Timothy Johnston - The Current

Gordon had raised his hand, and he kept it raised. As if demonstrating the act itself—how a hand was raised for its own shooting. “That was about you,” he said. “Trust me. I know what was in his heart. And I know he let that boy off easy.”

“He shot a boy with no evidence, Mr. Burke.”

“No evidence doesn’t mean no reason.”

She shook her head. Her heart was pounding. How did they get here—with her condemning her father’s actions and Gordon Burke defending them?

“And what about those pictures?” she said. “The photo line-up? I couldn’t ID him myself.”

“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t him.”

“And Danny Young?” she said—she blurted.

“What about him.”

“I mean—should he have shot him too?”

He stared at her and she did not look away, her heart pounding, and there was no sound but the tumbling of her clothes in the other room, that constant thumping and ticking, until suddenly an alarm sounded, so loud and urgent she jumped. It was the dryer. It blared and stopped and the drum stopped turning and they studied each other in a new silence.

“I think your dad was right about one thing,” Gordon said. “It’s none of your concern.”

She saw him again, her father, sitting on the bed, his cool hand on her forehead, You have to help him now, sweetheart . She felt Holly Burke’s heart beating in her chest again—or the memory of it, the emptiness that so much feeling left behind.

“And if he was here,” Gordon went on, “I think he’d say it was time for you to get back to school where you belong.”

“How do you know what he’d say?” she said, and she saw how these words struck him, and she said, “I’m sorry… Mr. Burke, I didn’t mean that how it sounded, I—”

He raised his hand again and shook his head. Suddenly he looked very tired and very old.

“We keep saying things we’re sorry we said,” he said. “Which tells me we should just stop talking about it.” He looked at her with kindness, or his idea of it in that moment, and Audrey nodded, and smiled, and wiped her eyes. Then she stood from the table and went into the utility room to get her clothes.

IT’S NONE OF your concern .

Her father had told her that years ago, and Gordon Burke had said he was right.

But her father had also said, You have to help him now, sweetheart .

Help who? Mr. Burke? Danny Young?

All that day—the day after Gordon Burke brought her home—she did not leave the sofa except to make herself soup, except to use the bathroom, and by nine o’clock the next morning she was done lying around on that sofa.

She’d not been back to the building since his retirement but it had not changed, and its smell was still the smell of her father: leather belts and coffee and cigarettes and dusty wooden floors and the smoky wintry smell of his sheriff’s jacket when he would let her wear it as she sat reading in the old wooden armchair, waiting for him to finish typing at his computer, finish his phone calls, finish talking to his deputies, to Gloria, his secretary, before at last jingling his keys and putting his hand on top of her head, Ready to roll, Deputy?

Ready, Sheriff .

“Oh, goodness—hello, sweetie,” Gloria now said, turning from her computer with her smile. Older now. Old. Hair gone to silver, cigarette voice deeper, but the same kind eyes peeping out of the same enormous glasses. At the funeral she’d wept like a widow and hugged Audrey for so long her husband had to pry her loose.

There was no one else around, the deputies out on call, or back in the jail, or behind the closed door that once bore her father’s name on the frosted glass and now bore the name of the new sheriff, sheriff wayne g. halsey, in black-and-gold letters.

“How are you getting along, sweetie?” Gloria said, glancing at the purple cast.

“I’m doing all right,” Audrey said. “You know.”

Gloria looked at the too-big canvas jacket and shook her head. “Not a day goes by I don’t think of him.” She plucked a tissue from the box and dabbed at her eyes. Audrey thought to put a hand on her shoulder or squeeze her hand, but then Gloria sniffled loudly and tossed the tissue into a wastebasket and looked up smiling again.

“So. What can I do for you?”

“I was hoping I could talk to him for a minute. The sheriff.”

“Sheriff Halsey?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Oh, yes. I just wanted to ask him something.”

A crease appeared between the older woman’s thin, painted eyebrows. “Let me just make sure he’s not on his cell phone,” she said and picked up the handset and pushed a button, and from behind the office door they heard the beep-beep and they heard him say, “Yes?” and Gloria spoke into the handset, and her voice was in the speaker in his office at the same time, “There’s someone here to see you, Sheriff.”

“Well, who is it?”

“It’s Audrey Sutter.”

He said nothing. Then he said, “I’ll come out,” and Audrey wondered how Gloria could’ve thought he was on his cell phone with that voice of his.

Halsey himself was larger than her father, even when her father had been healthy. Taller, heavier, louder. As a deputy he’d looked more like the sheriff than her father had. He looked like he’d been raised from birth to be sheriff, although she knew for a fact that he’d been raised by two English professors at the University of Minnesota.

He walked her back to his office and she sat in the old wooden armchair and he sat in her father’s old swivel chair behind the desk. Behind him on the wall was the big map of the county, all in yellow but for the river looping through it in a blue cursive.

He watched her looking around the office and said, his voice just a little softened, “I imagine it’s not easy for you, coming back here.”

“Not easy but not bad either. I always loved it here.”

He scratched at the back of his head. His hair was dark and thick and it held the depression from the sweatband of his hat all the way around. Finally he put his hands together on the desk and said, “You’re always welcome to pay a visit, of course.”

“Thank you, I appreciate that.”

“But this isn’t a social visit. Is it.”

“No, sir.”

He checked his watch and said, “Well, I’ve got ten minutes before I have to be somewhere else, so we’d best get to it.”

“Yes, sir.” She turned her father’s watch on her wrist and then held it still. “I just wanted to ask you about Deputy Moran,” she said.

He looked at her. “You mean Sheriff Moran.”

“I mean when he was still a deputy here.”

The sheriff sat regarding her blankly. Then he stood up and came around the desk and shut the door with a quiet click and walked back and sat down again.

“What did you want to ask?”

“I wanted to ask why he left the department.”

“Why did you want to ask that?”

She was not expecting the question and she sat trying to think, her heart beating.

“Since the accident,” she said, “my accident, in the river, I’ve been thinking about Holly Burke. I’ve been thinking about her a lot.”

“I guess I can understand that,” he said.

“And I’ve gotten to know her father a little bit too—Mr. Burke.”

“I saw him at your father’s service. Was somewhat surprised by that, I have to say.”

“Well. He came to bring me firewood—this was after the funeral—and I was sick with the flu and he took me in. He took care of me.”

The sheriff moved a pen on his desk from one place to another. She could see him trying to imagine all of that. He looked up again, waiting for her to go on.