59 Glass Bridges

by Steven Peters

  Flaxen crabgrass cracks into shards against my toes, the water below apparently too far or too anoxic to sustain it. I shine my light down the beach, and watch Willow emerge from the water, only to plop down amidst a copse of the pale weeds. She begins plucking them from the sand like “I love you nots” on a daisy.

  “Come on,” I say, though I don’t know where we’re going.

  Willow sticks out her tongue and continues to pluck the grass. The dry stalks around her rustle as she plucks them from the earth, though I don’t feel any wind. Willow begins to sing, “Cock-a-doodle-doo, my dame has lost her shoe….”

  I leave the ghost to her nursery rhyme, cautiously approach the water. The sand underfoot turns tacky and pastes itself to my soles. I uproot footprint-shaped patches of shoreline with every step.

  When I stand on the river’s lip, perched on the line that separates earth from water, I stop. The river swirls darkly beneath me, inky currents outlined only by white eddies swirling around rocks. I pick up a pebble from the beach and arc it into the river, but it does not skip—it just sinks without a sound.

  The water’s turgid swirl reminds me of tar or ink being sucked down a drain. I briefly consider swimming the expanse, but even the gentle kiss of this dark shoreline makes me shiver. I don’t want to tread those waters.

  “Do we cross the water or continue down the shore? I thought there was a bridge.”

  “My master’s lost his fiddle stick, he knows not what to do.”

  “I—is that your nursery rhyme or your weird way of mocking me?”

  Willow laughs and skips a few steps down the beach. I switch topics.

  “So, these ghostly powers of yours. You can stick your arm through me, but you can also hold my hand. You can pick bouquets of beach grass, but you don’t leave any footprints. Explain to me how this works.”

  Willow looks back at our single row of footprints in the sand. She shrugs. “Maybe you stopped to carry me?” she says, before returning to her rhyme.

  Willow’s cheerful chanting is incongruous with how anxious the river makes me. The rhymes are weirdly out of place in this silent, black landscape.

  I look around and spot a tree, barely deserving of the name, jutting sideways from the bank. Its cancerous trunk stretches out over the river to trail its single, gnarled branch into the water. I walk over to it, the parched grass tickling my soles.

  The tree trunk is bleached and pallid, no hint of green or brown left on it. Two single bronze leaves cling steadfastly to the otherwise naked branch, and they whisper against each other as they brave the river’s tide.

  I put a foot on the trunk, less from a desire to cross the river—the tree doesn’t extend nearly far enough—so much as idle curiosity as to its stability. I barely apply any weight before the entire thing gently pulls from the earth and falls down into the dark water. There’s no splash to be heard. I watch it drift languidly downstream, its skeletal branch uplifted like fingers reaching for help.

  I put my windbreaker back on, suddenly cold. Willow rejoins me, a bouquet of crabgrass clenched in her hand.

  “Willow,” I say and I’m surprised to hear my voice is hoarse. “Willow, where is the bridge? Who is the boatman?”

  Willow puts a finger to her lips as if she wants silence, but she still sings, “Cock-a-doodle-doo, my dame has found her shoe and master’s found his fiddling stick—”

  Then she points down the beach, and I swing the beam of light around to follow.

  There, I see a slightly darker grey against the grey sand—a small dock hunching over the water. I cannot see anyone standing on the dock, but I imagine I can make out the outline of a white raft bobbing in the water.

  Willow marches back through the sand to me, and puts a finger to her lips again. Her palm closes over the flashlight, and standing inches in front of me, she flips it off. I’m blind.

  From the darkness I hear her voice, disembodied, sing, “She’ll now dance with her shoe. Cock-a-doodle-doo. My dame will dance for you—”

  A laugh goes up from the direction of the dock, and a creaking voice responds, “—While master fiddles his fiddling stick, for dame and doodle doo.”

  • 24 •

  I DIDN’T RECOGNIZE THE FACE inside of the coffin. Its military haircut and its moustache were both combed smooth. I remembered them bushy and bristling, itching as those lips—now pale and purple—reached down for a kiss. Its eyes were closed, but in my memories they were blue.

  I had always been afraid of my great-grandfather, but never more so than at his funeral. He inspired a sombre atmosphere in the people around him—an atmosphere that lingered, even in death.

  Everyone wore black. Even me. Even the body in its varnished wooden box.

  All around me people talked quietly. Many cried. My father’s eyes remained dry, and when I asked him why, he said that he’d already killed that old man in his books.

  I don’t think he meant for me to hear that. I don’t think he remembered I was there.

  The colourful bouquets piled upon tables and trestles all around the room seemed heretical against the gloomy attire of those who put them there.

  Only my Grandmother matched the flowers: jade earrings still pinned to her ears, her dress a navy blue. I watched her as she spotted me, standing in my father’s shadow. She marched across the room and spirited me away.

  “Come,” she said, her voice louder and happier than any of those around us. “Let’s go visit the only man I ever admired.”

  My Grandmother did cry as she looked down at the man in the coffin. Yet she was smiling too.

  “Do you know,” she said. “That I think I was spoiled? Oh, I had more chores crammed into one day than you’ve had to do your whole life, but my father had more sons than he knew what to do with—and only one baby girl.”

  I looked around for a baby girl, but my Grandmother laughed and said, “Me!” She jabbed a thumb back at her collarbone. “I had more dresses than any other girl in my grade, and even I knew that I looked damn cute with my hair tied back in ribbons. My daddy bought me those pretty things because he didn’t know how to say, ‘I love you.’”

  She wiped her wrinkled eyes and said quietly, “He was the most vibrant man alive.”

  I looked at the man in the box. His wrinkles were smoother than I had ever seen. His nails were neatly trimmed. His hands were folded on his stomach. But he looked waxen and unreal, and I couldn’t imagine this figure ever being vibrant.

  The coroners hadn’t been able to erase the yellow that had crept into his skin, nor how much flesh the cancer had leeched from him. I had trouble resolving the man in the box with the man who’d sat in his rocking chair, creaking slowly away, terrifying me into silent respect without ever saying a word.

  “I don’t remember him talking,” I confided to my Grandmother, wondering if it was a failing on my part not to remember somebody’s last words.

  “He’d like that,” she said. “I mean, he didn’t speak much English. But even so, he thought actions spoke louder.”

  Everyone had looked into the coffin, but no one stared into it as long as my Grandmother. Nobody else smiled. Later, over cookies and punch, I pointed this out to my Grandmother, and she laughed softly behind her cup.

  “Most people don’t smile when bad things happen,” she said. “But I remember a little rhyme that surely your daddy’s taught to you. ‘Now I lay me down to sleep….’”

  She cried as she said the Lord’s Prayer. I repeated the words with her until she trailed into silence.

  • 25 •

  WILLOW HOLDS MY HAND AGAIN and guides me blindly towards the dock. We clasp the flashlight, flicked off, between us. From the dock, the creaking voice laughs again, and chants, “Three blind mice, three blind mice, adrift on river’s edge. The miller and his merry old wife, seeking safe passage?”

  The voice strikes me as sinister. Its words stick in my ears like the wet shoreline clinging to the sand. If the waves beneath us made a sound, they would
sound like this voice.

  Willow squeezes my hand, and I realize that I’m shuddering.

  The sand beneath us is suddenly replaced by gravelly wood, hard and cool against my feet. The smell of stale water now rises from all sides. The voice is directly in front of me, and I feel a skeletally thin finger touch my collarbone. I shudder again.

  The finger loiters on my neck, before dripping down my right arm. Willow lets go of my hand as the boatman’s probing finger reaches my palm. It lingers for a moment on the cut, tracing its jagged edge, before roaming down to touch my fingertips one by one.

  “One, two, three, four, five,” his voice counts from the darkness. He is very tall, if the direction of his voice is any indicator, and his breath smells of fish and seashells. “Once I caught a fish alive.”

  His hands let go of mine, and his voice moves a little to the side. I assume he’s performing a similar ritual with Willow, “Six, seven, eight, nine, ten: then I let it go again.”

  “Why did you let it go?” Willow sings out. Despite myself, I jump at the sound of her voice, so clear and loud next to his reedy whispers.

  She had fallen silent as we neared the dock and I hadn’t even noticed.

  “Because it bit my finger so,” the voice creaks. A hint of laughter.

  “Which finger did it bite?”

  At this the boatman falls silent and it’s some minutes before he speaks again. His voice, now further down the dock, is joined by the sound of ropes uncoiling over sandy wood. “So,” he muses, “Two little dicky birds, seeking a crossing before the rain comes down?”

  Willow does not respond verbally, but the boatman must be able to see her—his grunt sounds like agreement. “And of course, up front you’ll pay the fee,” his voice slithers. “My sailing ship’s a-laden with pretty things for thee.”

  Pay? I don’t have any money. I haven’t agreed to this.

  Willow pinches my arm and sings, “I saw four-and-twenty sailors, that stood between the decks, were four-and-twenty white mice with chains around their necks.”

  Though her response makes maddeningly little sense to me, the boatman’s voice suddenly drips venomously as he shouts through the darkness, “A duck, am I? Little dicky birds, always chirping back! You’ll pay my fine or swim these frigid waters.”

  Willow, too, drops the rhymes. She says, “I’ve already gone swimming, as you can plainly see. And, as always, money is earned for services rendered.”

  The boatman is silent. I can almost feel the hatred peeling off him. Then the docks are lit ablaze and I’m struck blind.

  • 26 •

  WHEN MY EYES ADJUST to the sudden flare of light, it’s Huckleberry Finn, not the Grim Reaper who sits before me.

  The boatman wears frayed and sun-bleached jeans rolled up to his knobbly knees. His shirt may once have been silk, but now it’s stained from years of use, missing half its buttons, and in dire need of a wash. A leather vest, at least two sizes too small, hugs his shoulders, but won’t close across his stomach. Atop his head, a wide-brimmed straw hat casts his entire face in shadow—except for his reedy chin, which sports a scraggly beard the colour and consistency of the shore’s flaxen grass. A sliver of river grass juts from his gap-toothed grin, and he chews merrily on the end.

  He sits on the edge of a raft, his feet tracing lazy circles in the water that I’d so carefully avoided. He lazily bobs a fishing pole with one hand, though the pole is little more than a pale branch with a thread looped around one end.

  The raft’s base is a simple mesh of uneven white logs, lashed together with bits of thick woven cords. A teepee made out of old blankets dominates the centre of it, and within I spot a sleeping roll and a small chest of drawers. The boatman has a laundry line tied between his teepee and one of the raft’s wooden side rails. A maroon bathrobe hangs limply over the line, like a fox pelt left out to dry. In front of this makeshift shelter rests a galvanized garbage bin, out of which a crackling fire now licks greedily at the otherwise smothering darkness.

  Based on the voice and the ominous river, I’d been expecting a skeleton poling a barge, not this country bumpkin.

  Willow stands at the dock’s edge, and her grin matches that of the boatman’s, save that she’s retained her teeth. She slips back into nursery rhymes, and sings, “One misty, moisty morning, when cloudy was the weather. I chanced to meet an old man clad all in leather. He began to compliment, and I began to grin … how do you do?”

  And then both she and the boatman turn to look at me expectantly. Without knowing what to say, I parrot Willow’s words, “How do you do?” and am rewarded with a look of relief washing over Willow’s face. The boatman looks disappointed.

  He mumbles, “…and how do you do, again?” before motioning us aboard his vessel.

  Willow bounces onto the raft, which doesn’t rock in the water as she steps aboard.

  When I follow, however, the craft sinks three inches into the water and begins to spin lazily on the current. Before I’ve gained my sea legs, the boatman unwraps a line from the post beside him, and jabs his fishing rod into the inky eddies, as if his raft were a pole barge.

  Soon, our vessel is a small bubble of light on black waters. I lose sight of the dock, but cannot yet see the far shore. I’m struck by the strangeness of the maze. I sidle up beside Willow who is sitting happily in front of the fire. “This river,” I whisper, not sure if I’m allowed to talk out of rhyme. “Was there no other way?”

  “None that I’ve ever taken,” she whispers back. “Everyone crosses the river.”

  The journey is surreal, has been surreal the entire time, and I name the only river that this one recalls: “Styx.”

  Willow shrugs. “I don’t know its name.”

  “Willow,” my whisper comes out ragged. “This is the unorthodox ‘bridge’ you mentioned, right? Are we almost out?”

  She shakes her head.

  The boatman, perhaps feeling excluded from our conversation, speaks loudly over our whispering voices, “Drove the ducklings to the water, every morning at nine. Hit her foot against a splinter, fell into the foaming brine.”

  Whether a threat or a nonsense nursery rhyme, I’m not sure. Nevertheless, I fall silent for the duration of our river voyage.

  Occasionally, the boatman crows other vaguely ominous bits of rhyme, most to do with drowning. “Ruby lips above the water, blowing bubbles, soft and fine. But, alas, I was no swimmer. I lost my Clementine,” he sings, as he rows us across the river.

  The sick feeling in the pit of my stomach settles in.

  Later in the crossing, the boatman points into the deeps, a broad smile still plastered on his face. He sings, “Come to the window, my darlings, with me. Look out on the stars that shine on the sea. There are two little stars that play bo-peep, with two little fish far down in the deep.”

  I look where he points, but can see neither fish nor anything else in the opaque waters. When, after a minute or so, I notice that his grin has widened further, I quickly huddle back into the centre of the raft. I worry that perhaps Willow and I are the fish, and he’s just made another drowning metaphor.

  Willow looks unconcerned. She stares straight ahead, eyes scanning for an unseen shore.

  The trip, though long, is relatively uneventful. I track the passing of at least four hours on my wristwatch, but doze off and lose count after a time.

  When I awaken, Willow has donned her shoes again. Anticipating landfall, I put my shoes on as well, but the journey still takes several more loops of the minute hand.

  How long have we been on this river? Eight hours? More? What kind of a river takes this long to cross?

  The water shimmers like glass beneath us and the sky is a black shroud. Whether by some property of the water or simply by virtue of the boatman’s skill, neither ripples with our passing.

  • 27 •

  MY MOM WORKED FIFTY-PLUS HOURS per week, and while she loved the mountains she rarely found time to see them. My dad, though he worked from home,
preferred to spend his time locked in his studio. He told me that only in books did the woods house elves and the oceans krakens, and what did real life have on that?

  So only my grandparents took me camping. My grandfather loved the quiet of the outdoors and my Grandmother liked to paint. The joy, for me, was fishing.

  My grandparents frequented a peninsula on Sheep River—a small sliver of land that secreted away a campsite, surrounded on three sides by water.

  While my grandfather stoked a fire to life and erected our tent, my Grandmother set up her easel facing the water. I was already digging through my tackle box, before I’d even rolled out my sleeping bag.

  Even after setting half of my allowance aside every week for Sunday’s tithe, I had managed to save up enough to purchase myself a rod and reel. My grandfather, seeing my enthusiasm, gave me a spool of four-pound line to lace my reel with and a number of his spoon lures, jigs, and nymphs. A fly fisherman himself, he didn’t understand the appeal of my drift fishing, but he couldn’t argue with the results.

  The pike were the largest fish in the river. Slimy and streamlined, these fish ate everything, no matter what lure I rigged my rod with. But they weren’t the prey I was after.

  My prize had a much more refined palette—a taste for the colour chartreuse, and a plastic nymph bobbing on the swirling water. I watched my line slacken in the lazy river, waiting for it to snap taut as my prey clamped its jaws around my prize.

  Rainbow trout.

  While a four-pound line would snap when faced with a pike’s thrashing and dagger-like teeth, it was perfect for the smaller fish that swam those waters. To my twelve-year-old self, there was no finer-tasting fish in the world.

  The fishing was easy, I simply had to set my line. Then it was a patience game—waiting to feel the line tug in my hand and see a splash of red and silver in the water.

  Depending on my success, dinner was either trout or Alphagetti, because I threw the pike back, not being partial to their fishy taste. Then, my grandfather would wash the dishes while my Grandmother brewed coffee over the fire.