Bridge of Clay

by Markus Zusak

  * * *

  —

  Later, they sat together, on the steps, and despite the cooling weather, the mosquitoes were out, and heinous. They crouched, light-footed, on their arms.

  “God, they’re monsters, aren’t they?”

  The black mountains stood tall in the distance.

  A panel of red behind them.

  Again, the Murderer spoke, or tried to.

  “How was—”

  Clay cut him off. “You hired equipment.”

  A friendly sigh. Had he been caught cheating? Had he severed the bridge’s ethos? “I know—it’s not very Pont du Gard, is it?”

  “No,” said Clay, but gave him a break. “More than two people built that one, though.”

  “Or the devil, if—”

  He nodded. “I know.”

  He couldn’t tell him just how relieved he was that the job was already done.

  Now Michael tried again.

  He finished his bitten-off question.

  “Home?”

  “Not bad.”

  Clay could feel him looking, then—at the almost-heal of bruising.

  He finished his coffee.

  Our dad bit his mug, but gently.

  When he stopped, he looked at the steps, and nowhere near the boy. “Matthew?”

  Clay nodded. “Everything’s good, though.” He thought a moment. “Rory ended up carrying me,” and there was the slightest smile in front of him.

  “They were good with you coming back—here, I mean?”

  “Of course,” Clay said, “I had to.”

  Slowly he got up and there was so much more, so many things to say, so much at the inner edges; there was Henry and Schwartz and Starkey (and let’s not forget Starkey’s girl), and Henry and Peter Pan. There was Claudia Kirkby, and me. There was all of us at the station, still standing as the train was leaving.

  And, of course.

  Of course, there was Carey.

  There was Carey and Royal Hennessey, and weaving through the traffic…and losing to Pump Up the Jam—

  But there again, the quietness.

  The unsaidness.

  To break it, Clay said, “I’m going inside…while I’ve still got some blood left in me—”

  * * *

  —

  But then—what was this?

  A surprise.

  As halfway in, he came back; he was suddenly, expansively talkative, which for Clay was eight extra words.

  Coffee cup in hand, he said, “I like it here, I like being here,” and he wondered why he’d done it. Maybe it was to acknowledge a new existence—of both Archer Street and the river—or even a kind of acceptance:

  He belonged as much to each of them.

  The distance between us was him.

  In the end, it had to end.

  The fistfights were coming to a close.

  A cigarette had been found and smoked.

  Even the piano-mongering was over.

  In hindsight, they were worthy distractions, but could never quite turn the tide of her.

  The world inside her escalated.

  She emptied, she overflowed.

  If anything, in the months to come, there were a few last stands of reliable life—as our mother was punished with those treatments. She’d been opened up and shut back tight, like a car on the side of the highway. You know that sound, when you slam the front down, when you’ve just got the bloody thing running again, and pray for a few more miles?

  Each day was like that ignition.

  We ran till we stalled again.

  * * *

  —

  One of the best examples of living that way was made quite early in January; the middle of the Christmas holidays:

  The gift and glory of lust.

  Yes, lust.

  In later years there might have been the naked excitement and pure idiocy of Bachelor Party, but in that early period of Penny’s decline were the beginnings of boyhood depravity.

  Perversions or living completely?

  It depends which way you look at it.

  Regardless, it was the hottest day of summer so far, like a harbinger of things to come. (Clay liked the word harbinger, from his formidable teacher at school, who was full to the brim with vocab. While other teachers kept strictly to the curriculum, this one—the brilliant Mr. Berwick—would no sooner walk into class than test them on words they simply had an obligation to know:

  Harbinger.

  Abominable.

  Excruciating. Luggage.

  Luggage was a great word, for being so perfect for what you did with it; you lugged.)

  * * *

  —

  But yes, anyway, not long into January, the sun was high, and achingly hot. The racing quarter was searing. The distant traffic hummed to them. It turned casually the other way.

  Henry was in the newsagent’s, up on Poseidon Road, just down from Tippler Lane, and when he came back out triumphantly, he dragged Clay into the alley. He looked left and right, and said it.

  “Here.” A giant whisper. He pulled the Playboy from under his T-shirt. “Get a load of this.”

  He handed him the magazine, and opened it to the middle, where the fold went across her body—and she was hard and soft, and pointed and amazing, in all the perfect places. She looked positively thrilled with her hips.

  “Pretty great, huh?”

  Clay looked down, of course he did, and he knew all this—he was ten years old, with three older brothers; he’d seen naked women on a computer screen—but here was totally different. It was stealing and nudity combined, on glossy printed paper. (As Henry said, “This is the life!”) Clay trembled amongst the glee of it, and weirdly, he read her name. He smiled, looked closer, and asked:

  “Is her last name really January?”

  Inside, his heart beat big, and Henry Dunbar grinned.

  “Of course,” he said, “you bet.”

  * * *

  —

  Later, though, when they made it home (after several stops to ogle), our parents were caught in the kitchen. They were down on the worn-out floor, and sitting just barely upright.

  Our father was against the cupboards.

  His eyes were a wasted blue.

  Our mother had thrown up—it was a horrible mess—and now she slept back against him; Michael Dunbar sat only staring.

  The two boys, they stood.

  Their erections suddenly deserted them; dismantled, deep in their pants.

  Henry called out, he reacted, and he was suddenly quite responsible. “Tommy? You home? Don’t come in here!” as they watched our mother’s fragility—and Miss January, rolled up, between them.

  That smile, her perfect furniture.

  It hurt now to even think of her.

  Miss January was just so…healthy.

  * * *

  —

  Early autumn it had to happen; there was a destined afternoon.

  Rory was a month into high school.

  Clay was ten years old.

  Her hair had grown back, a strange and brighter yellow, but the rest of her was going-and-gone.

  Our parents went out without us knowing.

  It was a small cream building near a shopping mall.

  The smell of doughnuts from the window.

  A cavalry of medical machines, and they were cold and grey but burning, and the cancerous face of the surgeon.

  “Please,” he said, “sit down.”

  He said aggressive at least eight times.

  So ruthless in the delivery.

  * * *

  —

  It was evening when they returned, and we all came out to meet them. We always helped bring shopping in, but that night there was n
othing more. There were pigeons on the power lines. They were coo-less, watching on.

  Michael Dunbar stayed at the car, leaning down, his hands on the warmth of the hood, while Penny stood behind him, her palm against his spine. In the smoothing, darkening light, her hair was like straw, all tied and tidied back.

  As we watched them, none of us asked.

  Maybe they’d had an argument.

  But of course, looking back, death was out there too that night, perched high up with the pigeons, hanging casually from the power lines.

  He was watching them, side to side.

  * * *

  —

  The next night Penny told us, in the kitchen; cracked and sadly broken. Our father in several fragments.

  I remember it all too clearly—how Rory refused to believe it, and how soon he’d gone berserk, saying, “What?” and “What?” and “WHAT?” He was wiry-hard and rusty. His silver eyes were darkening.

  And Penny, so slim and stoic:

  She steadied toward matter-of-fact.

  Her own eyes green and wild.

  Her hair was out and open, and she repeated herself, she said it:

  “Boys, I’m going to die.”

  * * *

  —

  The second time was what did it for Rory, I think:

  He clenched his hands, and opened them.

  There was a sound inside of all of us then—a sound of quiet-loud, a vibration unexplainable—as he tried to beat the cupboards up, he shook them and bucked me off. I could see it, but couldn’t hear.

  Soon he grabbed the person nearest him, who happened to be Clay, and roared right through his shirt; and it was then when Penny came at him, she finished across them both, and Rory couldn’t stop. I could hear it far away now, but in a moment it blew me back—a voice in our house like a street fight. He roared into Clay’s chest, straight through the buttons; he shouted right into his heart. He struck him over and over—till the fire was lit in Clay’s eyes, and his own turned flat and hard.

  * * *

  —

  God, I can still hear it.

  I try so much to keep my distance from that moment.

  Thousands of miles if I can.

  But even now, that depth of scream.

  I see Henry near the toaster, speechless when it counted.

  I see Tommy all numb beside him, looking down at the blurry crumbs.

  I see our father, Michael Dunbar, unfixable, at the sink; then going down for Penny—hands on shaking shoulders.

  And me, I’m in the middle, collecting a fire up all of my own; paralyzed, folded-armed.

  And lastly, of course, I see Clay.

  I see the fourth Dunbar boy—dark-haired and thrown to the floor—his face staring up from below. I see the boys and tangled arms. I see our mother cloaked around them—and the more I think about it, maybe that was the true hurricane in that kitchen, when boys were only that, just boys, and murderers still just men.

  And our mother, Penny Dunbar, with six months left to live.

  On Wednesday morning, Clay ran to town in the dark, got there in the light, and bought a paper from the Silver Corner Shop.

  Halfway back he stopped; he studied the form guide.

  He looked for a certain name.

  In the day, as they talked and worked, wrote and planned, the Murderer was curious about the newspaper, but he didn’t yet dare to ask. He busied himself with other things. There were sheets of sketches and measurements. There were wood costs for the falsework and scaffolding. There were stone plans for the arching—for which Clay said he had some money, but was quickly told he should keep it.

  “Trust me,” said the Murderer, “there are holes out here all over the place. I know where to find the stone.”

  “Like that village,” said Clay, almost absently. “Settignano.”

  Michael Dunbar stopped. “What did you just say?”

  “Settignano.”

  And there, caught in the moment, from absence to realization—of what he’d said, and more importantly, what he’d referred to—Clay had managed to both bring the Murderer closer, and also push him away. He’d erased, in an instant, the previous night’s generosity—of “I like it here, I like being here”—but let it show he knew so much more.

  There, he thought, think that one over.

  But he left it alone at that.

  * * *

  —

  At just past twelve-thirty, the sun was blazing in the riverbed, and Clay said, “Hey, do you mind if I borrow your car keys?”

  The Murderer was streaming sweat.

  What for?

  But he said, “Sure, you know where they are?”

  It was the same just before two, and then once more, at four.

  Clay jogged across to the eucalypts and sat inside at the steering wheel, listening to the radio. The horses that day were Spectacular, then Heat, and Chocolate Cake. The best she placed was fifth.

  After the last race, when he got back to the river, he said, “Thanks—I won’t ever do that again, that was bad discipline,” and Michael Dunbar was amused.

  “You better do some overtime.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m kidding.” But then he found the nerve. “I don’t know what you’re doing over there”—the aqua eyes brightened, momentarily, in the depth inside his cheekbones—“but it’s gotta be pretty important. When boys start walking away from things, it usually means a girl.”

  Clay was appropriately stunned.

  “Oh—and Settignano,” the Murderer went on (given he had him on the ropes), “is where Michelangelo learned about marble, and carved slabs out for his sculptures.”

  Which meant:

  I don’t know when.

  I don’t know how.

  But you found it, you found The Quarryman.

  Did you find the woman, too—Abbey Hanley, Abbey Dunbar? Is that how you got it?

  Yes.

  Penny told you about her, didn’t she?

  Before she died.

  She told you, you found her, and she even gave you the book—and the Murderer looked at Clay, and the boy was sculpted himself now, as if made of blood and stone.

  I’m here, said Michael Dunbar.

  I left you, I know, but I’m here.

  Think that over, Clay.

  And he did.

  In the tide of Dunbar past, three and a half years passed, and Clay lay in bed, awake. He was thirteen years old. He was dark-haired, boyish and skinny, and his heartbeat stung in the stillness. There was fire in each of his eyes.

  In a moment he slid from bed, he was dressed.

  He was in shorts and a T-shirt, barefoot.

  He escaped out to the racing quarter, and he ran the streets and screamed. He did all of it without speaking:

  Dad!

  DAD!

  WHERE ARE YOU, DAD?!

  It was spring, just before first light, and he ran at the bodies of buildings; the rumored placement of houses. The lights of cars would shine at him, twin ghosts, then by, then gone.

  Dad, he called.

  Dad.

  His footsteps slowed, then stopped.

  Where were you, Michael Dunbar?

  * * *

  —

  Earlier that year, it happened:

  Penelope was dead.

  She’d died in March.

  The dying took three years; it was supposed to last six months. She was the ultimate in Jimmy Hartnelling—it could kill her all it wanted, but Penelope wouldn’t die. When finally she’d succumbed, though, the tyranny started immediately.

  From our father we hoped for hope, I think—for courage, and close proximity—like hugging us one by one, or to carry us up from our lowest.

  But nothing l
ike that had come:

  The police-car pair had left us.

  The ambulance swam down the street.

  Michael Dunbar came to all of us; toward us, then out, and away. He got to the lawn, and walked on.

  There were five of us stranded on the porch.

  * * *

  —

  The funeral was one of those bright-lit things.

  The sunny hilltop cemetery.

  Our father read a passage from The Iliad:

  They dragged their ships to the friendly sea.

  He wore the suit he’d worn on his wedding day, and the one he’d wear years later, when he’d return and be faced with Achilles. His aqua eyes were lightless.

  Henry had made a speech.

  He imitated her put-on accent from the kitchen and people laughed, but he had tears in his eyes, and there were at least two hundred kids there, all from Hyperno High, and all in perfect uniform; heavy, and neat, dark green. Boys and girls alike. They talked about the metronome. A few she’d taught to read. The toughest took it hardest, I think. “Bye Miss, bye Miss, bye Miss.” Some of them touched the box as they walked and passed in the light.

  The ceremony was outside.

  They would take her back in to burn her.

  The coffin-slide into the fire.

  It was sort of like the piano, really, but the instrument’s homely cousin. You could dress it up all you wanted; it was still just a piece of hardwood, with daisies thrown on top. She’d chosen not to be scattered, or kept like sand in an urn. But we paid for a small memorial—a stone for us to stand and remember by, to watch her above the city.

  From the service we carried her away.

  On one side was Henry, Clay and me. On the other, Michael, Tommy and Rory—same as our Archer Street football teams—and the woman inside was weightless. The coffin weighed a ton.

  She was a feather wrapped up in a chopping block.