Abram's Bridge

by Glenn Rolfe

  “I have to go,” he said, letting go of her, stepping from the creek. He wiggled his wet feet into his sneakers.

  “What are you going to do?” she said.

  “I think my father knows more than he’s telling me,” he said, gazing back at her crystal eyes, the compulsion to save her filling his veins with gasoline.

  “Li’l Ron,” she said.

  “Yes, Sweet Kate?”

  “Be careful.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Heath Barnes opened the door. “Hello? Papa?”

  “In here,” the old man’s low voice boomed from around the corner.

  Heath stepped inside. The smell of carrots and celery tickled his nose. Papa had a thing for soups. He won Best Beef Stew at the Coral County Fair any time he chose to enter. Heath’s stomach growled; he hadn’t even been hungry.

  He walked into the cozy kitchen. A young Johnny Cash stared back at him from the clock on the flower-patterned wallpaper. Papa loved country music, old country. Cash was his favorite. The wallpaper was one of his nana’s final touches to the home before she had passed several years back. There was a honky-tonk song playing from Papa’s old record player in the next room. The old man, dressed in an apron—he loved to look official when crafting his masterpieces—was humming along, moving from the small counter space to his right with a noticeable bounce in his step.

  “That smells great,” Heath said, setting his backpack next to the kitchen table. Two bowls were already out, silverware too.

  “It oughta, won first place—”

  “Two years straight. I know. And well worthy of both honors,” Heath said.

  “It should be ready in about fifteen minutes,” Papa Schultz said, tapping the wooden spoon against the silver pot and placing it down on the counter. He turned to Heath. “So, you finally get the freedom you’ve been telling me you’re ready for, house to yourself, and you decide to come stay here. Is it that lonely up in that big house?”

  Heath wasn’t about to tell his real reason for coming. He just went along. “Jase’s collection of creepy dolls just run out of interesting things to say so quickly. You can only listen to so many vaudeville jokes so many times,” he said. Jase’s creepy dolls were his collection of collectible wooden dummies. His ventriloquist dolls were part of his small fortune.

  “Uh-huh. So it must be the food you’re after. Kids today wouldn’t survive without a microwave.”

  “I’m surprised, but grateful that you’re home,” Heath said. “I thought for sure you’d be at the library.”

  “I was going to, but when you called, I decided to ask Lorraine if she wanted an extra day this week. So here we are,” Papa said.

  Heath visualized again the man tossing papers into the furnace.

  “What was that Ronnie Sawyer up to the other day?” he asked, hoping the question sounded casual.

  “Oh that,” Papa said, picking up his spoon and turning back to his stew. “Nothing, the boy was simply asking for help finding what he was looking for. A school project.”

  Heath would have to proceed with caution.

  “I heard something about a girl—a runaway or something?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. It was a sad tale, but unfortunately not a very uncommon one,” he said, lifting the spoon to his mouth and, smacking his lips, testing the batch. “What the Sawyer boy’s paper is going to be about, I don’t know.”

  “He didn’t say?”

  “He did not.”

  Heath treaded onward. “Did you know her? The runaway?”

  “Not really. She was a strange child. Not many friends,” Papa said.

  Heath watched as he tapped the spoon, setting it down again, then walking to the table. Heath’s heart was beating a step faster than normal. Why was he so worried about his papa? He wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t deny the fear. His overactive mind imagined the old man walking over to him, slamming his fist on the table and telling him to drop it. Drop it or you’re going into the furnace next! Instead, his papa picked up the two bowls, carrying them to the stove.

  “Not many enemies then either, I guess,” Heath said.

  His papa stopped, spoon in hand, staring down into the steaming stew.

  “No, no. I wouldn’t think so,” he finally said. He doled out two spoonfuls for each of them, put the spoon down, took off the apron and brought the award-winning sustenance to the table.

  Heath had overheard the year the girl ran away—2000, the year before he was born. He wanted to ask if his father, his real father, may have known the girl. His papa had yet to look at him since sitting down. He figured it best to let things be for the moment.

  He brought the aromatic deliciousness up to his lips and blew. Looking at the combination of freshly chopped vegetables, spices and large pieces of beef, he appreciated the amount of calculation and preparation his papa put into crafting each stew. He thought of the basement furnace again and wondered just how calculating and crafty his papa was at other things.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Stefan Schultz sat up around the bend from Abram’s Bridge, his pickup idling, the Sawyer kid’s bike sitting by the weeds after the bridge. The boy was probably digging around down there for clues. For bones, his mind whispered. Stefan had told that dumbshit to forget about it. Apparently, he was going to have to up the fear factor to drive the point home.

  He backed the truck up, turning around in a little inlet where staties liked to try and catch locals speeding down the back road. There was an old, abandoned logging road a quarter of a mile back. He would wait there for the boy.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Heath Barnes clicked away on his laptop in the bedroom at the back of his papa’s one-story home. The room had belonged to his father, but was now his whenever he stayed the night. Metallica’s logo had been etched into the nightstand and the headboard, along with other old band names he didn’t recognize. Papa had gone to take a nap. Heath decided to use the quiet time to do some research. Flying lower than Ronnie Sawyer, he used the Web. His papa had incinerated the papers at the library, but there were still bound to be some records online.

  The Coral County Sentinel had a website, but their history issues only went back to 2003. The Kennebec Journal, however, went much farther back. After a few empty searches, he found what he was looking for in an article posted on April 15, 2000:

  MISSING: 14-Year-Old Marsden Resident Katharine Bell

  Katharine Bell, missing since Friday evening, was not found during a search of the Marsden area by Coral County Sheriff’s Departments Sunday. Bell’s parents, Chris and Heidi Bell, say their daughter left their home on Jefferson Hill Road Friday afternoon after school and never returned.

  State police have not ruled out foul play or the chance the girl may have left of her own volition.

  Anyone with any information on Katharine Bell’s whereabouts should contact State Police Detective Ken Bradford at 207-555-1515.

  The Bells still lived in town. Somewhere off Aikman Street. Heath typed Chris Bell into whitepages.com.

  32 Jefferson Hill Road, Marsden, Maine

  Knock-knock.

  Heath’s heart jumped. He lowered the laptop’s screen and craned his head around. Papa stood in the doorway. How long had he been standing there? For an old man, his papa managed to quietly glide around the house with an unnerving ease.

  “Y-yeah?”

  “You want any more stew? I was going to bring the leftovers to Lorraine,” Papa said, his eyes subtly, yet not unnoticeably, darting to the closed laptop.

  “No. Thanks, though. I have a couple errands to run too,” he said.

  “You need a lift?” the old man said, stroking his white beard.

  “No, that’s okay. It’s nice out there. I’d like to take full advantage of the weather. It’ll be snowing before you know it,” Heath said, slipping off the
bed and grabbing his Dr. Who sweatshirt.

  “Well, all right. I saved us each a bowl for later anyhow. Keys under the steps like usual. Call if you’re going to be later than supper.”

  “I will,” he said.

  The old man glanced back down at the laptop before disappearing from the doorway.

  Heath grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen from the top of his bureau. Looking at his curly, blond locks, he decided he’d better wear a hat. He had a fedora. Papa always said it made him look like a young Frank Sinatra. He thought it made him look more like a reporter.

  He waved to his papa, who was sitting in his Oldsmobile in the driveway, and rolled his mountain bike to the street. He glanced over his shoulder. Papa was watching him. Ice slipped down his spine.

  Shaking off the bad feeling, he set off down the road. Jefferson Hill Road was off from Aikman Street. It would only take twenty minutes, give or take.

  Orson Schultz watched until his grandson was out of sight, and then got out of his car.

  Making his way back inside, he went straight to the boy’s room, spotting the laptop in the center of the bed. He flipped the top open. After a second, the screen came back to life.

  Christopher Bell, 32 Jefferson Hill Road, Marsden, Maine, 207-555-1284

  “Goddamn kids,” he said aloud, slamming the laptop shut, “can’t just leave well enough alone.”

  He made his way to the telephone and dialed his son’s apartment. No answer. His son had told him last night that he would take care of things. This offered Orson no solace. He had had to help clean up this mess himself once already. He would just have to do it again.

  Greg Sawyer was on his third Bud of the day. Last night’s conversations with Schultz and then with Li’l Ron were both eating at him (all of this Katharine Bell talk from out of nowhere). He hadn’t thought of the girl since leaving Marsden, like he told Schultz last night, but now her name was buzzing louder than the constant hangover headache.

  Schultz had known the girl. She was just a kid—thirteen, fourteen—something like that. He used to talk about her like she was an angel. Said they hung out down under the bridge. Said she was cute, real nice, nicer than Missy, and that age was ‘nothin’ but a number’.

  Missy told him she was pregnant, and then the girl disappeared.

  Maybe he stopped seeing the Bell girl, and she was so in love with him and so heartbroken she ran away. That had been Schultz’s take. Sounded plausible, but it never felt right. Nothing about Schultz’s relationship with the girl had seemed right.

  Greg had had his suspicions back then. Schultz had been an okay guy to hang out with, but he’d had a mean streak. He’d given Missy bruises a number of times. Jen had always called him an abusive asshole and had labeled him Most Likely to End Up in Jail. She’d refused to hang out anywhere near the guy. She hadn’t been friends with Missy, but her cousin was.

  Greg never let himself think any further than Schultz hung out with the Bell girl, and the Bell girl disappeared. Anytime he started to, like now, that old familiar thirst came rushing back.

  He placed the bottle to his lips, emptied it and waved it at Del. “One more for the road, Del.”

  Stefan, he thought. Del had asked him what he and Stefan had talked about last night. Schultz had always hated his first name (Greg wondered when he had started using it). Del had never heard the stories of the Toxic Twins (a name he and Schultz had borrowed from Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith when they were sixteen, back when his mom used to refer to them as the Two Gregs).

  Chapter Twenty

  Stefan Schultz watched the Sawyer boy pedal by. Taking another swig from the Jameson, he turned the key in the ignition. Against the golden rays of sun heating the cab of his truck, amidst the smell of cigarettes and oil, darkness slithered over his contemplations. That old, familiar energy began to stir and course through his veins, began seeping from his pores. The smell of suffering innocence, like the smell of the blood that had run from between Sweet Kate’s legs, permeated the cab. It was intoxicating, and he gave in.

  Li’l Ron heard the engine roar behind him, whipping his head back in time to see the pickup approaching at high speed.

  He turned the handlebars to the right, trying to get out of the way, but it all happened too fast.

  The truck struck his back tire, throwing him and the bicycle into the dirt and grass off the shoulder of the road. Li’l Ron, sliding face-first to a stop, flipped over to see his bike and its mangled back tire and shattered reflectors strewn across the faded and cracked blacktop. He acknowledged the trembling in his hands and saw the truck that hit him.

  SGS.

  The red pickup idled fifty feet or so up ahead—the truck from this morning, from across the street from Mr. Henley’s.

  He heard a clunk—the truck switching into gear—saw the white reverse lights and the truck come roaring for him. He was up on his feet—pain buzzing to life in his swollen right knee—and limping off into the tree line.

  He heard the crunching and grinding, like the sound of garbage being crushed in one of those large trash compactors, and knew his bike had suffered another assault under the wheel of the psycho-driven pickup.

  I’m not looking back, I’m not looking back, Li’l Ron told himself. And he kept his word. Climbing up the embankment past the first row of trees guarding the wilderness from man’s passageways, he concentrated on one motion—forward.

  “You can’t run from me, boy,” a voice bellowed out. “I told you to mind your own business, didn’t I?”

  It was the man from the other night. The cigarette-to-the-eye man. Li’l Ron did not want his eyes to suffer a lit smoke. He didn’t need the motivation, but the sound of twigs and branches snapping, and dead leaves swishing and being displaced at his back, burned its own hole in his mind’s eye. He ignored the pain in his knee and the stiffness of his torn lip, reaching flatter ground and breaking into a track-star run.

  Stefan Schultz saw the Sawyer boy reach the plateau and bust into a run.

  Little shit, he thought. He unshouldered the rifle he’d brought for looks, taking aim at the heavens, and fired.

  Bang!

  “Stop where you are or the next shot’s coming your way,” he said.

  He listened as the Sawyer boy’s footfalls slowed, and then fell silent. Stefan slung the gun back on his shoulder and scurried his way to the plateau. The boy was standing on a wide path, with his quivering hands in the air. He could see blood on the side of the kid’s face, the knee of his jeans torn and painted red to match.

  Stefan—cocking his head to the side, hands on his hips, rifle at his side—began to laugh.

  “You’re making a whole mess of trouble for me, you know. Now, I don’t know why you’re messin’ ’round down under that bridge, but I told you to let it lie, didn’t I?”

  The boy just stood, shaking.

  Stefan pulled a pack of Marlb Reds from the pocket of his flannel shirt, sifted a cigarette free and placed it between his cracked lips. He tucked the pack away, pulled out his Zippo and motioned for the boy to join him.

  “Come on,” he said, agitation slipping over his delivery.

  The boy did as he was told.

  Stefan lit the cigarette, snapped the Zippo shut and placed it back into the front pocket of his blue jeans.

  He puffed on the smoke, watching the boy come before him and stop ten feet away. Scared shitless, he thought. Good, but I can do better.

  Taking a long drag off the cigarette and grinning like a man who’d just tagged his first deer of the season, Stefan removed the smoke from between his thin lips, pinching it between his thumb and forefinger, and stared at the burning cherry. “Now, what was that promise that we made?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Heath Barnes turned his bike from Aikman Street and onto Jefferson Hill Road. Climbing the skinny mountain passage, h
e was never more grateful for his mountain bike and its easy gears. The vast woods surrounding the roadway hunched over the blacktop here, cutting out most of the daylight and leaving this part of the ride shadowy and claustrophobic.

  It took him a few minutes to find the first homes: a two-story white house, peeling from top to bottom with a junkyard of injured Winnebagos—most missing tires or windshields, one missing the whole front end—dying in the yard; a series of trailers lining either side of the road came next, before another short stretch of creeping trees.

  The mailbox painted with a white 32 sat lonely and still at the end of a dirt driveway. Heath turned onto the road and followed it down.

  A small, grey-blue one-level house waited at the end. It was nothing more than an oversized shack. There was one window in the front, featuring a soccer-ball-sized cavity in its pane, and another small, rectangular window at the front corner, a sliver of plastic clinging on for life at the edge of the sill. A beat-up, brown Plymouth sat before the dilapidated wooden porch that looked beyond saving.

  Heath slipped off his seat, dropping the kickstand, unshouldered his bag and pulled the paper and pencil from within. Taking a deep breath, a trace of fright—more nerves than actual fear—stirred within.

  He ascended the short steps with caution—testing the worn-looking boards of the death-trap porch, finding it sturdier than expected—and walked to the door. Raising his fist to knock, the door opened.

  “Can I help you?” asked the man.

  He was short—five four, five five at most—a horseshoe of brown hair surrounding a dying puff of greying hair atop his head. His crystal-blue eyes looked pale, sad and defeated.

  “Ah, Mr. Bell?” Heath stammered.

  “Yes, I’m Chris Bell.”

  “I know this is not my place to ask, and maybe a bit awkward, and by all means say no if you don’t want to do this—”

  “What is this about?” Mr. Bell asked, huffing and gripping the doorframe so tight Heath saw his knuckles go white.