Bridge of Clay

by Markus Zusak

  From within.”

  Or as the actor Ian Charleson delivered it, with the amazing Scottish accent:

  From wethun.

  * * *

  —

  As time went by, we wondered.

  Should we place an ad in the RQT, for a lost but annoying tabby?

  No—we would never do anything so logical.

  Instead there was Clay and me.

  We’d look at what remained in that classifieds section, which culminated, always, in the mule. When we ran he’d be steering us over there, and I’d stop and call to him, “NO!”

  He’d look at me, disappointedly.

  He’d shrug, he’d go, come on.

  To ward him off, I softened when something else arrived, in an ad that was placed by the pound:

  A female, three-year-old border collie.

  I drove there myself and picked her up, and came home to the shock of my life—for there, right in front of me, on the porch, they were all out laughing and celebrating, and between them, the Goddamn cat. The bastard had come back!

  I got out of the car.

  I watched the beaten-up, collarless tabby.

  He looked at me; he knew all along.

  He was a cat with particular schadenfreude.

  For a moment I expected a salute.

  “I s’pose I’ll just take the dog back,” I said, and Rory threw Hector sideways; he went flying a good five meters—and there was high-pitched, bloodcurdled meowing. (I bet he was glad to be home.) Then Rory came stalking over.

  “You got the little bastard a dog now?” But he was also partly congratulatory.

  And Tommy?

  Well, Tommy picked up Hector, and shielded him from the rest of us, and came over and opened the car. He hugged the cat and the dog simultaneously, and said, “God, I can’t believe it.” He looked over at Clay and asked; it’s so strange how he knew what to do:

  “Achilles?”

  Again, a shake of the head.

  I said, “This one’s actually a girl.”

  “Okay then, I’m calling her Rosy.”

  “You know that isn’t—”

  “I know, I know, it’s the sky,” and we were back for a moment together:

  His head in her lap in the lounge.

  * * *

  —

  Mid-December, a Sunday, early morning, we drove to a beach in the south, in the depths of the national park. Its official name was Prospector, but the locals called it Anzacs.

  I remember the car and the drive there:

  That sick and unslept feeling.

  The outline of trees in the dark.

  Already the traditional smell inside, of carpeting, woodwork and varnish.

  I remember how we ran the sand dunes, and they were cool in the sunrise, but punishing; by the top we were both on our knees.

  At one point, Clay beat me to the peak, and he didn’t just lie there, or capsize, which was more than appealing, believe me. No, instead, he turned and reached for me, and the backdrop of shore and ocean; his hand came down, and he pulled me up, and we lay at the top with the suffering.

  When he talked to me about that later—when he spoke and told me of everything—he’d said, “It was one of our greatest moments, I think. Both you and the sea were burning.”

  * * *

  —

  By that point, Hector wasn’t just back.

  It was clear he’d never leave us, ever.

  There seemed to be fourteen different versions of that bloody cat, because wherever you went, he appeared. If you walked toward the toaster, he was sitting just left or right of it, amongst the surrounding crumbs. If you went to sit on the couch, he was purring on top of the remote. Even once, I went to the toilet, and he watched from up on the cistern.

  Then Rosy was running the clothesline, rounding its stenciled shadows up. We could walk that dog for miles on end: black legs, white paws, and flecks of eyes and gold. But still she’d come back and run. Only now do I see the significance. She was likely corralling memory—or at the very least, the scent of it—or worse, the restless spirits.

  In that sense, there was always something stirring by then, at the house at 18 Archer Street. To me it was death and goneness, and a compulsory sense of mischief. It would lead to the madness of Christmas, and specifically Christmas Eve—when they brought home the bird and the fish.

  Me, I arrived from work.

  Henry was beaming, delirious.

  I said my maiden “Je-sus Christ!”

  Apparently, they’d gone to the pet shop, to buy the goldfish to add to the list—but Tommy loved the resident pigeon. It had hopped down onto his finger as he listened to the story—how a mob of hoodlum mynah birds had been picking on him over on Chatham Street, so the pet shop owner went in.

  “Did you think he might have deserved it?” said Rory, but Tommy was following instinct. He was over, examining the fish. The pigeon clung sideways to his arm.

  “Here,” he told them, “this one.”

  The goldfish had scales like plumage.

  He had a tail like a golden rake.

  Which left only bringing them home, and me standing in the doorway; and where could I turn but to blasphemy, while Tommy provided the names.

  By then he’d made sense of everything:

  They were neither of them close to an Achilles.

  “The goldfish is Agamemnon,” he informed me, “and the pigeon, I’m calling Telemachus.”

  The king of men, and the boy from Ithaca:

  The son of Penelope and Odysseus.

  The sky was hit by sunset, and Rory was looking at Henry.

  “I’m gonna kill that little shit.”

  After the spectacular failure of seventh placing in Group One company, Cootamundra was spelled for summer. On return he was ridden by Carey—four times, for three wins and a third.

  And now she was becoming sought-after.

  * * *

  —

  For Clay, there was radio and riverbed, city and Surrounds.

  There was the silence of the Amahnu, and the stories he’d heard in the kitchen—for they’d stayed up the entire night that night, when he’d asked about the Slaves and David; they drank coffee. Michael told him of finding the calendar. Emil Zátopek. Einstein. All the rest of them. There was a girl who once broke a boy’s spaceship, and sat down the front in English; she had hair down to her waist.

  He didn’t do details like Penelope did—he wasn’t dying, so wouldn’t go as far—but the effort was true, and truthful. He said, “I don’t know why I never told you these things.”

  “You would have,” said Clay, “if you’d stayed.”

  But he wasn’t intending to puncture him; he’d meant they were stories for when he was older.

  And you’re telling them to me now.

  He was sure he’d understood.

  It was dawn when they talked of the David, and the Slaves imprisoned in the marble. “Those twisted, struggling bodies,” said Michael, “fighting from out of the stone.” He said he hadn’t thought of them for decades, but they were somehow always there. “I’d die to find greatness, like the David someday—even for just a moment.” He watched the boy’s eyes, in front of him. “But I know—I know…”

  Clay answered.

  It hit them both hard, but he had to.

  “We live the lives of the Slaves.”

  The bridge was all they had.

  * * *

  —

  There was the week in mid-January, when it rained up in the mountains, and the Amahnu started to flow. They saw the great sky coming. They stood out on the scaffold, and the heavy wooden falsework, with the splinters of rain around them.

  “It could all be washed away.”

  Clay was quiet
but certain. “It won’t be.”

  He was right.

  The water rose only to shin-height.

  It was the river in sort-of-training.

  Warming up the Amahnu way.

  * * *

  —

  In the city, through March, there was the buildup to the autumn carnival, and this time the Group One was hers.

  Cootamundra.

  Race Eight on Easter Monday, at Royal Hennessey.

  The race was the Jim Pike Plate.

  * * *

  —

  Of course, Clay came home that long weekend, but had done something else, a while earlier:

  He’d walked up Poseidon Road, to a key-cutting, shoe-fix, engraving place. It was an old man inside, with a snow-white beard, like Santa Claus wearing overalls. When he looked at the Zippo, he said, “Oh, I remember this.” He shook his head. “Yeah, that’s it—Matador in the fifth. A girl…Strange thing to write on a lighter,” and the headshake turned to a nod. “Real likeable, though.” He gave Clay pen and paper. “Write it clearly. Where do you want it?”

  “There are two.”

  “Here, give us a look.” He snatched the translucent paper. “Ha!” He’d returned from nod to vigorous headshake. “You kids are bloody mad. You know about Kingston Town?”

  Did they know about Kingston Town.

  “Maybe,” said Clay, “put Carey Novac in the eighth under the first one, and the other on the other side.”

  Santa Claus smiled, then laughed. “Good choice.” But it wasn’t a ho-ho-ho; more of a heh-heh-heh. “Kingston Town can’t win, ay? What’s that s’posed to mean?”

  “She’ll know,” said Clay.

  “Well, that’s the most important thing.”

  The old man got to engraving.

  * * *

  —

  As he left the shop, the thought struck him.

  Since leaving home that first time, for the river, he’d thought the money—the roll of it from Henry—would be only for building the bridge. But it was always meant for this. He’d used all of twenty-two dollars.

  At 18 Archer Street, he put the remainder of the big thick roll onto the bed lying opposite his.

  “Thanks, Henry,” he whispered, “you keep the rest,” and he thought of Bernborough Park then—back to boys and never quite men—and turned and left for Silver.

  * * *

  —

  Early on Easter Saturday, two days before the race, he got up and sat in the dark; he looked for the Amahnu. He sat on the edge of his bed, and the box was in his hands. He took everything out but the lighter, then included a folded-up letter.

  He’d written it the previous night.

  * * *

  —

  In the evening that Saturday, they lay there and she told him.

  The same instructions.

  Go out hard.

  Let him run.

  Then pray and take him home.

  She was nervous, but they were good nerves.

  Near the end, she said, “Are you coming?”

  He smiled at the bulging stars.

  “Of course.”

  “Your brothers?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do they know about this?” she said, and she was talking about The Surrounds. “And us?”

  She’d never asked about that before, and Clay was pretty certain. “No—they just know we’ve always been close.”

  The girl nodded.

  “And, hey, I have to tell you…” He paused. “There’s also something else—” and now he stopped completely.

  “What?”

  He retreated, still as he was. “No. Nothing.”

  It was too late, though, because now she was up on an elbow. “Come on, Clay, what is it?” She reached across and poked him.

  “Ow!”

  “Tell me.” She was poised for another strike, right between the ribs; and there was once when this happened before, in waters still to come, when things had turned out badly.

  But this was the beauty of Carey, the real beauty; because forget the auburn hair, and the sea glass—she would take the risk a second time. She would gamble and do it for him.

  “Tell me or I’ll hit you again,” she said. “I’ll tickle you half to death.”

  “Okay! Okay…”

  He said it.

  He told her that he loved her:

  “You’ve got fifteen freckles on your face, but you have to look hard to find them…and there’s a sixteenth one down here.” He touched that piece of her neck. When he attempted to take his hand away, she reached up and trapped his fingers. The answer was how she looked at him.

  “No,” she said, “don’t move it.”

  * * *

  —

  Later, much later, it was Clay who got up first.

  It was Clay who rolled over and took something, and placed it against her, on the mattress.

  He’d wrapped it in the racing section.

  The lighter was in the box.

  A gift within a gift.

  And a letter.

  TO BE OPENED ON MONDAY NIGHT.

  * * *

  —

  On Easter Monday she was on the back page of the paper: the auburn-haired girl, the broomstick trainer, and the horse, deep brown, between them.

  The headline said MASTER’S APPRENTICE.

  On the radio, they played an interview with McAndrew, from earlier in the week, in which they queried the choice of jockey. Any professional in the country would have ridden that horse, given the chance, to which McAndrew said simply and stiffly, “I’m sticking with my apprentice.”

  “Yes, she’s a prospect, but—”

  “I’m not in the business of answering that kind of question.” The voice, pure dryness. “We swapped her last spring in the Sunline-Northerly, and look what happened there. She knows the horse and that’s it.”

  * * *

  —

  Monday afternoon.

  The race was at four-fifty and we got there for three, and I paid the admission. When we pooled our money near the bookies, Henry took the roll out. He gave Clay a certain wink. “Don’t worry, boys, I’ve got this.”

  When it was done, we made our way over, and up, past the members, to the muck. Both stands were close to packed. We found seats in the very top row.

  By four the sun was dropping, but still white.

  By four-thirty, with Carey stock-still in the mounting yard, it was starting to yellow, behind us.

  In the color and noise and movement, McAndrew was in his suit. He said not a single word to her, just a hand down onto her shoulder. Petey Simms, his best groom, was there, too, but McAndrew lifted her upwards, to the breadth of Cootamundra.

  She trotted him lightly away.

  * * *

  —

  At the jump, the crowd all stood.

  Clay’s heart was out of its gate.

  The deep-brown horse, and rider on top, went straight out to the front. The colors, red-green-white. “As expected,” the course caller informed them, “but this is no ordinary field, let’s see what Cootamundra’s got for us….Let’s see what the young apprentice has—Red Centre three lengths second.”

  In the grandstand shade we watched.

  The horses ran in the light.

  “Jesus,” said the man standing next to me. “Five lengths bloody ahead.”

  “Come on, Coota, you big brown bastard!”

  That, I think, was Rory.

  At the turn, they all closed in.

  In the straight, she asked him for more.

  Two horses—Red Centre and Diamond Game—climbed forward, and the crowd called all of them home. Even me. Even Tommy. The shouts of Henry and Rory. We roared for Cootamundra.


  And Clay.

  Clay was in the middle of us, he was standing on his seat.

  He didn’t move.

  He didn’t make a sound.

  Hands-and-heels and she brought him home.

  Two lengths and girl and sea glass.

  Carey Novac in the eighth.

  * * *

  —

  It had been a long time since he’d sat on the roof, but he did that Monday night; he was camouflaged amongst the tiles.

  But Carey Novac saw him.

  When she’d pulled up with Catherine and Trackwork Ted, she’d stood on the porch, alone. She held her hand up, fleetingly.

  We won, we won.

  Then, in.

  Dear Carey,

  If you’ve done the right thing (and I know you have), you’re reading this when you get home, and Cootamundra has won. You took it away from them in the first furlong. I know you like that style of racing. You always liked the great front-runners. You said they were the bravest ones.

  See? I remember everything.

  I remember what you said when you first saw me:

  There’s a boy up there on that roof.

  I eat toast sometimes just to write your name in the crumbs.

  I remember everything you’ve told me, about the town you grew up in, and your mum and dad, your brothers—everything. I remember how you said, “And? You don’t want to know my name?” It was the first time we spoke on Archer Street.

  There are so many times I wish Penny Dunbar was still around, just so you could talk to her, and she’d have told you a few of her stories. You’d have been in our kitchen for hours….She’d have tried to teach you the piano.

  Anyway—I want you to keep the lighter.

  I never really had many friends.

  I have my brothers and you and that’s all.

  But okay, I’ll stop talking now, except to say that if Cootamundra didn’t win by some chance, I know there’ll be other days. My brothers and I, we’ll have put some money on, but we didn’t bet on the horse.