Silence on Cold River

by Casey Dunn

  * * *

  Four hours later, Martin stood in front of the closed door to the investigation room, the interview with Ama replaying in his mind. Through the narrow windowpane, he could see Captain still studying the board of pictures and notes. The older man planted his hands on his hips, his shirt wrinkled and partially untucked at his waist. Captain heaved a sigh and glanced at his wristwatch, no doubt wondering where Martin was and what he’d learned from Ama. Neither one of them had slept since the day before, and in that moment, Martin felt the full weight of utter exhaustion and the captain’s expectations crushing down on him. He put his hand on the doorknob, closed his eyes briefly, and walked into the room.

  “What did Ama say?” Captain’s blue eyes were bright, and Martin was struck by the hope in them.

  “She doesn’t remember, Captain.”

  “Doesn’t remember what? Hazel?” Captain capped a pen, and his brow descended, casting shadows on his eyes.

  “Anything. Ama Chaplin doesn’t remember anything.”

  MICHAEL Chapter 35 | July 1993 | Atlanta, Georgia

  IT’S NEARING TWO IN THE afternoon on a Sunday. Dumpsters should be heaped with new scraps in the coming hour. I can’t bring myself to linger like a stray dog, but I will walk by and lift my nose, sampling the air like I might be strolling once again through Tarson Woods, the end of my father’s walking stick marking a leisurely cadence on the asphalt.

  “Didn’t think I’d see you again,” a woman’s voice calls out. Garnet is standing in the frame of the back door to a bar, old grease emanating from behind her. She has a lacy apron tied around her waist and a full trash bag in her hand, red hair piled on top of her head. “I heard what happened. You should’ve said my name straightaway,” she says.

  I tighten my grip on the walking stick and stare at her. Her advice nearly cost me everything, but the mention of her name saved me the stick. “I can’t feed you, but I know someone you might want to talk to. He has a recording studio, and he’s looking for somebody to clean after hours. He’s good, honest. That’s harder to find than a free meal around here. If you want, I can introduce you.”

  “He makes music?” I ask, interest sparking a sharp and sudden feeling in my chest like the first note struck in a silent, waiting concert hall.

  “So you do talk.” Garnet smiles. She pulls a little notepad and a pen from her apron front and jots down something on a piece of paper before handing it to me. It’s a name and an address. “Do you have a name so I can tell him who I’m sending?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Just tell him Garnet sent you. But this time, it better come out of your mouth the second you get there. None of this scared, quiet-mouse nonsense. You can be scared. We’re all scared. But you can’t let it show. Not if you want to survive.” She tosses the trash into the dumpster and wipes her hands. “I think for now I’ll call you Sticks,” she says. “I gave myself a new name when I came here. You could do the same. No harm in that.”

  AMA Chapter 36 | 6:00 PM, December 2, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia

  AMA RAISED THE HEAD OF her new bed. Now that she was stable, they’d moved her to the maternity ward on the police department’s order, to better shield her from press and public access. The added security was a bonus, but a baby was constantly squalling, and in the hallway, visitors and siblings and new grandparents squealed and whispered.

  Her mind was louder. Every time she let her focus wander, her mind’s eye ran to the picture of Eddie Stevens, not his cloaked face peering at her through the dark and rain but the mug shot of him from the Tarson Police Department, his face full and empty at the same time.

  “They are going to lock him up and throw away the key,” Detective Martin had said. “He admits to shooting you. The gun was registered to him. He was covered in gunpowder and your blood. You’re a defense attorney. This is as slam dunk as it gets. There is only one way this man gets off.”

  Witness testimony. They both knew it.

  Martin had gripped the railing on her bed, his skin drawn tight over scarred knuckles.

  “If you can’t remember what happened, Eddie Stevens’s life is over, and from the way he tells it, he shot at someone to try to save you. He just hit the wrong target.”

  She’d stared at him, remaining blank. He’d pushed back and turned away from her, the soles of his shoes squeaking on the tile.

  “What did he say he was doing out there?” Ama had called out as he left.

  Martin had paused near the door, his chin over his shoulder, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze.

  “He said he went in looking for you.”

  “Why?” She’d leaned forward. Baited, she realized, but didn’t care.

  Martin’s eyes flicked to her for the briefest of moments, and then he’d walked out.

  She watched the doorway now, imagining him there even though the conversation had taken place in the ICU hours before. She had a feeling Martin was really the one behind her move to the maternity ward instead of a general floor. He must feel pretty certain there was another man in the woods aside from Eddie Stevens.

  A new nurse walked in and scrawled his name on the board—Nathan—before he checked her blood pressure and took her temperature. Ama realized she’d never asked Michael his name. Not when he was butchering that song in the hotel bar and not when she’d seen him on the path in Tarson. He’d just offered it. And she was annoyed. She didn’t ask—hadn’t cared. She’d spent entire nights with men whose name she never learned. Names weren’t important—a string of letters like beads on a necklace, so we know when to turn around when someone behind us calls.

  Ama was worried about only one voice at her back. Even all these years later, she could still feel Michael’s frigid stare penetrating the seam of her jacket and burrowing under her skin as she did her best not to run from that dumpy little courthouse. She remembered the relief she’d felt when she’d heard Michael was dead, the exhale, the little laugh that followed. She’d giggled, for Christ’s sake, went out for drinks with an old friend, paid for the rounds, and didn’t tell him why.

  But Michael wasn’t dead.

  And now there was a girl locked up somewhere in those godforsaken woods, and even if Ama told someone about Hazel, no one would find her. Michael might just be an even bigger mystery than that evergreen labyrinth. No one knew him. His mother was blind and had been well around the bend even seventeen years ago. If she was still alive, she’d be little help. The only person who had any idea how Michael ticked was Ama, and he’d had two decades to sharpen his tools since using a paring knife to slice neighborhood pets and peel back their throats and lungs to look like butterfly wings.

  The only tools she’d sharpened in those same years were weapons meant to fight back against those who would hold Michael accountable for what he’d done. She’d positioned herself between defendants and their accusers for so long that she wasn’t sure if others saw any difference between the people who committed these crimes and what her role was in the aftermath. She knew she wasn’t an accessory after the fact. So why now, with a bullet wound in her chest, a brace on her foot, and a nurse checking her vital signs every three hours, did it suddenly feel like it?

  MICHAEL Chapter 37 | October 2004 | Atlanta, Georgia

  I SIT AT A CORNER booth in a Waffle House, my third cup of black coffee steaming between my hands, the entrance ramp to the interstate a quarter mile away, and Ama Chaplin’s business card on the table.

  Chaplin.

  She must’ve married. I close my eyes and recall her hand as she shoved a wad of cash in my face at the hotel bar. She wasn’t wearing a ring. Then again, she doesn’t seem the type. She was different than I remember. Something about her was equal parts emptier and more weighted down, worn dull and yet sharp enough to slice through bone in a single stroke. But it was her, striding away to the cadence of an imaginary snare drum, right between the two trees that framed the doorway to the patio, their leaves impossibly yellow.

  Ama and I have found e
ach other once more in a city of half a million people, in a landscape made of concrete, and I realize in this moment that Fate still managed to show me Ama walking through trees as if she might be on a trail in Tarson Woods.

  Tarson is calling me home. I can hear it, just like I can hear the music when people make notes of unchecked emotion. Music is just like Fate—you have to allow it to unravel to understand the ending. You must learn to play with soft fingers. A loose grip yields a stronger swing. My hands are still. My pulse roars. Ama is here, so I must go there. And when Fate is ready, Ama will come to me. I cannot leave anything to chance now. There is only Fate.

  I finish my coffee, leave a five-dollar bill from Ama’s cash on the table, and walk out the door. Once in the car, I pull up to the road and pause. The interstate is to the left, but nothing will be open in Tarson by the time I get there, and I don’t know how to walk back into my old house, if it even still belongs to me.

  I turn away from the interstate and drive until I find a motel that charges by the hour. There are only a few cars in the lot, and a single lamp is visible in the lobby. Someone is sitting on the wooden bench just outside the door. As I pass by, I see a tendril of red hair peeking out from under a gray hood. I pause, and the fingers on the ivory hands—slender and long, like my mother’s—squeeze tighter. Her knuckles are scraped, and a couple of nails are broken. On her ring finger is a silver crescent moon, a round, dark red stone nestled in the curve.

  “Garnet?” I whisper.

  She looks up, surprise stretching out the angles on her face. Recognition lights upon her eyes.

  “Sticks? What are you doing here?” she asks.

  “I’m going to stay the night, then I’m going to head out of town for a while.”

  “Where are you going?” she asks.

  “Home,” I say. “What happened to your hands?” I study the wounds, wondering if she cried out when her nails broke.

  “Professional hazards,” she says.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  “I’m waiting until I’m tired.”

  “You look tired.”

  “Thanks. Asshole.” A downturned smile elongates her mouth. “I’m glad to see you made it, by the way. I wasn’t so sure you would. Now here you are, all grown up and polished. Professional. Heard you were the best hire at the studio. Never missed a day. Climbed on up that ladder, didn’t you? You’re doing all right for yourself. I barely recognize you. I’m glad our paths crossed again so I could see it. Gives me faith.”

  “Three times.” I look her dead in the eyes, and the sensation of electricity courses through every fiber of my body. “Our paths have crossed three times, haven’t they?”

  “In front of that hotel in the rain, in the alley behind the restaurant, and here,” she lists, and her expression becomes wistful. “Did you ever pick a name?” she asks.

  “Jonathon Walks.” I show her the Oregon driver’s license I bought off a Georgia Tech student once my work responsibilities included runs to the liquor store to retrieve liquid courage for new artists.

  “I guess he does kind of look like you.” She shakes her head. “But you’ll always be Sticks to me.” She bites her lip and looks me up and down. “Maybe our paths keep crossing for a reason. Do you believe in stuff like that? Meant to be?”

  “Yes,” I say. The night, the hotel, the roar of the interstate, blurs to nothing, and all I see is Garnet. All I hear is Lady Fate whispering, whispering, whispering.

  “Why don’t you save your money?” she says. “I already got a room. We can share.”

  With my eyes, I trace the length of her slender throat, imagine the shape of her tongue resting in a bed of yellow teeth. My pulse is a bass drum in my ear—boom, boom, boom—and my fingers tingle with anticipation.

  “Sure,” I say.

  I follow Garnet to her room. The bed is unmade, the cover strewn over one corner, the sheets rumpled. I will wait until she falls asleep, I decide. Wait, and then slide a pillowcase off a pillow, spin it into something useful, twist it around her throat, and listen to her whispers of sounds as long as she can keep them up. I imagine she has decent stamina.

  In front of me, Garnet shoulders out of her jacket and lets it fall to the floor, revealing a corset and a miniskirt and flesh. She slowly sits on the edge of the bed and spreads her pale legs, her skirt hitching over her hips. She slides her hands behind her on the comforter and curves her back in an arch. She isn’t wearing any underwear.

  I stare at the dark place at her center. “How many men have been inside you?”

  Her knees slam shut, and she sits up. “Do you think you’re too good for this? You’re the same as me, Sticks. We survive how we can. You climbed up a ladder I propped up for you, boy. You’d think that would mean something for me, but a man’s rise never benefits a woman. You’re in a room I paid for. I saved you, Sticks. You made it because of me. Without me, you’d still be street trash!”

  Her last word strikes me center. Her red hair is autumn leaves blanketing the floor of Tarson Woods.

  Her bottom lip trembles. “Jesus, Sticks. You?”

  “No. I didn’t mean to upset you. I was only asking because I have never been with a woman.”

  “Seriously?” She smiles, shuddering with emotion, and turns her face down, shaking her head. “Never?”

  “No.”

  “Some men like to go pro their first time.” She curves to her side, softening the angles of her body. “I can make you feel like you’re earning it.” Tears are still beaded in her eyelashes.

  “Can we go somewhere… special?” I ask.

  “This isn’t classy enough for you?” She glides her finger over the swell of her breasts. “Trust me. You won’t remember where you are.”

  “What if I want to? I’ll… pay you.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “Have you ever seen moonlight on water?” I ask.

  “Not in a long, long time,” she says, and then studies me for two seconds, three. “Okay. Just promise me you aren’t going to want to run off and get married or something afterward. That’s happened to me before, you know.”

  “No, nothing like that.” I manage a little laugh and peer at her from the corners of my eyes. “But I would love to hear you sing.”

  EDDIE Chapter 38 | 8:00 PM, December 2, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia

  EDDIE STARED AT THE DOOR. It was locked, but he could come and go with a knock. He could use the facilities, make phone calls. He wasn’t detained. Not exactly. But he didn’t have a key to the world outside and had no idea what time it was, what day. So then again, maybe he was detained.

  But they were listening to him. Things were moving. He left the room more often than he needed to so he could see if the board in the room across the hall, visible through a rectangular glass pane in the door, had changed again. Change was good—that much he knew. Something was ruled out or something was ruled in.

  They had not mentioned moving him back to a holding cell. Eddie wondered if they’d moved him to the musty office just because they needed his cell, but he’d seen only two people walked down the hall leading to those beds, and one had walked back out not long after. Probably drug busts or DUIs. Maybe they were being taken to court, or for processing through to longer stay prisons.

  Eddie knew that walk, those steps, the circle. In and out, doors and chains. Van doors slamming shut. Metal doors rolling closed. He’d stolen more than a few cars before he even had a license to drive, with no parent around to notice he wasn’t in bed. When he was in group homes, they rotated kids through quickly, and often even the well-meaning fosters couldn’t keep up with their names. Bigger boys started calling him Boost. He could make anything start. But he couldn’t lie to save his life. Then he got caught. At fourteen, he was looking at a two-year sentence in juvie.

  Mr. Flemmons, a science teacher he barely knew from the school he rarely attended, had approached Eddie and his lawyer before the hearing. Eddie remembered never having fe
lt so small before, sitting on that wooden bench, men in pressed suits and polished shoes passing behind Mr. Flemmons as he knelt on the floor in front of Eddie.

  “Why do you like stealing cars?” he’d asked.

  “I don’t like stealing them,” Eddie answered.

  “So what do you like about it?”

  “I like making them start.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m good at it.”

  “I can teach you to be even better at it,” Mr. Flemmons said. “If starting the cars is the part you really like.”

  Eddie had nodded, his eyes down, pimpled chin still stinging from a fresh shave with a disposable razor. Mr. Flemmons stepped aside, spoke to the lawyer, and strode down the hall a ways. Out of the corner of his eye, Eddie saw Mr. Flemmons knock on a big wooden door. It swung open, and he stepped inside.

  The hearing was moved to the judge’s chambers. Eddie sat down at the nicest table he’d ever seen, and he imagined it was the same kind of table knights sat around and did whatever knights did when they came together. Eddie had wished the faces staring at him then were hidden behind armor—his lawyer, Mr. Flemmons, the judge, the prosecuting attorney, and the man whose car he’d been caught stealing. Eddie had touched his forehead to the mahogany tabletop, feeling how cool it was, how damp it immediately became with his sweat, the glossy table foggy with the heat of his drowning heart.

  Eddie’s sentence became longer and shorter at the same time. He had to provide a list of all the cars he had stolen and where he’d taken them, then write a letter of apology to each of the owners as they were identified.

  “I don’t know how to write too good,” he’d said.

  Mr. Flemmons spoke up. “I’ll teach you. I can teach you everything you want to know about motors and electricity and batteries, too. But first, you have to agree to let me help you improve your reading and writing. You will not miss a day of school, and you will spend every afternoon in my classroom until your guardian picks you up.”