The Other Side of the Bridge

by Mary Lawson

  “The Veterans Guards are going to guard them,” their mother said. “But they’ll fall asleep. They’re old men.”

  Jake gave a snort of laughter. He ate a slice of beef, one potato, and about half a carrot, and then pushed back his chair.

  “I’m off,” he said. Sometimes Arthur wondered if he ate so little because he knew how it distressed her.

  “Aren’t you having dessert? It’s pie.”

  “I’ll have some later.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out.” He patted her head and was gone. The screen door slammed behind him.

  Into the silence of the room his mother said, “Do you think he’s happy? With us, I mean. Is he happy, here, with us?”

  Arthur looked at her, and saw desolation in her eyes.

  One evening at the beginning of May, Otto Luntz came over to tell them that he and Gertie were going away.

  “I don’t know how long,” he said. He sat down at the table and accepted the cup of tea Arthur’s mother set down before him. “Maybe a vile. Gertie’s sister in Oshawa, ve go stay vid her. Maybe ve sell de farm, I don’t know.” He looked from one to the other of them. His expression was so bleak that it was hard not to look away. “I be glad you look after tings,” he said. “I pay, of course.”

  “We don’t want no money from you, Otto,” Arthur’s father said. “We’ll be happy to look after things as much as we can.” He sounded anxious though. There was a limit to how much they could do.

  But Otto understood that. He said, “Important ting is de pigs. I know you can’t do more land, but I tink maybe if you usse my tractor you can do some liddle more? You get my fuel ration too. Den you got horses and a tractor?”

  Arthur and his father looked at each other doubtfully. They had never wanted a tractor, didn’t care how fast it was, how efficient. They’d told themselves it wasn’t worth the money—Otto had borrowed heavily from the bank to buy his and in the early stages it kept breaking down, costing him even more—but the simple truth was that they hadn’t liked the idea of it. Hadn’t wanted a big, ugly, noisy machine crawling across their land. If you compared it to the horses, who knew their work so well, who were quiet and companionable, and fertilized the land as they went instead of compacting the soil or churning it into a sea of mud every time it rained, the horses won hands down. But now, if they had Otto’s land to consider as well as their own…

  “We ain’t neither of us driven a tractor before,” Arthur’s father said, as if hoping that would excuse them.

  “I show you tomorrow,” Otto said. “It iss not difficult.”

  So the next day he showed them, and it wasn’t difficult. Both Arthur and his father had a turn driving it up and down the Luntzes’ driveway and it seemed pretty straightforward. Like a truck but bigger. So it was settled. The Dunns would look after the farm as well as they could and keep a share, unwillingly, of the profits, and Otto and Gertie would take their time over deciding what to do next—though they all knew they were saying good-bye for good, that the next time the Luntzes came to Struan it would be merely to clear out the house.

  Otto brought the tractor over on the morning he and Gertie left. What with the strain of the farewells nobody paid it any attention, but after the Luntzes had gone they all went and had a closer look at it, even Jake. It might be for farmwork, but it had wheels and Jake liked wheels.

  “It just makes me think of those boys,” Arthur’s mother said. She was red-eyed and her voice was clogged as if she had a cold. “I’ll never see it without thinking of them.”

  “No point dwellin’ on it,” Arthur’s father said. “It don’t help.”

  “I know it doesn’t help.” Her voice was sharp with unhappiness. “But it’s a fact.”

  “Doesn’t look as strong as two horses,” Arthur said to change the subject, though it did look pretty strong. It didn’t look as friendly as the horses, though, that was for sure.

  Jake was wandering around it, patting the huge tires, drawing a line along the dusty flanks with his finger. “I’m glad it’s red,” he said with satisfaction. “Red’s the right color for a tractor.” He climbed up and sat on the seat and grinned down at them. “Bet it’s fun to drive,” he said. “Wonder how fast it can go. Whoo! We should take it out on the road and see what it’ll do!”

  “It’s not a toy,” his father said sharply, in the voice he used to use with Jake, and Jake flushed. He said, “That was a joke, Dad. I was making a joke.”

  “It’s dinnertime,” his mother said. “Maybe after dinner you can all try it.”

  But maybe Jake guessed he wouldn’t get to drive it, because after dinner he wandered off, like he always did. Arthur’s mother did the dishes as usual, and Arthur and his father retired to the armchairs for a few minutes to let the food go down, though maybe for a little less time than usual because, although they wouldn’t have admitted it even to each other, they were both quite excited about the tractor.

  “Looks bigger’n it did before dinner,” Arthur said, when they went out to it again.

  “Won’t look no smaller tomorrow,” his father said. “Might as well give ’er a go.”

  He climbed up stiffly, placing his feet on the plates with deliberation, and made to sit down. Then hesitated and looked down at Arthur. “You wanna go first?”

  Arthur shook his head.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Here goes.” He started the engine as Otto had shown him and it fired up with a roar. He and Arthur grinned at each other. He put it into gear and the huge wheels started turning. He grasped the steering wheel tightly with both hands and yelled, “I’ll take her down to the lower forty!”

  Arthur nodded and watched him drive off.

  “I hope he’s careful,” his mother said. Her voice made Arthur jump. He hadn’t heard her coming up behind him.

  “I’ll follow him down,” he said. “See how he’s makin’ out.”

  “Tell him not to go so fast,” his mother said. “I’m going over to the Luntzes to look at Otto’s pigs. Just to make sure they’re all right. If you drive it, Arthur, you be careful.”

  He set off, following in the tread marks of the tractor. His father was out of sight already—he did seem to be driving kind of fast. But then, that was the thing about tractors: they were fast. Otto reckoned he could plow four to five acres in the time it took a team of horses to do one. Maybe they would end up buying it, when Otto came to sell things off. It was noisy, though. He wasn’t keen on the noise. His father must be three fields away by now but you could still hear the roar. And then all at once the pitch changed. The roar wavered and then rose, and kept climbing until it was more like a scream. Arthur frowned, wondering what his father was doing. Did he have it in the wrong gear? Suddenly uneasy, he walked faster, then broke into a run. The scream went on. He’d passed the tractor many times when Carl or one of the others was plowing, and he’d never heard it make that noise before.

  When he got to the brow of the hill he couldn’t see it at first. He stopped and looked around. He could hear it louder than ever, the high scream kept on and on, and the tread marks were there, running fairly straight down the side of the field, but there was no sign of the tractor, just some big brownish-black thing sticking up out of the ditch at the bottom of the field. And then he realized what it was and started running and shouting at the same time—“Dad! Dad!”—just as he had shouted all those years ago when the baby was coming and his mother was in danger, running and shouting, now as then, with fear clutching his heart.

  The tractor had rolled right over so that the wheels were spinning in the air. His father was underneath it. All Arthur could see was his head and neck. He was face up and his face was purple and his eyes were bulging and his mouth was gaping wide. Arthur leapt down into the ditch and grabbed hold of the side of the tractor, keeping clear of the monstrous wheels, and braced his legs and heaved with all his strength. The tractor did not move one fraction of an inch.


  “Hold on, Dad! Hold on!” Arthur yelled, his voice cracking with disbelief and terror. The tractor was still screaming like an animal; he turned so that his back was against it and reached behind himself and braced his legs against the side of the ditch and lifted, put all of his huge strength into it, and lifted, roaring with the effort. Was there a movement? He didn’t know but he thought there might have been, and he couldn’t let the tractor down again because then all of that weight would be back on his father. He roared, “Jesus! Jesus!” and as if in answer there was a movement at the top of the ditch and Jake was there, white and staring with shock. Jake jumped down and reached up swiftly and turned off the engine and the silence screamed as loud as the engine had. Jake grabbed hold of the tractor and tried to lift as well but his strength was nothing and made no difference at all.

  “Get the horses!” Arthur roared at him. His legs were shuddering with the strain. What if he could not keep it up? What was the point of his size and strength if he could not keep the weight of the tractor from crushing his father?

  Jake nodded and scrambled up the side of the ditch as fast as his limp would allow, and at the top spared a fraction of a moment to look back. He stopped. Arthur roared, “Get the bloody horses!” but Jake slid back down the slope and put his hand on Arthur’s arm. He said, “Art, he’s dead.” His voice was shaking and his lips were bluish with shock.

  Arthur glanced down and saw the dreadful color of his father’s face and the way his eyes bulged, and saw now that blood was running from his mouth. But that did not mean he was dead, none of it meant he was dead—it just meant they had to get the weight off him so that he could breathe.

  “Get the bloody horses!” he bellowed again, and Jake hesitated, then nodded, and scrambled up the side of the ditch once more, and disappeared. Arthur waited, sweat pouring down him, shoulders, back, and legs trembling violently, saying over and over again, “Hold on, Dad. Hold on. He’ll be right back. Just hold on.”

  Then Jake was there again, with two of the horses and their harnesses and ropes and all that was needed—grant him that, in this one instance Jake did all that was needed, and did it fast, and did it well—and they hauled the tractor off their father’s broken body, and Arthur, sobbing now, carried him across the fields and into the house.

  Arthur’s mother said, “I didn’t think it would be him. I thought one of you would be taken from me. I never thought it would be him. I thought we would have years and years together. I thought we would grow old together.”

  Jake said, “I thought when I grew up and got a job somewhere, doing something important, he’d see I wasn’t useless. You want to know the truth? I hate him for dying before he learned I wasn’t useless. That’s the truth.”

  As for Arthur, he had no words.

  NINE

  MAY REMOVE WOLF BOUNTY

  EXPERT WARNS SILAGE IS TRICKY

  —Temiskaming Speaker, May 1960

  They had been standing beside the vegetable patch when the Cadillac pulled into the farmyard. They all started moving toward it but then the door opened and a man got out, and Laura stopped so suddenly that Ian bumped into her.

  “Jake,” she said. Just that.

  Ian looked from her to the stranger, curiously.

  The stranger’s smile widened. He was leaning against his car, arms folded, weight on one leg. He was wearing a suit, something you didn’t see all that often in Struan, and very clean shoes.

  “Hello, Laura,” he said. “How are things down on the farm?” It sounded like a joke rather than a question, and maybe that was how Laura took it too, because she didn’t answer. The man’s eyes moved from her to the baby she was holding and then to Ian, and Julie, and finally to March. “One, two, three, four,” he said musingly, nodding at each of them. “You have been busy.” His gaze moved back to Ian and he tipped his head to one side. He was still smiling but he looked puzzled. “You’re Carter?” he said.

  The question seemed to fluster Laura. She switched the baby from one hip to the other and said, “No, no, he’s not…. I’m sorry, I should have introduced you. This is Ian, Dr. Christopherson’s son. He helps Arthur in the summers. And this one isn’t mine, I’m just looking after him for the afternoon. Ian, this is Jake, Arthur’s brother.” She hesitated, then said, “You should have written, Jake. You should have told us you were coming.”

  “That would have spoiled the surprise.” He stepped forward and extended his hand to Ian. “I didn’t think there was much family resemblance,” he said.

  Ian shook hands. “Nice to meet you.” Three summers now he’d been working on the farm and never once had anyone mentioned Arthur having a brother.

  “Carter isn’t here right now,” Laura said. “He’ll be back soon. And Arthur’s out in the fields.”

  Jake laughed. “Where else?” he said. “How’s he doing?”

  “Oh, fine,” Laura said. “He’s doing just fine. We’re all fine.”

  Jake was looking around the farmyard curiously. “The old place isn’t looking too bad. Barn looks good. Is that new?”

  “About five years old. I think about five years.” There was a pause. Laura said, “You…you must be hungry, Jake. How far have you come today? Would you like something to eat? Supper’s still a long way off. You’ll stay for supper, won’t you? But in the meantime…” Her voice trailed off. She seemed nervous, Ian thought. She was being polite to Jake in the way that you’re polite to a stranger or someone you’re uncomfortable with.

  Jake was smiling at her again. “I stopped in town and had a look around. Had a piece of pie in Harper’s. But sure, I’ll stay for supper. In fact, I was hoping you could put me up for a day or two.”

  “Oh! Of course!” Laura said hurriedly. “Of course you must stay as long as you like….” She looked down at Julie and said, “This is your uncle Jake, honey. Say, ‘Hello, Uncle Jake.’”

  “Hello,” Julie whispered.

  “Hi,” Jake whispered back. “You look just like your mum, did you know that?” Julie shook her head. “You’re a lucky girl,” Jake said, and winked at her. Julie smiled shyly, and Jake turned back to Laura. “Maybe I’ll just take my suitcases in and then go and find Art.”

  “Oh, you mustn’t go out to the fields,” Laura said hastily. “It’s very muddy. You’ll ruin your shoes. Ian will go and get him, won’t you, Ian?”

  “Sure,” Ian said. He noticed now that Jake had a limp. Polio? An accident? His father would know.

  “We’ll go together,” Jake said cheerfully. “The shoes will survive. I want to surprise Art.” He opened the trunk of the car and lifted out two suitcases. Ian stepped forward and took them, feeling like a lackey. Jake grinned at him. “If you insist,” he said. “You can charge Art extra. Additional services rendered.”

  Ian took the bags into the kitchen and put them by the stairs. Through the window he could see Laura and Jake, still talking. Or maybe Laura was just listening. She was holding the baby in front of her now, and was watching Jake over the top of its head. March was circling her, around and around, eyeing the stranger; as Ian watched, Laura put her free hand on his head and drew him toward her. He put his arms around her knees and she stroked his hair. Julie was still beside her, so she seemed to be wrapped in children. It made quite a picture, Ian thought. It would be called The Mother. Though there was something about the scene that wasn’t as reassuring as that title suggested.

  He went to the door and Jake saw him and jerked his head backward, meaning “Come on, let’s go,” so Ian went out and joined them.

  “Ian knows which field he’s in,” Laura was saying as he came up. “He’ll be so glad to see you, Jake.”

  She wasn’t all that pleased herself, Ian thought. He wondered if Jake was aware of it. But he looked perfectly at ease.

  They started off down the track, Ian being careful not to walk too fast. The limp was quite pronounced.

  “So,” Jake said. “How long have you been working for my big brother, then?”<
br />
  “About three years.”

  “And is he a good employer?” Something about the idea seemed to amuse him.

  “Yes, he’s great,” Ian said. “He’s a really nice guy.”

  “Oh, sure,” Jake said, nodding. “Sure. No one could accuse Art of not being nice.” He looked sideways at Ian and added, “He’s got a nice wife, too, hasn’t he?” Ian looked at him quickly and Jake laughed. “That’s what I figured.”

  Ian felt his face go hot. He stuck his hands in his pockets, then pulled them out again. “She’s a really nice woman,” he said, and Jake laughed again and slapped him on the back. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t tell on you. We’ll change the subject. You’re Dr. Christopherson’s son. I don’t remember him having kids. How old are you? Seventeen? Eighteen?”

  “Eighteen,” Ian said.

  “Well you were around, then. I’ve been gone—let’s see—about fifteen years I guess.”

  “Did you leave to go to college?” Ian asked, anxious to keep the conversation on this relatively safe course. Jake looked to be in his mid-thirties now, so he’d have been the right sort of age. It would probably have been unusual for a farm kid to get to college back then, but he could have won a scholarship. You could see he was smart.

  “Thought about it,” Jake said, “but decided against it. It was a bit too…you know.” Ian didn’t know, but it seemed impolite to say so. “Besides, my father was dead by then and Art was running this place. He was doing all right financially—he had a good war, as they say—but still it didn’t seem right to ask him to shell out for me.”

  They’d come to a gate and he stood back and waited for Ian to open it. The ground was a soggy mix of mud and cow dung and Jake picked his way carefully. Ian squelched through it. His boots were so caked with mud already they couldn’t get any worse.