Bridge of Clay

by Markus Zusak

  And so on.

  After ten minutes, I went in, to separate them, and there was blond and rusty argument. Their hair was pointing outwards—north and south, east and west—and Tommy, so small, in the doorway.

  “Can we go to the museum or what?”

  It was Henry who’d heard and answered, but spoke across to Rory.

  “Sure,” he said, “but wait a minute, okay? Just give us a sec to beat Matthew up,” and like that, they were both of them friends again.

  They buried me fast and furiously.

  My face in the taste of socks.

  * * *

  —

  On the streets, it was almost business.

  Clay ran.

  I struggled to stay with him.

  Him and his burning left pocket.

  “Up, up.”

  That’s all the talk was reduced to by then, if he ever said anything at all.

  At Bernborough, always the same.

  Eight 400 sprints.

  Thirty seconds of rest.

  We ran to the point of collapse.

  * * *

  —

  At the museum, we all went in, and we complained about the cost of things, but it was worth it, every cent; it was worth it just to see the kid, as he met the thylacine’s eye. The other thing, too, was that he’d been right, it was true, it did look more like a dog, with a peculiar oval stomach; we loved the Tasmanian tiger.

  But Tommy loved all of everything:

  Above us, the blue whale skeleton, sprawled out like a laid-down office block. The nimble neck of the dingo again, and the parade of various penguins. He even loved the most frightening of it, especially the red-bellied black snake, and the shine and grace of the taipan.

  For me, though, there was an eeriness; a confederate for all the taxidermy—something dead and unwilling to leave. Or to be fair, unwilling in me:

  Of course, the thought of Penelope.

  I imagined her here with Tommy.

  I saw her crouching slowly down, and so, I think, did Clay.

  Sometimes I’d see him watching, but it was often just left of the specimen—especially when shown behind glass. I’m sure he’d caught her reflection then, of blond and stick-thinned, smiling.

  We leaned outside at closing.

  All of us tired but Tommy.

  The city fast-moving around us.

  * * *

  —

  On one of our runs, it happened.

  It came to us, early morning.

  The worlds infused together.

  We really should have thought of it sooner.

  We were running at first light, on Darriwell Road, a few kilometers from home. Clay saw it strapped to a telegraph pole, and propped, and mindfully backtracked. He stared at the wrapped-round advertisement:

  A cat had just had kittens.

  Why take Tommy to dead animals, when live ones could come to him?

  I memorized the first half of the phone number, and Clay the second, but when we called, we were loudly told. The notice was three months old; the last kitten was sold six weeks ago. But the woman who’d answered knew exactly where to go. Her voice was like a man’s voice, both close and not-for-nonsense. “There are dozens of internet animal sites, but your best bet’s the RQT.”

  She meant the Racing Quarter Tribune, and she was pinpoint, she was astute; the first time we looked in that paper—our local suburban news—there was a collie for sale, and a kelpie, and a pair of cockatiels. A guinea pig, a king parrot, and three cats of different breeds.

  At the bottom, though, he was waiting, and he’d be there a little while yet. Already I should have known, from the fire inside Clay’s eyes; they were each both suddenly smiling, as his finger pointed downwards:

  ONE STUBBORN BUT FRENDLY MULE

  NEVER BUCKS, NEVER BRAYS

  ***

  $200 (negotiable)

  YOU WON’T BE SORRY

  Call Malcolm

  I said, “Don’t show Tommy, whatever you do,” but Clay wasn’t close to caring. He’d gently thrown a finger again, at the mistake on the very first line.

  “Stubborn,” he said, “but frendly.”

  * * *

  —

  We settled for one of the cats—a family moving overseas. Too expensive to carry the tabby. They told us his name was Stripey, but we knew for a fact we would change it. He was a big and purring heap of a thing—black lips and tarmac paws—and a tail like a shaggy sword.

  We drove to the place in Wetherill, two suburbs west, and the cat came home in Clay’s lap; he never moved an inch, he just purred with the engine, in tune. He happy-pawed him with his claws.

  God, you should have seen Tommy.

  I wish you could have seen him.

  At home, we hit the porch.

  “Hey, Tommy!” I called, and he came, and his eyes were young and permanent. He nearly cried when he brought the cat close, the stripes against his chest. He patted him, he stroked him, he spoke to him without speaking.

  When Rory and Henry both came out, they were both of them gorgeously right; they complained with jinx-like timing.

  “Hey—how come Tommy gets a bloody cat?”

  Clay looked away. I answered.

  “Because we like him.”

  “And you don’t like us?”

  Soon we heard Tommy’s announcement, and Clay’s instantly blunt response:

  “I’m gonna call him Achilles.”

  Abruptly, “No, not this one.”

  Immediately, I looked at him.

  I was stubborn and certainly unfrendly:

  No, Clay, Goddamn it, I said, if only with my eyes—but who did I think I was kidding? After all, Tommy held the cat like a newborn.

  “Okay then,” he said, “Agamemnon,” and now it was Rory who stopped him.

  “How about a name we can fucking pronounce?”

  And still he paid homage to Penelope.

  “What about Hector then?”

  The champion of all the Trojans.

  There were nods and murmured approvals.

  * * *

  —

  Next morning, out in the racing quarter, there were turns I’d never known of, and we came to Epsom Road. Not far from the Lonhro Tunnel. The train line rattled above. It was one of those forgotten streets here, with a single forgotten field. The fences were mostly wayward. The trees were molting stringy barks; they towered and stood their ground.

  At the bottom was the patch of land; and grass, like fists, in the dust. There was a barbed wire fence, corroded. A shack had faded to greyness. And a caravan, old and weary; a drunk at three a.m.

  I remember the sound of his footsteps then, how they slowed on the potholed road. Clay never slowed down at this point of a run; it was up and only up—and soon I understood. Once I’d seen the caravan, and the unkempt segment of land, I saw that logic didn’t live here, but mules most definitely did. I walked and spoke with disgust.

  “You called the number from the Tribune, didn’t you?”

  Clay walked purposefully on.

  His breath was so quick to normalize, from running to everyday life.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  And then we saw the sign.

  Looking back, there was something right about it.

  I can see it and say that now.

  At the time, though, I was suspicious—highly annoyed, as we walked to the fence line—and the sign had once been white. Musty and dirty, it hung diagonally, from the middle of the highest wire—probably the greatest sign in the racing quarter, if not racing quarters worldwide.

  In faded thick black marker pen, it said:

  ENYONE CAUGHT

  FEEDING THESE HORSESr />
  WILL BE PROSECUTED!

  “God,” I said, “look at that.”

  How could a person spell anyone wrong and get prosecuted right? But that, I guess, was the racing quarter. That, and there weren’t any horses there, and for a while, it seemed, nothing else—

  But then he came rounding the shack.

  Quite suddenly there was a mule’s head, and the expression that often defined him:

  He watched, he gleaned.

  He communicated.

  Like a supreme-yet-derelict being.

  Already he had that what-the-hell-you-lookin’-at look on his long, lopsided face—till he’d watched a moment longer, and seemed to say, Oh, okay then.

  In the pieces of dappled sunrise, he slowly gangled over.

  Up close he was almost charming; he was talkative, though mute, and personable. His head was a texture, a scrubbing brush—and he ranged in careless colors, from sandy to rust throughout; his body, a dug-up farmland. His hooves were the shade of charcoal—and what were we supposed to do? How do you talk to a mule?

  But Clay would take him on.

  He looked in the eyes of the animal, which seemed so much like calves’ eyes, like babies sent for the slaughterhouse, pure sadness but so alive. He went to his pocket and reached for it; and it wasn’t the bright yellow peg.

  No, it was Clay Dunbar at his best:

  A hand, a sandful of sugar.

  It was raw and sweet in his palm—and the mule was eternally blessed—and to hell with the sign and its spelling; his nostrils began to spin. His eyes were undone as he grinned at him:

  I knew you’d one day come.

  You had to give it to the older Michael Dunbar.

  This time he got it right:

  The photo was a work of art.

  When Clay came back to Silver, he stood in the kitchen near the oven.

  “So you gave it to her?”

  His sunken eyes were hopeful.

  His hands looked vague; distracted.

  Clay nodded.

  “She loved it.”

  “So do I; I’ve got another one I took earlier,” and reading Clay’s thoughts, he said, “It’s pretty easy to sneak up on you out there—you’re lost in another world.”

  And Clay, the right response; and something else, first time since coming.

  “It helps me to forget,” he said, and he looked from the floor to face him. “But I’m not sure I really want to.” By the sink was a certain Mistake Maker; the blond-haired Penny Dunbar. “Hey—Dad?” It was such a shock, to both of them, and then came a second, a follow-up. “You know…I really miss her. I miss her so much, Dad, I miss her so much,” and it was then, a few footsteps, the world altered:

  He went over and brought the boy closer.

  He grabbed his neck in his arm and hugged him.

  Our dad became his father.

  * * *

  —

  But then they went back to the bridge.

  Like nothing had ever happened.

  They worked the scaffold and prayed for arches, or better, arches that lasted forever.

  It’s funny, though, really, when you think of it, the air between fathers and sons—and especially this one and this one. There are hundreds of thoughts per every word spoken, and that’s if they’re spoken at all. Clay felt it especially hard that day, and in the days that stacked up after it. Again, there was so much to tell him. There were nights he’d come out to talk, then retreat, heart beating, to the bedroom. He remembered so vividly the boy he’d been, who’d ask for the stories from Featherton. He’d been piggybacked, back then, into bed.

  He’d practice at the barren old desk; the box and his books beside him. The feather of T in his hand.

  “Dad?”

  How many times could he rehearse?

  Once, he almost arrived, in the heavier light of the kitchen, but again, he returned to the hallway. The next time he actually made it, The Quarryman tight in his grip—and Michael Dunbar caught him:

  “Come in, Clay, what have you got there?”

  And Clay stood snared in the light.

  He brought the book up from his side.

  He said, “Just.”

  “Just,” then held up higher. The book, so white and weathered, with its creased and crippled spine. He held Italy out before him, and the frescoes on the ceiling, and all those broken noses—one for each time she’d read it.

  * * *

  —

  “Clay?”

  Michael in jeans and a T-shirt; his hands were weathered concrete. They might have had similar eyes, but then, for Clay, all the constant burning.

  He’d had a concrete stomach once, too.

  Do you remember?

  You had wavy hair; you still do, but more grey in it now as well—because you died and got a bit older, and—

  “Clay?”

  He finally did it.

  Blood flowed through the stone.

  The book, in hand, held out to him:

  “Can you tell me about the Slaves and David?”

  In many ways, you could argue the cat was our biggest mistake; he had a string of disgraceful habits:

  He drooled almost uncontrollably.

  He had a nasty stench of breath.

  He had a God-awful shedding problem, dandruff, and a tendency to throw his food overboard when he ate.

  He vomited.

  (“Look at this!” shouted Henry one morning. “Right next to my shoes!”

  “Just be grateful it wasn’t in ’em.”

  “Shut up, Rory….Tommy! Come clean this shit up!”)

  He meowed all hours of the night—such pathetic and high-pitched meowing! And then all the ball-tearing happy-pawing, on anyone’s lap he could find. Sometimes, when we watched TV, he’d move from boy to boy, sleeping and purring the house down. It was Rory who despised him most, though, and summed up all of us best:

  “If that cat starts slicing up my balls again, Tommy, I’m gonna kill the bastard, I swear it—and trust me, you’ll be next.”

  But Tommy was looking much happier; and Henry had taught him to reply:

  “He’s only trying to find ’em, Rory,” and even Rory couldn’t resist—he laughed—and actually gave the big tabby a pat there, as he clawed through the shorts on his lap. There was the fish and the bird and Achilles to come, but next in line was the dog. It was Hector who paved the way home.

  * * *

  —

  By then we’d hit December, and there was a single, immutable fact:

  Clay was a 400 specialist.

  He took the distance apart.

  There was no one at Chisholm who could go with him, but challengers would soon be coming. The new year would bring Zone and Regionals, and if good enough, he’d make it to State. I looked for new ways of training him, and harked back to old motivations. I started, where he had, the library:

  I looked at books and articles.

  I scoured the DVDs.

  All I could find on athletics, till a woman was standing behind me.

  “Hello?” she said. “Young man? It’s nine o’clock. It’s time to close.”

  * * *

  —

  In the lead-up to Christmas, he did it.

  Hector went out and went missing.

  All of us took to searching, and it was something like looking for Clay, except Clay, this time, was with us. We all went out in the mornings, and the others went out after school; I joined them when I came home. We even drove back to Wetherill, but the cat had up and vanished. Even jokes were falling flat.

  “Hey, Rory,” Henry said, as we wandered the streets. “At least your balls have had a chance to recover.”

  “I know, good bloody riddance.”

  Tommy was out
on the outskirts of us, and mad and sad as hell. As they spoke he’d come running over, and tried tackling them down to the ground.

  “You bastards!” He spat the hurt out. He flailed and punched away. He swung his boyish arms. “You bastards, you fucking pricks!”

  At first they just made light of it, in the darkened street around us.

  “Shit! I didn’t know Tommy could swear so well!”

  “I know—that’s pretty good work!”

  But then they felt the eyes of him, and the pain in his ten-year-old soul. Much as Clay had broken that night, in the future, in the kitchen, in Silver, Tommy was breaking now. As he fell to the road on hands and knees, it was Henry who bent and reached for him; then Rory who held his shoulders.

  “We’ll find him, Tommy, we’ll find him.”

  “I miss them,” he said.

  We all fell on him.

  We walked home that night in silence.

  * * *

  —

  When the others all went to bed, Clay and I watched the movies I’d borrowed, we read the small crowd of books. We watched films about the Olympics, and endless documentaries. Anything to do with running.

  My favorite was Gallipoli, recommended by the librarian. World War I and athletics. I loved Archy Hamilton’s uncle—the tough-faced, stopwatched trainer.

  “What are your legs?” he’d say to Archy.

  Archy would say, “Steel springs.”

  We watched it many times over.

  For Clay it was Chariots of Fire.

  1924.

  Eric Liddell, Harold Abrahams.

  He loved two particular things:

  The first was when Abrahams first saw Liddell run, and said, “Liddell? I’ve never seen such drive, such commitment in a runner….He runs like a wild animal.”

  Then his favorite Eric Liddell:

  “So where does the power come from, to see the race to its end?