The Drowning Child

‘Yes – him!’ said the witness. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t look at him. Is he … gonna make it?’

‘He may be able to hear you, ma’am,’ said the officer. ‘Keep talking me through what you saw.’

‘The rest was a blur,’ said the witness, ‘except that the little girl must have fallen in, her daddy tried to pull her out, but next thing that man was down on him, beating on him, taking his little girl. It was crazy.’

Jimmy Lyle felt a presence beside him.

‘Can you tell me your name, sir?’ He was checking his pulse. He was a paramedic. Jimmy could feel a second man kneeling to his right.

‘No – I can’t tell you my name,’ thought Jimmy Lyle. ‘I can’t.’

They could search his pockets for ID, but he had none. He had no cell phone. He felt a hard pinch on his finger and recoiled from the pain. Then the paramedics’ words, back and forth, interchangeable voices, descriptions, instructions. ‘His GCS is nine, get the collar, put on O

and put it on fifteen liters …’

Jimmy could feel hands on his head, holding it secure, as a collar was strapped around his neck, the padding tight against his ears, the sound sucked from the world. The paramedics inserted the IV, delivered the shot of dopamine that would increase his blood pressure, hung the bag that would fill his veins with circulating fluid.

At first, it worked. Then, the numbers changed; his respiratory rate dropped from twelve breaths per minute to four, his GCS fell to six.

They were about to tube him when Jimmy Lyle coughed, and his heart surged like a lagging runner in the home straight.

As he was stretchered past the pond, Jimmy Lyle thanked God for misperception, for absent facts, for the blind faith of good hearts and decent souls. The passersby should have passed on by. That little girl wasn’t ‘his little girl’. The man who beat him to a pulp was the little girl’s father. He had told her to turn away and cover her ears as he dragged Jimmy into the bushes and beat him without letting up, without caring whether it would send him to the ER or his grave. Then he fled, covered in Jimmy’s blood, his thick arms clutching his weeping, soaking-wet daughter to his chest.

Jimmy Lyle was a piece of shit, and, thanks to the kindness of strangers and the dedication of paramedics, remained a living, breathing, piece of shit.

1 (#ulink_1af63172-170f-53cb-a8cf-7efad92672a0)

March 6

Lake Verny spat and crackled with a relentless, piercing rain. Clyde Brimmer sat at a table in the window of The Crow Bar, looking beyond his reflection, beyond the candlelight that captured a face plowed for years by whiskey and the elements. In his tight right hand, he was holding a round white moonstone.

‘That lake has secrets that the rain wants to tell.’ Clyde spoke loud enough to be heard, but there was only one person there to hear him, and she was doing nothing more than standing behind the bar and staring ahead, her amber hair and freckles glowing in the dim light above her. She had showered today, at least. She had made it. Strike another day off the bleak remainder of the life of Shannon Fuller.

‘It won’t stop ’til it gets to the bottom of something,’ said Clyde. ‘Might be the lake bed, might be …’

Clyde liked to trail off; it was his lonely man’s way of leaving a door open to further engagement, of luring more questions from whoever might be listening. He spoke to customers of his careful choosing, and he spoke to Shannon. He trusted her, without even realizing that in all his years of drinking, she was the only bartender who could set his pace, who could keep him a civilized man until closing time. He had better nights when she was on.

He shifted the moonstone into the grip of his two smallest fingers, then hammered the rutted tabletop to mimic the rain.

‘I have no doubt,’ said Shannon, dealing another card from the bartender’s conversational deck – I have no doubt, it sure is, they sure do, can’t argue with that, who’re you telling, can’t beat it, you bet, sounds about right …

Nothing moved except her mouth.

‘One for the road,’ said Clyde, and Shannon Fuller moved like someone had put a coin in a slot and a mechanism was kicked off. It came to an end when her reflection joined Clyde’s in the window as she set a Scotch down in front of him.

‘One for the road to Tate,’ she said. Tate was the town five miles away; halfway there was the brokedown house Clyde inherited from his grandmother. Some nights, Shannon gave him a ride home. Other nights, it was whoever else was high on pity.

Clyde raised his hands, gripping the air. ‘It’s got the wrong energy,’ he said. He looked up at Shannon. ‘Can you feel it?’

‘I can’t feel much of anything right now,’ thought Shannon, but she kept that line in the buzz-kill deck – the cards no good bartender dealt; I’m lonely, I’m divorcing, I’ve got cancer, I’ve been abandoned, I’m lost, I’m fucking dying inside, I’m alone, I’m alone, I’m alone.

‘I can feel it,’ said Clyde, clearing her pain to vault into his own – in his chest, in his heart, as he watched the lake rising, watched the water slap up over the banks.

Shannon Fuller knew that, in a sober state, Clyde never would have spoken about the energy of the lake that had taken away her eleven-year-old son, Aaron, only six weeks earlier. Aaron’s was the last body Clyde had embalmed before he was fired for drinking on the job. Two weeks earlier, when Shannon crawled back to work to pay the bills, Clyde had stood weeping at the bar, clutching her clasped hands, swearing he was sober when he tended to her boy. And she believed him.

She gave him some work since then, odd jobs at the cabins and in the grounds. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was in The Crow Bar, drinking until eleven at night, he and Shannon overlooking the killing lake, finding unspoken comfort in their somber bond, as the last two people to lay their hands on Aaron.

The door to the bar slammed back against the wall and Seth Fuller walked in, his tall, thin frame swamped in oversized rain gear. He snapped his head back to shed the hood, and pulled the door closed behind him.

‘Lady and gentleman, we’ve got an escaped convict,’ he said, in a dramatic old-style newsreel voice. He smiled, then switched back to his own – a slow, young and dumber one. ‘He broke free from my alma mater yesterday afternoon. Well, during a hospital visit.’ Seth glanced down at Clyde’s full glass, then shook his jacket off, turning back to hang it on a wooden peg. ‘So,’ he said, ‘BOLO for bald brick shithouse, Franklin J. Merrifield – white male, dumb as a box of frogs, forty-eight years old, meth-cooking, drug-dealing, motherfucking, teen-raping, fire-starting—’

‘You knew the guy?’ said Clyde.

‘I knew the guy,’ said Seth. ‘Approach with caution.’ He smiled. ‘And that was tonight’s public service announcement from Tate PD with a few insider extras from reformed maker of trouble, prisoner number G65746.’ He walked up to the bar. ‘Aunt Shannon, I am at your service.’

They shared the same glow, the same amber-colored freckles, but the rest of Seth – the shaven head, the narrow features, the flesh, the bones beneath – came together in a colder, darker way.

Seth tilted his head toward Clyde.

‘Take a seat,’ said Shannon. ‘Let me pour you a drink. He’s like a scared puppy tonight.’

Clyde’s right leg was bouncing now, striking the underside of the table, rippling the whiskey in his glass. It wasn’t long before it tipped over. He chased it across the table with his hand, but the rich flow of liquor through his veins and his shot reflexes meant all that happened was the moonstone slipped from his grip, skidded over the edge, and landed in the fallen whiskey.

Shannon grabbed a cloth and rushed to Clyde.

‘Do not move,’ she said. She knew he had no balance, drunk or sober. She knew Clyde as well as he didn’t know himself.

He stopped, then settled again in his seat. Shannon crouched down beside him, stopped when she saw the moonstone.

‘Is this yours?’ she said, picking it up.

He nodded. She stood up and shook the whiskey off it. A drop struck the candle’s flame. It sizzled and died.

‘It’s a moonstone,’ said Clyde. ‘The traveler’s stone – it protects those who cross water when the moon shines.’

His gaze moved from the wet black candle wick to what lay beyond the window.

‘You can’t trust water and you can’t trust fire,’ said Clyde. ‘And out there? That lake’s ablaze.’

Franklin J. Merrifield drifted awake from a profound, distressing sleep. What followed was the slow realization that he was not in his cell. He could smell rain, grass, trees, earth. The last time he smelled those smells was on that final shackled walk from the courthouse.

The only sound he could hear was rain hitting glass.

Glass?

He waited for his eyes to adjust, for shapes to form, for light to filter in, but the darkness was absolute. His heart started to pound wildly. His head felt strange, like it was overstuffed with packing materials; foam or twisted-up pieces of brown paper. His body felt solid, weighted down. His jaw was clamped shut. When he opened it, he felt the skin on his lips tear. He could taste blood.

He had just one question: