Mortality Bridge

by Steven R. Boyett

  “Setting me up. For the brushoff. Mister Rock Star?”

  “If I were dead and stuck down here forever with you I wouldn’t think twice, Sam. But the clock is ticking and the longer I hang around the less my chances are, and this ground is hard as rock and it’d take days to dig you out of there.”

  “Half an hour.”

  Niko scrutinizes the unnerving spaceless juncture of granite and ground from which part of Sam emerges like some inflatable Sam doll flattened there, the rough depression beneath him meticulously scraped for how many patient painful years like a dribble of water carving out a canyon. Half an hour? “No way.”

  “Half an hour, Niko. I swear to. Well, I swear. Look, I’ve dug down to. About my belly button. My arm won’t go. Any lower because. My back won’t bend. It’s just my hips. And my legs. Taking the weight. Under here. If you use that. Pitchfork. To jab out a. Shallow trench about. Down to my knees. I think you can. Work it in. From an angle. And lever me out.”

  Niko stares. “Are you out of your fucking mind? I’ll probably stab you as much as the ground. And do you know what it’ll do to you if I lever you out of there?”

  Sam grins. “What, you think it can. Get any worse?” He pats the granite looming over him. “Come on, Niko. I can’t bleed to death. I can only bleed. And you’re not. Gonna kill me. Cause I’m already dead. And if it hurts me. Well. Death’s a bitch huh? Half an hour and. If I’m not out. You can go your. Merry way and. I’ll still be grateful. For you knocking. A hundred years off. My downtime here.”

  Niko eyes the iron rod. He stands slowly and reverses it until the business end is pointed toward Sam. “You always did talk me into the most unbelievable shit.”

  In the dimness Niko can’t tell if Sam’s expression is deadpan or earnest. “You ain’t seen nothin yet. Pilgrim.”

  IT TAKES CLOSER to an hour, every second of it nauseating.

  The pronged rod is really more trident than pitchfork. Niko sets to work tentatively, pushing the prongs along the depression begun by Sam and jabbing at the hard ground. Soon he sees his trepidation will get him nowhere. Propped on his free arm Sam lifts up to make a space between himself and the compacted ground. There’s still only a few inches’ clearance and it’s hard for Niko to get leverage. On one knee he pulls the trident back and shoves it forward again. The shock of it striking jolts his hands. Sam hisses and grimaces.

  Niko hesitates. “Did I hit you?”

  “Just ignore me. Okay? I’ve developed. A high tolerance.”

  “Okay.” Niko jabs again. Again Sam winces. They continue like this, Niko jabbing and Sam making pained faces and even whimpering once, until Sam suggests Niko scoop out the dirt he has scraped loose. Niko wipes sweat from his brow and reaches under Sam. His position necessarily close and uncomfortably intimate. Sam’s face caked with old blood. One eye nearly bugging out of his head, both cobwebbed with burst capillaries. Smell of rot.

  What Niko’s hand encounters in the cramped hot damp space beneath Sam’s flattened body does not feel recognizably human. He scoops dirt back toward himself and his hand emerges bloody. “Jesu—”

  “Don’t.”

  Niko stares amazed at the fear in Sam’s cry.

  “No holy names man. Not here. They’ll be on you. Like a cheap suit. And they’ll make you. Sorry you even know. How to talk.”

  “Okay.”

  “I know it doesn’t. Mean anything. When you say it. We all got into. The habit up there. But it means something. Down here. Trust me. And they do not. Like it.”

  “Okay.” And recommences jabbing with the trident.

  Before long Sam screams with every trident stroke, but whenever Niko hesitates Sam begs him to keep going. The head of the trident caked with blood and dirt and gore. Niko puts his hand beside Sam’s ruined face and reaches under the block and scoops out tacky dirt and something moist and filthy. He brushes off the dirt and the object flops in his hand. Sam’s penis. Niko stares stupidly at it and then realizes what it is and yells and jumps backward, flinging it away as if it is a snake poised to strike him. He turns and spews his last earthly meal upon the hard flat ground. When he’s finished heaving and he straightens and turns to Sam to say he’s sorry but he just can’t do it, he can’t do this to another human being dead or damned or friend or stranger, and Sam sees it in his face and interrupts to tell him that it hurts but not that bad, and besides the pain is easier to take when you know it isn’t mortal. That no wound here is mortal. If you didn’t heal they couldn’t keep on torturing you.

  It doesn’t make Niko feel any better but it does let him go on. Soon he’s jabbing the trident in as far as it will go, and Sam tells Niko to try using it to pry him out.

  There’s only one way to do it and Niko doesn’t protest. He pushes the trident until it grates against Sam’s flattened hipbone and then wedges the iron rod where the bottom of the block meets the lip of the depression and begins to pull. Easily at first, then harder. Sam pulls himself with his free arm, screaming but refusing to let Niko ease up. The trident tip scrapes bone and the rod slides back toward him. Either Sam has moved forward or the trident has ripped across his flesh. Or both.

  Niko wedges the trident and pries again. Sam is definitely coming loose. His crushed arm flops into the depression. Sam reaches with his good arm to drag the crushed one free of the block and it flops onto the plain like the boneless limb of a freshbaked gingerbread man. Sam oozes from his stone prison like something excreted. Niko drops the trident and grabs Sam around his chest to pull the rest of him free. Sam’s chest is soft and full of lumps and it gives in the wrong places. Niko feels as if he’s hugging a loose and lumpy sack of flour. Both men yell as Sam pulls free, jellied legs dragging behind him and raw exposed muscle and bone and a loop of intestine coming out his ass and glistening in the pale orange light.

  Niko is about to blow his groceries again and he sets Sam down. Sam clings to him a lingering moment with his only working arm, drowning man to driftwood, then lets go to flop onto the ground with a soft resilience that makes Niko tighten his throat and look away. His old friend’s body so distorted it inspires horror more than empathy or even dread. Sam’s been trapped long enough to heal but his organs and bones have grown back flat.

  Unable to lift his head Sam stares up at the sky. “How do I look?”

  “Like you crawled out from under a rock. What now, Sam?”

  “Now we get out of here.”

  “Sam, you can’t walk.”

  Sam merely stares up at him. Of course he can’t walk, his legs are flabby tentacles. Blood burst from his skin and even toenails when the block landed on him, blood and shit spurted from his bowels along with loops of intestine and other unidentifiable stuff. His pelvis and ribcage are crushed and every organ that wasn’t shredded by bone had to have hemorrhaged. The pain alone would have killed Sam if he weren’t already dead. His brain had probably hemorrhaged like sat-on macaroni. It’s obvious as the block beside them that Sam isn’t going anywhere anytime soon unless somebody carries him, and the only person likely to do that for a long long time is Niko. The blunt truth of it hangs there between them like an odor.

  Sam looks up at him. “I’d do the same for you.”

  “I know you would.” Sam would, too. He was the guy who made the news by charging a machine gun nest with a grenade in hand and pulling the pin to lob it in through sheer inertia long after he’d been shot dead, the guy who dives in the frozen river to retrieve the fallen baby and hands it up to the mother before submerging one last time. Posthumous decoration was invented for men like Sam.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Fire away.”

  “How’d you die?”

  Absurdly and despite his horrific appearance Sam looks embarrassed. “Tried to break up a fight in a bar. Don’t know what it was about. Guy had a knife and the other one didn’t. I didn’t think it was fair, that’s all. I was—well, what difference does it make, here I am. Oh well, huh.” Sam snorts. �
��That’s probably what they put on my tombstone. Oh well.”

  Niko’s thinking how much he doesn’t want to do this as he puts on his coat and bends to pick up Sam.

  “SO HOW COME you’re down here in the Park?”

  “That’s what they call it?”

  “Yeah. Like an amusement park, only for torturing people. An abusement park.”

  Niko’s wearing Sam like a knapsack. He snorts.

  “Seen anyone else you knew?” Sam’s carrying Niko’s guitar case. “I really just got here a few hours ago. And I can’t see a damned thing.”

  “I guess you get used to it. The dark I mean. I don’t think you ever get used to the rest of it. I think that’s the whole idea.”

  Niko carries the trident.

  “Why are you down here, Sam? You were a good person.”

  “Well thanks. It’s a mystery to me. Nobody tells you. You just wake up here and they start in on you. I had plenty of time under that block to go over my whole life front to back and I couldn’t come up with anything. Except maybe that I was a good guy but I wasn’t great, you know? Not a hero or a saint or anything like that. Maybe that’s what you have to be to make the cut.”

  “Then I imagine there are an awful lot of people here.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  Sam’s blood is soaking through Niko’s coat.

  “I’ve never seen a living person down here. There can’t have been very many, huh?”

  “Inanna came to visit her sister. Gilgamesh came to conquer death. Odysseus—well, he summoned the shades of Tiresias and Agamemnon from the mouth of Hades more than really descending. Theseus tried to kidnap Persephone and was tormented until Hercules rescued him when he came down to bring Cerberus to King Eurystheus. Virgil wrote about Aeneas coming down to find his father and then guided Dante when he got the nickel tour. Most of the medieval visits weren’t true descents but visions. Oh, and a lot of virtuous pagans like Adam and Eve and Moses were rescued by Jesus after his cruci—”

  The ground trembles and a roaring rolls across the lidded sky. “Shit. Now you’ve done it.”

  “What—oh.”

  “Oh, he says. Man, go faster if you can. They’re gonna be on us like flies on shit.” Sam peers in all directions, one eye popping, both eyes blooded.

  “Sorry. I forgot.”

  “Oh well.”

  Niko picks up his pace and Sam slaps against his back. Mangled Gumby or not Sam still weighs a grown man’s weight.

  “He was already dead though so he probably doesn’t count.”

  “Who?” Niko sounds a little breathless.

  “You know. Son of He Whose Name Must Not be Said. He supposedly did it between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The Harrowing of Hell, Catholics call it. Between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.”

  “Some weekend.”

  “Funny, when you talk about all the mortals who’ve come down here, you forgot one I’d have thought you’d mention first.”

  “Who’s that, Sam?”

  “Orpheus. He always reminded me of you. For one thing he was Greek—”

  “Thracian. Son of Calliope and Œagrus.”

  “And he played the lyre, which I guess is some kind of harp.”

  “Invented by Hermes. Nero played it. Most people think he fiddled.”

  “But Orpheus was like a force of nature. You know, he’d play, birds would harmonize, lions and lambs would crouch down to listen, rivers changed course to be nearer to the sound. Dogs and cats were pals. All that big mythic type stuff. Didn’t he also save Odysseus’ ship by drowning out the Sirens with his playing?”

  “The Argo. Looking for the Golden Fleece with Jason.”

  Niko’s stride has become determined, his heels pound metronomically.

  “Somewhere along the line Orpheus fell in love with the maiden Eurydice—”

  “After the Argosy.”

  “The myth doesn’t say much about her, does it? I guess she’s what Hollywood calls the love interest.”

  “She was a nymph.”

  “Like I said. So Orpheus and Eurydice get married. The wedding’s barely over and what happens? Eurydice goes walking in a meadow with her bridesmaids, who knows why, and she gets bit on the ankle by a viper and dies instantly. Say, could you not grab my leg so hard?”

  “Is there some point to all this?”

  “So Orpheus’ wife of about five minutes dies of a snakebite and Orpheus goes out of his mind with grief. He grabs up his lyre and goes to some cave—”

  “Tænarus, in Lacoön.”

  “—and he walks down until he reaches Pluto and Persephone, the King and Queen of the Underworld. And he plays his lyre for them and sings his grief at the loss of Eurydice. Say, doesn’t this guitar case get kind of heavy after a while?”

  “Fuck you, Sam.”

  “He tells them Look, everyone comes back to you guys sooner or later anyhow. Our life is only loaned to us, at the end of it you get us no matter what, right? So what’s the difference if you let me have her now? It’s just a loan. Lend her to me and let her live out her natural lifespan with me and then you’ll have her again forever. He doesn’t even try to beat the rap the way they do in all those deal with the devil stories, because the Greeks didn’t have a heaven and hell. Just an underworld where everyone ends up. Nowadays who knows what old Orpheus would do?”

  “Might as well finish it.”

  “Okay, well, Pluto and Persephone can hardly turn him down, can they? This guy’s music defeated the Sirens. So Orpheus plays his lyre and all of Hades pretty much grinds to a halt. Pluto and Persephone are like, enough already, you’re killing us here. They get Eurydice from the newly arrived souls—maybe she was in a line for processing or something, I don’t know. But they give her back to Orpheus and they tell him he can take her back up to the world of men. But there’s a catch.”

  “Don’t look back.”

  “Don’t look back. Eurydice can follow Niko—sorry, follow Orpheus—back up to the world, and he can hold her hand and lead her through the cave and back to the daylight. But if he looks back the way they’ve come the whole deal’s off.”

  Niko watches his own feet plod the treadmill ground.

  “So they come back up through Hades, which couldn’t have been much fun. They’re holding hands and walking near the end of the tunnel and Orpheus sees a light ahead. He steps into it and—”

  “He stepped into it and looked back to tell Eurydice how happy he was to be back in the world with her. But she was still in the shadows and the second he looked back her hand pulled away. She let go. He tried to hold onto her but he’d looked back and she’d become a shade again and she was slipping back into the dark.”

  “And he tried to follow her, didn’t he?”

  “The gods wouldn’t let him go back a second time.”

  “Once in a lifetime opportunity I guess.”

  Niko stops walking. They are near another of the granite blocks. “I have to stop, Sam. I need a couple minutes.”

  “Sure. I’m not very light, am I?”

  “Heavier by the word.”

  Niko kneels and drops the trident and Sam lets go the guitar case and then Niko lowers Sam from his back. Sam peels away with a sound like getting up barebacked from a vinyl chair. Niko is sweating and breathless.

  “I always thought that story was mean,” says Sam.

  Niko laughs a single syllable. “Yeah.”

  “I always wondered why he never told the gods fuck you and went back anyhow.”

  “Maybe he was more broken than angry. Maybe he realized he’d just fuck it up again. Maybe he knew it would all come around again one day. Maybe he swore he’d change the ending if it did. It’s an old story really. It’s been told a lot of times a lot of ways.”

  They’re quiet a few minutes.

  “The first time I heard Notes on Her Sleeping,” Sam says. “I’ll never forget it. It broke my heart. I was a first-year grad student sharing an apartment with two other g
uys. But that day I was alone and enjoying no one else being around. Just sitting on my ratty couch in my shoebox apartment and listening to the radio. You don’t know what paradise is till it’s way too late. So this song comes on and a minute into it I just know it’s you. I had your first two albums, with Perish Blues and Stagger Lee. I liked them but you never got much airplay till that song. It was the first time I heard someone say your name on the radio. I was so proud of you. This was like nothing I ever heard out of you. Really sweet and just so sad. And I just sat there alone and cried. I guess people tell you things like that all the time.”

  “Not quite like that.”

  “Well. Bridge was one of my favorite albums. It would’ve been even if I didn’t know you. I mean that.”

  “Thanks, Sam.”

  “I just wanted you to know. I’m not just saying it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I hope the ending changes this time round. I hope you get her back.”

  Niko says nothing. What is there to say?

  Pale orange throbs the sky.

  Sam says Oh shit.

  Niko turns and looks out where Sam is looking but sees nothing. “What?”

  Sam’s good hand points toward what he sees with his dark-adapted eye. “Our friends are back.”

  “Shit.” Niko puts his coat on and feels the pack of cigarillos in a pocket. He bends to Sam.

  Who shakes his head. “Never mind, Niko. Grab your case and haulass over to that block. Stay up against the side and it’ll be harder for them to get you. Their aim’s good but I doubt it’s that good.”

  “But—”

  “Go on. You won’t make it if you have to carry me. If they miss you, haul back over here. I promise I won’t go anywhere.”

  Niko hesitates. He wants to say he knows old phrases and word-keys and charms. But Sam’s right and now is not a time to learn that ancient keys are useless. He picks up his guitar case. “Back in a few.”

  “They’ll have to go back for another block after they drop this one. Come back right after they drop.”