So Cold the River (2010) (41 page)

“Josiah,” she said, trying to put a stern touch in her voice even though she was standing with her hand at her heart, “what
on earth do you think you’re doing?”

“You have a reputation for unrivaled hospitality,” he said, and his voice raised a chill in her because it did not fit the
man, did not fit even the time. “For offering housing and help. I’m seeking both.”

“I never opened my door to a man with a gun before. And I won’t start now. So go on your way, Josiah. Please go on your way.”

He shook his head slowly. Then he shifted the gun from one arm to the other. When he did it, the muzzle passed right over
her.

“Mrs. McKinney,” he said. “Anne. I’m going to need you to open that door.”

She didn’t speak. He reached out and twisted the knob and opened the door.

“Would you look at that.” He turned back, the artificial smile gone from his face, and pointed the gun at her. “After you,
ma’am. After you.”

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.

C
LAIRE 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?”

“Go ahead.”

“Why are you hanging in the game?”

“What do you mean?”

“If I were you, I’d probably have driven back to Bloomington by now and stopped taking calls from the crazy white guy. Why
haven’t you?”

There was a brief silence, and then Kellen said, “All those stories my great-grandfather told me about this place? All those
crazy-sounding stories? Well, Everett Cage was a talker, I’ll admit that. He liked to captivate his audience. But, Eric? He
also wasn’t a liar. He was an honest man, and I’m sure of one thing—whatever he said, well, he believed it. I guess I’ve always
wondered how he could believe things like that.”

It was quiet again, and then he said, “I’m starting to understand.”

Josiah found himself watching the clouds. At first he’d taken to gazing out the window just because he wanted to be sure the
old woman wasn’t up to something, that there was no way she could signal for help once those drapes were pulled back. But
the window showed only a field and a view of the western sky. The clouds were massing, unsettled and swirling, layers seeming
to shift from bottom to top and then back. The sky over the yard was pale gray, but out in the west it looked like a bruise,
and the wind pushed hard at the house and whistled with occasional gusts. Something about the turbulent sky pleased him, made
him smile, and he pulled his lips back and spat tobacco juice onto the window, watched it slide down the glass in a brown
smear. Funny he couldn’t even remember putting a chaw in. Hadn’t ever taken to the habit, threw up when he sampled his first
dip at fourteen and never went back to the stuff, but there it was.

He waited until nearly nine before kneeling beside Anne McKinney and passing her his cell phone. Late enough that Shaw and
the woman would be awake; early enough that they probably weren’t ready to check out. He had Danny watching in case they did,
and the phone had been silent.

“Time for your part in this,” he said. “It’s a most minor role, Mrs. McKinney, but critical nonetheless. In other words, it
is a role that I cannot allow you to… what’s the phrase I’m looking for?
Fuck up.
That’s it. I cannot allow you to fuck this up.”

She held his eyes and didn’t so much as blink. She was scared of him—she
had
to be—but she wasn’t allowing herself to show it, and there was a part of Josiah that admired that. Not a large enough part
to
tolerate
it, though.

“If you’re fixing to hurt people,” she said, “I won’t have a part in it.”

“You don’t have the faintest idea what I’m
fixing
to do. Remember that. But here’s what I can tell you—this call doesn’t go through, people will begin to get hurt. And there’s
only one person nearby for me to start with, too.”

“You’d threaten a woman of my years. That’s the kind of man you—”

“You ain’t got the first idea the kind of man I am. But I’ll give you a start: you picture the darkest soul you ever seen,
and then, old woman, you add a little more black.”

He hovered over her, the phone extended, his eyes locked on hers. “Now, all you got to do is make a phone call and say a handful
of words, and say them right. That happens, I got a feeling
I’ll find my way out of that front door of yours, and you’ll be sitting here watching your damn sky as you like. But if it
doesn’t
happen?”

He pursed his lips and shook his head. “I’m a man of ambition. Not of patience.”

She tried to keep her gaze steady but her mouth was trembling a bit, and when he pressed the phone into her wrinkled palm,
he felt a fearful jolt travel through her.

“You call that hotel,” he said. “You said he wanted that water? Well, tell him now’s the time to come get it. You’ll give
it all to him, but he’s got to hurry up and get out here, because you’re going to be leaving town for a few days.”

“He won’t believe that.”

“Well, you best
make
him believe it. Because if he doesn’t? We’re going to have to find ourselves a whole new tactic. And with the mood I’ve found
myself in, I don’t believe anyone would like to see what happens should I be required to get creative.”

He slid the shotgun over and leaned it against the edge of the couch so the muzzle was looking her in the face.

“Anne, you old bitch,” he said, “it’s got nothing to do with you. Don’t change the way I feel on that front.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll call. But whatever you think is going to happen, I can assure you it won’t work out as you’ve
planned. Things never do.”

“Don’t you worry about me. I’m a man who’s capable of adjusting.”

She dialed, but he took the phone from her hand and put it to his ear to be certain she wasn’t calling anybody else. The voice
that answered said, “West Baden Springs,” and Josiah, in a voice thick with easy charm, said, “I’m calling for a guest. Mr.
Eric Shaw, please.”

“One moment,” the woman answered, and Josiah passed the
phone back to Anne McKinney. Then he dropped to one knee on the floor in front of the couch and rested his hand around the
stock of the shotgun, curled one finger around the trigger guard.

“Hello,” Anne said, and there was too much fluster in her voice. He shifted the gun as inspiration as she said, “I was, well,
I was trying to reach Mr. Shaw.”

“Oh,” she said. A pause during which Josiah could hear a female voice, and then Anne said, “Oh, yes. Well… a message? I, um—”

Josiah gave an emphatic nod.

“Yes, I’d like to leave a message. My name is Anne McKinney. I’ve only just met… oh, he mentioned me? Well, you see, he wanted
something from me. Some old bottles of Pluto Water. And I want him to have them but I need him to come get them soon because
I have to go out of town.”

She was talking too fast, and Josiah moved the gun so the barrel was just inches from her chin.

“That’s all. Just tell him to come see Anne McKinney if he can. He knows where I live. Please tell him. Thank you.”