The Current

by Tim Johnston

  And now Danny too. Danny was missing, and what if Holly Burke never went into the river and Mr. Burke never got sad and angry and you all still worked at the Plumbing Supply, you and Danny and Jeff, and you still lived at the old house and Wyatt was still alive . . . But no, Wyatt would still be dead because time was still there and you would be as old as you are now and Wyatt died because he got too old, and you will die one day too, you and Danny and Momma too, but Danny would not be leaving all the time, driving all over, he’d be making bridges and dams but he could come home and stay home and he wouldn’t be leaving all the time because of people saying he had something to do with Holly Burke going into the river when he didn’t, he didn’t, some other person did that to her, and the sheriff, the old sheriff who was Audrey’s father never found who did it and that was ten years ago . . . and now Danny’s letter said Deputy Moran pulled him over that night and that’s how the pocket got onto his truck, and what did that mean? Did the deputy just find the pocket or did he tear it off of her shirt himself, and what did that mean . . . ?

  When he woke up he was in Danny’s room, on Danny’s bed, the comforter from his own bed thrown over him and it was almost light out and he’d been dreaming and the dream was so bad he’d been crying in his sleep and he went on crying when he was awake because he knew it was true, what he dreamed, he knew it: the phone would not ring, would never ring, because Danny could not make the call. Because Danny was dead now too.

  It was like looking over the dam again, your heart rolling and nothing to hold on to and nothing to stop you and nothing but down and down and down.

  But you can’t tell her. You can’t tell her.

  You have to get up and brush your teeth, and wash your face, and get dressed for work. You have to go downstairs and turn off the TV and put your hand on her shoulder and shake her gently, Momma, Momma wake up, and wait for her to open her eyes and see you, and see how she remembers, slowly, just looking at you, that Danny is missing. You have to tell her you want to go to work, you want to stay busy, you can’t tell her you don’t want to sit with her all day waiting and waiting, even though Danny would say you should do that, just for her. And then you have to make the tea while she goes upstairs to dress and have a hot mug waiting for her when she comes back down, and you have to remind her that she needs to put the phone back on the machine because it won’t charge otherwise and it won’t work away from the machine anyway, and when she drops you off at work you have to kiss her on the cheek good-bye and tell her everything is going to be OK Momma, everything is going to be OK, and watch as she pulls out of the lot again and turns toward home so she can be near the phone when it rings, and all the time you are just falling, down and down and nothing to stop you not even the river, not even the rocks.

  55

  He drove by Wabash’s garage at two in the afternoon and when he drove back fifteen minutes later the van was rumbling like a race car and he could see sparks in his sideview mirror where the tailpipe was scraping the concrete.

  Wabash came out to meet him in the parking lot.

  “What happened there, Gordon?”

  “Ran over something.” He shut the door and put his hands in his jacket pockets.

  “Sounds like you tore the whole muffler out. What the heck did you hit?”

  “I don’t know. Something big. Wasn’t even there by the time I pulled over.”

  Wabash moved to the back of the van and got down on one knee for a look under the chassis. “Chunk of ice, maybe?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Must of been a big gosh-darn chunk.”

  “Think you can get to it today?”

  “Well,” said Wabash, still looking. “Gonna have to order a new muffler and tailpipe, looks to me, so we might not get her done till tomorrow.” He stood again and spanked the snow and grit from his knee. “You want me to work up an estimate?”

  “No, just want you to do it.”

  “All right. You want to take the Crown Vic again?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “That’s what she’s there for.” They both looked at the black car where it sat in the weak afternoon sunlight.

  Wabash looked at Gordon and then looked more closely. “You feeling all right there, Gordon?”

  “Feel just fine.”

  “You don’t look so hot.”

  “That right? Well, you don’t look so hot yourself.”

  “Fair enough. I’ll get you the key.”

  At a quarter past six Moran came out of the building and climbed into his SUV and shut the door. Exhaust chugged from the tailpipe, reverse lights lit up the pavement as he backed out of his space, and then the cruiser followed its headlights down the street. When it was a block away Gordon put the Crown Vic into gear and pulled away from the curb and followed. He’d been sitting there since four thirty.

  The cruiser hit a green light and Gordon, keeping his distance, stopped on the yellow. He sat through the red light as the cruiser sat through a red at the intersection up ahead and then they both drove on. Gordon hit a pothole and the Crown Vic’s license plates rattled on the floor of the passenger side. Beside him, unfolded on the duffel bag, lay the map of the county.

  He followed the SUV through town and out onto the county highway going west into rural woods and farmland. The address was listed as Route 10, and Moran was headed that way, and why else would he be going out there? The man was going home.

  Home to what? To wife. To smells of dinner. To kids running up to grab his legs.

  Could a man live two lives? Could he be this one man in the light of day—this husband, father, sheriff—and another man at night, a second man? Driving the back roads in his sheriff’s cruiser, using his badge and his authority for the purposes of the second man. Ugly purposes. How long could he go on like that? How many nights, how many women. Would he still be doing it when his kids were off to college, when he was a grandfather? Or would the needs of the second man weaken with age, his memory weakening too, until he no longer believed he’d ever been that man, done those things. Could his children and his wife stand at his graveside one day believing they’d known the one, entire man? And die themselves believing that?

  It was a six-mile stretch of empty highway, the blacktop plowed but with tracks of packed snow, and Gordon kept his distance until they’d gone three miles by his odometer, then he gunned the Crown Vic to close the gap. He drew near enough to see his own headlights in the silver paint of the SUV’s back side and then eased off the gas and followed along at that distance. He saw Moran tilt his head toward the rearview and he could see that he was watching the headlights, and he gave him a few seconds to recognize the shape of the car, the headlights, as he knew he would, as any cop would, before he swung into the other lane and gunned the big engine again and blew by the SUV. He’d already dimmed the dashlights, and anyway the moment of alignment between the two drivers was too brief, and in the next moment the headlights of the SUV were in his rearview and growing small as he sped on, and the sign for the turnoff up ahead was bright in his own lights, and he would take the turnoff, he would take it one way or another and it was up to Moran to decide what would happen after that, follow or not follow, go home or not go home, choose one path and not the other . . . and the turnoff was coming up fast on the right, the turnoff was here, and Gordon braked to take it and only then, banking sharply into it—too sharply, the back end of the Crown Vic swinging wide—only then did the cruiser bloom into color behind him, barlights pulsing red and blue, grille lights pulsing red and blue and the headlights lifting as Moran hit the gas hard.

  The Crown Vic held the turn, the rear end swung back, and he sped down the road with his eyes in the rearview, and there it came: the cruiser’s headlights and barlights spilled into the turn and slurred left and right and straightened and came on fast. Gordon watching his own headlights on the snow and the tiretracks up ahead, and watching Moran’s in the rearview. He had a quarter-mile lead, maybe a little more, and that was what he
needed. His lights lit up the yellow sign, bridge may be icy, and then they shaped out the trestlework of the bridge, and the tiretracks went across and there was no ice that he could see, and when he hit the brakes the tires grabbed and held, until they didn’t and the car began to drift, and he eased off the brakes, correcting, braking, straightening her out and bringing her to a halt near the far end of the bridge.

  He threw the Crown Vic into park and opened the door and stepped out as the SUV’s lights bore down on the bridge. Moran saw him in plenty of time and braked to a stop twenty, thirty yards from the Crown Vic, and no way to go around, and there he sat, behind his headlights, the colored lights pulsing. Not getting out of the SUV, not killing the lights, just sitting there. Like it was just another routine stop and he would sit back there awhile doing whatever it was cops did—check the plates, check in with dispatch, send a text to the wife. When Danny Young looked in his rearview that night, the night of the park, this is what he must have seen: the deputy’s headlights, his silent colored lights.

  And had she seen them too? Ten, fifteen minutes earlier, that night—those same lights coming up behind her as she walked near the river. The colored lights that said Stop walking now, just stay where you are. Just do what I say.

  Gordon went through his motions and watched himself going through them, moving through space so slowly and at the same time so surely, so expectedly, as if watching a memory of himself . . . keeping his hatbrim low and lifting his hand in a friendly wave and then stooping back into the car like he had some trouble to attend to there, such as haywire equipment, such as spilled coffee, and from that vantage he saw Moran step out of the cruiser and put on his sheriff’s hat and make his way forward in his own headlights. Not reaching for his sidearm but moving just the same like a man who would not be caught off guard.

  What are you doing out here, young lady?

  Nothing, Officer. Just walking.

  You know the park is closed after dark.

  It is?

  You know it is. Come on, get in. I’ll take you home.

  From within the Crown Vic he heard Moran call out, “Davis—? Is that you? It had goddam better be, or else I’d better see hands in the air and I mean right now.”

  Gordon stood up out of the car with the rifle and leveled it, and Moran stopped midstep and put his hand to his pistol grip and Gordon said, “Don’t do that,” and Moran held still.

  “Get your hand off that pistol, you son of a bitch. Right now.”

  Moran stood with his hand on the pistol and Gordon stood with the stock to his shoulder and his eye to the sights. He’d known it would be close range and he’d removed the scope before he put the gun in the duffel bag. The end of the barrel was steady, the sights dead-centered on the backlit shape of Moran’s neck.

  “Gordon?” said Moran. “Is that you?”

  “Hand off the gun or I pull this trigger right now, no discussion.”

  Moran hesitated, then raised both hands chest-high, palms forward.

  “Take it easy, Gordon. Christ, I thought you were a goddam off-duty cop. Where’d you get that Crown Vic?” He cocked his head to look past Gordon. “Is that Dave Wabash’s?”

  Gordon watched him.

  Moran shook his head. He might’ve smiled but the lights were behind him and his face was dark under the hatbrim. “Cop car . . . sheriff’s hat. You got a badge now too, Gordon?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Christ,” Moran said again. He looked slowly from side to side, then up into the trestles, then back to Gordon. His breaths coloring in the lights. “Put the rifle down, Gordon, before you accidentally shoot me.”

  “Won’t be accidental.”

  “Well, at least take your finger off the trigger till you’re ready. I’d hate for you to shoot before you had a chance to tell me just what the fuck you think you’re doing.”

  Gordon flexed his fingers on the forward stock and reset the butt to his shoulder.

  Moran shook his head again. “I blame myself, Gordon. I should’ve seen this coming at the café. Should’ve got you some help right then.”

  Gordon said nothing. The rifle barrel steady. He saw something in the cruiser, and his heart went cold: someone in the passenger seat. A small person. A little girl. But when he looked directly into those headlights the little girl—or that shape of her—vanished.

  “Put the rifle down and let’s talk it over,” Moran said. “I can help you, Gordon. There won’t be any charges.”

  “You got that right.”

  “Gordon.” Moran took a step and Gordon shifted the gun and shot into the near headlight of the SUV and immediately chambered another round and leveled the gun at Moran again. The report replayed in the trestlework and died away. The headlight had been in his eyes and now it wasn’t. There was no one in the passenger seat. That daughter was home, she was safe . . .

  Moran stood looking at the darkened headlight, his profile lit up now by the Crown Vic’s taillights. He looked like a man in red face paint. Or one so angered his face had begun to glow.

  “You’ve just made this situation a whole lot harder to walk away from, Gordon.”

  “I can see your eyes now. I can put the next bullet in either one of them.”

  “I expect you could, if you were ready to shoot a sheriff.”

  “Wouldn’t be shooting a sheriff. I’d be shooting a liar and a rapist and a killer.”

  The red and glowing face did not change.

  “I don’t think you’re thinking clearly, Gordon. If you’re so sure about this, why don’t you go to Sheriff Halsey and tell him?”

  “Because it doesn’t matter what anybody says. Nobody knows the truth but you and my daughter.”

  “And you, Gordon. You’re so sure, you’re ready to shoot a man in cold blood. And then what?”

  “And then what doesn’t concern you. You won’t be here.”

  “What if you’re wrong, though, Gordon? What if you shoot an innocent man?” He turned his palms in a way that changed him from a man at gunpoint to a man in conversation. A man just asking the obvious and reasonable. But he kept them raised, and Gordon considered putting a bullet through one of them, as Sutter had done for his own daughter. And for Caroline Price. And for Holly too. All of them one daughter finally, and their fathers were all the same man with just one desire in him, one purpose.

  “I’m just not sure you’ve thought this through, Gordon,” Moran said, and Gordon shook his head to clear it.

  “Keep saying my name, you son of a bitch. It won’t make me not pull this trigger.”

  “Just take it easy, all right? I’m trying to help you here. Can you just lower the gun barrel, at least?”

  “How many.”

  “What?”

  “How many women. Young women. Girls. How many.”

  “I don’t understand the question, Gordon.”

  “Hell you don’t.”

  “Lower the rifle, Gordon.”

  “Think I don’t know about Katie Goss?”

  “Katie Goss? Am I supposed to know that name?”

  “You ought to since you raped her.”

  “Raped her?” Moran cocked his head. “Where in the hell are you getting your information, Gordon?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “It does matter, as I’d like to know who’s spreading lies about me.”

  “Katie Goss said it herself.”

  “To you?”

  Gordon said nothing.

  “No, not to you. Why in the hell would she be talking to you?”

  “My daughter—” Gordon said, but the words choked him. He saw the gun barrel waver. The colored lights blurred. “She told you no,” he said. “She told you no and you killed her. Say it. Say it, you son of a bitch. Say you ran her down and threw her in the river to drown. Say it before I kill you.”

  “You aren’t going to kill me, Gordon.” Moran took a step forward, his hands still raised.

  “Take one more step and find out.”
r />   “You aren’t going to shoot me, Gordon, because you’re not sure you’re right. You’ve heard a lot of talk, and you’ve talked yourself into one version of things, but you don’t know for sure, and the moment you kill me you’ll never know for sure, because if I’m the one who did it, like you say, then I’m the only one who can tell you the truth. I’m the only man who can put your mind at ease. And I won’t do that, Gordon, because it would be a lie, and afterwards you would still not know the truth. Kill me, Gordon, and you will still be in exactly the same place, won’t you. You still won’t know for sure. You will never know, even when you are in prison for the rest of your life. Or dead yourself. You’ll die never knowing for sure if you killed an innocent man, a sheriff, a father of two little children himself, Gordon . . .”

  Somehow he’d walked nearly to the barrel. The colored lights filled Gordon’s vision, Moran just a shape in the glistening pulsing lights, like a figure underwater.

  The rifle became heavy and he understood that Moran’s hand was on the barrel, lowering it. He let the barrel drop and when it was aimed at the ground he let Moran take the rifle out of his hands. Moran working the bolt, ejecting the remaining two rounds into the snow and recovering them from the holes they made, then digging up the empty casing the same way and slipping all three into his jacket pocket. He carried the rifle to the cruiser and put it in the back seat as if it were his prisoner, then opened the front door and reached in, and the colored lights that had been pulsing all the while stopped and there was only the one headlight casting light on the two of them and the road and the Crown Vic.