Timothy Johnston - The Current

“Yes,” he said.

“Long blond hair.”

“Yes.”

“I remembered that when I was in the water.”

“You were just a little girl then. You shouldn’t have known about such things.” He turned his head to cough. “I never should’ve had you in the car with me.”

“That didn’t make any difference, Daddy. We all knew. We’d stand around on the playground and say her name: Holly Burke .”

She saw the effect of this name in his eyes, darkening the blue like a cloud over water. He’d not found the girl’s killer—or had not found the evidence the law required. Had never given her that, given her family that, and now he never would.

“She seemed so old to us then,” Audrey said, “so grown-up and mysterious. But she doesn’t seem old now. She seems young. Even younger than she was.” The beautiful hair, that long fine girl’s hair, lit up and swaying in the current, in the lights.

He squeezed her good forearm. “I wish you wouldn’t think about that.” He patted her—kept patting until she looked at him and he stopped.

“There’s something I didn’t tell the deputy—the sheriff,” she said, and the moment she said it she felt him grow tenser yet. She felt his heart begin to slide.

“That’s all right,” he said. “It takes time, sometimes, to remember things. The brain just kind of…” His mind was running to the worst, she knew: What hadn’t she told him about those two boys, what they’d done to her?

She shook her head. “It’s nothing like that, Daddy. I just didn’t want to tell the sheriff something I wasn’t sure about. And I’m not sure I didn’t just imagine this.”

He waited. Watching her run her fingers up and down the purple cast.

“What is it, sweetheart? Tell me, and I’ll tell the sheriff if I think he ought to know. I’ll tell him you’re not sure—how’s that?”

She nodded. Then she told him about the scratches on the one boy’s face, the one who grabbed her. The scratches were fresh, but she knew they didn’t come from her own fingers; they ran small and neat across his face, ear to nose, like the scratches from a cat.

“Did Caroline do it?” her father said, and she said, “No. I did it. I must have done it with the backscratcher.”

He looked at her. “The backscratcher?”

“The backscratcher,” she said. “From Phoenix, Arizona. The lady at the gas station will show you. Can I have that, please?”

He handed her the cup and she sucked at the straw and handed the cup back.

“I must’ve hit him with it,” she said. “But then he took it away from me and I stopped. I stopped fighting, Daddy.”

He squeezed her hand hard. “Sweetheart, don’t—”

“Caroline fought, Daddy. She fought them so good. She fought them so beautifully.”

THERE WASN’T MUCH she could tell them, as there wasn’t much she knew, and just a few minutes after they left she had trouble remembering what they’d said, what they’d asked, trouble believing they were ever there at all.

She tried to call Danny again. Kept trying until, in the space between dialings, the phone rang and she answered, —Danny? But it was Rudy, her brother, telling her that everything was all right, Dan was all right, they’d found him up at the cabin, and there was no trouble and he was in custody.

In custody? Rachel said.

Not arrested, her brother said quickly. Not charged.

But in custody, Rachel said.

There’s a gray area, he told her, and he went on reassuring her, but Rachel’s mind was reeling. She was at the kitchen window, as she’d been the night before. Two yellow eyes looking in, the twin smiley-faces. Water , she remembered. The dog had rolled in something. She saw her son’s face, the look on his face when he saw her in the window.

There was nothing out there now. No truck. No son.

In custody .

It was dark when tires crunched in the drive, and she quickly turned off the TV. A car door slammed, tires crunched the gravel again, and in walked Danny. Rachel was up from the sofa but everything about him said Stop, don’t touch me . Marky lifted him in a bear hug until Danny said, Put me down, idiot.

Danny, Rachel said.

As if he hadn’t heard her, as if she weren’t there, he headed for the stairs.

Hey Danny where’s Wyatt? Marky said.

I had to leave him up there, with Jer.

Marky put his hands to his head, but he said nothing. He stood like that watching his brother.

Danny, Rachel said, talk to me—and he stopped on the stairs. Then turned back to her.

Why are you even here, Ma?

She stared at him.

Why aren’t you on your date ?

Danny, she said again, but then faltered. His eyes so hard, so cold. What had she done?

They stood that way for a while, he on the steps above and she below, before he turned again and continued up the stairs. Marky watching him go, turning back to Rachel, and finally going up the stairs too.

She moved woodenly from room to room then, locking the doors, drawing the curtains. It crossed her mind to pull the phone line from the wall, and at that second the phone rang. Rudy again. There was nothing for her to worry about, he told her, he’d been talking to the lawyer… telling her other things she hardly heard, something about physical evidence, the phrase erratic, troubled girl , and Rachel mechanically took down the number of the lawyer.

There was a silence, and then she said, Do you think he knows?

Who? said Rudy.

Gordon Burke. Do you think he knows, about Danny?

You haven’t talked to him?

Yes, earlier. Briefly. He wasn’t—He… She didn’t finish.

He’s a good man, Rach, Rudy said. And he’s been good to those boys. But what he’s going through right now… Hell, I don’t even want to imagine.

SHE WAITED FOR the sheriff to return, but he didn’t—not that night, not all day Friday.

She waited for Gordon to call, although she knew that wouldn’t happen either. And then it was Friday night, Halloween—Danny emerging from his room at last, on his way to Jeff Goss’s waiting car, and off they went. Rachel sitting at home with Marky, who sat in his Vikings helmet and jersey ready to dish out candy for kids if any came, and then announcing after a while that none were coming. And none did; not one. It was a bad night for it, a bitter wind blowing, so no wonder.

Later, after Marky had gone to bed, something sailed through the living room window, puffing out the curtains and dropping with a light thud to the carpet. A small stone out of the sky. Surprising, what a clean, small hole it made in the glass, with only a few slender shards to pick up. The pieces were still in her hand when the phone rang.

Hello? she said. Hello—?

Hello? Mrs. Young?

Mrs. Young! The blood went out of her. She steadied herself on the counter. It wasn’t him, it wasn’t Gordon. It was his brother, Edgar.

Rachel managed to give her sympathies, then listened while Edgar explained that Gordon wasn’t going to open the store tomorrow, so the boys should plan on staying home.

She saw the scene over there, at Gordon’s house: Edgar at the phone and Gordon beyond him, heaped in a chair, staring into his coffee. Meredith on the sofa, and their daughter, their only child, laid out somewhere in some cold, awful place, dead.

—under the circumstances, Edgar was saying, they should plan on staying home until further notice.

After he hung up, Rachel kept the phone to her ear, listening to the strange silence there, a sound from outer space, an eerie wind. She stood frozen in it, her chest hollow. There’d been a day, years ago, when something happened, or nearly happened, between her and Gordon Burke. A gray afternoon, the windowpanes ticking with bits of ice. She’d come out of a bath and felt weak and had sat down on the bed. Before her was the cheval glass that had belonged to her grandmother, then her mother, now her. Who would she give the mirror to, this girly keepsake?