She walked slowly across the bridge. This was the same old bridge she used to walk with Roderick years ago, when she was on her way home from school and he’d be following along just to breathe the same air she was breathing. At the other end of the bridge, she saw Roderick’s pickup idling there as it waited. She had called him from Bertina’s to ask if he would please come get her. He hadn’t complained, even though he would usually be in bed by then, getting ready for dawn and another workday. She would get up in the morning and make his sandwiches, put a piece of low-calorie candy in his lunch pail and maybe one of those little notes she used to tuck in, back in the old days, down under the banana and the chocolate donut. I love you. Be careful at work today. Your wife, Edna. On the ride home, she would tell him the truth. She would say, “Ward Hooper was a nice man who worked for the soil department. There was nothing between us but talks. I’m sorry, Roderick. I don’t know what got into me.” And Roderick would breathe easy to hear these words as he drove them home, both hands safely on the steering wheel. It was all about words anyway, Edna knew. It was how humans used them, and which ones they chose.
In the middle of the bridge, Edna paused long enough to tell Harry and Orville good night, to stay warm, and to not let the bedbugs bite. Then she walked on across the bridge, the river far below her unseen and powerful, surging itself toward the sea.
16
SUNDAY NIGHT, 11:00 P.M.
It was when the darkness was working its way toward dawn, with laces of pink slowly forming on the horizon, the jungle stirring. They were moving out, getting the patrol boat filled with supplies. Wally McGee was distant, as if listening for something no one else could hear, not even the jungle. Harry had turned to tell Private Barry Wilson, the tall kid from St. Louis, to turn off his transistor. Eric Burden and the Animals were barely audible, singing “We Gotta Get Outta This Place.” But barely audible was too loud in the jungle. “Put it away, Wilson,” Harry said, as a barrage of automatic weapons cut the dawn wide open. “Ambush!” he heard Wally shout. They were shooting from behind any tree, rock, or shadow that would hide them. Harry was thinking, “How did they do that? How do they appear without sound, as if out of mist and air?” And that’s when he realized he’d been hit in his lower right leg. He saw blood exploding up over the top of his boot. And now Private Wilson, a kid who wanted to go home and become a lawyer, was bleeding from his mouth and nose. He still held the transistor in his hand, as if he were surprised to see it there. Blood poured from beneath his helmet as his legs collapsed and he went down. “Medic!” Harry was shouting, as he and Wally McGee tried to cover Wilson’s body. They were pinned down on the riverbank as their flank men filled the trees with gunfire, doing their best to drive the enemy back. Harry pulled his shirt off and Wally did the same. Ferguson, a twenty-year-old medic from Texas, already had two bamboo poles and with the shirts, they made a litter, got Wilson on it. We gotta get out of this place. Harry was thinking, He’s just a goddamn kid who wants to listen to a rock song. What’s he doing bleeding to death in this jungle? Ferguson and Greer, the black kid from Los Angeles, were now crouched, ready to pull the stretcher carrying Wilson back toward the clearing where a helicopter could land for him. And that’s when Harry saw the grenade, sailing on air like a small and harmless toy. It struck the dirt and rolled to within four feet of the litter where Wilson lay bleeding yet still alive, where Harry and Ferguson and Greer and McGee all stared at it. Harry could almost feel their thoughts coming to meet his, as if war gives men the ability to communicate the way insects do, without speech. Shit, that’s a frag. Five-second fuse. How does a man decide it’s the time he will die? Is five seconds enough to think it out clearly? Are ten? Would an hour be better, or a day? War doesn’t think that way. Harry heard Wally shout, “Move out!” Then it was all slow motion, that wild world of colored birds and flowers, of jungle rot and death, a liquidy motion as Wally threw his body up and forward, onto the grenade. What Harry remembered most about the explosion was not the spray of blood or bits of bone and shrapnel, but the shock wave that followed it, one that seemed to push through the bones of his own body. Wally was still alive. Greer had pushed Wilson’s dead body off the stretcher, the private’s eyes staring upward as if still thinking that helicopter would save him. “One less lawyer,” Greer said, knowing it would have made Wilson laugh. Tears were running down his face. Wilson was going to be Greer’s best man at his wedding. Harry crawled over to Wally’s side. Ferguson and Greer dragged the litter behind Wilson’s body and lay there as the flank men poured more bullets at the VC. Ferguson pulled out a morphine needle and shot it into Wally’s arm, but Harry knew it didn’t matter. And that’s when he felt it, the sorrow for lost words between humans, lost life, lost love. He pulled Wally’s body into his arms and sat cradling it. He wanted the boy to know he wasn’t going to die alone. Maybe it was too little, too late, but it was all Harry had in his possession there in the jungle, three seconds before a second bullet ripped into his side. Now, it was Sergeant Harry Plunkett that Ferguson and Greer were getting onto the litter made of shirts, one Harry’s and the other Wally’s. Ferguson and Greer were pulling him backward now, out of the barrage of fire, away from Corporal Wally McGee and Private Barry Wilson, whose small transistor lay on the ground near his feet. They’d take care of the injured and dying first, and come back for the dead next. How do they do it? That’s what else Harry was thinking, as Ferguson pumped morphine into him and started the plasma. How do young men who were at the movies one day in Oklahoma City, or at a beach in Florida whistling at the pretty college girls, or skiing on some quiet mountain in Vermont, how do they become heroes overnight, heroes in an alien world? Harry would mourn for Corporal McGee and Private Wilson forever, and they were just two of the men he lost. And so the bird, a UH-1B helicopter gunship, a Huey, that flying symbol of the war itself, had lifted him up and carried him over the dead bodies and marble eyes as it sprayed the jungle below with rounds of mortar. When Harry woke from the nightmare that was real, he was in a hospital in Cam Rahn Bay. The bullet wound in his leg was painful but superficial. The wound in his side would take three more months at Walter Reed Hospital to heal. Then he was sent back to Mattagash where he could begin again that simple and uncomplicated life he’d left behind. But he felt like an imposter. It wasn’t his skin anymore that he was living inside. It was a suit, a uniform that still belonged to the U.S. Army. And he had brought something else back from Vietnam, a whole new vocabulary of words and no opportunity to use them. It was as if he’d been away studying Anglo Saxon or Medieval German. The army taught him a new language. Boom Boom Girl. Jesus Nut. Hooch. Beehive Round. Uncle Ho. The military had words and letters for everything, especially those things most difficult to deal with, since letters and words could conceal the awful truth. Body count. KIA. Body bag. Even the grenade that killed Wally McGee was more than a frag. It was also a lemon, a pineapple, and a baseball, at least to the guys on the ground. To the gods in the Pentagon and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and those other high places where gods live, it was an M-26A1, an Offensive Fragmentation hand grenade with a five-second fuse.
Harry came home speechless to a world that was quickly filling up with words. In a matter of years, billions of emails a day would be fluttering about the planet. Over two million every second, and 90 percent of them would be useless spam. Hundreds of television stations. Billboard signs and text messages. And yet, in all those words, among all that clutter, Harry was still searching for the truth.
Shock and awe.
If you shoot me, you better kill me… otherwise, I’m getting up.
Sergeant Harry Plunkett came home to a fact of life so unpleasant that he lived years before admitting it to himself, that never again, not even making love to Emily or waiting at the hospital as Angie was born or fishing the best spots along the river, never again would he ever, could he ever, feel so intensely alive as he had in the midst of that death jungle, in the heart of that heartless wa
r. He had lived aware of every cell in his body, electrified, prickling in anticipation of anything that moved or breathed. He could hear his own heart beating and he had rejoiced at the sound of it. Mortality was the best drug on the market.
Harry woke quickly, snapping from the dream as if someone had shaken him. He looked around, fighting to remember where he was. Then he knew. Mattagash. On the bridge. Inside his truck, which was now freezing cold. Shivering, he sat waiting for his heart to stop racing, waiting for forty years to fall back into the past where it belonged. He took a deep, cold breath, then another. That’s when he heard rapping, a soft rat-a-tat-tat, like a toy machine gun. Orville Craft was at his window. Harry rolled it down.
“Hey, neighbor,” said Orville.
“You’re still here?” asked Harry. His words became puffs of vapor, even inside the pickup.
“Guess so,” said Orville. He sounded almost chipper. “Eleven hours now, but who’s counting?”
“I didn’t think you’d last this long,” said Harry.
“I didn’t either,” said Orville.
“What’s it gonna take?” asked Harry.
“I don’t know,” said Orville. He was struck with an image of the two of them living on the bridge forever, friends and loved ones bringing them food and clothing, until they eventually grew into the steel itself like two aging rust spots.
“Have you thought about what’s gonna happen in three and a half hours?” asked Harry. “Danny Broussard’s truck is gonna come screaming onto this bridge.”
“Danny’s a go-getter,” said Orville, “always gets that first load of the day.” It was Danny’s yellow headlights he saw first those predawn mornings when he’d fumble to the bathroom to pee, Meg still snoring in their bed. Then the logging truck would fly past the house and become red taillights as Danny hit the Jake brakes before he crossed the bridge. He missed that warm bed. He missed Meg.
“He’ll be half asleep,” said Harry, “and not expecting a mouse on this bridge, let alone two vehicles. No way will he see that little sign Ray put up. Of course, he won’t be loaded yet, but that Kenworth weighs about twenty tons empty.”
“It’ll do some serious damage all right,” said Orville. “But it’ll do it to you first, since you’re on the lower end of the bridge.”
“Yeah, I already thought of that,” said Harry. “Well, I guess it’ll be quick for both of us.”
“I came to tell you that I found a candy bar in the glove compartment,” Orville said. “You want half?”
“Sure,” said Harry. He was starving. He reached for the half-bar that Orville held out to him and then hesitated. What if Orville had filled it with laxatives or something? Or worse yet, Viagra crumbs, as Billy had done to him? Harry imagined himself leaving the pickup right where it was and sprinting to Blanche’s.
“Go ahead,” said Orville. “It’s safe. Here, I’ll give you my half.”
“Thanks,” said Harry. He had to smile. Where had Orville Craft been hiding a sense of humor all these years? As Harry ate the sweet chocolate, he saw that Billy Thunder’s light was still on, down in his little camper, which was likely much warmer than Harry’s pickup. It was as if the whole town had gone to bed and left them on the bridge, even Blanche and Meg, as if everyone might be tired of the silly battle between them.
Harry felt the cold in his toes and fingers so he got out of the truck. He needed to move, to build up some warmth in his body. Orville was wearing a bulkier coat now, over the lighter coat he had worn earlier in the evening. How had this wimp turned into Robert Peary, headed for Antarctica? He was standing at the railing, looking down at what would be a river if he could see it. The only light, other than the half-moon and a thick smattering of stars, was the yellow light from Billy’s camper.
Harry blew on the tips of his fingers. He reached in his jacket pockets for his gloves. He could smell snow in the air. The cold had brought the smell with it, fresh and crisp.
“It’s going to snow tonight,” said Harry.
“How do you know?” Orville asked.
“I just know. It’s time.”
Harry’s grandfather had taught him the tricks that nature knows well. It’s what the land knows in its heart. Even squirrels know it. It’s what all the old-timers knew, before weathermen with satellites and the Internet and round-the-clock predictions. Pioneers looked to the moon for their weather, good or bad. Was the moon tipped on its side, the horns pointing up? Does the smoke from that chimney rise straight or does it hang low? Are birds roosting close to the ground? If the bats are flying low, then rain is on the way. Old-timers asked the land, and the land answered them. Nowadays, Mattagash youngsters couldn’t tell a raven from a crow. But they could download thousands of songs onto something called an iPod. They could cure viruses and scale Mount Everest with the click of a mouse.
“So, am I right?” Orville asked then. “This thing between you and me. It’s because of Meg and that night at the dance.”
It was in April of 1980. Emily was getting weaker by the day, the medicines not helping. She had packed a few items in a suitcase and Harry drove her to the hospital in Watertown. Mud season, April. The snow along the roadsides was half white, half brown. Cars hurled slush at each other when they met. Harry drove up to the hospital’s front door and let Emily out there, so she wouldn’t have far to walk. And that’s when Orville Craft’s car flew past, in a hurry to find a space in the crowded parking lot. Harry knew his car, a green Chevy in those days. He hadn’t seen Orville much since high school. Harry had become a soldier in Vietnam and Orville had become a milkman in Mattagash. Roads so different they weren’t on the same map. But Orville was at the hospital that day, the same day Emily would disappear inside forever. Harry remembered getting out of the car in a rush of anger. The front of Emily’s coat, her legs, her shoes, were sprayed with wet and dirty water. She was already trying to make light of it. “For heaven’s sake, Harry, it will wash out. It’s not a big issue.” For Harry, it was a major issue. Maybe it was because he felt so helpless that day. Maybe he knew that Emily wasn’t coming home again. He knew, and yet he could do nothing about it. Once, near the village of Trang Chanh, he and Wally had pulled an old Vietnamese woman out of a burning hut before it came crashing down, had dragged her back into the trees where she would be safe from gunfire. She was weeping, so ancient she was toothless, her papery brown hands withered and bony. She kept muttering words to Harry in Vietnamese and pointing back at the inferno that had been her home. She’s telling us something about her husband, said Wally, who had been learning all he could of the new language, with its many vowels and strange consonants. Ah, shit. He’s still inside the hut, Sarge. He had taken Army food to children whose ribs showed through their skin. He had placed babies into the arms of medics, infants burned so badly their bodies were black. But he couldn’t make those hospital doors open again so Emily would step back out, smiling and healed. “That son of a bitch,” is what Harry said that day, watching as Orville’s car found a parking space. For years, Harry carried in his mind a frozen picture of Emily’s face, as if it were a photograph, the surprise when that wave of dirty water washed over her. Her heart weakening by the beat, Emily would stay in the hospital another two months before it was finally over.
“What are you thinking?” asked Orville.
It always amazed Harry how the mind has no borders, no need for gasoline to fuel it, to carry it 12,000 miles away or fifty years into the past. It can even carry humans to the future, as they think ahead to what they might do on Wednesday. Or in a year. Twenty years. And it all happens in a second, with a snap of those neurons. A spaceship, the mind, a time machine.
“I was thinking of the last time Emily went to the hospital,” Harry said.
“She was two doors down from my mother,” said Orville. “Mother died in May.”
“Emily in June,” said Harry.
“I know,
” said Orville. “I see her stone every Memorial Day.”
Harry knew that human beings often do battle over a parking space. Men go to war in tall office buildings over a window. Was it any less honorable than the wars fought over mountains? Iwo Jima. Bloody Ridge. Pork Chop Hill. Hamburger Hill. He would ask Blanche to drive with him to Connecticut, maybe for New Year’s. He wanted her to meet Angie and the kids. But more importantly, he wanted to hold his only child in his arms again. He would stop being cantankerous. If Angie wouldn’t come home for visits, he would go to her. He would listen to the city noises, the honking, the sirens wailing, the road rage. She was worth it.
“I got those two blankets,” said Orville. “Wanna sit in my car?”
“Sure,” said Harry. He couldn’t remember when he had felt so cold. “Long as it’s not too warm in there.”
***
Harry sat in the passenger seat of Orville’s car, beneath one of the blankets. He felt the cold creeping into the steel of the car, settling into the tires. Orville had been in there for a good part of the eleven hours. How large was the man’s bladder? Harry had peed off the bridge three times but had yet to see any body activity from Orville. Maybe he had canisters in the mail car. Maybe mailmen were like astronauts and long-distance truck drivers. Maybe they peed as they drove and delivered letters.
The One-Way Bridge Page 25
