Michael Koryta - So Cold the River

“Did you end up playing college ball?” Eric said.

“No. I had scholarship offers to small D-1 schools, but nowhere elite, and if I couldn’t play at that level, I didn’t want to play at all. Some people would call that quitting. I call it understanding. Because I never quit playing, I busted my ass right up until the last second of my high school career. But basketball, it was not my game. And I came to understand that. I had this real high grade point average, which was supposed to be like a complement to my game, right? Well, that changed. I refocused. Got an academic scholarship and then a degree and then a master’s, and now I’m closing in on the doctorate. I am good at what I do, right? But it’s not playing ball. That’s not quitting, though. That’s changing. That’s growth.”

“Good thing you’re a likable guy,” Eric said. “Because if there’s anything more obnoxious than a wise old man, it’s a wise young one.”

“Man, it just sounds good ’cause I’ve had a lot of time to think on it,” Kellen said with a laugh, and then he hit the brakes and twisted the wheel, taking a hard turn off the road and down onto a rutted gravel drive. “Damn. Almost missed it.”

This was a far sight different from visiting Anne McKinney. Instead of the well-kept two-story home on the hill surrounded by windmills and weather vanes, there was a small house with warped and peeling siding and a front gutter that hung about a foot off the roof at one end. An old aerial antenna was mounted at the peak of the roof, tilting unnaturally and covered with rust. There was a trailer set on stone blocks no more than thirty feet from the house and only one gravel drive and one mailbox.

“You know which it is?” Eric said.

“He told me to come to the house.”

Kellen parked in front of the trailer and they got out and closed the car doors. When they did, a dog with long golden fur rose from the tall weeds that grew alongside the block foundation. Eric tensed, thinking this was the sort of place where bite might precede bark, but then he saw the dog’s tail wagging and he lowered his hand and snapped his fingers. The dog walked over with the stiff gait of arthritic hips and smelled Eric’s hand, then shoved its muzzle against his leg, the tail picking up speed.

“You make friends fast,” Kellen said.

It was a mutt, some blend of golden retriever and shepherd probably, and was friendly as hell. Eric scratched its ears for a few seconds before moving on to the house, the dog following at his side like they’d been together forever. Only the screen door was closed, and when they got there, Kellen called out a loud hello instead of knocking.

“It’s open,” someone on the other side said.

Kellen pulled the screen door back and the dog immediately started through. Eric made a grab at its neck but found no collar, and then the thing was inside the house, nails clicking on the old wood floor.

“What in hell you go and let him in here for?” the voice inside shouted. “He’ll wreck this place faster than a hurricane.”

“Sorry,” Kellen said, and then he stepped inside and Eric followed, seeing Edgar Hastings for the first time, an angular-faced, white-haired man in a blue flannel shirt, sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. The TV was on but the volume was off. He had a pack of cigarettes in the pocket of the flannel shirt, and a crossword puzzle on his lap. One word had been filled in. There were a half dozen juice glasses on the end tables around him, all of them partially filled with what looked like Coke that had gone flat.

“I’ll get him out of here for you,” Kellen said. The dog was off in the kitchen now, regarding them from behind the table, and something about his expression told Eric those arthritic hips were going to get a hell of a lot looser when the dog wanted to avoid being caught and put out of the house.

“Oh, don’t worry about Riley. I’ll get him out in time. Go on and sit on the davenport there.”

Davenport. There was a term Eric hadn’t heard in a while. He and Kellen sat on the couch Edgar had indicated, a spring popping beneath Kellen, and Riley, as if aware that the threat of imminent eviction had passed, came back over and dropped to his haunches at Eric’s feet.

“Nice dog,” Eric said.

“My grandson’s, not mine. He lives in the trailer.” Edgar was regarding Eric with a harsh squint, skeptical. His face was spider-webbed with wrinkles, even his lips, and whiskers were scattered on his chin. “Now tell me why in tarnation you want to know about Campbell Bradford?”

“Well, Eric here is interested in someone of the same name,” Kellen said, “but we’re not sure if it can be the same person. His Campbell is still alive.”

The old man shook his head. “Not the right man, then. He’d have to be long dead. Who sent you down here to ask about him?”

“A woman in Chicago,” Eric said. “She’s a relative of Campbell’s, but the one she knows is ninety-five now.”

“Different man,” Edgar said flatly. “Should’ve made a phone call.”

“Well, my Campbell says he grew up in this town. Left when he was a teenager.”

“He’s lying,” Edgar said.

“You claim to know everyone in the town?”

“I know everyone has the name Bradford, and I absolutely know everyone has the name Campbell Bradford! Hell, anybody from my time would. Wasn’t never but one Campbell Bradford in this valley, so if somebody’s telling you otherwise, they’re lying. Why in hell they would want to do that, though, I have no idea. He wasn’t the sort of man you’d want to pretend to be. Campbell went beyond bad.”

“Excuse me?”

“He was worthless as worthless gets, ran around with every gambler and crook ever came to town, didn’t pay any mind to his family at all. Used to keep a hotel room just for fornicating, drank all hours of the day, never met a truth he wouldn’t rather turn into a lie. When he ran off, he left his wife without a cent, and then she died and my parents had to take in the child. Those days, that’s what folks would do. My parents was Christian people and they believed that’s what they ought do, so that’s what they done.”

He offered the last part like a challenge.

“He doesn’t sound impressive, I’ll grant you that,” Eric said.

“Campbell even went beyond all that,” Edgar answered. “Like I told you, that man went beyond bad. There was the devil in him.”

“You’re telling me he was evil?”

“You say that like it’s funny, but it ain’t. Yes, he was evil. He was, sure as I’m sitting here. It’s been damn near eighty years since the man left. I was a boy. But I remember him like I remember my own wife, God rest her. He put the chill in your heart. My parents saw it; hell, everybody saw it. The man was evil. Came to town in the middle of the high times, started in with the gamblers and the whiskey runners, made the sort of money doesn’t come from honest work.”

Eric felt an unpleasant throb in his skull, the headache level jumping on him.

“You told me Campbell didn’t have any family left but Josiah,” Kellen said.

“That’s right. Josiah is Campbell’s great-grandson, last true member of Campbell’s line that there is, least as far as anyone around here knows. I’m as good as a grandfather to him myself, I suppose, though there’s plenty days when I wouldn’t want to claim that. Josiah’s got him a streak of difficult.”

Kellen hid a laugh by coughing into his fist, looking at Eric with amusement.

“I mean, we was all like family, you know, even though I’m not blood relation to that side,” Edgar Hastings said. “Josiah’s mother, she called me Uncle Ed, and I thought of her as a niece. We was close, too. We was awful close.”