Infinite by Brian Freeman
One world at a time.
—Thoreau, on his deathbed
CHAPTER 1
“We’re very sorry for your loss, Mr. Moran,” the cop told me as he handed me a white foam cup filled with coffee. He already had his own coffee in his hand, and he was eating a powdered doughnut that left a dusting of sugar on his mustache like fresh snow on a lawn.
I said nothing. I felt dazed and numb, as if I were in a coma from which I wasn’t sure I would ever awaken. The chill made me shiver. They’d taken away my soaked, dirty clothes and wrapped a wool blanket around my naked body, but it didn’t help. A policewoman who lived nearby had offered to wash and dry my clothes and bring them back to me before morning. The deep cuts on my arms and legs had been disinfected and bandaged, but I felt a stinging pain regardless. I kept coughing, and when I did, I could still taste the river.
It tasted like death.
“Feast or famine,” the cop said.
He was probably about forty years old, with a round face and not much brown hair left on his head. He had a large mole in the seam of one of his nostrils, which was the kind of thing you couldn’t stop looking at. He was plump, clean, and dry, a cop who spent his nights at a desk. Two other cops, young and fit, had found me in the field, with rain pouring over my face along with my tears.
Where was I?
What town was this?
I didn’t even know. The police had driven me here, but I remembered none of it. I only remembered shouting Karly’s name as they dragged me away. She was still down there in the water.
“Feast or famine,” the cop said again. “That’s been us this season. May and June were dry as a bone. Been driving the farmers crazy. Land’s hard as a rock. We get a storm like this, and all the water just runs off into the creek. The banks ain’t made for that much rain that fast.”
He was right. My grandfather grew up in the flatlands of North Dakota, where the waters rose every spring with the snowmelt, and he used to warn me about rivers. Never trust a river, Dylan. Give a river even half a chance, and it’ll try to kill you.
I should have listened.
“Sorry about all the paperwork at a time like this,” the cop continued. I thought his name was Warren, but I couldn’t even lift my head to study the nameplate on his shirt. “I know that’s the last thing on your mind, but somebody dies, we have to jump through a lot of hoops. That’s the law. Like I say, I’m really sorry.”
“Thank you.” I barely recognized my voice. It didn’t even sound like me.
“Can you tell me your wife’s name again?”
“Karly Chance.”
“You and she didn’t have the same last name?”
“No.”
“How old was she?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“And you?”
“I’m thirty-two.”
“The two of you live in Chicago?”
“Yes.”
“What brought you down to this part of the state?”
Dylan, let’s go away for a few days. I know you’re upset and angry, and you have every right to be, but we need to start over.
“I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“I said, why were you down in this part of the state?”
“We took a weekend away from the city,” I replied. “A friend of Karly’s has a place in Bigneck.”
“What do you do in Chicago, Mr. Moran?”
“I’m the events manager for the LaSalle Plaza Hotel.”
“And your wife?”
“She works for her mother. She’s a real estate agent.” I added a moment later, “She was.”
Warren popped the last bite of doughnut into his mouth and then rubbed his mustache clean with a napkin. He kept scribbling notes on the yellow pad in front of him, and he hummed to himself as he did. I looked around the police interview room, which had chipped cream-colored paint on the walls and no windows. Warren sat on one side of a rickety oak table that was old enough to still have cigarette burns in the wood. I sat on the other side, swaddled in the blanket like a newborn. I couldn’t trust any of my senses. When I breathed, all I smelled was the dankness of water in my nose. Every time I closed my eyes, I was back inside the car, as the river flipped us like a carnival ride.
“You got a way to get home to the city?” Warren asked me. “Family or friends or somebody who can pick you up?”
I didn’t know what to tell him. I had no family, not really. My parents died when I was thirteen. That’s the clinical way I describe it to people, which is easier than saying that my father murdered my mother and then killed himself right in front of me. After that, I moved in with my grandfather. Edgar’s ninety-four now and doesn’t drive. We get along, but we don’t get along, if you know what I mean. It’s always been that way.
As for friends, the childhood friend who had always bailed me out when things got bad was Roscoe Tate, and he died four years ago after bailing me out. Literally. That was the night I met Karly. I was covered in blood, my arm broken, my leg broken. Roscoe was dead behind the wheel, his neck snapped. I thought I must be dead, too. I stared through the car’s shattered windows and saw an angel staring back at me, her dress billowing in the wind, her hand reaching in to hold mine. Her quiet voice murmured that help was coming, that I was going to be okay, that she wouldn’t leave me.