Charlotte Rogan - Now and Again

When the phone rang, he rushed to answer it, hoping, suddenly, it was Louise. He hadn’t talked to her in weeks, but now he realized he was missing something and maybe it was her. Halfway to the phone, he stopped. Why would Louise be calling him out of the blue? It was his responsibility to call her first, and he would. He’d call her that evening, after she got home from work. Meanwhile, what if it was Falwell on the phone? Let Kelly answer it. Ever since the meeting in DC, Falwell had been silent, and even though no news was better than bad news, something told Penn the silence wasn’t entirely good. Almost two months had passed since then — more than enough time for Falwell to have investigated the website and discovered Penn’s involvement in it. More than enough time for him or one of his subordinates to come up with a plan for shutting the website down. Miller, thought Penn. I’ll bet Miller’s the one who sent the tape.

“Danny,” called Kelly, rapping on the windowpane. “Dolly’s on the phone.”

A late-season storm had blown in overnight, and they had awoken to find the ground covered with snow. “What happened to spring?” Danny had asked before going with his notebook to sit on the stoop with his head resting on his hands and his elbows on his knees and tiny flakes turning his hair white. He’d been sitting in the snow working on what he was now calling his rap epic, but he was no longer there. An hour earlier he had stuck his head in through the door to ask, “Anyone have a synonym for ‘help’? I have ‘help’ in there now, but it’s missing the connotations I want. I want it to say ‘solidify the position of.’ I want it to hint at ‘aggrandize’ and ‘enrich.’ I want there to be an undercurrent of corruption, where one person helps another only because he thinks it’s going to pay off for him personally. I want the emphasis to be on the subject, not the object of the verb. Altruism laced with greed — that’s what I want. Nothing to do with helplessness. Maybe there isn’t a word for it after all. Or maybe there is, but it’s in a language I don’t speak.”

“Where’s Danny?” Kelly asked, and then he told Dolly that Danny would have to call her back.

The snow was coming harder now, slanting down and swirling where the wind eddied around the building. Penn and Kelly put on parkas and gloves and headed out the door, one going left and the other right, their movements perfectly in sync as they canvassed the neighborhood, up one street and down the next, meeting in front of the railroad crossing and then continuing together past the squat building where the single mother lived with her three kids before turning back across the tracks, which is when Penn noticed footsteps going toward Bridge Street and the river. The footsteps were just faint impressions, mostly filled with new snow, as if a ghost had passed through, only touching down lightly now and then.

“Over there,” Penn said. Kelly followed Penn’s gaze to where the prints left the road and plunged down the steep embankment to the railroad bed. The two men started down after them, stumbling at first and then getting their footing and doing what they had been taught to do — no words necessary, only gestures and bodies and eyes. Penn’s adrenaline was pumping now. Inside the parka, his core was heating up. And then they were at the trestle bridge and the river, with the straight shot of the tracks over the gray-black water and, on the other side, Pennsylvania. He caught Kelly’s eye. Cross?

Kelly nodded: cross. He held up his watch for Penn to see. It was ten minutes after the hour. “When does the train come through?” he asked.

Penn shrugged. He didn’t know the schedule. Danny was the only one who paid attention to that.

Kelly nodded again, and they started across, sprinting now, legs working in a steady rhythm, eyes sharp and wide-angled, ears straining and sifting through the muffled sounds and slotting them into categories: interesting but irrelevant, pay closer attention, ignore. Penn paused to take in the ribbon of black water, made gray by the cross-hatching of snow, but Kelly didn’t break his stride. And then they were on the other side, with better options for avoiding a train should one come through.

“Hey, Captain,” said Kelly, motioning to the disturbed snow of an equipment yard where a row of open sheds housed lumber and lengths of PVC pipe and sheets of corrugated roofing. “He could be in there.”

Penn nodded and circled left while Kelly circled right, each man ducking into the first shed he came to before shaking his head and moving down the row, sliding in and out with his back to the wall and now and then checking the other man’s position and scanning left and right, alert not only for signs of Danny, but also for signs of anyone else who might be hiding there with less-than-benign intent. Their paths met at the far end of the yard, and they circled back toward the tracks, this time drifting silently between the buildings, quick and catlike in the snow. But Danny wasn’t there.

The tracks curved behind the last of the commercial buildings before one set veered west toward the rail yards and one cut south along the river. Kelly pointed to some footprints going south. Above them, the clouds were low and shredded. On one side of the spur, a marsh. On the other, the steely expanse of the river, with the far bank only a faint pencil sketch of rocks and trees against the snow. They found Danny sitting on an embankment one hundred yards farther down the tracks, his eyes closed and his hands folded on his lap.

“Hey, man, what’re you doing?” asked Kelly.

“Come on,” said Penn. “You’re coming back with us.”

It took a long time for the words to sink in and for Danny to nod in their direction. But then Danny heaved himself upright and stood tall and straight, hands extended as if he were welcoming them to his white and blanketed kingdom.

“Dolly called,” said Kelly. “She wants you to call her back.”

Now it was the three of them moving abreast — Penn on the right and Kelly on the left, with Danny between them, eyes sharp, ready to dive onto the snowy verge if and when a train came, half-jogging so as to limit their exposure on the tracks.

“When does the next train come through?” asked Kelly as they passed the place where the spur joined the main line.

“East or westbound?” asked Danny.

“Either one will kill us.”

“Two or three minutes,” said Danny, “but the snow will make it late if it hasn’t been canceled.”

They walked a little farther in silence. Then Penn said, “We’ll wait for it here. We can cross the bridge once it passes.”

Danny stopped and turned, and the men on either side of him stopped and turned too. They stood side by side but not quite touching and waited, gazing out over the frozen river as if they were protecting it, listening to the silence and blinking their eyes against the snow, which was coming at them horizontally now, propelled by a stiff wind shooting off the water. They sensed it before they saw the light, a humming vibration that felt and sounded like a giant was running his violin bow across the tracks, with the faintest of bass notes resonating up from the earth’s core. Then a bright smudge in the surrounding whiteness, a whitish-yellow halo, small and indistinct, but steadily growing in size. Penn couldn’t tell how close it was. Everything was muffled. There was no depth to anything, no clear waves of sound. Just the three of them, arms linked now, surrounded by the pelting snow.

“Come on,” said Kelly. “Let’s get off the tracks.” But Danny’s feet were planted, and when Penn pulled on his arm, he encountered an equal and opposite resistance.

“We don’t go until Danny gives the signal,” said Penn. He held his right hand up, gloved fingers spread. “Count it out, Danny,” he said. “Count it right on out.”