John Hart - Down River

Consequence meant nothing to Danny. He flat-out did not give a shit.

I wanted to feel like he did.

We hit it off. If I got into a fight, he backed me up. I did the same. Older kids. Kids our age. It didn’t matter. Once, in the eighth grade, we stole the principal’s car and parked it in plain view at the massage parlor by the interstate. Danny went down for that: expelled for two weeks, juvenile record. He never mentioned my name.

But he was a grown man now, and his father stood to make a pile of money. I had to wonder how deep that dark streak ran.

Seven figures, Robin had said.

Deep enough, I guessed.

“You think he could have done it?” I asked. “Attacked Grace?”

Dolf thought about the question. “Maybe, but I doubt it. He’s made some mistakes, but I still say he’s a good enough kid. Are the police looking for him?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “Guess we’ll see then.”

“There was a woman with Grace before she was attacked.”

“What woman?” Dolf asked.

“In a blue canoe, one of the old wooden ones like you never see anymore. She had white hair, but looked too young for that, somehow. They were talking.”

“Were they?” His eyebrows came together.

“Do you know her?”

“I do.”

“Who is she?”

“Did you tell the police about her?”

“I did.”

He spit over the rail. “Sarah Yates. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

“Who is she?”

“I haven’t spoken to Sarah in a long time. She lives across the river.”

“You can do better than that,” I said.

“That’s really all that I can tell you, Adam. Now come here. I’ll show you something.”

I let it go, followed him off of the porch and into the yard. He led me to the barn and put a hand on the old MG that sat on blocks in the center of it. “You know, until this car, Grace has never asked me for a single thing. She’d wear the seat out of her pants before she complained of a draft.” He rubbed his hand on the car’s fender. “This is the cheapest convertible she could find. It’s temperamental and undependable, but she wouldn’t trade it for the world.” He studied me again. “Do those words describe anything else in this barn? Temperamental. Undependable.”

I knew what he meant.

“She loves you, Adam; even though you left, and even though the leaving damn near killed her. She wouldn’t trade you for anything else.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because she’s going to need you now more than ever.” He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Don’t leave again. That’s what I’m telling you.”

I stepped back, so that his hand fell away; and for a moment there was a twitch in his gnarled fingers. “That’s never been up to me, Dolf.”

“Your dad’s a good man who’s made mistakes. That’s all he is. Just like you. Just like me.”

“And last night?” I asked. “When he threatened to kill me?”

“It’s like I said. Violent and more than a little blind. The two of you. Just the same.”

“It’s not the same,” I said.

Dolf straightened and turned up his lips in the most forced smile I’d ever seen. “Ah, forget it. You know your own mind well enough. Let’s go eat some breakfast.” He turned and walked away.

“That’s the second time you’ve lectured me about my father in the past twelve hours. He doesn’t need you fighting his battles.”

“It’s not supposed to be a battle,” he said, and kept walking.

I looked at the sky, then at the barn, but in the end I had nowhere else to go. We returned to the house, and I sat at his kitchen table and watched as he poured two coffees and took bacon and eggs out of the refrigerator. He cracked six eggs into a bowl, added some milk, and whipped it all with a fork. He put the bowl aside and opened the bacon.

It took a few minutes for us both to calm down.

“Dolf,” I finally said. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.” His voice was as calm as could be.

“What’s the longest you’ve ever heard of a deer living?”

“A whitetail?”

“Yes.”

Dolf dropped half the side of bacon into the pan. “Ten years in the wild, longer in captivity.”

“You ever heard of one living twenty years?”

Dolf put the pan on the stove, and the bacon began to snap and sizzle. “Not a normal one.”

Light fingered through the window to place a pale square on the near black wood. When I looked up, he was studying me with open curiosity. “Do you remember the last time my father took me hunting?” I asked. “That white buck I shot at and missed?”

“It’s one of your old man’s favorite stories. He says that the two of you reached an understanding out there in the woods. A thing unspoken, he’d call it. A commitment to life in the shadow of death, or something like that. Damn poetic, I always thought.”

I thought of the photograph my father kept in his study, the one taken on the day we saw the white deer. It was taken in the driveway after a long, silent walk back from the deep woods. My father thought it was a new beginning. I was just trying not to cry.

“He was wrong, you know. There was no commitment.”

“What do you mean?” Dolf asked.

“I wanted to kill that deer.”

“I don’t understand.”

I looked up at Dolf and felt the same overwhelming emotions I’d felt in the woods. Comfort. Pain. “My father said that deer was a sign. He meant that it was a sign from her.”

“Adam-”

“That’s why I wanted to hurt it.” I squeezed my hands, feeling pain as the bones ground together. “That’s why I wanted to kill it. I was angry. I was furious.”

“But why?”

“Because I knew it was over.”

“What was?”

I couldn’t meet his eyes. “Everything good.”

Dolf did not speak, but I understood. What could he possibly say? She’d left me, and I did not even know why.

“I saw a deer this morning,” I said. “A white one.”

Dolf sat down on the other side of the table. “And you think that maybe it’s the same?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe. I used to dream about the first one.”

“Do you want it to be the same?”

I did not answer him directly. “I read up on white deer a few years back, the mythology of white deer. There’s quite a bit of it, going back a thousand years. They’re very rare.”

“What kind of mythology?”

“Christians talk of a white stag that carried a vision of Christ between his antlers. They believe it’s a sign of impending salvation.”

“That sounds nice.”

“There are legends that go back much further. The ancient Celts believed something entirely different. Their legends speak of white deer leading travelers deep into the secret parts of the forest. They say a white deer can lead a man to new understanding.”

“That’s not too bad, either.”

I looked up. “They say it’s a messenger from the dead.”

We ate in silence. Dolf left and I got myself cleaned up. In the mirror, I looked haggard, my eyes somehow older than the rest of me. I pulled on jeans and a linen shirt, then I walked back outside, where I found Robin sitting on the picnic table holding part of a carburetor. She stood when she saw me. I stopped on the porch.

“Nobody answered when I knocked,” she said. “I heard the water running and decided to wait.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I came to apologize.”

“If it’s about earlier-”

“It’s not,” she said.

“What then?”

A shadow crossed her face. “It was Grantham’s call.” She looked down and her shoulders drew in. “But that’s no excuse. I should not have let it go this far.”