Where the River Ends by Charles Martin Read Free Book Online Page A

land-speed records, but I’ve known the runner’s high.
    Usually, when I clocked out at work, I’d grab a tea bag or two, either Constant Comment or Earl Grey—kind of like you do when you’re checking out of a hotel and you grab the individual bottles of soap and conditioner. You’ve got a hundred at home, but for some reason, you take two more because you never know when you might actually use it. In my case, the caffeine helped fend off the hunger. The restaurant was pretty good about turning a blind eye when it came to eating leftovers once the kitchen had closed.
    One night I clocked out and then sucked down a bowl of French onion soup, some clam chowder, a few chicken strips and an entire loaf of French bread. I was full for the first time in a few days so I ambled out onto King Street and, for reasons I cannot to this day make sense of, turned hard left onto Market, en route to Waterfront Park. It was a clear night, or morning, and I wanted to smell the water and stare out over Fort Sumter.
    I strolled along, angry over my tips, complaining about my inability to sell anything even remotely resembling art and sick and tired of Chinese noodles. In truth, I was having a pity-party—and those are always better alone. All I was missing was a bottle, but I couldn’t afford one.
    I reached the park, and strolled around the fountain to one of four granite platforms placed along the waterfront. Their bases were constructed with the idea that statues would be placed on them in the future. At the moment, they looked like miniature helicopter landing pads, three feet off the ground and half surrounded in semicircle walls of granite. The locals called them echo chambers, because if you stood in the center and spoke exactly at twelve o’clock you could hear your own echo. Quite loudly, actually.
    I hopped up on the base, whispered and heard something clank against metal, then a muffled scream followed by a painful grunt. I looked up, saw nothing and then looked again. Along the walkway, I saw the outline of a man’s back. He was leaning over something or someone and was raising his hand as if to hit them. I’m no hero and there’s no
S
on my chest, but next thing I knew I found myself running across the grass. I glided off the granite wall, sprung myself airborne and caught the man in the chest. He was enormous. Broad-shouldered, as thick as he was wide, bearded and reeking like the Dumpster outside the hotel along with a pretty heavy dose of alcohol. My chest collided with his shoulder and I thought I’d just been hit by a Mack truck. The person beneath him scurried off to one side as he turned his attention to me. I stepped backward in between him and whoever he was beating. The perfume told me it was either a girl or a guy who wanted to be. I held out both hands. “Wait, sir—”
    He laughed, lunged like a cat, grabbed me by the throat, cut off my air and threw me backward like a rag doll. He looked like the guy in
The Green Mile,
only meaner. I hopped up, hands shaking like stop signs, heard somebody crying behind me, felt a hand shaking as it was pressed against my back, and then I smelled that smell again.
    I stuffed my hand in my pocket and pulled out $67 in one-dollar bills. His teeth shone white as his hand wrapped around the money. His other hand tightened around my throat. I reached into my back pocket and handed him my wallet, which held my license, student ID and two maxed-out credit cards. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. He palmed the wallet and stuffed it in his back pocket. Unfortunately, neither of those two had any effect on his grip on me or his advance on the girl. He pushed me—therefore us—back into one of the granite semicircles and backhanded me hard across the mouth. The world went squirrelly, and the streetlights hazed over then reappeared. When I could focus, I saw him back on top of her, one hand around her neck, the other up her shirt. This had gone from bad to worse, so I