So Cold the River (2010) (3 page)

“My gifts.”

She hesitated, the first time she’d shown anything but total self-assurance, and then said, “You know, taking things that
are gone and bringing them back to life.”

Eric said, “I’d like to interview him. Something of this length, interviews will be important.”

She nodded, but the smile was fading. “I understand that, but I don’t know how much you’ll get. He’s ninety-five and in very
poor health. Conversations are difficult.”

“Sometimes one sentence is enough to make a hell of a difference. If it’s the right words, the right sound… it can have an
impact.”

“Then I’ll arrange a time for you to visit. I also know that you like to have photos and family artifacts. I already brought
something for you.”

She reached into her purse and withdrew a glass bottle, maybe eleven inches tall. Her purse had been resting in the sunlight,
but the bottle was surprisingly cold when she passed it into his hand. Light green glass, with etching across it that said
Pluto Water, America’s Physic.

“Look at the bottom,” Alyssa Bradford said.

He turned the bottle over and found another etching, this one the image of a jaunty devil with horns, forked tail, and a sword
in his belt. One hand was raised, as if in a wave. The word
Pluto
was etched beneath the figure.

“What is it?”

“Mineral water. That’s what made the town famous, and what built the hotels and brought people in from all over the world.”

There was a stopper held in place with a wire press-down, and below it the bottle was filled with a cloudy liquid the color
of sandstone.

“They drank this stuff?” Eric said.

“Drank it out of the bottles, yes, but they also had spas, springs you’d sit in that would supposedly cure physical ailments.
That was the big deal at the resorts. People would come from all over the world to visit those springs for the healing effects.”

Eric was running his thumb over that etched figure on the base, watching sediment rise and settle inside the glass with his
motions.

“Isn’t it just a gorgeous bottle?” Alyssa Bradford said. “It’s the one thing I found that had something to do with his hometown.
I think it’s fantastic that he kept it all these years. That bottle is about eighty years old. Maybe more.”

“What’s with the devil?”

“He’s Pluto. It’s the Roman version of Hades. God of the underworld.”

“Seems like a strange mascot for a company to choose.”

“Well, the mineral water came from underground springs. I suppose that inspired them. Anyhow, he’s a happy-looking devil,
isn’t he?”

He was that. Cheerful, welcoming. That water inside the bottle, though, was a different story. Something about its odd color
and those fine, grainy flakes of sediment turned Eric’s stomach, and he set the bottle on the table and slid it back to her.

“No, you can keep it for now,” she said. “I’d like you to take it
with you. See if you can find someone who can give an accurate date for it.”

He didn’t want the bottle at all, but he accepted it when she pushed it across the table, wrapped his hand around it and felt
that unnatural penetrating cold from within.

“What do you have in that purse, dry ice?”

“It always feels that way, actually,” she said. “I don’t understand why. Something about the mineral content? Or maybe that
old glass.”

He put the bottle in his briefcase and refilled his coffee while she wrote him a five-thousand-dollar check, keeping his palm
pressed against the warm side of the mug until she’d signed it and torn it free and handed it to him.

I
T WAS THE SORT
of story that begged for telling, and with the addition of those wild, extravagant hotels in so rural a place, it was a story
with a strong visual component. Perfect for film. Maybe this could go somewhere beyond the Bradfords. Maybe, if he did it
right, this could open some doors that had swung shut in his face out in L.A.

Before even setting foot in the town, Eric had swiftly developed a sort of possessive fear about the place, a worry that somebody
else was going to get there first. The stories he’d found in his first pass of research were countless. Rich and poor, gangsters
and politicians, the explosion and then death of the passenger trains, Prohibition and the effects of the stock-market collapse—all
of it had swirled through these bizarre little towns. They were a microcosm, really, a story of America. It was a chance to
do something real again.

Alyssa Bradford called him three days after their meeting to
say he could check into the West Baden Springs Hotel on the first Friday of May. That was just one week away, and she’d arranged
for him to have his first—maybe his only, depending on the man’s health—chance to talk with Campbell Bradford on the Thursday
prior. Alyssa warned that the old man was not well, might not be able to communicate. Eric said he still wanted to give it
a shot.

Claire called that night, and when he saw her number on the caller ID, he felt flushed with relief and gratitude—it had been
a week since they’d spoken, and each day was drawing longer and harder on him. Then she said, “I was just calling to check
on you,” and that was all it took to erase the positive feelings. Calling to check on him? Like he was suicidal or something
now that they weren’t together, incapable of maintaining a life without her in it?

He made a few cutting remarks, threw in one jab about her father, and guided her toward an early hang-up like a dog herding
cattle toward an open gate. When she invited him to give her a call in a few days, he said not to count on it.

“I’m headed out of town for a while,” he said. “Few weeks, maybe a month.”

“Spontaneous vacation?” she said after a beat of silence.

“Work.”

“And where are you going?”

“Indiana,” he said, biting off the word with pain.

“How exotic.”

“It’s a hell of a story. Believe it or not, those don’t always come from Maui or Manhattan.”

“I’m just kidding. Tell me about the story.”

“Maybe later. I’ve got a lot to do, Claire.”

“Okay.” Her voice had some sorrow in it, and that pleased him. “Well, I hope it goes great for you, whatever it is.”

He swung a closed fist toward the wall, pulled the punch at the last minute, and landed it with a soft thump, no real pain.
Damn her
hopes
for him, her well wishes, and her blessings.

“I’m sure that it will,” he said. “I’ve got a good feeling about it. Things just seem to be looking up for me lately.”

That was a cruel parting line, and he knew from her frigid
Good-bye, Eric,
and the click of the breaking connection that it had scored a direct hit. He turned off his phone and went to the kitchen
and poured himself two fingers of Scotch.
No, hell with it, pour four.
He dropped an ice cube into that—
Water the drink down a touch, and the quantity becomes no problem at all, right?
—and then went into the living room and began scanning through the DVD collection, looking for something to take his thoughts
away. Something by one of his old favorites, Huston or Peckinpah, maybe. Yes, Peckinpah. Make it bloody and loud. That seemed
right tonight.

He’d watched
Straw Dogs
and had another Scotch and tried without success to sleep before he found himself back at the computer, researching again.
He’d found there were matches for the correct Campbell Bradford—though it appeared in most formal circumstances he referred
to himself as C. L. Bradford—but all of them had to do with his philanthropy. For a man of such great wealth, he’d lived a
remarkably quiet existence. Eric couldn’t find so much as a short bio paragraph on the Web, just the name on list after list
of contributors for various causes. His donations spanned a wide spectrum, too wide to tell Eric much about the man, but it
was obvious he was partial to liberal politics and a supporter of the arts, particularly music. He’d made sizable donations
to various community orchestras, but Eric noted that they seemed to be small or rural groups, with names like Hendricks
County Philharmonic, rather than the prestigious symphonies. Perhaps he assumed—correctly, no doubt—that the large ones were
better funded.

After cycling through pages of results without finding anything of interest, Eric went back and ran a search for Campbell
along with the words “West Baden” and got nothing. He tried again with “French Lick” and was surprised to find three results.
A closer look revealed all three were basically the same thing—a request for information on Campbell and a handful of others
posted by an Indiana University graduate student named Kellen Cage. The student explained that he was researching the area’s
history for a thesis and was hoping for any information about a handful of people—particularly, he’d written, Campbell Bradford
and Shadrach Hunter. The latter name meant nothing to Eric. There was an e-mail address listed, though, so Eric went ahead
and dropped him a note. If the kid was intrigued by Campbell, that meant he’d heard some stories already, which put him well
ahead of Eric. And, for that matter, Campbell’s family.

After exhausting the minimal possibilities for Campbell, he turned to searching for Pluto Water and soon found some old ads
that he’d have to include in the film. They were priceless. Pluto Water cured damn near everything, it seemed. Alcoholism,
asthma, obesity, paralysis, pimples, hives, influenza, insomnia, malaria, and venereal disease all made the list. It turned
out the product was nothing more than a laxative, but even after that was known, the company still made millions bottling
and selling it with the charming slogan
When nature won’t, Pluto will.

The ads themselves were amazing things, too, perfect images of a time and place and people. Women in flowing gowns, men in
suits, and that silly smiling devil always present. Eric was particularly taken with one of a man standing in front of a basin
sink and mirror. In the illustration he looked back at himself in
what appeared to be true and total horror, and the text beside his head read,
What’s wrong with me?

He got to his feet, planning on another Scotch but then thought better of it. Maybe because the room reeled a little around
him, maybe because he’d just seen the word
alcoholism
on those lists. Didn’t want to dance too close to that partner, no.

But he was on his feet, and he felt like he was in search of something.

The Pluto Water. He went into the living room and found his briefcase and opened it, wrapped his hand around the bottle. Still
cold. Still
oddly
cold, in fact. How could water sit in a room for so long and never absorb its temperature? He hadn’t read anything about
that quality in his research.

“Curer of ills,” he said, running his thumb over the etchings. The water looked hideous, but millions of bottles had been
consumed over the years. Had to be safe. Mineral water didn’t go bad, did it? Then again, wouldn’t
anything
go bad after so long?

Only one way to find out, but of course he couldn’t do that.

Why not?

For one thing, the water could be tainted, could poison his ass, leave him dead on the living room floor from one tiny taste.

You know that won’t happen. That water is natural, came out of a spring, not a chemistry set.

But there were other reasons, those of the courteous, professional sort, not to crack into an artifact the old man had for
some reason left untouched all these years.

It has a cap. You open it, take a sip, put the damn cap back on. Who’s to know?

He felt like a young boy standing in front of the liquor cabinet, pondering his first taste of the sauce. Drink some of it
down, then fill it up with water—maybe apple juice for color—and they’ll never know. What the hell was his problem? It was
a
bottle of old mineral water. Why did he want to know what it tasted like? It tasted, no doubt, like shit.

Scared of it. For some reason, you’re
scared
of it, you pussy.

It was true, he realized as he stood there staring at the bottle, it was true and it was pathetic, and there was only one
way to slap that fear down. He forced the old wires up and loosened the stopper. It was a terrible thing to do—he’d probably
just cut the bottle’s value in half by opening it, and it wasn’t even his bottle—but after the whiskeys and the bad conversation
with Claire and the realization that for some inexplicable reason he was frightened of this bottle, he no longer cared about
that. He just wanted a taste.

There was a sulfuric smell to the water, and he felt mildly repulsed as he lifted the bottle to take a drink. He was almost
unable to bear the smell of the stuff; how had so many people actually ingested it?

The bottle hit his lips and tilted and a splash of the contents sloshed over the rim and into his mouth and found his throat.

And Eric gagged.

Dropped to his knees and spat the foulness onto the carpet, the taste more corrupt than anything he’d ever experienced, a
taste of rot, of death.

He set the bottle on the floor, spat onto the carpet again as he took a shuddering breath through his nose, and then felt
another gag coming on and knew this time it wasn’t going to be so clean, made it halfway into the bathroom before vomiting
violently onto the floor. The whiskey scorched through his throat and burned his nostrils and he fought his way to the toilet
and hung on to the bowl and emptied again, felt his temples throb and saw his vision go cloudy with tears from the force of
it, the terrible exertion.

The next bout was worse, an awful wrenching from deep in
his stomach, like somebody twisting a wet towel until the fibers screamed with strain. When he finished, he was facedown on
the floor, the tile cold on his cheek.

It was an hour before he left the bathroom. An hour before he felt strong enough to stand. He got out the mop and a bucket
and some disinfectant spray and went to work. When the bathroom was clean, he returned to the living room, avoiding the clock
that announced it was four in the morning, long past the hour that decent people had found their beds, and picked up the Pluto
bottle. The smell rose again, and he clenched his teeth as he fastened the cap, holding his breath until the bottle was in
his briefcase.