One Lane Bridge: A Novel

by Reid, Don

  “The only one I got. Are you sure you’re from the church?”

  J. D. considered explaining everything he knew to this hardened man of the earth, but just as he was about to speak, the voice came from the other room.

  “Daddy, send him in to see me.”

  J. D. stared into Paul’s tired gray eyes. “Can I go see her?”

  Paul began taking the food out of the plastic bags, pausing to examine the bags, and nodded his head without returning J. D.’s glare. J. D. wondered for just a moment if the plastic bags gave way to any suspicion in Paul Clem’s mind. Certainly Paul had never seen anything like them before. Never had the question, paper or plastic? loomed so large in J. D.’s mind. He wished now he’d said “paper.”

  “Sure,” Paul said. “It won’t hurt nothing.’”

  J. D. pushed back the strings of hanging beads and walked through the dark dining room, toward the single-bulb lamp in the far corner of the living room. The daybed was in the same position by the front door, but a different person was lying in it. This time it was Lizzie, and she looked different. Prettier. Longer hair. Fuller cheeks.

  “Lizzie?”

  She smiled and sat up. “Hi. I know you. Your name starts with a W.”

  “That’s right. Wickman. John Wickman.”

  “I remember you real well. You had that funny-lookin’ car.”

  “Lizzie, where’s your mother?”

  “Mamma died nearly two years ago. Did you know my mamma?”

  “Well, I met her once. She was right here in that very same bed when I was here yesterday.”

  “Yesterday? Do you mean that in a poetic way, Mr. Wickman? My schoolteacher talks like that sometimes when he’s readin’ poetry and stuff. He says ‘yesterday’ when he means ‘a long time ago.’ Is that what you were doin’?”

  J. D. heard the back door close. He looked at her more intently than he ever had before and tried to find reason and good sense in the conversation they were having.

  “Lizzie, listen to me. How long has it been since you saw me last? How long since I was out here in your kitchen and you were frying bread?”

  “Is that what I was frying when you were here? I didn’t remember that, but I love fried bread.”

  “Lizzie, listen to me. How long ago was that?”

  “Oh, it must have been two years ago anyway, if Mamma was still alive.”

  “It wasn’t just yesterday?” J. D. was beginning to feel frantic but hoped his voice didn’t show it.

  “Why, of course not. Yesterday I was here in bed. Mamma died when I was fourteen. That was two years ago.”

  J. D. took a deep breath and asked the question he knew he had to ask but was in mortal fear of hearing the answer.

  “Lizzie, what year did your mamma die?”

  “The fall of 1940.”

  Something grabbed J. D. in the hollow of his stomach, and he thought he might be sick. He felt a shiver from deep in his spine, and he knew his voice was shaky when he took a deep breath and asked, “So what is today’s date?”

  “You mean you don’t know what today is? Today is Thursday.”

  “No. I mean the date. Do you have a calendar?”

  “There’s a calendar on the back of the door. The one with the pretty pictures. It’s September tenth, 1942.”

  Where was he? How did he get here? What was that bridge? A doorway? A portal through time? And why? Why was he here, and who were these people?

  “Lizzie, do you remember me being here before?”

  “I said I did.”

  “But your father doesn’t.”

  “Well, that was a couple years ago, and Daddy’s failed a lot since Mamma passed. Plus he don’t like a lot of people. He’s kind of gruff.”

  He looked at this pretty young girl lying in a sickbed yet still full of conversation and personality. “Why are you in bed here in the parlor?”

  “I hurt my foot about a week ago. I was working up in the barn and stepped on a nail. It was rusty, and boy, was it big. It went clear through my foot. Wanna see? It went in the bottom and came out the top. Daddy pulled it out.”

  She drew the sheets back to reveal a swollen foot bandaged with gauze and wrapping. There were bloodstains on the top and bottom. He could tell she was in pain as she grimaced while trying to lift her foot to show him.

  “Has a doctor seen you?”

  “Doctors cost a lot of money, and I don’t know what they can do for me.”

  Those were almost the exact words Paul had answered with when J. D. had asked if a doctor had seen Ada. J. D. had left then without taking any action, and some time had passed—just a day to him, but two years to the Clems! And now, Ada was dead. Lizzie needed a doctor, and soon. He couldn’t leave her here like he had her mother.

  “Where did your father go, Lizzie?”

  “Out back, milking probably. You’ll see him out there somewhere. Are you leaving now?”

  “Maybe. I need to talk with him, but I’ll see you before I go.”

  “Thanks for the food. Tell all of them at the church I said, ‘bless ’em.’”

  J. D. walked into the kitchen. As he neared the door leading to the back porch, he heard something he faintly remembered from yesterday. A radio. It was turned down low, and he had to stop to hear what was on. It was Ernest Tubb singing, “Walking The Floor Over You.” What he had assumed to be a traditional country music station yesterday—a “classic” country station—was actually a regular country music station playing current hits. Hits from 1942! His knees nearly buckled.

  He found Paul carrying a bucket of chicken feed out of a shed in the backyard. The look on his face was just as fierce and unfriendly as it had been when he met J. D. at the van. Life had whipped him and left him blowing in the wind. He had lost his wife, and now his daughter was flat on her back, fighting what could be a losing battle. The look in his cold, empty eyes said he had no reason to get out of bed each morning, yet he walked through his duties as man of the house. J. D. spoke to him with apprehension. He wasn’t expecting a positive answer, but he did hope the negative would not be violent.

  “Mr. Clem. Lizzie is a very sick girl. She may have blood poisoning. She needs to see a doctor. Can I take her to see one?”

  “Take her? No. You’re not taking her anywhere. You think I’m turnin’ my daughter loose with some stranger and lettin’ her get in that station wagon or whatever that is with you?”

  “You can come along. We’ll just be gone for a little while. Just long enough to get her to the emergency room.”

  J. D.’s back stiffened at what he had just proposed. What if the old man took him up on his offer and all three of them went into town? How could he explain what was happening and all the sights he would see? The highways, the cars, the houses, the buildings? How could he explain something he didn’t understand himself?

  “She’ll be fine. I’ll take care of her. Always have.”

  “I know you have, sir. But she needs something you can’t give her this time. She needs a doctor as soon as possible. If you won’t let me take her to see one, then let me bring one out here.”

  “Doctors cost money.”

  “I’ll pay.”

  “I think you need to go.”

  “I’m not leaving here without her.”

  Paul Clem set the small pail on the ground by his feet, stood with his shoulders squared, and raised his height a good two inches. His eyes narrowed and there was flint in his voice. “You got any kids?”

  “Yes, I do. I have a daughter not much older than Lizzie.”

  “Then you’ll understand what I’m about to tell you. You try to move my girl from that room, and you gotta kill me to do it.”

  J. D. knew he meant it. He would have to bring the doctor to Lizzie. He only hoped he had time. If one day on his side of the bridge was two years on hers, he didn’t. But maybe it wasn’t quite so simple an equation. In the past twenty-four hours, nothing had been. He would have to try. Maybe he had time. Maybe he did.<
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  Chapter Seven

  J. D. recalled nothing of the thirty-minute drive back to Hanson. One second he was crossing the one lane bridge, and the next he was pulling into the parking lot behind the Dining Club. His eyes had apparently been on the road, but his mind was on Lizzie and how to explain it all to Karlie. He knew there was a young girl across that bridge who desperately needed medical attention, but he had no way of proving that to his skeptical wife. He had promised to tell her all about it when he got back, but what would he say? He felt like the little boy in a joke he had heard. When the boy’s mother asked him what he had learned in Sunday school, he said they had talked about Moses and how when he got to the Red Sea he had his army build a pontoon bridge and carry all the people across the water. Then he had his army blow up the bridge so the bad guys couldn’t cross. His mother said, “Are you sure that’s what they taught you this morning?” And the little boy said, “No, but if I told you what really happened, you’d never believe it.”

  He sat in the car and wished he still smoked.

  The last employee exited through the back door just minutes before Officer Bobby Caywood pulled up alongside J. D.’s van. They got out of their vehicles and walked into the restaurant together. J. D. was thankful for the company as it gave him a few more minutes before he had to talk to Karlie alone.

  “Hey, honey, Bobby’s here,” J. D. called as he locked the door behind him.

  Karlie came out of the kitchen and said, “Hi, Bobby. Are you ready to do this?”

  She didn’t look at J. D. He knew her well enough to know that while he was gone, her thoughts had congealed to a cold silence—and he was in for a rough night. And his mind was more on how much of the truth he could tell Karlie than on the money they were here to protect. The whole truth just might prompt her to commit him before morning. And he wasn’t even sure what a half-truth would be at this point. But he had to push those thoughts away. They were here to mark bills and catch an embezzler, a disloyal employee. They were here to bring the hatchet down while Lizzie Clem lay dying somewhere in the 1940s. What was he thinking? He couldn’t possibly tell Karlie that. A girl died sixty-five years ago, but she was still alive tonight? Maybe he did need to be committed. And what had Caywood just said to him?

  “Did you hear me, J. D.?”

  “No, I’m sorry, Bobby, I didn’t.”

  “I said, would you put a mark on these bills? I’m going to mark them, and I want you to also. Keeping it all on the up and up so there’s no chance for a mistake.”

  “Sure. Karlie, do you want to mark them?”

  Karlie was nowhere to be seen. She had gone back into the kitchen to turn out lights and close pantry doors. She was keeping her distance. When J. D.’s mind returned again to the business at hand, Officer Caywood was talking again.

  “… does their shift end?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The girls that open up in the morning. What time does their shift end?”

  “One o’clock.”

  “Okay, why don’t I meet you over here at five minutes to one tomorrow afternoon? We’ll stop them as they leave the building and take them into the office and make our move. That way the evening shift will be here on the floor, and whatever happens doesn’t disturb business.”

  “Sounds good to me.” J. D. raised his voice a little and said, “Sound all right to you, honey?” But “honey” wasn’t responding. The only answer he got was another pantry door slamming somewhere in the back and another light being switched off.

  J. D. drove Karlie to the Kroger parking lot to pick up the BMW they had left there that morning. Words were not exchanged, but the feelings were heavy in the air. Karlie opened the car door and was about to get out when she finally found her voice.

  “J. D., are we going to go home and go to bed and never talk more about where you were all evening? Because if we are, I don’t think I can take it.”

  “I don’t know where I was.”

  This elicited no response—only a stony stare and silence.

  J. D. continued, “I went out there and, honey, you have to believe me. The bridge was there. The one lane bridge. I drove over it, and the house was there. And the man was there and the daughter. But the woman … the woman was dead. I talked to the girl. She’s sixteen now, and she’s in bed like her mother was before, and the man looks old and tired. And … and it’s two years later. They’re both two years older, but only a day has passed.”

  J. D. could only see shadows on his wife’s face, but he didn’t have to see her clearly to know what was in her mind. The sobs that began to rock her body told him all he needed to know. He couldn’t blame her. He reached for her, but she didn’t move toward him. She just kept crying until he suddenly realized he was crying too. Tears he hadn’t felt since his father’s funeral eight years ago were running down his cheeks and falling on his hands. His wife was sick with concern, he was confused and scared, and their marriage was in danger of crumbling around him as surely as was everything he had come to know as normal. His mind was full of questions and empty of answers. But he couldn’t ignore what he had seen with his own eyes. His wife needed the man she had two days ago, but a young girl somewhere out on Route 814 in 1942 needed a doctor, and he was the only person on earth who could help her. If indeed this was still earth.

  Chapter Eight

  J. D. wasn’t sure either one of them slept that night. He knew for certain they didn’t talk, and he was almost certain neither of them drifted off. Even a restless sleep—the kind that lasted for only minutes before he found himself looking at the alarm clock for the twentieth time that night—would have been welcome. But he heard every automobile that passed, every boom of a teenager’s heavy-duty car radio that jarred the walls of the house, and every door shutting at the neighbor’s from dawn on. At six thirty he climbed out of bed as quietly as he could, showered, dressed, and went to the kitchen to watch TV and drink instant coffee just to kill time until he was sure his old friend Jack Hamish was out of bed and at the drugstore.

  At eight forty-five he walked into Alden Drugs and waited till Jack was off the phone. When Jack looked up and saw J. D., he motioned for him to come behind the counter and up the steps to his office. J. D. smiled and followed the instructions, sitting down in front of the big, old wooden desk full of files and papers. He looked at the framed diplomas and licenses on the wall and the framed pictures of Jack’s two nephews on the desk.

  He and Jack shared a long history. They had sat directly across the aisle from each other in the first grade, and Jack enjoyed, almost from day one, kicking J. D.’s books out from under his desk every time he passed. After the fourth time, J. D. returned the kick and sent Jack’s books flying across the aisle just as the teacher looked up. J. D. was caught and punished, and that day at lunch Jack had come up to him and apologized for causing trouble. Their friendship began in that moment and lasted through grade school, high school, and college.

  They still ate lunch together a couple of times a week and played poker together every first Friday of the month. Jack Hamish was his closest friend, the one he would confide this baffling situation to even if Jack couldn’t help him. Or maybe he could. Jack was a pharmacist and exactly what J. D. needed at this very moment. But he dreaded trying to explain why he needed him.

  “Hey, buddy, how you doing? Sorry to keep you waiting. Want some coffee?”

  “No. I’ve had plenty.”

  “You look like you’ve been up all night.”

  J. D. gave him a half smile and admitted he had. Then, to answer Jack’s question of why, he began to tell his story as honestly and as convincingly as possible.

  “I was out riding in the country a couple of days ago and broke down out on Route 814. You know where that is?”

  “Maybe. Is it out there where …?”

  “It doesn’t really matter,” J. D. interrupted. “It’s about eighteen miles northeast. Anyway, I was driving the Triumph, and I broke down and didn’t have a s
ignal on my cell. So I went up to a house and an old farmer met me in the yard.”

  Jack’s grin went as wide as his face. “Is this going to be a farmer’s daughter joke?”

  J. D. cut him off. “No. I wish it were. He had a daughter, but she was like fourteen years old. And he had a wife who was sick in bed, and they were as poor as dirt and needy as any family you’ve ever seen. Like those families our Sunday school class used to shop for at Christmas when we were kids. They needed food, but the old man was proud and kind of ran me off when I offered to help. So I came home and told Karlie about them, and we bought them some groceries and went out there yesterday morning. And here’s where it gets strange. They were gone. They weren’t there any longer.”

  “They had moved?” Jack asked with a slight shrug.

  J. D. looked at his old friend a long time before he answered. So long that Jack became uneasy. “So what is it? Had they moved or not?”

  J. D. rubbed his face, feeling the sleepless hours that lay behind him. He chose his words as if he were a lawyer defending the case of his life.

  “They had disappeared. They were gone. Their house was gone. A store was where their house was. And even this enormous old one lane steel bridge you had to cross to get to them was gone. Just … gone.”

  Jack’s wide smile was gone too. His lips were tight, and his eyes were slits as if he was trying to see into his friend’s mind. J. D. watched every twitch in the face of the friend sitting across the desk from him. He was imagining every thought that was going through his old buddy’s brain. He knew Jack would try not to be critical or judgmental, and at one point he even expected a punch line from his lips to ease the tension. But that didn’t come. After a long couple of seconds past comfortable, Jack said, “I don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I, buddy,” J. D. said with a heaviness he was sure even Jack had never heard before.

  Jack looked down at his desk as if the answer was somewhere in its disarray and then slowly brought his eyes up to meet his friend’s. He spoke in a tone and a manner usually reserved for trying to make a point with a child.