Michael Koryta - So Cold the River

He worked all the way down the brick drive to the stone arches and the old building beside them that had once been a bank. Then he crossed to the other side and paused before starting his return trip, looking up at the length of the drive at the work yet to be done. Looking up at that damned hotel.

Oh, he’d liked it at one time. Had been excited, same as everybody, when word came down that the place was going to be restored, that the casino was on its way. Jobs aplenty, that was the word. Well, he had his job now. Had his callused hands and sunburn. Some fortune.

The resorts were supposed to be a big deal for the locals. Provide a-what was the word that politician had said?-a boon, that was it. A boon. Shit.

Thing these damn hotels provided, so far as Josiah was concerned, was torment. Rich folks coming in again, the way they had so long ago, and all of a sudden you were more aware of your place in the world. More aware of your fifteen-year-old Ford pickup when it was idling next to a Mercedes with Massachusetts plates, waiting for a green light. More aware of the Keystone Ice you bought in thirty-packs when you saw somebody in an Armani suit throw down a twenty for a Grey Goose martini and then wave off the change.

They said all this was going to boost the local economy, and they’d been right. Josiah made eight thousand dollars more per year now than he had before the restorations began. But he did it trimming weeds in front of people who made eighty grand more than that. Eight hundred grand more than that. Worse than the money was the anonymity-people coming and going right past you all day and never giving you so much as a blink. Wasn’t that they disrespected you outright; they didn’t even realize you were there.

It vexed him. Had almost from the day the hotel doors opened and he saw all that gold and glitter, from the first time he’d walked through the casino with his hand wrapped tight around the ten-dollar bill that was all he could afford to gamble with. Because Josiah Bradford’s family had been in this valley for generations, and there was a time, back when the resorts were flourishing in the Prohibition days, when they were powerful. Noticed and known. Somehow, seeing the place come back to life while he held a weed eater in his hands felt beyond wrong-felt intolerable.

Why, wasn’t but a month ago that some black kid from IU came to Josiah’s home in a damned Porsche Cayenne, just dripping money, and said he wanted to talk about Josiah’s great-grandfather, Campbell, the man who’d controlled this valley once. Granted, he’d run off and left his family, taking with him every dime they had-and according to the stories, plenty of dimes they didn’t have, too-but in his time he’d been as powerful as anyone who ever walked through that damn rotunda. A behind-the-scenes sort of influence, the kind you built with brass knuckles and brass balls, the only kind Josiah’d ever respected. Campbell’s legacy was an infamous one, but Josiah had always felt a strange kind of pride in him anyhow. Then the black kid showed up, some rich student, wanting to talk about the tales, put his own version of the Bradford family history down on paper. Josiah threw him the hell out of his house and hadn’t heard from him since, but the car was around often enough, a 450-horse motor in a frigging SUV, dumbest thing Josiah had ever seen, seventy thousand-some dollars’ worth of stupid.

Every insult was fuel for the fire, though. That’s what he told himself day in and day out, what kept him here, putting cigarettes out before he’d even had a chance to smoke them, saying yessir and nosir to that fat bastard Amos. It wouldn’t last forever. You could bet your sweet ass on that. There’d come a day when he’d walk back into this shit-hole town and make ’em stir, swagger into that casino and toss a few thousand on the table, look bored when he won and amused when he lost, have the crowd hanging on it.

You had to be ambitious. Josiah figured that out early, knew even when he dropped out of high school that he would rise above all this crap. He didn’t need high school, that was all. Had all As and Bs except for a C in chemistry when he quit. But what was he going to do, earn a scholarship, go up to IU or Purdue and get some bullshit degree that landed him a four-bedroom house with a thirty-year mortgage and a leased Volvo? Please. What he had his sights on was a good deal bigger than that, and you didn’t need the schooling to get it. What you needed was the hunger. And Josiah Bradford had that in spades. Fire in the belly, his old man had called it just before tying one on up in Bedford and wrapping his Trans Am around a tree on US 50, killing himself before Josiah had the pleasure.

Better believe it was a fire. Burned hotter every day, but Josiah was no idiot, knew that it required a touch of patience, required waiting for the right opportunity.

The puttering sound of the Gator’s little motor broke him out of his reverie, and he bowed his head and extended the weed eater again, let the sun scorch on his back as he began to make the slow trip back up the brick drive to the hotel.

The Bradford name had meant something in this town once.

It would again.

THERE WAS A COCKTAIL waitress at the bar who reminded Eric of Claire, the same willowy build and glossy dark hair and easy laugh, so he decided not to linger over that drink so long after all. He settled for one beer again and then went up to the room and took his shoes off and lay on the bed, thinking he’d rest for a few minutes. Evidently the drive and the beer were enough to coax sleep along, because when he opened his eyes again the bedside clock showed that he’d slept for nearly two hours. It was past five now. Time to get into action.

He sat up with a grunt, still feeling foggy with sleep, and swung his feet to the floor and went to get his briefcase. There was a legal pad in it on which he’d sketched a rough outline of what he wanted to get done first. All he had scheduled for today was an evening meeting with that graduate student who’d posted about Campbell on the Internet, but he’d like to get some film done, too, get things rolling as much as possible.

Inside the briefcase he found the legal pad and the bottle of Pluto Water, which reminded him that he needed to check on that, get an accurate date if possible.

When he took the bottle out of the briefcase, he could’ve sworn it was even colder than when he’d last touched it in Chicago. It had always been unnaturally cool, but now it felt as if it had just come out of a refrigerator. It was hard to believe, considering his last experience with it, but somehow the bottle looked almost tempting today. Almost refreshing.

“No way,” he said, thinking about another taste. He couldn’t ever stomach that again. Who knew what was wrong with it. Stuff would probably kill you.

All the same, he loosened the cap again. Lowered his nose to it and took a quick sniff, bracing for that noxious, stomach-turning scent.

He didn’t get it. A trace, maybe, but nothing so foul as last time. In fact, it smelled mild now, almost sweet. That was odd. Must have released the worst of the smell as soon as it was opened. Maybe that’s how they did it in the old days, let the stuff sit open for a while before consumption.

Oh, hell, he thought, go on and get a little on your tongue.

He poured a few drops into a cupped palm, then held it to his face and dipped the tip of his tongue into it, expecting the worst.

It wasn’t so bad at all. Just a barely perceptible sweetness. It must have needed to breathe a little. No way he was going to brave an actual swallow of it again, though. No way.

He put the cap back on and left the room.

That first afternoon it felt right to just wander. He opened with a few shots of the dome and the atrium and the rest of the interior splendor, then moved on outside and explored the grounds. There were a handful of beautiful but small stone buildings that had once housed some of the mineral spas. A fountain highlighted the center of the garden, and Eric discovered there was a small cemetery on the hill above, looking down at the dome. He took a few experimental shots from the ground, shooting at the hotel past the tilted gravestones, and was pleased with the results. This spot needed to be incorporated into whatever he did-anytime you could shoot down on something so grand with gravestones in the forefront, you should.