The Current

by Tim Johnston

  But Danny is far away and Marky knows only his love of the dog, his terror of death, and Roger is gone. There’s no one but you to make that choice, to say whether this animal, this member of the family, after all, goes on living or has come now, so quickly, to his end.

  It was the water, she remembered—the sound of water in the pipes. If he had not used the outdoor spigot she would not have come downstairs. She would never have seen him standing out there with the hose in his hand. Would never have seen the look on his face the moment he knew she was there, the moment he knew he’d been seen.

  Of course, if she had not had a date with Gordon Burke—if she’d never had feelings for Gordon Burke—Danny would not have been out at all that night.

  This was her final thought on the matter, again and again, all these years later. Standing at her grandmother’s stove, the winter sun rising, stirring dogfood and drugs in a saucepan for the outlaw sheriff.

  18

  Sutter woke up coughing as if he would drown and he coughed his way into the bathroom and put his hands to his knees and stood bow-backed until at last he hocked the thing up and into the bowl, thick ball of Jesus knows what that bobbed in the water in a spreading cloud of pink. He spat again and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stood over the bowl dizzy and sweating.

  He got into his jeans and his shirt and stepped barefoot onto the cold concrete of the motel’s second-story walkway and lit the day’s first cigarette and stood looking down on the gray lot below. Birds somewhere, calling and whistling. Iowa birds. Semis somewhere, brakes gasping, the big diesel engines rumbling. He looked down from the height of the balcony and he remembered falling though space and then he remembered his dream: he’d been on the river with his father, the two of them in his father’s old johnboat way up north above the falls, his father heavy in the stern and himself just a small boy riding high in the bow. But in the dream they had no outboard and when he searched the floor for the paddle he found nothing but dead fish, the boat rocking in the current and moving fast as the falls roared louder and his father yelling, Just hold to the gunwales, Tommy, and don’t . . . but he could not hear for the roar of the water, and then the bow was out in open space and he with it, way out over the drop with the weight of his father in the stern, nothing under the bow but the plunging water and the open air and the far small rocks below. He hung there and he hung there, the world below him, before the boat fulcrumed over the edge and began its dive and he’d woken up with his fists gripping the gunwales and his lungs full of water.

  The garage didn’t open until eight a.m., the sign said, so he drove back two blocks to a café and then drove another block and parked, and killed the engine, and sat with the keys in his fist.

  “What?” he said. She hadn’t said a thing.

  He half expected to see Ed Moran’s cruiser on the street, or parked before the café, and when he went inside and sat at the counter he half expected to see Moran himself walk in with his deputies, and he half hoped he would. Save everyone a lot of trouble, probably.

  But no sheriff walked in, no deputies, and at eight a.m. he let the waitress refill his mug. She was forty or so and on the big side and she had a bright patch of pink on her neck he took to be a birthmark. Her tag said rhonda.

  “You sure you don’t want some real breakfast, hon?” she said, regarding with an unhappy look the untouched half of his buttered toast. The other half he’d swallowed just so he could take his heart pills and not vomit them right back up.

  “Thank you, but I gotta watch my figure,” he said, and there was a half beat of nothing before she cocked her head back and laughed.

  “Hon, you call that a figure?”

  When she’d gone away again he sat drinking his coffee until he’d emptied the mug—no sheriff, no deputies—and then he left a few bills on the counter and walked out a free man, a free citizen of his own country, and he walked to his car and got behind the wheel and drove back past the café and pulled into the lot of the mechanic’s garage and parked off to the side, out of the way of the closed bay door.

  An electronic chime sounded when he entered, and there was no one at the desk and he waited to see if someone would respond to the chime. Stink of grease and tire rubber and sweat, decades of it in the crammed little office and no one coming, so he stepped into the garage through the open door and stood watching the only man in there heft a tire from off its bolts and bounce it away on the blackened floor. Finally Sutter said Hey and the man looked up from his work and said Hey yourself. Stood and came over, working a red rag in his hands. He was a squat and strong-looking man with enlarged gray eyes behind thick lenses. Midforties. His face was not marked, scratched, in any way.

  “Can I help you?” the man said.

  Sutter looked for a name on the blue mechanic’s shirt but saw none. “Maybe so,” he said. “Are you the owner?”

  “I am, and my old man before me and his old man before that.” He stuffed the rag in his back pocket and set his hands to his hips.

  “Any chance you’ve got a young man name of Bud works for you?”

  “Bud,” said the man, merely repeating the name. He took Sutter in anew. Sutter wearing his regular canvas jacket, now. His jeans, his khaki shirt. “You mind if I ask who’s asking—not to be rude or nothin.”

  “Not at all. Tom Sutter,” he said and put out his hand.

  “Pete Yoder.”

  “Glad to meet you, Pete. I’m just asking because this guy Bud gave me a jump up in Decorah awhile back, said if I was ever down this way I should stop by the shop and say hey.”

  “Which shop did he say?”

  “Said best shop in town.”

  “Well, you found it. But I only got one man working for me and his name ain’t Bud.”

  “Well, shoot,” said Sutter. “What’s his name?”

  “I just told you. Pete Yoder.”

  Sutter smiled. “That’s how I liked it myself, back in the day. My name on the door, my name on the work. Well,” he said, turning to go.

  “What kind of work was that? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  Sutter turned back. “I was a sheriff for fifteen years.”

  “That so. Whereabouts?”

  “Up north. Just over the state line.”

  “That so.” Yoder adjusted his smudged lenses. “Then you probably know Sheriff Moran.”

  “He used to be a deputy of mine,” said Sutter.

  Yoder nodded and studied his own fingers, front and back. He pulled the rag from his pocket and began working it in his hands again. “Well, Sheriff. I reckon this brake job ain’t gonna do itself.”

  “Sorry to keep you from it.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t help you. There’s two other garages in town, but I’m guessing you already know that.”

  Yoder walked him back into the office, and there he paused, and Sutter paused too.

  “How do you like that rig there, Sheriff?” He was looking at a grid of black bars over the office window. Raw steel frame bolted to cinderblock. Welds of dull pewter, unpainted. New-looking.

  “I’d say you had you a break-in,” Sutter said.

  “You’d say right. Twelve hundred dollars’ worth of hand tools, according to the insurance, walking right out that door. But you can’t buy those kind of tools no more. Those were my granddad’s tools.” He looked away. Then he looked back and said, “Not sayin nothin against your old deputy, Sheriff. But ever time I think of some son of a bitch walking around in here, taking his sweet time, and then walking right out that door with my tools . . .” He looked like he might spit, but spit where, on his own floor? “I know it’s just tools,” he said. “But I think I could kill a son of a bitch if I got the chance.”

  19

  By the time he pulled into the parking lot of the garage the cab of the van was no warmer than when he pulled out of his drive—or if it was warmer it was his own body heat that had warmed it—and Gordon left the engine running so there’d be no doubt, so no one could
sit there running the engine for an hour before they could tell him what he already knew, which was that his goddam heater was shot.

  He felt a little better for the day off, for the night’s rest without fever dreams, but still his eyes ached in the winter light and his body felt like he’d fallen down a flight of stairs.

  Just a few other cars and trucks in the lot and none he recognized other than Wabash’s Ford pickup and the black Crown Vic he kept as a loaner. Anyway the garage opened for business at seven thirty so she would have already come and gone by now and would not return again until five o’clock to pick the boy up again, just as she’d done when the boy worked for him. That other lifetime. And he would go to another garage if he could find one within twenty miles that did not take twice as long and charge twice as much and do half as good a job and was somehow also run by Dave Wabash, a man he’d known since high school and who sent customers his way just as he sent them Wabash’s way.

  He stepped into the office and stood there a full minute, waiting, tasting more than smelling, thanks to his jammed-up sinuses, the gasoline and tire rubber, before finally he pushed through the glass door, stained with many black handprints, into the garage and made his way toward the only sound, which was the ratcheting of a socket wrench—steady, rhythmic, like the call of a great bug. He tracked the sound to the far bay, where a man stood under a gray sedan, or did not stand exactly, as the lift only went so high, and there was no pit and a man had to stoop under the chassis or else scoot around in a chair on casters—Wabash too cheap to buy new lifts, which was fine by Gordon if it kept his prices down.

  All he could see of this man was his dark-blue mechanic’s pants and his leather workboots, and Gordon said, “That you under there, Dave?” and there was a final turn of the wrench before the boots shifted and took a step and a face appeared. Not Wabash’s face or the face of any other mechanic he knew, but the face of the boy he’d not seen in ten years, and seeing it appear now from beneath the car did something to Gordon’s legs so that he had to take a step to get his balance. His heart rolling like a boat. Time rolling back.

  But of course it was not that boy—he knew it before his heart or his legs knew it. It was the brother, Marky, who he’d seen maybe half a dozen times since those days, usually right here in this garage, the boy blurting out, Heya Mister Burke! as if he had no sense of time, no sense of history. And maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was the only one.

  You could tell him from his brother by the eyes, always the eyes, if that’s all you had to go on: the lights on in there but a different kind of lights. You didn’t say retard anymore; there were other words, though Gordon hadn’t learned them. The boy had not been expected to live, once upon a time, and now here he was—twenty-nine, thirty?—big as a horse and working on a car. That was the thing, that was what threw him, and Gordon said without thinking, “What the hell you doing under there?” As if it was his place and not Wabash’s. As if he’d caught the kid trying to sweat copper in the back room of the Plumbing & Supply, trying to blow himself up and the whole building with him.

  The boy grinned and said, “Heya Mister Burke!” and showed him the socket wrench and told him in a burst of Marky-talk, within which Gordon caught just enough English, that he was pulling the pan because the gasket was bad and Jeff had told him to do it . . . Gordon pinching his eyes shut against the pain the boy’s yammer put into his brain and saying, “Where’s Wabash, Marky? Where’s your boss?” to which the boy gave a big shrug and went on yammering.

  “All right, all right,” said Gordon, “where’s Jeff, then?” and as he said it a door squawked open at the far end of the garage and Jeff Goss stepped out, tucking his blue shirt back in, behind him the sound of the refilling toilet tank Gordon himself had installed maybe twenty years ago, Goss looking down as he walked and then looking up and stopping—or almost stopping at the sight of Gordon standing beside the crouched and yammering Marky, and then continuing on toward them. No taller now than he’d been at sixteen, still looking up to look you in the eye. Not the worker Marky’s brother had been—or that Marky had been, for that matter—not even close. But he’d hired the three of them as a set, figuring three boys who were almost like three brothers would be stronger than three who weren’t. That the best of them would shape the other two and bring out something better in all three—or at least something better than had been there otherwise.

  And then you wake up one day wishing you’d never set eyes on any one of them. Wishing they’d never been born. That they’d died all together in a car accident at sixteen.

  “Hey there, Mr. Burke,” Goss said. Then, to Marky: “Big Man, give it a rest,” and the stream of Marky-talk abruptly stopped, as if by some valve.

  “Wabash has got him working on cars now?” Gordon said.

  “That ain’t work, Mr. Burke, he’s just draining the oil pan.”

  Gordon turned to Marky again, the boy standing hunchbacked under the chassis still, looking from Gordon to Goss and cranking the wrench handle slowly with one hand as he held the socket in the other, as if to raise some tricky bolt from his own fist.

  Gordon grunted and said, “Maybe you better tell him that. He thinks he’s pulling the whole goddam pan and changing out the gasket.”

  Goss gave a small jerk of the head and put on a smirk. “He tell you that?”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “Heck. He don’t know himself what he’s saying, Mr. Burke, you know that. He gets going sometimes he just can’t stop—can you, Big Man.” Goss grinning at the boy under the car until Gordon wanted to cuff him one to the back of his head and Marky standing under the old lift like he was just waiting for it to give out and squash him, the dope, and finally Gordon couldn’t stand it and, gesturing at the boy, he said, “Get out from under there already, you dope, you’re making me nervous,” and Marky came out from under the car and stood to his full height, somehow still looking like someone who was worried about cracking his head on something.

  Gordon turned once more to Goss and said, “Where’s your boss?” and Goss told him Wabash was out on call with the wrecker, wouldn’t be back until after lunch, and was it something he could help him with? Gordon standing between these two boys, daylight burning, his head pounding . . . Jeff and Marky waiting, watching as their old boss took his forehead in his hand and shook his head and said, “Son of a bitch.” Then said to Jeff, “It’s the goddam heater,” and turned and walked back toward the office.

  Jeff followed, and Marky stood alone by the raised car, still turning the socket in his fist and saying nothing to his old boss, no Good-bye Mister Burke! Because Jeff had given him a look, a face that said you just be quiet Marky, you don’t need to say good-bye to Mister Burke, and he watched them go into the office and then watched them through the bay windows as they crossed the lot toward the van, good old Mr. Burke, who looked mean and talked mean but wasn’t really mean because he let you work for him in the Plumbing Supply when you were just kids, you and Danny and Jeff, and Danny still lived at home, at the old house in town, not the farmhouse, and Poppa had died and this is how you dry-mop a floor Marky, and this is how you wet-mop a floor, Mr. Burke pushing the mops awhile and then handing them to you and patting you two times on the back to get you going, always two times, one two off you go, and here’s how you clean a window and here’s how you keep the supplies neat on the shelves and here’s what you say if a customer asks you something, you say just one second ma’am or just one second sir while I go get Mister Burke or Danny or Jeff, and all the nice people coming into the Plumbing Supply and saying Heya Marky and Danny always there to show you stuff Mr. Burke wouldn’t show you like how to clean the copper fittings and paint them with the little flux brush, stand back now while I light this torch and don’t ever do this without me Marky, I’m serious, this is just for show, and the hissing gas and the scritch-scritch of the sparky thing and then the WOOSH of the flame and see here how you heat up the joint until the copper turns that bright new penny co
lor and the flux starts to bubble in the seam and then you touch the solder to the seam, see how it just kinda sucks into the joint and when you see the solder all the way around the seam you know the joint is filled and you can stop then and that’s how you sweat copper Marky and don’t ever EVER tell Mister Burke I showed you that, you promise, you swear on a monkey’s uncle?

  And you never told Mr. Burke anything Danny said not to, not even the time Holly showed you the jewelry she had in a shoebox in her closet and made you swear you wouldn’t tell a soul and Danny said where’d you get all this and Holly said the mall and Danny said you better be careful and she said I am careful dummy, that’s why it’s here and not in the mall, and later after you went home Danny made you promise all over again not to tell anyone about the jewelry and you said but stealing’s bad Danny, and he said I know it is Marky but telling on people is worse, especially your friends, especially after you promised not to, and after that you didn’t want to go upstairs into Holly’s room anymore . . .

  You never told Mr. Burke anything you promised not to, not about sweating copper in the back room or about Holly’s jewelry, but Mr. Burke got mad anyway, Mr. Burke got so mad and so sad and so quiet after Holly went into the river, and then one day after the sheriff came and asked questions you couldn’t go to the Plumbing Supply any more, you or Danny or Jeff, and Holly was dead, and Danny coming home from the cabin without Wyatt, and Danny so mad too and so quiet, and then going away to Saint Louis and to Houston and to Albuquerque and only coming home at Christmas and some years not even that, poor old Wyatt so sad, he doesn’t understand anything you tell him he just looks at you and he looks at the door and he sniffs all around the house looking for Danny and he lies in his bed, Danny’s bed, and he doesn’t want to play anymore and just let him be, Marky, Momma says, he’s old, and he just lies around old and sad and waiting waiting waiting . . .