The Current

by Tim Johnston

  “Shit, I goddam told you,” said Moran.

  She watched him. Her throat wanted to call out to him—Help me, please—but she would not let it. Would not speak to him. Already her jaw was chattering.

  “You couldn’t just cooperate, could you?”

  The water so cold and so strong and Moran just standing there. She turned her face so she wouldn’t see him. Before her, downriver, the ice banked around the woods and disappeared. If she went under how far could she go? Was there a place downriver where the ice didn’t freeze and she could surface? How far was the dam, where Caroline had been found?

  But this wasn’t that river.

  Yes, it was—Upper Black Root, Lower Black Root, all the same river going the same direction, toward the same dams . . . but how far?

  The water so cold you couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.

  But there’s another dam, Deputy—remember? Where we fished when you were a little girl?

  Yes, Daddy . . . but how far is that?

  Fishermen left holes in the ice—but the holes would freeze over an hour later and would be too small anyway.

  There was movement, scraping sounds, and she turned to see Moran on his hands and knees, making his way out toward her. He’d left his hat behind and he looked ridiculous and hideous. Like an animal come from the woods to see if this floundering thing in the ice could be had for dinner.

  “Go away,” she said, or tried to say. Her breath was gone.

  He got down on his stomach and drew himself forward on his elbows. The ice popped and he went no farther. Resting there on his elbows, getting his breath, and the breath gusting white from his open mouth.

  She turned from him and tried to raise herself on another part of the ice, but there was nothing to hold on to and the current was strong and she slipped down again and stopped trying and rested. All the blood had gone to her heart but her heart was cold too.

  Moran breathing, watching her.

  “All you had to do was cooperate,” he said. “You’d think I deserved that much, at least. All the years we’ve known each other.”

  Against her will she turned to look at him—looked into those bug eyes and saw not hostility but . . . confusion. Or something like it.

  He looked down at his hands, then cupped them and blew into them. White shoots of breath escaping at the seams. He looked away, downriver.

  “You remember when your daddy would send me to pick you up at school?” he said. And looked at her again. “You remember that?”

  Her head was shaking and maybe he thought she was answering him.

  “Sure you do. You were just a little girl. He’d get hung up and couldn’t make it so he’d send me. Trusted me with that—picking up his daughter from school.”

  She watched him from her hole of ice and water, her backteeth knocking.

  “And you’d ride up front with me, and I’d let you use the PA . . . remember? You’d scare the bejesus outta some kid on the sidewalk and then duck down out of sight.”

  He smiled at her, almost shyly. Then the smile died away and his brows creased. “But then he stopped doing that. Stopped sending me. I figured you must’ve said something. Must’ve told him you didn’t want me picking you up anymore.” He watched her. As if she might have something to say to that. Some kind of confirmation.

  “You never . . .” she said with her rattling jaw.

  Moran cocked his head. “Never what?”

  “Never told him . . . my dad.”

  “I never told him what?”

  “That you pulled . . . Danny Young over. That night. You never told him . . . you were there too.”

  She watched him, and whatever had been in his eyes, shyness or whatever it was, vanished. He grinned crookedly and shook his head.

  “Daddy’s little deputy,” he said. “And look where it’s gotten you.”

  She turned away from him again. She could not hold on much longer but she wasn’t frightened now. She’d been here before and she knew how it would be. In a moment you’ll simply let go and he’ll see that you let go, that you made the decision yourself. Not him. You walked onto the ice yourself and you will go under yourself and it will be all right.

  But Moran would not wait—he began worming his way forward again on his elbows.

  “Don’t—” she said, and he reached out and she slipped and thrashed and turned from him and held on, and he came at her again.

  “Stop that,” he said, but she said nothing more—would not speak to him, would not scream. He reached again and she dodged again, splashing, and held on. He would only come so close, would only risk so much. She kept moving to the left and to the right. Like a child going around a tree to keep from being tagged.

  He was breathing hard, grunting with his efforts. He came closer still and reached again and she turned away and with her back to him she felt his hand land on her shoulder and felt the strength of his grip. And though she was not facing him she knew from the pressure of his hand, the orientation of his fingers, where he was, and she turned once more in her hole and flung the cast backwards through the air and it landed hard, solidly, as if striking a rock. The impact shook her to her skull and he made no sound and his hand slipped from her shoulder and did not return.

  She turned to face him. He was lying facedown on the ice, his mouth open, one bug eye open and staring at her. Something dark ran down his jaw and she saw it was coming from his ear. His breaths puffed snow crystals along the ice.

  Instinctively she grabbed at him. As you would grab at a rope, or the branch of a tree. She took hold of his arm, his shoulder, and suddenly he was awake again, and he was moving—rolling once, slowly, like a body turning over in bed, away from her, and her deadened fingers could not hold on. He lay flat on his back on the ice now, his face to the sky. His bug eyes shut. Cold, thin smoke drifting from his open mouth. No part of him within reach.

  She watched him. Watched for the smoke to stop seeping from his mouth.

  She looked back toward the road—no lights, no movement; the pines and the shadows of the pines, and the dim shapes of the two cars beyond—and when she looked back he was staring at her. Or seemed to be. He’d turned his head and his eyes were open. Bulbous and glassy and empty.

  She looked away again, downriver, at the wide plate of ice and the bend that went around the woods and continued out of view. She’d stopped shaking, she noticed. Her teeth had stopped chattering. No longer cold because she was no longer there—arms dead, chest dead. No feeling whatsoever below the ice, not even the sensation of the current pulling at her legs. Nothing now but the dead weight of sleep, of dreaming, of sinking into water that was no longer cold but warm—bathwater warm, and you could see everything under the water, every bubble and every rippling eel of color where the moonlight came through the ice and lit up the underworld, the shape of your own fingers where they slid along the underside of the ice, and there’s the slippery and wavering moon following along with you, gliding along on the other side like a bright eye that wants only to keep you in its sight, wants only to light your way as you go, and the journey will be long but you are not alone—the girls of the river are here as they were before, girls of pale arms and long yellow hair . . . and Caroline is with them too, her hand finding your good hand and gripping, her cheek so smooth against yours, her voice so warm and grass-soft in your ear, Oh, Audrey, here we go again—what is wrong with us? and it’s a voice to fill your heart, to make you want to laugh and cry—Oh, Caroline, Caroline! God I’ve missed you!

  Drifting with Caroline and the others in the warm river under the ice, the moon following overhead, and there is no urgency to breathe, no panic about breathing, just the steady current and the feeling of her hand in yours, her body alongside yours, the two of you bumping downstream under the ice.

  It’s so beautiful, Caroline, isn’t it?

  It is, Audrey. But hush now, hush, she says in her Georgia voice, it won’t be long.

  On and on under the ice, in the strange
light, your fingertips slipping along the underside of the ice and the girls coming and going like the curious creatures they are, the moon following, and it’s two minutes or it’s two hours or it’s ten years . . . ten years and ten thousand years all the same thing to the world and only one creature in all its history ever keeping track, ever thinking of such a thing as time—ever desiring it or fearing it or losing it, and that was why you’d come home in the first place, because you were running out of time and that was why he’d gone down there looking for that boy, and there’d been even less time than both of you knew. And time had just ended, just stopped cold with no warning for Caroline and her family, for Holly Burke and her parents too . . .

  But that’s not how it is, Audrey, that’s not how things really are once you’re outside of time—or inside of it, as you are when you’re in the river, when you’re in that current and you are drifting. That’s not time, because there is no beginning and no ending and you are just in the current and the current is forever and you are not alone, you are never alone in the current and the current itself is . . . is what?

  Is love.

  Is love. All right. But you have to be in it, inside the current, to ever know that. And once you’re in it you can’t tell those who are not, who you’ve left behind, that it’s all right, that it’s not what they thought it was. And that’s the worst thing: that you can never tell them what it’s really like. That it all flows on, under everything, even the ice . . . And that’s why you can’t stay, Audrey: so you can tell them.

  But I want to stay.

  No, you don’t. You’re too strong.

  You’re the strong one, Caroline . . . You are.

  Tell that to the deputy!

  Did you see?

  I saw everything. You fought so beautifully, Audrey. Don’t stop now.

  But I’m so tired . . .

  Almost there, Audrey.

  Caroline—

  Hang on, now. Hang on, Audrey. See it? Here it comes . . .

  PART V

  57

  The sheriff sat in the cruiser for a long while, the engine off, watching the building from a distance. He kept thinking something would come over the radio, or his phone, that would require him to pull away from the curb and get back to town. But no one radioed, no one called.

  Almost six thirty now and lights were coming on in the windows. He didn’t have to watch hers, as he’d already been up there once and she wasn’t home, but he watched anyway.

  He would wait fifteen more minutes and then he’d go.

  He waited fifteen minutes and said, “All right, five minutes more,” and two minutes after that a small red hatchback pulled up before the building and parked. A woman stepped out of the car hitching a tote bag to her shoulder, then stood by as a small child—a girl—hopped down to the curb. The woman opened the hatchback and collected a plastic bag of groceries, then took the girl by the hand and the two of them went up the walkway toward the building.

  He waited until he saw light in the second-floor windows and then he got out of the cruiser and walked up to the building and pushed through the unlocked entrance. He climbed the stairs for the second time, and for the second time rapped his knuckles on her door. There was a long moment, a long silence, the sheriff watching the lens of the peephole, before the deadbolt clacked and the door swung open and she stood in the opening, still in her coat.

  She was older, a little heavier, but otherwise did not look much different than she’d looked ten years ago when she’d been Danny Young’s eighteen-year-old girlfriend. She looked like a tired young mother at the end of a long workday. The little girl stared up at him from behind her mother’s legs and the resemblance was strong. Like seeing the same person at two different ages.

  “Miss Goss?” he said.

  “Yes,” said the woman.

  “Katie Goss.”

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Sheriff Halsey. I don’t know if you remember me.”

  “I remember you. You used to be a deputy.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I did. I’m sorry to just show up like this. I tried to catch you at work but you’d already left.”

  She stood with one hand on the door, one on the back of the little girl’s head.

  He said, “Do you mind if I step in for just a minute? I’d rather not talk to you in the hallway like this.”

  She didn’t answer, and he knew what he was asking of her, and he didn’t know what he’d say if she refused him. But she didn’t; she opened the door and stepped aside.

  He removed his hat and stepped inside and she closed the door behind him. He bent toward the little girl and smiled. “Hello, what’s your name?”

  The little girl flinched at his voice and said nothing.

  “That’s Mel,” said her mother.

  “Hello, Mel. My name is Wayne.”

  The little girl said nothing. He straightened again, and Katie Goss was watching him. She said, “Sheriff, why do I get the feeling you’re about to say the name Audrey Sutter?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. I hadn’t planned on it.”

  “But that’s why you’re here.”

  “No, ma’am. Why would it be?”

  “Because of what she told you.”

  He watched her. “What do you think she told me?”

  “Something she promised me she wouldn’t.”

  Halsey stood there. The little girl looking up at him, then at her mother, then at him again. He said, “She kept that promise as far as I know, ma’am. She came to see me before she came to see you, and it sure wasn’t me who sent her your way.”

  Katie Goss watched him. “Then why are you here, Sheriff?”

  The little girl would not go to her room, but finally she agreed to play with her horses on the coffee table, and Katie Goss found a cartoon channel on the TV, and when that was settled she took off her coat and cleared the little kitchen table and poured two glasses of filtered water and sat down in the chair across from him.

  Halsey lifted the glass for a drink and set it down again. The TV was playing and the little girl was out of view behind a pony wall, but just the same he tried to keep his voice down.

  “I guess you won’t be too surprised to know that I know about your talk with Sheriff Sutter, ten years back.”

  “You mean about Danny Young?”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t. I mean before that.”

  She said nothing. Then she sat back in her chair with both hands around the glass of water and the glass on the table. The cartoon voices looped forth in a continuous babble. She began clicking her fingernails on the glass. Halsey watched her nails for a moment and looked up again.

  “And just to be clear,” he said. “I’m not asking you to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me. I’m not asking you to go into any . . . particulars.”

  Her nails on the glass sounded like a soft typing. She watched him, saying nothing. Finally she stopped clicking and said, “I’m still trying to figure out why you’re here, Sheriff. I mean why now.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m trying to figure that out too.” He looked at his own glass of water. “They’s a thaw to ever freeze, as my granddad liked to say.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I think it means the past doesn’t stay in the past. That it comes back around, eventually.”

  “And you think it’s come back around?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not even sure what that would look like.” He gave his glass a slow half-turn. “When Holly Burke was killed,” he said, “I was just a young deputy about as green as I could be. And I believed then that the sheriff, and the rest of us, that we all did the best we could with what we had, and what we had was not much. Now, as sheriff myself, knowing the things I didn’t know then, well. I wonder.”

  “What do you know now?” she said, and he looked up from his glass. The young woman just sitting there, awaiting his answer.

  “The truth is I don’t know what I know,” he said. “But cert
ain . . . information has come to light, with regards to that case, the Holly Burke case. And I’m sitting here now because I think there might be a connection.”

  “A connection?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Between what happened to her and what happened to you, back then.”

  She watched him, and he could see in her eyes that he wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t already considered—maybe even before Audrey Sutter tracked her down.

  “Have you spoken to Danny Young?” she said. “I mean recently?”

  “No, ma’am. I wish I could. But he’s gone missing.”

  “Missing?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Part of me was hoping maybe you’d heard from him.”

  “Me?” She gave a small huff. “I haven’t heard from him in ten years.”

  “Yes, ma’am. It wasn’t much of a hope.”

  She watched him, and he held her eyes.

  “You don’t think he killed Holly Burke?” she said.

  “No, ma’am, I don’t. I don’t think I ever did.”

  “You must be about the only one then. You and your old boss.”

  “Did you believe it?”

  She didn’t answer, but she didn’t look away either—and at the same time she did; her eyes were on him because he was in front of them, that was all. Then she looked down.

  “I didn’t know what I believed anymore, Sheriff.”

  He waited. Turning the glass in his hands. She did not wipe at her eyes and no tears came. The TV played on in the other room. He resisted the impulse to check his watch.