John Hart - Down River

“You remember.”

He couldn’t meet my gaze. I knew the steps from the inside. It had been one of the worst days of my life, listening for long hours as the lawyers argued over whether or not I’d get the needle if convicted. I shook the memory off, looked down, and saw my father’s hand settle on a sheaf of pages on the seat next to him. “What’s that?” I gestured.

He picked up the pages, made a sound in his throat, and handed them to me. “It’s a petition,” he said. “Sponsored by the chamber of commerce. They gave it to me today. Four of them. Representatives, they called themselves, like I haven’t known them all for thirty years and more.”

I riffled the pages, saw hundreds of names, most of which I knew. “People that want you to sell?”

“Six hundred and seventy-seven names. Friends and neighbors.”

I handed the pages back. “Any thoughts on that?”

“People are entitled to their opinions. None of it changes mine.”

He was not going to discuss it further. I thought of the debt he had to repay in a few short days. I wanted to talk about it, but couldn’t do it in front of Miriam. It would embarrass him.

“How are you, Miriam?” I asked.

She tried a smile. “Ready to go home.”

“Go on,” I said to my father. “I’ll stay.”

“Be patient with her,” he said. “She’s too proud for the load she’s carrying.”

He turned the key. I stood in the dust and watched him go, then sat on the hood of my car and waited for Grace. She was smooth and sure, bending arrows with quiet resolve. After a few minutes I pulled the car into the driveway, went inside, and came back out with a beer. I dragged a rocking chair to the other side of the porch, where I could watch her.

The sun sank.

Grace never lost her rhythm.

When she finally came up onto the porch, I thought that she would walk past without speaking, but she stopped at the door. Her bruises were black in the gloom. “I’m glad to see you,” she said.

I didn’t get up. “Thought I’d make dinner.”

She opened the door. “What I said before. I didn’t mean it.”

She was talking about Dolf.

“I’m going to take a shower,” she said.

I found ground beef in the refrigerator and had dinner on the table by the time she came out. She smelled like clean water and flowered soap. Wet hair brushed the robe she wore and the sight of her face shot new barbs through my chest. The eyes were better, but the torn lips still looked raw, the stitches black and stiff and wrong. The bruises had eggplant hearts fading to green at the edges. “How bad is it?” I asked.

“This?” She pointed at her face. “This is meaningless.” She looked at the water I’d poured for her, then pulled a beer out of the fridge. She cracked it, took a sip, and sat. She pushed up her sleeves to eat, and I saw the wreckage of her left forearm. The bowstring had chewed it up, put long welts across a ten-inch stretch. Grace caught me staring.

“Jesus, Grace. You’re supposed to wear arm guards.”

She took a bite, unflinching, and pointed at my plate. “You going to eat that?”

We ate dinner, drank beer, and barely spoke. We tried, but failed, and the silence grew close to comfortable. The company mattered. It was enough. When I said good night, her eyes were heavy. I lay on the guest bed, thinking of Jamie’s deceit and of tomorrow’s conversation, of all the things that lived with such force in this place. The sheer volume made the room spin. Life, in all its complications, seemed to funnel down from a vast, high place, so that when Grace opened the door, it felt ordained.

She’d lost the robe, wore a cobweb gown that could have been nothing. When she moved into the dark, she was a whisper.

I sat up. “Grace-”

“Don’t worry, Adam. I just want to be near you.”

She crossed on swift feet and climbed under the comforter, being careful to keep the sheet between us. “See,” she said. “I’m not here to spoil you for other women.” She moved close and I felt her heat through thin cloth. She was soft and she was hard and she pressed upon me in near perfect stillness. It was then, in the dark and the heat, that revelation found me. It was the smell of her, the way her breasts flattened against me, the hard curve of her thighs. It came with an audible snap, the sound of pieces slipping into place. Danny’s call three weeks ago. The urgency in his voice. The need. And there was Grace’s friend, Charlotte Preston, who worked at the drugstore and told Robin of some unknown boyfriend. She’d said that there were issues, something that made Grace unhappy. Other pieces shifted and clicked. The night that Grace stole Danny’s bike. The wormlike twist of a tight, pink scar and the words that Candace Kane spilled with such venom when I’d asked why Danny had left her.

He was in love. He wanted to change his life.

What had been void mere seconds ago now brimmed with bright, dripping color. Grace was not the girl who lived in my head. Not the child I remembered. She was a grown woman, lush and complex.

The hottest thing in three counties, Jamie had said.

There were still gaps, but the shape was there. Danny worked the farm, he probably saw her every day. Danny would know that she loved me. I rolled away and turned on the bedside light. I needed to see her face.

“Danny was in love with you,” I said.

She sat up, pulled the comforter to her chin. I knew that I was right.

“That’s why he was breaking up with his other girlfriends,” I said. “That’s why he was clearing his debts.”

An edginess moved into her face, a stiffness that spoke of defiance. “He wanted to prove himself. He thought he could convince me to change my mind.”

“You dated him?”

“We went out a few times. Motorcycle races on the parkway. Late nights in Charlotte, dancing at the clubs. He was fearless, charming in a way. But I wouldn’t go where he wanted to go.” She lifted her chin. Her eyes glittered, hard and proud.

“You wouldn’t sleep with him?”

“That was part of it. The start. Then he got crazy. Wanted to spend our lives together, talked about having kids.” She rolled her eyes. “True love, if you can believe that.”

“And you weren’t interested.”

She put her eyes on mine, and her meaning was unmistakable. “I’m waiting for someone.”

“That’s why he called me.”

“He wanted me to know that you weren’t coming back. He thought that if you told me that yourself, I might actually believe it. He said I was wasting my life waiting for something that would never happen.”

“Jesus.”

“Even if you’d done what he wanted, come home and told me face-to-face, it wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“That night you took Danny’s bike…?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes I just need to see the dotted line go solid white. Danny didn’t like me doing it without him. I took the bike all the time. I just never got caught.”

“Why do you think Dolf may have killed him?”

She tensed. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“We need to.”

She looked away.

“He hit you,” I said. “Didn’t he? Danny got mad when you told him no.”

It took her a minute. “I laughed at him. I shouldn’t have, but I did.”

“And he hit you?”

“Once, but it was pretty hard.”

“Damn it.”

“He didn’t break anything, just bruised me. He was immediately sorry. I hit him back and hit him harder. I told Dolf as much.”

“So, Dolf knew.”

“He knew, but we worked it out, Danny and me. I think Dolf understood that. At first, anyway.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Danny was stubborn, like I said. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. Once things calmed down, he went to Dolf, to ask for my hand in marriage. He thought Dolf could convince me.” She barked a laugh. “The nerve.”