Holding Lies (30 page)

He took Annie's hand in his and tried to say a million things, but all he could muster was, “You deserved better. You've always deserved better.”

“I was so cruel the last time I was here,” she said.

“You were seventeen.”

He reached into his pocket and handed her a worn photograph, the very photograph he'd kept on his person for twenty-something years: the two of them together on a sunlit beach, her five years old and river tanned and gleaming wet and holding a crawdad to the camera, and him lean and brown-not-gray and beaming at his little girl—buoyant and hopeful at the promise of all the years together to come. “I want you to have this.”

She seemed hesitant to touch it, but she finally did, holding it to the light. “Do you have a copy?”

He put a hand to his heart. “Right here.” Maybe she would cherish it as he did, or maybe she would tuck it away and never look again. Either way, he wanted her to have it; he wanted her to remember. “You've always been here with me.”

A moment passed with them standing just out of reach, and he realized this was it.

She checked her watch. “I should—”

“Of course.”

But she hesitated. “Daddy?”

“Annie?”

She looked to the ground between them. “I'm sorry about the ring.” He smiled. “It never fit you right.”

“Maybe it was a little big, but you couldn't have known my size. I'm sorry.”

He extended his hand and said, “Here.”

She looked and muttered, “How … when did you … ?”

“Do you want to know? I'll tell you if you do.”

She touched the ring in his palm as if it might be made of vapor. Then she checked for the inscription. “When alone, remember these arms reaching.” He'd had it made months ago for Caroline, but now he realized he'd written this inscription for Annie.

“Don't tell me,” she said, sliding it on her thumb. “I might be a grown woman, but I still need magic.”

They both turned toward the sound of a truck climbing the driveway, Caroline's green Tundra. He'd left a message on her answering machine inviting her to come say goodbye, but he wasn't sure if she would show up. He wasn't sure if she would ever come again. But there she was, slamming the door behind her and holding a Tupperware container. “Just some smoked salmon and filberts and stuff. Figured you could use some grub on the flight.”

Annie thanked her with a hug and a kiss to the cheek, and said, “Take care of my daddy, will ya?”

Caroline smiled and took Hank's hand in hers. They stood shoulder to shoulder now, and watched as Annie put the food and her purse in the rental car. “She's so beautiful,” Caroline whispered.

Hank turned to see Caroline's eyes welling up, and he knew what she was missing, out there in the world somewhere. “She is.”

Annie said, “Well?” and stepped toward him and they embraced. She wasn't letting go and neither was he. “You'll do better,” he whispered, and she pressed her tear-wet face against his neck.

H
ANK SCRATCHED AT
the patch stuck to his arm as he drove up River Road, the shotgun in back. It was a Winchester Camp Defender, a short-barreled twelve-gauge with an improved choke. He'd bought it used years ago, to ward off bears when he, Rosemary, and baby Riffle lived up Rock Creek, in the hippie house. He'd only shot it at the quail that frequented the hilltop, often hitting three or four with a single blast. They'd eaten a lot of quail in those days.

Walter was out front at the picnic table tying flies. His glasses were low on his nose, his cap tipped back on his head, and he was looking withered and white, and Hank was pretty sure from the look of him that he hadn't slept much the night before. He didn't look up from the vise when Hank approached. Instead, he said, “I nailed it, finally. Look at this fucker.” He cut the thread and dropped the fly from the vise and tossed it to Hank. He'd wrapped the moose hair so densely that it felt like a solid object, and he'd trimmed it to produce a concave nose. “It'll cast easy with that small head, but it should chuck water like the best of your poppers. Took ten years, but I got it.”

Hank leaned the shotgun against the table and studied the pattern. It was a spectacular tie.

Walter only glanced at the shotgun. “You and your curiosity theory. I was a hard sell, wasn't I? Not true, I guess, what they say about old dogs.”

Hank pinned the pattern to the table's wood. “When are we going to fish it?”

Walter handed him a fly box—his fly box, the wooden one he'd carved himself as a young man. In it were twenty-five or thirty of the flies in two colors and in two sizes. “Stayed up most of last night tying. Fish them, tell me how it goes.” He nodded toward the shotgun without looking at it. “Did you bring me any shells?”

“Sorry.”

Walter spit. “That was mighty selfish of you.”

Hank had two old bricks of double-ought and a newer box of sixes, but he'd left them in the closet, and not because he thought he'd someday use them.

“I'm sure I can round one up,” Walter said. “Better not take two.”

Hank flinched away, this was all too much. Walter's drift boat was pulled out, and dozens of rods were slanting up from it, their tips fluttering in the hot midday breeze. “Did you fish today?”

“Take that shit, Hank. I want you to have it.”

Hank scoffed. “Come on, Walt.”

“I don't have no use for it. Sure as shit ain't oaring that old beast again. You better not leave here without it.”

“I'm not taking your tackle. Come on. We got to get you up and on the water.”

“Don't get your waders in a bunch. I kept out my seventy-one fifty-two. I'm done grocery shopping, but I ain't done fishing.” He maneuvered a leg out from the picnic table, cringing against the pain as he did. “If something there don't meet your highfalutin standards, give it to Danny. That kid knows quality when he sees it.”

Walter started to stand from the table, but sank back before he'd come up halfway. Hank slipped his arm under Walter's and helped him rise and lift his other leg over the bench. It was then that he
saw Walter had pissed himself. The rate of Walter's descent left Hank without words.

Walter swung around the wading staff and leaned onto it, and pushed back at Hank. “Get off me. I ain't feeble.” Walter didn't seem to notice the urine on his pants, that or he was pretending not to.

Hank stuttered. It was all he could do.

“Help me to the truck. Bring that thing.” He gestured at the shotgun.

Together they walked, Walter leaning on his wading staff while Hank kept him steady, across the yard to Walter's old pickup. “I named Mindy my heir. Only seemed fair that she get this house after all I put her through. Not that there'll be much left after the mortgage is settled. But I want you to have the truck. Sell it if you want, but don't let her get her hands on it. I got my reasons, old reasons. Don't let her have it. You hear?”

“Yes sir.”

“I got the title all signed over to your name. Put your squiggles on it, and send it on to the DMV. Do it today.”

Hank looked out over the valley. In this moment, he felt like a stranger here, felt like he'd never really known this man named Walter. Part of it was how fast he was failing, how fast death was taking him. But there was something else too.

Last night, Bridge had shown up at the house, coming by to check on Hank and make sure he was doing all right with that head wound and all. They'd shared a couple beers on the porch, listening to the river between the road noise, Hank talking a little about Annie, about her life back East, then about Walter, about how suddenly this cancer was getting him. Bridge sighed, “Fucking shame.” For a long few moments, they'd been quiet, sipping together and considering. Bridge had been the first one to speak. “Not sure if you know this or not, but my daddy always had his suspicions about Walt, you know, that maybe he was the one who shot Jackson up at Altitude Ramp.” He seemed to think better of this topic after he'd voiced it, but Hank pressed and
Bridge eventually went on to say, “He was the one that found the body and all.” Which was news to Hank. And which seemed like the kind of detail Walter would have mentioned. Should have mentioned.

“What is it, Hankle?” Walter now said. “Pull that broom out your rear and speak your mind.”

Hank put his arm under Walter's, gestured toward the truck. “Let's get fishing.”

“Fuck off. You only look like that when you got something to say. Speak up, don't got time for your pussyfootin'.”

“It's nothing.”

Walter swung his wading staff and clocked Hank's shin, hard enough to leave a weeklong bruise. “Man up, son. You're running out of chances.”

Hank reached for a cigarette, and only then remembered the carton in the trashcan, the goddamn patch on his shoulder. “Jackson's murder. When you told me about it, you didn't say you were the one who discovered his body. Seems like a detail you'd relate.”

Walter shrugged, hawked up some phlegm, and spit. “Long time back.”

“True enough.” He shouldn't have asked. He didn't really want to know. He'd known Walter forty-something years, and he had a clear sense of the man, and he wanted it to stay that way.

Walter was poking at the ground with that wading staff.

Hank tried to bail him out. “Should we hit Red Gate?”

But Walter didn't look up; he was chewing his cheek and cursing under his breath. Finally he muttered, “He's the one giving me cancer. I know it.”

“Who?”

Walter was shaky now on his wading staff, too shaky to be standing. “I didn't go up there planning on anything. I just went up there to stop him from snagging those fish, that's all. It was a warm day and I knew the winter fish would be on the redds. You know the day, short sleeves in March. And there that bastard was, throwing trebles.”

“Here, sit down, Walt.”

Walter didn't move, he just kept teetering there. “I'll tell you because I know you'll stick by. I only ever told Mindy.”

“You don't have to tell me.” He didn't want to know, and yet he did, more than anything.

Walter took a breath, and stared hard at a point in the dust like he was aiming to snap-shoot it with a pistol. “We're pushing at each other, that's how it starts … and I got my rifle out, shouldn't have done that, but there's the rifle …” He was breathing hard now, like it was happening at this moment. “I don't know how, but there it was, and we're pushing and pop, the thing goes off. We were pushing at each other, Hank. I didn't mean to, I just meant to scare him, if I meant anything at all. And that's god's truth.”

Walter staggered a couple steps and sat on the tailgate of the truck. It was there that he seemed to change, the wide eyes narrowing into cold slits, the heavy breathing replaced by calm, almost imperceptible inhalations. His voice changed too, flatter now. “You'd be surprised what a man's body does when he catches one in the neck. You'd be surprised how the sight of that stays current.”

Hank took a seat on the tailgate too.

“He was snagging those fish though,” Walter continued a few moments later. “It happened because he was up there. He shouldn't have been up there. He should've been doing his job. That's why it happened. Gotta be in good with the river. I was just the messenger. Can't feel shitty about that, right? If it hadn't been me, woulda been somebody else. The river made up its mind.”

The breeze slowed to a stop, and the day felt that much hotter. Walter passed his sleeve over his brow. “What? Stop looking at me like that.”

A moment passed and Walter pointed at the boat. “I gave you the reels for those rods, the lines too. Hank? Are you going to tell anybody?”

Was he? Could he? Could he not? “Do you want me to?”

That's when Hank noticed the fear. He wasn't afraid of Walter, he was afraid of his reasons. Afraid that Walter's logic might be lying dormant in him too.

Walter shrugged. “It was a long time ago. Nobody cares anymore. Jackson didn't have no sober kin.”

Walter took the shotgun, racked the action. “Christ, Hank, don't you ever clean this? This here powder looks like it's from the Carter era.”

Hank was thinking of Morell, of that wading staff leaning against the truck. Metal, stiff, and heavy enough to crack a skull. This man he'd known forever, this stranger. Capable of anything.

Walter pointed at Hank's truck. “You should get on. Hook up the boat and put those rods in your rig and fuck off. Last thing I need is somebody around here looking at me like that. You and Mindy. I'm in good with Lady Ipsyniho. That's all I need.”

Hank didn't know what to say, how to leave Walter—or how to remain near him. He knew this man better than he'd known his own father, and yet, there he was, old and dying and guilty as all hell and more wicked than anyone he'd ever known.

“I'm a part of this valley, Hank, I'm part of her. It's her juice in my blood, and my bones is her gravel, and I've only ever done what's best for her. Sure, I've fucked up. But I've never worked against her. That's got to count for something.”

“It counts,” Hank said, though he didn't know if it did. “Counts as much as anything.”

“Stop thinking I did it,” Walter said. “I can see it in your eyes. The river killed that kid.”

Hank backed away, sure now.

“The river killed him. You know it.”

Hank turned and walked to his Bronco, forgetting everything except the wickedness. Even the firs looked menacing, their limbs crooked and reaching and knowing. They'd known all along.

Walter called, “Don't forget this title. Sign it like I said. Get it in the mail today. And for fuck's sake, rig up that boat and get it out of here.”