Undercurrent (3 page)

“Thanks, Mr. Keller,” I answer flatly.

“Coach,” he says. “Please. And I hear that nothing’s broken?”

“No,” I tell him.

“It’s a miracle. We were all pretty worried, weren’t we, boys? Worried you wouldn’t make it back.”

I’m not understanding any of this: why my stupid gym teacher is in my hospital room and why he’s brought his two pets along with him.

“I’m fine—Coach,” I tell him.

“Good,” he answers. “We really need you back on your feet. The school needs you. Now rest up, and we’ll talk more in a few days. Now c’mon, guys,” Keller says. “Let Cal get some rest!”

With that the coach leaves. Hunter and Ricky follow behind like a pair of trained dogs. They probably like sniffing each other’s asses, I think. But as the door closes, I’m feeling blown away. What the hell was that about? I have absolutely no idea.

The truth is everything seems off. But then again I did just have a seriously whacked experience, as sketchy as the details remain. I’ve been trying hard to remember what happened before I went over the falls, but I can’t recall much. The entire last week is fuzzy to me. Was I mad at Cole? Did we have a fight? I feel a strange anger toward him, something I can’t explain. Is that why he hasn’t visited me?

There’s another knock on the door. I hope it’s not a nurse or a doctor but someone I actually want to see—someone who might finally fill me in on what’s been going on.

The door opens before I get a word out. The person who enters is even more unexpected, and more frightening, than Coach Keller.

It’s the sheriff of the Crystal County Police Department.

CHAPTER 4

The big man doesn’t even bother introducing himself, he’s so certain
that every teenager in Crystal Falls knows who the Law is around here. If not, the gold star on his chest gets the message across, and the bushy brown mustache underlines it.

Lowering himself into one of the armchairs, the sheriff makes himself comfortable, something that looks to be impossible as the buttons on his beige shirt strain against his gut. What’s with sheriffs, anyway? Always with the big bellies and chicken legs. Still, one look at his forearms and I know the guy could have me in handcuffs and in the back of a cop car without even breaking a sweat.

Even though I haven’t done anything, I can feel myself squirming under the sheets.

“Good morning, son,” he says when he finally gets around to speaking. “So you’re back among the living, I see.”

“Yeah,” I reply.

“You sure gave people a pretty good scare,” he says, shaking his head disapprovingly.

The remark sort of annoys me. People were scared? Well, imagine how I felt, going over the falls. I’m careful to keep the reaction off my face. I can already tell that the sheriff thinks I did something stupid or reckless, and that’s probably what he’s here to find out.

The sheriff relays how fortunate it was that a woman taking a walk by the river happened to spot me on the rocks. Without her I would have probably frozen to death, he explains cheerfully. Her name is Olive Patterson, he adds, telling me I should make sure to thank her sometime.

I’ve never heard the name before. Should I send her a gift or something? Flowers? Chocolates? I should probably mow
her
lawn for free until eternity, I guess.

“So what’s the damage?” the sheriff asks, leaning over to examine me. “What did the doc say?”

“I’m okay,” I answer. “A cut on the back of my head, bruises, scratches . . .”

“Well, dang, if that ain’t a miracle, I don’t know what is.”

“Me neither.”

The sheriff stops speaking and peers at me instead. He sits back. “So what was it like?”

“What was what like?”

The sheriff laughs. “Going over Crystal Falls,” he says. “Landing in the river. You know, all that fun stuff.”

“I don’t really remember,” I answer, suddenly wishing I had a better story to tell. Because I suppose I’ll be answering the question for the rest of my life.

“Now that’s a shame,” the sheriff says, shaking his head. “Because of all the other people who’ve ever gone over them falls, you’re the first one I’ve had the opportunity to ask. . . .”

“What? There were others?”

“Sure. I’m surprised this is news to you.”

Well, it is. Though the possibility had occurred to me before, I’d never heard of an actual instance.

“How many?” I ask.

“Well, three.” The sheriff starts fidgeting, feeling around in his pockets. He wants a smoke, I know—I remember seeing the same squirming with my chain-smoking late uncle Bud. “Since I’ve been in the department, at least.”

“Three?”

“Yup. The first was about a month after I joined on as deputy. Agnes Thompson, a nice young woman, I remember, and pretty. Reported missing after not turning up for her shift at the diner for a few days. We never found her body, but we found some tracks down by the river. Her parents out west got a suicide note in the mail a couple days later.”

I think about my uncle Bud again, who not only lit fresh cigarettes with spent ones but also finally put a shotgun in his mouth and lit that up too. Luckily, I didn’t see that, though. And he wasn’t the first relative either, at least on my mother’s side, where offing yourself has been a bit of a tradition among the males in the family.

I’m suddenly wondering if the sheriff already knows this.

“Anyway, who was next?” the man continues breezily. “A kid. Franklin something.”

“A kid?” I feel sick to my stomach. “What happened?”

“Not sure—he either jumped on purpose or fell in by accident. Unfortunately we had no tracks and no note in his case. Found his shoes, though, and some shreds of his clothing, in the river. Best guess is that he jumped too. He was a troubled little guy, it turned out. Picked on at school and all that . . .”

Yeah, I’m really seeing a theme developing here. Well, you’ve got it wrong, Sheriff, because I haven’t had a suicidal thought in my life. Plus I’m too afraid of heights. It took all my nerve to go out on the footbridge over the falls when we first moved to town, and then I only did it because Cole went first.

“If so, what a shame,” the sheriff tells me. “Throwing your life away like that. Sure, kids can be cruel, but they don’t usually mean much by it. Things just happen sometimes. Am I right?”

The sheriff stares at me intently. Is he expecting me to break down? To start crying about how Hunter punched me in the eye? C’mon. No one is bothering me now, not after what Cole did. And he should already know that, having dragged my brother down to the station over the incident.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s what this is about. Maybe the sheriff thinks I’m a hothead like my brother. Maybe he thinks the Harris boys are bad news.

“Now, the third guy,” says the sheriff, “well, he was just asking for it.” He laughs. “You know, come to think of it, he probably should have won one of those Darwin Awards.” Seeing my blank expression, the sheriff explains: “It’s a joke award, black humor—when somebody does something so dumb that they remove themselves from the gene pool, they win a Darwin. The idea is that the whole human species benefits by becoming a little bit less stupid.”

That’s black, all right, but I’m not seeing the humor, considering I just nearly died myself and have come nowhere near reproducing. “Sounds really funny,” I say, without smiling.

“Yeah,” the sheriff agrees. “The fellow was an old drunk by the name of Dutch Carter,” he begins.

Wait a second—that name is familiar. I can even picture its owner: a gray-haired guy with a red face and white stubble. As the sheriff explains how he used to work over at the distillery, I figure that’s where I must have met him.

“Dutch and a few of his buddies were drinking down at the river’s edge as usual, just above the falls,” the sheriff recounts. “They’re hammered, the lot of them, when one of them geniuses decides it’d be funny to toss Dutch’s smokes out onto a rock in the water.

“So rather than lose a few bucks, Dutch jumps out to get them back. And he makes it—onto the rock, that is. But then he tries to make it back. And I guess that pack of Luckies added a little too much extra weight, because he misses the bank by an inch and lands in the drink. And
wham
: He’s swept off downriver.”

A sickening feeling is triggered in my guts thinking about that unstoppable force carrying the man off. I know it. I’ve felt it.

“Then somehow Dutch gets hold of a tree branch dragging in the water. He’s holding on for dear life, screaming at his buddies as they go running, trying to grab him. But no such luck. Just as they reach him, he’s had enough and lets go.

“And that was that. Old Dutch went over, screaming his fool head off, no doubt. The surviving gang of morons comes running down to the station, all frantic, shouting about how we should go save him or something. I mean really. C’mon.

“But hell, we gave it the old college try. We dragged the river as best we could and had a poke around the rocks. But there was no sign of him, just like the other two . . .”

The sheriff hasn’t finished his story though. And I can tell that he really likes this part, because he’s feeling around for his smokes again. Judging by his face, he’s told it a few times and perfected his delivery.

“Anyway, weeks go by,” he says. “And everybody gets on with their lives, including the same bunch of boozers who I heard poured a bottle of whiskey off the bridge in their brainless friend’s honor.

“But then one evening, a couple of kids head down to the river along to the observation area, to play a bit of grabby-grab in the mist under the falls.

“Then just as they’re getting it on, up he pops—old Dutch, straight out of the water like a cork, all purple and bloated like a big old wine grape.”

The image makes me want to gag. I think of how close I came to ending up like that—a swollen, bashed corpse.

I swallow a few times and try to forget about it. I’m alive, and that’s all there is to it. But something occurs to me: Why haven’t I heard this story before? Somebody working at Holden’s gets killed going over the falls? My father would have mentioned it at least.

“When did it happen?” I ask.

“Lemme see,” the sheriff answers. His eyes go to the ceiling, and he waggles a stubby, stained finger. “It was six years ago this past summer.”

Which is a couple of years before we even came to town. But something is bothering me: Why can I see the man’s face so clearly? I’m sure Cole and I met a guy named Dutch once, down at the distillery shortly after we first moved here. And how many Dutches can there be?

“Six years ago—you’re sure?”

But the sheriff doesn’t answer, having already moved on. Instead he leans in toward me. “So that makes you number four,” he says. “Except, unlike the others, somehow you come out with barely a scratch. Kind of hard to believe . . .”

“I know,” I answer. But the sheriff doesn’t sound amazed or happy for me. “I guess I have a guardian angel or something,” I add, shifting uncomfortably around in the bed.

“Actually you had more than an angel,” he informs me. “You had something the others didn’t.”

“Huh?” I have no clue what he’s talking about. “What?”

The sheriff leans forward even more. And it’s then I realize it’s not cigarettes he smokes but cigars. The cloying smell hits me, coming off his clothes and making me feel even more nauseated.

“You,” he says, “were wearing a life jacket.”

“I was wearing what?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself, son,” the sheriff says. “Because I hate repeating myself.”

“A life jacket? I’m sorry. I don’t remember.”

And it’s true: I don’t. But I think about it. I know for a fact that our family owns four life jackets: two orange and two kid-size yellow ones that are no use to anybody anymore. They’re in the garage, stored inside the canoe, which has sat up in the rafters for years now. To get at them, I would have had to climb a ladder.

“So what was going on with that?” the sheriff wants to know.

I shrug. “Like I said, I really don’t remember.”

The man makes a face; he’s not buying it, and he’s not hiding the fact.

“I’m serious,” I insist. “Like, I have no clue why.”

“Come on now, think,” the sheriff asks me, still leaning in, still stinking. “Were you going for a swim maybe? Or just being careful, in case you slipped and fell?”

I have no idea what he is getting at. No one in his right mind would even dip a toe in the river in late September. But that kind of answer isn’t going to get me anywhere with this guy. So I just explain again how I don’t remember anything leading up to the accident.

But I’m shaking now. I’m starting to get really scared. The sheriff is holding out on me, hiding something he thinks I know. Sighing, he sits back in the chair. He fiddles with his pockets again, staring at me, before finally speaking again.

“Tell me about Neil Parson.”

This takes me by complete surprise. “Neil Parson? From school?”

“The very same.”

“What do you want to know about him?”

He shrugs. “I’m not fussy. Anything.”

This seems like a weird direction for the conversation to go, if that’s what you can call what we’re having. I suppose
interrogation
is the better word, which probably explains why I am feeling so defensive.

“Neil’s just a guy,” I answer. “In my grade.”

“Sure, I know. But what’s he like?”

“What’s he like?”

“Yeah. Would you say he’s a good guy? A friend of yours?”

“No. I don’t know.” I’m stumped. I don’t know much about Neil Parson. He’s quiet, a brainiac. And he lives on Orchard Street, something I know only because my friend Willow lives across from him. I tell the sheriff as much.

“So you’re saying you really don’t know Neil?” he responds, jerking his head in surprise.

“Not really. No.”

“You don’t hang out away from school? Spend time together for any other reason?”

“No,” I say, frustrated.

“All right,” the sheriff answers, scribbling something down. “If you say so.”

“You don’t believe me?” I ask, alarmed.

The sheriff opens his mouth to say something but stops as the door opens and a nurse walks in. Instantly I smell the perfume again, like toilet cleaner. Seeing the officer in the room, she stops dead, the color draining from her face like someone pulled a plug on it.

“Rose!” barks the sheriff. The name is pinned to her nurse’s uniform. “What are you doing in here?”

The woman looks like a cornered animal. “Working,” she blurts out.

“I don’t think you should come in here.”

“No one told me not to.”

“Well, I’m telling you. And I’m going to make sure everybody knows before I go. Do you understand me?”

The nurse turns and shoots me a glare.

“Do you understand me, Rose?” the sheriff repeats.

“Yes,” the woman answers before slinking out of the room.

“Son of a bitch,” the sheriff swears softly to himself when the door closes.

Okay, I’ve had enough of this—I’m getting really freaked out. “That nurse . . . ,” I say.

The sheriff looks at me with sudden intensity. “What about her?”

“She said something.”

“To you? When?” he demands to know.

“Back when everybody thought I was still unconscious.”

“What did she say?”

It’s hard to say out loud; I get a shiver even thinking about it. But I manage: “She said she hoped I’d never wake up.”

The sheriff doesn’t look the least bit surprised. “Did she touch you or anything?” he wants to know. “Did she hurt you at all?”

Well, the needle in the hand didn’t exactly tickle, but I don’t think that counts. “No,” I tell him. “She just did nurse stuff.”

“Good,” he says, relieved. “Still, I don’t want her coming in here in the future. Press your button if she does. I’ll tell her supervisor.”