The Narrows(58)

“And you didn’t tell this to the police?”

Dwight hung his head and seemed intent on examining the turtle’s slow progress. He didn’t answer her.

She put a hand on the boy’s sweaty back. His entire body seemed to radiate a tremendous amount of heat.

“I get it,” she said quietly. “You didn’t want to get him in trouble. It’s cool. You’re a good friend.”

“You won’t tell on him, will you?”

“No.” Sweat dampened her own brow. “You think he went back out to the factory alone?”

“Maybe.”

“Wouldn’t he take his bike?”

“Maybe, maybe not. You can’t ride your bike across the field and down to the Narrows. It’s too tough and rocky and, anyway, there’s all this garbage lying around that the flood left behind. It’s easier to just walk.”

“Wouldn’t he have asked you to go with him?”

When Dwight looked at her again, she could see that his eyes were threatening tears and that he was doing his damnedest to fight them off. He was a boy who refused to cry in front of some girl.

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice cracking. “I wouldn’t have gone, anyway. Maybe he knew it. I would have talked him out of it.”

She shook her head. “Why would he want to go back there so badly?”

“I don’t know. He saw something. He saw his dad, Brandy.” After a time, he could only repeat himself. “He saw his dad.”



3



Under the influence of Valium, her mother fell asleep on the couch again by five o’clock that evening. Careful not to wake her, Brandy took the truck keys from the pegboard by the back door and went out into the yard. Darkness had fallen prematurely, the sun eclipsed by the mountains, and the yard was alive with the sound of restless crickets. As she went to the truck she gave the garage a wide berth; the bats still hung from the eaves, swaying gently in the wind like fruit dangling from tree branches.

Since she had turned sixteen and gotten her license, Brandy had driven the truck less than a half-dozen times, her mother barking instructions at her from the passenger seat. Only once had she driven by herself, and that had just been down to Lomax’s for groceries. Now, she winced as she cranked the key in the ignition. The pickup’s engine roared loudly. She realized she was already standing on the accelerator. Switching her foot to the brake, she dropped the truck into Drive. The truck jerked back and forth, alerting Brandy to put on her seat belt. She expected her mother to come storming out onto the back porch at any second, but that never happened. The poor woman was inside, dead to the world.

The steering wheel turned stubbornly. It was an old truck and didn’t have power steering, so unless she was already in motion, turning the steering wheel was like cranking open the hatch on a submarine. Nevertheless, she managed to turn the wheel and simultaneously ease off the brake. The truck bounded forward, crunching over stones and fallen branches. She drove around to the front of the house and made a sharp right when she hit the road. Gunning the accelerator, she headed in the opposite direction of town.

When she hit Route 40, the damage caused by the recent rash of storms was readily apparent. There were downed trees and muddy corrugations in the earth. As the highway curved around the mountain, she could see the silvery slip of the Narrows below. The water was high and ran with the potency of white-water rapids.

Spinning the wheel with more ease now, she took a gravel access road off Route 40 that eventually became Highland Street. In the truck’s rearview mirror the mountains appeared to surreptitiously rearrange themselves. Brandy suddenly felt very cold.

The land grew darker as she left the highway behind. She fumbled one hand along the dashboard until she located the knob for the headlights. Dull light cleaved through the gloom ahead of her. Skeletal trees shuttled by. When the road graduated toward an incline she pressed down harder on the accelerator. She crested a hill then sped quickly down the other side, loose change vibrating in the cup holder between the seats, and she leaned forward over the steering wheel to see ahead of the headlights into the darkness. Though she wasn’t too familiar with this stretch of road, she knew the Highland Street Bridge was likely to appear directly before her at any moment—

Yet only blackness rushed toward the dashboard.

Then the blackness moved and she realized she was heading straight toward the swirling water of Wills Creek.

Shrieking, she spun the wheel and slammed on the brakes. The pickup fishtailed and the reek of burning motor oil stung her nose. Loose change peppered the dashboard like buckshot. A second later, the truck jerked to a stop, the chassis rocking on its undercarriage. Clouds of road dust and bluish exhaust engulfed the vehicle as bits of gravel rained down against the windshield.

For several seconds, she sat straight as a ramrod, unable to move. Both her hands clenched the steering wheel. As the dust cleared outside, she could see the truck’s headlights carving through the gloom to the other side of the creek. Just a few scant yards from the front of the truck, the Narrows roared below.

The bridge was gone. She recalled hearing on the news that the previous flood had weakened the shoreline and sent the pylons crumbling into the water below. The bridge itself was either on the floor of the Narrows or had been carried out to the Potomac.

Her heart still overexerting, she climbed out of the truck and crept to the muddy ridge of the Narrows and peered down. The water looked like liquid mercury and about as cold and inhospitable as the moons of Jupiter. A sickening feeling overtook her as she imagined her little brother losing his footing and sliding down into the rapids below.