Moran stepped to the edge of the bank and stood looking down on her.
“Come up off of there,” he said.
She shuffled backwards on her hands and knees, then got to her feet. She stood listening, feeling—her heart pounding, remembering the water when she first went in, the shock of it, how the entire body jolted in amazement, in disbelief. At the same time, standing there, she knew she would not fall through again, and it was silly, it was irrational, but she believed that the ice knew her. Or the feel of her, her particular weight and stance. She and the ice had a history, and after all it was the same river here as it was across the state line…
Moran took a small, careful step down the bank, his hand held out to her, and she turned then and walked out onto the ice.
“Wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said. “That ice ain’t as thick as it used to be.”
She continued on, putting distance between herself and the bank. When he shut up she could hear the thin dunes of snow compressing under her boots, could hear the blood beating in her ears and nothing more—no cracks, no pops. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty steps before she stopped and looked back. He wasn’t following. She’d had her hands out for balance and now she slipped them back into the jacket pockets. She stood facing him. The ice would be thinnest in the middle of the river but she would go there if she had to, and beyond, all the way across and into the nameless woods on the far bank.
“Just gonna stand there all night, is that the idea?” He didn’t have to shout; his voice carried easily over the hard, flat surface.
She said nothing. The river made no sound—not the ice, not the water flowing beneath it, although it did flow; she could feel it, like her own blood. So fast and silent in its dark rushing and so cold.
Moran folded the cuffs and returned them to their place on his belt. He watched her. Then he took another sideways step down the bank, took one more and then onto the ice, one boot only, but that was enough—she felt the change before it reached her: a shift, a shooting nerve that ran through the ice and expressed itself, finally, in the smallest pop, just beneath her boots.
She took her hands from her pockets.
The ice sighed, it took a breath—then pitched beneath her. A sharp edge rose like a fin, and her boots slipped down the incline of it and she fell to her chest on the upended slab and slid legs-first into the water, plunging into the dark and the cold up to her ribs, clinging to the upended slab of ice, and there was the moment before the cold soaked through her clothes, and then it simply squeezed the breath from her like great jaws clamping down. She clung to the slab of ice but her own weight pushed it under, dunked it like a smaller body she meant to drown and it slipped under the surface of the ice and she let go and grabbed for the ice itself and she could hear the slab scraping and knocking along the underside of the ice, carried away by the same current that shoved her against the edge and pulled at her legs.
“Shit, I goddam told you,” said Moran.
She watched him. Her throat wanted to call out to him—Help me, please—but she would not let it. Would not speak to him. Already her jaw was chattering.
“You couldn’t just cooperate, could you?”
The water so cold and so strong and Moran just standing there. She turned her face so she wouldn’t see him. Before her, downriver, the ice banked around the woods and disappeared. If she went under how far could she go? Was there a place downriver where the ice didn’t freeze and she could surface? How far was the dam, where Caroline had been found?
But this wasn’t that river.
Yes, it was—Upper Black Root, Lower Black Root, all the same river going the same direction, toward the same dams… but how far?
The water so cold you couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.
But there’s another dam, Deputy—remember? Where we fished when you were a little girl?
Yes, Daddy… but how far is that?
Fishermen left holes in the ice—but the holes would freeze over an hour later and would be too small anyway.
There was movement, scraping sounds, and she turned to see Moran on his hands and knees, making his way out toward her. He’d left his hat behind and he looked ridiculous and hideous. Like an animal come from the woods to see if this floundering thing in the ice could be had for dinner.
“Go away,” she said, or tried to say. Her breath was gone.
He got down on his stomach and drew himself forward on his elbows. The ice popped and he went no farther. Resting there on his elbows, getting his breath, and the breath gusting white from his open mouth.
She turned from him and tried to raise herself on another part of the ice, but there was nothing to hold on to and the current was strong and she slipped down again and stopped trying and rested. All the blood had gone to her heart but her heart was cold too.
Moran breathing, watching her.
“All you had to do was cooperate,” he said. “You’d think I deserved that much, at least. All the years we’ve known each other.”
Against her will she turned to look at him—looked into those bug eyes and saw not hostility but… confusion. Or something like it.
He looked down at his hands, then cupped them and blew into them. White shoots of breath escaping at the seams. He looked away, downriver.
“You remember when your daddy would send me to pick you up at school?” he said. And looked at her again. “You remember that?”
Her head was shaking and maybe he thought she was answering him.
“Sure you do. You were just a little girl. He’d get hung up and couldn’t make it so he’d send me. Trusted me with that—picking up his daughter from school.”
She watched him from her hole of ice and water, her backteeth knocking.
“And you’d ride up front with me, and I’d let you use the PA… remember? You’d scare the bejesus outta some kid on the sidewalk and then duck down out of sight.”
He smiled at her, almost shyly. Then the smile died away and his brows creased. “But then he stopped doing that. Stopped sending me. I figured you must’ve said something. Must’ve told him you didn’t want me picking you up anymore.” He watched her. As if she might have something to say to that. Some kind of confirmation.
“You never…” she said with her rattling jaw.
Moran cocked his head. “Never what?”
“Never told him… my dad.”
“I never told him what?”
“That you pulled… Danny Young over. That night. You never told him… you were there too.”
She watched him, and whatever had been in his eyes, shyness or whatever it was, vanished. He grinned crookedly and shook his head.
“Daddy’s little deputy,” he said. “And look where it’s gotten you.”
She turned away from him again. She could not hold on much longer but she wasn’t frightened now. She’d been here before and she knew how it would be. In a moment you’ll simply let go and he’ll see that you let go, that you made the decision yourself. Not him. You walked onto the ice yourself and you will go under yourself and it will be all right.
But Moran would not wait—he began worming his way forward again on his elbows.