Bridge of Clay

by Markus Zusak

  Love,

  Clay

  And sometimes, you know, I imagine it.

  I like to think she hugged her parents for the last time that night, and that Catherine Novac was happy, and that her father couldn’t have been prouder. I see her in her room; her flannel shirt, jeans, and forearms. I see her holding the lighter, and reading the letter, and thinking Clay was something else.

  How many times did she read it? I wonder.

  I don’t know.

  We’ll never know.

  No, all I know is that she left the house that night and the Saturday rule was broken:

  Saturday night at The Surrounds.

  Not Monday.

  Never Monday.

  And Clay?

  Clay should have gone back.

  He should have been on a train that night—back to Silver, to the Amahnu, on his way to finish a bridge, to shake our father’s hand—but he, too, was at The Surrounds, and she came with a rustle of feet.

  And us?

  We can’t do anything.

  One of us writes, and one of us reads.

  We can’t do anything but me tell it, and you see it.

  We hit it, like this, for the now.

  As we watch them both walk toward it—The Surrounds, the very last time—the past tucks close inside me. So much of that time would lead them there: to each approaching footsteps.

  There was Zone and then the Regionals.

  Anniversary and State.

  There was Tommy’s quadruple animals.

  As New Year passed into February, there was Clay and the nuisance of injury (a boy with broken-glass feet), and the promise, or more like a warning:

  “I win State and we’ll go and get him, okay?”

  He was referring, of course, to Achilles.

  * * *

  —

  I could go in all sorts of orders here, in many kinds of ways, but it just feels right to start there, and thread the rest toward it:

  How it was on the anniversary.

  A year since Penelope’s death.

  In the morning that day in March, all of us woke up early. No work that day, and no school, and by seven we’d been to the cemetery; we’d climbed up over the graves. We put daisies down in front of her, and Tommy looked out for our dad. I told him he should forget it.

  By eight we started cleaning; the house was filthy, we had to be ruthless. We threw out clothes and sheets. We stamped out knickknacks and other crap, but preserved her books and bookshelves. The books, we knew, were sacred.

  There was a moment when all of us stopped, though, and sat on the bed, on the edges. I was holding The Odyssey and The Iliad.

  “Go on,” said Henry, “read some.”

  The Odyssey, book twelve:

  “From the flowing waters of the River of Ocean my ship hit the open sea…where ever-fresh Dawn has her dancing lawns, and the sun would soon be rising….”

  Even Rory was silent, and stayed.

  The words plowed on and the pages turned; and us, in the house, and drifting.

  That bedroom went floating down Archer Street.

  * * *

  —

  In the meantime, Clay stopped competing barefoot, but hadn’t been wearing shoes.

  In the training, we’d kept it simple.

  We ran the early mornings.

  400s down at Bernborough.

  In the evenings, we watched the movies.

  The beginning and end of Gallipoli—Jesus, what an ending!

  The entire Chariots of Fire.

  Rory and Henry claimed that both were boring as bat shit, but they always came around; I caught their captured faces.

  On the Thursday before Zone there was a problem, just two days out from racing, because kids had got drunk at Bernborough; there was glass all over the track. Clay hadn’t even seen it, and he didn’t notice the blood. Later, it took us hours to pick the pieces out. In the process I remembered what I had to—a moment from a documentary (and one that we still had at home):

  Olympic Highs and Lows.

  Again, all of us were in the lounge room, and I pulled out the old footage, of the amazing but tragic race, in Los Angeles. You might know the one I mean. Those women. The 3,000 meters.

  As it is, the athlete who won the event (the awesomely upright Romanian, Maricica Puică) wasn’t as famous for that race, but two of the others were: Mary Decker and Zola Budd. We all stared on in the darkness—and Clay, especially, in horror—as the so-called controversial Budd was accused of deliberately tripping Decker in the jostle, on the straight of the Olympic stadium. (Of course she did no such thing.)

  But also, and most importantly:

  Clay saw.

  He saw what I hoped he would see.

  He said, “Pause it—quick,” and looked closer, at the legs of Zola Budd’s running. “Is that…tape there, under her feet?”

  * * *

  —

  The scars were healing nicely by anniversary day, but since we’d started taping his feet up, it was something he’d loved and maintained. As I finished up the reading, in Penny and Michael’s bedroom, he was rubbing them, in and away. The soles were calloused but cared-for.

  At last, our parents’ clothing was gone; there was only one garment we kept. I walked it through the hallway; we found its rightful resting place.

  “Here,” I said to Rory, who opened the lid to the strings.

  “Hey, look!” said Henry to all of us. “A packet of cigarettes!”

  And first I laid the two books down, and then the blue woolen dress. They belonged for now to the piano.

  “Quick,” said Rory, “shove Hector in!” but even he couldn’t summon the strength. He placed a hand down gently, on the pocket and button within; she’d never had the heart to mend it.

  * * *

  —

  In the lead-up—in January and February that year—I realize there were hardships. But there were good times, there were great times, like Tommy and each of his pets.

  We loved Agamemnon’s antics, the so-called king of men; and sometimes we sat and watched him, headbutting the glass of his tank.

  “One…two…three,” we’d count, and by forty only Rory was left.

  “Don’t you have anything better to do?” I’d ask.

  “No,” he’d say, “I don’t.”

  He was still on the road to expulsion, but I gave it a shot, nonetheless. “Homework?”

  “We all know homework’s useless, Matthew.” He marveled at the goldfish’s toughness. “This fish is the bloody best.”

  Of course, Hector went on being Hector, purring and ball-tearing through summer, and watching bathroom-work from the cistern.

  “Oi, Tommy!” I’d often call to him. “I’m trying to have a shower!”

  The cat sat like an apparition, in the steam room haze around him. He’d stare and somehow smirk at me:

  And I’m tryin’ to get a schwitz!

  He’d lick those tarmac paws of his, he’d smack his tire-black lips.

  Telemachus (whom we’d already reduced to T) marched inside and out of his cage. Only once did the Trojan strike at him, and Tommy had told him no, and Hector went back to sleep. He likely dreamed of the steam.

  Then Rosy, and Rosy still ran, but when Henry brought her a beanbag, which he’d found in a council cleanup (he always had his eye out), we loved how she’d cast it around. In the moments when she actually did lie down, she preferred the open sunshine; she would pick it up and drag it along, following the path of the light. Then she’d dig to make herself comfortable, which could only have one result:

  “Hey, Tommy! Tommy! Come have a look at this!”

  The backyard was covered in snowfall, from the beanbag’s Styrofoam balls. The most humid d
ay of the summer so far—and Rory looked over at Henry.

  “I swear you’re a Goddamn genius.”

  “What?”

  “Are you kidding me? Bringing that bloody beanbag home.”

  “I didn’t know the dog would destroy it—that’s Tommy’s fault—and anyway…” He disappeared and came back with the vacuum.

  “Oi, you can’t use the vacuum for this!”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know—you’ll wreck it.”

  “You’re worried about the vacuum, Rory?” This time it was me. “You wouldn’t even know where to switch the bloody thing on.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shut up, Henry.”

  “Or how to use it.”

  “Shut up, Matthew.”

  All of us stood and watched, though, as Henry finished the job. Rosy leapt forward and sideways, barking and carrying on, and Mrs. Chilman, grinning, at the fence. She stood on her toes on a paint tin.

  “You Dunbar boys,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  One of the best parts of the anniversary was the great bedroom swap, which we did after moving her books, and the dress inside the piano.

  First we dismantled the bunk beds.

  They could each be made into singles, and although I wasn’t overly keen, it was me who moved to the main bedroom (no one else wanted anything to do with it), but I took my old bed there with me. No way would I sleep on theirs. Before any of that was dealt with, though, we decided it was time for a change—for Henry and Rory to disband.

  Henry: “Finally! I’ve been waiting for this my whole life!”

  Rory: “You’ve been waiting, bloody hell, good riddance! Pack up your shit and leave.”

  “Pack my shit up? What are you on about?” He gave him a generous shove. “I’m not going!”

  “Well I’m not going!”

  “Oh, just shut up,” I said. “I wish I could get rid of the pair of you, but I can’t, so here’s what we’ll do—I’ll toss this coin. Twice. The first one’s for who moves out.”

  “Yeah, but he’s got more—”

  “Not interested. Winner stays, loser moves. Rory, you call.”

  The coin went up, it hit the bedroom ceiling.

  “Heads.”

  It bounced over the carpet; it landed on a sock.

  Tails.

  “Shit!”

  “Ha ha, bad luck, buddy boy!”

  “It hit the ceiling, it doesn’t count!”

  I turned now to Henry.

  Rory persisted. “It hit the fucking ceiling!”

  “Rory,” I said, “shut up. Now, Henry—I’m throwing again. Heads you get Tommy, tails you get Clay.”

  It was tails again, and the first thing Henry said when Clay moved in was “Here, get a look at this.” He threw him the old Playboy—Miss January—and Rory made friends with Tommy:

  “Get the cat off my Goddamn bed, shithead.”

  Your bed?

  Typical Hector.

  * * *

  —

  Again, in the lead-up, mid-February, when he hit the Regional Championships, at E. S. Marks—where the grandstand was a concrete gargantuan—we had the tape network down to an art. We’d made it a kind of ritual; it was our version of what are your legs, or the power that came from within.

  First, I’d crouch below him.

  Slowly I’d roll out the strapping tape.

  A line straight down the middle.

  A cross before his toes.

  It started like a crucifix, but the result was something different, like a long-lost letter of the alphabet; a few edges would curl to the top.

  When the 400 was called, I walked with him near the marshal zone, and the day was muggy and motionless. As he left he thought of Abrahams, and the bible-man, Eric Liddell. He thought of a skinny, diminutive South African, whose taped feet inspired his.

  I said, “I’ll see you after the end,” and Clay had actually answered me, his peg in his shorts, in the pocket:

  “Hey, Matthew,” and then just, “Thanks.”

  He ran like a Goddamn warrior.

  He was truly the lightning Achilles.

  * * *

  —

  In the end, it was close to evening that day, on that first anniversary, when Rory came to his senses; he said, “Let’s burn the bed.”

  Together, we made the decision.

  We sat at the kitchen table.

  But there was no decision to make.

  Maybe it’s a universal truth of boys and fire; the same way we’ll often throw stones. We pick them up and aim for anything. Even me, edging close to nineteen:

  I was supposed to be the adult.

  If moving into the main bedroom was the grown-up thing to do, then burning the bed was the young one, and that’s how I bit the bullet; I took a bet each way.

  Initially, not much was said:

  Clay and Henry were assigned the mattress.

  Rory and I took the base.

  Tommy, the matches and turpentine.

  We took it out through the kitchen, into the backyard, and launched it all over the fence. It was roughly the same place, all those years earlier, where Penelope met City Special.

  We got to the other side. I said, “Right.”

  It was warm and a breeze had picked up.

  Hands for a while in our pockets.

  Clay had a handful of peg—but then the mattress went back on the base, and we walked out to The Surrounds. The stables were tired and leaning. The grass was patchy-uneven.

  Soon we saw a distant old washing machine.

  Then a shattered, lifeless TV.

  “There,” I said.

  I pointed—close to the middle, but nearer our place—and we carried our parents’ bed there. Two of us stood, and three crouched. Clay was off to the side; he was standing, facing our house.

  “Is it a bit windy, Matthew?” Henry asked.

  “Probably.”

  “Is that a westerly?” It grew gradually stronger each minute. “We might set the whole field on fire.”

  “Even better!” shouted Rory, and just as I started to admonish him, it was Clay who cut through everything—the field, the grass, the TV. The lonesome carcass of washing machine. His voice directed away:

  “No.”

  “What?”

  We all said it at once, and the wind blew even harder.

  “What’d you say, Clay?”

  He looked cold in the warmth of the field. His short dark hair was flat on his head, and that fire inside him was lit; he said it, quietly, again.

  A firm and final “No.”

  And we knew.

  We would leave things exactly like this. We’d let the thing die its own death here—or at least that’s what we believed—for how could we ever foresee it?

  That Clay would come back and he’d lie here.

  He’d squeeze the peg till it bit through his hand.

  The first time was the night before State, once we’d sat for a while in the kitchen; him and me. He laid the truth down in between us:

  He’d win State, then go for Achilles.

  He had the two hundred dollars—probably his whole life savings.

  He didn’t even wait for an answer.

  What he did do was go out the front, run a light run through the racing quarter, feed a few of our carrots to the mule—and end up back on the roof.

  Then, later, much later, while the rest of us slept, he got out of bed and wandered there; he picked out a brand-new peg. He climbed up onto the fence, then walked the width of the laneway. It was dark and there wasn’t a moon out, but he found his way easily through.

  He wandered and climbed over onto it.

 
The bed lay down in the gloom.

  He curled himself up like a boy.

  He lay down in the dark and he dreamed there, and cared nothing for winning or State. No, he spoke only to another boy, from a small country town, and a woman who’d crossed the oceans.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered to both of them, “I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” The peg was clenched tight in his hand, and he addressed them, lastly, again. “I promise, I’ll tell you the story,” he said, “how I brought you both home Achilles.”

  That mule was never for Tommy.

  Once, in the tide of Dunbar past, there was a girl who knew a Dunbar boy, and what a girl she was.

  She had auburn hair and good-green eyes.

  She had a puzzle of blood-colored freckles.

  She was famous for winning a Group One race, and dying the very next day—and Clay was the one to blame.

  He lived and breathed and became it.

  He eventually told them everything.

  In the beginning, though, and quite fittingly, when Carey first had seen him, she’d seen him up on the roof.

  * * *

  —

  She grew up in a town called Calamia.

  Her father was a jockey.

  Her father’s father, too.

  Before that, she didn’t know.

  She loved horses, trackwork, and trackwork riding, and records and stories of Thoroughbreds.

  Calamia was seven hours away, and her first memories were of her dad. He’d come home from trackwork in the mornings, and she’d ask him how it had been. Sometimes she’d wake up when he left the house, at 3:45 a.m. She’d rub her eyes and say to him, “Hey, Ted, can I come, too?”

  For some reason, whenever she woke in darkness, she called her mother Catherine, she called her father Ted. In the daytime it disappeared; they were simply Mum and Dad. That was one of many things not written or spoken about, years later, when they found her fallen, and dead.

  * * *

  —