Timothy Johnston - The Current

She turned to Jeff Goss and he said, his eyes on Marky, or perhaps on the half-cleaned glass beyond him, They’re going around talking to people. Anyone who might’ve seen her last night.

He scooped up some pink receipts and studied the topmost one. They talked to Big Man, Jeff said, but I don’t think they understood much.

Did you ? she thought to ask. But didn’t. Jeff had been around Marky long enough, had heard enough of Danny’s translations, that he’d acquired, without much caring one way or another, she believed, a passing comprehension of Marky’s meaning in any number of routine situations. But did he understand what Marky told the sheriff and his men? And understanding it, did he then translate? Uncle Rudy’s cabin, he’s saying , Jeff might’ve said. Do I know where it is? Sure I do, Sheriff…

Jeff raised the receipt to study the one beneath it. Rachel standing there. Thinking. Trying to think. She’d come into the store intending to ask Jeff about last night—Danny had gone back out to give him a jump. But now she didn’t want to look at him again. She couldn’t seem to breathe.

Holly Burke is dead. All night in the river .

Marky, she said, get your jacket, please. We have to go now.

Gotta clean the glass Momma.

Tomorrow, Marky. Today’s a short day.

At home she was barely in the door, had barely glanced at the answering machine—no blinking red light, no call from her son—before she saw the car outside, in the street: the sheriff’s white cruiser, parked as if it had been there all day, when she knew it hadn’t been there just seconds ago. Tom Sutter and one of his deputies coming up the walk in their tan jackets, their stiff hats.

In the living room the TV went mute. They’re here Momma.

I know, sweetie. He could not see the drive or the walk from where he sat, but he’d heard the car doors shutting and it was not the sound of Danny’s truck, or he’d seen some reaction in her at the window, or felt it—she’d stopped concerning herself with how he knew the things he knew a long time ago; it was just who he was. If you were sad, if you were missing your husband, for instance, he would find you and put his arms around you. If you stayed up waiting for his brother to come home, and Marky yawned and went to bed, then you knew you could go to bed too.

Marky getting up from the couch now and coming to stand beside her. Her little man, so big now! Too big to send to his room, but she didn’t want the sheriff staring at him, asking him questions, upsetting him, and she said, Sweetie, go on up to your room, OK? Just for a little while. And he stood looking into her eyes like he understood perfectly—all her fear and all her love for him, and for Danny too—before he said, OK Momma I’ll go upstairs, and she put her hand on his face, and he turned and went up the stairs.

The sheriff introduced himself and his deputy, then told her they’d like to speak to her son, they’d like to speak to Danny, watching her face as she explained that she didn’t know where he was, hadn’t seen him since last night, and the sheriff making sure she was aware of the unfortunate news regarding… while the other man, Deputy Something, brushed past her with his eyes, ransacking with his eyes all he saw beyond her in the house, working his wad of chewing gum. They were trying to learn as much as they could about the night before, Sheriff Sutter was explaining. They understood that her son Danny had been at the bar, at Smithy’s, where Holly Burke was last seen alive.

Rachel wasn’t sure if this was a question, but she said she couldn’t say about that, she didn’t know where he’d been.

The deputy stopped chewing, watching her with his buggy eyes, and resumed chewing again.

After a moment—after Sutter asked—she let them in.

SHE’D SHUT HER eyes for just a few seconds, she thought, but when she opened them again the room had changed: the bright, hard sunlight gone from behind the blinds, doctor gone, the smell of cigarette smoke stronger.

“How long was I asleep?”

Her father handed her the water cup. “Not long. An hour.”

She sucked at the straw and swallowed the cold water. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I am. We made you talk too much.”

“It’s the drugs. Can you tell them to stop giving me the drugs?”

“It’s for the pain, sweetheart. For your arm.”

“I don’t care about that. Please, Dad.”

“I’ll ask the doctor.”

She turned to look at Moran then, who’d been standing back and staring at the floor, or his boots. Her father looked too, but when she said “Sheriff” both men turned to her.

“Can I ask you something, Sheriff?” she said, and Moran stood straighter.

“Of course, Audrey,” he said.

“Where is Caroline now?”

He glanced at her father, and her father said, “She knows. She’s asking about the body,” and Moran turned back to her.

“She’s gone back home, Audrey. Her folks flew up to get her yesterday and they took her back with them. Mr. Price, her father, drove up here to see you but you were still… sleeping. He and Caroline’s mother wanted to get her back home and put her to rest.”

Audrey looked away and the tears ran to her jaw and from there fell to her collarbone. She wiped her face with the palm of her good hand and turned back to Moran. He wasn’t finished with his questions, and she waited for the next one. He’d removed his jacket—they both had—and when he stepped up to the side of the bed she saw the sheen of sweat on his forehead.

“I was hoping you could tell me more about those two boys, Audrey. From the gas station.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Did you get a good look at them?”

“It was dark back there, and they were both wearing caps with, you know, bills, so their faces were dark.”

“Were they black?”

“Their faces?”

“Were they African American.”

“No, they were white boys. They smelled like car engines and beer. And cigarettes.”

“How old were they?”

“I don’t know. Twentysomething.”

“Names?”

Audrey shook her head. Then, as she remembered it, she said, “Bud.”

“Bud?”

“The one Caroline sprayed, the one on the ground—the other one called him Bud.”

“As in the name Bud?” said Moran. “Or ‘bud’ as in ‘buddy’?”

She thought about that. “I thought it was his name. But now I’m not sure.”

Moran flipped open his notebook and wrote it down. The notebook was small and black and just like the one her father had used. “And the other boy?”

“I never heard his name.”

“Did you get their license plate?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you see what they were driving?”

“No, sir.”

“You didn’t see them follow you?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you see who came up behind you at the top of the bank—who gave your car a bump?”

“It wasn’t my car.”

“Caroline’s car then. Was it those boys?”

“I couldn’t see who was driving. The headlights were in our eyes.”

Moran nodded. “You said, earlier, that Caroline pepper-sprayed those boys pretty good. They must’ve been mad as heck.”

“So was Caroline.”

“Do you think they were in any shape to drive?”

“I don’t know, Sheriff. We didn’t stick around to find out.”

Moran looked at her father, as if out of some old habit, but quickly turned back to her. “Did you see the vehicle that came up behind you, what kind of vehicle it was?”

“The lights were real high, and I thought maybe it was some kind of truck.” Then she remembered something she’d forgotten, something she’d seen as Caroline’s car spun around and around on the ice.