The Bridge

by D Keith Mano

  “I—that was just a manner of speaking.”

  “Whack. Whack. Whack. The second one didn’t want to eat his pill.” Priest dramatized. He waited for Xavier Paul’s reaction sullenly. “So I broke his teeth in.”

  Xavier Paul drank half a glass of wine. Said nothing.

  “Was that a sin?”

  “Mmm?”

  “I think you’re afraid of me, old man.”

  “Yes. Not that you might kill me, Priest.” But that was a rationalization, Xavier Paul thought. Death under Priest’s hands had a special horror. He repeated, “Not that you might kill me. I’m afraid of something in your eyes. Or—something that isn’t in your eyes.” He laughed. His voice became shrill. “Don’t worry about it. Why worry if I’m afraid?”

  “Oh.” Xavier Paul had disappointed Priest. “It’s funny. I was afraid of you before, back there. I thought you were a ghost; I didn’t think you were real.”

  “Maybe we should go now.”

  “You don’t answer me. Was it a sin? Did I make a sin?”

  “Ah—” Xavier Paul had become careful. “In another time, in my time, I think they would have said self-defense.”

  “There is no self-defense. We are told that. It is rule number twelve. Priest read it.”

  “Rule number eleven. They tell you wrong. Priest.”

  “Yes. Is that so?”

  “It is. Damn—I absolve you of the guilt. That is—if you feel any guilt, which I doubt.” Xavier Paul performed the sign of the cross with his right hand. “Were you a Christian? Were your mother and father?”

  “I don’t think so. How do I know? No one ever told me anything.”

  “Let’s see—you were ten at the Decree. It’s possible you were baptized.”

  “What is that?”

  “A priest puts water on your head.” Priest fingered his temples. “He grants you freedom from sin and a promise of eternal life.” Priest nodded: he thought the old man was crazy. “Jesus Christ—have you ever heard of him?”

  “The name. Yes. Who is Jesus Christ?”

  “Is? Was.” Xavier Paul moistened his lips. “Is. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Two thousand years ago he was crucified on a cross. He died to take men’s sins away.”

  “What was that word, Crucified?”

  Xavier Paul sighed. He opened his arms, seemed to measure a segment of the air. “They hung him on a wooden cross. Nailed him to it through his hands and feet. Until he died.” Priest considered this.

  “What god? What god was his father?”

  “The God who rules all things. What other God?”

  “Oh.” Priest shrugged. “That god.”

  “Jesus Christ gave his flesh and blood for us.” Xavier Paul became eager. “That’s why they closed our churches. They said it was cannibalism. And anyway, we couldn’t sacrifice…there was no more bread, no more wine. E-diet is not Christ’s blood. It has no life in it.”

  “You believe this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mmm. Is there more wine?”

  “Not for now. Later. Tonight perhaps.” Xavier Paul licked ooze of the broken fig from his palm. “It’s been a long time. I haven’t talked about Christ in a long time.”

  “I’ve seen your crosses. In a cave near my house. Mary and I used to play there. It was where the Christians stayed in the war.”

  “Where?”

  “In the cave.”

  “No.” Xavier Paul rapped the table excitedly. “Where is the cave?”

  “Oh. Behind a mountain called Bull’s Hump. West of New Loch. It’s high on a cliff. But the path broke. I-we couldn’t go there any more. We found bones.” Priest licked the bottle’s snout. Xavier Paul clutched fingers in his beard, hung his arm on them.

  “I wasn’t there. I was in the battle of the Palisades.” He worked up one sleeve: there was an empty pod, a crater above the wrist. Notches had been sawed from the radial bone. The flesh appeared silvery. “I was a colonel in the Christian Legion. But we weren’t all Christians. It was just a name.”

  “Yes?” Priest had lost interest. “You going to eat that fig?”

  “Yes. It’s my fig.” Xavier Paul took it. “I lived off the land two years before I heard about the amnesty. Near Lake Shanatati. That’s where I’m going now. It’s on the other side of the old Thruway. I’m going to eat Jesus Christ’s flesh and blood there. A last time before the end.” Priest glanced at him.

  “Do you eat this flesh and blood? In your mouth?”

  “Yes. I make the mass.” Xavier Paul winked. “You don’t live to eighty-nine just eating the E-diet.”

  “Mass. Mass.” Priest liked the word. “Do all Christians eat?”

  “Yes. They did once. I haven’t seen another Christian in twenty years. I haven’t baptized a child into the faith since—’* He thought. “But I haven’t looked for them. I’ve been slack. Tired—tired of the whole thing. I’ve spent twenty years planning meals. Hiding food like a squirrel. Wolfing things down in the dark. They caught me at it twice. Once, ten years ago, I found a supermarket storeroom. Some of the cans were—”

  “Let me see it.”

  “What?”

  “Christ’s flesh and blood. Is it in the sack?”

  “Priest. You make me sick.” Xavier Paul grimaced, shook his head. “Listen: it’s just a symbol. We use bread and wine, wafers and wine, to represent the flesh and the blood. Christ died two thousand years ago. I explained that.”

  “You won’t share it with Priest. You want it all for yourself.”

  “For God’s sake. Look—I just said. It’s wine like the wine you’ve been drinking. But it doesn’t become the blood of Christ until you’re baptized into eternal life.”

  “Yes?” Priest was suspicious. “Eternal life. What does that mean? The guardsmen can’t kill you?”

  “I’m sorry. This is my fault. I forgot just how abysmally stupid you are. There was a time when these things had meaning for all people.” Xavier Paul ate the fig quickly. “Eternal life isn’t this life. You die. All men die. But if you believe in Jesus Christ—then you have another life after this. With God.”

  “Where?”

  “With God.”

  “Where? Where is God?” Priest smirked.

  “In a better place than this. You can be sure of that.”

  “You eat the flesh and the blood there?”

  “I guess. We’re getting nowhere. Let’s go.”

  “Baptize me.” Xavier Paul laughed. “Why are you laughing?”

  “Baptize you? This is no joke, no game. It’s not like putting on a new shirt. You have to believe—”

  “I believe.”

  “Like hell you do.”

  “I believe.”

  “You don’t even know what I’m talking about.” Xavier Paul stood. Priest pushed the table. Xavier Paul tottered back, sat again.

  “You old horse. You’ll eat it all yourself.”

  “Calm down. You’re drunk, Priest. You’re not used to the wine. We’re friends. I’m not trying to cheat you.” Xavier Paul placed his palms on the table. He soothed the wood. “Maybe I will baptize you. I have to tell you more about it. We have time.”

  “Does it taste good?”

  “Yes, but it’s just bread and wine; I told you that. When you believe in Christ it feels good. In here.” He touched a place on his sternum.

  “Ah—” Priest stood. He was afraid.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?” Priest had hiccuped. He was startled by the reflexive plucking. He had not hiccuped in thirty years. His eyes opened. Priest had heard of heart attacks. He thought this was some eccentric and hazardous systole beat. Hands palpated over his thorax. He stumbled, more obviously drunk now that he required balance. It happened again. Xavier Paul began to laugh.

  “What? What-up?”

  “Priest, you should see your face.”

  “My heart—”

  “Heart? It’s hiccups, you jackass. You must have had them as a child. It won’t k
ill you. I get them all the time.”

  “Hic-ups?”

  “You’re not used to eating. Ssssh—close your mouth. We can’t go outside if you make that noise.” But Priest had become interested: the peevish sound amused him. He lowered his jaw, exaggerated it, laughed.

  And saw his laughing. Priest cringed down. A full-length mirror walled one thigh of the kitchen doorway. Priest parried defense with the wine bottle in his hand: another bottle answered exactly. He was afraid, paranoid. His arm muscles rolled, as though testing the bonds of this automatic repetition. Priest stepped nearer. The mirror was old, smoky. Flakes, less reflective, metaled its surface, droplets of mercury pressed flat between glass slides. Nacre rainbows edged them. He buffed in front of his face with one hand; the mist, he thought, was imitated from the room’s air. The mirror hand wiped, but not mimicking now, made to mimic. He hiccuped. Priest lifted the wine bottle. Yet he had superstitions of identity. The bottle did not strike. Xavier Paul stood behind him. He was taller. Counterfeiting play, Priest rammed his forearm across the old man’s shoulders. Xavier Paul exhaled; his back seized up. He clutched palms on hips, legs apart. His stomach distended, as though he were defecating. Priest was alone inside the mirror.

  “Damn. Don’t do that, you fool.” Xavier Paul hissed breath, wary of a quick inhale. “You hurt my back.” He brought feet together, straightened, a chain losing slack link by link. “Jesus Christ, the pain.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Priest repeated. “Delicious. Delicious.” He hiccuped. He smiled. His teeth worked, chewing in the mirror.

  ***

  Priest stood still. The mountains were dead. Their scalps appeared gray, seborrheic. The trees were leafless. Xavier Paul imagined stripped boys, their bulk and vanity gone, yet not shy. Each wore an ivory knee sock. It was seven o’clock. The sun had set unevenly: shadowed here, but still bright on the valley’s northeastern crest. Flocculent vapor issued from the frontal lobe of Conklin Mountain, from the shoulder of Squirrel Swamp Mountain. Xavier Paul and Priest waited in the highway bed. Route 17 curved right to the Thruway exit at Suffern. An unorganized herd of deer loitered near Tome Brook. They were emaciated. Priest said, pointing,

  “Smoke?”

  “No.” Xavier Paul stubbed the pavement. Fissures there were calked with a brown/black bead of caterpillar bodies. “Gypsy moths.”

  Priest walked ahead. He unsnapped his mask. The vapor bursts, he saw, were faceted, made of planes that caught or dulled the twilight. As they flocked, the moths seemed to blink, shiver, ashes blown from a cold paper fire. Deer walked somnolently at all levels to the arid crag summit of Conklin Mountain. Trunks had been neatly shucked. Deer stood on hind legs nuzzling the highest cuticles of bark. Tome Brook was red/brown. Its banks were eroded, as though mazy tree roots had been drawn out of the soil. Priest turned. He stared at the great factory. “The deer are starving. I’ve never seen so many. There were a lot last winter. The bodies stank when it thawed.”

  “Yes. And it’s summer. Or an endless winter just beginning.” Priest gestured to the Thruway. He was sober now; his head ached.

  “Are you going that way?”

  “It doesn’t look very pleasant, does it?” Xavier Paul rolled a ball of the blurred caterpillars. Kneaded it with his sole. “Might as well die with the land. Yes. I’ll go north to Route 2IO, then east. I’ll leave you there.”

  “It will be dark soon. I don’t like sleeping with these things.”

  “We can go in there.” Priest looked.

  It seemed a bare acropolis, thirty acres square. Rectangular dolmens studded the mesa roof, pedestals perhaps for some pantheon no longer honored. Deer inhabited the wide center forum, dwarfish there, frustrated by outcroppings and crevices that grew no food. A soil ramp had been bulldozed up against its rear wall, over bumpers of a railroad spur, but the roof had not been landscaped. A Guards flag drooped, unable to catch wind, holed in six places. To Priest’s left the sign asserted: FORD. In the distance a leviathan water tank had fallen into its tripod tower, an egg grabbed by some spindly closing lap. One equatorial split opened it. But from Route 17 the building appeared intact. Windows were unbroken. Priest thought the walls had been painted.

  “What was in there?”

  “An automobile assembly plant. It’s a museum now. I don’t see anyone, do you?”

  “No.” Priest thought. “Ford. Yes, I remember.”

  “Let’s try it. Are you game, my friend?” Priest nodded. “And, for God’s sake, watch your big mouth.”

  “I know. I know. It was the wine before.”

  Deer had groomed the vegetation. Dandelion stems were cropped to the soil line, pinched at their ends, straws sucked flat. At first Priest thought they had stepped on broad flagstones. But the stones resounded, gave: car roofs. Fill had been patiently shoveled over/between hundreds of automobiles never driven. Priest stamped on a red blister: rabbits puffed, smoke exhaust, from holes around the buried car. Its interior was a warren. They disturbed shrews, chipmunks, a woodchuck. Priest laughed, stamping, stamping. Xavier Paul hushed him; he was tired and cranky; Priest’s enthusiasm had become tedious.

  The door opened. For twenty yards they were purblind, groping over opposite walls of a narrow foyer. Then skylights illuminated the main assembly room. Its twenty-foot high roof was hung with mobiles, rotating gently on their chains; chassis and car segments dangled down, steps in a process, to the ingenious assembly line. It was the moment, preserved after thirty years, when ecology commandos had blown up the Kings Point generator. Priest was thrilled. He hurried along the line, in reverse, one hand out, feeling and seeing, as the automobiles were picked down to their carcasses. Several partitions had been arranged around the spacious front area, once a sales office; the museum. Xavier Paul reconnoitered thoroughly; they were alone. He sat on the floor to wait for Priest.

  “So many cars. I didn’t think there were so many cars. And all those outside.” Priest hobbled back. He was disheartened. “What’s wrong with you?” Priest thought Xavier Paul had fallen.

  “I’m all right. Tired.” Xavier Paul extended a hand. “Gently now, you big baboon. You’ve wrenched my back once already.” Priest helped him up.

  “My father worked on cars. I told you that.”

  “No. You didn’t.”

  “I helped him. I was good with my hands. This makes me remember. I liked to drive fast on the roads. But no one will drive again, I guess.”

  “No.”

  “In this place of eternal life…Are there cars?”

  “I don’t think it’s one of God’s priorities.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “No cars.”

  “Oh—” Priest stepped around a wall. The office area had been stripped of its furniture, its dividers. A single long room now, it ran the building’s full width at the front.

  “What is this?”

  “The museum.” Priest pointed. “That? That’s an Eisenhower light tank. They used tanks in the war. Terrible things. If we’d had just a few tanks when Hauser turned Gregory’s right flank—” He shrugged. “Well, we all ran short of fuel in the end.”

  “They shot bullets with that? Jesus Christ, it’s big.” Xavier Paul grimaced.

  “It’s a cannon, Jesus Christ. That’s what put me out of action. A cannon. August i6, 2006. Foggy day it was. I don’t remember the night.” Xavier Paul massaged his forearm.

  Priest knelt. He examined the hard treads, one by one, muttering: said a giant’s rosary. He stood in front to imagine the tank’s crushing impetus. It scared him pleasantly. He hammered at the steel breastbone with his fist. The machine gun did not swivel in its slit. Other weapons were displayed on a platform along the center aisle: a howitzer, a bazooka, a flame thrower. Two manikins modeled standard combat equipment. Priest assaulted one from behind, wrist under chin, presumed knife hacking down. The head came off. Priest giggled. He replaced it backward.

  “No one will sneak up on him again. He can see his own ass now. Wha
t’s that thing?”

  “Helicopter gunship. It could fly up or down.” Xavier Paul raised, lowered his palm. “We had six of them, but only two experienced pilots—”

  “Look at this.”

  Priest was distracted again. He limped ahead, jerking Xavier Paul after. In one comer a thirty-foot-square panorama of Manhattan Island stretched to the wall horizon. Gauze represented pollution: it was tinted black/gray. A few penthouses and spires had been inserted through. The rivers were a sluggish gumbo, stewed with fat chunks of sewage. Manikins superintended the display. They wore masks, oxygen tanks: man circa 1990.

  “That’s the bridge I crossed.” He traced a thread cable with his forefinger.

  “Amazing. You must have ice water in your veins.”

  “Priest was scared a little.” He grinned. “Back then, was it really like this?”

  “No. Exaggerated. They exaggerated everything. And now we wear masks anyhow.”

  “Look. Guns.” It was a case of pistols. “You think they still work?”

  “Perhaps. They seem well enough kept.”

  “I want one.”

  “What for?” Priest clubbed down with both elbows. The pane did not break: it dropped neatly out of the wooden frame. Priest lifted the glass, slanting it on one edge. He withdrew a blocky, square .45 pistol. There were three clips of ammunition.

  “It’s heavy. My father had a gun, but not like this. Smaller, I think. Look. There’s grease on it.”

  “I see.”

  “Can you load it?”

  “Probably.”

  “Go ahead. Load it.”

  “You must think Tm crazy.” Xavier Paul walked away. “You’re dangerous enough as it is.”

  “This thing goes in the handle, doesn’t it? Like so.”

  “Damn it, Priest. Be careful.”

  “Well. You do it then.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.” Priest was cunning. “I want to die this way. Not with pills. That’s a woman’s way to die. What is this thing for?”