The River King

  “I’d better go back and check on my boys. I wouldn’t want anyone to get suspended tonight. They’re lost without me, you know.”

  Carlin watched Harry return the way they’d come, pausing to turn and grin before he stepped back into the woods. Harry had been right about one thing, the coat was sopping. A puddle had formed at Carlin’s feet, there on the concrete path. The water that had collected was silvery, as if made out of mercury or tears. Something was moving within the puddle, and when Carlin bent down she was shocked to discover a pretty little minnow, the sort often found along the banks of the Haddan. When she reached for it, the fish flipped back and forth in the palm of her hand, cool as rain, blue as heaven, waiting to be saved. She really had no choice but to run all the way to the river, and even then, she had the sense that it was probably too late. She could race into the shallows wearing her good shoes, ignoring the mud and pickerel-weed clinging to her dress, but the minnow might already be too far gone. One small silver fish brought her to tears as she stood there, her best clothes ruined, the water rushing around her. Try as she might, there would always be those it was possible to rescue and those whose destiny it was to sink like a stone.

  WALKING ON FIRE

  INDIAN SUMMER CAME TO HADDAN in the middle of the night when no one was watching, when people were safely asleep in their beds. Before dawn mist rose in the meadows as the soft, languid air drifted over fields and riverbanks. The sudden heat, so unexpected and so welcome at this time of year, caused people to rise from their beds and throw open their windows and doors. Some residents went into their own backyards sometime after midnight; they brought out pillows and blankets and slept beneath the stars, as disoriented as they were delighted by the sudden change in weather. By morning, the temperature had climbed past eighty, and those few remaining crickets out in the fields called hopefully, even though the grass was brown as sticks and there were no longer any leaves on the trees.

  It was a gorgeous Saturday and time stretched out as it did on summer days. Unexpected weather often caused people to let down their defenses, and this was what had happened to Betsy Chase, who on this morning felt as though she were suddenly waking from a long, confusing dream. As she passed the old rambling roses on campus, some of which were still blooming on this mild November day, she thought of Abel Grey and the way he had looked at her. She thought about him even though she knew she shouldn’t. She knew where such entanglements led. Love at first sight, perhaps; trouble, certainly. Betsy preferred the more sensible affinity she felt for Eric; she was not the kind of woman who fell hard and she planned to keep it that way. In her opinion, love that struck suddenly was too akin to tumbling down a well. She would surely hit her head if she took such a fall; she would regret it dearly.

  And yet, try as she might, Betsy couldn’t shake the attraction. It was as though he were still staring at her, even now, as if he had seen right through her. She tried to think of ordinary things, telephone numbers, for instance, and grocery lists. She recited the names of the girls at St. Anne’s, a litany she always found difficult to recall, always confusing well-behaved Amy Elliot with uncooperative Maureen Brown, mixing up Ivy Cooper, who wept every time her grade fell below an A minus, with Christine Percy, who had yet to open a text. None of these tactics did the least bit of good. Try as she might, desire wasn’t so easy to dodge, not on a day like this, when November was so very much like June anything seemed possible, even a notion as foolhardy as true love.

  Work would help get rid of idle thoughts. It always did the trick, managing to set Betsy back on track. Since her arrival at Haddan, she had been so busy with students that she’d had little time for her own photographs. The entire burden of St. Anne’s rested with Betsy, since Helen Davis was hopeless in that regard, and Betsy was especially worried about Carlin Leander, who had been closest to the dead boy. Although there was some debate about whether or not Gus’s death had been caused by his own hand, despair could be contagious; suicide had been known to spread through groups. There were always individuals who, already looking for a way out, came to believe they had found a door leading through the darkness. When one person walked through, the gate swung open, beckoning others to follow. This was the reason Betsy made certain to check on Carlin, for she’d heard the girl was refusing to eat and that she was skipping classes, letting her grades fall dangerously low. Often, Betsy found Carlin’s bed empty at curfew, and although this was against Haddan rules, Betsy never reported these transgressions. She was well aware of the ways in which grief could affect those left behind. Would it be so surprising if one of the girls in Betsy’s care took it into her head to eat a bottle of aspirin, or slit her wrists, or climb onto her window ledge? Would Betsy then be expected to follow along after such a student, inching her way along the roof, grabbing for any girl who might imagine she could fly away from her sorrows and all her earthly cares?

  In all honesty, Betsy herself had had such notions after her parents’ deaths. She’d been sent to live with friends of the family in Boston, and one evening, at dusk, she’d climbed out to the roof as storm clouds were gathering. Lightning had been predicted and residents were warned to stay inside, but there Betsy was, without benefit of either coat or shoes, arms raised to the sky. The rain was torrential, with winds so fierce that shingles were ripped from the rooftops, and before long gutters were overflowing. When lightning did strike, only blocks away, cleaving in two an old magnolia tree on Commonwealth Avenue that had always been appreciated for its huge, saucerlike flowers, Betsy had crawled back through the window. By then she was drenched and her heart was pounding. What had she wanted out there in the storm? To join her parents? To anesthetize her pain? To feel, for a few brief instants, the power of charting her own fate? And yet, in spite of how weary she was of this world, the very first sheet of lightning had sent her scrambling back to the safety of her room, so quick and so frantic she broke two fingers in the process, a sure sign of her attachment to the glorious world of the living.

  Once again, on this oddly warm day, Betsy experienced the same charge she’d felt during that long-ago storm, as if she had not been completely alive and was slowly being shocked back, atom by atom. She unlocked the photo lab, glad to be rid of the burden of her girls if only for a few hours, in need of time alone. She had only one roll of film to develop, the one she’d taken in Gus Pierce’s room, and even if the prints had not been commissioned by Abel Grey, she would have done her best. Betsy never rushed in the darkroom, knowing full well that images always profited when given extra care. Breath gave life to all that was human, but light was the force that animated a photograph. Betsy particularly wanted to illuminate this set of prints; she wanted each one to burn in Abel Grey’s hand, the way his stare had burned through her. But somewhere along the developing process, something went wrong. At first Betsy thought her vision was failing; surely, it was only a matter of time until she saw straight. But soon enough she understood that her eyesight wasn’t the problem. Betsy’s vision was still twenty-twenty, just as it always had been, her one true gift, and perhaps this was the reason she’d always had the ability to see what others ignored. All the same, Betsy had never seen anything like this before. She remained in the photo lab for quite some time, but time wouldn’t change anything. She could wait for hours or for days, but the same image would remain. There, seated on the edge of the bed, hands folded neatly in his lap, was a boy in a black coat, his wet hair streaming with water, his skin so pale it was possible to see through him, into thin air.

  * * *

  ABEL GREY, A MAN WHO USUALLY SLEPT LIKE a rock, unmovable until dawn, could not get to sleep when the weather changed. He felt as though he’d been set afire, and when at last he fell into an uneasy slumber, he dreamed of the river, as if perhaps its waters could cool him while he slept. His house was closer to the train tracks than it was to the Haddan, and the sound of the 5:45 A.M. to Boston often filtered through his dreams, but it was the river he heard on this night, when the weather was so
warm mayflies swarmed the banks, although such insects were not usually seen until the mild, green days of spring.

  In his dream, Abe was in a canoe with his grandfather, and all around them the water was silver. When Abe looked down, he saw his own image, but his face was blue, the shade it might have been had he drowned. His grandfather set aside his fly rod and stood; the canoe rocked from side to side, but that didn’t bother Wright Grey. He was an old man, but he was tall and straight and he had all his strength.

  Here’s the way to do it, he told Abe in the dream. Jump in headfirst.

  Wright threw a rock as far as he could and the water before them shattered. Now it was clear that this silver stuff wasn’t water at all, but a mirrorlike substance that stretched on and on. Wherever a man might look, he was bound to see himself, there among the lilies and the reeds. When Abe woke, he had a serious headache. He wasn’t a man accustomed to dreams; he was too levelheaded and suspicious in nature to put much stock in wispy illusions or look for meaning where there was none. But today, his, grandfather’s resonant voice stayed with him, as if they’d recently been speaking and had been interrupted in midconversation. Abe went into the kitchen, started some coffee, and gulped down three Tylenol. It was early and the sky was perfectly blue. The big tomcat who had adopted Abe was pacing back and forth, demanding breakfast. All in all, an extraordinary day, a morning when other men might turn to thinking about fishing or love, rather than the vagaries of an unexplained death.

  “You don’t have to get hysterical,” Abe told the tom as he opened a cabinet. “You won’t starve.”

  As a rule, Abe had never liked cats, but this one was different. It didn’t fawn over a person, arching its back and begging for scraps, and was so independent it didn’t even have a name. Hey, you, Abe called when he wanted to get the cat’s attention. Over here, buddy, he’d say when he reached for one of those cans of overpriced cat food he used to say only an idiot would spend good money on.

  Surely, this cat had a history, for one of its eyes was missing. Whether this was the result of surgery or a badge of honor from some long-ago battle was impossible to tell. This injury was not the cat’s only unattractive feature; its black fur was matted and its shrill meow brought to mind the call of a crow rather than the purr of its own kind. The one remaining eye was yellow and cloudy and could be extremely unsettling when it fixed upon someone. If the truth be told, Abe wasn’t unhappy that the tom had taken up residence. There was only one troublesome sign: Abe had started to talk to the thing. Worse still, he had begun to value its opinion.

  When Joey arrived to pick up Abe, as he had every day for the past fourteen years, Abe was showered and dressed, but he was still wrestling with his dream.

  “What looks like water, but breaks like glass?” Abe asked his friend.

  “Is this a frigging riddle at seven-thirty in the morning?” Joey poured himself a cup of coffee. When he looked in the fridge there was no milk, as usual. “It’s so hot out there the sidewalks are steaming. I feel like Mary Beth is going to get after me to put the screens back in the windows.”

  “Take a guess.” Abe got some powdered milk from the cabinet where the cat’s food was stored and handed the box to Joey. “It’s driving me crazy.”

  “Sorry, bud. No idea.” Though the silverware was unwashed and the sugar only bare scrapings at the bottom of the bowl, Joey added a spoonful to his coffee and poured in the clumpy powdered milk. He quickly drank the potent mixture of caffeine and sucrose, then went to the sink to place his cup atop a pile of dirty dishes. Mary Beth would faint if she saw the way Abe kept his place, but Joey envied his friend’s ability to live in a dump such as this. What he didn’t understand was the addition of the cat, which now leapt onto the counter. Joey swiped at the animal with his newspaper, but it only stood its ground and mewed, if mewing was what the croaking sounds it emitted could be called. “Do you feel sorry for this disgusting animal? Is that why you have it?”

  “I don’t have it,” Abe said of his pet, as he poured some powdered milk into a bowl, added tap water, then set the dish on the counter for the cat. “It has me.” In spite of the tablets he’d taken, Abe’s head was pounding. In his dream he had known exactly what his grandfather meant. Awake, nothing made sense.

  “What’s with you and the riddles today?” Joey asked as they went out to the car, the back door slamming shut behind them.

  Joey had driven the black sedan through the car wash attached to the mini-mart on his way over and now sunlight was striking the beads of water on the roof, causing the black metal to resemble glass. Golden light streamed down Station Avenue and a bee drifted lazily over Abe’s unkempt lawn, which hadn’t been mowed since July Up and down the street, people were out in their yards, marveling at the weather. Grown men had decided to play hooky from work. Women who had always been proponents of washer-dryers decided to hang their laundry out on the line.

  “Will you look at this,” Abe said beneath the deep and brilliant sky. “It’s summer.”

  “It won’t last.” Joey got into the car, and Abe had no choice but to follow. “By tonight we’ll all be shivering.”

  Joey started up the engine, and once they were on their way, he hung a U-turn and drove into town, making a right at the intersection of Main and Deacon Road, where the Haddan Inn stood. Nikki Humphrey’s sister, Doreen Becker, who was the manager of the inn, had draped several carpets over the railing, taking advantage of the beautiful weather to beat the dust out of the rugs. She waved as they passed by, and Joey honked a greeting.

  “What about Doreen?” Joey kept his eye on the rearview mirror as Doreen leaned over the railing to turn one of the carpets. “She might be the girl for you. She’s got a great behind.”

  “That’s the part you always notice, isn’t it? I guess that’s because they’re always walking away from you.”

  “How did I get dragged into this? We were talking about you and Doreen.”

  “We went steady in sixth grade,” Abe reminded him. “She broke up with me because I couldn’t make a commitment. It was either her or Little League.”

  “You were a pretty good pitcher,” Joey recalled.

  Abe never took this route through town, preferring to cut across the west side on his way to work, thereby avoiding this part of the village entirely. The inn mostly served out-of-towners, Haddan School parents visiting for the weekend or tourists arriving to see the fall foliage. For Abe, the inn brought to mind the occasion of his brief and heedless involvement with a Haddan School girl. He’d been sixteen, smack in the middle of his bad behavior, in the year when Frank died. He was crazy back then, out at all hours, wandering through town in search of trouble, and as it turned out trouble was exactly what this girl from Haddan was after as well. She’d been the kind of student the school had been known for in those days, pretty and indulged, a girl who had no qualms about picking up a local boy and charging a deluxe room to her father’s credit card.

  Though he’d prefer to forget the incident entirely, and had never mentioned it to Joey, Abe remembered that the girl’s name was Minna. He’d thought she’d said minnow at first, and she’d had a good laugh over that. Still, it had been quite some time since he thought about how he’d waited in the parking lot while Minna checked in. As they drove past the inn, he recalled how she had signaled to him from the window of the room she’d rented, confident that he’d follow her, anytime, anyplace.

  “I didn’t have time for breakfast,” Joey said as they drove on. He reached past Abe for the glove compartment, where he kept a stash of Oreo cookies. He told people they were for his kids, but his kids were never in this car and Abe knew that Mary Beth didn’t allow her children sugar. People did that all the time, and what was the crime? Most folks tossed out little white lies, as if truth were a simple enough dish to cook, like eggs over easy or apple pie.

  “Let’s say it wasn’t suicide and it wasn’t an accident, that only leaves one thing.” Perhaps it was seeing the boy’s open eyes t
hat affected Abe so; you had to wonder what the synapses in the brain might have recorded, those last things the boy saw and felt and knew.

  “Man, you are really into riddles this morning.” It was early and the streets were empty, so Joey picked up speed; he still got a kick out of ignoring the town limit of twenty-five miles per hour. “See if you can figure out this one from Emily. What do you call a police officer with an ear of corn on his head?”

  Abe shook his head. He was serious, and Joey refused to hear his concern. Hadn’t that always been the way between them? Don’t ask, don’t talk, don’t feel anything.

  “Corn on the cop.” Joey popped another cookie into his mouth. “You get it?”

  “All I’m saying is that there is always the possibility of criminal intent, even in Haddan. Things aren’t always what they seem.”

  A bee had managed to fly into the car through the open windows ; it hit repeatedly against the windshield.

  “Yeah, and sometimes they’re exactly what they seem to be. At best, the kid had an accident, but I don’t think that’s what happened. I went through his files from school. He was in and out of the infirmary because of his migraines. He was taking Prozac and who knows what illegal drugs. Face it, Abe, he wasn’t some innocent little kid.”

  “Half the people in this town are probably taking Prozac, that doesn’t mean they jump in the river, or fall in, or whatever we’re supposed to believe. And what about the bruise on his forehead? Did he hit himself on the head in order to drown himself?”

  “That’s like asking why does it rain in Hamilton and not in Haddan. Why docs someone slip in the mud and crack his skull open while another man walks by untouched?” Joey grabbed the package of Oreos and smacked the bee against the glass. “Let it go,” he told Abe as he tossed the crumpled bee out the window. “Move on.”

  When they arrived at the station, Abe continued to think about his dream. He usually did let things go; he was pleased to move on with no regrets, a trait to which most of the single women in Haddan could surely attest. But every now and then he got stuck, and that had happened now. Maybe it was the weather that was getting to him; he could hardly draw a breath. The air-conditioning was officially turned off by town decree every year on the fifteenth of September, so the offices were sweltering. Abe loosened his tie and looked into the cup he’d gotten from the cooler in the hallway. You can’t see water, but you know it’s there all the same.