Michael Koryta: So Cold the River

“Alyssa gave me this,” he said, pushing it into the old man’s hand, and for the first time Campbell’s face changed while Eric had his eyes away from the camera, went drawn and lined with concern.

“You shouldn’t have this,” he said.

“I’m sorry. She brought it to me.”

Campbell’s long, ancient fingers opened and he lifted his hand from the bottle, found Eric’s forearm and squeezed with surprising strength.

“It was so cold,” he said.

“The bottle? Yeah, I know. Weird stuff.”

“No!” Campbell’s eyes were wide now, full of emotion, the game forgotten.

“What?”

“Not the bottle.”

“Well, I thought it was plenty cold. When I touched-”

“Not the bottle.”

Eric said, “What, then? What are you talking about?”

“So cold.”

“What was?”

“The river.”

“What river are you talking about?”

“It was so cold.”

Eric wanted to say something about Bradford’s sense of humor again, wanted to give him some credit for this unnerving and inventive-as-hell prank, but he couldn’t get the words out, couldn’t even get them formed, because he was staring into the man’s face and unable to believe that any drama school on earth had ever produced a talent like this. He wasn’t acting. He was lost in some frozen memory. One that terrified him.

“So cold the river,” Campbell Bradford repeated, his voice now dropping to a whisper as he lowered his head back to the pillow. “So cold the river.”

“What river? I don’t understand what you’re talking about, sir.”

Nothing.

Eric said, “Mr. Bradford? I’m sorry I brought the bottle.”

Silence. The amazing job of blank-faced posing he’d done before paled in comparison to this.

“Mr. Bradford, I was hoping to talk to you about your life. If you don’t want to talk about West Baden or your childhood, that’s fine with me. Let’s talk about your career, then. Your kids.”

But it wasn’t going to work. Not anymore. The old man was stone silent. Game or not, Eric wasn’t going to wait all night. He let five minutes pass, asked a few more questions, got no response.

“All right,” he said, removing the camera from the tripod. “I think you were messing with me earlier, and I hope you are now. I’m sorry if I upset you.”

That got a languid blink. When Eric picked up the bottle from the bed and put it back in his briefcase, Campbell followed it with his eyes but said nothing.

“Okay,” Eric said. “Take care, Mr. Bradford.”

He left the hospital and drove back to the apartment, opened a beer and leaned against the refrigerator while he drank it, holding the bottle to his forehead between sips. What a weird guy. What a weird night.

It was the sort of story he’d have shared with Claire once, and that thought reminded him of the message he still hadn’t checked. Maybe it was her. Hopefully, it was her. If she’d called, he was justified in calling her back. It would give him the excuse.

When he played the message, though, it wasn’t Claire’s voice.

“Eric, hey, I hope this catches you! This is Alyssa Bradford, and I’m calling to tell you not to waste your time driving to the hospital tonight. My father-in-law took a turn for the worse this week. I went down there yesterday and he couldn’t say a word, would just look at me and stare. The doctors said he hasn’t spoken since Monday. I’m so sorry it won’t work out. I wish you could have talked with him. He had such a sense of humor. I guess the last time he spoke, it was to tell the nurse she needed to get a new outfit. That was just like him. If those were his last words, at least they were a joke.”

She wished him luck in West Baden and hung up. Eric finished the rest of his beer in a long swallow and deleted the message.

“Hate to tell you, Alyssa,” he said aloud, “but those weren’t his last words.”

IT HIT NINETY ON the first Friday of May, and everyone Anne McKinney spoke with commented on the heat, shook their heads, and expressed disbelief. Anne, of course, had seen this coming about six weeks earlier, when spring arrived early and emphatically. It had been in the high sixties throughout the third week of March, and while the TV people were busy talking about when it would break, Anne knew by the fourth day that it would not. Not really, not in the way of a normal Indiana spring, with those wild swings, seventy one day and thirty the next.

No, this year spring settled in and put up its feet, and winter didn’t have much to say about it, just a few overnight grumblings of cold rain and wind. There had been five days in the eighties during April, and the rain that came was gentle. Nurturing. The entire town was in bloom now, everything lush and green and unpunished. The grounds around the hotel were particularly stunning. Always were, of course-full-time landscapers could do that for you-but Anne had seen eighty-six springs in West Baden, remembered about eighty of those pretty well, and this was as beautiful as any of them.

And as hot.

She couldn’t avoid the weather conversations even if she’d wanted to; it was her identity in town, the only thing most people could think to mention when they saw her. Sometimes the topic came up casually, other times with genuine interest and inquiry, and, often enough, with winks and smiles. It amused some people, her fascination with weather, her house on the hill filled with barometers and thermometers and surrounded by weather vanes and wind chimes. That was fine by Anne. To each his own, as they said. She knew what she was waiting for.

Truth be told, there were times when she thought she might never see it either. See the real storm, the one she’d been counting on since she was a girl. The last few years, maybe she’d let her eye wander a bit, let her interest dim. She still kept the daily records, of course, still knew every shift and eddy of the winds, but it was more observation and less expectation.

But now it was ninety on the first Friday of May, the air so still it was as if the wind had lost its job here, headed elsewhere in search of work. The barometer sat at 30.08 and steady, indicating no change soon. Just heat and blue skies and stillness, the summer humidity yet to arrive, that ninety more tolerable than it would be in July.

All peaceful signs really. Anne didn’t believe any of them.

She went into the West Baden hotel at three and sat in one of the luxurious velvet-covered chairs near the bar and had her afternoon cocktail. Brian, the bartender, gave a wink to one of his coworkers when he fixed Anne’s drink, as if she didn’t know he put only the barest splash of Tanqueray in the tonic before squeezing the lime. A splash was all she needed these days. Hell, she was eighty-six years old. What did the boy think she was coming down here for, to end up three sheets to the wind?

No, it was the routine. A ritual of thanks more than anything else, an appreciation for continued health, health that she couldn’t ask for at this age. She still made it up all those front steps, didn’t use a cane or a walker or a stranger’s arm. Walked in under the dome and had herself a seat and a sip. The day she couldn’t do that, well, go ahead and pop the lid on the pine box.

There wasn’t a soul in the world who would understand how it made Anne feel to come in here and see the place alive. The day it had finally reopened, she walked into the rotunda beneath that towering dome of glass and burst into tears. Had to sit down on a chair and cry, and people just smiled sympathetic-like at her, seeing an old woman having an old woman’s moment. They couldn’t understand what it meant, couldn’t understand the way this place had looked when she was a girl, the most amazing place she could ever have imagined in the world.