by Jerry
“What?”
“It’s 2001.”
“Yeah, only the paper said it was 2000. We’re still a year off,” I said. “Do you remember the man with the syringe?”
Cindy shook her head no, and then kneeled down and started sorting through the gravel. She found a rusty nail, a silver lighter, a bicentennial quarter, and a piece of a Rubik’s cube. The red and green stickers were burnt around the edges.
“Remember? At the 7-11?”
“How is this helping?” Cindy asked. “Who cares what year it is anyway?”
“Maybe there was a war.”
“What do you mean?” Cindy asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe there was a nuclear war. Maybe we’re all dead.”
Cindy flipped the bicentennial quarter, it came up heads. She peeled off the green sticker from the piece of Rubik’s cube. “You’re dead the moment you start thinking like this. You’re dead the moment you break the routine. Dead. Deranged. Done.”
“A lot of people live without the routine. Lot’s of people are unmedicated.”
“Nonvoters,” Cindy said. “We’re nonvoters now.”
Cold Turkey Merry Go Round
That night we stayed in the office, hid in my cubicle. We drank instant soups out of paper cups and tried to distract each other with games like twenty questions and name that tune, but both of us kept thinking about pills.
Cindy and I were withdrawing again.
“When I was about five years old my father, my real father and not my Dad, took me to an amusement park,” Cindy said. “He wanted to ride the merry-go-round, but I didn’t want to.”
“Who sang that song about talking in your sleep?” I asked. “Was that the Romantics?”
Cindy didn’t answer, but turned her head away and grabbed a plastic wastebasket. She vomited up chunks of noodles, brown meat.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Oh Christ,” she said, wiping her mouth with her woolen sleeve. “I’m all rubbery. I can’t decide if I’m hot or cold.”
She was bright red, and hot to the touch. She’d sweat big circles around her armpits, right through her sweater.
“I’ll get you some water.”
“Why don’t we take a pill. Shouldn’t we just take a pill?” she asked.
“No.”
Cindy wiped her mouth, took another sip of cold soup, and started again. She fiddled with my solar calculator, turned it upside down and spelled out “BOOB” and “hEll.”
“I was terrified of the rides, all of them. I just stared at the different machines and cried,” she said.
“What?”
“When my Dad took me to the amusement park.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“But the worst one, the worst ride was the merry-go-round. There were these miniatures along the top of it, wooden figurines of Dutch girls that rotated back and forth as the ride turned, and I thought that the dolls were real. I convinced myself that they were the shrunken bodies of the children the merry-go-round didn’t like.”
The office was different; there was a dome-shaped light sitting on top of a swatch of red carpet where there had been a fax machine. And there were no computers anywhere.
“Listen to me,” Cindy said. She squeezed my hand and I sat back down, only realizing after the fact that I’d been about to leave.
“Listen,” she said. “It wasn’t so much that I thought I’d be turned into wood, it was more like I thought I was already up there,” Cindy said. “I imagined that I was already made of wood, that I was just a doll.”
I took another sip of soup, and burned my tongue. The soup was hot; it had cooled, but now it was steaming again.
“He, my dad, decided to ride by himself. He said that he was going to have fun, that he was going to show me that there was nothing to be afraid of,” Cindy said. “And I just knew that he would die, that he would freeze solid and the park people would have to find a spot for him up there, up with the Dutch girls in their wooden dresses. And I knew he wouldn’t really fit.”
“But he didn’t die. He didn’t die and everything was fine.”
“Didn’t he?” Cindy asks.
I didn’t say anything. I was too busy vomiting into the plastic wastebasket.
“I don’t remember what happened after that, it was a long time ago.”
“It wasn’t as long ago as you think,” I said.
Street Future
In the morning we decided to leave town. Cindy’s Yugo was parked in front of the high school, about two blocks away from my office.
A teenage boy, a punk kid wearing army pants and a pink muscle shirt, was sitting on her car. He was cross-legged on the trunk and smoking a cigarette when we arrived.
“Move it, kid,” I said.
“Who are you supposed to be, my Grandpa?”
“Just get down from there,” I said.
“You in the present?” he asked. “You need some future?”
“Come on, we’ve got to go,” I grabbed his arm and started to drag him off of the trunk. Cindy grabbed my wrist, and shook me loose from him.
“Wait,” she said, “he’s trying to help us out.”
“Listen to your lady. I’m not loitering, I’m talking business,” he said. He took another drag off his cigarette and then flicked it into the street.
“What kind of business?” I asked.
“You know that future everybody says won’t ever get here? Well, this is it.” He held out a joint, a vial of some pinkish crystals, and a few capsules.
“I don’t want any,” I said. I grabbed Cindy’s hand and tried to loosen her grip on my arm.
“Look at yourself; look at your lady. She’s hurting, needing. You two aren’t going anywhere without a fix.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re a voter, right? The year two thousand and all that?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said. “I guess.”
“You’ve been doing the wrong stuff, that’s all. They’ve got you hooked on all kinds of bullshit. Listen, I’m not selling their future,” he said. “I’ve got the year 2000 in this vial, the real 2000 with flying cars and Art Deco and robots. This is the shit,” he said.
“Flying cars?” I asked.
“And robots,” he said.
“How much is it?” Cindy asked. “How much do you want?”
On the Road
We’re like tourists. We stop at rest areas and roadside diners and take pictures of asphalt and urinals and neon signs that read “no vacancy.” Except now I can’t wait for the next exit ramp, I can’t keep driving anymore. I pull over at random, stop on the shoulder of I-5 and get out.
I lean inside the car and turn on the emergency blinkers.
“What are you doing?,” Cindy asks. “Somebody might stop for us.”
I lean back inside and turn off the blinker, but before I pull myself out again I flip on the radio. Boy George is singing “I’ll tumble 4 U,” and I spin the dial.
“Get the camera while you’re in there,” Cindy tells me.
I hand it over and Cindy takes a picture of the highway in front of us. I put my arm around her and pull her to me. I want to be as close to her as possible. I want to live happily ever after.
We get back in the car and just sit for a minute, unsure what to do next.
“Let’s smoke some more,” Cindy says. She holds up the vial and starts to unscrew the top.
“You sure?”
Cindy doesn’t reply, but pulls out a metal pipe, takes a hit, and then passes it over to me.
I watch pink smoke fill the front of the car, and then take a drag myself. With water in my eyes I decide to go again, to continue. I put the key in the ignition, listen to the engine turn over, and press down on the gas.
Cindy rolls down the passenger window and peers out, looking through the lens. “Smile,” she says to the flat landscape, the patches of brown weeds and barbed wire fencing.
The tires lift up from the road, and I watch the gas gau
ge transform into an altitude gauge. I take another hit off the pipe and lean back in the ultra conforming gelatin lined driver’s seat.
We float away, zip off towards the horizon, and Cindy presses down on the button of her instamatic, takes a snapshot of the ground as we lift away from it.
“Smile,” she says.
BRIDGE O’ DOOM
Ken Rand
The Union Pacific built the bridge in 1896 on its line from the Coyote Ridge coal mines up north to the mainline at Three Pines fifteen miles south. The bridge spanned Three Pines River where the footing was the most solid. A Pratt simple-span through-truss bridge, reinforced with a wooden-beam central pier. A hundred and twenty-two feet long, fourteen feet wide, fifty-two feet high from the pier footing to the span top. A hundred and three tons of steel girder.
It had no official name. UP just gave it a number that nobody remembered, but people called it the Strausser Bridge because it was on Strausser land. When the mines played out in 1910, UP sold the line to Hans Strausser, cheap.
He got the bridge intact, all deeded legal and proper.
Hans sold the rails during The Great War and used the ties for corral and fence. He kept the bridge up because it was a shortcut to his summer grazing land by the old mines.
It was a pretty bridge. Ansel Adams photographed the lower valley from the bridge in the spring of 1942 on his way back from shooting at Yellowstone. His photograph of the bridge from the west bank looking back toward the house, barn, and corrals became world famous.
Dale Strausser sat at the kitchen table finishing a cup of coffee just at sunup, getting ready for morning chores. Griddle-iron heat poured through the open door and window.
Miguel, Dale’s hired hand, came running across the yard yelling, raising a dusty rooster tail. The wiry old Mexican stood in the open kitchen door, panting, dancing from foot to foot like he had to pee, and jabbering in Spanish.
“Slow down,” Dale said. He stood and strode to the door, coffee mug in hand.
Miguel took a breath. “Something on the bridge, Dale. You got to see.”
“We got a bear or what?” Rocky barked out by the bridge.
Miguel’s answer came in high-speed Spanish again, and Dale caught enough, including “diablo” and “brujeria,” to know he’d better try to look serious. Miguel was a good hand.
Dale took a last swig of black brew, tossed the dregs and mug in the sink, and walked out into the yard, Miguel hovering, skinny arm pointing over Dale’s broad shoulder at the thing on the bridge.
“See?” Miguel’s voice cracked. He smelled like onion.
On the bridge stood a huge, square, black wall. Dale judged it measured fourteen feet wide and as tall. He knew the bridge’s dimensions, and the—thing—fit from side beam to side beam as if wedged in place under the queen post two-thirds of the way across.
If you take a boat across to the other bank and wade back this way a tad and look up, it disappears. That’s because you see it edge-on and it has no thickness. No thickness. The scientists said that’s impossible.
You can’t see it at all from the west side. It has only one dimension—what you see from where you are now. No edges, no side view, no backside. Impossible.
And the color. Solid black. It reflects no light. None. The scientists said it emits no radiation. Some thought it was a black hole.
Dale took a breath and approached the thing, alone. Miguel wouldn’t set foot on the bridge, nor Rocky. Dale stood in front of it, ten feet away. His hair stood on end, beard to crown. I’ve gotten used to it since, and I don’t have much hair left anyway, but back then, it was the most eerie thing I’d ever seen.
He picked up a rock and tossed it at the thing. The rock disappeared. It made no sound.
Dale grunted. He’d expected the rock would bounce off, or ripple like water or make a whoosh, gurgle, or sucking sound. Special effects. Something. Anything.
Nothing happened.
Miguel and Rocky had gone quiet. No wind rustled the rushes at the foot of the bridge or stirred the cottonwoods flanking the barn. No cows bawled in the field to the north like they did that time of day. Even the chickens were quiet.
Dale got an idea.
“Miguel, you got any string with you?”
He turned when Miguel didn’t answer. He’d gone. Rocky sat shivering.
Dale cursed, and fetched some bailing twine from the barn and tied it around a three-foot length of two-by-four and went back to the bridge. Five feet away, he threw the board through it—not at it—even then, I thought “through,” not “at.” He held the string. Didn’t hear a sound. He waited a few seconds and pulled on the string.
The string was cut where it had touched the wall. Till Dale pulled it back, it hung as if still attached to the board, but when he jerked on the string, it was like the wall cut the string and all Dale got was what he held, cut at the wall—by the wall. The board was gone.
Dale took out his jackknife and slid it blade first into the wall. It felt like slicing air. He shoved the blade in to the hilt and pulled it back out. Just hilt. No blade.
“Huh.” He pondered touching it but decided against.
He went back inside to think over another cup of coffee. Miguel had already made a new pot. They sat at the kitchen table, shoulders hunched, silent.
After finishing his cup, Dale rose and called Sheriff Dekker in Three Pines. Dekker said he’d come out, by and by.
Dale’s stoic demeanor cowed Miguel who settled down enough to go out and do some chores. While he did, Dale rigged a fence at the near end of the bridge with some loose chicken wire and hung a couple red rags.
Sheriff Dekker came out two hours later, took notes, took some pictures, tossed rocks through it, scratched his head, said he’d call the University at Laramie, and left.
Too soon, all hell broke lose. Media and scientists arrived as Dale washed lunch dishes. The first day got hectic. The next day got more so. The day after, worse.
Scientists tried all kinds of things. They brought all these fancy electronic gadgets out here, measuring, probing, testing, doing scientist stuff. They’d send something in, nothing came back. No radio signals, no TV signals, nothing.
It rained one day and it didn’t even get wet.
Dale couldn’t take a leak in private what with all the TV people around. He ended up on CNN, ABC, CBS, Fox. Larry King. Leno came out to do a show.
They began calling it “The Bridge.”
Dale couldn’t get much work done. Neighbors came and helped as best they could for a while.
Dale’s son Patrick came home from college before the first week. “I saw on TV, dad,” he said. “I figured you needed a hand.”
“Immigration busted Miguel,” Dale said. He made a poor show of scolding Patrick for dropping classes to come home—waste of a good mind and all that.
“What I’m learning in law school,” Patrick said, “it’ll be useful, especially if the government steps in.”
Which they did, the next day.
Dekker posted a deputy that first day to make sure the TV people and scientists stayed on the road, closed the gates and so on, but Dale soon got overwhelmed, what with helicopters and all. Dekker sent more deputies but it wasn’t enough. He welcomed the feds.
I sure as hell didn’t. Pardon the language, but the feds were a goddam pain in the ass.
“National security,” the boys with their aftershave and their mirror glasses and business suits said, eyeing Dale like he was a terrorist and stupid to boot. They set up a perimeter around the bridge and around the ranch. Soldiers, all over the place, chased off the media and a few scientists. Nobody in without permission. Patrick almost had to prove his citizenship to get back from the courthouse in Three Pines.
On the eighth day, three days after Patrick got home, the first person crossed. An accident.
It happened at sunup. Dale had planned to cut hay on his south pasture but he didn’t even get as far as the barn to fire up the tractor. A big Ar
my truck blocked the barn door.
He stalked across the yard to the bridge where a Marine colonel stood, looking busy and important.
“Are you the chief honcho in charge of screwing up my day?” Dale said, madder than a calf at branding. “I don’t got any rights anymore, not even property rights, huh?”
Sorry. Didn’t mean to get riled, but it still boils my beans after all these years the way the feds just took over.
The colonel just mumbled, wouldn’t even make eye contact, about “national security” and such bullshit. I held my ground. I stood nose to nose with this asswipe and told him he’d hear from my congressman and I’d sue the goddam Pentagon.
And so on. I’m as patriotic as the next guy, or was, but this had gone on far enough. He wouldn’t move the damn truck.
As Dale yelled at the officer, he glanced out on to the bridge—the Bridge—and saw a scientist, an engineer named Don Reynolds from Ames, Iowa, Dale later found out, trip over a box and fall backwards into—through—the Bridge.
Disappeared. Didn’t make a sound.
All hell broke loose. Panic. The media heard about it—they weren’t far off—and it became hot news.
The next day, public pressure forced Washington to let the media back in. The road soon got jammed all the way back to Three Pines with reporters, government types, and curiosity seekers. Dale’s fence got torn to hell and poachers killed a dozen head, some just left to rot in the field.
Patrick’s legal skills finally paid off. He got a court order forcing the intruders out. Dale didn’t understand it, didn’t try to, but it got the job done, even if it took a month. Cleared them off, every soldier, scientist, TV reporter, engineer, and shiny-shoed son-of-a-bitch killing Dale’s stock, trampling his garden, tearing down fence, destroying road, and making life hell.
They all hovered beyond the property line, watching through binoculars and telescopes, satellite dishes aimed at the sky, rigs parked up and down the road by the thousands.
It took longer to stop the helicopters from buzzing.
Two months later, as the first snow kissed Coyote Ridge to the north, Patrick’s college buddy Richard came.
Richard had a theory about the Bridge, why it was there.
