Timothy Johnston - The Current

“That was for your mother and your brother, period.”

“I know it, Gordon.”

“And God damn it, whatever happened to respect?”

“Respect?”

“Respect. Like calling a man by his proper name.”

The boy seemed to think on that. Then he said, “I guess that stopped when you stopped having any respect for me.”

“Respect for you. Are you standing there shitting me?”

“No, sir. You never even tried to ask me directly about any of it. You never gave me a chance.”

Gordon stared at him. Jesus God what was happening here. Just go inside , his mind told him. Begged him. Just turn and go on inside before you kill this boy .

“Is that what this is?” he said. “You come out here to tell me all about it?”

“No, sir. I came out here to see if you’d let me say one thing. If you’d give me the chance to do that.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know. I just wanted to try. I didn’t want to—” He hesitated. “I didn’t want to go away again without trying.”

Gordon stared into the boy’s eyes. Somewhere in there was the young boy he’d known, before he grew up and turned into this other thing.

“You didn’t do it, I suppose,” said Gordon. “That’s what you wanted to say.”

The boy held his eyes. “Sometimes—” he began, and swallowed. “There were times when I thought maybe I had, Mr. Burke. That I’d hit her with my truck but just didn’t know it. That I’d blacked out or something.”

Gordon’s heart was banging. He watched the boy.

“I’d been drinking, Mr. Burke. I’d had a few beers—”

“I already know that. That’s in the record.”

“Yes, sir. And it was dark, and windy, and trees everywhere… and I thought it was possible. It could have happened that way. It could have. But even if it did—even if I hit her, by accident, how did she end up in the river?”

“Because you put her there. You panicked and you put her there. And she was still breathing.”

The boy shook his head. “No, Mr. Burke. That’s what the sheriff said. That was his version.”

“The sheriff had you in the park—right time, right place. And afterwards you drove off to that cabin.” Gordon’s heart pounding with rage like it had all happened yesterday. He looked at the truck again. It was not the same truck but it might as well have been. “Sheriff had you,” he said. “Dead to rights. And he let you go.”

The boy was staring at him, nodding slowly. “I know how it looked, Mr. Burke. I’d been at the bar, I’d been in the park. The deputy had pulled me over. I drove up to my uncle’s cabin. I know how it looked. But—”

“Hold on,” Gordon said, and the boy stopped. “Pulled you over?”

“Sir?”

“You said the deputy pulled you over.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Pulled you over when?”

“As I was coming out of the park.”

“That night?”

“Yes, sir.”

Gordon shook his head, his mind already reversing, searching itself. “Pulled you over for what?”

“For being in the park after dark.”

And his mind went all the way back then, ten years in time… Sutter showing up at his house the first time, and then the other times. The officers going through her room, her dresser drawers. The questions: What time did she go out? Did she call? How was she getting around without her license, without a car? Who was she seeing? He had not been in his right mind but he would remember this—he would know if they’d told him the boy had been pulled over coming out of the park. It would be in the record. There would be no question he’d been there.

“That makes no sense,” he now said. “Why wouldn’t I know about that? Why wouldn’t everybody?”

The boy was silent. Shut down. Staring blankly at him. Then he said, “They never told you I got pulled over?”

“No, they didn’t. And I know that report backwards and forwards and there is no mention of any deputy pulling you over. Says you admitted to being in the park.”

The boy staring at him, taking this in.

“Why wouldn’t that be in the report?” Gordon said.

“I don’t know, Mr. Burke.”

“You don’t know? Is this some kind of game?”

“No, sir. I’m trying to understand it too.”

“You better by God hurry up.”

The boy shook his head. He said, “If you didn’t know about it, Mr. Burke, it means nobody knew about it. They’d have told you everything they knew. It means the sheriff…” He didn’t finish.

“It means the sheriff what?”

“Didn’t know,” said the boy. “He didn’t know the deputy pulled me over.”

“How would he not know that?”

The boy was silent.

“What are you saying,” said Gordon, “—the deputy never told the sheriff? That it just slipped his goddam mind?”

The boy said nothing.

“Speak up,” Gordon said.

“That night,” the boy said, “when he pulled me over, the deputy, he walked all around my truck with his flashlight and then he let me go. No DUI. Not even a ticket for being in the park at night.”

“So?”

“So he would have seen it, Mr. Burke. He would’ve seen it then—wouldn’t he have?” The boy’s eyes had a glassy, faraway look to them. Like his mind had wandered off somewhere.

“Seen what?” Gordon said. “Seen what,” he snapped, and the boy came back, blinking. Then he pulled his hand from his pocket and held the hand palm-up to him. As if offering him something to eat.

It was a square of white cloth, so thin and light it would’ve blown from his hand but for the thumb holding it there.

Gordon’s heart began to slip. “What is that?” he said thickly.

The boy said nothing, and Gordon’s heart slipped all the way into coldness, into blackness. He knew what it was. He knew what it was and he knew there was no other like it in the world and he knew that only a handful of people even knew about it—ripped from her blouse, they said, ripped clean off and never recovered—and only one person in the world could have it and here he was. And then with no other thought or even movement he was aware of, he had the boy by the jacket and had thrown him up against the truck. No idea what he was saying, just the sensation of speech in his throat, as if he’d gone deaf. The boy holding his wrists, his cap fallen away, and though his head shook with the violence of Gordon’s grip his face was calm, and his voice was calm too, saying, “Mr. Burke… Mr. Burke, let me say one thing—”

What did Gordon say? Did he say anything? Did he say: Say it, you son of a bitch ? Did he say: Say the last thing you have to say ? He only knew he let the boy stand straight, keeping his grip on his jacket, the boy’s hands gripping his wrists, and the square of cloth pressed between the boy’s hand and his wrist like some thin bandage he could feel all the way to his heart, and at last the boy said, “Why would I show it to you, Mr. Burke? Why would I do that?” These words and all sound reaching Gordon through a dull roaring like water rushing in his ears.

“Because you want to torment me. Because you want to see if I will kill you.”

“No, sir.”

“Do you think I won’t? Do you think I care what happens to me?”

“No, sir, I don’t, but that’s not why.”

“Why then, God damn you.”

“Because…” said the boy. “Because it was on the truck. It was caught up in the license plate—”

Gordon renewed his grip and gave the boy a shake. “Boy—what are you telling me?”

“I’m telling you that that deputy shined his flashlight all around that truck and didn’t see this piece of cloth, but when I got home I saw it right off. Plain as day.”