So Cold the River

Eric nodded.

“You’re wondering if it’s hard,” Kellen said. “Being his brother. Being the unfamous one.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Eric lied.

“Man, everybody wonders. It’s cool, don’t worry about it.”

Eric waited.

“I love my brother,” Kellen said. “I’m proud of him.” The fierceness in his voice seemed directed at himself, not Eric. “But the truth? No, it’s not easy. Of course not.”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“I was supposed to be a professional basketball player. That was my destiny. I was certain of it. By the time I was in eighth grade, I was six four, and I was an athlete, you know? In AAU ball I had coaches coming to see me from the ACC, Big Ten, Big East, all of ’em. This at fourteen.

“I was a great student, too, reading books all the time. But you want to know why? This is the truth, man, I swear it—I was working on my image for when I joined the league. The NBA. I was going to be a paradox, you know, the professional athlete who was also a scholar. I had this plan for it, how in press conferences I was going to make comparisons between ball games and battles, coaches and generals, referees and diplomats. I would actually plan the interviews in my head, no lie. I would hear them, man, hear what these announcers would be saying about me, hear it like it was real.”

Eric looked away, feeling embarrassment not for Kellen, but for himself. Kellen was describing a child’s fantasy. He was also describing Eric’s twenties. And, hell, most of his early thirties, when mythical movie reviewers had raved constantly about films he would now never make. Was just a matter of time, he’d known, until the fantasies became the facts. He’d been sure of that.

“When you’re real young, all the coaches care about are tools,” Kellen said. “And, brother, I had them. Size, speed, strength. Didn’t have the feel for the game that some of the other kids had, but that comes with time, right? Well, it didn’t come for me. Ever. I was hearing the word focus so much it should’ve been my name, but I just couldn’t get into the flow the way I needed, could never lose myself in the rhythm of it. By high school, when other kids caught up in size, that was showing.”

They were driving out through the hills south of the hotel now, winding country roads.

“My brother feels that game,” Kellen said. “When he plays it, there isn’t anything else there. Nothing. He sees it all before it happens; even as a kid he was like that. He’d come down the lane on a fast break, go right to left, then somebody would step out to cut him off, and he’d see it just before they committed, and then dish… he was slick. No question. But he was a kid, too, and scrawny as hell. So it was no big deal.”

Eric was silent, waiting.

“My junior year of high school,” Kellen said, “I had a game in front of some major coaches. And I just butchered it. Scored thirteen and had eight rebounds but damn near double figures in turnovers, too. They had this small, fast team that ran a press the whole time and just rattled the hell out of me. I couldn’t handle it. Each time I’d make a decision on what to do with the ball, it was a half second too late. Just a disaster.

“So that’s on a Friday night, and the next afternoon I go with my parents to watch my brother’s eighth-grade game. And Darnell, he just ran on ’em. That’s all. Not a soul on that court could even imagine playing at his level. He drove anytime he felt like it, got shots anytime he wanted them, made passes when he didn’t, stole the ball from the other team like they’d left the doors unlocked and ladders at the windows. It was filthy. I went out on the court after the game and I congratulated him, but it was stiff.”

He ran a palm over the back of his head, leaned forward, close to the steering wheel.

“That night, he’s sitting in the living room watching TV, and I walked in and changed the channel without saying a word. He got pissed, naturally, and I just went after him. Tackled his ass over the couch and hit him and had my hands around his throat when my dad came in and dragged me off.”

He gave a small, wry smile. “My father, he is not a small man. He took me out in the yard, and he just whipped my ass. Knocked me up one side and down the other and then kept coming, and the whole time he’s doing it, he’s saying, Who you mad at? Who you mad at? Over and over in this real soft voice, Who you mad at? Because he’d been at my game and then at my brother’s, you know, and he understood what was going on. He understood it better than I did.”

“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.