John Hart: Down River

“Most of it is harmless. Editorials in the paper. Harsh words. But there have been some threats, some vandalism. Somebody shot up some cattle one night. Outbuildings were burned. You’re the first one to get hurt.”

“Other than the cows.”

“It’s just background noise, Adam. It’ll work out soon, one way or another.”

“What kind of threats?” I asked.

“Late-night phone calls. Some letters.”

“You’ve seen them?”

She nodded. “They’re pretty graphic.”

“Could Zebulon Faith be behind any of it?”

“He leveraged himself to buy additional acreage. I’m thinking that he needs that money pretty badly.” She cut her eyes my way. “I’ve often wondered if Danny might not be involved. The windfall would be enormous and he doesn’t exactly have a clean record.”

“No way,” I said.

“Seven figures. That’s a lot of money, even for people that have money.” I looked out the window. “Danny Faith,” she said, “does not have money.”

“You’re wrong,” I said.

She had to be.

“You walked out on him, too, Adam. Five years. No word. Loyalty only goes so far when that kind of money is on the table.” She hesitated. “People change. As bad as Danny was for you, you were good for him. I don’t think he’s done that well since you left. It’s just him and his old man, and we both know how that is.”

“Anything specific?” I didn’t want to believe her.

“He hit his girlfriend, knocked her through a plate glass window. Is that how you remember him?”

We were silent for a while. I tried to drown out the clamor she’d unleashed in my mind. Her talk of Danny upset me. The thought of my father receiving threats upset me even more. I should have been here. “If the town is torn in two, then who is on my father’s side?”

“Environmentalists, mostly, and people who don’t want things to change. A lot of the old money in town. Farmers without land in contention. Preservationists.”

I rubbed my hands over my face and blew out a long breath.

“Don’t worry about it,” Robin said. “Life gets messy. It’s not your problem.”

She was wrong about that.

It was.

Robin Alexander still lived in the same condo, second floor in a turn-of-the-century building, one block off the square in downtown Salisbury. The front window faced a law office. The back window looked across a narrow alley to the barred windows of the local gun shop.

She had to help me out of the car.

Inside, she turned off the alarm, clicked on some lights, and led me to her bedroom. It was immaculate. Same bed. The clock on the table read ten after nine.

“The place looks bigger,” I said.

She stopped, a new angle in her shoulders. “It got that way when I threw out your stuff.”

“You could have come with me, Robin. It’s not like I didn’t ask you.”

“Let’s not start this again,” she said.

I sat on the bed and pulled off my shoes. Bending hurt, but she didn’t help me. I looked at the photographs in her room, saw one of me on the bedside table. It filled a small silver frame; and in it, I was smiling. I reached for it, and Robin crossed the room in two strides. She picked it up without a word, turned it over, and placed it in a dresser drawer. When she turned, I thought she would leave, but she stopped in the door.

“Go to bed,” she said, and something wavered in her voice. I looked at the keys she still held.

“Are you going out?”

“I’ll take care of your car. It shouldn’t spend the night out there.”

“You worried about Faith?”

She shrugged. “Anything’s possible. Go to bed.”

There was more to say, but we didn’t know how to say it. So I stripped out of my clothes and crawled between her sheets; I thought of the life we’d had and of its ending. She could have come with me. I told myself that. I repeated it, until sleep finally took me.

I went deep, yet at some point I woke. Robin stood above me. Her hair was loose, eyes bright, and she held herself as if she might fly apart at any second. “You’re dreaming,” she whispered, and I thought that maybe I was. I let the dark pull me under, where Robin called my name, and I chased eyes as bright and wet as dimes on a creek bed.

I woke alone in cold and gray, put my feet on the floor. There was blood on my shirt so I left it; but the pants were okay. I found Robin at the kitchen table, staring down at the rusted bars on the gun shop windows. The shower smell still clung to her; she wore jeans and a pale blue shirt with turned cuffs. Coffee steamed in front of her.

“Good morning,” I said, seeking her eyes, remembering the dream.

She studied my face, the battered torso. “There’s Percocet, if you need it. Coffee. Bagels, if you like.”

The voice was closed to me. Like the eyes.

I sat across from her, and the light was hard on her face. She was still shy of twenty-nine, but looked older. The laugh lines had gone, and her face had thinned, compressing once full lips into something pale. How much of that change came from five more years of cop? How much from me?

“Sleep okay?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Strange dreams.”

She looked away, and I knew that seeing her had been no dream. She’d been watching me sleep and crying to herself.

“I stretched out on the sofa,” she said. “I’ve been up for a few hours. Not used to having people over.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Are you?” The mist seemed to blow off of her eyes.

“Yes.”

She studied me over the rim of her mug, her face full of doubt. “Your car’s outside,” she finally said. “Keys on the counter. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you’d like. Get some sleep. There’s cable, some decent books.”

“You’re leaving?” I asked.

“No rest for the wicked,” she said, but did not get up.

I rose to pour a cup of coffee.

“I saw your father last night.” Her words pounded into my back. I said nothing, couldn’t let her see my face, didn’t want her to know what her words were doing to me. “After I got your car. I drove out to the farm, spoke to him on the porch.”

“Is that right?” I tried to keep the sudden dismay from my voice. She should not have done that. But I could see them there, on the porch-the distant curl of dark water and the post my father liked to lean against when he stared across it.

Robin sensed my displeasure. “He would have heard, Adam. Better he learn from me that you’re back, not from some idiot at the lunch counter. Not from the sheriff. He should know that you’ve been hurt, so that he wouldn’t wonder if you didn’t show up today. I bought you some time to heal up, get yourself together. I thought you’d appreciate it.”

“And my stepmother?”

“She stayed in the house. She didn’t want anything to do with me.” She stopped.

“Or with me.”

“She testified against you, Adam. Let it go.”

I still didn’t turn around. Nothing was happening as I’d hoped. My hands settled on the counter’s edge and squeezed. I thought of my father, and of the rift between us.

“How is he?” I asked.

A moment’s silence, then, “He’s aged.”

“Is he okay?”

“I don’t know.”

There was something in her voice that made me turn around. “What?” I asked, and she raised her eyes to mine.

“It was a quiet thing, you understand, very dignified. But when I told him that you’d come home, your father wept.”

I tried to hide my dismay. “He was upset?” I asked.

“That’s not what I meant.”

I waited.

“I think he wept for joy.”

Robin waited for me to say something, but I couldn’t answer. I looked out the window before she could see that tears were rising in my eyes, too.