Timothy Johnston - The Current

Her fever had broken and she’d opened her eyes long enough to see him sitting there beside the bed, and he’d told her he’d be back in a couple of hours, and she’d nodded and shut her eyes again and was asleep before he’d stood up. He didn’t like leaving her alone in the house like that, but the fever had broken and she was going to be all right and he couldn’t wait any longer.

He went up the steps and opened the glass door and stepped into a large room. There were four wooden desks and only one of them manned—a young deputy on the phone, looking Gordon over and holding his forefinger in the air.

“Yes, ma’am,” the deputy said into the handpiece. “I don’t blame you one bit, ma’am.”

Gordon stepped up to the desk.

“Yes, ma’am, I’ll let him know the second he gets back. You have a good day, ma’am.” The deputy hung up the phone and shook his head and looked up at Gordon. “Afternoon, sir. What can I do for you?” The ID on his pocket flap said dep. kurt short. Gordon read it twice to be sure.

“I need to speak to the sheriff.”

“All right. I bet I can help you out. Did you want to report something?” He fetched a form and readied his pen.

“No, I just need to speak to the sheriff. Is he here?”

“’Fraid not. He’s out on a call.”

“How long.”

“Sir?”

“How long will he be out.”

The deputy tapped his pen on the form. “Can’t say, sir. How about you give me your name and your trouble and I can pass it on to him when he gets back?”

“What makes you think I’ve got trouble?”

The deputy stopped tapping his pen.

“Sir, either you let me help you out or you let me write something down or you go sit in a chair over there and wait for the sheriff to get back.”

“You forgot one.”

“One what.”

“One option.”

“I don’t believe so.”

“You forgot the one where you call up the sheriff and say Gordon Burke drove down from Minnesota to get Audrey Sutter’s things and he’s standing right here in front of my desk, Sheriff, what do you want me to do.”

Fifteen minutes later he’d loaded the last of it into the back of the van and he was just closing the rear doors when a sheriff’s cruiser pulled into the spot beside him and Ed Moran stepped out.

“Hey, Gordon.”

“Hey, Sheriff.”

“You get everything all right?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t exactly have a list.”

“Well, whatever the Prices didn’t take, the rest is hers.”

“Then I guess I got it all.”

“Sorry I wasn’t here to help you. I had to go pick up a sick boy from school and find him a sitter.”

“One of yours?”

“My youngest, Eli. Sick as a dog.”

“It’s going around.”

“So I hear. How’s she doing?”

“Her fever broke, anyway.”

“That’s good.”

“So I thought I’d run down here and get her stuff.”

Moran nodded. Hands on his hips. “Can I ask you something, though?”

“Go ahead.”

“How the heck did she end up at your house in the first place?”

Gordon told him about the firewood, the girl burning up with fever, the ice-cold house, and Moran shook his head.

“Like she hasn’t been through enough as it is,” he said.

Gordon watched the sheriff’s face in the shadow of his wide hatbrim. He looked like he might have another question on his mind, but if he did he didn’t ask it. Gordon said, “You made any progress on any of that?”

“Not as much as I’d like. County attorney says we’re about one eyewitness shy of a case.”

“She told me you showed her some pictures—the girl did.”

“She tell you what her old man did down here?”

“Told me that too.”

Moran shook his head again. He squinted up at the blue winter sky. “Well, I guess I best get back to work here.”

“I don’t suppose you care to have a cup of coffee, Sheriff.”

Moran looked at him.

“On me,” Gordon said.

Moran slid back his jacket sleeve to check his watch.

“Yeah, I might could use a cup,” he said. “Why don’t you go on ahead to the Blue Plate just down the street here—it’s that blue sign, you can see it from here—and I’ll come along soon as I check in with the boys.”

“Boy,” said Gordon.

“How’s that?”

“There’s just one boy in there.”

The waitress told him to sit wherever he liked and he took the booth in the far corner with his back to the wall. The lunch hour was over and the place was empty but for one old man at the counter, the old man stirring his spoon round and round in a white china mug. From where Gordon sat he could see the plug of skin-colored plastic fitted into the old man’s ear.

The waitress came over and said, “What can I getcha, hon?” and Gordon ordered a coffee.

“That’s it?”

His eyes went to the patch of bright pink on her neck—burn scar, or birthmark maybe—and back to her face. “That’s it for now, thanks.”

“All right. I’m gonna brew you some fresh—how’s that sound?”

“That sounds jim-dandy.”

“Ha,” she said, “‘jim-dandy,’ I like that,” and went away again.

The tabletop was striped with lighter bands of laminate and after a while he connected the stripes to the window slats to his left, and he put his hands into the light to see it bend around them. He’d not slept and his own mind seemed feverish to him, jammed full of voices and images, some of them real and some of them having come some other way into his head in the long hours since the boy showed up in his driveway, when was that—yesterday. And now here he sat in a diner in Iowa waiting on a man who was sheriff now but who back then was just another half-wit deputy pawing through her dresser drawers, lifting up her mattress, digging his fingers into her jewelry box—

The white china mug that dropped suddenly into his vision made him jump, and the waitress put her hand on his shoulder and said, “Oh gosh, sorry there, hon—maybe I should of brought you decaf!”

“Maybe so.”

“You sure you don’t want nothin else?”

Moran appeared at her side. “This man giving you trouble, Rhonda?”

“Oh no, Sheriff. I just snuck up on him and scared him.”

“Well, how about you scare me up a cup of what he’s having, hey?”

She went away again, and Moran got out of his jacket and tossed it on the booth seat opposite Gordon, tossed his hat on top of that and sat down. He set his phone on the table, off to the side, and slid his napkin and silverware over there too. The two men were silent, looking around the diner, until the waitress returned with a second mug and the pot of coffee.

“There you go, Sheriff. How about you, hon, can I top you off?”

“No, thanks.”

“Anything to eat, Sheriff?”

“No, dear, that’s all,” Moran said, and she went away again.

Moran raised his mug and sipped and set it down again. He sat watching Gordon. Then he said, “Well, Gordon. I’m gonna go ahead and guess you’ve got something on your mind here.”

Gordon was looking down into his own mug. The oily surface of the coffee, the wisps of steam in the bands of light. He rocked the mug a bit to see the liquid move.

“I’m trying to pick someplace to begin,” he said.

“The beginning generally gets the job done, in my experience.”

“The beginning goes a long ways back, Sheriff.”

“Then you best get started.”

The old man at the counter sat watching them over his shoulder. Gordon stared at him until the old man faced forward again.

“Don’t mind old Harold there,” Moran said. “He couldn’t hear a firecracker in a football helmet.”

Gordon placed one hand over the other on the tabletop and looked at the sheriff. “A man told me a story yesterday.”