An hour passes, then two. A couple kid taggers sneak in, but I yell like the security guard and they clear out.
Part of me feels the urge I had all those years ago when I abandoned my new pickup and all my dad had built for himself, and for me, and walked out onto the Oregon City Bridge. That day was just as dark and wet. I had stood in the middle of the bridge’s narrow two lanes, less than thirty feet wide across. I was alone. No traffic was coming through at that hour. The bridge had towered over me, rising up in a concrete-covered arch. I could imagine all the giant skeletal steel girders and spans and bolts just under that concrete skin. I knew how bridges worked. I had wanted to be an engineer but had backed out of it, intimidated by the schooling it took, and returned to working alongside my dad. It was the only way he had wanted me anyway.
I remember the rain had picked up. It trickled down the concrete, making it glisten. I stepped onto the walkway, and then onto the base of the arch, which had a nice, flat width to it, and I started to march right up the slope, and upward.
I felt mechanical, like this was meant to be. My breathing calmed. I quit shaking. When the grade got steeper and the wind harder, I remember I kicked off one work boot, then another for better grip, and I had kept climbing. I had needed to reach the crest of that arch, and it was all that I would ever need again ...
I perk up under my tarp. A black SUV pickup has pulled up to the job site. It’s Gerald Tappen. He comes in through a rear gate and wanders around, checking this, checking that. He talks on the phone flapping his arms and pointing things out, this is not right and that’s screwed, hanging up and pulling tarp tighter over materials and electricals, surveying his mess of a job like a dog just thrown into a cage. Then he’s standing right below me. His phone rings again. I move forward to listen.
“Hey there, good to hear from you,” he says. “Oh, yeah, we’re still at it gangbusters. Hear that? We work in the rain here ...” There’s a long pause while Tappen listens. His face loses color. “No, look. But, I—we—gave you our promise. I’m telling you, it’s all on schedule. And you promised us too ...” He looks around like he wants to kick something. “No. No. You do that? It’s dead in the water. All of it. This thing will rot. Dead. We’ll all have to start over. Please, listen ...” But it’s he who has to listen. When the call is done, the rain has stopped and Tappen sits, head in his hands.
I pull back but my foot dislodges a patch of cracked tile.
Tappen stands up. He shouts, “Who’s there? You, up there! This is a job site.”
The mezzanine is like a big balcony. Stretches of railing have been ripped out, leaving the floor exposed. I crawl forward, to the edge. I pull back the tarp and show myself.
Tappen straightens. His phone rings again. He delivers it to a pocket, keeping his eyes on me. “You want work?” he yells at me. “That what you wanted? Fine. Problem is, there isn’t any.”
I don’t say a thing. I just stare at him. See what that does.
“I got more people coming any second,” he adds.
The hell he does. His voice is harder, more deliberate, like a patrol cop telling me to clear off the sidewalk, that doorway’s private property, you’ll frighten the customers.
“Me and Oscar?” I say. “We were working right up here. And you know what? It’s real dangerous up here.”
“How’d you even get up there? I returned the power lift.”
“We never had no power lift, not for us. We had to find our own way up. But you wouldn’t know about that.”
“Look. Come on down. We’ll talk.”
“Nope.”
“Then, I’m coming up.”
I nod. I stand up but stay where I am, grasping at what’s left of a railing. I hear Tappen make his way upward, picking his steps so as not to slip. When he’s made it finally, he looks like someone just slapped him hard across the face. He joins me at the railing. It’s torn away on either side of us. It wobbles. He holds on with both hands. He looks out.
I point down, directly below to the first floor. There’s a wide hole there, a gaping rift that shows a grisly dark cellar with spiky old machinery like the bowels of a steam ship.
“After I left that day?” I say. “You had to be here. You’re always here.”
Tappen looks away, out where this building was supposed to have real walls again someday. I let him look, take all the time he wants. He smiles eventually, but as if he’s opening wide for a dentist. “Now look. Don’t go getting all smart.”
“That what I’m doing?”
Tappen’s smile falls away, tumbles down. I can practically hear it splat.
I just shake my head at him again. I’m thinking, the police will never believe me. No one will. And why should they? No one knew me. No one sees me. I laugh at the thought, still shaking my head.
Tappen says, “Don’t you go shaking your head at me ...”
He lunges and grabs at my jacket, fisting big wads of it. I smell his warm stale breath, like fancy cheese and wine from the night before. I push off him and kick at him, across the knees. He stumbles and crouches, glaring at me, looking for a fast way out but it’s too slick up here. I kick again and again, like I’m Oscar in the big game and Tappen’s got the ball I got to get and Tappen claws at concrete and wet scraps of tile. Keep kicking like this I’m going to make the pros. I kick and lunge, hurling him to the edge till all I want to be kicking any more is air.
I got him pinned to the railing. The railing creaks and loosens.
Tappen swings and flails to grab my feet, break free, something. He claws at busted concrete, exposed bolts.
I keep kicking. The railing busts off.
The railing tumbles down. It bounces off the hole’s edge with a clang and crashes into the cellar below. Clangs and knocks echo out a sharp, sick reverb.
Tappen’s still with me, staring down. Something makes me pull back from him.
We sit slumped near the edge, panting, exhausted. The rain is back. It found its way through the beams above and it trickles down our faces, clothes. Like this, Tappen doesn’t look much different from a guy like me.
“I didn’t do it,” he says.
“Who did then?” I say.
“I don’t know. I really don’t.”
*
People don’t usually invite me into their cars. Gerald Tappen insists we get inside his SUV, since the rain is hitting so hard we can’t hear ourselves. I could live in this vehicle. The seats heat. All it needs is a toilet. But I don’t tell him that. I glare at the big digital screen in the middle of the dash, at all the big knobs on my side alone. After that rain and sweat I’m not exactly smelling great, a little gamy even. Tappen reaches back and hands me a towel, white and soft.
“I can wash it. Don’t worry about it,” he says.
He doesn’t even roll the windows down for air. Pretty friendly for a guy who almost got thrown off a ledge by yours truly—too friendly, I’m thinking. He drives me over the Burnside Bridge and I think we’re heading for the Pearl District but he takes me to that little strip club in Chinatown, Magic Gardens. He smiles at me, like I should be excited. Yeah, sure, this is just what us homeless guys crave all day—I really, truly just hope someone will please, please take me to a strip club. Nothing against the place. It’s like an alimony-ravaged boozer’s man cave, with one rack for a dancer and a pool table almost touching it, the video poker always in eye’s reach, carpet that still smells of the pre-smoking ban days. The skaters and kids in bands and eventually the bridge-and-tunnel flocks discovered it long ago, of course, so it has that going for it, but there’s nothing doing at this early hour on a Sunday. The bouncer guy was camped out next to the ATM machine smiling at Tappen till he saw smelly me follow the man in. “It’s okay, he’s with me,” Tappen says.
We sit in the only dark corner. I thought Tappen only picked this place so he doesn’t have to be seen in his natural habitat with a guy like me, but I can tell he likes it here. He insists I eat something, please, please, li
ke some sitcom maître d’. I go for the tater tots. I drink a Sprite, Tappen a Tanqueray and tonic. The songs the dancer picks sound like protopunk or later and they rock but I don’t know the bands except for the Wipers. It’s too loud to talk. Tappen has to huddle too close to hear me.
“I took you for more of a suburban gentleman’s club kinda guy,” I say.
“Yeah, maybe.” A young dancer sashays over after her three songs, but Tappen waves her away with a smile. He shrugs. “Got to get your wallet emptied somewhere. They probably have a framed photo of me in back, says ‘Sucker of the Month.’ But they just keep my photo in it.” He adds a laugh. “You know?”
“Sure. Sucker of the Year.”
Tappen, nodding, throws back his T and T. He turns to face me. “You believe me. I saw it on your face. You stopped ...”
“I didn’t throw you down there too, you mean.” I wipe at my face, rub at my temples, pushing around the heat behind my eyeballs. “I shouldn’t even be around. The cops will find me eventually. Me and Oscar, we were always together.”
“I could vouch for you.”
“Oh, what—I was with you at the time? That it?”
“Sure, why not. I gave you a ride home, back to your, uh ...”
“What? My what? Where do I live?” A guy like this, he’s got no idea. Screw this. I get up to leave but turn back, grab the last of the tater tots, wrap them inside napkins and stuff that into my pocket. “Thanks for the tots,” I say and stomp out.
He could vouch for me, or he could screw me good. They would always believe a guy like him, but never one like me. Who needs a world like that?
Tappen follows me as I cross through Chinatown heading for Old Town and the Steel Bridge. He flanks me and cuts me off, coming around a corner. Faces me.
“Here’s the thing: I don’t want trouble,” he says, “don’t need it right now.”
“Me, I love it. It’s just fucking swell.”
“I’m only saying, you can be smart. You were smart. Doing what you almost did, it would’ve made it even easier for them to pin Oscar on you.”
“The crazy homeless guy did it, you mean.” I start walking again.
“Look at you. You almost act like you want it pinned on you.”
I say nothing, keep going. They won’t pin it on me where I’m going and either will he. Not right away they won’t.
Tappen bounds after me, pulls me into a doorway. “The cops spoke to me. All right? They questioned me. I didn’t pin it on you. I didn’t pin it on anyone. Just said, I didn’t know where he was and that was that.”
What can I say now? I don’t have a plan for this. It’s almost like this guy gives a crap. Almost. I hold out my hands and keep them there like I’m hanging them out to dry. “I should’ve just split, hopped a train to Tacoma, goddamn Spokane, something,” I mutter.
“But, you didn’t,” he says.
Tappen drives me back over the river. He insisted on it.
“Oscar had a Green Card,” he says, eyes on the road.
Could that be true? Why didn’t Oscar tell me? Why did he pretend otherwise?
Tappen eyes me. “That’s right. He had one for a long time. Guessing you didn’t know? Could’ve been naturalized by now if he ever had his shit together.”
“He had his shit together. Don’t give me that.” I’m grasping at the door handle, about ready to bolt at the next stop.
“Don’t get out. You’re not hearing me.”
“I am though. You know what I think?”
“What, what do you think?”
“You’re a sucker,” I say. “All this talk of we. Who’s that—investors, rich daddy, what? All they have to do is just fund you, fund your addiction, this addiction we all have. Then you’re stuck. It’s too hard to get out. You have too much stuff.”
He doesn’t answer me. He only shakes his head.
He pulls up to the Rescue House, a Catholic homeless mission a few blocks from the Burnside Bridge. It’s Latino night, I can tell from the line of poor and homeless lined up outside. We stop at the curb, slowly, keeping a distance. We can see just over the line’s heads. Inside, Eva Tappen is serving food to people. She wears plain gray sweats and no makeup.
“Think they’re gonna see a Maria,” Tappen says but not like it’s supposed to be a joke. We watch Eva. She has the long neck and big eyes of model types, dancers, actresses, her chest poised so perfectly there has to be something manufactured about it. A little lift, maybe.
Tappen snorts. “I thought it would make me legit, marrying a stunner like her. The real deal, you know? I mean, since we’re bearing it all here.”
“Are we? All right.”
“It’s an old story. Just have enough faith, and the rest’ll follow.”
“Hers seems to be working.”
“What, her faith?” Tappen glares at me. “So, here’s another thing you don’t know—she’s Oscar’s sister.”
He might as well have vomited in my face. My lips, eyes sting. I can’t say anything, just glare back at him.
“How you think he—you—kept getting the work?”
“He ... never told me.”
“Of course he didn’t. And you know why? Because everything’s rigged in this world. Everything.”
*
Someone’s in my tent, I can tell. It only makes the aggravation I got going burn even more. It just better be Amy in there. For a moment I hope it’s Matt and Jack instead, and the thought only burns me hotter. I hear coughs, muffled talking, cooing. I throw open the flap and burst in. Amy huddles in the near dark clutching a hammer in case it’s not me. I can see she’s hiding a brown paper sack between her and the tent wall.
“You came back,” she says.
I sit as far from her as I can get, my back to the flap. She turns on the flashlight. It stands at an odd angle, illuminating us with grotesque rays.
“Whash the matter?” she says, slurring it a little.
I can only shake my head.
She moves closer, holding out a hand for me. I can’t stop shaking my head. She moves to kiss me. I push her away.
“You’re wasted. You smell like that coat. One thing I know? Amy—she’s always wasted.”
Amy backs up, frowning. I see the paper sack again.
“What all you got in there?” I say. “Huh? Rotgut, glue, lacquer?”
She glares at me, then holds up the sack. Something yelps inside.
I grab the sack and pull out a fuzzy puppy, its ears flopping. It licks at my wrist, and licks and licks.
“Isn’t he cute? He’s so cute. Isn’t he cute? Look at him. God,” she says.
I hand the puppy back to her. She hugs it and almost drops it.
“But, I got him for you.”
“I told you I wasn’t coming back.”
“I thought maybe you would if I got him.”
“It’s a she. Where you steal it?”
“I got it for you.”
I scoot closer, using the knuckles of my fists to move along. “Some deal, trick, what?”
She curls up with the puppy. She faces away from me. I can smell the booze and chemicals on her, in her.
“Where’s this end?” I say. “Huh? Where?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”
I punch at the tent wall, rattling all. We face away from each other. I still feel a chill, thinking about what Tappen told me about his wife being Oscar’s sister. After he laid that one on me, I bolted. Just shot out of his SUV without even mumbling a thanks. I could feel his eyes on me through his high-grade tinted windshield glass as I headed off into the shadows of the next corner. Now it’s like I’m in shock, a guy just been in a car wreck. If Oscar kept secrets like those, what else was there? What else wasn’t like he said it was?
“The truth? The way we’re going? It’s a ditch somewhere for the both of us,” I tell Amy.
Half an hour later, we’re still sitting there side by side, like two passengers on a bus that’s taking too
long. I’m waiting for Amy to come down a little, to lose the slurring.
“The cops, they never came around by the way,” she says eventually.
“There you go. It’s never like I think.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
“I can’t stay here. For your sake.”
“Don’t you mean for yours?” she says. “You’re going to your hiding place.”
I don’t say anything. She knows me better than I do myself.
I thought I had figured it out. I thought Gerald Tappen did the deed. Now I’m back where I started.
I set out the tater tots—she loves tater tots—and a to-go box of Chinese food I found on the way back. “I came back to check on you. Eat up. Give it to your new puppy. It’s up to you.”
And I go for good.
*
I had made it way up high. I was standing atop the very crest of the arch of Oregon City Bridge. The dawn had given way to morning. I had a fine view of the river and surrounding country, of the misting falls and the old paper mill.
Faint blue-and-red flashes caught my eye. I looked over toward Main Street. Two police cars were parked near the side street where my abandoned truck sat. The cops inspected the scene, poking about and looking around ...
I’ve always thought that I had waited too long to make my move back then. Now, as I huddle in my blanket gazing at the Steel Bridge just before dawn, waiting for full daylight within this cocoon of my own making, I wonder if the truth is that “back then” is only supposed to prepare me for now—for this bridge that I can’t stop staring at. I really have nowhere else to go but climb that steelwork, all those crisscrossing beams. There are so many ways up. I had imagined them all so many times ...
A flash. A flashlight beam catches my eye. It travels along ragged earth and rocks, nearing my hideaway. I got nowhere to go. If it’s a railroad bull I’m screwed.
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