So Cold the River(121)

“Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”

“That old lady called. She wants you to get her Pluto Water.”

“Okay. I’ll call her back in a while. I don’t really have time to—”

“She said she’s leaving for a few days, and if you want the bottles, you have to get them now. She sounded upset.”

Leaving for a few days? It was odd that she hadn’t mentioned it.

“She say where she was going?”

“Nope. Just that if you want the water, today’s the day to get it.”

Damn it. He didn’t have time for a delay like this, but he also couldn’t afford to let the last supply of original Pluto Water he had access to close off. Not right now, not when his hands were shaking and his head was throbbing and even full bottles of the hotel water didn’t do a damn thing to help. By now Anne’s water might not help either, but it was better to have at least the chance of a net under your tightrope.

“Hang on,” he said and then lowered the phone and said to Kellen, “Hey, are we going to pass by Anne McKinney’s on our way to this place?”

“That’s the exact opposite direction. But we can turn around.”

He didn’t want to turn around. He wanted to see the site of the old Granger cabin, and the sky was turning forbidding, more storms certainly on the way. But it was worth a delay if he could get his hands on a few more bottles…

“I’ll go see her,” Eric told Claire. “I hate to slow down for it now, because I want to find this spot I told you about and it looks like rain.”

“I had the TV on. They’re predicting bad storms all day.”

“Great. I’d love to get caught out in the woods in those. But if she’s leaving—”

“I could go get them,” Claire said.

He hesitated. “No. We agreed that it was safest for you to stay—”

“She’s an elderly woman, Eric. I think I can handle her.”

“I don’t really like that idea.”

“Well, I’d like to see one of these bottles, honestly.”

He remembered the way she’d inquired about the bottle as soon as she got to the hotel, as if testing him, searching for tangible proof of his wild stories.

“Fine,” he said. “Let me give you directions to the house.”





50


ANNE SAT ON THE COUCH with her hands folded in her lap and watched Josiah Bradford pace and mutter and thought that it was clear he was no longer in his own mind. He still managed lucid exchanges, but whenever he drifted away from the moment, his head was taking him far from this house. It was almost like watching Eric Shaw the other day. Like that but different, because with Eric it had been obvious that his mind was traveling somewhere else. With Josiah, it seemed something was paying him a visit. He was holding entire under-the-breath conversations, grumbling about a strong back and a valley that needed to be reminded of a few things, other bits and pieces that seemed just as nonsensical. His eyes were bloodshot and rimmed by puffy, purple rings, the picture of exhaustion. She wondered if he was using the strange, terrible drug that did so much harm in this area, meth. She’d only read of it, had no sense of the symptoms, but surely something had invaded his body and mind.

When he wasn’t whispering to himself, he was spitting tobacco juice into an empty fruit cocktail can he’d dug out of the kitchen. He’d carry on in a whisper for a while, staring out the window, and then he’d peel his lips back from his teeth and—ping— spit into the can. Over and over he did that, and while watching a man spit tobacco was far more loathsome than fascinating, she found herself enthralled by it. Because, as far as she could tell, there was no tobacco in his mouth.

He’d never put any in his mouth, at least, and though she’d studied him hard, she could see no bulge in his cheek or lower lip. When he spoke, to her or to himself, he didn’t seem to be talking around anything either. Yet his supply of amber-colored spittle never seemed to run dry, and she could smell the tobacco, dusky and cloying, from where she sat.

Bizarre. But at least he was distracted from her. Whatever he had planned for Eric Shaw couldn’t be good, though she didn’t know what she could do to prevent it, or if she even should try. Perhaps it was best to wait him out. Maybe he’d leave eventually, or maybe he’d burn himself out and fall asleep. If he did that, she could get to the R. L. Drake. He’d felt awful good about himself for cutting the phone line, but he hadn’t counted on her having a shortwave. All she needed was the opportunity, but getting down those steep stairs into the cellar wasn’t something she could do quickly. Quietly, maybe, but not quickly.