Timothy Johnston - The Current

But there’d been plenty of time for him to delete every trace of her from the phone, the sheriff would point out, and anyway Danny had already told him he didn’t think he had to show his cell phone to anyone if he wasn’t under arrest, and the sheriff had said that was true, and at last he answered Sutter’s question, No, Sir, I never wanted to date her .

Never?

No, sir .

An attractive young woman like that? Never thought about it—ever?

And with the flashlight in one hand and the hose in the other you stood up then and you saw her, your mother—standing at the window and looking right at you, and how long had she been standing there, how much did she see? Where is the square of cloth?

It’s in one of your pockets.

Put the flashlight down and finish rinsing the dog. Rinse your hands. Take a good long drink of the cold water and shut the water off and take the dog inside and tell her you gotta go back out and help Jeff, he needs a jump and you gotta go and you’ll be right back. Just go back there and look, that’s all—the truck is clean, or as clean as you can get it, so drive back now, your heart pounding, and see from the edge of the park that there are no cops, no flashing lights, and drive all the way through the park and all the way back and no sign of her anywhere, and was it some kind of joke, that piece of cloth? A gag executed by drunk girls just to mess with you?

Other scenarios, other possibilities, won’t even enter your mind until later, when you are driving north toward Cousin Jer’s, strung-out and seeing things—figures, young women, running out of the darkness into your headlights—and thinking you will never make it, that the lights will come up fast in the rearview and the colored lights will go off like bombs in the early morning darkness and that will be that.

But that’s later. First—get back home and get your stuff and go, because you need to get away from here and you need time. You need time right now like you need the air to breathe.

You can say it, Danny. She was a good-looking young woman and you desired her. You wanted Holly Burke .

No, sir .

You wanted her, and so you offered her a ride, cold night like that, her dressed like that, and she gets in. But then you try something in the park, you get grabby and there’s a fight, and she gets out and starts walking, and that’s when you hit her with the truck—maybe not on purpose, but you hit her. And you panic. You see her lying there and you think you killed her and you’re drunk and you panic. You need to get rid of the body—but how…?

No air in that little room, as if Sutter’s voice were using it up with each word, and that voice so thick in Danny’s head like smoke—expanding like smoke until his brain was swimming in it, spinning in it—

… and next thing you know you’re lifting the girl in your arms, and you’re walking her to the riverbank and she weighs nothing, and all you can think is how cold she must’ve been, out here with no jacket, nothing but that blouse… and you lay her down again, and with a push you send her over, and down she goes, her face rolling once, twice to the sky before there’s the splash and the waves go rippling out and the body in its white, flimsy blouse lingers, the blond hair spreading, the body pulled slowly out into deeper water, stronger current… and the last you’d see is a pale shape of fabric on the surface of the water, air-filled, trembling in the wind like some living creature, before even that went under, sinking into darkness and you could not take it back you could never take it back and it was no nightmare, it was real, and you’d done it…

No, sir, Danny heard himself say. Shaking his head, shaking off this vision .

But you hadn’t killed her, Danny, Sutter said. She was still breathing when you pushed her into the water. And that right there—that’s not manslaughter. That’s not even vehicular homicide, Danny. That’s murder .

Sutter watching him, no expression whatsoever on his face, in those blue eyes. The camera watching. The men behind the glass watching .

The room spun. His stomach pitched. He thought he might be sick .

Sutter picked up his pen again and tapped it twice on the notepad .

Talk to me, Danny. Tell me about that night. Tell me what happened .

The room came to rest. Danny took a breath and let it out slowly .

I’m ready for that lawyer, he said. Either that, or I walk out of here right now .

And in the few seconds you had before she stepped into your room— Danny, we had a deal! —you pinched the cloth up from your jeans pocket and opened up the textbook and laid the cloth flat between the pages and put the book up on the shelf and you can’t even say why. Just down the hall sat the perfect solution: a contraption that filled itself with water and emptied itself with gravity into a four-inch waste pipe as dark and forever as the bottom of the sea.

Instead you put the thing in your textbook. Knowing full well it was the one thing that could end your life. That could flush you down some dark and forever hole yourself.

Because, at the same time, in some new part of you that did not exist an hour ago, not even fifteen minutes ago, you knew that the same piece of cloth that might end you might also save you. If only you had the time to figure out how.

SHE SLEPT AND woke, slept and woke, through day and night, or many days and many nights. She might’ve been in the river again, but now there was heat—hours of heat that set her skin on fire, and then hours of cold so deep her jaw chattered, and she slept and woke and did not know one from the other because everything she saw in either state was equally vivid and equally unbelievable and equally ordinary. She saw glass beads swaying in a river of color and lights, and the colors smelled of fruits no one had ever tasted before and the lights played on the bare shoulders of three young women who stood on the bottom of a lake with their toes in warm sand and their hair rising and falling in cool passing currents of light. She saw a corona of light around dark curtains, the light pulsing and blooming like a living thing, and she saw the bedroom where she lay and it was not her bedroom and it was, and she knew everything she would find in the closet down to a pair of high black boots that zipped up the back and she knew if she got up and looked in the mirror she would see her new face, her new hair, and there was a silver brush on the desk and she knew how the brush would feel in her hand and how it would feel in her hair, and she felt a new heart beating in her chest and this heart broke just to feel all that it felt all at once, all its love and pain and want and fear all at once.

She saw the curtains open on their own and a figure appear in the dark of the glass and she saw this figure put its hands to its face and peer in through the air bubbles and the tiny cracks and when it stood she saw the soles of its boots as it walked off into the night. Pale hair moved in the water like silky smoke, and she smelled smoke, and her father was sitting with her, Here, Deputy, drink this , and he raised her head with his hand and tilted the cool water to her lips, then he cleared the hair from her forehead and said, You have to help him now, sweetheart , and she said, Help who, Daddy? but he was gone.

She saw the faces of boys she did not know all lined up in picture frames and they were all the same boy, and the images darkened and sank away until all she saw was their teeth like the grins of skulls. She watched a large bird like a hawk or an owl glide soundlessly across the ceiling. She saw a man and a woman dressed in black climb stone steps, their heads high but heavy, so heavy, and they walked into a great hall that was washed in every color, because the river of light flowed through the great hall too and they walked hand in hand down the aisle and they looked down on the girl who lay there and the girl’s hair shifted colors in the light, dark to light and back to dark again, as if the shadows of great fish or boats were passing over her.