Bridge of Clay

by Markus Zusak

  They spoke of ninety percent:

  Ninety percent of jockeys are injured every year.

  They talked about a tough business, predominantly flimsy pay, and one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.

  * * *

  —

  But what about what they didn’t say in the papers?

  The papers didn’t talk about the sun when first they’d spoken—so near, and huge, beside her. Or its glowing of light on her forearms. They didn’t mention the sound of her footsteps, when she came to The Surrounds, and the way she rustled closer. They didn’t mention The Quarryman, and how she would read and always return it. Or how she’d loved his broken nose. What good were newspapers anyway?

  On top of everything else, they didn’t mention if there was an autopsy, or if the previous night was upon her; they were certain it was instant. Taken, like that, so quickly.

  McAndrew was retiring.

  They claimed it wasn’t his fault, and they were right; it was the game and these things happened, and his care for his jockeys was exemplary.

  They all said it, but he needed a rest.

  Much like Catherine Novac, way back from the start, the horse protectionists called it tragic, but so was the death of horses—overrun and overbred. The game was killing all of them, they said.

  But Clay knew the answer was him.

  * * *

  —

  At home, when we arrived, we sat in the car a long time.

  We turned into our father, after Penny died.

  Just sitting. Just staring.

  Even if there had been Tic Tacs or Anticols, I’m sure we wouldn’t have eaten them.

  Clay thought it, over and again:

  It wasn’t the game, it was me, it was me.

  And credit to the rest of them, they came.

  They came and sat in the car with us, and at first all they said was “Hi, Clay.” Tommy, as the youngest and greenest, tried to talk about the good things, like the day she came and met us—in waters still to come—and how she’d walked right through the house.

  “Remember that, Clay?”

  Clay said nothing.

  “Remember when she met Achilles?”

  * * *

  —

  This time he didn’t run anymore, he only walked the maze of suburbs; the streets and fields of the racing quarter.

  He didn’t eat, and didn’t sleep, and couldn’t shake that feeling of seeing her. She was a girl at the edge of everything.

  As for the rest of us, it was so clear how hard it had hit him, but we barely knew the half of it—and how could we understand? We didn’t know that they met at The Surrounds. We didn’t know about the night before, or the lighter, or Kingston Town or Matador, or Carey Novac in the eighth. Or the bed we’d failed to burn.

  When our father called us up, a few nights in a row, Clay just shook his head at me. I said we’d take good care of him.

  * * *

  —

  And the funeral?

  It could only be one of those bright-lit things, even if they held it indoors.

  The church was totally packed.

  People came out of the woodwork, from racing identities to radio hosts. Everyone wanted to know her. So many knew her best.

  No one even saw us.

  They didn’t hear his countless confessions.

  We were buried down deep in the back.

  * * *

  —

  For a long time, he couldn’t face it.

  He would never go back to the bridge.

  What he did was feign alrightness:

  He came to work with me.

  When our father called, he talked to him.

  He was the perfect teenage charlatan.

  In the night, he watched the house diagonally across the street, and the shadows moving within. He wondered where the lighter was. Had she left it under her bed? Was it still in the old wooden box down there, with the letter folded within?

  There was no sitting on the roof, not anymore—only the front porch, and not sitting, but standing, leaning forward.

  * * *

  —

  One evening he walked to Hennessey, the grandstands gaping casually.

  A small crowd was by the stables.

  They gathered at the fence.

  Grooms and apprentice jockeys all bent down, and for twenty minutes, he watched them, and when they’d dispersed he came to realize; they were trying to free her bike.

  Despite every internal talking-to, and the desolate void in his stomach, he found himself gently crouching, and touching the four-digit gauge—and he knew the number instantly. She’d have gone right back to the start of things, and the horse and the Cox Plate without him:

  Out of thirty-five races, The Spaniard won twenty-seven.

  It was 3527.

  The lock came out so easily.

  He pushed it back in and muddled it.

  The grandstands felt much closer then; both open in the darkness.

  In many ways it feels ridiculous, almost trivial—to come back to 18 Archer Street, in the time before her arrival. If there’s one thing I’ve come to learn, though, it’s that if life goes on in our aftermaths, it goes on in our worlds before it.

  It was a period when all was changing.

  A kind of preparation.

  His before the beginning of Carey.

  It starts, as it must, with Achilles.

  * * *

  —

  To be honest, I might not have been too impressed with that dubious two hundred bucks we spent, but there was one part I’ll always cherish; it was Rory at the kitchen window, the morning we’d brought him home.

  As was common for a Saturday, he staggered through the hallway around eleven, then thought he was still drunk, and dreaming.

  Is that?

  (He shook his head.)

  What the hell?

  (He wrung his eyes out.)

  Until finally he shouted behind him:

  “Oi, Tommy, what’s goin’ on ’ere?”

  “What?”

  “What-a-y’ mean what, are you shitting me? There’s a donkey in the backyard!”

  “He’s not a donkey, he’s a mule.”

  The query was stuck to his beer breath. “What’s the difference?”

  “A donkey’s a donkey, a mule’s a cross between—”

  “I don’t care if it’s a quarter horse crossed with a Shetland bloody pony!…”

  Behind them, we were in stitches, till Henry eventually settled it. “Rory,” he said, “meet Achilles.”

  By the end of the day he’d forgiven us—or at least enough to stay in. Or at least to stay in and complain.

  In the evening we were all out back together, even Mrs. Chilman, and Tommy was going, “Hey, boy, hey, boy,” in the most loving voice you can imagine, and patting the scruff of his coat. The mule stood calmly eyeing him, while Rory was grumbling to Henry.

  “Next he’s gonna take the bastard out to dinner, for Christ’s sake.”

  In the night he lay smothered by Hector, and Rosy lay lightly snoring. From the left-hand bed you could hear it—an anguished but quiet muttering. “These animals are Goddamn killing me.”

  * * *

  —

  In his running, I thought Clay might have lessened, or loosened, now that State was over, and the mule was in our keeping. I couldn’t have been more mistaken. If anything he was running harder, which somehow seemed to bother me.

  “Why don’t you take a break?” I said. “You just won State, for God’s sake.”

  He stared down the rest of Archer Street.

  All that time and I’d never noticed it.

  That morning was no exception:

  It burned inside his
pocket.

  “Hey, Matthew,” he said, “you coming?”

  * * *

  —

  By April, the problems started.

  The mule was enigmatic.

  Or more so, purely stubborn.

  He did love Tommy, I’m sure of it; he just happened to love Clay more. It was Clay he let check his feet. No one else could budge them. It was Clay, alone, who could quiet him.

  A few nights in particular, very late, early morning, Achilles would bray up a storm. Even now I hear those sad-but-terrifying eey-ores—a mule-and-hinge-like crying—and between them, the other voices. There was Henry shouting “Shit, Tommy!” and me saying “Shut that mule up!” There was Rory calling “Get this fucking cat off me!” and Clay, just lying, silent.

  “Clay! Wake up!”

  Tommy was frantically pushing him, pulling him, till soon he got to his feet; he made his way to the kitchen. Through the window he saw Achilles, and the mule was under the clothesline; he cried like a rusty gate. He stood and reached his head up, his mouth thrown into the sky.

  Clay watched, he couldn’t move; for a while he remained transfixed. But then Tommy had waited enough. As the rest of us surfaced, and the mule howled out and onwards, it was Clay who handled the sugar. He took the lid off, and the stuck-in spoon, and walked out back with Tommy.

  “Here,” he said firmly, “cup them,” as they stood on the porch by the couch. It was dark but for mule and moonlight, and Tommy produced both palms.

  “Okay,” he said, “I’m ready,” and Clay poured all of it out, a handful, a sandful, I’d seen it once before; and Achilles, he’d seen it, too. For a moment, he stopped, he looked at them, and he ambled his way across. Pigheaded and clearly delighted.

  Hey, Achilles.

  Hi, Clay.

  That’s quite a noise you’re making there.

  I know.

  When Tommy met him, he held out his hands, and Achilles got in and sucked them—he hoovered into every corner.

  The last time it happened was in May, and Tommy was finally resigned. He’d looked after every animal, all of them the same, and for Achilles we’d bought more grain, more hay, and cleaned the racing quarter out of carrots. When Rory asked who’d eaten the last apple, he knew it had gone to the mule.

  On this occasion, a midnight southerly; it blew through the streets and suburbs. It brought with it sound from the trains. I’m sure that’s what set him going, actually, and the mule just couldn’t be quieted. Even when Tommy ran out to him, Achilles only shook him off; he brayed onwards at forty-five degrees, and above them, the clothesline spun.

  “The sugar bowl?” Tommy asked Clay.

  But that night he’d told him no.

  Not yet.

  No, this time, Clay walked down, and a peg was against his thigh, and all he did first was stand with him, then stretched, very slowly, upwards; he halted the turning clothesline. With his other hand, he reached even slower, and placed it on the face of the mule, on that dry and crackly brushland.

  “It’s okay,” he told him, “it’s over—” but Clay knew better than anyone; there are some things that never stop. Even when Tommy ignored him, and came back out with the sugar bowl, and Achilles hoovered it up—the crystals around his nostrils—the mule was watching Clay.

  Could he see the outline of his pocket?

  Maybe, probably not.

  One thing I know for certain, though, is that the mule was nowhere near stupid—Achilles always knew.

  He knew that this was the Dunbar boy.

  This was the one he needed.

  * * *

  —

  We ran a lot in that time to the cemetery, up, and in, at winter.

  The mornings were getting much darker.

  The sun climbed onto our backs.

  Once, we ran to Epsom, and Sweeney was a man of his word:

  The caravan was gone, but the shack went dying on.

  We smiled and Clay said, “Enyone.”

  * * *

  —

  Then June, and seriously, I think Achilles was more intelligent than Rory, because Rory was again suspended. He edged his way closer to expulsion; his ambitions were being rewarded.

  I met again with Claudia Kirkby.

  This time her hair was shorter, just noticeably, and she wore a beautiful pair of earrings, formed into lightweight arrows. They were silver, slightly hanging. There were papers all strewn on her desk, and the posters remained intact.

  The trouble, this time, was that a new teacher had arrived—another young woman—and Rory had made an example of her.

  “Well, apparently,” explained Ms. Kirkby, “he was swiping grapes from Joe Leonello’s lunch, and lobbing them at the whiteboard. She was hit when she stopped and turned. It went down the front of her shirt.”

  Already, her grasp of poetry.

  I stood, I closed my eyes.

  “Look, honestly,” she went on, “I think the teacher may have overreacted a little, but we just can’t keep putting up with it.”

  “She had a right to be upset,” I said, but soon I started to flounder. I was lost in the cream of her shirt, and the way it had waves and ripples. “I mean, what are the odds?” Could a shirt be somehow tidal? “Turning around at that exact moment—” It jumped from my mouth and I knew it. What a mistake!

  “Are you saying it was her fault?”

  “No! I—”

  She was giving me a hiding!

  She was holding those papers now. She smiled gently, reassuringly. “Matthew, it’s okay. I know you didn’t mean it that way—”

  I sat on a graffitied desk.

  The usual teenage subtlety:

  A deskful of Goddamn penises.

  How could I possibly resist?

  It was then she stopped talking and took a silent, brazen risk—and it was that that I first fell in love with.

  She laid her palm down on my arm.

  Her hand was warm and slim.

  “To tell you the truth,” she said, “so much worse happens here every day, but with Rory, it’s one more thing.” She was on our side, she was showing me. “It’s not an excuse, but he’s hurting—and he’s a boy,” and she killed me, like this, in an instant. “Am I right, or am I right?”

  All she’d had to do was wink at me then, but she didn’t, for which I was grateful—for she’d quoted something word for word, and soon she’d stepped away. She sat now herself, on a desk.

  I had to give something back.

  I said, “You know,” and it hurt to swallow. The waters now still in her shirt. “The last person who ever told me that was our dad.”

  * * *

  —

  In the running, something was coming.

  Something sad, but mainly for me.

  Through winter, we stayed consistent; we ran Bernborough, we ran the streets, and me then to coffee and kitchen, and Clay gone up to the roof.

  When I timed him, the problem was awkward.

  The runner’s most dreaded dilemma:

  He ran harder, but wasn’t getting faster.

  We thought it was lack of adrenaline; motivation was suddenly thin. What else could he do but win State? The athletics season was still months away; no wonder he was feeling lethargic.

  Clay, though, wasn’t buying it.

  At his side, I talked him on.

  “Up,” I said, “up. Come on, Clay. What would Liddell do, or Budd?”

  I should have known I was being too nice to him.

  * * *

  —

  When Rory was suspended that last time, I had him come to the job with me; I fixed it with the boss. Three days’ worth of carpet and floorboards, and one thing was certainly clear—he wasn’t allergic to work. He seemed disappointed when each day ended; and then he
left school, it was final. I ended up almost begging them.

  We sat in the principal’s office.

  He’d snuck in and stolen the sandwich press from the science staff room. “They eat too much in there, anyway!” he’d explained. “I was doing ’em a bloody favor!”

  Rory and I were on one side of the desk.

  Claudia Kirkby, Mrs. Holland, the other.

  Ms. Kirkby was in a dark suit and light blue shirt, Mrs. Holland, I can’t remember. What I do remember is her silver, sort of slicked-back hair, the softness of her crow’s feet, and the brooch on the pocket, on her left; it was a flannel flower, the school’s emblem.

  “Well?” I said.

  “Well, um, what?” she asked.

  (Not the answer I was expecting.)

  “Is he getting kicked out for good this time?”

  “Well, I’m, um, not sure if that’s—”

  I cut her off. “Let’s face it, he bloody deserves it.”

  Rory ignited, almost with joy. “I’m sitting right here!”

  “Look at him,” I said. They looked. “Shirt out, sneer on. Does he look like he cares even remotely about this? Does he look repentant—”

  “Remotely?” Now it was Rory who interjected. “Repentant? Shit, Matthew, give us the dictionary, why don’t you?”

  Holland knew. She knew I wasn’t stupid. “To be honest, um, we could have used you last year in our, um, year twelve cohort, Matthew. You never looked that interested, but you were, weren’t you?”

  “Hey, I thought we were talking about me.”

  “Shut up, Rory.” That was Claudia Kirkby.

  “There, that’s better,” replied Rory. “Firm.” He was looking firmly somewhere else. She hugged her suit jacket a little tighter.

  “Stop that,” I said.

  “What?”