Cold River (34 page)

She may not have had to face it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t on her mind. She was glad for meetings with Nettie and Mrs. Reilly that tore her attention away from Vince’s plans for her future. And from Grange’s empty office.

Every day, Mandy tried to get in touch with Fran to let her know she wasn’t leaving, that she didn’t want out of her lease. She tried Fran’s house and her office, but the phone rang and rang without the answering machine picking up. Mandy called the Qwik-E Market on Wednesday afternoon and when Elizabeth answered she asked if she knew what Fran’s schedule was.

“I haven’t seen her, actually,” Elizabeth said. “Mr. Laffitte has been managing the stores this week because Fran is getting ready for an audit next week. She’s been really grouchy, so I’m not sorry she’s not here, but Mr. Laffitte is a bit of a slave driver.”

“If you see Fran, please tell her I need to talk to her,” Mandy said.

Elizabeth said she would, but it wasn’t until Thursday that Mandy was able to talk to Fran. The driving, soaking deluge that had poured down since Saturday night finally stopped, but Mandy was aware that the river would continue rising for a while, and she wanted to check on the dike above her house. When her work session with Mrs. Reilly ended at noon, she headed home.

Mandy was slowing down to turn off onto the gravel road when she saw that Fran was home. She drove there instead, catching her friend as she was getting in her car. Mandy pulled into the driveway, turned off the key, and jumped out. “Fran, I’m so glad I caught you. I’ve been trying to reach you by phone.”

At her greeting, Fran turned. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she wore no makeup on her flat, round face. Dark circles under her eyes accentuated an unusual pallor, and Mandy exclaimed, “Oh, Fran! Are you all right?”

“I’m just tired. Vince isn’t paying me enough for all the responsibility I shoulder. When this audit is over, I’m going to hit him up for a raise.”

“Well, here’s one less thing for you to worry about. I’m not leaving.”

Fran’s reaction was almost a snarl. “What?”

For a moment Mandy could only stand with her mouth open. “I’m staying,” she repeated. “At least through the end of the school year.”

Fran’s face twisted into an ugly sneer. “So you caved. I thought you were built of stronger stuff.”

“What are you talking about, Fran?”

“Do you know what Grange says about you? He doesn’t want you here. He says he wants to find whoever made your wheel fall off and give him a medal. He says some of the things you do are so wrongheaded it curls his hair, and the happiest day of his life will be when he sees your shirttail hitting your backside as you leave town.”

Mandy felt tears welling. “Fran, why are you saying this?”

“To help you. Wise up! You think that because Grange invited you into his office for a cozy little chat that he’s fallen for you, but I’m here to tell you that ain’t so. He and I have an understanding. He’s mine, Mandy.”

Fran got in her pickup, slammed the door, and started the engine, but seconds later she rolled down her window. “And here’s another thing. Those incidents stopped when I put out word you were leaving. Don’t be surprised when they start up again. People want you gone. I won’t be responsible for what happens because you’re so stubborn.”

Mandy felt as if someone had hit her in the chest with a sledgehammer. Hugging her arms close, she bent over and turned away as Fran spun gravel driving away. Long after the sound of her pickup had faded in the distance, Mandy stayed, leaning against her car for support because her knees had gone weak. “You and Grange?” she asked the silent, empty air. “You and Grange?

MANDY WAS SO
debilitated by her meeting with Fran that she almost forgot what she had driven home for. After she finally got in her car and drove down the gravel road, she saw the river in the distance and remembered the dike.

She parked and trudged upstairs to put on her sweats and running shoes. Though she didn’t feel like it, she forced herself to head out on a trail through the woods to a place where she could look down on the barrier thrown up to protect the house. From where she stood, everything looked fine. The water still had a foot to go to reach the top, and the downstream side of the dike was dry.

Mandy was grateful for that assurance, but it didn’t displace the hollow feeling in her breast. She recognized a return of the dark emptiness she’d felt as she watched the lights of Albuquerque in her rearview mirror. “So, is that what it is, Dr. Stinkbug?” Her voice sounded loud in the stillness of the woods. “You’re in love with Grange Timberlain?”

Sighing, she looked back towards her house, not quite ready to face a long afternoon alone shadowed by the memory of Fran reaching up to ruffle the hair at the nape of Grange’s neck. Instead, she turned upriver and began to trot along a path that, she suspected, would bring her to the familiar one that followed the riverbank.

She found the trail presently and quickened her pace, trying to outrun the memory of Fran’s words
.
He wants you gone. The things you do are so wrongheaded, it curls his hair. He’s mine.
When she came to the place in the pine plantation that led out to Timberlain Road, Mandy didn’t even pause but continued at a punishing pace alongside the river. She was in new territory now, and in places the trail ran perilously close to the edge. She slowed her pace in those areas because the path was ribbed by the roots of trees and bushes that grew beside the trail and sprang from the steep sides of the riverbank.

Mandy had run almost to the limit of her endurance when she finally stopped to rest. Standing with her hands on her hips, she looked down at the dark, swirling water below as she inhaled air heavily laden with the scent of pine. The only sound she could hear above her own breathing was the river, but as respiration grew easier, she heard voices.

Thinking that she might be able to beg a drink of water, she walked toward the sound, making her way through the trees and sparse undergrowth. The voice she heard was deep and booming with a strange accent. The man was complaining about the cold, and as she stepped into a clearing, she saw him. Dressed in a blue jacket and watch cap, he bent over a large metal apparatus and stuffed wood into a firebox. It took her only a moment to process the meaning of the circular vat and the loops of metal tubing to realize this must be the still that Doc MacDonald had talked about.

Instinctively, she stepped back into the cover of the bushes, but at that moment, the man in the watch cap shut the firebox door, turned around, and spied her. He looked African American and loomed taller than she expected, with muscular arms and a neck as thick as a small tree. He raised a ham-like hand to his mouth and hollered, “Hey, Grange! You got a visitor.”

“Grange?” Mandy whispered. As he stepped out from behind the steaming still, Mandy remembered Mo saying, “Grange brings a lot of money to the district.” Mo wouldn’t tell her how Grange got the money, but right here, right now, the means was graphically evident, and it was criminal. She had fallen in love with a crook.

She felt her diaphragm tighten, and saliva streamed into her mouth as she turned and began to run back the way she came, afraid that at any moment she was going to be sick to her stomach.

She heard Grange call her name, but that only propelled her faster. Crashing through the bushes, she finally came to the trail. As she paused to catch her breath, she tried to will the nausea away.

“Mandy, wait!”

She could see glimpses of Grange’s blue shirt through the branches that were just now beginning to leaf out. Panicked by the thought that he might catch her, she sprinted down the trail, her mouth open as she gasped for air. A bothersome black edge appeared around her field of vision, and she shook her head to clear her sight as she plowed on. She could hear the pounding of his footsteps behind her, and when she looked over her shoulder to see where he was, her toe struck a root. She stumbled forward out of control, arms windmilling as she tried to stay upright. She almost managed it, but the last step she took was only half on the trail. The end of her foot hung in thin air, and when the ground under her heel crumbled away, she felt herself pitching head first over the edge. Frantically, she grabbed at the bushes growing on the vertical bank, snared a slender willow, and hung suspended in midair.

“Mandy!” Grange bellowed. “Mandy!” He sounded frantic.

“Here,” she croaked, but she knew he couldn’t hear her.

“Mandy!” He was right above her.

She looked up and saw him sliding on his belly over the edge, reaching out his hands to her. He seemed to be hanging by his toes, and he stretched his fingers out to touch her hand.

“Can you climb up the branch?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t have the strength.”

“Yes, you do. Look at me! Mandy, look at me. You can. Six inches higher, and I can reach you.”

She looked into his eyes, but just then the willow tore away from the bank, and she dropped another foot. Held only by two cord-like roots, she was a few scant feet above the murky floodwater.

“Mandy, listen. Moses is going to pull me up, and I’m going to send him for a rope. Hang on tight, and we’ll get you out of there soon. Don’t be afraid. Hang on tight.”

As she dangled from the willow branch and watched Grange disappear over the edge, she suddenly felt the full weight of her peril.

“Grange!” she shouted.

His head appeared over the bank. “I’m here. I’ve sent Moses back for a rope.”

“I don’t know how long I can hang on.”

“You can do it, Mandy. You’ve got strong hands. You’ll manage.”

“Grange!” she screamed as the roots tore farther away from the bank and dropped her knee-deep into the water.

He reached his hand out in a futile gesture. “Hang on, Mandy. I hear Moses coming. Hang on, darling. He’s almost here.”

Grange disappeared for only a moment, but in that instant, the bank gave away around the roots, and Mandy and the willow slipped into the icy waters of the Hiesel and began to drift downstream.

There was a surreal, slow-motion quality about the whole experience. She sank up to her chin and then bobbed and twirled around in the water, facing upstream where she had a good view of Grange standing on the bank making sweeping gestures with his arms as he spoke to his companion. Then he sat on the bank and slid over the edge, dropping feet first in the river. He disappeared from view in the foliage at the bottom, but soon Mandy saw his head sticking up above the muddy flow.

Her teeth began to chatter as chilling reality set in, and she examined the nearest bank. It rose steeply and offered no way out of the floodwaters for as far as she could see, but she knew that around the bend the bank wasn’t so high. In her mind’s eye, she saw the dike that protected her house and decided she would put all her energies into staying afloat until she could make her way to the side of the river, where she could climb out at the levee.

Mandy turned around to look for Grange, but all she could see was the dark bulk of a tree trunk bearing down on her, sideways. Stroking as hard as she could and coming up with a mouthful of dirty water in the process, she tried to get to the end of the log before it bumped into her. She just made it, and as it passed, she kicked and lunged, reaching to grasp a crooked limb. Her hands were so cold she couldn’t feel the branch, but she immediately felt the drag of the river lessen. She pulled herself close to the log, draped her arms over it, and was just about to murmur a thankful prayer when she heard Grange.

“Mandy!”

He sounded quite close. She twisted around to mark where he was.

“Mandy!” He was upriver and farther out. “You’ve got to let go,” he hollered. “Get out in the middle.”

She was so cold she could hardly unclench her jaw, but she shouted, “No! We’re just about to the bend. After that the bank drops off. Come here.”

He began swimming toward her. When he got nearer, he shouted urgently, “The logjam, Mandy! You’ve got to get away from it! Come out here!”

Grange didn’t have to say it twice. Mandy’s adrenal glands kicked in the afterburners as she remembered the story of how his fiancée had died. She pushed away from temporary safety and began furiously swimming toward the middle. He continued to stroke towards her, calling encouragement.

“Come on, Mandy. A little farther. We’ve got to be past the middle.”

“I don’t think— ” she began, but she got another mouthful of water and came up coughing and sputtering.

Grange’s voice was louder. “Come on, Mandy. You can do it.”

She saw that they were sweeping around the bend, and she lost heart. “I can’t. I can’t go any farther.”

Then he was there beside her. She heard his voice in her ear and felt the warmth of his breath on the nape of her neck. “Yes, you can,” he said. “Grab onto me and I’ll pull you.”

She turned and looked into his eyes. “My hands won’t work. I can’t hold on.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, looking downriver. “We’d never make it now. We’re too close. Listen, Mandy, I’m going to try to steer us to the best place, and at the last minute, I’m going to get us as far out of the water as possible, so when I say kick, you kick like a mule. I’ll get the best handhold I can, and I’m going to hold onto you while I do it. I’ll pin you to the log. It won’t be comfortable, but it will keep you from going under, I think. If we can hang on until help arrives, we’ll be all right.”