Covered Bridge

by Brian Doyle

  Suddenly she turned her eyes on Nerves and bleated once at him. Her eyes turned piercing and cold.

  Nerves went roaring down the road in a little chuck-wagon of dust.

  O’Driscoll and I laughed all the way home. We laughed at the goat bleating at Father Foley and at the goat bleating at Nerves. And we laughed at Old Mac Gleason.

  Fleurette would like this part of the letter.

  Dog Attacked by Killer Potato Bugs!

  FATHER FOLEY was doing something to my mind. For instance, even something that happened to Nerves made me think of Father Foley’s sermons.

  It was Nerves who first noticed that our potato field was being attacked by bugs. The potato plants were quite high when we took over the farm. Our field was outside our front door and across our side road. We had twelve rows of potatoes, twenty paces long. Since there are about four potato plants in every long pace, there must have been almost a thousand potato plants. More potatoes than we’d ever need. But we could use them for trading for other things we didn’t have.

  I saw Nerves come out of the potato field through the barbed wire gate. He was looking pretty disgusted. His skin was moving up and down his body. He was shuddering like someone in a restaurant who just found a cockroach crawling out of his spaghetti.

  I went into the potato field to see what it was that made Nerves so nauseated.

  On the first potato plant I inspected I counted fiftysix fat orange potato bugs with black spots, munching away on the leaves.

  The next plant had even more.

  Now I realized what was bothering Nerves.

  Nerves hated bugs of all kinds. He always avoided flies, spiders, moths, butterflies, grasshoppers, ants, any kind of bug, whenever he could.

  I guess he was just out for a stroll in the potato patch when he looked around and realized that he was surrounded by over 55,000 bugs. And all related to each other. Poor Nerves was outnumbered.

  I got some empty Habitant Pea Soup cans that were piled on a shelf in our shed just next to the potato field.

  By holding a Habitant Pea Soup can under the leaf of the potato plant and using a flat stick, you could knock the bugs into the can.

  At first they made a pinging noise when they hit the bottom of the can, but then things got quieter and more disgusting as the can filled up.

  I put the first full can on the gatepost and started a new one. I was starting to feel like Nerves must have felt, his skin crawling up and down his body.

  Mrs. O’Driscoll came up to the gate with Nerves behind her.

  She pulled on the gate but it stuck a bit, so she yanked a little harder. That caused the Habitant Pea Soup can, full to the top with potato bugs, to fall off the gatepost, dumping most of the bugs on top of Nerves.

  Nerves was stunned. He stood still as a statue while the bugs spread over his body like bees. Nerves’ eyes, which normally were kind of beady, were wider than Mrs. O’Driscoll or I had ever seen them. It didn’t seem possible that his eyes could expand and bulge out like that.

  Then his mouth opened wide like he was screaming, but no sound was coming out.

  Then he took off as fast as his little legs could churn and kick up grass and dirt, down around the ice house, and we heard the splash as Nerves hit the water of Mushrat Creek.

  “Well,” said Mrs. O’Driscoll out of the corner of her mouth, “we’ll find out now if potato bugs can swim or not.”

  We ended up with seven cans of potato bugs.

  The stove in the summer kitchen was roaring hot, ready for baking bread.

  Mrs. O’Driscoll and I dumped the bugs into the flames. What a stink for a while.

  I couldn’t help thinking about Father Foley.

  The stink and the flames.

  Of Hell.

  Woman Builds Bridge!

  NOT LONG AFTER we heard the first dynamite go off and saw the first dead fish float down Mushrat Creek, a poster went up in the store at Brennan’s Hill.

  MEN WANTED

  BRIDGE CONSTRUCTION

  MUSHRAT CREEK

  Carpentry, Cement, Steel,

  Laborers.

  THE LAZY NEED NOT APPLY!

  Madame Ovide Proulx

  Proulx Construction

  A lot of farmers were crowded around the poster. They read “Madame Ovide Proulx.” Madame Proulx? A woman?

  A woman building a bridge?

  How could that be?

  O’Driscoll and I went up to the place where the new bridge was going to be.

  It was an ugly sight.

  Blown-up trees and bulldozers and mud and big gashes out of the sides of beautiful Mushrat Creek.

  O’Driscoll got in a line-up and got hired on as a carpenter. While he was signing his work card I saw him saying something to the woman in charge. She looked up at me. Then O’Driscoll waved for me to come over.

  “Madame Proulx wants to hire you. She needs a nail puller. You get eighty cents an hour. You work from seven in the morning until six at night, one hour for lunch, only half days on Saturday.”

  Mrs. Proulx looked at me.

  “Can you pull nails?” she said.

  “Out of wood?” I said.

  “Of course, out of wood. What did you tink, you pull dem hout of da hair?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Did you think you’ll pull them out of the air?” O’Driscoll said, helping me out.

  “Yes, I can pull nails,” I said, ignoring her sarcasm.

  “Sign ere!” said Mrs. Proulx.

  I had a job.

  I was already figuring out the money. Ten hours a day would be eight dollars. Five times eight. Four more dollars for Saturday. Forty-four dollars a week! I could buy more red paint with that. And other stuff for the bridge—lamp oil, wicks.

  We started work the next day.

  For the next few days, before I went to bed, I’d try to tell Fleurette about what it was like.

  A farmer or two from almost every house along the road and by the river and up and down the valley were working on the new bridge.

  There was rock and earth to be moved and holes to be dug and forms to be built and cement to be poured and steel to be laid.

  The foreman of the job was French and he was from Maniwaki. His name was printed on the side of the truck and the end of the big generator. His name was Ovide Proulx (pronounced PROO).

  His wife, Mrs. Proulx (pronounced PROO, too) was in charge of the Time, the Tools and Supplies and the Pay Envelopes.

  All the farmers called her Prootoo.

  On Fridays, Prootoo rang the bell at six o’clock sharp and the farmers lined up in their blue overalls and waited while she called out their names and made them step up for their envelope of money. She also sometimes searched the farmers for stolen tools or nails.

  Sometimes there was money taken out of the farmers’ pay envelopes for a tool they maybe lost or broke.

  Everybody was afraid of Prootoo.

  Except Mr. Proulx, the boss.

  And everybody hated Prootoo.

  Except Mr. Ovide Proulx. He loved Prootoo.

  Whenever he went away in the truck he kissed her on the cheek and when he got back a little later, he kissed her again. And even while he was kissing her on the cheek, she turned her head so that she never took her eyes off the farmers as they slowly built the new bridge.

  She never took her eyes off the farmers as they slowly built the bridge from seven o’clock in the morning to six o’clock at night except on Saturday, and then it was eight o’clock in the morning to twelve o’clock noon that she never never stopped watching.

  Just before the twelve o’clock dinner bell one of the farmers who was swinging a sledge hammer let it go and it flew out and landed in the deep part of Mushrat Creek.

  Prootoo was already marching over to where the farmer and I were standing even before the hammer hit the water.

  “You go in and get it,” said Prootoo, pointing at the farmer who let go the hammer. “Take off your overalls, jump in the creek, g
et the sledge ‘ammer.”

  I could see the hammer down there, through the clear water, the hammer head on the bottom in the mud, the handle pointing straight up, floating.

  I could see by the farmer’s face, he wasn’t going to take off his overalls for her or anybody else.

  “You want to work?” she said to him. “Let’s get in dat water!”

  I knew the farmer was going to get fired.

  I took a chance.

  “I’ll go,” I said.

  “O.K.,” she said. “Fine. Let’s go before it sinks in the mud!”

  I was fiddling with the strap of my overalls, waiting to see if she would stop staring and look away. I got the strap undone and looked up again. Prootoo was still staring. She had the dinner bell in her hand. It was almost past twelve o’clock and all the hungry farmers were standing around staring at her, waiting for her to ring the bell.

  My fingers went up to my other strap and I looked up again, wondering if she was going to turn her back while I took off my pants.

  All the farmers stood around where the new bridge was going to be, all the farmers, still as statues, waiting for my pants to go down, waiting for the bell, waiting for their dinner, their stomachs groaning and rumbling.

  I was thinking of Prince Andrei, how he felt.

  If Prince Andrei could do it, so could I...

  I couldn’t write any more in Fleurette’s letter. I was falling out of the chair I was so tired. I could finish it later. Working ten hours in a row every day makes you tired.

  I lay down on the straw mattress that Mrs. O’Driscoll had fixed up and sank softly into it. I only had to move a couple of spikes of stubble sticking in me before I was comfortable. The mattress cover smelled clean like the breeze off Mushrat Creek. And because of the fresh straw, my whole bed had a smell of sweet dust and clover.

  Horseballs Roll Down Man’s Cheeks!

  ON THE FIRST Sunday of my first week working on the new bridge, I went exploring.

  Past the woodpile on the south side of our house, along the road between the barn and the stable, past the manure pile and the pig pen, past the strawberry patch and through the pine bush, down along our lower field and the ancient rail fence and onto the log road that led to the river, Nerves and I walked east.

  It was called the log road because the lower swampy parts were made of logs, lying crossways, lodged in the clay and mud.

  As the road moved up rocky hills and down into meadows and gullies and through pine and spruce bush, you could sometimes hear Mushrat Creek talking away as it wandered near us.

  Further on, the tall thick sumac with the sickening blood-red fruit blocked off all sound except for the summer heat bugs.

  And later, we edged sideways down the clay, and then passed through the dark bark and the white berries of the poison dogwood trees.

  Then over the last rocky part to the water, feeling your feet squishing on the stinkhorn fungus until you and your totally disgusted dog reached the hemlock tree where the rowboat was pulled up and tied with a chain.

  And then if you looked north up the Gatineau River, past where Mushrat Creek dumped in its pretty water, you would be able to see (but you couldn’t, because the river turned there) Devil’s Hole and the dam at Low.

  I pulled the boat up a bit more, bailed it out with an old dented dipper that I found under the back seat.

  I was thinking that if O’Driscoll and Mrs. O’Driscoll bought this farm, then this shoreline, these rocks, this boat, this hemlock tree that was supposed to be poisonous would all be ours.

  I wondered if the water was ours too. Probably not.

  Out in the middle of the river there were two people in a big rowboat.

  You could hear them talking, and by the sounds they were making you could tell they were working at something, something heavy.

  They were lifting something big and brown.

  There was a man who had most of the weight and a boy, maybe his son, helping him.

  What they were resting on the side of the boat now was a wood stove. It was about the size of our wood stove—four lids, an oven and a reservoir plus legs. The stove was very rusty and was breaking up a bit as they rested it on the gunwale of the boat.

  Then Nerves and I heard the man count one, two, three, GO!

  And over into the Gatineau River went the rusty stove.

  A puff of red dust, probably rust, rose up, and the stove sank almost right away. A dirty little geyser of water shot up as the river swallowed.

  Then there was some shouting and some crying.

  Then the man and the boy both peered silently over the edge of the boat into the water.

  Then they started tossing in the long, sausage, hollow pieces. The stove pipes. They were easy. And the lids.

  I was imagining exactly what they could see. The stove lids taking longer to disappear because of the seesaw motion they made while they were sinking, like plates.

  The rusty trail of large then smaller air pockets.

  And I was imagining what they couldn’t see.

  The stove hitting bottom softly, bouncing over on its side, settling in.

  To stay there for years.

  But just before they dumped the stove, something happened.

  There was some grunting caused by lifting.

  Then the man was saying something like “lift your end, lift, lift!”

  Then the stove went over.

  But the boy must have hurt himself or cut himself or something because his both hands were down now holding his ankle and his head was a way back, his face facing the sky.

  “Stop that! What happened? Let me see,” the man was saying. “What are you crying for? What’s this crying? Stop it! Be a man! Stop being a baby! Be a man! Don’t cry! Be a man!”

  I was remembering that only last year I cried. I cried about something I did that I was ashamed of and also because an old lady who was a friend of mine died. I cried and Mrs. O’Driscoll didn’t say, “be a man!” She didn’t say that. She put her arms around me and gave me a big long hug. I was wondering about Mrs. O’Driscoll when she was a little girl. Did she once cry and did somebody come along and say, “Stop that! Be a woman! Don’t cry! Be a woman!”?

  It seemed stupid to me. Why should the boy be a man? And what if he was a man? Men cry. I saw O’Driscoll cry. He cried the night he came home from being lost in the War. While he was crying, Mrs. O’Driscoll didn’t run over to him and yell at him and tell him he shouldn’t be crying because he was a man!

  He cried and while we were watching him he started to laugh at the same time he was crying.

  I heard him the other day telling one of the farmers at the bridge about it. “There I was,” he said, “crying away, tears as big as horseballs rolling down my cheeks!”

  In the parlor that afternoon, while we were reading, O’Driscoll looked up suddenly and said this: “I’ve got, I think, a good plan to save your bridge. You and Mrs. O’Driscoll have won over some of the people with your paintin’ and your fixin’. Some of the farmers at the Brennan’s Hill Hotel are sympathetic to the cause. But not all of them are, Hubbo. And when it comes down to the money, the few you’ve won over will give in. No sir, we need a stronger position. If it touches their pockets they’ll buckle under.”

  “What are you going to do?” I said.

  “Start a petition. Get a petition signed by every workin’ man on the job is what I’m going to do, me lad! Get a list of names of everybody on the job saying they want the old bridge saved to show their children and their children’s children how they used to live!”

  Baby Tells Lies Before It Can Talk!

  PROOTOO AND I were getting along fairly well. At least when she looked at me, her eyes seemed kinder than before. And the day that Mrs. O’Driscoll brought her the homemade black currant jam, she almost smiled at me.

  There were farmers of all sizes working on the bridge. Small farmers, medium-sized farmers, big farmers.

  The biggest farmer of them all look
ed like he was wearing shoulder pads under his shirt. He reminded me of a football player who played for the Ottawa Rough Riders named Tony Golab. We used to wait outside the little door in the green fence at half time for the players to come back on the field. There was a cement ledge you could stand on, and when Tony Golab came by I once jumped on his back and rode him into the park without paying.

  “Hang on, kid!” he said while the security guard was trying to pull me off him. “Hang on, kid!” he said.

  His sweater was covered with mud so you couldn’t see his number. But I knew what it was. It was 72.

  And there was blood on his cheek.

  The biggest farmer of them all reminded me of Tony Golab.

  Another one of the farmers liked to sing.

  He had only one song but it had hundreds of verses. They were all about some ancient guy named Brian O’Lynn.

  The verses sounded like this:

  Oh, Brian O’Lynn and his wife and wife’s mother

  Tried to go over the bridge together

  The storm it was howling, the bridge it fell in.

  “We’ll go home by water,” says Brian O’Lynn.

  But our most famous farmer was not working on the bridge at all.

  He was a visitor who came over during our lunch hour and entertained us while we lay on the ground, sprawled out on the ground, full of food and resting.

  Everybody said that Old Mickey Malarkey was the biggest liar on the Gatineau River. The Gatineau River runs from north of the town of Maniwaki right down to Ottawa. There are lots of little towns and villages in the Gatineau River Valley and lots of farms and houses along the river.

  There were lots of liars living between Maniwaki and Ottawa. Maybe hundreds of liars. And so to be the biggest liar in the whole valley you had to be very good at it. There was quite a lot of competition.

  Old Mickey Malarkey was the best.

  He was also the one who had the most practice because he was the oldest. Old Mickey Malarkey was 112 years old and the farmers all said that he’d been lying since he was a little baby. Some of the farmers working on the new bridge said that Old Mickey Malarkey was lying before he learned to talk, if you can imagine that.