So Cold the River

There wasn’t a neighbor in view of the house, and Anne’s voice would have been lost to that wind. Her car was in the carport on the other side of the porch, and the road stretched beyond that, kind neighbors in either direction, but Anne McKinney’s days of running were many years past. Those much-loathed, sturdy tennis shoes on her feet might help get her up the stairs, but they wouldn’t get her to the road. She took another look at the gun, and then she walked past Josiah Bradford and into her empty house.

He came in behind her and closed the door and locked it. She was walking away from him, toward the living room, but he said, “Slow down there,” and she came to a stop. He walked into the kitchen, took the phone down and put it to his ear and smiled.

“You seem to be having some trouble with your service. Going to need to get a repair crew out for that.”

She said, “What do you want? Why are you in my home?”

He frowned, wandering out of the kitchen and into the living room and settling into her rocking chair. He waved at the couch, and she walked over and sat. There was a phone right beside her hand, but that wouldn’t be any help now.

“It wasn’t my desire to end up here,” he said, “just the unfortunate way of the world. Circumstance, Mrs. McKinney. Circumstance conspired to bring me here, and now I must take some measure to gain control of that circumstance. Understand?”

She could hardly take in his words for the sheer sound of his voice, that unsettling timbre it held, a quality of belonging to another person.

“Yesterday,” he said, “a man paid you a visit in the afternoon. Came running in out of a rainstorm. I’m going to need you to tell me what was said. What transpired.”

She told him. Didn’t seem a wise idea not to, with him holding a gun. She started with his first visit, explained what he’d said about making the movie, which Josiah Bradford dismissed with a curt wave of his hand.

“How’d he hear of my family? What lie did he tell you, at least?”

“A woman in Chicago hired him. And she gave him a bottle of Pluto Water. That’s why he came to see me.”

“To ask about it?”

She nodded.

“Then why’d he come back yesterday?”

“For my water. I’ve kept some Pluto bottles over the years. He needed one.”

“Needed one?”

“To drink.”

“To drink?” he said, and the gun sagged in his hand as he leaned forward.

“That’s right.”

“You let him drink that old shit?”

“He said he needed it, and I believed that he did. It gives him some… unusual reactions.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

She liked seeing him confused and unsteady. It dulled the fear a little.

“It takes away his headaches, but it gives him visions.”

“Visions? Are you senile, you old bitch?” His voice sounded closer to normal now, the snapping anger of a young man, none of the eerie formality he’d shown before.

“He sees your great-grandfather,” she said. “He sees Campbell.”

His forehead bunched into wrinkles above those strange eyes he had, eyes like oil.

“That man told you he’s seeing visions of Campbell.”

“Yes.”

“Either you are without your senses, or whatever scam this son of a bitch is running is more interesting that I had imagined. Can’t be a thing about it sorted out without him, though, can there?”

Anne didn’t answer.

“So we’ll need a meeting,” Josiah said. “A powwow, as our red brothers called it. You don’t mind your house being the location, do you? I didn’t expect that you would.”

He looked at the grandfather clock. “Too early for you to call, so we’ll have to enjoy each other’s company for a spell.”

She stayed silent, and he said, “Now, there’s no cause to be unfriendly, Mrs. McKinney. I’m a local, after all. Called this valley home for all my life. You just think of me as a visiting neighbor and we’ll be just fine.”

“If you’re a visiting neighbor,” she said, “you’d be willing to do me a favor.”

“I suspect you’re going to request something unreasonable.”

“I’d just like those curtains pushed back. I like to watch the sky.”

He hesitated but then got to his feet and pulled them back. Outside, the trees continued to sway with the wind, and though it was past sunrise now, the sky was a tapestry of gray clouds. The day had dawned dark.

49

CLAIRE WANTED TO COME along. She said he shouldn’t be alone, and when he told her that he wouldn’t be, she said that Kellen was a stranger and as far as she was concerned, being with a stranger was as good as being alone.

“Look,” he said, “you’re safe here, and you’re also here if I need you.”

“Yes. I’ll be here when you need me there. Wherever there might be.”

“We’re just going to look for a mineral spring. That’s all. Maybe take two hours. It could tell me something. Being there could tell me something.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“If it doesn’t, then we go home,” he said, although the idea left him uneasy, this place having wrapped him in its embrace now, made him feel like he belonged here.

She studied him, then echoed, “We go home.”

“Yes. Please, Claire. Let me leave to do this one thing.”

“Fine,” she said. “It’s not like I’m unused to you leaving.”

He was silent, and she said, softly, “I’m sorry.”

“You’re honest.”

She ran her hands over her face and through her hair and turned from him. “Go, then. And hurry, so we can go home.”

He kissed her. She was stiff, returned it with an uncomfortable formality. Tense with the effort of hiding those things she hid so well—anger, betrayal. She felt them now, and he knew it and still he was heading for the door. What did that make him?

“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Quicker than you think, I promise.”

She nodded, and then after an awkward silence, he went to the door and opened it and said, “Good-bye.” She didn’t answer, and then he was in the hallway, the door shutting softly behind him and hiding her from sight.

Kellen was waiting in the parking lot, the Porsche at idle. He had the windows down and his eyes shielded by the sunglasses even though the morning was dark with heavy cloud cover.

“Something tells me that ain’t Dasani,” he said, eying the bottle of water in Eric’s hand. It was only half full now, maybe a little less. The headache was whispering to him, the pain like a soft, malevolent chuckle.

“No,” Eric said, fitting the bottle into a cup holder. “It’s not Dasani.”

Kellen nodded and put the car into drive. “A word of warning, my man—this might be the definition of a goose chase we’re embarking on here.”

“I thought you knew where the spot was?”

“I know where the gulf is. That’s all. There’s a lot of fields and woods around it, and how in the hell we’re supposed to find a spring, I don’t know.”

“We’ll give it a shot, at least,” Eric said. “Think we can beat the rain?” he asked, eyeing the darkening sky.

“I drive fast,” Kellen said.

They were on their way out of town when Eric said, “Can I ask you something?”