A girl’s audible gasp.
On his way back to the pickup, Denny shared a quick word with Xavier, then he and André walked down the road behind Samad’s truck as it drove off a safe distance. Concealed, Xavier watched the four youths flee, two boys, two girls, as they crossed the bridge to beat it back to town. Once they were gone he went under the bridge to check that everyone fled, then he came back up and signalled to the pickup that the coast was clear. Denny waited to give the kids time to completely vacate the area on the other side, and only after he saw them well down the road was he willing to cross back over.
This’ll work out, he thought. A minor complication resolved.
This’ll work out.
Yet the night was wearing on.
The moon rising.
They’d lost precious time.
■ ■ ■
He used to say, “I’ve heard the whispers.”
An acquaintance tested that refrain one time, asking, “What whispers? When? Willis, how did you hear these whispers? Nobody hears whispers that they’re not meant to hear.” The casual friend worked in his field, a shopkeeper also, although not from his part of the country. They met at the same winter trade shows from one year to the next and initially he was expecting something to happen between them but nothing did, and for a while he blamed the other man for this but later put the onus on himself.
“What do you mean?” he asked. He was slightly tipsy at the time, happily in an evening lull that held no particular fascination for him.
The acquaintance leaned forward. He was a plump, handsome man, with clear pores and cheeks so smooth anyone might believe he was incapable of growing a whisker. “Who exactly,” he asked, “is whispering?”
Willis Ephraim Howard, Esq., learned something rather definitive about himself that night during the welcomed conversation: he was capable of fooling himself. He uttered that one declaration, “I’ve heard the whispers,” with such singular conviction and for such a long time that he convinced himself of its veracity. Confronted in a hotel bar in an American city—probably it was Chicago although trade shows blended together in his mind—he finally accepted that he’d never actually heard such a whisper. He collected no actual knowledge and not so much as a smidgen of evidence that anybody anywhere ever whispered about him in that way, currently or in the past. What he did was imagine the whispering to the extent that he came to believe that it was based on fact and experience, rather than on his own ingrained run-of-the-mill fear and gentle self-loathing.
The revelation made him giddy.
“I’m a fraud,” he confessed. “A lunatic!”
“You’re drunk is what you are,” his gift store associate attested. “Oh, and something else.” The man pushed himself back into the comfy leatherette sofa, crossing one leg over the other. He wore bright yellow socks with an Argyle pattern. Willis wished at that moment that he could dare to wear bright yellow Argyle socks.
He also yearned to hear what the fellow would say next, as he presumed he’d be uttering words he was hoping to hear. But the man disappointed him.
“You’re curious,” Willis was told, “but you’re not keen.”
And that, he knew, struck by the blow, was God’s own truth.
Months later, Willis surmised that the line could serve well as his epitaph. The assessment did not apply only to the matter in question, his sexuality, but also to how he conducted himself throughout life. He was curious, but he was not keen. About anything. No longer drunk or giddy, he found the verdict to be unrelentingly depressing.
On rare occasion, Willis experienced sex with men, finding the forays, not surprisingly, messy, rowdy, troubling, mildly humiliating, unpleasant in a perplexing way, and yet rather exciting. He slept with women also, occasions that were even more rare, and he also found those experiences messy, but tepid, and although they were pleasant enough, which surprised him, he failed to be particularly excited. The arrival of a fresh young woman in his shop altered this perception, of himself if not of sex, for he sensed that the curiosity factor was not really his big thing anymore. With her, he thought, he could probably discover a genuine enthusiasm. She already demonstrated that her presence made him irrational, he practically gave away half his store to her, even if the space was more accurately defined as an eighth and in due time he was supposed to be compensated accordingly. He liked to think that it was not merely the sexual fantasy—although he also acknowledged that he often chose to deliberately kid himself. So the sexual fantasy probably did count more than anything else, he decided, but until he actually delved into that for himself what he enjoyed the most, what he was keen on, as well as being curious about, admittedly, was the aura of her presence. For that was it. He wanted to bathe in that aura. He wanted to bask in its evident light. He wanted to see himself reflected in the glory and the glow he felt when mirrored in her company. Half jokingly, he once defined himself as a rudimentary narcissist, yet somehow this woman accentuated his narcissism to an excruciating, highly sexualized degree. She elevated him by articulating his pain.
Tonight he dwelled upon this remarkable twist. The insight was delivered to his consciousness, as if by e-mail or by FedEx, about thirty hours previously while he lay in his bath, and he virtually wore the premise as a fragrance since then. Now, with some of the lustre gone, he thought things through. Weighed the evidence and decoded his logic. What do I want out of this? he asked himself. The personal, the business side, either one, what is it I want? He welcomed the introspection, believing that he was delving into what could prove critical in his life. What will I do, or give up, to get it? Sex is out of the question, okay, she’s not about to give me that. Willis was proud of himself to be asking such penetrating questions, for at long last he was keen about the answers.
He decided to make a list.
Then, right away, to make two lists.
At the top of one sheet of paper, he wrote, What I Want. And at the top of the other, What I’ll Do or Sacrifice to Get What I Want. Before he was able to add anything to his lists, he turned over the first sheet of paper and at the top of the blank side wrote, Why I Want What I Want. Now he was working with three lists. A side to one of the sheets remained blank, so he turned it over and stared at it awhile.
He flipped the sheets several times, and then he underlined each of the three titles with a cursive flourish. Yet, as each minute ticked by, he was drawn to the one completely blank side more than to the others, so he put that one on top. He didn’t know what to write there, but assumed that a new and pertinent title would soon dawn on him.
When nothing did, he stood and stepped over to the opposite side of the room to his liquor cabinet. A broad choice. He chose a Bailey’s Irish Cream that he poured into a favourite snifter, then sat back down on his sofa. He sipped, and curled up, tucking his legs up under him and crisscrossing his arms over his chest. He stalled, but knew what was coming next. Give it a few minutes, Willis Ephraim Howard advised himself. This’ll pass. We’ll see what’s on the tube tonight. This will pass.
Rather than easily passing, his mood overwhelmed him, and Willis felt wretched. An abject ache in his chest gained intensity and although he knew what it was, just another onrushing accumulation of unhappiness, malaise, and depression, he worried that this was the big one, a heart attack that would drop him where he sat and rip him from his life and he’d be left with three blank lists and one blank page that even lacked a title, and regretted that these four sheets represented the sum total of his life. In the midst of his agony, that was the cruellest incision—that at the moment of his death, at the peak of his life, he wanted to inscribe what was important to him and was unable to do so, and that blankness, arriving at the very moment of his death, defined him, for at the crucial hour, that was exactly how he defined himself.
He wanted to survive just so he could put something down on the page.
Willis toppled over. No s
udden stroke, no brutal attack, his heart was under no particular duress. His woe arrived by way of his own imagining. He was curious, in typical fashion, but not keen. Sexually, emotionally, even in a business sense, even when it came to plumbing his depths, he was merely curious. He lay in a circular huddle on the sofa and, as his anxieties politely let up, he shut his eyes and, comfortable again, considered just sleeping there. He thought of nothing to add to the pages despite a middling desire to do so. Perhaps, as time went by, he might be inspired to write something down. Or perhaps it was on the page already. The sum total of his life then, perhaps, added up to nothing. A big fat zero. In the interim, he’d put the pages away in a drawer, the blank one on top. Perhaps, perhaps, he’d see to them another day. Perhaps, that’s what he needed. Another day to mull this over.
Eyes closed, he viewed a mental image of the young woman walking, chatting with customers, casting an intermittent smile in his direction. Willis swallowed hard, through a pain, a compression and a dryness in his throat. He didn’t want to admit it, but he lived for those moments now, those inexplicable glimpses. It’s not, he thought, that someone came into his life, disrupting it, but something came in, when the door was unlocked, the windows unsealed, when he wasn’t looking and was caught unaware.
■ ■ ■
Denny O’Farrell waited in a crouch. The bottom tip of the moon’s sliver stood on end above a hilltop, visible to him now, and if he pulled himself upright the nadir would also appear. He stood, bending back a few branches and as he did so he turned his gaze away from the moon. Before him, the covered river bridge cast in the patina of faint moonlight stood stark and still.
As though breathing.
He listened to woodsy night sounds.
The river’s rush. Wind in the trees. Bug flight and distant truck wheels on pavement. A gear change. The loud thrum of quiet.
Across the river, Xavier gave the all clear.
This time Denny issued no order. He simply nodded his chin.
The pickup drove its own length onto the bridge then stopped.
Old timbers released a sad creak. Then a croak. Then settled.
Samad waited, perhaps afraid to turn around.
From the truck bed, André Gervais spoke his command. “Go, Samad.”
Samad liked that, in a way. Hearing his name gave greater import to his contribution. Then Xavier’s repeated flashes encouraged him.
“Take it real slow,” André counselled. Samad already knew to do that.
The truck moved cautiously forward.
With his right hand, André turned the pump’s handle. Gasoline spit from an eight-foot hose, which he flailed with his left hand to release it back and forth across the floor of the bridge then up into the rafters. Before getting too far across he switched hands, then he called to Samad to go a speck quicker. By accident, he splashed himself and the truck.
They moved across the bridge, an easy pace, leaving a trail of stinking gasoline puddles on the floor and a sweat stain of gas on the side and upper timbers. Then Samad drove them off the bridge onto the pavement on the other side. He picked up Xavier thirty feet along.
“Let’s go,” Xavier, nervous, commanded. He jumped up onto the truck bed with André.
“Let’s wait,” André contradicted him. He was holding his arm, a trifle weary from pumping.
“Why?”
“I want to see this.”
Samad did as well, apparently. With the transmission in park he opened his door and stood on the running board, looking back the way they’d come. He stared at the bridge, adored from the moment he arrived in this town. He played on it as a child and leapt from its braces as a teenager and watched the logs from the forest be guided down underneath it to the southern mills. Now it stood alone and abandoned in the dark. Sacred in its way. Like a church, like.
He saw a form—Denny O’Farrell—walk up the incline to the old covered bridge on the other side.
He watched him crouch down.
■ ■ ■
Denny paused.
He could smell the gas.
He needed to do this quickly, then disappear, yet he paused.
Then he struck a match against the flint on his matchbook and tossed it onto the gas-soaked timbers.
The flame flared on the wood before fizzling out.
He lit another match. This time it went out in a puff in midair.
The third match he used to light the entire matchbook, and set it down gently, quickly. Gasoline ignited in a soft blue line about three feet wide and burned as casually as a barbecue when suddenly Denny reared back from a sudden ignition. A sound like a wind shook him, and suddenly the fire encircled the interior of his end of the wooden trestle, then at panic speed it whooshed down the length of the structure. The heat seared him and he rolled himself away even as flames leapt back at him, and on the roadside Denny scampered to his knees, jumped to his feet, and retreated a short distance.
But he stopped, although this was against the plan. He turned around and looked back.
■ ■ ■
The men on the far side dwelled momentarily in the thrall of the fire, before André shook himself alert and interrupted their rapture. “Get out of here!” Gas, he realized, spilled on the truck, the barrel wasn’t empty, he stank of gasoline himself, and a trickle followed them to this spot in a direct dotted line. The others now saw it, too, in the firelight. They never anticipated that the flames could surge across the bridge so quickly, as if in pursuit of them, and Samad scrambled in behind the wheel and drove for their very lives. Upon the crest of a gradual riverside hill, two hundred feet along, he braked, took a breath, and when his vehicle did not explode, dared look back.
The old covered bridge transmogrified into an inferno. Flames raged under the rooftop, blazed out through the side openings. Samad half fell getting out and stood on the running board to gaze over the roof of the cab. “Holy crap,” he said quietly. He was thinking, What did we do this for?
Xavier meant to say something, but he and André stayed silent.
■ ■ ■
Denny O’Farrell moved deeper into the thicket, not to be seen in the brilliant glow of the fire. Across the river the truck had not yet fled. A mistake. The guys there were taking in the view, like tourists. The initial scorch still felt warm on his face, and he worried that his skin was marked by telltale burns—seared skin the only evidence a judge might require to throw away the key.
Burying himself low behind the shrubbery, tree trunks, and low-slung branches, he successfully reduced the amount of light that fell upon him, but he could not escape the flames’ noise in his ears. That roaring surprised him. Not only did timbers grotesquely crack in the heat, but the fire’s internal wind and the scorched air astonished him. Denny hid his face in his arms, to both hide and shield himself from the combusting frenzy.
The ferocity of the bedlam intensified, scaring him more.
When he looked up again, he saw that at least the guys across the river were long gone.
Denny sensed that he glowed. That he shone like a moonscape. Light the fire cast upon him radiated off his cheeks and forehead, he imagined, and within the thicket that concealed him, which itself might combust in an instant. If anyone looked upon him now, he believed, they’d see the fire not only mirrored in his eyes but burning there as twin torches. Suddenly, he was rudely shoved back against a tree. The knock came from a concussive burst through a section of the bridge roof. Flame and sparkling cinders whirled and ascended high into the night sky. For a moment that display lingered in his bones, he wished that he could just make this stop. He’d gone too far. He didn’t mean to do this. And then, looking up through the leaves, he felt bewildered by how the flames transformed the dark.
■ ■ ■
Jackson Eugene Withers—from birth, “Jake”—plunged his shoulder too heavily into the rear outside door departin
g a bar, consequently stumbling into the establishment’s parking lot and looking more inebriated than he might have otherwise. He caught himself against a tall fence constructed for the sole purpose of hiding garbage cans from view. He sniffed a wayward scent. Straightening, Jake adjusted his ball cap and pulled down his polo, a ritual vanity that came too late. He was already spotted. He caught the covert attention of a police officer across the street and a short distance down in another lot. Jake pulled out his keys and climbed into his car, recently christened the Old Orange Shitbox by Skootch. As he drove away from the lot, Jake Withers was being followed.
Skootch’s ball club played Les Tigres de Maniwaki that evening. The other team was mostly composed of mill workers, although their catcher was a burly import from the post office. They’d won handily, 6–zip. Handcuffed early by inside fastballs, striking out in his first two at bats, Jake was hit on the kneecap in his third. A Maniwaki plumber, a lefty, was losing his stuff by the seventh inning and Jake connected with a tricky squibbler down the third base line that, once the ball went fair over the bag, broke into foul territory, rolling under the infield fence for a ground-rule double. A double! Not only his first hit, but his first RBI, followed shortly by his first run scored.
A decent night. After a couple of beers in the company of his teammates he wanted to get off on his own to soak it in. Or, perhaps, he’d drive back to Skootch’s camp to see if any of the women were up. They might be. Talking away. Drinking. Smoking. Sitting by a fire. Maybe he’d go there. Yeah. Chat to some girl about his double that dribbled under a fence twenty feet from the third base bag.
He was driving arrow-straight down Main Street when his police escort, unimpressed by any evident level of inebriation, discontinued the surveillance. Jake noticed the headlights remove themselves from his rearview then instantly forgot about them altogether, his attention snagged instead by a strange glow through and above the treetops farther along. That impression faded, the sightlines blocked by buildings and a denser woods, but he kept looking to see if the strange light returned. Then it did, and he said, “Shit me,” speeding up. Jake knew what it was before he got there but he couldn’t really believe this and wanted to make sure. It could be a house. As he swerved too quickly around a bend he depressed the gas pedal. Fire. Red, orange, white, and blue. He continued to accelerate close to the burning bridge then braked hard and flung himself out of the car and raced on foot to the edge of the inferno as if he would find something there that he might do, or someone whom he might save.
The River Burns Page 20
