Nos4a2

by Joe Hill

  She didn’t want proof. She wanted not to know about it.

  Failing that, she wished there were someone she could talk to who would tell her she was all right, that she was not a lunatic. She wanted to find someone who could explain, make sense of a bridge that only existed when she needed it and always took her where she needed to go.

  She dropped over the side of the hill and into a pocket of cool, rushing air.

  That was not all she wanted. She wanted to find the bridge itself, to see it again. She felt clear in her head and certain of herself, firmly placed in the moment. She was conscious of every jolt and shudder as the Raleigh banged over roots and stones. She knew the difference between fantasy and reality, and she kept this difference clear in her head, and she believed that when she reached the old dirt road, the Shorter Way Bridge would not be there—

  Only it was.

  “You aren’t real,” she said to the bridge, unconsciously echoing Mr. Eugley. “You fell in the river when I was eight.”

  The bridge obstinately remained.

  She braked to a stop and looked at it, a safe twenty feet away. The Merrimack churned beneath it.

  “Help me find someone who can tell me I’m not crazy,” she said to it, and put her feet on the pedals and rode slowly toward it.

  As she approached the entrance, she saw the old, familiar green spray paint on the wall to her left.

  HERE

  That was a funny place to point her toward, she thought. Wasn’t she already here?

  All the other times she had gone across the Shorter Way, she had ridden in a kind of trance, turning the pedals automatically and thoughtlessly, just another working part of the machine, along with the gears and the chain.

  This time she forced herself to go slow and to look around, even though everything in her wanted to get out of the bridge as soon as she was in it. She fought it, the overriding impulse to hurry, to ride as if the bridge were collapsing behind her. She wanted to fix the details of the place in her mind. She half believed that if she really looked at the Shorter Way Bridge, looked at it intently, it would melt away around her.

  And then what? Where would she be if the bridge blinked out of existence? It didn’t matter. The bridge persisted, no matter how hard she stared at it. The wood was old and worn and splintery-looking. The nails in the walls were caked with rust. She felt the floorboards sink under the weight of the bike. The Shorter Way would not be willed into nothingness.

  She was aware, as always, of the white noise. She could feel the thunderous roar of it in her teeth. She could see it, could see the storm of static through the cracks in the tilted walls.

  Vic did not quite dare stop her bike, get off and touch the walls, walk around. She believed that if she got off her bike, she would never get back on. Some part of her felt that the existence of the bridge depended utterly on forward motion and not thinking too much.

  The bridge buckled and stiffened and buckled again. Dust trickled from the rafters. Had she seen a pigeon fly up there once?

  She lifted her head and looked and saw that the ceiling was carpeted in bats, their wings closed around the small, furry nubs of their bodies. They were in constant subtle movement, wiggling about, rearranging their wings. A few turned their faces to peer nearsightedly down upon her.

  Each of these bats was identical, and each had Vic’s own face. All their faces were shrunken and shriveled and pink, but she knew herself. They were her except for the eyes, which glittered redly, like drops of blood. At the sight of them, she felt a fine silver needle of pain slide through her left eyeball and into her brain. She could hear their high, piping, nearly subsonic cries above the hiss and pop of the static flurry.

  She couldn’t bear it. She wanted to scream, but she knew if she did, the bats would let go of the roof and swarm around her and that would be the end of her. She shut her eyes and threw her whole self into pedaling to the far end of the bridge. Something was shaking furiously. She could not tell if it was the bridge, the bike, or herself.

  With her eyes closed, she did not know she had reached the other end of the bridge until she felt the front tire thump over the sill. She felt a blast of heat and light—she had not once looked to see where she was going—and heard a shout: Watch out! She opened her eyes just as the bike hit a low cement curb in

  Here, Iowa

  AND SHE SPILLED ONTO THE SIDEWALK, SANDPAPERING HER RIGHT KNEE.

  Vic rolled onto her back, grabbing her leg.

  “Ow,” she said. “Ow ow OW ow.”

  Her voice running up and down through several octaves, like an instrumentalist practicing scales.

  “Oh, kittens. Are you all right?” came a voice from somewhere in the glare of midday sunshine. “You sh-should really be more careful jumping out of thin air like that.”

  Vic squinted into the light and was able to make out a scrawny girl not much older than herself—she was perhaps twenty—with a fedora tipped back on her fluorescent purple hair. She wore a necklace made out of beer-can pull tabs and a pair of Scrabble-tile earrings; her feet were stuck into Chuck Taylor Converse high-tops, no laces. She looked like Sam Spade, if Sam Spade had been a girl and had a weekend gig fronting a ska band.

  “I’m okay. Just scraped myself,” Vic said, but the girl had already quit listening. She was staring back at the Shorter Way.

  “You know, I’ve always wanted a bridge there,” the girl said. “Couldn’ta dropped it in a better s-spot.”

  Vic raised herself up onto her elbows and looked back at the bridge, which now spanned a wide, noisy rush of brown water. This river was almost as wide as the Merrimack, although the banks were far lower. Stands of birch and century-old oaks massed along the water’s edge, which was just a couple feet below the sandy, crumbling embankment.

  “Is that what it did? My bridge dropped? Like, out of the sky?”

  The girl continued to stare at it. She had the sort of unblinking, stuporous stare that Vic associated with pot and a fondness for Phish. “Mmm-no. It was more like watching a Polaroid develop. Have you ever s-s-ssseen a Polaroid develop?”

  Vic nodded, thinking of the way the brown chemical square slowly went pale, details swimming into place, colors brightening steadily, objects taking shape.

  “Your bridge faded in where there were a couple old oaks. Good-bye, oaks.”

  “I think your trees will come back when I go,” Vic said—although with a moment to consider it she had to admit to herself she had no idea if this were true. It felt true, but she couldn’t attest to it as fact. “You don’t seem very surprised about my bridge showing up out of nowhere.” Remembering Mr. Eugley, how he had trembled and covered his eyes and screamed for her to go away.

  “I was watching for you. I didn’t know you were going to make ssssuch an ass-kicking entrance, but I also knew you might not sssss—” And without any warning at all, the girl in the hat stopped talking, midsentence. Her lips were parted to say the next word, but no word would come, and a look of strain came across her face, as if she were trying to lift something heavy: a piano or a car. Her eyes protruded. Her cheeks colored. She forced herself to exhale and then just as abruptly continued. “—get here like a normal person. Excuse me, I have a ss-ss-ssstammer.”

  “You were watching for me?”

  The girl nodded but was considering the bridge again. In a slow, dreamy voice, she said, “Your bridge . . . it doesn’t go to the other side of the Cedar River, does it?”

  “No.”

  “So where does it go?”

  “Haverhill.”

  “Is that here in Iowa?”

  “No. Massachusetts.”

  “Oh, boy, you’ve come a long way. You’re in the Corn Belt now. You’re in the land where everything is flat except the ladies.” For a moment Vic was pretty sure she saw the girl leer.

  “Excuse me, but . . . can we go back to the part where you said you were watching for me?”

  “Well, duh! I’ve been expecting you for months. I did
n’t think you’d ever sh-show up. You’re the Brat, aren’t you?”

  Vic opened her mouth, but nothing would come.

  Her silence was answer enough, and her surprise clearly pleased the other girl, who smiled and tucked some of her fluorescent hair back behind one ear. With her upturned nose and slightly pointed ears, there was something elvish about her. Although that was possibly a side effect of the setting: They were on a grassy hill, in the shade of leafy oaks, between the river and a big building that from the back had the look of a cathedral or a college hall, a fortress of cement and granite with white spires and narrow slots for windows, perfect for shooting arrows through.

  “I thought you’d be a boy. I was expecting the kind of kid who won’t eat lettuce and picks his nose. How do you feel about lettuce?”

  “Not a fan.”

  She squeezed her little hands into tight fists and shook them over her head. “Knew it!” Then she lowered her fists and frowned. “Big nose picker?”

  “Blow it, don’t show it,” Vic said. “Did you say this is Iowa?”

  “Sure did!”

  “Where in Iowa?”

  “Here,” said the girl in the hat.

  “Well,” Vic started, feeling a flash of annoyance, “I mean, yeah, I know, but, like—here where?”

  “Here, Iowa. That’s the name of the town. You’re right down the road from beautiful Cedar Rapids, at the Here Public Library. And I know all about why you came. You’re confused about your bridge, and you’re trying to figure things out. Boy, is this your lucky day!” She clapped her hands. “You found yourself a librarian! I can help with the figuring-out thing and point you toward some good poetry while I’m at it. It’s what I do.”

  The Library

  THE GIRL THUMBED BACK HER OLD-TIMEY FEDORA AND SAID, “I’M Margaret. Just like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, only I hate when people call me that.”

  “Margaret?”

  “No. God. I’ve got a big enough ego as it is.” She grinned. “Margaret Leigh. You can just call me Maggie. If we go inside and I get you a Band-Aid and a cup of tea, do you think your bridge will stay?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “Okay. Cool. I hope your bridge doesn’t disappear on you. I’m sure we could get you home without it—we could hold a fund-raiser or s-s-something—but it might be better if you went back the way you came. Just so you don’t have to explain to your parents how you wound up in Iowa. I mean, it wouldn’t be too bad if you had to ss-ss-ssstay awhile! I have a bed down in Romantic Poetry. I crash here some nights. But you could bunk there and I could camp out with my uncle in his trailer, at least until we raise your bus fare.”

  “Romantic Poetry?”

  “Shelves 821-point-2 through 821-point-6. I’m not supposed to suh-ss-sleep in the library, but Ms. Howard lets me get away with it if it’s only now and then. She pities me, because I’m an orphan and kind of weird. That’s okay. I don’t mind. People make out like it’s a terrible thing to be pitied, but I say, Hey! I get to sleep in a library and read books all night! Without pity, where would I be? I’m a total pity s-s-ssslut.”

  She took Vic’s upper arm and helped her to her feet. She bent and collected the bicycle and leaned it against a bench. “You don’t have to lock it up. I don’t think anyone in this town is imaginative enough to think of s-s-stealing something.”

  Vic followed her up the path, through a sliver of wooded park, to the rear of the great stone temple of books. The library was built into the side of the hill, so it was possible to walk through a heavy iron door into what Vic guessed would be a basement. Maggie turned a key hanging from the lock and pushed the door inward, and Vic did not hesitate to enter. It didn’t cross her mind to mistrust Maggie, to wonder if this older girl might be leading her into a dark cellar with thick stone walls, where no one would be able to hear her scream. Vic instinctively understood that a girl who wore Scrabble tiles as earrings and called herself a pity slut did not present much in the way of threat. Besides, Vic had wanted to find someone who could tell her if she was crazy, not someone who was crazy. There was no reason to be afraid of Maggie, unless Vic thought the Shortaway could willfully lead her wrong, and on some level Vic knew that it couldn’t.

  The room on the other side of the iron door was ten degrees cooler than the parkland outside. Vic smelled the vast vault filled with books before she saw it, because her eyes required time to adjust to the cavernous dark. She breathed deeply of the scent of decaying fiction, disintegrating history, and forgotten verse, and she observed for the first time that a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue, and cleverness. The iron door settled shut behind them, the weight of it clanging heavily against the frame.

  Maggie said, “If books were girls, and reading was s-ss-ssss—fucking, this would be the biggest whorehouse in the county and I’d be the most ruthless pimp you ever met. Whap the girls on the butts and send them off to their tricks as fast and often as I can.”

  Vic laughed, then clapped a hand over her mouth, remembering that librarians hated noise.

  Maggie led her through the dim labyrinth of the stacks, along narrow corridors with walls of high shelves.

  “If you ever have to escape in a hurry,” Maggie said, “like, if you were on the run from the cops, just remember: Stay to your right and keep going down the steps. Fastest way out.”

  “You think I’ll have to escape the Here Public Library in a hurry?”

  “Not today,” Maggie said. “What’s your name? People must call you something besides the Brat.”

  “Victoria. Vic. The only person who ever calls me the Brat is my father. It’s just his joke. How come you know my nickname but not my name? And what did you mean, you were expecting me? How could you be expecting me? I didn’t even know I was coming to see you until about ten minutes ago.”

  “Right. I can help with all that. Let me s-stanch your bleeding first, and then we’ll have questions and answers.”

  “I think answers are more important than my knee,” Vic said. She hesitated then, and with a feeling of unaccustomed shyness said, “I scared someone with my bridge. A nice old guy back home. I might’ve really messed up his life.”

  Maggie looked across at her, eyes shining brightly in the darkness of the stacks. She gave Vic a careful once-over, then said, “That’s not a very bratty thing to s-say. I’ve got doubts about this nickname of yours.” The corners of her mouth moved in the smallest of smiles. “If you upset someone, I doubt you meant it. And I doubt you did any lasting damage. People have pretty rubbery brains. They can take quite a bit of bouncing around. Come on. Band-Aids and tea. And answers. They’re all right this way.”

  They emerged from the stacks into a cool, stone-floored, open area, a sort of shabby office. It was, Vic thought, an office for a private investigator in a black-and-white movie, not a librarian with a punk haircut. It had the five essential props for any PI’s home base: a gunmetal gray desk, an out-of-date pinup-girl calendar, a coatrack, a sink with rust stains in it—and a snub-nosed .38 in the center of the desk, holding down some papers. There was also a fish tank, a big one, filling a five-foot-long socket in one wall.

  Maggie removed her gray fedora and tossed it at the coatrack. In the soft light from the fish tank, her metallic purple hair glowed, a thousand burning neon filaments. While Maggie filled an electric teakettle, Vic wandered to the desk to inspect the revolver, which turned out to be a bronze paperweight with an inscription on the smooth grip: PROPERTY A. CHEKHOV.

  Maggie returned with Band-Aids and motioned for Vic to get up on the edge of the desk. Vic sat where Maggie pointed and put her feet on the worn wooden chair. The act of bending her legs brought the stinging sensation in her knee back to the forefront of her mind. With it came a deep, nasty throb of pain in her left eyeball. It was a feeling like the eye was caught between the steel prongs of some surgical instrument and being squeezed. She rubbed at it with her palm.

  Maggi
e touched a cold, damp washcloth to Vic’s knee, cleaning grit out of the scrape. She had lit a cigarette at some point, and the smoke was sweet and agreeable; Maggie worked on Vic’s leg with the quiet efficiency of a mechanic checking the oil.

  Vic took a long, measuring look at the big fish tank set into the wall. It was the size of a coffin. A lone golden koi, with long whiskers that lent him a wise appearance, hovered listlessly in the tank. Vic had to look twice before her eyes could make visual sense of what was on the bottom of the tank: not a bed of rocks but a tumble of white Scrabble tiles, hundreds of them, but only four letters: F I S H.

  Through the wavering, green-tinted distortion of the tank, Vic could see what lay on the other side: a carpeted children’s library. About a dozen kids and their mothers were gathered in a loose semicircle around a woman in a neat tweed skirt, who sat in a chair that was too small for her and who was holding up a board book so the little guys could look at the pictures. She was reading to them, although Vic could not hear her through the stone wall, over the bubbling of the air handler in the fish tank.

  “You’re just in time for story hour,” Maggie said. “Ss-story hour is the best hour of the day. It’s the only hour I care about.”

  “I like your fish tank.”

  “It’s a whore to clean,” Maggie said, and Vic had to squeeze her lips together to keep from shouting with laughter.