Michael Koryta - So Cold the River

He reached out and touched the grass near his feet, dipped his fingertips into Danny’s blood.

Ain’t your blood, Campbell’s voice whispered to him. And ain’t your concern.

But it was hard to focus now, hard to listen. The warm, wet touch of his old friend’s blood held him like cinder blocks strapped to his feet. He couldn’t move away.

He’s no kin to you, boy, and you got work left to do.

Campbell’s voice, so steady and strong throughout most of this day that it had become Josiah’s own at times, suddenly seemed softer. It was hard to hear him, hard to hear anything but the echoing roar of the shotgun.

Josiah had no recollection of having met Danny. They went back that far. Had just walked through their shitty world together from the start, more like family than friends. And the dumb son of a bitch had never stopped walking with him. Not even through this. Shit, he’d come driving up to that timber camp, bringing supplies long after he knew Josiah had killed a man. Had come out here following Eric Shaw at Josiah’s command, had waited on him through a damned tornado.

Had offered to take the woman’s place in the truck right now.

Who in the hell would do that? And why?

Damn it, boy, get your hands out of his blood and step back! You were to listen. That’s all. Only thing you’re required to do is listen, and now you’re not doing it.

He didn’t want to listen, though. Campbell would tell him to go, to leave this spot, and it didn’t feel right to leave Danny where he’d fallen. No, he couldn’t leave him alone…

It was the woman who jarred him loose. He’d taped her wrists together behind her back, but her fingers were free, and somehow she’d managed to reach the door handle. He heard the click of the latch opening, and with it his mind spun away from Danny Hastings and he turned to see her feet go flying through the cab as she fell backward and out of the truck.

He got up quickly and ran around the bed of the truck, found her down there in the dirt. She had nowhere to go, was just thrashing around like a fish on the sand, but he had to give her credit for trying. Josiah reached down and grabbed her by the back of her jeans and got her upright, then dropped the shotgun long enough to use both hands to shove her back inside. He hadn’t gotten the door closed yet when he heard an odd, faraway cry.

He slammed the door and snatched the shotgun with both hands, then turned and looked at the woods around him. He heard the cry again, understood the word this time: don’t. Eric Shaw was on his feet and had reached the trailhead, was just across the field from them. Josiah’s finger went to the trigger and for a moment he considered letting it blast in Shaw’s direction. He held off, though.

“You watch!” he bellowed. “You watch, and you listen! Isn’t a thing you can do to stop this!”

He walked around to the driver’s door and jerked it open and climbed inside, setting the shotgun between his legs, muzzle pointed down. The engine roared to life as Shaw continued on his drunken stagger through the field. Josiah threw it into gear and pulled away. In the rearview mirror, he could see the man begin to scream.

At the end of the gravel drive he turned left and pushed the pedal down to the floor, the worn tires howling on wet pavement. He drove south, figuring to return to town the same way he’d come. It would require passing the wreckage that was left of his home again, but he was determined to speed past it without a pause or even a sidelong glance.

That was the idea for the first mile at least, until the house came into view and he saw there was a car pulling out of the driveway. A police car. Josiah hesitated but didn’t touch the brake pedal. They were looking at the damage, not looking for him.

That idea held until the cruiser pulled all the way out, blocking the road, and hit the lights.

ERIC WAS TRYING TO hurry, but his legs were prone to buckling. He fell twice and got back to his feet, reeling, and pushed on. Toward the middle of the field his head began to clear and his legs steadied. There was a terrible burning just above his shoulder and he could feel a wet, pulsing heat along his scalp where bleeding continued-wounds left behind by Josiah’s shotgun butt. The pain in his skull was lost between the headache that had been building all morning and the impact of the gun.

He was a hundred yards from Josiah Bradford’s truck when the tires spun and it pulled down the gravel drive and toward the road with Claire inside. Eric stopped moving and screamed at them to stop, but the truck flashed through the trees and was gone from sight for a moment. Then it appeared again, marked by a shriek of tires as Josiah made a left turn out onto the road and sped south. Eric stood in the field and screamed until the truck was gone.

The wind blew up in a sudden commanding gust and pushed him sideways, and that got him moving again. The air temperature seemed to have dropped ten degrees, and it was as dark in the field now as it had been in the trees.

Up ahead he could see two vehicles remained-a white sedan and a twisted black mess that had once been Kellen’s Porsche. It was upside down now, demolished, but the white car was upright and looked functional. He ran toward it. Made it to within thirty feet before his eyes took in the splash of red across the hood and then dropped to the grass below it. What he saw there took his legs. He stumbled and fell, landing on his hands and knees in the mud.

There was a body in front of the white car. A huddled, blood-soaked mass.

He got up and moved forward, unable to take a breath, the world seeming to go still and silent around him despite the raging wind. There was so much blood. So much…

It was Josiah’s partner. Edgar Hastings’s grandson. He’d been shot in the left side of his torso, had a massive, ragged hole blown out of him. It looked nothing like a gunshot wound. More like something chopped away with an axe. After he’d gotten close enough for recognition, Eric stumbled away from the body as if it could stand up and hurt him.

Not Claire. That is not Claire. And you only heard one shot… You saw him put her in the truck, and she was alive. She had to be, because there was only one shot…

There had been only one shot. Right? He felt sure of that, and now he was sure of what that shot had accomplished. But Claire wasn’t here, which meant that she was in the truck with Josiah Bradford-a man who’d just murdered his own friend.

Dynamite. With fifteen gallons of gasoline to help it along. When they take her bones out of the fire…

“No,” he said aloud. “Damn it, no.”

He circled around the body and came to the white car, jerked the door open, and looked inside. No key in the ignition. Who had driven it here? Josiah was gone in the truck, so that probably meant the dead man, Danny, had driven this car.

No time to hesitate. He had to move fast, just do it without thinking.

He crossed to the body and knelt beside it, felt bile rise in the back of his throat, squeezed his eyes shut and reached with one of his shaking hands toward the blood-soaked jeans. He felt for the pocket, almost shouting when his fingers touched warm, wet blood, and pushed his hand inside.

The keys were there.

Forty minutes after the first tornado of the day touched down near Orangeville, the third made contact in Martin County, at the point where the Lost River emptied into the east fork of the White River. The funnel cloud tore into the riverbank and then blew northeast, cutting a straight line across the Lost River’s snaking course, as if it intended to follow it all the way upstream. Then the storm ran into the hollows of the Hoosier National Forest, two natural wonders colliding, and lost its strength in the uneven wooded terrain. It was as if, one spotter said, the forest had swallowed it.