Timothy Johnston - The Current

When he woke up he was in Danny’s room, on Danny’s bed, the comforter from his own bed thrown over him and it was almost light out and he’d been dreaming and the dream was so bad he’d been crying in his sleep and he went on crying when he was awake because he knew it was true, what he dreamed, he knew it: the phone would not ring, would never ring, because Danny could not make the call. Because Danny was dead now too.

It was like looking over the dam again, your heart rolling and nothing to hold on to and nothing to stop you and nothing but down and down and down.

But you can’t tell her. You can’t tell her.

You have to get up and brush your teeth, and wash your face, and get dressed for work. You have to go downstairs and turn off the TV and put your hand on her shoulder and shake her gently, Momma, Momma wake up , and wait for her to open her eyes and see you, and see how she remembers, slowly, just looking at you, that Danny is missing. You have to tell her you want to go to work, you want to stay busy, you can’t tell her you don’t want to sit with her all day waiting and waiting, even though Danny would say you should do that, just for her. And then you have to make the tea while she goes upstairs to dress and have a hot mug waiting for her when she comes back down, and you have to remind her that she needs to put the phone back on the machine because it won’t charge otherwise and it won’t work away from the machine anyway, and when she drops you off at work you have to kiss her on the cheek good-bye and tell her everything is going to be OK Momma, everything is going to be OK , and watch as she pulls out of the lot again and turns toward home so she can be near the phone when it rings, and all the time you are just falling, down and down and nothing to stop you not even the river, not even the rocks.

HE DROVE BY Wabash’s garage at two in the afternoon and when he drove back fifteen minutes later the van was rumbling like a race car and he could see sparks in his sideview mirror where the tailpipe was scraping the concrete.

Wabash came out to meet him in the parking lot.

“What happened there, Gordon?”

“Ran over something.” He shut the door and put his hands in his jacket pockets.

“Sounds like you tore the whole muffler out. What the heck did you hit?”

“I don’t know. Something big. Wasn’t even there by the time I pulled over.”

Wabash moved to the back of the van and got down on one knee for a look under the chassis. “Chunk of ice, maybe?”

“Maybe.”

“Must of been a big gosh-darn chunk.”

“Think you can get to it today?”

“Well,” said Wabash, still looking. “Gonna have to order a new muffler and tailpipe, looks to me, so we might not get her done till tomorrow.” He stood again and spanked the snow and grit from his knee. “You want me to work up an estimate?”

“No, just want you to do it.”

“All right. You want to take the Crown Vic again?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“That’s what she’s there for.” They both looked at the black car where it sat in the weak afternoon sunlight.

Wabash looked at Gordon and then looked more closely. “You feeling all right there, Gordon?”

“Feel just fine.”

“You don’t look so hot.”

“That right? Well, you don’t look so hot yourself.”

“Fair enough. I’ll get you the key.”

AT A QUARTER past six Moran came out of the building and climbed into his SUV and shut the door. Exhaust chugged from the tailpipe, reverse lights lit up the pavement as he backed out of his space, and then the cruiser followed its headlights down the street. When it was a block away Gordon put the Crown Vic into gear and pulled away from the curb and followed. He’d been sitting there since four thirty.

The cruiser hit a green light and Gordon, keeping his distance, stopped on the yellow. He sat through the red light as the cruiser sat through a red at the intersection up ahead and then they both drove on. Gordon hit a pothole and the Crown Vic’s license plates rattled on the floor of the passenger side. Beside him, unfolded on the duffel bag, lay the map of the county.

He followed the SUV through town and out onto the county highway going west into rural woods and farmland. The address was listed as Route 10, and Moran was headed that way, and why else would he be going out there? The man was going home.

Home to what? To wife. To smells of dinner. To kids running up to grab his legs.

Could a man live two lives? Could he be this one man in the light of day—this husband, father, sheriff—and another man at night, a second man? Driving the back roads in his sheriff’s cruiser, using his badge and his authority for the purposes of the second man. Ugly purposes. How long could he go on like that? How many nights, how many women. Would he still be doing it when his kids were off to college, when he was a grandfather? Or would the needs of the second man weaken with age, his memory weakening too, until he no longer believed he’d ever been that man, done those things. Could his children and his wife stand at his graveside one day believing they’d known the one, entire man? And die themselves believing that?

It was a six-mile stretch of empty highway, the blacktop plowed but with tracks of packed snow, and Gordon kept his distance until they’d gone three miles by his odometer, then he gunned the Crown Vic to close the gap. He drew near enough to see his own headlights in the silver paint of the SUV’s back side and then eased off the gas and followed along at that distance. He saw Moran tilt his head toward the rearview and he could see that he was watching the headlights, and he gave him a few seconds to recognize the shape of the car, the headlights, as he knew he would, as any cop would, before he swung into the other lane and gunned the big engine again and blew by the SUV. He’d already dimmed the dashlights, and anyway the moment of alignment between the two drivers was too brief, and in the next moment the headlights of the SUV were in his rearview and growing small as he sped on, and the sign for the turnoff up ahead was bright in his own lights, and he would take the turnoff, he would take it one way or another and it was up to Moran to decide what would happen after that, follow or not follow, go home or not go home, choose one path and not the other… and the turnoff was coming up fast on the right, the turnoff was here, and Gordon braked to take it and only then, banking sharply into it—too sharply, the back end of the Crown Vic swinging wide—only then did the cruiser bloom into color behind him, barlights pulsing red and blue, grille lights pulsing red and blue and the headlights lifting as Moran hit the gas hard.

The Crown Vic held the turn, the rear end swung back, and he sped down the road with his eyes in the rearview, and there it came: the cruiser’s headlights and barlights spilled into the turn and slurred left and right and straightened and came on fast. Gordon watching his own headlights on the snow and the tiretracks up ahead, and watching Moran’s in the rearview. He had a quarter-mile lead, maybe a little more, and that was what he needed. His lights lit up the yellow sign, bridge may be icy, and then they shaped out the trestlework of the bridge, and the tiretracks went across and there was no ice that he could see, and when he hit the brakes the tires grabbed and held, until they didn’t and the car began to drift, and he eased off the brakes, correcting, braking, straightening her out and bringing her to a halt near the far end of the bridge.

He threw the Crown Vic into park and opened the door and stepped out as the SUV’s lights bore down on the bridge. Moran saw him in plenty of time and braked to a stop twenty, thirty yards from the Crown Vic, and no way to go around, and there he sat, behind his headlights, the colored lights pulsing. Not getting out of the SUV, not killing the lights, just sitting there. Like it was just another routine stop and he would sit back there awhile doing whatever it was cops did—check the plates, check in with dispatch, send a text to the wife. When Danny Young looked in his rearview that night, the night of the park, this is what he must have seen: the deputy’s headlights, his silent colored lights.