So Cold the River (2010) (18 page)

“All them stones is, like, registered or whatever,” Danny said. “You can’t sell them. Where we gonna sell them? Go on up to
the pawnshop and sell stones like that?”

“We won’t sell them here.”

“Well, I know that, but where do you think we’re going to do it? We could go all the way across the country—”

“Won’t sell them in this country,” Josiah said, voice soft, and that brought Danny up, his version of a thoughtful expression
coming on.

“I’m getting out,” Josiah said. “You can come or not, it ain’t my concern. But I am getting
out
of this place.”

“It’s a dumb idea,” Danny said, and the audacity of that blew Josiah away. Danny Hastings calling
him
dumb? He should’ve swung on him, knocked the red hair right off the top of his head. He didn’t, though. Instead he just stood
there and stared. Something was odd about what Danny had just said, and it
took a minute but then Josiah figured out what the odd quality was—Danny had been
right.
It was a dumb idea.

Dumb, but not impossible. And Josiah Bradford was just about ready to take those odds, like one of the fools who went down
to the casino on Friday night knowing they’d get cleaned out but not giving a shit. Worse came to worst, they’d remember Josiah
in this town. They’d damn sure do that.

“It can be done,” he said, but there wasn’t much vigor in his voice. “If you don’t have the balls, all right. But don’t you
tell me it can’t be done.”

Danny was quiet. After a time he opened his beer and then they drank in silence for a while, standing there awkwardly because
they couldn’t lean on the rail. Josiah went over and sat on one of the chairs and Danny followed and took the other.

“Story I had to tell you is that I spoke to my grandpa today. He said a man’s in town asking about old Campbell.”

Josiah frowned and lowered his beer. “That same son of a bitch I told you about?”

“The black kid? No. Said there’s another one now. This one is doing some kind of movie. Black kid is helping him.”

“A movie about
Campbell?
”

This was some kind of strange. Josiah’s great-grandfather had been the subject of plenty of old Edgar’s rants over the years,
but who in the hell would want to make a movie about him?

“Edgar’s addled,” he said. “A
movie?
”

“What he told me,” Danny said, “was that some guy was down from Chicago working on a movie and wanted to ask about Campbell
today.”

“Well, I don’t know why anybody would want to waste their time on him. Campbell left a lot of nothing behind, and I’m still
living off that today.”

Danny said, “Well, that’s what I was wondering. If what this
guy told Grandpa is true, and he’s making a movie about somebody in your family, don’t he owe you something?”

It was a fine question. A
fine
question. What right did strangers have to go wandering around asking about Josiah’s own blood? Let alone turn a profit from
it?

“You said these guys are headed down to see Edgar today?”

“That’s right. I was going to go down there myself, make sure they wasn’t running some sort of scam like the ones you hear
about with older folks, but you’d told me to come by…”

Josiah finished his beer, crushed the can, and tossed it aside.

“We’ll take my truck.”

E
RIC LEFT
A
NNE IN
the rotunda when Kellen called to say he was nearing the hotel, took the bottle back to his room, and then went outside to
wait. He was feeling better after having the elderly woman confirm all of the things he’d seen in the bottle.

Kellen pulled up outside the hotel in his Cayenne with the windows down and hip-hop music thumping from the speakers, old
stuff, Gang Starr that had probably come out when Eric was in high school and Kellen was, what, seven? Eric had to suppress
a smile as he got inside the car. A midthirties white guy like him sitting in a Porsche listening to rap—ah, this was almost
like being back in L.A.

“You feeling all right?” Kellen asked when Eric climbed in.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Look pale.”

“I’m white.”

“Knew there was something funny about you.” Kellen pulled away from the hotel. He was wearing jeans and a shiny white T-shirt
made from one of those fabrics that were supposed to wick moisture, along with sunglasses and a silver watch.

“Are you close to your brother?” Eric asked, looking around the Porsche and thinking about the source of it.

“Oh, yeah. We talk about three, four times a week.”

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.

“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.”