Timothy Johnston - The Current

“I’m waking you up. It’s like waking up a dead man.”

“What time is it?”

“Keep your voice down. It’s two o’clock.”

“Danny tomorrow is Monday.”

“It’s already Monday.”

“Danny…”

“Just—hey, Marky, come on. I gotta talk to you for a second.” He’d been sitting there awhile in the chair and he could see his brother well by the light from the farmlight where it shone through the curtains. Marky dug his knuckles into his eyes and then got himself up on his elbows. He swallowed thickly and opened his mouth to yawn.

“Here, drink some water. Your breath could strip the paint off a car.”

“Your breath could strip the paint off a car Danny.”

Marky drank the water and smacked his lips and handed back the glass. He piled his two pillows against the headboard and drew himself up into a sitting position. He wore a dark T-shirt and his biceps were white as milk. Danny poked the near one with his finger. When they were teenagers they’d had barbells in the garage—Marky so weirdly, so effortlessly strong that Danny had begun working out in the gym at school to catch up.

“You been working out, buddy?”

“No Danny just working.”

“They got you lifting cars down there, or what?”

“No we got the lifts for that.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

Danny glanced around the room, at the dark shapes of the desk and the dresser, the gleam of the picture frames on the desk, pictures mostly from long ago when they were boys and their father was still alive. Missing was the picture of the two married couples, the Youngs and the Burkes, standing before a storefront with their arms all around each other and grinning, that picture lost somehow in the move from the old house to the farmhouse, or so he’d thought until, home for Christmas two years ago and digging in Marky’s dresser for wool socks, he’d found it at the bottom of the drawer.

“You like working at the garage?” he asked Marky.

“Sure I do but not as much as the Plumbing Supply though.”

“Why not?”

“Cause you’re not there Danny.”

“Yeah. Jeff’s there, though.”

“Jeff’s there.”

“Jeff’s been a good friend, hasn’t he.”

“Jeff’s been a good friend Danny we’ve been friends with Jeff since we were all little boys.”

“I know it. How about Mr. Wabash. You like working for him?”

“Sure I like working for him. He could give you a job too Danny.”

“Yeah, I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think he likes me very much.”

“He likes you Danny everybody likes you.”

“No, they don’t, buddy. You know that’s why I went away. Why I always have to go away.”

Marky looked down at his hands in his lap. “It’s because of Holly Burke.”

“It’s because of Holly Burke.”

“That was a long time ago Danny.”

“I know it.”

“And it wasn’t your fault you didn’t have nothing to do with Holly Burke going into the river.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I know that Danny,” Marky said, “we used to play with her when we were little she was our friend.”

Danny sat looking into his brother’s eyes in the light of the farmlight, Marky looking into his. And then Marky looked at Danny’s clothes, his heavy winter shirt and his jeans and his socks, and he said, “You’re leaving again aren’t you Danny.”

“I’m leaving again. I’m all packed up. I just wanted to say good-bye.”

“What about Momma?”

“I don’t want to wake her up—she’ll just start crying and she’ll be up all night worrying. You can tell her for me in the morning. All right?”

“All right but she’s gonna cry anyway Danny she always cries.”

“I know it.”

“I wish I could go with you Danny.”

“I do too. But you got your job, and you gotta take care of Ma.”

“I know it,” said Marky.

They were silent. Marky’s eyes gleaming in the dark. Danny leaning forward, his forearms on his knees and gripping one hand in the other.

“What?” said Marky.

“What what?”

“You’re gonna say something Danny.”

Danny smiled. “Yeah, all right. I’m gonna say something. But it’s just between you and me, OK?”

“OK.”

“I don’t want you telling anybody else I told you this.”

“I won’t tell anybody Danny.”

“Especially Ma.”

“OK Danny.”

“Swear on a monkey’s uncle?”

“Swear on a monkey’s uncle.”

“All right then. I’m going to call you tomorrow, Marky. Or later today, Monday. I’m gonna call you on your cell phone later today and I’ll be far away by then.”

“Where you going Danny?”

“I don’t know but I’ll call you when I get there.”

“OK Danny.”

“But if I don’t call you… Are you listening?”

“I’m listening.”

“But if I don’t call you by tomorrow night—by tonight—it means something happened to me, Marky, and—”

“Danny don’t say that.”

“Keep your voice down, will you? Marky, I gotta say it so you know. I can’t tell Ma because she’ll just start freaking out. You’re the only person I can tell. You’re the only one. All right?”

“All right Danny.”

“And if I don’t call by tonight, if you don’t hear from me, then I need you to do something for me.”

“All right Danny.”

He reached for the envelope on the desk. It was one of his mother’s envelopes, light blue and birthday-card-shaped, but it was never a card when you saw it in your mailbox, whenever you’d stayed somewhere long enough to have a mailbox, it was a letter, two or three pages of her neat handwriting on matching stationery. On the envelope she’d write your name formally and with a kind of flourish, Mr. Daniel P. Young , and seeing it written that way on that blue envelope always made your heart stumble a little.

“What’s this?” Marky said, taking the envelope.

“It’s a letter, you knucklehead, and it ain’t for you.”

“You’re the knucklehead who’s it for?”

“You can read, can’t you?”

“It’s dark in here.”

Danny picked up the cell phone from the desk and thumbed the button and held its light toward the envelope and Marky’s face. Marky held the envelope close to his face and bunched his brow as he read it.

“Sheriff Wayne Halsey.”

“Sheriff Wayne Halsey. You know him, right?”

“Sure I know him Danny we service the sheriff department’s vehicles every spring they got three Chevy Tahoes and one Chevy TrailBlazer and—”

“All right, all right. That letter’s for the sheriff and the sheriff only—and only if I don’t call you by tonight. Are we clear?”

“We’re clear Danny.”

“You put it someplace top secret that only you know about, all right?”

“All right.”

“And I don’t mean your sock drawer.”

Marky dipped his head to give him a look. “Give me a little credit Danny.”

“Give you a little credit? Where’d you get that from—Jeff?”

“No I just said it.” He sat studying the face of the envelope as if by doing so he could know all that was inside.

“Well, get up outta that bed a minute,” Danny said.

“Why?”

“Because I’m not hugging a grown man good-bye while he’s lying in his goddam bed, that’s why.”

“Don’t cuss Danny.”

“That’s not cussing. Come on, now.”

MOST OF HIS gear was already in the truck—he’d never taken it out—and so he only had to go down the stairs once with a duffel in each hand, the old steps creaking but if she woke up she did not get out of bed, and when the duffels were packed into the cab he shut the passenger door quietly and stood looking at the farmhouse, lit up by the farmlight, and the light casting shadows on the snow. The clothesline post stood at its tilt and its shadow lay like a second post on the snow, the two of them conjoined and bent where they met in a trick of the eye—like it was all one continuous piece that was not planted at all but stood upright from its own T-shaped base, like sculpture. Like a demonstration of some principle. He saw two boys swinging there, one on each side of the T, dropping to the ground when the post began to give under the turf, Oh shit oh shit…