Bridge of Clay

by Markus Zusak

Then the jump, and she was gone.

  * * *

  —

  The second time they raced that autumn, in the T. J. Smith, it looked like he might have had her. The jockey let him out well before the turn, and the lead looked insurmountable. But Queen of Hearts had eaten him up. In five or six gigantic strides, she hit the front and kept it.

  Back at the stables, a giant crowd surrounded slot fourteen.

  Somewhere, inside, was Jackie, Queen of Hearts.

  In slot forty-two, there were only a few stray enthusiasts, and Petey Simms and Carey. And Clay.

  The girl ran her hand down his blaze.

  “Great run, boy.”

  Petey agreed. “I thought he had her—but that’s some horse.”

  Halfway between them, around stall slot twenty-eight, the two trainers stood and shook hands. They spoke while looking away.

  Clay, for some reason, liked that part.

  He liked it more than the race.

  * * *

  —

  Midwinter, the horse was spelled, after losing again to his nemesis, this time a total slaughter; this time four good lengths. He was barely ahead of the rest of them. They’d watched that one on TV, in the lounge at the Naked Arms, where it was showing live on Sky. It was a race run up in Queensland.

  “Poor old Wally,” she said, then called out to the barman—a guy named Scotty Bils. “Hey, how ’bout a beer or two to commiserate?”

  “Commiserate?” He grinned. “She won! That, and you’re underage.”

  Carey was disgusted. At the first comment, not the second.

  “C’mon, Clay, let’s go.”

  The barman looked at the girl, though, and then he looked at Clay; both Scotty Bils and the boy were older, and Scott just couldn’t place him; but there was something, he knew, between them.

  When finally he did, they were almost out the door.

  “Hey,” he called, “it’s you; you’re one of ’em—a fair few years ago—aren’t you?”

  It was Carey who first did the talking.

  “One of who?”

  “Seven beers!” shouted Scotty Bils, and his hair was almost gone, and Clay came back and spoke to him:

  “She said those beers were good.”

  * * *

  —

  And what have I told you before?

  Carey Novac could make you tell her things, although Clay was her hardest case. Outside, when he’d leaned on the Naked Arms tiles, she leaned against them with him. They were close, their arms were touching.

  “Seven beers? What was that guy talking about?”

  Clay’s hand went into his pocket.

  “Why is it,” she asked, “that every time you’re uneasy, you reach for whatever you’ve got there?” She was facing him, applying pressure.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “No,” she said, “it’s not.”

  She shook her head and decided to risk it; she reached down.

  “Stop.”

  “Oh, come on, Clay!”

  She laughed, and her fingers touched the pocket; her other hand went for his ribs—and it’s always something awful and anxious, when a face ignites, then changes; he’d taken her and shoved her away.

  “STOP!”

  His shout like a frightened animal.

  The girl fell back, she stammered; a single hand kept her up off the ground, but she refused to be helped to her feet. She slumped back against the tiles, her knees curled up at throat-height. He started to speak. “I’m sorry—”

  “No—don’t.” She looked fiercely at the boy beside her. “Don’t, Clay.” She was hurt and wanted to hurt him. “What the hell’s wrong with you, anyway? Why are you such a…”

  “A what? What?”

  Such a Goddamn freak.

  The vernacular of young people everywhere.

  The words like a wound, between them.

  * * *

  —

  They must have sat there a good hour after that, and Clay wondered how best to fix it; or if it was fixable at all—the swollen taste of conflict.

  He took the peg out softly and held it.

  He laid it slowly down onto her thigh.

  “I’ll tell you everything,” he said, but quietly. “Everything I can but this.” They looked at it, perched amongst them. “The seven beers, all her nicknames…how her dad had Stalin’s mustache. She said it was camped on his mouth.”

  She cracked, just slightly; she smiled.

  “That’s how she once described it,” and his voice now more like a whisper. “But not about the peg. Not yet.” The only way he could live with himself was knowing he’d tell her at the end—when she’d need to leave him behind.

  “Okay, Clay, I’ll wait.” She stood and she pulled him upwards; she forgave by being relentless. “So for now, just tell me the rest of it.” She said it like not many said such things. “Tell me all of everything.”

  * * *

  —

  And that was what he did.

  He told her everything I’ve told you so far, and so much more to come—just short of a backyard clothesline—and Carey did what no one could, she saw exactly what somehow he couldn’t.

  The next time they stood at the cemetery, with their fingers each clenched in the fence, she reached over with a small piece of paper.

  “I was thinking,” she said, and the sun backed away, “of that woman who left your father…and the book she’d taken with her.”

  Her freckles were fifteen coordinates, with a last one down on her neck—because there, on that small crumpled paper, was a name and several numbers, and the name she had written was HANLEY.

  “There are six of them,” she said, “in the phone book.”

  He woke up.

  He was sweating.

  He swam up through the sheets.

  Since the telling of truth to McAndrew, and Ted and Catherine Novac, he was left with a lasting question.

  Did he confess for only himself?

  But not even in his darkest moments did he believe that; he did it because he’d had to. They deserved to know how it happened.

  * * *

  —

  Now, many nights later, he woke and felt her upon him:

  The girl was on his chest.

  It’s a dream, I know it’s a dream.

  She came at his will of imagining.

  There was the smell of horses and death, but also alive and life-like; he knew because she was warm. She was still, but he felt her breath.

  “Carey?” he said, and she moved then. She got up sleepily and sat beside him. Her jeans and glowing forearms, like the day she’d first walked over.

  “It’s you,” he said.

  “It’s me…” But now she turned away from him. He’d have touched her auburn hair. “I’m here because you killed me.”

  He sank in a channel of sheets.

  In bed, but caught in a rip.

  * * *

  —

  After that, he returned to running, in mornings before work with me. His theory was perfect logic; the harder he ran, the less he ate, the more chance he might see her again.

  The problem was only he didn’t.

  “She’s dead.”

  He quietly said it.

  * * *

  —

  Some nights he walked to the cemetery.

  His fingers would cling to the fence.

  He would ache to see that woman again, from the start, from way back when—the one who’d asked for a tulip.

  Where are you? he almost asked her.

  Where are you now that I need you?

  He’d have looked inside that streak she had, that wrinkle above her eyebrows.

  * * *

  —

/>   Instead he ran to Bernborough.

  He did this night for night.

  In the end, a good few months went by, till he stood on the track at midnight. The wind was up and howling. There was no moon. Only streetlights. And Clay stood close to the finish line, then turned to the height of the grass.

  For a moment he slid his arm in; it was cold and unfriendly to the hand. For a moment he heard a voice. Quite clearly, it called out Clay. For a moment he wanted to believe, and so “Carey?” he called in after it—but he knew there was no going in.

  He just stood and he said her name—for hours, until the sunrise, and felt sure this would never recede. He would live like this and die like this, no sun would rise in him.

  “Carey,” he whispered, “Carey,” and the wind slung all around him, till finally dying down.

  “Carey,” he whispered, more desperately, then his final act of futility.

  “Carey,” he whispered—“Penny.”

  And someone out there heard it.

  In the past, in the year they had for their friendship, there were times it was easy being Carey and Clay, and they lived upwardly, closely together. But still, there were so many moments. He would sometimes stop and remind himself:

  He shouldn’t be falling in love like this.

  How could he feel deserving?

  Yes, it’s safe to say they loved each other, on rooves, in parks, even cemeteries. They walked through the streets of the racing quarter, and were fifteen and sixteen years old; they touched but never kissed.

  The girl was good and green-lit:

  The clear-eyed Carey Novac.

  The boy was the boy with the fire in his eyes.

  They loved each other almost like brothers.

  * * *

  —

  On the day of the phone book, they called each name from the top.

  There was no initial starting with A, so they decided on calling all of them, and hoped for the chance of a relative.

  The fourth one was the one.

  His name was Patrick Hanley.

  He said, “What? Who? Abbey?”

  It was Carey, that time, who spoke, because they’d alternated the calling, name for name, and she’d been second and fourth. She’d forced Clay to go first. They both listened up close to the earpiece, and could tell by the suspicion in his voice—this was definitely it. The others had all been clueless. Carey said they were looking for a woman, and she’d come from a place called Featherton. The other end, however, hung up.

  “Looks like we’re going out there,” she said, and searched, again, for the address. “Ernst Place, Edensor Park.”

  * * *

  —

  It was July by then, and she had a day off, a Sunday.

  They caught the train and bus.

  There was a field and a bike track footpath.

  The house was in a corner, the right-hand side of a cul-de-sac.

  At the door, he knew them right away.

  They stared at him next to the brickwork.

  He had dark hair, a black T-shirt, and an archway masquerading as a mustache.

  “Wow!” said Carey Novac; she’d spoken before she’d realized. “Look at the size of that handlebar!”

  Patrick Hanley wasn’t swayed.

  When Clay found the courage to talk to him, his questions were met with a question:

  “What the hell would you want with my sister?”

  But then he’d had a good look at him; and he looked a lot like him—Clay could see the moment it changed. Was Patrick remembering Michael, not only as a man Abbey married, but as the boy she’d walked the town with?

  Regardless, things became friendlier, and introductions were made.

  “This is Carey,” Clay said, “and I’m Clay—” and Patrick Hanley now stepped closer.

  “Clay Dunbar,” he said quite casually; but he’d split them right down the middle. He’d said it, he didn’t ask.

  * * *

  —

  She lived in a gorgeous apartment block:

  She was several bright windows in a concrete Goliath—the capitalist type—and they went there a few weeks later (Carey’s next day free), on an August afternoon. They stood in its frightening shade.

  “It goes all the way up to heaven,” said Carey, and as usual, her hair was out. Her blood-spot freckles were jittery. “You ready?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, look at you!”

  She slid a hand through so they linked arms, and they could have been Michael and Abbey.

  Yet still, he didn’t move.

  “Look at what?”

  “You!”

  As always she wore her jeans, and worn-out ones at that. Her flannel shirt was faded. A black jacket was loosely open.

  She hugged him by the buzzers.

  “I wouldn’t be listed, either,” she said, “if I lived in a place like this.”

  “I think it’s the first time you’ve ever seen me in a shirt,” he said.

  “Exactly!” She tightened their linking arms. “See? I told you. You’re ready.”

  He typed in 182.

  * * *

  —

  In the lift, he shifted his feet, he was so nervous he might throw up, but in the corridor he was better. It was rendered white, with dark blue trimmings. At its end was the greatest view of the city you could imagine. There was water everywhere—the salty kind—and a skyline that felt within reach.

  On the right you could see the Opera House.

  To its left was its constant running mate:

  They looked from the sails to the Coathanger.

  A voice stood up behind them.

  “Goodness.”

  Her eyes were sweet and smoky.

  “You look exactly like him.”

  * * *

  —

  Inside, the apartment was a woman’s.

  There was no man there, no children.

  It was somehow immediately obvious.

  When they looked at the former Abbey Dunbar, they knew she was, and had been, beautiful. They knew she had great hair, good clothes, attractive in every way—but even so, there was love and loyalty; this was no Penelope. Nowhere even close.

  “Would you like a drink?” she asked.

  They spoke together. “No thanks.”

  “Tea? Coffee?”

  Yes, her eyes were grey and glorious.

  Her hair was as good as television—she had a bob to knock your socks off—and you needn’t look hard to see the girl again, as bony as a calf.

  “What about milk and cookies?” said Carey, an attempt to lighten the mood. She played Abbey; she felt she had to.

  “Hey, kid.” The woman smiled—this older version—and even her pants were perfect. That, and a priceless shirt. “I like you, but best be quiet.”

  * * *

  —

  When Clay told me about all this, he said the funniest thing.

  He said the TV was on, and there was the background noise of game shows. Where once she’d loved I Dream of Jeannie, now it seemed to be this. He couldn’t tell which show it was, but they were introducing the contestants, one of whom was Steve, and Steve was a computer programmer, whose hobbies were paragliding and tennis. He loved the outdoors and reading.

  When they all sat down, and Carey had settled down, they talked for a while of small things—of school and work and how Carey was an apprentice jockey, but it was Clay who did the talking. Abbey spoke of his father, and what a beautiful boy he’d been, and how he’d walked that dog through Featherton.

  “Moon,” said Carey Novac, but quietly, almost to herself.

  Both Clay and Abbey smiled.

  When Carey did actually come to speak louder again, it was to ask a burning question.
“Did you ever get remarried?”

  Abbey said, “That’s better,” and then, “Oh yes. I did.”

  As Clay looked at Carey, thinking, Thank God you’re here, he also felt blind in the light. This place was so well lit! The sun came in so directly, and hit the modern couch, the mile-long oven, and even the coffee machine as if they were holy—but he could tell there wasn’t a piano. Again, she was all but nothing. He was staunch and would quietly fight it.

  As for Abbey, she looked out, she nursed her cup of coffee.

  “Oh yes, I got remarried—I did it twice,” and abruptly, like she couldn’t wait any longer, she said, “Come here, I want to show you something,” and “Come on, I won’t bite,” when he hesitated, for she was leading him into the bedroom. “Here—”

  And yes, here all right—because there, across from the bed, on a snippet of a piece of wall, was something to beat his heart down, then lift it slowly out of him:

  It was something so soft and simple, in a scratchy silver frame.

  A picture of Abbey’s hands.

  A sketch like sticks, but gentle.

  Like sticks, but soft; you could lie in them.

  She said, “He was seventeen, I’d say, when he drew that,” and Clay, for the first time, looked at her: beneath, to other beauty.

  “Thank you for showing me,” he said, and Abbey would use the momentum. She could have no idea of Clay and Penny, and five brothers and noise and chaos, and fights about the piano; and dying. There was only the boy in front of her, and she intended to make it count.

  She said, “How can I ever tell you, Clay?” She was between the boy and the girl. “I’d tell you how sorry I am, what a fool I was—but you’re here, and I can see it.” For a moment she looked at Carey. “Is this boy a beautiful boy?”

  And Carey, of course, looked back at her, then kept her focus on Clay. The freckles no longer anxious. A smile recalling the sea. And of course, she’d said, “Of course.”