Michael Koryta: So Cold the River

Safest place to be was in the basement, of course, but suddenly that didn’t seem to matter. She wanted to see this storm. She’d been waiting so long to see one, and it was fitting that on a day like today, when she’d finally been able to play the role she always knew was hers, she would have the opportunity. It felt like a gift, almost, like this one was intended just for her.

She took the steps slowly at first, hand on the railing, but halfway up she realized how firm and strong her stride was. Her legs hadn’t felt this way in years. She dropped her hand from the railing.

Up in the living room she turned and looked out the wide picture window. The cloud was closer now, and she could see its movement clearly, the fascinating swirling layers. Everything in the lower portion was pure white, the kind of white that hurt the eyes, like sun on a snow-covered field.

She had a notion that it would be easier to see it from outside. There was an odd sense of celebration to the storm’s arrival, and she wanted a toast. Her memory must be slipping; though she didn’t remember having had booze in the house in years, there was a bottle of gin on the counter. Tanqueray, her favorite. A glass with ice beside it, with a sliced lime already positioned on its rim.

She poured the gin and tonic into the glass, sure somehow that there was no rush, that the storm would wait for her. She squeezed the lime into the drink and lifted it to her lips, took a few swallows.

Delicious. You could never get too old for a taste like that.

She set the glass down, licked her lips, and walked to the front door. There was not so much as a twinge in her knees or hips, and her back felt strong and supple, ready for heavy lifting. In fact, her walk felt supple, felt like the old head-turning walk of her youth. She hadn’t forgotten how to move.

She’d left a pair of heels beside the door, beautiful black heels that she hadn’t seen in years. What they were doing down here, she didn’t know, but given how steady her legs were this afternoon, she’d rather have them on than those silly white tennis shoes.

Off with the tennis shoes and on with the heels, then out the door and onto the porch. Down the steps and into the yard, and then she turned to the left and walked past the house and toward the empty field beyond. All around her the clouds were dark but the funnel remained white. Odd, because it should have been picking up debris by now, lots of it, absorbing the dirt to change into that fierce gray you always saw in the photographs.

It roared just as she’d known it would-the sound of a train. It wasn’t a frightening sound, though. Familiar, really. Took her mind back to other places. Why, it sounded just like the old Monon, the train of her youth.

She walked to the edge of the yard and waited for it, and she couldn’t keep the smile off her face now or the tears off her cheeks. Silly, to stand here and cry as she faced it, but the cloud was just so beautiful. There was magic here, and she’d been allowed to see it.

What more could you ask?

CAMPBELL STOOD WITH A lantern in his hand and Shadrach Hunter at his side as the rain poured down around them. The boy worked in a shallow ditch below them, pulling aside broken slabs of limestone.

“See there!” Campbell shouted. “There it is, Shadrach. The spring, just as I promised.”

The lantern light cast a white glow on the shallow, softly bubbling pool that was exposed as the boy removed the rocks. When Campbell held the lantern directly over the top of it, the pool seemed to absorb the light and hide it.

“Boy, get him a bottle of it.”

The boy took a green glass bottle from his coat pocket. He removed the stopper and held it upside down so Shadrach could see that it was empty, and then he knelt and dipped the bottle into the pool. When it was full, he straightened and handed it to Shadrach, who took a drink.

“You tell me,” Campbell said.

“Tastes like honey,” Shadrach Hunter said. His deep voice sounded uneasy. “Like liquid sugar.”

“I know it. This is what the boy’s uncle put into that liquor, and there ain’t never been any other liquor like it. You know that, Shadrach. You know that.”

“Yes,” Shadrach said and returned the bottle to the boy.

Campbell grinned, then shoved the boy with his free hand and said, “Cover it.”

The boy went back down into the ditch and replaced the stones. When he was done, the water could no longer be seen, and scarcely heard.

“Well, there you go,” Campbell said, switching the lantern from one hand to the other. It hissed when rain hit the glass. “You said you wouldn’t give me a dime unless you saw the spot, knew that it was real. You seen it now, haven’t you? It’s real enough.”

“It is, yes.”

Campbell tilted his head back, his face lost to the shadows. “Well, then. My part of the bargain is complete. Yours is not.”

Shadrach shifted, brought a hand out of his coat pocket and wiped it across his face, clearing some of the moisture away.

“Let’s bargain while we walk,” he said. “I want to get out of this rain.”

He started away from the spring without giving Campbell a chance to argue. There was a hill leading away from the spring, and as he walked up it, Campbell and the boy fell in behind him. They walked into the woods.

“What’s your plan?” Shadrach said.

“My plan? You know what it is! There’s a fortune sitting here, a fortune pooling out of the rocks. That old man never made more than a dozen jugs of whiskey at a time. He was a fool. Lacked the ambition to see what could be gained from this, the fortune that was waiting. Well, the boy knows how to make the liquor, too.”

“So you intend to… expand.” Shadrach had his face turned away from Campbell, walking through the woods with a brisk stride.

“Expand?” Campbell stared at Shadrach as if he’d spoken in Greek. “Hell, that’s too soft a word. I’m going to make more money than anybody in this valley ever dreamed of. I’ve got contacts in Chicago-Capone and all the rest of them. The network is there. All we need to do is handle the supply.”

“And you want me as an investor.”

“That’s all you need to be. You’ll get your share returned tenfold by the end of the year. Believe that.”

“Why me?” They’d crested the hill now and were walking along the spine of a wooded ridge. Campbell was on the left, closest to the brink.

“Hell, boy, everybody else is busted! You ain’t figured that out yet? You’re the last man left in the valley with dollars to his name.”

Shadrach Hunter smiled. “You want to see my dollars?”

“I’d like to utilize them, yes.”

Hunter stopped walking. He reached in his jacket and removed a silver money clip. Peeled the bills off and counted them. Fourteen bills-all ones.

“There you go,” he said, replacing the money in the clip and offering it to Campbell. “That’s my stockpile, Bradford.”

Campbell looked at him in disbelief. “What in the hell is the matter with you? I always heard you was cagey smart for a colored. Ruthless. You think I’m making a joke here? There’s a fortune to be made!”

“I believe you,” Shadrach Hunter said. “But I don’t have any money. That’s what I got-fourteen dollars.”

“Bullshit.”

Hunter shrugged and put the money clip back into his pocket. “Ain’t no shit but true shit, Bradford.”

“Everyone knows you been skimming for years. Just sticking it away somewhere. A damned miser, that’s what you are.”

“No, that’s what the gossiping old fools in this valley say I am. Truth is different.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Don’t have to, but refusing to believe ain’t going to line your pockets with dollars that I simply do not have.”