The Banks of Certain Rivers (28 page)

“What? I only just heard this kid’s name for the first
time Monday morning!”

“Well that’s what it says. Here’s a quote: ‘The
Port Manitou School District has zero tolerance for emotional and/or
physical intimidation and abuse of students by
staff—’”

“Did Gracie Adams say that?”

“How did you know?”

“Fuck.” I sit on my couch and drum my fingers on my knee.
“You really can’t come over?”

“No. Like I said, work. Why didn’t you just tell me? Were
you home yesterday afternoon? I was here, you had to see I was here.”

“It was my turn to freak out.”

“You’re not the only one freaking out,” Lauren
says. She sighs. “What are you going to do?”

“My sister put me in touch with a lawyer, but he’s
expensive. Insanely expensive. The cops are looking at the video, Alan’s
looking at it too, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got the
support of at least a couple people in the district.”

“What happens if they do charge you with assault?”

“The police were here to talk to me yesterday, and they didn’t
mention anything about any charges. But if it does happen, probably
I’ll lose my job. If I lose my job, I’ll lose my
insurance. So in the short term, at least, I’ll probably move
in with Carol and rent my place out for some income to help cover
Wendy’s expenses.”

“Oh God,” she says.

“Yeah. So, there we go. It’s not pretty, but at least
having a vision of it helps keep me clear-headed about things. But
this sucks. That’s about the best way I can put it.”

Lauren doesn’t respond.

“Are you there?” I ask.

“Sorry. Sorry. I’m here. I just….”

“Just?”

“I’m going to go. I’ll talk to you later.”
She says these words in nearly a monotone.

“Wait,” I say. “It’s going to be fine,
really. I’ll get through this. We’ll get through this. I
love you, okay?” I’m thinking, right there, the three
magic words will snap her out of it. But they don’t.

“I’ll talk to you later,” she repeats. And she
goes.

I don’t get up from the couch for a while. I stare out the
window at the rain dripping from the edge of my roof, and wonder just
how bad this will get. I almost call Alan, but I don’t; instead
I go to the spare room and wake up the laptop. The video is there,
maximized in the center of the screen, waiting for me.

Hey!

I had to like, fight him off me.

I watch it once, and one more time after that. I almost start it a
third, but stop myself. Can I still get into my work email? Why
should I even try? I do, though, against my better judgment, and sure
enough I’m able to log in. I skim through the subject lines,
and when I see one that says WE ARE WATCHING YOU MISTER NEIL!! I
flinch and snap the laptop screen shut maybe a bit too hard. I need
to get myself away from this. Running would bleed off some of this
feeling, I should go run, but there’s still the rain, that
damned rain.

A padded manila mailer sits on the table to the left of the laptop,
the one I found a few days ago in a box of Wendy’s things in
the garage attic. The envelope is wrinkled and creased with age; an
edge is reinforced with tape, the end is torn open, and the label on
the front is addressed to Wendy in the stiff cursive of her
grandmother. The label has been crossed out with blue marker, and
along the top it says ‘Property of Wendy Olsson.’
Underneath, the words ‘From Neil K.’—bounded on
both ends by a pair of hearts—have been written in a more
florid script.

I pick up the mailer by a corner so the contents drop out onto the
surface of the table. A bundle of my letters, gathered together with
a thick purple rubber band, lies on top of the stack. I pick the
letters up and feel their collected heft, the weight of a teen boy’s
love. I poured myself into every one of them. I’d write them at
school on lined notepaper, or at home when Mike thought I was just
doing homework. I’d fold the pages into awkward squares and
stuff them into envelopes provided by my mother. She’d give me
postage too, with a smile and a wink. She knew what was going on with
Wendy and me.

I don’t unbind my correspondence. I went through them all the
other day, and that was enough. Their mass in my hand is the only
reminder I need.

Wendy’s unsent letter is there on the table too. There’s
a thickness to the blue envelope, more than a few pages inside, I’m
sure. She was always neater than I was with her missives, always
using perfect handwriting on her stationery, never sending a page
with a word crossed out or even an eraser mark. With my eyes closed,
I lift the envelope to my nose; there’s nothing there but the
dusty scent of paper. I trace my index fingertip over the gummed edge
of the flap and imagine Wendy licking it and pressing it shut. But
she held onto it. Why didn’t she send it? I could open it now,
but I don’t. I keep my eyes closed and press the envelope to my
lips.

My thoughts are broken by my doorbell, followed by a knock. Leaning
forward over the computer table so I can look out the window, I
see Leland’s black truck, panels splattered with mud, parked in
front of my home. For a moment I consider ignoring him, but I’m
curious why exactly he’s here, so I go to the door to greet
him. He has a somber look on his face.

“Saw the paper this morning,” he says.

“I haven’t read it yet. But I heard it’s bad. Come
on in.”

I take his jacket and ask him if he wants any coffee; Leland nods and
he follows me to the kitchen.

“You didn’t do that, I know,” Leland says, taking a
seat.

I laugh at this. “You’re the first person to say it with
any sort of conviction.”

“Come on, Neil. That’s not you. And Steve knows the kid.
Says he’s a loser. I know the parents, sort of. Money. Big
money from Chicago.” He waves his hand when I hold up the sugar
jar. “No thanks. A little milk is fine, if you have some.”

I bring two mugs to the table and take a seat with him. “So
what does it mean, them having money? Does it mean I’m
screwed?”

Leland shrugs. “I know a good lawyer.”

“So do I. They’re not cheap.”

“No,” Leland says, shaking his head and giving a little
laugh through his nose. “They are not cheap. And I’m a
guy who’s dealt with them enough to know. What are you going to
do?”

“I guess I’m waiting for the school or the police to tell
me what’s going on. It’s their move.”

“You going to be able to afford this?”

Now I shrug.

“Listen,” Leland starts, “I know I’m going to
sound like some kind of vulture—”

“Here comes the hard sell,” I say.

“—But I think there’s an opportunity for you here.”

“What, if I sell?”

“You could sell, or”—he looks at me—“you
could exchange part of your property for a share in the partnership.”

“Leland. Come on.”

“I know you don’t want to mess with the orchard. I know
what it means to you, and I know what it means to your wife’s
family, okay? You forget I knew Dick Olsson a little bit myself. But
I know it can’t be making much money for you. I know you’re
probably just breaking even on the leases.”

He’s right, and I hope my expression isn’t giving it
away.

“If you joined in, there wouldn’t be any major
construction on the Olsson Dunes. It would mostly be golf course and
open space. As natural as we can keep it.”

“What about the Little Jib River?”

“The river stays untouched, just a pathway on the northern side
and a footbridge to the golf course. Your house stays, the farmhouse
stays. That place on the beach, though….”

“You’d take it down?”

“It’s barely standing up on its own, Neil.”

He’s right about that, too.

“What about Alan?” I ask. “Are you going to offer
him the same sort of deal?”

“Alan Massie is a stubborn man.” I raise my eyebrows, and
Leland lifts his hand. “Wait a second, I know you guys are good
friends. His property doesn’t have the same sort of value to
the project. But I’ll talk to him. For now, though, I’d
appreciate you keeping this discussion between you and—”

My landline rings, cutting Leland off.

“You need to pick that up?”

“Doubtful,” I say, reaching over to turn up the volume on
the machine so we can hear it. A beep fills the house, followed by a
man’s voice.

“You sound pretty tough there on your message, Mister Teacher,”
the voice says. “Maybe you need an ass whipping yourself. You
are pathetic son of a bitch, you hear me?”

Click.

Leland looks shocked.

“Are you...does that kind of talk trouble you? That’s
illegal, harassing someone like that on the phone, you know.”

“It troubles me less than the prospect of losing my job.”

“You need to tell the police about that call.”

I shake my head. “I’ll tell them about it when they come
to charge me for assault.”

Leland rises and takes his coffee cup to the sink. “Think over
what I just told you. The character of the orchard will stay. Your
house will stay. You’ll get some money in the short term, and
you’ll make more in the long term. You’re thinking about
it, I can tell.”

I say nothing, and get to my feet to walk him to the door. “I’ll
check in with you later,” I say, and I can feel my heart
beating in my chest.

“All right. Don’t get too shaken up about everything.
You’re going to come through this just fine. I know it.”

“Thanks, Leland.”

“I’ll see you.”

I close the door behind him, and turn back into my house. I haven’t
taken a step before there’s another knock at my door. It’s
Leland again.

“Let me in,” he says in a low voice. “Close the
door.”

“What’s going on?”

“You’ve got some company.”

Leland follows me to the guest room and we peek out the window;
behind Leland’s truck are a pair of news vans with colorful
graphics on their sides and satellite dishes on their roofs.

“Who the fuck are those guys?” I say softly.

“It’s a Detroit station,” Leland says. We’re
whispering as if the guys in the van could hear us. “The first
one, anyway. I don’t know who the other guys are. Why would
they make the drive up here? You want me to say something to them?”

“No, just…go around them, I guess.”

“All right.”

Leland heads out again while I stay in the guest room. I watch him
beeline for his truck, his head ducking through the rain. The
headlights come on, and he swings wide through my yard and past the
van. After he goes, two men jump out of the first van: one with a
microphone, and the other with a boxy video camera draped in a clear
plastic rain cover up on his shoulder. Both wear rain jackets with
their station logo on the breast, and they come to my house and ring
my bell. Instead of answering, I take out my phone and call Alan.

“Neil! So you saw the—”

“Shut up,” I say. “There are news vans in my
driveway. One’s from a TV station downstate.”

“For real?”

“Yes, for real!” They ring the doorbell again.

“I’m guessing you don’t want them there.”

“No.”

“Sit tight. I’ll be right over to take care of it.”

The newsmen ring a final time, wait a minute, and slog back to their
vehicle. A couple moments after that Alan, wearing an olive green
rain poncho, rides up my drive on his bike. He stops next to the
passenger side of the first van and the window rolls down. They all
chat for a bit, Alan points to the road and nods, the window rolls up
and the van drives away. Alan speaks to the guys in the second van,
and they drive away too.

Alan comes into my house through the side door without knocking.

“What did they want?” I ask him as he hangs his dripping
poncho on the back of a chair. “Why does anyone in Detroit care
about this?”

“It’s not just Detroit,” Alan says. “They’re
CNN’s Lower Michigan affiliate. The other guys are from FOX.”

I have to sit down. “You’re kidding me.”

“You had almost a hundred and fifty thousand views on YouTube
this morning,” he reports with a smile. “You have gone
viral, as they say.”

“You’re smiling about this? Why the fuck are you
smiling?”

“Because when it’s revealed that the video is fake, the
damages you claim when you sue whoever made it will be, in part,
predicated on how frequently the video was viewed. Let’s get
those numbers up, right?”

My home phone rings again, and I put my head in my hands while I wait
for the beep.

“Oh, look at me, I’m big and tough and totally picking on
people my own size!” It’s a man, speaking like a dopey
cartoon character. “Look at me, I’m such a fucking pussy
in real life that I have to pick on kids! Bwaaaaa!”

“Unplug that,” Alan tells me. “Get dressed for a
run.”

“Alan, I’m not really—”

“Unplug it now, and get into your running things. I’ll
ride with you.”

“What about the guys in the van?”

“We’ll go through the orchard to my house.” Alan
leans to the wall by my phone as he speaks, reaches down, and
straightens back up with my phone’s loose power cord dangling
from his hand. “We’ll duck through the orchard, then
we’ll go north on the highway. They won’t even see us.”

“Fine,” I say. I change into running clothes, shorts and
a long-sleeved shirt for the chill, and I find a light jacket that
actually fits. We go outside and I look all around for signs of video
cameras before trotting off through the cherry trees. Alan rides
behind me as I run the wet dirt path. When we get to the highway he
moves to my side, speeding up ahead to go single file when we hear a
car behind and falling back once it’s passed. We say nothing
for the first mile or so, until Alan finally speaks.

“I feel like you’re a prizefighter,” he says from
beneath the hood of his poncho. His knees rise and fall as he pedals.
“And I’m your trainer. Getting you in shape for the big
fight.”