The One-Way Bridge

by Cathie Pelletier

  This was the third time Edna had driven over to the trailer park for a visit. Mama Sal had been predicting that Bertina would spend her time lying on her Florida furniture and doing absolutely nothing now that she’d been forced to come back home for some R and R. But as far as Edna could tell, there wasn’t much furniture to lie around on. During her first visit, she had been shocked to see in the living room nothing more than a ratty beanbag chair and a narrow sofa that looked more like an army cot. But that didn’t stop Bertina from putting on airs, even if she got those airs on credit. “The shipping company is late delivering my real furniture,” Bertina had declared six days earlier when she drove a rattling car up to Mama Sal’s door, two dark-skinned girls fighting in the backseat. “I got crystal lamps and maple coffee tables en route from Tampa as I speak.”

  There were no lights on inside the trailer except for the back room the girls shared as a bedroom, two sleeping bags sprawled on the linoleum floor.

  Edna went up the rickety steps and knocked on the door.

  “Come on in, it’s open.” Bertina’s voice.

  Edna stepped into darkness and closed the door behind her. Across the room, Bertina’s cigarette tip glowed orange.

  “Is that you, Bertie?” Edna asked. “Why’s it so dark in here?”

  She heard a quick snap and then the room was flooded with lamplight. Edna could see Bertina now, half-swallowed by the beanbag chair, an ashtray filled with cigarette butts at her feet. Her straight brown hair, usually shiny and stylish, was now pulled back into a limp braid. Bertina had taken after their father, petite, with brown eyes instead of dark blue. Edna was plumper, the way Roderick said he liked her, and tall like Mama Sal.

  “Come on over here,” Bertina said, that same excitement in her voice as those days when she’d brag about her high school dates, Edna still too young to think of boys. “I want you to see something.”

  Edna crossed the room and stood looking down at her sister.

  “Close your eyes,” said Bertina. When she stood, the beanbag chair sighed beneath her as it filled back out. She put both hands on Edna’s shoulders and turned her to face the wall. “I mean it, close your eyes and keep them closed.” Edna heard again the snap of a lamp switch.

  “Okay, open them,” said Bertina. Edna saw nothing but darkness.

  “Why’d you put the lamp out?” she asked. She was staring at a pitch-black wall of the tiniest and seediest trailer in the park. What was so spectacular about that?

  “Wait a sec and you’ll see,” Bertina whispered. And that’s when the wall in front of Edna came alive with dozens of sparkling dots, tiny pinpoints of light. What she saw was impressive. It was, and she’d have to admit it, an anomaly. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Edna could see that it was a long, narrow painting hanging in a frame. An electrical cord ran from behind it and down to an outlet below.

  “It’s Venice, Italy,” Bertina said. “I just got around to unpacking it.” She reached out and touched a fingertip to the velvet surface. Edna watched as the thing rippled, its watery canals shimmering in the dark. She could see now that there were many buildings hugging the canals, each one bursting forth with a yellow light of its own. “I bought it at a gift shop in Tampa,” Bertina added.

  “It’s interesting,” said Edna. “Sort of atypical.” She hoped Bertina would notice her use of the word.

  “I couldn’t leave Florida without bringing at least one piece of art with me,” Bertina said. She had developed what Edna could only assume was a Florida accent, dragging out the ends of her sentences far longer than any Mattagasher would. “See them long, narrow boats?” She placed her fingernail against a gondola that had been lit from bow to stern. “That’s what they use over there instead of cars.”

  The truth was that this electrical art really was unlike any Edna had seen. And art wasn’t the only thing Bertina had to brag about. On Edna’s first visit, she had been forced to look at a million photographs. There were shots of Bertina’s orange tree in her sunny backyard, every leaf, every bug, every inch of bark. Then came fuzzy images of Bertina’s in-ground swimming pool, which, along with the house and the backyard, she’d lost in the current divorce battle. Edna had even flipped through a dozen pictures of two peaked-nosed poodles, balls of hair around their ankles and rhinestone collars about their necks, poodles barking, running, sniffing, and, in one shot, even lifting their legs to pee on the orange tree.

  “It looks like Bangor to me,” Edna said. She hoped her voice held the disinterest she intended. “That looks like the mental institute where they kept poor Aunt Mildred.” She pointed at a building with two domes, a host of firefly lights twinkling sadly from behind its windows.

  “Aunt Mildred was bonkers,” Bertina said as she snapped the light back on. She pulled the plug on the painting, and Venice, without the power generated by American electricity, shut itself down for the night.

  ***

  When Edna got home a half hour later, she stood outside her house and stared up at the glittering stars. She thought again of Ward Hooper. Did he take up gliding as he planned to do, floating about the sky inside a wooden plane with no engine at all, no motor telling him what to do? A bluish flicker came from behind the living room window. Roderick and the boys would be watching television, as usual, Roderick stretched out on the sofa and the twins lying on the floor, on identical stomachs. She knew Roderick’s breath would smell of fresh smoke when she leaned down to wake him. Staring at the light that came from her own home, Edna thought of all those Italian houses with miniature bulbs in their windows. Venice. Of course she knew it wasn’t Bangor. And, of course, Aunt Mildred was bonkers. What had Roderick said, when the two of them had been forced by Mama Sal to take Aunt Mildred along to Bangor on their honeymoon, drop her off at the mental institute as if she was some kind of delivery package?

  All her lights are on, but no one’s home.

  3

  TUESDAY MORNING,

  AFTERNOON, AND EVENING

  Before she died, Emily often came with him when Harry drove up to his favorite spot on the mountain. But Emily Plunkett was now another casualty of time. Harry got out of his pickup and stood looking at the grassy road, barely noticeable, that wound through the trees. Another twenty years and not even this light trace of the old road would be left. It had begun as a horse and wagon trail leading to Mattagash Brook, where a sporadic gathering of houses and people had once thrived in the wilderness. It was beyond the brook itself that his grandparents had built a home and raised a family. That was Foster and Mathilda Fennelson, and their homestead once stood in the midst of pines and white birches. That was before the old couple was forced to give up a way of life that was quickly disappearing. “What if you fell, Mama, so far from a hospital?” he had heard his mother ask Mathilda. “Daddy, with your bad heart, you should live nearer a doctor,” she had said to Foster. So his grandparents had listened to the younger generation, had heeded the advice of those who no longer knew how to make soap by hand, how to shoe a horse, how to bury your own child in the family graveyard. His grandparents didn’t have the words to say, “But what if I need to walk to the spring for a drink of water?” or “With my good heart, I should be nearer the sound of the ravens each morning.” They were brought out of the woods and down to Mattagash. The rest of their lives, the important part, the part that made them human, stayed behind in the old house. In town, they bounced from son to daughter until Foster, feeling useless, gave up the ghost one autumn morning. Mathilda then disappeared into a room at the St. Leonard Nursing Home, another old bee in a graying honeycomb of tiny cubicles and sad faces. Harry visited her there before she died, but since she no longer knew him, he stopped the visits.

  Every time he went up on the mountain, Harry felt that deep loss of people and heritage. It was on the mountain that he often thought of Wallace McGee, the best soldier he’d ever known and now one of the many names on a long blac
k wall near the White House. A man should be able to leave war behind once he’s fought it and it’s over. But it wasn’t that easy. Civil War soldiers who couldn’t adjust well after the war were said to have soldier’s heart. In World War I, it was shell shock. In World War II and his father’s war, Korea, it was combat fatigue. It took Vietnam and its aftermath for it to slowly turn into what it still is, post-traumatic stress. Harry had come to prefer soldier’s heart. At least there was still something human left in it.

  He turned away from the old road. It always hurt him inside each time he found the remnants of it. It was a road that made him think too deep and too long when his mind went walking down it, like those dangerous trails and paths through the steamy jungles of Vietnam. Unlike the freshness of the Mattagash woods, the Mekong Delta was a world of thick, green plants, a planet of muck—a muck that made noises as you pulled your boots up out of it. Muck, muck, muck. In those parts of the country where the canopy was double and even triple, the enemy hid in the terrain. They blended into it like snakes and spiders until they became it. It was a war of camouflage and concealment, where even the lizards swore at American soldiers, the Fuck You lizards with their UckYou UckYou UckYou taunts coming out of the invisible night. Those were the things that Wally McGee liked to read about so he could teach his fellow soldiers. Wally and his books. Hey, Sarge, did you know that plant life in the jungle is in constant competition for sunlight? That’s why it grows in layers and forms canopies in the first place. Harry had seen it for what it was. Everything in the jungle wants to live, Corporal. We sure want to live. But so does Charlie. And the jungle is on his team, not ours. He felt he owed it to Emily and his ancestors to remember the old trail to Mattagash Brook. But he owed the jungle nothing.

  Up through the treetops, Harry could see a patch of blue sky. The whole town was in a tizzy over snowflakes that had fallen the day before. But Harry knew they had a few more days before any sincere snow arrived. It would be an early snow, but snow didn’t ask before it fell. When he reached the tree that had the plastic orange band tied around its trunk, he knew it marked the invisible line that separated his nephew Roderick Plunkett’s land from Orville Craft’s. He crossed the brook that was barely running water and onto land that had been Craft land for over a hundred years. Since it was quite possible some hunter from downstate was in the woods prematurely, trespassing and carrying a gun, Harry was wearing the red sweatshirt he’d ordered from a magazine. On the front were the words: If you shoot me, City Slicker, you better kill me. On the back was the rest of the message: Otherwise, I’m getting up… He liked the sweatshirt a lot, especially when he was at Blanche’s Café and a city slicker was reading it, some guy in a new L. L. Bean hunting jacket, the kind that has a pocket for a cell phone.

  A hundred yards in, through maples that still held their autumn-red leaves, Harry stepped out onto the trail Orville had bulldozed up the mountainside. It led to his cabin at the edge of Craft Pond, a pond so full of proud trout there might not be another like it in all of Maine. Harry stood for some time staring down into the dark waters that shimmered with light on the surface. In the branches above his head were the two gray jays that had followed him up the mountainside, hoping a sandwich might be hidden in his pocket. He could see the green roof of Orville’s cabin above the clutch of birch trees to his right. But he wasn’t worried that Orville might discover him there at Craft Pond. He knew Mattagash’s finest mailman was busy going from mailbox to mailbox in the Ford Taurus.

  On his way back down the mountainside, the gray jays still in pursuit, Harry noticed the sign nailed to the trunk of a maple. As he studied the words, he reached into his shirt pocket for his red timber chalk. Then he smiled, remembering that his chainsaw was close by, in the back of his pickup truck.

  ***

  As Billy Thunder stood waiting for the mail car, he lit his third Winston of the day. Then he stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets, the cigarette held firmly in his teeth. Portland might smell of fish and seagull shit, but at least it had buildings tall enough to break a wind so cold your bones rattled when it hit you. He saw Orville’s blue Ford reach the lower end of the bridge and roll slowly toward him. Billy waited as the car pulled to a stop and idled there, a parachute of exhaust rising from beyond its back bumper. He saw Orville taking his important time inside the car, inspecting a package, putting it back, inspecting another. Billy knew he was doing it to throw the weight of his government job around. He pulled a hand from his pocket and rapped on the window.

  “Come on, Orville, for fuck’s sake,” Billy said, and there went the swearing Winston again, bouncing up and down to his words. Whether the cigarette wanted to curse or not, in Billy Thunder’s mouth, it had no choice. Mattagashers had witnessed hundreds of swearing Winstons since the day Billy drove the white Mustang past the welcome sign. “Do I have any fucking mail or not?” He watched as Orville hit the button that slid his window down.

  “I’ve told you before, Thunder,” said Orville. “You’ll get your mail as fast as I can deliver it, like everyone else in town.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not like everyone else in town,” said Billy, accepting a thin stack of letters from Orville’s hand. “Maybe you noticed?” He shuffled through the few envelopes. Occupant. Sale. Resident. Occupant. He heard Orville throw the little car in gear and was quick enough to toss his cigarette to the ground and get an arm in through the window before the car could pull away.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Orville. “Otherwise, Tommy Gifford’s dog is gonna have a surprise arm for supper.”

  “You got a lot of packages in there, Orville,” Billy said. He removed his arm from the window when it was apparent Orville had put the car back into park. “It’s a small, brown box.”

  Orville knew very well what those packages looked like. He had already delivered a dozen of them to Billy Thunder. The return name on the upper left corner was always Elizabeth Miller, Portland, ME. Orville once had even stretched the postal rules by asking Billy what was in those boxes. “They’re from my girlfriend in Portland,” Billy had told him. “Pictures of her naked as a newborn baby. And some condoms, so I don’t catch something up here in the boondocks and take it home to her.” Orville figured this statement was true, or it was not true. How to know with a guy like Thunder?

  “I’ve been telling you for two weeks that I can’t deliver what isn’t mailed,” Orville said.

  Billy stood watching as the mail car sped up the road. When it braked at Tommy Gifford’s mailbox, Tommy’s chained-up dog let off a volley of sharp, angry barks. What was he going to do now? The Delgato boys had obviously shut off deliveries to him. They’d even stopped telephoning a week before with threats of what they were going to do to his kneecaps if he didn’t send their share of the money back to Portland. Billy wasn’t afraid of losing his kneecaps. What was the kneecap but a rest stop between the crotch and the foot? He could learn to walk as if his legs were wooden stilts, so long as he had money in his pockets for balance. Billy didn’t even blame the boys for being angry. But Supply and Demand couldn’t work if Supply quit speaking to Demand.

  Maybe tomorrow, he thought. It had become his daily mantra. He wondered if he should go to Blanche’s and spend money he didn’t have on some hot food. His camper was now almost as cold inside as it was out. But how could he buy a bigger electric heater until another package arrived? He heard the toot of a car horn and turned to see Kenny Barker, his toothy grin filling up the bottom half of his face. Kenny wound his window down.

  “Yo, Captain Kirk,” he said. “How are things on the Enterprise?”

  Billy put his hands back in his jacket pockets and crossed the road to talk to Kenny more privately. He already knew that ears grew on trees in Mattagash, and even moles had twenty-twenty vision.

  “Check back tomorrow,” Billy said.

  “Aw, damn,” said Kenny. “I shoulda kept getting my shit from that idiot in Wa
tertown. It wasn’t the best stuff, but he was a dependable idiot.”

  Billy shook his head. Why do they do it? he wondered. Why do customers who have been so loyal they eat from your hand like starving dogs turn so mean and spiteful?

  “Did you just call me an idiot in a roundabout way?” Billy asked. All of Kenny’s teeth disappeared at once.

  “No,” Kenny said. That desperate look appeared in his eyes, a look Billy recognized well and knew how to control.

  “How do you think I feel?” Billy asked. “When I don’t have merchandise to sell, I don’t eat. I haven’t been to Watertown on a date for two weeks. I haven’t had a case of lover’s nuts like this since grammar school. As a matter of fact, you’re starting to look less ugly to me.”

  Kenny’s window shot up. He gave Billy one last look before he hit the gas pedal. Billy watched as the car flew across the narrow bridge and was gone. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his pack of Winstons. He counted twelve cigarettes. He looked down at the tarred road where he’d thrown the new one he lit up before Orville arrived, bearing nothing but cold wind and arrogance. He picked it up, shook the dirt from its filter, and slipped it into his pocket. It was a shame that a polished businessman like William Thunder would have to find work alongside unskilled laborers. But with no shipments arriving for the past fourteen days, the boys in Portland had obviously meant it when they said “nada mas.” That they would trek north to find him, as they threatened in their last phone call, seemed unlikely. Billy doubted the Delgatos could find Bangor without the U.S. cavalry riding alongside with a canteen full of bourbon and a good road map. So how could they find tiny Mattagash, five more hours north? Still, he had no choice now but to go study the chalkboard at Blanche’s, see if anyone in town needed a handyman.