Bridge of Clay

by Markus Zusak

  “You didn’t build while I was away?”

  “No.” He patted the mule, but cautiously. “There could be thousands of people working on this bridge, and the world could come to see it…but they’d all know who it belonged to.” He handed him the lead of the animal. “You’re the only one who can finish it.”

  * * *

  —

  For a long time, Clay stood outside.

  He watched Achilles eating.

  Evening would soon be upon them.

  There was one thought overpowering him, and at first he didn’t know why.

  I think he just wanted to talk to him.

  It was the legend of Pont du Gard:

  Once, in France, which wasn’t even France then—it was the ancient world—there was a river that proved unbeatable. That river, today, is the Gardon.

  For centuries, the people who lived there could never quite finish a bridge, or if they did, the river destroyed it.

  Then one day the devil strolled into town, and made an offer to the villagers. He said, “I can build that bridge for you easily! I can build it in a single night!”

  And the villagers, they almost cried.

  “But!” The devil was quite beside himself. “The first one who crosses the bridge next day is mine to do with what I please.”

  So a meeting was held in the village.

  It was discussed and finally agreed.

  They took up the devil’s offer, and watched in total rapture, in the night, as he tore stones from up on the mountaintops, and anything else he came by. He threw and juggled the pieces, and made arches in twos and threes. He made that bridge and aqueduct, and in the morning, he awaited his payment.

  He’d made his bargain; he’d lived up to it.

  But the villagers, for once, had outsmarted him—and set a hare free over the top of it, as the first one to cross the river—and the devil was infuriated:

  He picked up the hare and smashed it.

  He flung it epically against an arch, and the outline is still there today.

  * * *

  —

  While Clay and Michael Dunbar stood, in the field by Achilles and the river, he watched and spoke across to him.

  “Dad?”

  The insects were mostly silent.

  There were always these bloodied sunsets here, and this was the first for Achilles. The mule, of course, ignored it, though, and went on with what he was born for; this field was made for the eating.

  But Michael stepped closer and waited.

  He wasn’t sure how to approach Clay just yet, for the boy had seen so much—and then came something strange:

  “Remember you asked if I knew it? The legend of Pont du Gard?”

  Michael was caught, midanswer.

  “Of course, but—”

  “Well, I wouldn’t.”

  “You wouldn’t—what?”

  Achilles was listening, too, now; he’d looked up from the grass.

  “I wouldn’t make a deal—for the bridge to be built in a night.”

  It was dark by then, well dark, and Clay kept talking on.

  “But I would make a trade for them.” He gritted his lips, then opened them. “I’d go to hell just to make them live again—and we could both go, you could go with me—one of us for one of them. I know they’re not in hell, I know, I know, but—” He stopped and bent, then called again. “Dad, you have to help me.” The darkness had cut him in half. He would die to bring them back again. Penelope, he thought, and Carey. At the very least, he owed them this.

  “We have to make it perfect,” he said. “We have to make it great.”

  He’d turned and faced the riverbed.

  A miracle and nothing less.

  Somehow she stitched the days together.

  She made them into weeks.

  At times we could only wonder:

  Had she made a deal with death?

  If so, it was the con of the century—it was death that wouldn’t stick.

  The best was when a year was gone.

  The months hit lucky thirteen.

  * * *

  —

  On that occasion, out of the hospital, Penny Dunbar said she was thirsty. She said she wanted beer. We’d helped her to the porch when she told us not to bother. Usually she never drank.

  Michael had her arms then.

  He looked at her and asked.

  “What is it? You need a rest?”

  The woman was immediate, emphatic:

  “Let’s go down to the Naked Arms.”

  Night had hit the street, and Michael pulled her closer.

  “Sorry?” he asked. “What was that?”

  “I said, let’s go down to the pub.”

  She wore a dress we’d bought for a twelve-year-old, but a girl who didn’t exist.

  She smiled in the Archer darkness.

  * * *

  —

  For a very long moment, her light lit up the street, and I know that sounds quite odd, but that’s how Clay described it. He said she was just so pale by then, and her skin so paper-thin. Her eyes continued to yellow.

  Her teeth became old framework.

  Her arms were pinned at the elbows.

  Her mouth was the exception—or the outline of it, at least.

  Especially at times like these.

  “Come onnn,” she said, she tugged at him. Cracked and dry, but alive. “Let’s go for a drink—you’re Mikey Dunbar, after all!”

  Us boys, we had to skylark.

  “Yeah, c’mon, Mikey, hey, Mikey!”

  “Oi,” he said. “Mikey can still make you clean the house, and mow the lawn.” He’d stayed up near the porch, but saw it was pointless finding reason here, as she walked back down the path. Still, he had to try. “Penny—Penny!”

  And I guess it’s one of those moments, you know?

  You could see how hard he loved her.

  His heart was so obliterated, but he found the will to work it.

  He was tired, so tired, in the porch light.

  Just bits-and-pieces of a man.

  * * *

  —

  As for us, we were boys, we should have been a sitcom.

  We were young, and the dumb and restless.

  Even me, the future responsible one, I turned when he came toward us. “I don’t know, Dad. Maybe she just has to.”

  “Maybe nothing—”

  But she cut him off.

  A hollow, septic arm.

  Her hand held out, like a bird paw.

  “Michael,” she said. “Please. One drink’s not going to kill us.”

  And Mikey Dunbar eased.

  He ran a hand through his wavy hairline.

  Like a boy, he kissed her cheek.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Good,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said again.

  “You said that already,” and she hugged him; she whispered, “I love you, did I ever tell you that?”

  And he dived right down inside of her.

  The small black sea of her lips.

  * * *

  —

  When he brought her toward the car, his clothes looked damp and dark on him, and again, she wouldn’t recede.

  “No,” she said, “we’re walking,” and the thought of it struck him cleanly. This woman’s Goddamn dying—and making sure she takes me with her. “Tonight we’ll walk together.”

  * * *

  —

  A crowd of five boys and a mother then, we crossed the expanse of road; I remember our shorts and T-shirts. I remember her girlish legs. There was darkness, then the streetlights, and the still-warm autumn air. The picture slowly forms for me now, but soon it comes to an end:
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  Our father stayed back on the lawn.

  A part of him was foundering there, and the rest of us turned to watch. He looked so damn alone.

  “Dad?”

  “Come on, Dad!”

  But our father had sat down, head in hands, and of course it could only be Clay:

  He returned to our lawn on Archer Street, and approached that shadow-of-dad. Soon he stood beside him, then slowly, he dropped and crouched—and just when I thought he would stay with him, he was up again, he was behind him. He was placing his hands in that area, in what every man on earth has:

  The ecosystem of each armpit.

  He pulled our father upwards.

  They stood, then swayed, and steadied.

  * * *

  —

  When we walked, we walked at Penelope pace, so pale in every movement. We turned a few more corners, onto Gloaming Road, where the pub sat calm and shiny. The tiles were cream and maroon.

  Inside, while the rest of us looked for a stool, our father went to the bar. He said, “Two beers and five ginger beers, please,” but Penny had loomed behind him, all sweat and shown-off bones.

  She put her hands on top of the beer mat.

  She dug deep, through barren lungs.

  She seemed to be reaching around down there, for something she knew and loved. “How about”—she called the question up, piece by piece—“we just make it seven beers?”

  He was a young barman, turning already for the soft drinks. His nametag said Scott. They called him Scotty Bils. “Excuse me?”

  “I said,” she said, and she looked him square in the face. His hair was going missing, but he wasn’t short of nose. “Make it seven beers.”

  That was when Ian Bils came over; the pulse of the Naked Arms. “Everything all right here, Scotty?”

  “This lady,” Scotty Bils said. “She’s ordered seven beers.” His hand in his fringe like a search party. “Those boys over there—”

  And Ian Bils—he didn’t even look.

  He kept his eyes firmly on the woman in flux, who was bracing against his bar. “Tooheys Lights okay with you?”

  Penny Dunbar met him halfway. “That sounds great.”

  The old publican solemnly nodded.

  He wore a cap with a galloping mustang.

  “Let’s make it all on the house.”

  * * *

  —

  There are victories and there are victories, I guess, and this one still didn’t come cheap. We thought she might let go that night, when finally we got her home.

  Next day we all stayed in with her.

  We watched her and checked for breathing:

  Her naked arms and the Naked Arms.

  She stank like beer and disease.

  * * *

  —

  In the evening, I wrote the absent notes.

  The best scrawl of our dad’s I could manage:

  My wife is quite sick, as you know….

  But I know I should have done this:

  Dear Miss Cooper,

  Please excuse Tommy for being absent yesterday. He thought his mum might die, but she didn’t, and to tell you the truth, he was actually a bit hungover….

  Which technically wasn’t true.

  As the oldest, it was only me who made it through my drink, and it was quite an effort, I’m telling you. Rory and Henry had half each. Clay and Tommy managed the froth—and still, none of it mattered, not remotely, for we watched Penny Dunbar smile to herself; a girl’s white dress and bones. She’d thought she might make men of us, but this was every woman for herself.

  The Mistake Maker made no mistake of it.

  She stayed till she’d finished them off.

  When they spoke of Pont du Gard again, it was to herald the beginning of the end.

  They walked and started work again.

  They worked and Clay wouldn’t stop.

  * * *

  —

  As it was, Michael Dunbar counted a hundred and twenty consecutive days that Clay worked on the bridge, and very little sleep, very little eating—just a boy who could work the pulley, and heave stones he had no right to carry. “There,” he would say to his father. “No, not there, up there.” He’d stop only to stand with the mule for a while; Clay and the faithful Achilles.

  Often, he slept in the dirt out there.

  He was covered by blankets and falsework.

  His hair was matted flat to him.

  He asked if Michael would cut it.

  It fell to his feet in clumps.

  They did it outside by the bridge, in the looming shadows of arches.

  He said thanks and went back to work.

  * * *

  —

  When Michael would leave for the mines, he made Clay promise to eat.

  He even called us here, to make sure we rang to check on him, and it was something I did religiously; I called him three times a week, and counted twenty-four rings till he made it in: the length of the sprint to the house.

  He spoke only of the bridge and building it.

  We shouldn’t come, he said, till he’d finished.

  The bridge and making it perfect.

  * * *

  —

  Probably one of the best things Michael ever did was force him to take a break:

  A weekend.

  A whole weekend.

  Clay, of course, was reluctant. He said he was going to the shed; he needed that torturous shovel again.

  “No.”

  The Murderer, our dad, was final.

  “Why not?”

  “You’re coming with me.”

  It was no surprise that Clay slept all the way in the car, as he drove him out to Featherton; he woke him when he’d parked on Miller Street.

  Clay rubbed at his eyes and ignited.

  “Is this,” he said, “where you buried them?”

  Michael nodded and passed him a coffee cup.

  The country began to spin.

  * * *

  —

  In the confines of the car, while Clay drank, our father gently explained. He didn’t know if they lived there anymore, but it was a couple called the Merchisons who’d bought the place, though it seemed there was no one home—except for the three out back.

  For a long time they were tempted—to cross that toasty lawn—but soon they drove on, and parked near the bank. They walked the old town and its streets.

  He said, “This pub here’s where I threw bricks up….I threw bricks up to another guy throwing bricks up—”

  And Clay said, “Abbey was here.”

  Oi, Dunbar, y’ useless prick! Where are me Goddamn bricks?!

  Michael Dunbar simply said, “Poetry.”

  * * *

  —

  After that, they walked till evening, right out onto the highway; and Clay could see the beginnings of things, like Abbey eating an Icy Pole, and his father and the dog called Moon.

  In the town he saw the surgery:

  Dr. Weinrauch’s infamous chopping block.

  Then the woman and resident boxer, who’d punched at the keys in the office.

  “It’s not quite how I saw it,” he said, “but I guess things never are.”

  “We never imagine things perfectly,” said Michael, “but always just left or right….Not even me, and I used to live here.”

  * * *

  —

  By night, near the end, they procrastinated.

  They needed to make a decision.

  “Did you want to go over and get it?” said Michael. “Did you want to go dig up the typewriter? I’m sure those people won’t mind.”

  But now it was Clay who’d decided. It was Clay who was firm and final. It was then, I think, he’d realize
d:

  For starters, this story wasn’t over yet.

  And even then, it wouldn’t be him.

  The story was his, but not the writing.

  It was hard enough living and being it.

  The seven beers was another beginning:

  A timeline of death and events.

  Looking back I can see how rude we were, and Penny herself, pure insolence.

  Us boys, we fought and argued.

  So much of the dying hurt us.

  But sometimes we tried to outrun it, or laugh and spit toward it—and all while keeping our distance.

  At our best we interrupted.

  Given death had come to claim her, we could at least be difficult losers.

  * * *

  —

  In winter that year I took holiday work with a local floorboard and carpet firm. They offered me a full-time job.

  At school, by sixteen, I was both good and not-good at many things, and my favorite was usually English; I liked the writing, I loved the books. Once, our teacher mentioned Homer, and the rest made light and laughed. They quoted a much-loved character, from a much-loved American cartoon; I said nothing at all. They’d joked at the teacher’s surname that day, and at the end of class I’d told her:

  “My favorite was always Odysseus.”

  Ms. Simpson was a bit perplexed.

  I liked her crazy ringlets, and her spindly, inky hands.

  “You know Odysseus and didn’t mention it?”

  I was ashamed but couldn’t stop. I said, “Odysseus—the resourceful one. Agamemnon, king of men, and”—quickly, I sucked it in—“Achilles of the nimble feet…”

  I could see her thinking, Shit!

  * * *

  —

  When I left, I didn’t ask their permission:

  I told my mother in her sickbed, and Michael Dunbar in the kitchen. They both said I should stay, but my mind was already set. Talking about resourcefulness, the bills were becoming flood-like—defying death had never been cheap—but that’s still not why I did it. No, it just seemed right, that’s all I can say, and even when Penny looked at me, and said I should sit up next to her, I felt completely certain and justified.