So Cold the River

“Nice dog,” Eric said.

“My grandson’s, not mine. He lives in the trailer.” Edgar was regarding Eric with a harsh squint, skeptical. His face was spider-webbed with wrinkles, even his lips, and whiskers were scattered on his chin. “Now tell me why in tarnation you want to know about Campbell Bradford?”

“Well, Eric here is interested in someone of the same name,” Kellen said, “but we’re not sure if it can be the same person. His Campbell is still alive.”

The old man shook his head. “Not the right man, then. He’d have to be long dead. Who sent you down here to ask about him?”

“A woman in Chicago,” Eric said. “She’s a relative of Campbell’s, but the one she knows is ninety-five now.”

“Different man,” Edgar said flatly. “Should’ve made a phone call.”

“Well, my Campbell says he grew up in this town. Left when he was a teenager.”

“He’s lying,” Edgar said.

“You claim to know everyone in the town?”

“I know everyone has the name Bradford, and I absolutely know everyone has the name Campbell Bradford! Hell, anybody from my time would. Wasn’t never but one Campbell Bradford in this valley, so if somebody’s telling you otherwise, they’re lying. Why in hell they would want to do that, though, I have no idea. He wasn’t the sort of man you’d want to pretend to be. Campbell went beyond bad.”

“Excuse me?”

“He was worthless as worthless gets, ran around with every gambler and crook ever came to town, didn’t pay any mind to his family at all. Used to keep a hotel room just for fornicating, drank all hours of the day, never met a truth he wouldn’t rather turn into a lie. When he ran off, he left his wife without a cent, and then she died and my parents had to take in the child. Those days, that’s what folks would do. My parents was Christian people and they believed that’s what they ought do, so that’s what they done.”

He offered the last part like a challenge.

“He doesn’t sound impressive, I’ll grant you that,” Eric said.

“Campbell even went beyond all that,” Edgar answered. “Like I told you, that man went beyond bad. There was the devil in him.”

“You’re telling me he was evil?”

“You say that like it’s funny, but it ain’t. Yes, he was evil. He was, sure as I’m sitting here. It’s been damn near eighty years since the man left. I was a boy. But I remember him like I remember my own wife, God rest her. He put the chill in your heart. My parents saw it; hell, everybody saw it. The man was evil. Came to town in the middle of the high times, started in with the gamblers and the whiskey runners, made the sort of money doesn’t come from honest work.”

Eric felt an unpleasant throb in his skull, the headache level jumping on him.

“You told me Campbell didn’t have any family left but Josiah,” Kellen said.

“That’s right. Josiah is Campbell’s great-grandson, last true member of Campbell’s line that there is, least as far as anyone around here knows. I’m as good as a grandfather to him myself, I suppose, though there’s plenty days when I wouldn’t want to claim that. Josiah’s got him a streak of difficult.”

Kellen hid a laugh by coughing into his fist, looking at Eric with amusement.

“I mean, we was all like family, you know, even though I’m not blood relation to that side,” Edgar Hastings said. “Josiah’s mother, she called me Uncle Ed, and I thought of her as a niece. We was close, too. We was awful close.”

The room seemed smaller to Eric now, as if the walls had sneaked in on him during a blink, and he was more aware of the heat, felt perspiration worming from his pores and sliding along his skin. How in the hell could Edgar Hastings possibly wear a flannel shirt in here? He took his hand away from the dog’s head and got a whine in response, one that sounded less like a complaint and more like a question.

“Like I told you, I just don’t know who’d want to bother with a man like that in some sort of movie,” Edgar said. “Not that I think most movies are worth anything anyhow, I got that TV set on from sunrise to sunup and don’t never find anything a normal person would want to watch.”

That one seemed to amuse Kellen again, but the smile left his face when Edgar flicked his eyes over, and Kellen said, “Um, so there’s just no way the Campbell who left this town could still be alive up in Chicago?”

“No. He left in fall of ’twenty-nine, and he was in his thirties then.”

Eric said, “Could it be he had another son after he left? Gave the son his name?”

“Hell, anything’s possible after he left.”

“And is there any chance that he came back to town, or brought his son back…?”

“None.” Edgar gave an emphatic shake of his head.

“You met the man personally,” Eric said. “Correct?”

“Yes. I was only a boy when he left, but I remember him, and I remember being scared to death of him. He’d come by and smile and talk to me, and there was something in that man’s eyes like to turn your stomach.”

“You told me he was involved with bootlegging,” Kellen said.

“Oh, sure. Campbell was supposed to provide the best liquor in the valley, and the valley was waist-deep in liquor during Prohibition. My father didn’t drink much, but he said Campbell’s whiskey made a man feel like he could take on the world.”

“They still make booze that will do that,” Eric said with a grin that Edgar wouldn’t match.

“I’ve seen liquor turn good men sour,” he said. “I used to have a glass or two, but truth is, I stayed away from it much as I could. It takes things from a man. You look at my grandson, he’s thirty year old and can’t even get off my property. Good boy, means well, but he lets the liquor take him. Wasn’t for me, who knows where he’d be now, though. My wife had the best luck with him but she passed nine years ago.”

“So he was a bootlegger,” Eric said. “Illegal, yes, but not evil. I don’t see—”

“Campbell saw to it that the law in town stayed bought off to certain enterprises,” Edgar said. “All the sorts that he was involved in. When they didn’t, they died. Was a deputy in town back then who was a cousin of my father. Good man. He wanted to investigate Campbell for killing a man had tried to run out on some debts. Wanted to charge him, thought he had the evidence. Told people in town he was going to nail Campbell to the wall. It’s a turn of phrase, you know. Figure of speech.”

Nobody spoke when Edgar paused, staring at Eric with flat eyes.

“They found that deputy nailed to his own barn wall. Literally. Had ten-penny nails through his palms, wrists, and neck. One through his privates.”

The dog whined again at Eric’s feet. Kellen said, “Did anyone try to arrest Campbell for that one?”

Edgar gave a small, sad smile. “I don’t believe so. Matter of fact, I believe it made things a little easier on Campbell. Those who had thoughts of crossing him, well, maybe they changed their minds.”

At that moment, there came the sounds of an engine and tires plowing through gravel, and Eric and Kellen twisted to face the window as the dog barked and stood.

It was an old Ford Ranger, two men inside. Came to a stop just behind Kellen’s Porsche and then the doors banged open and the men stepped out. A shorter, redheaded guy from the passenger side, and from the driver’s side a lean, dark-haired…

“Oh, shit,” Eric said. The driver was Josiah Bradford.

“Who is it?” Edgar said, pushing up from his chair and peering out the window. “Oh, hell, it’s just my grandson and Josiah. You might as well meet Josiah. Like I said, he’s the last of Campbell’s line.”

“We’ve met him,” Kellen said softly, and he stayed on the couch while Eric stood and went to the door.

22

ERIC WATCHED THROUGH THE screen door as the redheaded man walked to the porch and Josiah Bradford hung back, standing in the driveway staring at the Porsche. He was still studying it when his companion came through the screen door without a knock. Edgar Hastings’s grandson entered with his chest puffed out, swaggering in bold and tough, like a cowboy crashing through saloon doors, but the sight of Eric standing so close to the door gave him an awkward moment of hesitation, one that Edgar filled by saying, “Damn it, Danny, show some manners.”