“Spring in Vermont,” said Heather, stopping beside him, “for about a half-hour.”
“Damn,” Frank exhaled. “This would be a perfect day to ski the trails up on Wild.”
“Not after all that rain last night.”
“Did it rain again? I didn’t hear it.”
“All night long, thunder and lightning, the works.” Heather stepped back into the living room while Eli carried his snowshoes to the car. Frank noticed that the snow had sunk about six inches since yesterday, and that the snowshoe tracks were becoming puddles. Water trickled through the driveway ruts.
Heather came back and handed Frank a metal rod painted with some kind of flower design, a jaunty handle at one end.
“What’s this?” he said, aghast, holding it away from his body.
“A cane. It was with your stuff from the hospital.”
“Frank MacFarland, use a cane?” He propped it against the wall beside the door, and proceeded to walk down the three steps of the porch. Okay, so he had to limp, but he wasn’t feeble. And he didn’t want to look like an old codger in front of Mona, who was probably ten years younger than he.
Heather shrugged and went to the driver’s side of the car. Eli was already in the back seat. Frank stepped carefully along the path. Luckily, he’d shoveled it out last night, otherwise he’d be in big trouble now. He eased himself into the passenger seat of the Subaru station wagon. What was it with these Vermonters and Subarus? Every other car he saw in Vermont was a Subaru station wagon. Heather turned the key, the motor hummed, and they started down his rutted driveway.
On Wild Mountain Road, the car picked up speed, but then abruptly slowed as Heather tried to ease over a pothole. A pain shot through Frank’s chest. “Ooh,” he moaned.
“Sorry, Frank, but I can’t go much slower.”
He opened the window and breathed in the mountain air, washed clean by the rain and the sun in a cobalt sky.
“Look at the river!” Eli shouted. The Abanoosic River had transformed itself again, and now a flotilla of ice chunks rushed along on the current, colliding into one another and forming white piles that jammed into branches or rocks. A roaring sound grew louder as they came within sight of the covered bridge.
“The river’s about four feet higher than yesterday,” Heather shouted above the roar. “But what’s that firetruck doing there?”
The Wild Mountain firetruck, surrounded by people, was parked twenty yards ahead of them, and directly across the river sat another firetruck, smaller and a paler shade of red, also with people milling about. A burst of panic seared Frank’s gut, and he flashed back to yesterday. Two firetrucks, roaring water, stranded on the ice.
On the road in front of them, the fire chief, in a yellow slicker and high rubber boots, stood and shouted through a bullhorn. He flagged down the car and walked toward them. Heather pulled over and rolled down the window. “What’s going on, Cappy?”
Cappy Gold leaned over and peered into the car with dark, intense eyes. “You can’t cross the bridge.” His grizzled hair and ruddy skin brought the smell of outdoor exertion and tobacco into the car, and a tiny red jewel glittered in one ear. He looked at Frank. “How ya doin’, buddy?”
“A little sore,” Frank said. “And thanks for yesterday.”
“Part of my job.”
“But Cappy,” Heather said, “why can’t we go across? We have to get to Mona’s.”
“You’ll have to go to West Paris now to get across.”
“But that’s twenty miles!”
“One of those ice jams rammed into the bridge. Almost knocked it off the pilings. There’s another one, a bigger one, upstream, and if the river rises any more, it’s coming this way, too. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“Mom!” Eli exclaimed. “Let’s get out and see!”
“Eli, wait.” Heather slumped over the steering wheel. “My God, the bridge,” she moaned. “That bridge has been there since 1875. If it goes down, Mona will never recover.”
Frank closed his eyes and leaned back on the headrest. If only he could have gotten in there to help. Like that time in Montana, when the hikers fell into a crevice and they had to lower the rope ladder from the helicopter: Frank MacFarland at the controls, steady and strong as steel. If he had a copter now, he could hover over the river and spray some chemical that would dissolve the ice so the water would flow harmlessly under the bridge and away. He imagined Mona, her blue eyes like sparkling pools, gazing up at him, grateful, adoring. His head lolled to the side as the vision flickered into a dream.
A crashing noise, louder than the din of the roaring water, startled him awake. Heather and Eli were gone.
Ahead, people scurried around the firetruck, and a few men stood on top of it, pulling on a huge chain-link contraption. Frank opened the door and stepped out into the sunshine and commotion. Eli and a few other children around his age stood in a subdued group watching the river.
“Hey, kids,” he called, “what’s happening?”
“Nobody will tell us,” Eli said. His head hung down, and he kicked a stone in the road. “We have to stay back here or go home, Chief Gold says.”
From there to the bridge, the riverbed was almost motionless, the ice and snow a still mass jammed up against the bridge as the water from upstream poured on top of it. People wandered back and forth like refugees, lost and suspended in time. Frank scanned the crowd. Where was Mona? Heather, in a silver parka over her glittering red skirt, huddled with a bearded young man and a woman holding a thermos. About ten people were gathered beside the truck, and another group near the bridge. A sleek young man was talking to Cappy and taking notes, while a young woman in a bright pink parka directed a huge camera at them. Good. The media would have forgotten about Frank MacFarland by this time.
But where was Mona? Across the river, mist rose from the snow-covered ice. There. She was standing on the bed of the firetruck, pointing and gesturing to a man pulling on the huge chain. The chain contraption extended around the far side of the bridge and across the river to the other truck. “What the hell are they doing with that chain?” he said aloud, though no one was close enough to hear him. “Trying to hold up the bridge? How insane.”
Mona looked his way, and he raised a hand and waved, but she didn’t see him, and disappeared as the mist spread and swelled. Then the mist dissolved, and there she was…then she vanished again, like a bird flying through fog.
“Too right, Buddy.” The voice came from behind him, a phantom out of the fog: a tall man with a black beard and camouflage army jacket, a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder. He stared at Frank with sharp blue eyes and fingered the rifle. What was this guy doing with a rifle in March? Wasn’t hunting season in November?
The guy turned toward the bridge. “Those clowns don’t know what they’re doing,” he said with a sardonic smile, his tone of voice a little too adamant for casual conversation with a stranger.
“Yeah,” Frank agreed hesitantly. A knife-like pain shot up his leg from his ankle. “Do you live in town?” he asked, instinctively steering away from a provocative subject.
“No way.” The guy laughed bitterly. “Not in Vermont,” he said, almost spitting out the word Vermont. “I believe in freedom.” He stroked his gun handle and cupped the butt, apparently a habitual action.
Intrigued in spite of his pain, Frank asked, “You don’t think Vermont is free?”
“No, man, I’m into real freedom. Ever hear of the Free State movement?”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“We’re talking about people who really want to live free, like the Constitution says, and not let the government take away our hard-earned money. We’ve done the research, and found that New Hampshire is the best bet. No income tax—a place where we can test out our principles.”
“Like not paying property taxes?” Frank asked.
“Yup.” The guy smiled, not catching the irony in Frank’s tone, and obviously more relaxed now that he was o
n familiar ground. “We’re moving to New Hampshire.”
“So, what brings you to Vermont now?” Frank asked.
The man’s face darkened, and he stared across the river as his grip tightened on the gun. “It’s about a woman.”
Frank almost laughed, but checked himself in time. Who was this cowboy? Though he was curious, his ribs were hurting with every breath now. “I’ve got to go,” he said, and turned toward Heather.
“Okay, but if you’re interested in being a Free Stater, give me a call,” the guy said cheerfully, pulling a business card out of his pocket and handing it to Frank, who stuck it into his pocket and hobbled over to Heather. She was talking intently with a young man and sipping from a steaming coffee cup. She looked up, frowning. “Frank, I’ll take you home,” she said, reading his mind.
In the cabin, Frank went straight to the bed table and popped another two Percoset with a glass of water. Then to the kitchen alcove, where he took out a bagel, heated up the parsnip soup, sat down, and dipped in his spoon. The soup was thick and white and garlicky with flecks of orange carrots, creamy and light and tangy. It was, he decided, the best soup he’d ever eaten.
6
“HI, I’M JAKE PEREZ, Burlington Free Press,” the young man said, grinning and holding out his hand from across the counter. Tall, thin, and dressed in a sleek gray parka, he was the same guy who’d interviewed Cappy on TV.
Mona flicked her silver braid behind her, pulled down her red plaid shirt, and rang up a bottle of wine, a bag of onions, and a container of cottage cheese. “Hi.” She shook his hand.
Sunlight streamed in through the dusty window and the shelves around it were stacked with salad dressing and salsa. The room smelled of wet parkas and chicken noodle soup from the deli at the back of the store. People were milling around, opening and closing the door, and the floor was splattered with dirty puddles from their boots. Normally, Mona would have smiled and kidded around with this cute guy, as she did with all the customers; but today, she needed to keep herself close, to shore herself up. She was trying not to glance out the window every five seconds at the two crews standing on either side of the bridge, the engineers from the Cold Regions Research Lab, Cappy officiating, and half the town hanging out and watching. She gave change to Bea Vargas, a tiny white-haired woman who packed her wine, onions, and cottage cheese into her string bag.
Jake Perez pushed back a lock of curly brown hair, took a pen from behind his ear, and held it over his notepad. “They say the covered bridge is about to go down,” he said with a charming, oblivious smile, almost licking his lips with pleasure.
A sudden silence enveloped the people standing in line, and two women standing at the window turned around to look as Mona picked up a used napkin and some register receipts, then bent down to put them in the trashcan.
“And I hear they call you the Bridge Lady,” he said, almost laughing. More fun for this cad. “What does that mean?”
Mona winced.
“Mona knows everything about that bridge,” Bea Vargas said, breaking the silence. Her Hungarian accent seemed to lend her an air of authority. “The Vermont Historical Society called her book one of the best local histories.” She raised her eyebrows, looked at Mona, took her string bag of groceries, and slowly walked to the door. Mona knew not to ask her if she needed help. Bea had been coming to the store every Thursday since Mona had taken over—and, she’d told her, since 1956, when she and her husband had first started coming to their lake house. She ate nothing but vegetables and fruit, walked on the lake path every day (with snowshoes, if there was snow), and claimed that she’d never been sick. It was true that the FAST Squad had never been called to her house. Bea opened the door, walked out, and closed it behind her with meticulous grace.
Jake looked at the people gathered in a little circle around Mona and smiled affably. “I’d like to see that book.”
She tensed again and twirled the end of her braid round and round. Jake stood, relaxed, as if he was pleased to be here and had all the time in the world. Well, maybe she should have been flattered that the newspapers were interested in her booklet, A Vermont Covered Bridge. She was proud of it, but in Vermont, you didn’t blow your own horn. “It’s just a pamphlet,” she said. “But I’m out of them at the moment.”
“So, when was the bridge built?”
“Eighteen seventy-five.” Now she was on less shaky ground. “It was built by Sanford Granger, who designed and built quite a few of the covered bridges in that era. My great-great grandfather, Luc Cavalier, worked on this one.” Her dad had barely mentioned his own father, much less this grandfather—but when she’d found out about his work building the bridge, she’d had a jolt of recognition, as if her genetic inheritance had skipped a few generations and she had more in common with Luc than any of her present-day family. “There are fewer than a hundred covered bridges still left in Vermont, and less than twenty where they used this plank-lattice style.”
“What’s plank lattice?”
“All handmade, and a very sturdy construction.”
“And it has lasted,” Jake said with a dramatic hush in his voice, “for over a hundred years.”
“Well, back in the 1980s, they had to repair some of the trusses—but it has lasted, yes.”
Jake was writing everything down on his pad. He took a phone out of his pocket, tapped it with his finger, then held it up to his ear.
“That thing won’t work in here,” Leo Bailey declared, stroking his white goatee. He had been standing beside the window and listening to the conversation. “You have to go up the hill.” Leo pointed to the hill behind the store. “But right now, you’d need a good pair of snowshoes for that.”
“There’s a pay phone outside,” Mona said. But Jake shrugged, put his phone back into his pocket, and pulled out his pen again.
Roz Allingworth, a rounded, middle-aged woman with a spiky blonde crewcut, stood at the counter, holding a paper cup of cappuccino and licking the foam from the top. She cleared her throat. “The ice has already knocked down some trees, and our electricity has been out all night,” she said. “I hear it could last another couple of days.” She smiled, as though losing your electricity were a most satisfying event.
“Roz is chairman of the select board,” said Leo.
“But we’re more concerned about the bridge, at this point,” she said, forcing her face into a frown as if she’d just remembered that the select board chair should be concerned about the worst disaster the town could ever have. Did Roz really care about the bridge? She was Mona’s friend—in fact, had been her best friend in high school—but sometimes Mona questioned her priorities.
Jake stepped up to Roz. “Could I ask you a few questions?” he asked with a captivating smile. Roz beamed, and they moved to the other side of the store beside the dairy cooler as Mona breathed a sigh of relief.
The store was busier than it had been since Christmas, and the Sunday after-church crowd hadn’t even come in yet. Locals were stocking up on milk, eggs, bread, candles, matches, and flashlight batteries, and others, from who knows where, were cleaning out the soup and sandwiches as fast as Sierra, the teenager who worked the deli, could make them. Mona had to admit, it did mean more business—but the truth was, she was really happier with less business. Even though she didn’t earn as much here as she had in Rutland, she knew almost all her customers, and liked hearing about their lives.
Leo turned back to the sunny window and stared outside. “Big crowd out there,” he proclaimed. “Both sides of the river. Looks like the whole fire crew plus the FAST squad.” Leo, usually “conservative,” as he liked to say, which meant he didn’t venture any opinion that might be controversial, was now more animated than she’d ever seen him—as if he, too, were enjoying the festive atmosphere that had sprung up around this crisis. Of course, Leo’s income didn’t depend on people coming into the store, because neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night nor bridges falling down were going to stay the U.S. government f
rom paying Leo a good salary plus benefits. “But the temperature has dropped again,” he said, glancing at Mona, “so maybe it’ll slow down the flooding, and the ice will stay put for a while.”
She turned to ring up another customer, a mousy-haired woman in a green coat carrying a paper-wrapped sandwich, a diet Pepsi, and a bunch of bananas she had just plucked off the hanging chain. Maybe it was silly, but Mona loved this dangling chain of bananas. It reminded her of her week in Jamaica, and the beachside hut where a man in a straw hat had dispensed tropical fruit drinks to the strains of Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” bubbling through the warm coconut air.
She smiled broadly at the woman, who looked startled, but smiled back and placed her items on the counter.
What happened in the next few moments came quickly, but for months afterward, Mona would look back on it in her mind’s eye, seeing each detail in sharp focus.
The woman fumbled in her big leather purse. As Mona picked up the soda to scan it, a booming sound rumbled through the store, and the building trembled as if a freight train had just rammed into it.
Heather Brae burst through the door, red hair swirling. “It hit!” she shouted. Everyone in the store rushed outside and lined up on the porch. Mona arrived last, joining the line of dumbfounded people staring down at the scene below.
Two groups of people, one on each side of the river, stood motionless, silent. A boulder of ice was jammed up against the bridge, and the bridge bed was caved in. A god-awful wrenching and cracking rent the air—and then, in slow motion, like an old woman falling into bed with a sigh, the Wild Mountain bridge surrendered, buckling and tumbling over onto the frozen river.
A shout arose. “No!”
“Oh, God.” Heather sobbed.
Roz had whipped out her camera. There were sounds of other cameras clicking, and Jake was filming with his cell phone.
“It’s gone,” Leo murmured and put his arm around Mona.
Wild Mountain Page 4
