Eureka

by Jim Lehrer

  There were more barriers and warnings at the bridge, which Otis again walked his scooter around.

  The last sign had the harshest words of all:

  DANGER! BRIDGE UNSAFE!

  PROCEED NO FARTHER!

  TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED!

  STATE LAW!

  At a glance, the bridge resembled something from truly ancient times. The half-circle steel girders that swooped up twenty-five or thirty feet on both sides were solid rust. So were the metal struts and stanchions and heavy wires that had been strung between and through the girders for reinforcement.

  The bridge’s narrow two-lane road appeared to be wooden planking, much of which was split, broken, torn, or rotted away.

  The metal girders rose out of blocks of cracked concrete supports. On the right, faded and neglected, was a two-foot-square bronze tablet embedded in the concrete. Otis walked over and read it.

  THIS BRIDGE WAS BUILT BY THE WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION UNDER THE ADMINISTRATION OF PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT. IT WAS OPENED AND DEDICATED ON MARCH 12, 1936, BY U.S. SENATOR ANDREW MULVANE, U.S. REPRESENTATIVE HAMILTON HANOVER AND THE GOVERNOR OF KANSAS, RUSSELL MCDONALD.

  Above it was a smaller green-and-white metal sign swinging loose by a single screw. It said: CHANUTE RIVER.

  Otis stepped onto the bridge, being careful to put his feet down on what looked to be the most solid planks. He looked through the girders to the water of the Chanute River below. It was a long way down—fifty, maybe seventy-five feet—and the river was wider here—sixty yards at least—than Otis had expected. He must have driven over this bridge several times when he was younger, but he didn’t recall it being this high or the river being this big or running this fast. Maybe it had rained upriver somewhere and the runoff had flooded the Chanute.

  The current was really strong. He watched several cotton-wood limbs and what resembled a couple of large oil cans appear from upriver and quickly disappear below him and the bridge.

  The only noise was that made by the flowing of the river.

  He saw a few birds in the trees on the riverbank. They looked like meadowlarks, the state bird of Kansas, a fact that he had had to memorize in the sixth grade, along with the state tree, the cottonwood; the state motto, Ad Astra Per Aspera—”To the stars through difficulties;” the state colors, blue and gold; the state flower, the sunflower; and the state song, “Home on the Range.”

  Now, Otis. Sing, Otis, sing.

  He began to sing in a southern nasal twang as loud as he could:

  “Oh, give me a home,

  Where the buffalo roam,

  Where the deer and the antelope play …”

  Then he stopped and switched to the other song of Kansas:

  “I was born in Kansas,

  I was bred in Kansas

  And when I get married,

  I’ll be wed in Kansas.

  There’s a true-blue gal

  Who promised she would wait,

  She’s a sunflower

  from the sunflower state.”

  There. He had done it. He had sung again. He had sung, and his words were still reverberating and echoing out there somewhere for the birds and any other living things around to enjoy, if they so desired.

  He had never really ever sung a song—any song—by himself since graduation day from high school. He had been the star male singer of Sedgwicktown High School, crooning a. la Mercer at assemblies and gatherings, particularly “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe,” from the movie The Harvey Girls, That song was big everywhere but most particularly in small-town Kansas, through which the Santa Fe, as it was simply called, ran up, down, across, and through. Otis’s ability to carry a tune with some skill was an accidental gift. Otis had joined the high school chorus because his mother made him, and he expected to mostly hum with the other boys behind the singing of the girls. But the chorus director, a woman named Alma Stockton, whose main job was to teach math, heard something special in Otis’s voice. Alma Stockton told him many times that, for her money, Otis sang the Santa Fe song better even than Johnny Mercer, and he could probably make a living and life just singing that one song if he wanted to.

  But Otis stopped performing after high school. He did not sing even a word of anything except later, as a Eureka civic leader, when he mumbled hymns at the First Methodist Church and “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Rotary, sporting events, and similar gatherings.

  Now he had sung alone again as Johnny Mercer.

  A crow, clearly attracted by the stunning beauty of the singing, landed on one of the girders that crossed over the bridge from one span to the other, high above Otis.

  “Or are you a hawk or an eagle or a blackbird or a vulture instead of a crow?” Otis said to the black bird. He had never been good at distinguishing the really big ones. They all looked like crows to him.

  He hoped it wasn’t a vulture. He hoped there wasn’t a carcass of a dead animal around that had drawn the attention of this bird, whatever its species.

  He considered firing off a BB or two at the bird.

  No, no. That bird wasn’t hurting anything up there. Besides, it clearly appreciated the singing. So why bother it? But Otis was overcome with satisfaction in realizing for certain that he could have scored a bull’s-eye on the bird’s head if he chose to. He was that good with his Daisy rifle.

  That was Buck, the marksman runaway singer—and an old cowhand? That reminded him of the Mercer song Pete Wetmore had said was his favorite.

  Thinking maybe he was doing it in Pete’s memory, Otis sang it loudly:

  “I’m an old cowhand from the Rio Grande.

  But my legs ain’t bowed

  And my cheeks ain’t tanned,

  I’m a cowboy who never saw a cow

  Never roped a steer ’cause I don’t know how

  And I sure ain’t fixin’ to start in now

  Yippie-yi-yo-ki-yay,

  Yippie-yi-yo-ki-yay.

  I’m an old cowhand from the Rio Grande

  And I learned to ride

  ’Fore I learned to stand

  I’m a ridin’ fool who is up to date

  I know every trail in the Lone Star State

  ’Cause I ride the range in a Ford V8

  Yippie-yi-yo-ki-yay

  Yippie-yi-yo-ki-yay.”

  Otis looked ahead to the end of the bridge, to the other side of the river. It wasn’t really that far. The left side of the bridge’s roadway seemed in better shape than the right. Fewer of the planks were missing or rotten. It was obvious that through the years, the winds and rain and snow from the north had hit the other side of the bridge first and done heavier damage.

  If he was careful, he could drive his Cushman across. The alternative would be to go all the way back to the detour turnoff. What a silly and unecessary waste of time that would be. Onward, Otis.

  Yippie-yi-yo-ki-yay, Buck.

  He walked the scooter over to the left and confirmed that the planking looked much stronger and in better condition here.

  Okay, Cushman, let’s go.

  He mounted the scooter, kicked the motor started, and began a slow, steady, careful putt-putt toward the other side of the river, keeping the scooter as close as possible to the metal span. Just in case.

  Just in case he had to grab on to something.

  No problems the first ten yards. He heard some cracking sounds but gunned the scooter quickly before anything happened. At twenty yards, not quite halfway, he spotted a missing plank ahead, right in his path. He swerved gently to the right and moved past it and then turned back onto his route.

  Onward, Buck.

  He felt terrific. He felt so good, so accomplished, so daring, so brave, so satisfied just knowing he could still sing a song like Johnny Mercer, blow the head off a big black bird with a BB if he chose to do so, or maneuver a motor scooter across an ancient, closed, dangerous bridge.

  He saw the reflection of a flashing blue light coming from somewhere behind him. He turned to se
e what it was.

  Crack!

  The sound of splintering wood shot up from below the scooter’s front tire. Otis jerked the handlebar hard to the right and threw the throttle all the way forward.

  He felt the scooter giving way underneath him, the front first and then the whole machine. He desperately reached out to the side with his bare left hand for anything—a wire, a girder. Anything that he could hold on to, anything that would keep him from following the scooter down into the rushing waters of the Chanute River.

  He had something in his hand. He wasn’t falling. He held on as tight as he could. His body, from the waist down, was dangling through the roadway. A huge hunk must have come loose and given way. Maybe he could pull or swing himself up. He began to twist his body around so he could also grab something with his right hand.

  “Hey, friend! Hold on! I’m coming!”

  Who is that? thought Otis. The voice is familiar. The deputy? What did he find on his computer check about me? Why is he here?

  Otis reached forward with his right hand. His left hand slipped free.

  And down he fell. He screamed only once and only one word: “No!”

  In the few split seconds it took him to hit the water, he tried to think of something from the fourth year of his life and saw off to the left what looked like his red scooter in the water, being rushed away by the current. Or was that a mirage? Wouldn’t it have sunk like a rock?

  Then he crashed into the water, feetfirst. The impact jarred loose the Chiefs helmet from his head. He continued down into the water like a rock.

  Goodbye, helmet, Cushman, Red Ryder, wet dreams, Johnny Mercer, and life.

  Water rushed into his mouth and nose, and he could no longer breathe.

  E HEARD A VOICE. A man’s.

  “Otis, it’s me—Dr. Severy. Madison Severy. Call me Mad!”

  A voice. A man’s. Call me Mad? What does that mean?

  I am not dead!

  That’s what it means.

  I am not dead!

  The words leaped to and through Otis. He tried to speak them out loud. Nothing happened. There was no sound. At least he didn’t hear any. Were his lips moving? No way to tell.

  He decided to open his eyes. But they wouldn’t cooperate. It was like looking through a narrow, tiny mail slot in a foggy rain. Something like that.

  He thought he saw filmy, poorly lit shadows. They were people, maybe—probably. Other people who, like him, were also alive. One of them was probably Mad.

  I didn’t drown!

  He didn’t try to say it this time. He just thought it.

  “Otis, if you can hear me, nod your head!” The voice was male. It again sounded like the man who had said he was a doctor and should be called Mad. He was shouting. Why was he shouting?

  I’m Buck, Mad.

  Otis decided not to try nodding. He was too tired to do so even if he could.

  “You’re a lucky man,” said Mad, his voice’s volume turned down a bit but still very loud. “If that deputy hadn’t happened along, there’s no telling what the outcome might have been.”

  Call me Buck!

  Otis remembered a man in a uniform. At the river. He suddenly had the taste of tobacco smoke in his mouth. Or was he imagining that? Did the guy do CPR?

  He couldn’t tell exactly where Mad was; the shouts had come from over there on the right. Mad must be screaming into Otis’s right ear.

  Stop that!

  Otis figured his closed eyes might cause the Mad shouter to think this lucky patient of his had gone to sleep so he would shut up. He was wrong.

  “He’s reacting, he’s coming to,” said Mad in a much quieter voice. But not to Otis. Otis was the he. Mad was speaking to somebody else, probably one of those other shadows. Coming to?

  I am not coming to!

  “You’ve been saved, Otis,” Mad said in only a half-shout. “Your driver’s license got wet, but they could still read your name. Otis Halstead of Eureka, Kansas—you can thank God for that.”

  I don’t thank God for anything!

  “You’re back home in Eureka at the Ashland Clinic.”

  No!

  Otis tightened his closed eyes—or thought he did. That was what he wanted to do, at least. But he couldn’t tell if he had done it. He couldn’t tell if he had done—could do—anything.

  “Look, look,” said the voice of Mad, again to somebody besides Otis. “There’s liquid seeping out from under his eyelids.”

  “Are those tears?” a woman asked. Was that Sally? Otis couldn’t hear much better than he could see. Maybe that was why Mad was screaming into his ear. But it sounded like she really was crying. Sally always used to cry whenever Otis cried. She couldn’t help herself. It was automatic. He cried, she cried. When was the last time that had happened—that he’d really cried?

  “Tears of joy, obviously,” said Mad.

  “Maybe not,” said another voice, also a man’s. It sounded to Otis like it might be that idiot Tonganoxie.

  Get me out of here, Idiot Tonganoxie!

  Obviously, Idiot Tonganoxie couldn’t hear that. Nobody could hear anything Otis was saying, because he couldn’t talk. Right? Right, right.

  Otis figured he might have had it all wrong. He wasn’t alive at all. He had drowned in the Chanute. Now he was dead. But if he was dead, why would they have brought him to the world-famous Ashland Clinic? To study his water-soaked brain? Maybe Mad was lying to him. Or maybe Mad didn’t even exist. Maybe the newly late Otis Halstead of Eureka, Kansas, aka Buck, was in some kind of anteroom on the way to hell. No question, the final destination for Otis was going to be hell. But maybe not Buck?

  Different name meant different man meant different final destination?

  There was only one way to find out what was really going on here.

  He started with trying to move his right leg. Nothing happened. It wouldn’t budge. Neither would the left. Or either of his arms.

  I’m dead!

  That smoking deputy was too late.

  I’m only paralyzed?

  Maybe he saved only my life. My brain’s waterlogged—soaked through and through. Flooded to a standstill with water from the Chanute.

  “I’m a neurotherapist, and I promise you we’re going to bring you back to full life, if you do your part, Otis.” It was Mad.

  Could a neurotherapist, whatever that was, read minds—even those full of river water?

  “Please try to move the big toe on your left foot. Otis, say to yourself: ‘I am now going to move my big toe on my left foot.’”

  My big toe on my left foot. Yes, I can say that to myself, I am now going to move my big toe on my left foot.

  I’m alive!

  “Move it, Otis. Move the toe.”

  Move it, Otis, Move the toe.

  Otis tried but couldn’t move it, at least as far as he could tell.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” said the male shadow called Mad to some other shadows, maybe those of Tonganoxie and Sally. “We’ll give you something to help you sleep.”

  And they all went away.

  OTIS TRIED TO jiggle his head around. He wanted to see if he could hear or feel water sloshing around up there inside his skull.

  He neither heard nor felt anything, of course, and it was doubtful that his head had moved. But the thought might have made him laugh, or at least smile, if he could have done either.

  Goddammit!

  That was the prevailing mantra.

  He was back in Eureka. And at the world-famous Ashland Clinic. Goddammit! Goddammit! Goddammit!

  Maybe he’d have been better off without the deputy and the taste of the man’s cigarette smoke in his mouth. Maybe he’d be better off drowned in the Chanute than alive in Eureka at the Ashland Clinic.

  Yes, he was alive. He was pretty sure he knew that now. That was what he knew. That was all he knew. The last thought he’d had in the river was that he was drowning.

  He didn’t know about his Cushman, his Daisy Red Ryder air rifle, hi
s cast-iron fire engine, and his Kansas City Chiefs helmet. Did they drown?

  Why hadn’t he drowned if they had? The deputy couldn’t save them? Did he even try?

  What about his singing again like Johnny Mercer? Did it drown, too?

  He didn’t want to be here as Otis. He was running away from here as Buck. He was going the other way. He was Buck who was going west on a motor scooter. Too bad they could read his driver’s license. Maybe he’d be at some other hospital on the other side of the river if they hadn’t figured out he was Otis Halstead of Eureka, Kansas.

  Did they bring him back on the interstate? Buck didn’t like interstates.

  Goddammit!

  Mad? Call me Mad? Is that nickname part of what passes for humor here at the world-famous Ashland Clinic?

  Was Otis Halstead still fifty-nine? Or had Buck turned sixty?

  Maybe the shadow people would tell him everything when they came back tomorrow.

  Meanwhile, he would work on jiggling his right big toe. Or was it the left one the shadow named Mad had wanted him to move?

  Tears coming out of his eyes? That didn’t make sense. He hadn’t felt like crying. Only screaming. Maybe that was sweat Mad saw oozing from between the lids.

  Or water left over from the Chanute.

  THEN THERE WAS Mad again, talking.

  “Good morning, Otis,” he said. “I trust you slept well?”

  Otis didn’t attempt to respond, not with a nod or a wink, much less a word. He didn’t know if he’d slept well or not or for how long.

  What day was it? How much longer until his sixtieth birthday? Or had it already come and gone?

  Mad was still talking.

  “There’s a young man out here who says he knows you as somebody named Buck. He says he saw your picture and read about your accident in the newspaper and decided to find you and come see you. He says his name is Tom but you know him as T Injured people are often victimized by unscrupulous con men and women who read about somebody’s misfortune. He seems terribly clean-cut, but one can never tell. He wants to come in and see you. Can you give us some indication of what we should do with him—what we should tell him?”