Timothy Johnston - The Current

We used to play with her when we were little she was our friend .

But Holly Burke had not been their friend, exactly. More like a cousin, forced into closeness with them not by marriage but by business, by that hyphen in the Burke-Young Plumbing & Supply sign. Nice enough when she was little, fun enough, but you had to be careful. Moody , your mother said. Like the time you were playing tag in the yard and Marky tagged her on her chest and she shoved him hard and called him a retard and you could’ve hit her, you could’ve just about gut-punched her like she was some dumb-ass boy on the playground. By middle school there was no goofing around with Holly Burke and no saying hello in the halls even, and if you ever told anyone you’d once wrestled with her on the living room floor she’d call you a liar and a pervert, and by high school you wouldn’t even believe such a thing yourself—suddenly it was hard to believe she’d ever been a little girl at all.

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

No, sir… No, sir .

He saw that night again—the dark road winding through the dark woods, the bending limbs, the boughs that dipped and swayed. What if you’d left the bar a few minutes earlier? What if you hadn’t stopped to let the dog out? You’d been drinking. Hell, you were drunk. Taking those turns. The trees tossing and you are in your truck and you are nineteen and nothing can touch you, and you come around the bend and suddenly…

And what if you had? What if you’d come around the bend with the beers in your blood and not seen her in time? What if what they wanted to be true was true? What if your life now was exactly the one you deserved?

He walked around to the driver’s side of the truck, the night so still and cold there was only the sound of his boots on the packed snow, the sound of his own breath, but then, under these sounds and far off, he heard a tinny jangling, a faint rattling that was the sound of a dog running somewhere and he turned back toward the yard, toward the fields beyond. But there was no dog, no dark shape moving fast over the white. There was only the snow and the farmlight and the dark, unmoving shadows on the snow.

HE WAS SITTING at the table eating his cornflakes when she came down and she already knew, it was in her face, her eyes. The way she moved.

“He couldn’t wait till I came down?” she said, crossing to the sink to look out the window.

“He left last night Momma.”

“What time last night?”

“Two a.m. Momma.”

“How do you know?”

Marky stirred his cornflakes, chewing.

“Marky?”

“He woke me up to say good-bye that’s all.”

“That’s all?”

Marky nodded. Spooned up more cornflakes.

“Did he say where he was going?”

“No Momma.”

She stood watching him eat. The sound of the cornflakes so loud in his ears.

“So he woke you up to say good-bye but not me,” she said, and he looked up at her tired, sad face.

“He didn’t want to wake you up Momma. He told me to tell you good-bye for him.”

“What was the big rush?”

“I don’t know Momma he just said it was time for him to go again.”

She lit the flame and put the kettle on the stove and then stood looking out the window.

“He’ll come back Momma. He always comes back.”

She wiped at her face and then she turned and crossed the kitchen and ran her hand down the back of his head and said, “I’ll go get dressed and then we’ll go.”

“OK Momma.” When he heard her on the stairs he got up and checked the kettle, ran tap water into it, and returned it to the flame.

HE SPENT THE morning in the back, stocking shelves and matching inventory to what was on the computer, and it was a long morning. At lunchtime he sat at the little table in the back office and after a while Jeff came back and took his bag out of the fridge and tossed his burrito into the microwave and punched the buttons, then stood looking at Marky as the machine hummed and blew the spicy meat smell into the room. Marky took a bite of his ham sandwich and washed it down with his bottle of Sprite.

“You’re awful damn quiet today.”

“Yeah I been working on the inventory Jeff.”

“I see that. Very shipshape. Very shipshape.” Jeff watching him. Marky sipping at his Sprite. “How about that bag of chips?” Jeff said.

“How about it?”

“You gonna eat it?”

“No.”

“You’re not gonna eat your chips?”

“No do you want them Jeff?”

“Hell, if you don’t want ’em,” he said, and he popped open the bag and began eating the chips. The crunching loud chip sound. The microwave humming and blowing. Mr. Wabash banging on something in the garage. Then, holding a chip partway to his mouth, Jeff said, “Shit, I know what this is. This is Danny, isn’t it.”

“Danny left last night Jeff.”

Jeff stood watching him. “I’m sorry about that, Big Man.”

“It’s OK Jeff he’ll come back he always comes back.”

The microwave dinged and Jeff pulled the burrito out by the plastic wrapper and dropped it fast on a paper plate and sat down at the little table to eat.

“I gotta go to the drugstore now,” Marky said, standing.

“The drugstore?”

“Yeah gotta get something for Momma,” he said. His heart beating so hard as he said it. Jeff watching him as he bagged up his sandwich and put it back in the fridge.

“Hey,” Jeff said, and Marky stopped. Jeff just staring at him. “You knew he’d have to leave again, right? You knew he couldn’t stay.”

“Yeah I knew it Jeff. Momma and me we always know it and even Wyatt did too before he died.”

“Doesn’t make it any easier, though, does it.”

“No it doesn’t Jeff.”

He put on his jacket and he got out of the garage without Mr. Wabash seeing him and he walked six blocks through town, stopping only to look at the sheriff’s station—one of the white Tahoes parked out front, the 2014 V-8 with the 5.3-liter engine—and then he walked the six blocks back to the garage and Jeff was just finishing his lunch and Mr. Wabash was standing in the lot talking to a woman beside her red car. Danny had not called.

THE GIRL CAME in the afternoon, just after Rachel herself got home from errands and before she’d even gotten out of her coat. There were footsteps on the porch and then the doorbell rang and the dog didn’t bark and she remembered, once again, that he was gone.

Danny gone now too. The house so empty and quiet.

The girl stood on the porch in big sunglasses and a big canvas jacket, and even with the sunglasses Rachel knew who she was, and her heart gave a strange hop in her chest. She opened the stormdoor and the girl said, “Hello—Mrs. Young?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Audrey Sutter. I’m sorry to just show up like this, I tried to call.”

“Yes, I know who you are.” The girl removed the sunglasses and Rachel saw the purple cast, and she knew it must’ve happened in the accident, when she and the other girl had gone into the river. “I’m sorry—” Rachel said, and didn’t know how to go on. She should give the girl her sympathies, she knew, for her father, and for the other girl too—but instead she said, as kindly as she could, “Is there something I can do for you?”

“I was actually hoping I might speak to your son?” said the girl, and Rachel’s heart stumbled, it fell back in time. It was those words— speak to your son —as the girl’s father had once spoken them, standing just so on her stoop, at the old house, but it was the eyes too: those same blue eyes looking at her again out of that past, those terrible days. And she looked into these eyes now, trying to find the connection between her son and this girl, the sheriff’s daughter, but it was impossible. What had she missed?