Covered Bridge

by Brian Doyle

  And then everybody started thinking of Oscar McCracken, but nobody mentioned him. And Ophelia Brown. And nobody said her name, either.

  On Friday of the week when the news came out that they were going to tear down the old covered bridge as soon as one lane of the new bridge was finished, O’Driscoll was ready.

  The night before, I told Mrs. O’Driscoll and him about how Oscar would talk four times a day to his dead lover, Ophelia Brown.

  “We have to save this bridge,” said O’Driscoll. “Not only for Oscar, but for Posterity. In my travels I have learned that without a past, we have no future!”

  Mrs. O’Driscoll rolled her eyes. “What a Romantic,” she said.

  “You’ll get fired,” I said.

  “No, I won’t,” he said. “I’m on the side of right! The side of History!”

  O’Driscoll had a plan.

  Everybody knew that on Friday, about half past one, Prootoo would go to Wakefield to get the money for our pay. The bank closed at three o’clock so she always left in the truck with her husband who loved her, Ovide, to drive down to Wakefield and get the money before the bank closed.

  At 1:30, O’Driscoll started taking the petition around to the bridge workers asking them to sign if they were in favor of saving the covered bridge.

  I was watching him.

  The first person he talked to was the biggest farmer of them all, who was a pretty good mechanic and who was lying under the generator, working on it.

  O’Driscoll lay there under the generator with him. Their legs, sticking out, were the very same.

  They had on the same overalls and the same boots. Almost everybody wore the same-colored overalls. Everybody bought them at the same store. There was only one kind.

  The generator was right beside Prootoo’s shack.

  But the truck was gone. Everything was O.K. She wouldn’t be back for quite a while.

  We were sure Prootoo was gone in the truck to Wakefield to get the pay.

  Suddenly the door of the shack opened and Prootoo stood there listening to O’Driscoll talking to the mechanic about signing the petition about saving the bridge. You could hear him explaining it.

  You could tell that she didn’t know who it was under there, but she could hear what it was he was saying.

  She had a can of white paint in her hands. She began to lean away over to look under the generator to see who was talking about this petition about the bridge.

  Some of us were watching.

  We knew that if she got down on her hands and knees and looked under she would find out it was O’Driscoll doing the talking and fire him on the spot for trying to start a strike.

  Just then Mr. Proulx’s truck drove up in a cloud of dust. He said in French to her that they had to go. Right now! They were in a hurry! Wakefield. The bank closes at three! Tout d’suite!

  Prootoo then got a very wise and crafty look on her face.

  She didn’t say a word to her husband as he gave her a little kiss on the cheek out the truck window. While he kissed her, she never took her eyes off O’Driscoll’s pants. Then, as she walked around the front of the truck to get in, she deliberately spilled some white paint on the right leg of O’Driscoll’s overalls.

  Then she put the can of paint in the shack, got in the truck, and they took off.

  O’Driscoll, on his back, worked his way out from under the generator.

  “Thank you, Paddy,” said O’Driscoll. “That’s good enough for me.”

  “Did he sign his name?” I said.

  “No, he didn’t,” said O’Driscoll, “but he said he liked the idea of going around and asking people. He said he thought that was fair.”

  I told O’Driscoll about what Prootoo did. The paint on the pants.

  “I heard the truck taking off,” said O’Driscoll as he looked at the right pant leg of his overalls. “Why do you think she did this?”

  And then I thought. Then the more I thought, the more excited I got. I had a funny feeling that I was going to know the answer. The answer was right around the corner! Any minute now! Don’t think too hard. It might go away. Why did she do that? She didn’t know who it was. She didn’t know who was saying these things about the bridge because all the legs of all the overalls looked the same.

  But she put on the paint. On the pants.

  This is payday!

  Tonight at six, we line up.

  For our pay.

  All our pants will be together!

  She’ll pick the pants with the paint!

  “That’s it!” I said to O’Driscoll.

  “What’s it?” said O’Driscoll.

  “Tonight. At six o’clock! In the pay line-up! She’ll check the pants. She’ll make a speech. She’ll fire you! Just like teachers do in school sometimes. Make an example of you...fire you in front of everybody. That’s what she’s like!”

  Before I was finished, O’Driscoll was looking in the supply shack.

  I thought he was looking for paint remover.

  But no. He came out with Prootoo’s can of white paint.

  “An old trick I learned in the navy,” he said.

  “What are you going to do?” I said.

  “Follow me,” said O’Driscoll as he took a quick look over his shoulder. “Follow me!”

  Woman’s Face Sprouts Pine Knots!

  I TRIED TO EXPLAIN in my letter to Fleurette the look on Prootoo’s face when she came out of the shack at six o’clock and saw all the farmers lined up so straight, just like in school.

  Every farmer had a splotch of white paint on the right leg of his overalls.

  What a coincidence! Which worker was passing around the petition?

  Who knows!

  Prootoo’s face was like a crowbar, I said in Fleurette’s letter. No, it was more like a bag of cement. No, it was like a one-by-six piece of pine lumber with too many knots, and full of bent nails.

  It was like a flying sledge hammer.

  It was fun writing it. But I didn’t admit that I felt kind of bad. I felt a little sorry for Prootoo. She wasn’t as bad as they thought. In fact, sometimes she was almost nice. Maybe it was because I knew she liked me. I don’t know.

  The farmers on the bridge had so much fun that day that they all signed the petition whether they agreed with it or not.

  It said this:

  “I, the undersigned, refuse to tear down the covered bridge.

  I would rather save it for Posterity. For, without a past, we have no future.”

  Saturday at noon, while she was ringing the time-to-quit bell, Prootoo had the petition put in her hand by O’Driscoll himself.

  Graveyard Fence Moves During Night!

  THE NEXT DAY was Sunday, and it was a day that the people of Mushrat Creek would never forget.

  Father Foley started in on his usual sermon and was scaring himself half to death about Hell. Then he paused and changed the subject a bit. He started talking about Obedience. About following the rules about doing as you’re told. About how Satan was cast out of Heaven because of Pride and about how Adam and Eve, especially Eve, were kicked out of the Garden of Eden because they wouldn’t do as they were told and how the Lord once sent a big flood to drown all the people who wouldn’t do as they were told which was just about everybody and the way Father Foley told it, it looked like God could hardly get anybody to do what they were told.

  Then Father Foley whipped out a long sheet of paper.

  It was O’Driscoll’s petition!

  “It has come to my attention,” shouted Father Foley, “that the workers who are working on our spanking new bridge are refusing to honor part of their contract. Their Duty. This, my parishioners, is a disgrace to this fine community. Mr. Proulx is a fine businessman and an excellent craftsman. He has been hired and is being paid by the provincial and local authorities to do his duty. He will do his duty. And you will do yours! As God is my witness, the covered bridge will be torn down when the time comes for it to be torn down! And this foolish petition
is now null and void!”

  Father Foley then tore the petition four or five times and threw it down at his feet in the pulpit.

  The way Father Foley told it, it sounded sort of like God wanted the farmers to tear down their own bridge that their fathers had built.

  Everybody was shocked.

  But not as shocked as they were a few seconds later when a voice came from the back of the church.

  “That bridge is none of your damn business, Father Foley!” the voice shouted.

  Everybody turned around.

  It was Oscar McCracken doing the shouting. Quiet Oscar McCracken was almost screaming in Father Foley’s church!

  “What happens to the covered bridge is none of your damned business, Father Foley!” Oscar was choking and crying.

  Oscar McCracken, who never said boo to anybody, was yelling and swearing at Father Foley in Father Foley’s church!

  “I wish you were dead, Father Foley! I wish you were dead and burning in Hell!” screamed Oscar McCracken and ran out the open doors, knocking over the pile of collection baskets on the table there.

  When I looked back up at Father Foley, everybody was looking down. Not looking at anything.

  Ashamed of Oscar McCracken.

  Afraid of Father Foley’s rage.

  For the rest of the service, nobody would look at Father Foley. Everybody looked down at their feet.

  When we left, Father Foley wasn’t at the door to wish us goodbye.

  That evening, under the rowanwood trees, we were quiet. There wasn’t much to say. Nobody spoke to anybody, it seemed, since Oscar stood up and swore at the priest in church that morning. People moved out of the church quietly, not speaking much of anything to anybody. Some of the mothers maybe told their kids to hush up or hurry up or don’t do that, but that was about all anybody said.

  And we were sad. Sad for Oscar and Oscar’s family. Because now, for a while anyway, nobody was going to talk too much to Oscar, even though they liked him and everything. Now, when he’d deliver the mail and maybe they would be out at their mailboxes, they would maybe say good afternoon and then look down at their mail right away so as not to look into Oscar’s shame in his eyes.

  And we were worried. Now that the bridge was going to be torn down for sure, maybe everybody in Mushrat Creek would say to us, I told you so, I told you that old relic would be nothing but trouble, and maybe people would think we were strangers, poking into their business, especially O’Driscoll with his petition. Maybe they’d start to say he tricked them into signing it and that now they were in trouble because Father Foley saw every one of those names on the list and knew every one of them and had visited every one of them when they were sick and when their kids were sick or the old folks were dying and Father Foley prayed for all of them and loved them and now they turn around and do something like this? Be Disobedient? And maybe they’d say it was all because of those new people, the what-do-you-call-’ems, the O’Driscolls.

  I tried to change the subject, maybe get O’Driscoll talking.

  I asked him a question.

  “What did you mean when you said you learned that trick about the paint on the pants in the navy?”

  “Oh, that,” said O’Driscoll, taking a quick look behind him at Nerves, who was walking by with one of our hens. “That was the way you could come in late at night, a way after you were supposed to, past curfew, run right past the Duty Officer, you roar right down into the mess where your hammock is already slung, give all the full hammocks a swing as you go by, then get into yours without even taking your clothes off. A few seconds later when the Duty Officer sticks his head in the hatch to get your number, all the hammocks are swinging! Get it? Who just came in late and got in their hammock? Just about everybody, sir!”

  It was something but not the real O’Driscoll.

  Mrs. O’Driscoll sighed.

  The bridge would be gone. Nothing would be the same. Maybe we’d have to move again.

  Hopeless.

  Nerves was back from walking the hen to the hen-house and was sniffing some plants alongside the house.

  I tried O’Driscoll again. “What are those plants Nerves is so interested in over there?”

  I knew that if O’Driscoll didn’t know the answer he would make something up.

  I hoped he didn’t know the answer.

  “Those plants? You didn’t pull one up, did you? Because if you pull one up by hand, all alone, you’ll die a horrible death by strangulation within the next twenty-four hours. Why would you want to pull one up? I’ll tell you why.”

  You could tell O’Driscoll was glad to talk about something that would take his mind off his torn-up petition.

  Mrs. O’Driscoll eased back in her chair to get comfortable. She was going to try to enjoy this one.

  “Did you learn this in your travels?” she said and shut her eyes like she always did when she didn’t expect an answer.

  “They’re called mandrake plants. People take the mandrake root and grind it up and make a powder and mix it with pig’s blood and drink it. It can make a woman have as many babies as she wants and a little touch of it once and a while can make a man very handsome indeed. But too much of it has been known to drive a lad right around the corner and out of his mind. Julian, one of the emperors of the Roman Empire, took so much of it that he thought for a while he was turned into a goat and nearly died after he ate most of his blanket one night.”

  Mrs. O’Driscoll sighed.

  “How do you pull it up without getting strangled within twenty-four hours?” O’Driscoll went on.

  “I’m glad you asked that, Hubbo me boy. You don’t pull it up. You get a small rope, tie one end of it to the base of the stem of the mandrake and tie the other end of the rope around the neck of a dog.”

  I looked down at Nerves, who was studying some ants in the sweetgrass.

  He glanced up at us with a sarcastic look on his face.

  “Then,” said O’Driscoll, “you chase the dog!”

  “Where did you say you learned all this, again?” said Mrs. O’Driscoll, trying to trap O’Driscoll. She kept her eyes closed this time, which meant she knew she wasn’t going to get an answer and that she didn’t really want one anyway.

  “And when the mandrake is uprooted, you’ll notice two remarkable things,” O’Driscoll kept on. “One: you hear a small, blood-curdling scream. Two: you’ll see that the root is shaped exactly like a little statue of a man!”

  I was right. O’Driscoll didn’t know what those plants were at all.

  After dark, Nerves and I went out to trim the lamps on the covered bridge. The moonlight sparkled on the water of Mushrat Creek and pierced through the openings of the bridge, sending bars of softness onto the carriageway inside.

  The moonlight turned the red side of the bridge into silver.

  It was sad to think that the covered bridge would soon be gone forever.

  After the lamps, Nerves and I took a walk. Behind the church in the sexton’s cottage there was a light shining out the curtained window.

  The door was open a bit. I politely opened it some more.

  “Oscar?”

  Oscar, sitting at the table, with his sad eyes.

  “I can’t go home. My family won’t talk to me. I’ll stay here tonight or with Mrs. Brown. Hello, Nerves. How are you tonight?”

  Nerves sat with his head up and his paws together. Best behavior. He liked Oscar McCracken. He liked riding in the rumble seat of Oscar McCracken’s coupe car.

  “I shouldn’t have spoke like that in church. I shouldn’t have shouted them things.”

  Oscar let out a long, long sigh.

  “Everything’s over,” he said.

  Then he looked at Nerves a while and smiled a little bit.

  “I met you before you met me, you know,” he said, leaning over to Nerves.

  Nerves, sitting even straighter.

  Oscar turned to me.

  “You know, Hubbo, I never did in all my born days ever see a
dog faint, so help me God, until that night.”

  My mouth must have fallen open, because there was a moth trying to fly into it.

  “You?” I said. “That night?”

  “Come out, I’ll show you.”

  In the goat pen, on a little clothesline, hung a long white dress and a blue hat with a wide brim.

  “I did it to try and make Father Foley move Ophelia’s grave inside the graveyard fence. It was the second stupidest thing I ever did. This morning in church was the stupidest. Now she’ll never get in.”

  “That was you?”

  “That was me. I thought I’d meet Father Foley coming back from visiting the sick. Turned out it was you.”

  “I should have known it was no ghost,” I said.

  “Why?” said Oscar.

  “The splash!” I said. “Ghosts don’t splash when they hit the water. A big splash!”

  “I know.” Oscar was almost laughing. “I did a belly flop. Stupid me!”

  Then we both laughed.

  And then we stood for a while until the goat poked her head out of her little barn.

  Nerves got around behind my legs.

  “I’m goin’ to leave this place forever,” Oscar said quietly. “But there’s one thing I got to do before I go. And that thing I got to do, I got to do tonight.”

  Oscar went into the sexton’s cottage.

  There was clanging and rattling around in there.

  Oscar came out with a roll of page wire. And a post-hole digger. And a shovel. He had wire-cutters and a carpenter’s belt full of tools and nails.

  “Do you want to give me a hand?” he said.

  Up in the graveyard Oscar already had a cedar post cut and hidden in the long grass a little away from Ophelia Brown’s grave.

  He was all ready. He knew exactly what to do. He had been thinking about it for years.

  Ophelia’s grave was just outside the fence right between two fence posts.

  The first thing he did was cut the page wire away from the two posts and leave an open gateway in the fence.

  Then we dug a hole on the other side of Ophelia Brown’s grave and we sank the post and tamped it down with rocks and earth. This was a strong post.