“Shut the fuck up!” Tommy yelled at the dog, which was getting crazier by the second, yanking on its chain and trying to reach Billy. Tommy picked up a rock and hurled it at the animal. The dog disappeared, whimpering, to the other end of its chain. It sat on its haunches and watched.
“Want a beer?” Tommy asked.
“Sure,” said Billy. Tommy reached up into his truck and pulled down a six-pack, passed it to Billy. Then he slid his rifle out from behind the seat.
“Let me take care of my dog first,” said Tommy. “That’s what I was about to do this morning until Ray found that body.” He cracked open the rifle and pushed a bullet into the chamber. Billy looked first at the rifle, then over at the dog. It lowered its head and lay down to stare back at them.
“What do you mean?” Billy asked, but he knew.
“I ain’t losing another night’s sleep over my ex-wife’s dog,” said Tommy. “And I’m sick of people complaining about the barking.” He snapped the rifle shut. “Have yourself a beer. I’m gonna take him to the gravel pit behind the house. I’ll be right back.”
Billy wasn’t sure what his move should be. Getting all teary-eyed over a mongrel, a mutt, wouldn’t set well with someone like Tommy Gifford. The dog was cowering now as Tommy approached, as much afraid of him as it was of the gun he carried. Tommy was undoing the chain when Billy reached from behind and grabbed it.
“Hey, Tommy, I might as well take him off your hands,” said Billy. “I mean, there’s just me and Miss October living in the camper, now that Miss August and Miss September moved out. I could use some company.” The dog, having Billy and his scent so close, jumped from its position and put both paws on Billy’s chest, its tail wagging. Tommy watched this.
“He don’t usually go to people,” said Tommy.
“He’s probably smelling that dog I dated Saturday night,” said Billy.
Tommy smiled, but his eyes were thinking and Billy could read them well.
“What’ll you give me for him?” Tommy asked. A poker game, if Billy ever saw one, and Billy knew poker. He knew the game so well he’d lost thousands of dollars to it.
“What do I have that you want?” asked Billy. He was thinking of pills maybe, if he could coax Kenny Barker to give him a few hits of speed. Maybe a bag of weed? He’d have to use the fake Viagra money to buy some pot from the guy in Watertown who’d been selling it until Billy put up his own shingle. A case of beer? He could afford that. And he’d throw Miss October into the pot as well, even though he had to drive all the way to Watertown to buy a Playboy. But before he could offer any of those things to Tommy Gifford, he knew what was going to happen. The dog was now licking Billy’s hands, its tail wagging furiously, its nose sniffing at his jacket pocket as if maybe a treat were hidden there.
“Looks like you two are old friends,” Tommy said, and he smiled again. He turned and stared now at Billy’s car. Wimbledon white. The running horse stamped on the back of each seat. The extruded aluminum grille. Ford-blue valve covers and air cleaner. Fog lights.
Billy’s 1966 classic Ford Mustang.
“You gotta be kidding,” Billy said.
“I’ll take that piece of shit for the dog,” said Tommy. “That’s my only deal.”
“Ah, Tommy, come on, man,” said Billy. “You’re asking for my heart here.”
“Hell, you probably wouldn’t get shit for that car on eBay,” said Tommy. “It needs a lot of work.”
“But this is a dog,” said Billy. “And I’d get at least ten grand.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Tommy. “I was fucking with you. Besides, I got a bullet in my gun with this dog’s name on it. You know how many nights of sleep I lost?”
Rifle under his arm, Tommy grabbed the dog’s chain and yanked the animal away from Billy. He lifted it by the collar and pulled it to its feet.
“Get up and walk,” Tommy said to the dog.
“The dog and fifteen hundred dollars, and the car is yours,” said Billy. Surely Tommy had that much cash still in play from the lottery ticket. He would send a thousand back to Phoebe, the money he owed her. The rest would be enough to hold him over for a week while he got things packed. Then he’d catch a bus back to Portland. A Mustang was a fine thing, but it had no heart beating inside it.
Tommy smiled. He cradled the rifle under one arm, then popped the top off his beer.
***
The party had lasted for an hour, with no one mentioning the dead body. For the sake of festivity, they had let it go, literally, downstream. Orville couldn’t remember when he had been more proud of Meg. She had put her earlier anger aside to carry out the surprise she had been planning for weeks. All the invitation cards had been given out by hand, person to person, so that Orville wouldn’t be putting them in mailboxes around town and realizing that something was afoot. We request the pleasure of your company at a surprise retirement party for Orville Craft, at the home of Meg and Orville Craft. No gifts, but please bring a salad or pastry or casserole. Sunday at 4 p.m. How could Meg have known as she wrote out the invitations that the address for the party should have been Middle of the Mattagash Bridge. As plates with sandwiches and cake were passed around, along with thermoses of hot tea and coffee, she had told Orville why she had the change of heart. “Because I got home and looked around our house,” said Meg. “I saw the photos of our kids on the bookshelf, grown and gone. I saw the photos of our loved ones no longer with us. I thought of what it would be like to go into that room and look at your picture and know you were never coming home, just as the widows on your route must feel about their husbands. So I grabbed the cake and told Lillian to bring some blankets.” And Orville had thanked her, and he had eaten a sandwich and drank hot tea, which warmed him. And he ate a slice of the retirement cake with its blue plastic car sitting on the top, a plastic mail man standing next to it.
Billy Thunder even returned to eat two sandwiches and brought with him a dog on a leash. Sheriff Ray Monihan and his only son, Ray Ray, attended the party, whining up to the end of the bridge in Ray Ray’s little red Bug. Phillip Craft, who was Orville’s third cousin, also came. Orville didn’t even mind when he saw Blanche take Harry a sandwich and a cup of coffee. He had studied Harry’s face for signs of breaking but saw none. He didn’t let this rattle him. Instead, he enjoyed his guests, their puffs of warm breath forming words on the cold air as they talked. There was a sense of excitement, of winter coming, of the harvest past with its full moon. This would have been how their ancestors visited and talked, all those years before they had even electricity to distract them. Then, shivering, the women had packed up the plastic plates, the paper napkins, and the red balloons, the thermoses of tea and coffee. By the time the bridge was empty again, save for Orville and Harry, evening was moving in and bringing with it a blue twilight.
***
After an hour of silence between them, and with no more action on the bridge, Harry sensed Orville was getting restless. He was staring over the top of his steering wheel at the pickup truck. Harry knew Orville was getting restless because that’s how he was feeling too. And he was far more used to sitting in wait, in steaming rain and temperatures so high Orville couldn’t imagine them, mosquitoes bigger than he’d ever seen before.
Harry got out of his truck and slammed the door. He leaned back against the bridge rail, resting his butt on it. He stared down the Mattagash River to where the current was cutting V’s around the island. He heard Orville’s door open and slam.
“How are you holding up?” Harry asked. It had been six hours. In the beginning, he had given the finicky mailman two hours at most. When Meg had appeared with cake, Harry was certain the standoff would end when the party did. He had apparently underestimated the man.
“Fine,” said Orville. “You?”
“I’m enjoying myself,” said Harry.
A long string of Canada geese was cutting a wedge over t
he river, leaving behind the sounds of excited honking.
“I’ve never seen so many Canada geese as this year,” said Orville.
“They can afford to migrate again,” said Harry, “now that the Canadian dollar has gone up.”
Orville smiled. “Pretty soon, they’ll be on their way back north.”
“And before we know it,” said Harry, “it’ll be time to pick the first fiddleheads.”
Orville had been trying to pretend that he wasn’t missing a hot supper right then. The cold sandwich from his party would hold him only so long. Fiddleheads. They were ferns that grew wild in the spring, in those places along the river and creeks that were moist and shady. Cooked in a pot of potatoes and loaded with butter was the best way to fix them. He could almost smell the unique aroma they gave off when Meg boiled the first mess each spring.
“I know a place where fiddleheads grow so thick they hurt your eyes,” Harry said now. Orville felt his stomach respond with a tumble. His own special place was a half-mile down the riverbank from where he and Meg lived, where the old Harrison farm once thrived. But often, Orville would get there too late, only to see size twelve boot prints in the mud, as if the Missing Link also loved fiddleheads. He assumed feet that big must belong to Roderick Plunkett. Whoever it was, he left Orville with sparse pickings.
“Is it near the old Harrison farm?” he asked.
Harry shook his head.
“Roderick always picks that place clean,” said Harry. “I’m talking about a place that the old-timers might have found and picked a hundred fifty years ago. Fiddleheads the size of half dollars.”
Neither man spoke as they stood side by side on the bridge and listened to the tail end of the geese, the birds themselves fading to pencil dots in the sky as the honks evaporated on air and twilight.
“I like them cooked with a piece of pork,” said Harry. “Then served with homemade biscuits and butter.”
“It’s not gonna work, Plunkett,” said Orville.
15
SUNDAY NIGHT,
7:00 TO 10:00 P.M.
His shoulder pressed against the driver’s door, Harry tried to nap during the time he might have caught the world news, had he been home. But it was becoming a chore to tune in these days. The world seemed to be exploding, the ways to kill each other sped up. Harry knew now what he didn’t know back in 1968, that the propaganda for war was getting slicker. It was all about finding the best words to rile up the masses. What had once been Remember the Alamo had morphed into Remember the Maine, which had morphed into Remember Pearl Harbor. There was Uncle Sam with his I Want You! plea behind that pointed finger. Loose Lips Sink Ships. Till We Meet Again, Buy War Bonds. Then, as proof that it could get even worse, the United States of America had finally arrived at simplistic and arrogant words like Shock and Awe, words you might hear at a keg party thrown by college frat boys.
Harry heard Orville’s car door open and then close.
To keep warm, Orville paced the bridge. He could barely see the silhouette of the island now that evening was coming in to claim the land. Ray had not found the body there, even though the island liked to catch things that floated downriver. That’s where Orville and Simon Craft had occasionally gone fishing, on those rare days his father found time. On one fishing trip, a crayfish had bitten Orville’s toe, scaring him enough that he dropped his rod into the river. The old man laughed so hard it made Orville forget about being embarrassed and he laughed too. That memory stayed with him, one of the few good times he’d had with his father.
A pickup truck approached the lower end of the bridge, yellow headlights on. Roderick Plunkett’s truck. It stopped at the Bridge Out sign that Ray Monihan had put in place and idled there. A door opened and Edna got out. Her purse was slung over one arm and she was wearing a rose-colored winter coat. Then Roderick turned his truck around and it became red taillights. As Edna walked past Harry’s pickup, she glanced in and smiled. Harry was asleep behind the wheel, his lips slightly parted. When she reached Orville, she stopped.
“Lots of excitement today,” said Edna.
“You can say that again,” said Orville.
For a few silent moments, they stood near the railing, looking downriver.
“Well, I better be going,” Edna said. “Myrtle left the keys to her car under the mat. I’m gonna use it to visit my sister.”
“Sorry for plugging up the bridge,” said Orville.
“That’s okay,” said Edna. “I haven’t been standing out here on the bridge since before I was married. It’s a nice trip down Memory Lane.”
Orville watched as she disappeared off the upper end of the bridge. He heard Harry opening the door to his pickup. The door slammed and the echo came back at them after it bounced from the waters around the island, that same spot where Orville had been hearing the laughter, still in echo, from that day the crayfish bit his toe.
Harry pulled on his gloves. He came to where Orville was leaning back against the railing.
“How’s it going?” Orville asked. “Did you have a snooze?”
“We should have kept the leftover cake,” said Harry. He wondered if, while he napped, Orville had gone to the bathroom, urinating over the bridge’s rail and into the dark river below. He figured Orville Craft was too finicky to pee in public, even in front of another man, and was hoping the Craft bladder might be the factor that ended the gridlock.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Harry. The air, cold and thin, was leaking beneath his denim jacket.
“Not much else to do on this bridge,” said Orville.
“I didn’t buy you a retirement present.”
“That’s okay,” said Orville. He wondered what was up.
“But I got something for you,” Harry said. “Wait here. Don’t get in your car and back off the bridge or anything.”
Orville watched as Harry went back to his pickup, opened the door, and took out a flashlight. He closed the door, then leaned over the side of the truck’s body. Orville saw him fumble for something that was lying beneath what looked like a towel or an old shirt. Before Orville could decipher what it was, Harry had it under an arm and was on his way back to the railing. As Orville stood watching, Harry let the light shine across his retirement gift. The moose mailbox.
“I didn’t have time to wrap it,” said Harry. “Want me to get you a hammer? I got one in my truck.”
Orville was staring down at the moose’s face as he had stared at it for so many days of his professional life. He saw a sadness now in the animal’s eyes, as if it longed for the forest, that place where it could use its great sturdy legs, that tail for swishing deer flies, the hooves that leave cloven marks along mountain paths.
“No, I guess not,” said Orville. He had his own hammer anyway, now in the trunk of his car.
“Throw it over the bridge then,” said Harry. “Get it out of your system.”
The moose stared up at Orville. He felt a bit foolish now that he’d let it upset him every workday for three years. Meg had been right. It was just a metal box with antlers and clamps.
“I’ll pass,” said Orville. He watched as Harry put the mailbox back in his truck.
The cold crept in. Harry and Orville stood side by side then and stared down to where the last of the twilight was disappearing, to where the outlines of black trees were still silhouetted on the mountain behind the river. It was the same old mountain they’d known as boys, with that camel hump perched on its back. The moon appeared above the horizon, less than a half-moon now, C-shaped and white.
“The new moon is next week,” said Harry. “But I like the full moon. You can see the night better.”
“Me too,” said Orville. Several times, under a full moon, he had driven his four-wheeler up the mountain to his cabin, headlights off, only owls and stars watching.
Harry took a toothpick out of his shirt pocket and
put it into his mouth. The moon over Vietnam was, to Sergeant Harry Plunkett, a killing moon. He couldn’t imagine it was the same moon Emily gazed up at, half a globe away. The moon over Vietnam was an alien moon, just as that country with its strange birds and snakes and monkeys, was an alien planet. It was as if The Little People could even see at night. They could crawl out of rocks and trees and vines, then melt back into them. They could rise up instantly from a pile of leaves and take on the shape of a human holding a gun. They could smell American cologne on a downwind, yards away from the face that wore it. The Little People, that’s what they sometimes called the gooks, as if they were only clever elves playing pranks. Leprechauns with slanted eyes, stalking the jungle for that pot of gold. Their eyes were born to that world. You could hate them, as Harry and the other soldiers did to survive, but you had to admire them too. They were farmers and peasants, poorly equipped and often hungry. They’d sacrifice their own women and children, strap their slender bodies with booby traps, offer them up to The Cause if they had to. Those were the rules of that foreign place, that strange planet. How do you fight Victor Charles, considering all that? To survive, Harry forced himself to believe that the moon shining over Vietnam was not Emily’s moon back in Mattagash.
“I’ve been thinking,” Orville said. “I was wondering what our lives would be like if you and Meg had gotten together that night of the dance.”
Harry had been thinking too. A year after he left Vietnam, a man would walk upon the moon’s surface and it would become just another piece of real estate. But this new comment from Orville came at him fast. Meg? Orville must mean his own wife, Margaret Hart Craft. This must be some kind of verbal trick, something Orville thought up during that three-year war with Harry’s moose.
“What dance?” Harry asked, cautious.
“Your graduation dance at the school,” said Orville. “Back when you and Meg graduated, ‘The Mashed Potato Song’ started playing and you got up and were headed straight for Meg, to ask her to dance.” Orville remembered that Meg was wearing a blue prom dress and had a carnation tied around her wrist. Her hair was curled on the top of her head like small loaves of bread. French curls, the girls called them. In her high heels she was taller than Orville by an inch. He thought she was the most beautiful girl at the prom. “But I cut you off and asked Meg to dance first.”
The One-Way Bridge Page 23
