Timothy Johnston - The Current

“Momma…”

“Mrs. Young.” The sheriff looked at his hands on the table, then looked up again. “I can’t even imagine what you’ve gone through. Or what you’re going through right now. But I would ask you to ask yourself one thing.”

She waited. She was trying not to tremble.

“Why didn’t Danny tell his story ten years ago?” the sheriff said.

“He was just a boy, Sheriff. He was confused. He was terrified.”

The sheriff scratched his jaw and cocked his head. “He was nineteen, Mrs. Young. And I wouldn’t say he was terrified.”

She stared at him. “What does that mean?”

“It means I watched his interview, with Sheriff Sutter, and I wouldn’t say he was terrified. I’d say he handled himself pretty well, actually.”

She just stared at him. No idea what to say to that—was that supposed to be a compliment?

When he said nothing more she tapped her finger on the table and said, “Maybe that’s not the right question, Sheriff.”

“Ma’am?”

“Maybe the question isn’t why didn’t he say anything back then. Maybe the question is why would he say anything now? I mean, why would he do that?”

“Yes, ma’am. That is an awfully good question.” He cupped his hands together on the table and sat staring at them. As though he’d captured a small bird and was deciding what to do with it. Rachel and Marky watching him. Finally he uncupped his hands, popped the snap on the breast pocket of his shirt and brought out his notebook and pen.

“All right,” he said, clicking the pen. “Let’s start with what he was wearing.”

She stared at him. “What he was wearing?”

“Yes, ma’am. Last time you saw your son, what was he wearing?”

“Sheriff—” she said. Her mind was tumbling. “Sheriff—what about that deputy? Are you not even going to question him?”

“Sheriff, ma’am,” he said.

She looked at him. “What—?”

“That deputy is a sheriff now, ma’am, in another county, in another state, and I can’t just go down there and question a sheriff across state lines.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, it might make him itchy before I got a chance to charge him.”

“So then charge him.”

“I can’t charge a man across state lines, ma’am. I’d have to convince a judge to issue a warrant for his arrest down there, and even then, well, it could turn out he’d almost have to arrest himself, and he might not care to.”

Rachel took this in. She shook her head.

“But—” she said, and the sheriff waited. “What are you saying—if he was up here you could arrest him?”

“I could if I had probable cause. Only problem is, all I’ve got so far is this letter and this piece of cloth, both of which have been produced not by your son himself but by you, and one abandoned truck with a bullet hole could’ve been put there by anybody. So unless your son comes walking through that door in the next five minutes, or calls and tells me where he’s at, then I’m going to have to go out there and find him. So.” He readied his pen again and looked at them both, mother and son. “Can you tell me what he was wearing, last time you saw him?”

AFTER THE SHERIFF was gone, Marky went upstairs to get cleaned up and she sat at the table alone, staring at the two phones. Finally she picked up the handset and dialed Danny once more, and once more got the recording. She set the handset down and stared at it again.

And why didn’t you tell the sheriff about that rifle? Why didn’t you tell him to go talk to Gordon Burke?

Because just two weeks ago Gordon Burke was sitting right here at this table, and because he’d helped you bury old Wyatt… and because he’d watched Danny grow up, and because Gordon Burke had once been like a father to her sons and he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t.

When Marky came back down she had soup ready, and they tried to talk like it was just another night but everything they said sounded strange. The two phones sat on the table looking like they would ring, but not ringing. Outside it was snowing again, big white flakes tumbling in the farmlight, but it wasn’t pretty, not anymore. The first time it snowed it made you happy, it made you think of being a kid and sledding and making snowmen, and Christmas, and sometimes after that the snow would turn everything white and pretty again, but now the snow was just snow and the winter went on and the spring would never come.

After dinner they each tried calling again, then she called the sheriff, using the card he’d left, and after she hung up she told Marky a deputy had answered and said there was no news and that he’d let the sheriff know she called.

She turned on the TV and they sat down to watch, but everything they saw seemed loud and stupid and fake. Marky sat through one show, then said he was going upstairs, and she muted the TV.

“Is this bothering you? We don’t have to watch.”

“No Momma I just feel like going upstairs now.”

“All right.” If he was going upstairs then he wasn’t worried, Rachel knew. Or was that just what he wanted you to think?

“I can leave my phone with you if you want me to Momma,” he said.

“No, you keep it with you, sweetheart. Just, you know, let me know—OK?”

“I will Momma.”

Upstairs he sat on his bed, then stood again and went across the hall to Danny’s room. All his things were there, not as many as in his old room but just enough so you knew it was Danny’s room. His schoolbooks on the bookshelf, his old skates and his hockey stick. The Big Dam Mug on his desk where he kept his drawing pens and which always made you think about the dam that time you all drove there—Poppa lifting you up so you could look over and down and your insides all rolling over and what if he dropped you on accident and nothing to keep you from falling and you wouldn’t look again, you wouldn’t even stand there again for a picture.

And next to the Big Dam Mug was the framed picture of the two of you in the canoe with Poppa behind you, you and Danny in the orange life vests that smelled of the river and fish, both of you smiling and Poppa smiling too and it was Momma in the back of the canoe who took the picture with her old camera. That was the year Poppa went back to the hospital even though he didn’t smoke anymore and you stood by the hospital bed and he put his arm around you one at a time and said no crying, you boys are too big for that. I need you to be men, now, all right? I need you to take care of your mother. Will you do that for me? And at the funeral you each sat to one side of her and held her hand and you watched the machine lower the casket into the ground and that was when you knew for sure he was gone, he was really gone, and it was just the three of you now and you would never see your Poppa again except in pictures and in your memories and your dreams.

And now Danny too. Danny was missing, and what if Holly Burke never went into the river and Mr. Burke never got sad and angry and you all still worked at the Plumbing Supply, you and Danny and Jeff, and you still lived at the old house and Wyatt was still alive… But no, Wyatt would still be dead because time was still there and you would be as old as you are now and Wyatt died because he got too old, and you will die one day too, you and Danny and Momma too, but Danny would not be leaving all the time, driving all over, he’d be making bridges and dams but he could come home and stay home and he wouldn’t be leaving all the time because of people saying he had something to do with Holly Burke going into the river when he didn’t, he didn’t, some other person did that to her, and the sheriff, the old sheriff who was Audrey’s father never found who did it and that was ten years ago… and now Danny’s letter said Deputy Moran pulled him over that night and that’s how the pocket got onto his truck, and what did that mean? Did the deputy just find the pocket or did he tear it off of her shirt himself, and what did that mean…?