So Cold the River (2010) by Michael Koryta Read Free Book Online Page B

away. Then he let off the trigger, turned to Amos departing in the stupid little cart, and sent
     a thick wad of spit in his direction. Didn’t come close, but it was the gesture that counted.
    It was too damn hot for May. The skin on Josiah’s arms and the back of his neck had gone dark brown by mid-April, and now
     he could feel the sweat soaking through his shirt and holding his hair to his neck in damp tangles. Had been a time, not all
     that long ago, that he’d been griping about the cold. Now he wished fall would hustle along.
    He worked all the way down the brick drive to the stone arches and the old building beside them that had once been a bank.
     Then he crossed to the other side and paused before starting his return trip, looking up at the length of the drive at the
     work yet to be done. Looking up at that damned hotel.
    Oh, he’d liked it at one time. Had been excited, same as everybody, when word came down that the place was going to be restored,
     that the casino was on its way. Jobs aplenty, that was the word. Well, he had his job now. Had his callused hands and sunburn.
     Some fortune.
    The resorts were supposed to be a big deal for the locals.Provide a—what was the word that politician had said?—a
boon,
that was it. A boon. Shit.
    Thing these damn hotels provided, so far as Josiah was concerned, was torment. Rich folks coming in again, the way they had
     so long ago, and all of a sudden you were more aware of your place in the world. More aware of your fifteen-year-old Ford
     pickup when it was idling next to a Mercedes with Massachusetts plates, waiting for a green light. More aware of the Keystone
     Ice you bought in thirty-packs when you saw somebody in an Armani suit throw down a twenty for a Grey Goose martini and then
     wave off the change.
    They said all this was going to boost the local economy, and they’d been right. Josiah made eight thousand dollars more per
     year now than he had before the restorations began. But he did it trimming weeds in front of people who made eighty grand
     more than that. Eight hundred grand more than that. Worse than the money was the anonymity—people coming and going right past
     you all day and never giving you so much as a blink. Wasn’t that they disrespected you outright; they didn’t even realize
     you were there.
    It vexed him. Had almost from the day the hotel doors opened and he saw all that gold and glitter, from the first time he’d
     walked through the casino with his hand wrapped tight around the ten-dollar bill that was all he could afford to gamble with.
     Because Josiah Bradford’s family had been in this valley for generations, and there was a time, back when the resorts were
     flourishing in the Prohibition days, when they were powerful. Noticed and known. Somehow, seeing the place come back to life
     while he held a weed eater in his hands felt beyond wrong—felt intolerable.
    Why, wasn’t but a month ago that some black kid from IU came to Josiah’s home in a damned Porsche Cayenne, justdripping money, and said he wanted to talk about Josiah’s great-grandfather, Campbell, the man who’d controlled this valley
     once. Granted, he’d run off and left his family, taking with him every dime they had—and according to the stories, plenty
     of dimes they didn’t have, too—but in his time he’d been as powerful as anyone who ever walked through that damn rotunda.
     A behind-the-scenes sort of influence, the kind you built with brass knuckles and brass balls, the only kind Josiah’d ever
     respected. Campbell’s legacy was an infamous one, but Josiah had always felt a strange kind of pride in him anyhow. Then the
     black kid showed up, some rich student, wanting to talk about the tales, put his own version of the Bradford family history
     down on paper. Josiah threw him the hell out of his house and hadn’t heard from him since, but the car was around often enough,
     a 450-horse motor in a frigging SUV, dumbest thing Josiah had