The Current by Tim Johnston

Author:Tim Johnston
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2018-12-11T16:00:00+00:00

37

After he left the Hilltop Tavern he drove through town, and at the end of the business drag he pulled into the park once again, and once again it was after dark—but no dog with him this time, no Wyatt with his nose out the window and his entire body quivering with his need to get out of the truck, to sniff and to lift his leg and to know the whole world by its smells.

The road had been plowed but not plowed well and there were three distinct tracks in the snow, the center track shared by cars coming and going, and if anyone came along you’d have to inch by each other to pass or else drive into the deep snowbanks, and he could see where some of them had done just that. His lights in the turns swept over the naked trunks of the oaks and the snowy boughs of the pines, and no other cars coming or following as far as he could see.

When he reached the stretch of road that ran along the river, with just the row of pines between the road and the riverbank, he shifted the truck into four-wheel drive and plowed into the snowbank and let the truck come to rest on its own, one headlight glancing off the deep snow and one yet on the road. He killed the engine and stepped down into the road and shut the door behind him. No sound but the ticking of the engine and no light but the light of the snow itself and a faint glow of moon drifting behind the dark clouds above the treetops.

He crossed the road and stepped up into the snowbank on the opposite side and trod through the drifts between the pines and came to the edge of the river and stopped, winded, his bare hands in his jacket pockets. Before him the river lay flat and still from bank to bank and buried in white except where the wind had scoured away the snow and left black, glassy ponds of ice, like portals for looking into the water that flowed below. It was two bodies of water really, one holding in place for the long winter while the other flowed on beneath it. One staying, one going. When they were kids they played hockey on the pond behind Shep Porter’s house first and then, later in the winter, out on the lake, but they were not allowed to play on the river because of the current. And there was that time on the lake when Shep’s little brother Royce went out for a runaway puck and everyone saw him drop, just drop, like he’d hit a trapdoor, and the whole gang of boys taking off yelling Human chain, human chain! and you were the first one out there and you went down on your belly and Jeff Goss had you by the ankles and someone had Jeff, and you reached first with your hockey stick but

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