets empty, his left cheek peeled back from time and water and blow after blow after blow.

  Something cracks, splinters; then there’s a rush as the middle of the fallen oak gives way. The two halves of the rotted tree plummet to the water and are pulled downstream twenty feet before coming to a tenuous resting place. Now my breath is the only sound, the river continuing as if nothing has changed, the woods quiet, the wind and the voice and Timmy evaporating into the night.

  Timmy disappeared three years ago. In retrospect, it was amazing how quickly people stopped looking, how quickly they assumed he’d fallen in, how quickly they accepted a body wouldn’t be found. It took me longer to carve piano keys from his femurs.

  I stare down at the fallen tree, at the gap between the two halves where the black water sails through.

  I step out of my shoes and leave them on the bank.

  AMA Chapter 23 | 8:05 PM, December 1, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia

  A FLASH OF MOVEMENT HIGH on the hill behind Michael caught her eye. She wanted to scream, but it could have been a deer, for all she knew. Michael seemed more settled now, his whole story spilled between them. She didn’t want to risk agitating him again. Ama stole a glimpse over his head. The wind made the trees rock and bend. It was impossible to discern real movement from shadows.

  “Why did you come back here?” Ama asked. As if it mattered. As if she could’ve outrun him longer in a city of five hundred thousand people instead of forty square miles of trees and hills. A month after his verdict, she took her paycheck and put a down payment on a house an hour away. She’d convinced herself it wasn’t because of Michael, that she’d just have a better opportunity to make a name for herself closer to Atlanta. Somewhere along the last seventeen years, she’d bought the lie—and he’d been in Atlanta with her nearly the entire time.

  “Fate told me it was time,” he said.

  “Fate isn’t real! It’s an excuse. You chose to come back here just like you chose to leave. Nothing is guiding you.”

  “Answer me three questions. Tell me why you took my case, why you changed your name, and why you became a defense attorney, and I’ll prove to you that Fate has been guiding me, probably both of us, since the moment we met.”

  “I took your case because no one else would.”

  “That’s not the whole truth, is it? You weren’t even supposed to be the lead attorney on my case.”

  “I fought for it,” she whispered.

  “Why?”

  “Because I knew they thought I’d lose,” she answered, mentally revisiting that day in the office, their knowing stares, their not-so-discreet smiles.

  “But you thought I was guilty.”

  “It wasn’t about you. It was about me. I wanted to prove myself. I wanted to show I could win,” Ama said. “Do you have any idea what it was like to be a female attorney in rural Georgia at that time? They’d just as soon send me for coffee or to make copies than hand me a case.”

  Michael opened his hands and brought the tips of his fingers together. “Was it worth it?”

  She trembled, wondering at the notes he’d already recorded, the sounds he’d torn out of people. At the nineteen-year-old girl locked away somewhere, refusing to speak.

  “That’s on the prosecution. Not me,” she finally said.

  “Which brings me to question number two.” He gave her a pointed look.

  “The answers for questions two and three are linked,” Ama began. “My last name isn’t really Shoemaker.”

  Interest pricked Michael’s features. “Go on,” he said.

  “Shoemaker is my mother’s maiden name. We both changed our last names after my father was wrongly convicted for weapons trafficking. The short version is that he was the fall guy in a deal gone bad. He just routed trucks, dispatched drivers, made sure payments were picked up. Higher-ups in the company he worked for blackmailed him into being the go-between for sales. But his bosses had built a web of connections that all led back to him, and when they got caught, they all said he was the ringleader. He died in prison four years into his sentence.”

  “So you became a defense attorney.”

  “So I became a defense attorney.”

  “But you changed your name back to Chaplin. Why? Because of me?”

  “No,” she answered. “I took his name back to remember why I became an attorney. Not for people like you. For people like him.”

  “Why not a prosecutor? You didn’t want to go after the men who framed your father?”

  “It’s easier to put the wrong man away than to save the innocent one. I guess I liked the challenge.”

  “That would explain your eagerness to prove my innocence all those years ago.”

  Ama arched a brow. “You weren’t innocent. Discrediting the witnesses shouldn’t have been enough. You had luck on your side.”

  “You look at my life, my father’s death, my mother’s hand, my scars… and you call it luck?”

  “I’m the one here against my will.” Ama glared. “You should be in prison, but you’re not. What would you call it, Michael?”

  “I have something on my side, it’s true. But it’s nothing to do with luck.” Michael stood and reached behind Ama, disconnecting the chain. Then he pulled up on the cord, hauling her to her feet. Her wrists howled with fresh pain.

  “Wait,” Ama pled. “You still have to prove to me that fate has a hand in this.”

  “That’s what I’m doing,” he said. “But this is a story you and Hazel should both hear.” He opened the Ziploc bag with his soiled shirt, tore off a strip, and fitted it between her teeth before knotting it behind her head. The smell of her urine stung her eyes and made her stomach turn.

  “Bet you wish you hadn’t pissed yourself right about now,” he murmured, adding a secon
d strip of fabric. He slung his pack onto his shoulder before untying the rope from the tree. He knotted it at her wrists and then looped it around her neck, then held the end of it like he was holding a dog leash. “Time to go,” he ordered, pushing at the center of her back with his walking stick.

  She stumbled forward, catching her weight on her bad ankle. It buckled underneath her, and she staggered to the side. She tried to throw out her hands to stop herself, but Michael held the rope taut. She spun around on her heel and fell on her butt. She drew her knees under her, panting. A choke of a sob burned a path up her windpipe, and fresh tears spilled from her eyes.

  A twig snapped close by. Michael yanked on the rope.

  “Don’t make a sound,” he hissed, and drew the hood of his sweatshirt over his head, his face shrouded in shadows, and turned off the lantern. Fear ignited inside of Ama. Then she heard labored breathing and the shuffling sound of someone walking. She tried to cry out, but the fabric pinned down her tongue, making her cough.

  Her eyes adjusted. A hunched figure strode toward them. The person raised their arms, and a glint of silver shone in the moonlight. The unmistakable sound of a cocking gun hammer filled her ears.

  “Let her go!” a man’s voice shouted, and the sound of a gun blast filled the dark.

  Ama froze. The rope went slack. Ama turned her chin in time to see Michael pivot and take a running step downhill. She swung her gaze back to the man. He followed Michael with his gun, brought his elbows in, taking aim. Relief trickled through her. Then she remembered Hazel, locked away, imagined her surrounded by petrified organs pinned to boards. Michael had inadvertently conditioned her to never respond. Even if rescuers called her by name, she wouldn’t answer. They hadn’t found her in a year. She highly doubted Michael’s dead body would leave any remarkable clues. If Michael died, Hazel died, too, slow and silent and alone.

  She tried to shout at the man to stop, but the gag garbled her voice. The man with the gun didn’t turn his focus from Michael. He brought the site closer to his eye. His arm steadied to the point of motionlessness. He was going to shoot.

  With a grunt, Ama sprung up from her knees and leaped sideways, hoping to distract him just enough to at least make him hesitate. A second blast of gunfire jumped into the night at nearly the same instant. Pressure and heat flooded her chest, and a crunching sound filled her. She dropped to her side. Flecks of cold mud spattered her open mouth. She tried to crawl forward but couldn’t lift her body off the ground. Her left side throbbed, her left arm fire hot and limp. She moved her left hand to touch it. There was a soft place below her collar where her ribs should’ve been. Too soft. She pushed a finger into it, finding it wet.

  Confusion spread through her brain, painting over something she’d been so sure about just a moment ago. She rolled to her back and stared up, the sensation of becoming liquid spreading through her. Above, the stars became brighter and blurred into tiny lines. They stretched until they connected, crisscrossing the dark like stitches on a patchwork quilt. She heard gurgling and rasping, but she couldn’t tell from where. The sounds faded, and the darkness turned to white.

  EDDIE Chapter 24 | 8:15 PM, December 1, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia

  THE WOMAN CRUMPLED TO THE ground, writhing. Eddie dropped the gun. His hands shook.

  She’d jumped in front of the bullet, hadn’t she? Or had she tripped? Taken off in a blind panic? It didn’t matter… he’d shot her.

  Eddie lifted his gaze. The man he’d intended to shoot looked directly back. Between the dark and the hood drawn over his head, all that was visible of the man was his nose and the outline of his chin. The woman gasped, the sound of it liquid, and broke the spell that had settled like stagnant water, too warm and glistening with oil from decay.

  Eddie stepped toward her. The man reached for something in his pack. Eddie snatched the empty gun from the ground and trained it on the man’s chest.

  “Stay where you are!” Eddie shouted. “Help! We need help!” he screamed louder, tilting his mouth skyward in hopes the sound would carry farther. They had to be two miles from the main parking lot, maybe more. There’s no way anyone would be able to hear them. The man opened his mouth, closed it, then turned and fled downhill.

  Eddie rushed to the woman’s side. Her breaths came in wisps. Her eyes were unfocused and glistening with panic.

  “You’re all right. You gonna be all right,” Eddie said. He pulled the rope from around her neck and took the gag out of her mouth. She cried a little girl’s cry, small and breaking. He cradled her head in one leathered hand and felt for the bullet hole with the other. Blood spurted from a hole high on her chest. He pushed his palm against it, hoping to slow it down. If she kept bleeding this fast, she wouldn’t make it to the parking lot alive. He balled up the strip of fabric he’d taken from her mouth and stuffed it into the wound. A groan emitted from deep inside her, and her torso curled away from him.

  “Why did you do that?” he pled, staring over her head into the night. She tried to respond but sputtered instead, and then began to choke. Something warm and sticky pooled in the hand Eddie was using to support her head. She was bleeding from her mouth.

  “No, ma’am. Don’t be doin’ that now,” Eddie whispered. He knew he shouldn’t move her, but he figured that rule only applied to people with decent odds of survival. He stuck the gun in his coat pocket, bent down, and picked her up. She was heavier than he thought she’d be. His legs shook, and his feet were on fire. How was he going to carry her up? She moaned and clutched his jacket. Her face twisted with concentration, and her lips curled around a word. Her fingers fluttered at his hip. Her mouth opened, and her eyes focused on his face for a full second.

  “What are you trying to tell me?” Eddie pled, studying her.

  “Aaace,” came out of her mouth, ending in a hiss, and her bloody finger scratched against his chest insistently. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets, and her body went limp.

  “No!” Eddie shook her. She rocked in his arms, her limbs swaying. “No!” He hugged her close and staggered to the base of the hill. He looked up, searching for the way he’d come. Beams of light shone down from the crest. He squinted in the sudden flood of light.

  “I see someone!” a voice shouted from above. “Tarson PD! Who’s down there?”

  “Help! It’s me, Eddie,” he cried out. “I… a lady’s been… she’s hurt bad!”

  “Stay right where you are, Eddie!” another voice shouted. “Don’t move!”

  Eddie turned and leaned against the hill, holding the woman against his chest. He wished any sign of breath or life would stir under his hand.

  Scuffling sounds on the hill drew his ear. He glanced over his shoulder. Two officers descended, guns drawn. As they came closer, he recognized them as Briggs and Stanton, officers he’d spoken to over the last year in his search for Hazel.

  “Let her go, Eddie,” Briggs said, and aimed the barrel of his gun near Eddie’s face.

  “I don’t think I should do that,” Eddie said, distracted by the gun. He probably hurt her more when he picked her up. He couldn’t very well risk putting her down again. He began to straighten, shifting the weight of her.

  “I said don’t move!” Briggs shouted. Eddie flinched, and confusion set in. Why was Briggs yelling at him? Static buzzed from the radio clipped on Briggs’s hip, and the captain’s familiar voice blared through, asking if they’d found anything.

  “We got her. We’ve got them both,” Briggs said. “Ama. Ama, can you hear me?” he said loudly.

  “She’s unconscious,” Eddie said, rocking forward again, trying to move so they could see her face.

  “Stay where you are!” Briggs growled. “Put Ama down on the ground, Eddie. Then back away.”

  “I can’t do that!” Eddie shouted back. “What if I hurt her worse?”

  “Did you hurt her, Eddie?” Briggs asked, stepping toward them.

  “No… well, yes. But I didn’t mean to.”

  “Put her down!”
Briggs ordered.

  Recognition charged through him. He was standing in the woods with a warm gun in his pocket and a dying woman in his arms. Her blood was on his hands, his coat, his shoes. The bullet lodged somewhere inside her would match his gun. His fingers had gunpowder on them from the discharge. His heart shuddered in his chest. He kneeled down and gingerly placed her on the earth.

  “Hands up!” Stanton barked.

  Eddie raised his hands. “Let me explain. This isn’t what it looks like. A man had her,” he said. “I tried to shoot him, but she jumped in the way. I… I shot her. I didn’t mean to.”

  Briggs crouched down beside the woman and put his fingers on her throat. “She’s still alive,” he said. “But I don’t know how long she’s going to stay that way. It’ll take us too long to carry her out. Do you think we can get a chopper?”

  “Even if we had one, I don’t know where it would land,” Stanton responded, stepping close to Eddie, his gun trained low.

  “There’s a clearing not far from here. Right beside the river. It’s pretty level,” Eddie mumbled, watching Ama; the way her hand dangled from her wrist, her light hair spilled across the ground like milk on a dark wood floor.

  “Shut up,” Briggs responded. He brought the radio to his mouth. “Ama is in bad shape. GSW to the chest, lots of blood. She needs to go straight to the hospital in Dalton. We found Eddie holding her.”

  “This isn’t what it looks like!” Eddie pled.

  “You know, I prayed for you after Hazel disappeared,” Stanton said, glaring. “I searched these woods for her with you. You had us all fooled. What did you do to Hazel, Eddie? Is she out here, too? What kind of man hurts his own kid?”

  Eddie’s head snapped back as if he’d been struck, and rage blazed a path up his spine. “I would never harm a hair on my daughter’s head,” he roared. “I have never hurt anybody!”

  Briggs grabbed Eddie’s elbows, pinning them behind him. “Do you have a weapon on you of any sort, Mr. Stevens?” Briggs cuffed his wrists.