by Joe Hill
“Really worried, huh?” Pete stuck a pinkie in one ear and twisted it back and forth. “Got a lot of sentimental value, I guess.”
“No. I mean yes, it does. It belonged to her grandmother, my great-grandmother. But I mean it’s also very valuable.”
“Un-huh,” he said.
“It’s an antique,” said the Brat, not entirely sure why she felt the need to persuade him of its value.
“It’s only an antique if it’s worth something. If it’s not worth anything, it’s just an old thingamajig.”
“It’s diamonds,” the Brat said. “Diamonds and gold.”
Pete laughed: a short, caustic bark of laughter.
“It is,” she said.
Pete said, “Nah. Costume jewelry. Those things look like diamonds? Zirconia. And see inside the band, where it’s goin’ silver? Gold don’t come off. What’s good stays good no matter how much of a beating it takes.” His brow wrinkled in an expression of unexpected sympathy. “You okay? You don’t look so hot.”
“I’m all right,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of sun.” Which seemed a very grown-up thing to say.
She wasn’t all right, though. She felt dizzy, and her legs were trembling steadily. She wanted to be outside, away from the mingled perfume of Petesweat and onion rings and bubbling deep fat. She wanted this dream over with.
“Are you sure I can’t get you something cold to drink?” Pete asked.
“Thanks, but I had a milkshake when I was in for lunch.”
“If you had a milkshake, you didn’t get it here,” Pete said. “McDonald’s, maybe. What we got is frappes.”
“I have to go,” she said, turning and starting back toward the door. She was aware of sunburned Pete watching her with real concern and was grateful to him for his empathy. She thought that in spite of his stink and brusque manner he was a good man, the kind of man who would worry about a sick-looking little girl, out on her own along Hampton Beach. But she didn’t dare say anything else to him. The ill sweat was damp on her temples and upper lip, and it took a great deal of concentration to clamp down on the tremors in her legs. Her left eye thudded again. A bit less gently this time. Her conviction that she was only imagining this visit to Terry’s, that she was tramping through a particularly forceful dream, was hard to hold on to, like trying to keep a grip on a slick frog.
Vic stepped back outside and walked swiftly along the hot concrete, past the parked and leaning motorcycles. She opened the door in the tall plank fence and stepped into the alley behind Terry’s Primo Subs.
The bridge hadn’t moved. Its exterior walls were crammed right up against the buildings on either side. It hurt to look at it dead-on. It hurt in her left eye.
A cook or a dishwasher—someone who worked in the kitchen—stood in the alley by the Dumpster. He wore an apron streaked with grease and blood. Anyone who had a good look at that apron would probably skip getting lunch at Terry’s. He was a little man with a bristly face and veined, tattooed forearms, and he stared at the bridge with an expression located somewhere between outrage and fright.
“What the motherfuck?” the guy said. He cast a confused look at Vic. “Do you see that, kid? I mean . . . what the motherfuck is that?”
“My bridge. Don’t worry. I’ll take it with me,” Vic said. She was herself unclear what she meant by this.
She gripped her bike by the handlebars, turned it around, and pushed it toward the bridge. She ran alongside it two steps and then threw her leg over.
The front tire bumped up onto the boards, and she plunged into hissing darkness.
The sound, that idiot roar of static, rose as the Raleigh carried her out across the bridge. On the way across, she had believed she was hearing the river below, but that wasn’t it. There were long cracks in the walls, and for the first time she looked at them as they flashed by. Through them she saw a flickering white brilliance, as if the world’s largest TV set were just on the other side of the wall and it was stuck on a channel that wasn’t broadcasting. A storm blew against the lopsided and decrepit bridge, a blizzard of light. She could feel the bridge buckling just slightly, as the downpour dashed itself against the walls.
She shut her eyes, didn’t want to see any more, stood up on the pedals and rode for the other side. She tried her prayerlike chant once more—almost there, almost there—but was too winded and sick to maintain any one thought for long. There was only her breath and the roaring, raging static, that endless waterfall of sound, rising in volume, building to a maddening intensity and then building some more until she wanted to cry out for it to stop, the word coming to her lips, stop, stop it, her lungs gathering air to shout, and that was when the bike thudded back down in
Haverhill, Massachusetts
THE SOUND CUT OUT, WITH A SOFT ELECTRICAL POP. SHE FELT THAT pop in her head, in her left temple, a small but sharply felt explosion.
She knew even before she opened her eyes that she was home—or not home, but in her woods at least. She knew they were her woods by the smell of pines and the quality of the air, a scrubbed, cool, clean sensation that she associated with the Merrimack River. She could hear the river, distantly, a gentle, soothing rush of sound that was really in no way like static.
She opened her eyes, lifted her head, shook her hair out of her face. The late-day sunlight blinked through the leaves above her in irregular flashes. She slowed, squeezed the brakes, and put one foot down.
Vic turned her head for a last look back across the bridge at Hampton Beach. She wondered if she could still see the fry cook in his dirty apron.
Only she couldn’t see him because the Shorter Way Bridge was gone. There was a guardrail, where the entrance to the bridge belonged. Beyond that the ground fell away in a steep and weedy slope that ended at the deep blue channel of the river.
Three chipped concrete pylons, bracket-shaped at the top, poked out of the tossing, agitated water. That was all that was left of the Shorter Way.
Vic didn’t understand. She had just ridden across the bridge, had smelled the old, rotting, sun-baked wood and the rank hint of bat piss, had heard the boards knocking under her tires.
Her left eye throbbed. She shut it and rubbed it hard with her palm and opened it again, and for a moment she thought the bridge was there. She saw, or thought she saw, a kind of afterimage of it, a white glare in the shape of a bridge, reaching all the way to the opposite bank.
But the afterimage didn’t last, and her left eye was streaming tears, and she was too weary to wonder for long what had happened to the bridge. She had never, in all her life, so needed to be home, in her room, in her bed, in the crisp folds of her sheets.
She got on her bike but could only pedal a few yards before she gave up. She stepped off and pushed, her head down and her hair swinging. Her mother’s bracelet rolled loosely on her sweaty wrist. She hardly noticed it there.
Vic pushed the bike across the yellowing grass of the backyard, past the playset she never played on anymore, the chains of the swings caked in rust. She dropped her bike in the driveway and went inside. She wanted to get to her bedroom, wanted to lie down and rest. But when she heard a tinny crack in the kitchen, she veered off course to see who was in there.
It was her father, who stood with his back to her, can of Stroh’s in one hand. He was running the other hand under cold water in the sink, turning his knuckles beneath the faucet.
Vic wasn’t sure how long she had been gone. The clock on the toaster oven was no help. It blinked 12:00 over and over, as if it had just been reset. The lights were off, too, the room cool with afternoon shadow.
“Dad,” she said, in a weary voice she hardly recognized. “What time is it?”
He glanced at the oven, then gave his head a little shake.
“Damned if I know. The power blinked out about five minutes ago. I think the whole street is—” But then he glanced back at her, eyebrows rising in a question. “What’s up? You all right?” He turned off the water and grabbed a rag to pat his hand
dry. “You don’t look so hot.”
She laughed, a strained, humorless sound. “That’s what Pete said.” Her own voice seemed to come from way far off—from the other end of a long tunnel.
“Pete who?”
“Hampton Beach Pete.”
“Vic?”
“I’m all right.” She tried to swallow and couldn’t. She was painfully thirsty, although she hadn’t known it until she saw her father standing there with a cold drink in his hand. She shut her eyes for a moment and saw a sweating glass of chilly pink-grapefruit juice, an image that seemed to cause every cell in her body to ache with need. “I’m just thirsty. Do we have any juice?”
“Sorry, kid. Fridge is pretty empty. Mom hasn’t been to the grocery store yet.”
“Is she lying down?”
“Don’t know,” he said. He did not add, Don’t care, but it was there in his tone.
“Oh,” Vic said, and she slipped the bracelet off her wrist and put it on the kitchen table. “When she comes out, tell her I found her bracelet.”
He slammed the door of the fridge and looked around. His gaze shifted to the bracelet, then back to her.
“Where . . . ?”
“In the car. Between the seats.”
The room darkened, as if the sun had disappeared behind a great mass of clouds. Vic swayed.
Her father put the back of his hand to her face, the hand that held his can of beer. He had abraded his knuckles on something. “Christ, you’re burning up, Brat. Hey, Lin?”
“I’m fine,” Vic told him. “I’m just going to lie down for a minute.”
She didn’t mean to lie down right there, right then. The plan was to walk back to her room and stretch out under her awesome new David Hasselhoff poster—but her legs gave way and she dropped. Her father caught her before she could hit the floor. He scooped her into the air, a hand under her legs, another under her back, and carried her into the hall.
“Lin?” Chris McQueen called out again.
Linda emerged from her bedroom, holding a wet washcloth to the corner of her mouth. Her feathery auburn hair was disheveled and her eyes unfocused, as if she had in fact been asleep. Her gaze sharpened when she saw the Brat in her husband’s arms.
She met them at the door to Vic’s bedroom. Linda reached up with slender fingers and pushed the hair back from Vic’s brow, pressed a hand to her forehead. Linda’s palm was chilly and smooth, and her touch set off a shivering fit that was one part sickness, one part pleasure. Vic’s parents weren’t mad at each other anymore, and if the Brat had known that all she had to do to bring them together again was make herself sick, she could’ve skipped going across the bridge to get the bracelet and just stuck a finger down her throat.
“What happened to her?”
“She passed out,” Chris said.
“No I didn’t,” said the Brat.
“Hundred-degree fever and falling down, and she wants to argue with me,” said her father with unmistakable admiration.
Her mother lowered the washcloth she was holding to the corner of her own mouth. “Heatstroke. Three hours in that car and then right outside on her bike, no sunscreen on, and nothing to drink all day except that rotten milkshake at Terry’s.”
“Frappe. They call ’em frappes at Terry’s,” Vic said. “You hurt your mouth.”
Her mother licked the corner of her swollen lips. “I’ll get a glass of water and some ibuprofen. We’ll both take some.”
“While you’re in the kitchen, why don’t you grab your bracelet?” Chris said. “It’s on the table.”
Linda took two steps before registering what her husband had said. She looked back. Chris McQueen stood in the doorway to Vic’s room, holding her in his arms. Vic could see David Hasselhoff, over her bed, smiling at her, looking like he could barely suppress the urge to wink: You did good, kid.
“It was in the car,” Chris said. “The Brat found it.”
Home
VIC SLEPT.
Her dreams were an incoherent flickershow of still images: a gasmask on a cement floor, a dead dog by the side of the road with its head smashed in, a forest of towering pine trees hung with blind white angels.
This last image was so vivid and mysteriously awful—those dark sixty-foot-high trees swaying in the wind like stoned revelers in a pagan ceremony, the angels flashing and gleaming in their branches—that she wanted to scream.
She tried to yell but couldn’t force any sound up her throat. She was trapped beneath a suffocating avalanche of shadow stuff, a mountainous heap of soft, airless matter. She fought to claw her way out, shoving desperately, flailing about with all the angry, wiry strength she could muster, until suddenly she found herself sitting up in bed, her whole body greased in sweat. Her father sat on the edge of the mattress beside her, holding her by the wrists.
“Vic,” he said. “Vic. Relax. You just smacked me hard enough to turn my head around. Lay off. It’s Dad.”
“Oh,” she said. He let go of her, and her arms dropped to her sides. “Sorry.”
He held his jaw between thumb and forefinger and wiggled it back and forth. “It’s okay. Probably had it coming.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. For whatever. Everyone’s got summin’.”
She leaned forward and kissed his whiskery chin, and he smiled.
“Your fever broke,” her father said. “You feel better?”
She shrugged, supposed she felt all right, now that she was out from under the great pile of black blankets and away from that dream forest of malevolent Christmas trees.
“You were pretty out of it,” he said. “You should’ve heard yourself.”
“What did I say?”
“At one point you were shouting that the bats were out of the bridge,” he told her. “I think you meant belfry.”
“Yeah. I mean . . . no. No, I was probably talking about the bridge.” Vic had forgotten, for a moment, about the Shorter Way. “What happened to the bridge, Dad?”
“Bridge?”
“The Shorter Way. The old covered bridge. It’s all gone.”
“Oh,” he said. “I heard that some dumb son of a bitch tried to drive his car across it and went right through. Got hisself killed and brought down most of the bridge with him. They demoed the rest. That’s why I told you I didn’t want you going out on that damn thing. They should’ve taken it down twenty years ago.”
She shivered.
“Look at you,” her father said. “You are just sick as a dog.”
She thought of her fever dream about the dog with the smashed-in head, and the world first brightened, then dimmed.
When her vision cleared, her father was holding a rubber bucket against her chest.
“If you have to choke something up,” he said, “try and get it in the pail. Christ, I’ll never take you to frigging Terry’s again.”
She remembered the smell of Petesweat and the ribbons of flypaper coated with dead bugs and vomited.
Her father walked out with the pail of sick. He came back with a glass of ice water.
She drank half in three swallows. It was so cold it set off a fresh shivering fit. Chris pulled the blankets up around her again, put his hand on her shoulder, and sat with her, waiting for the chill to pass. He didn’t move. He didn’t talk. It was calming just to have him there, to share in his easy, self-assured silence, and in almost no time at all she felt herself sliding down into sleep. Sliding down into sleep . . . or riding, maybe. With her eyes closed, she had a sensation, almost, of being on her bike again and gliding effortlessly into dark and restful quiet.
When her father rose to go, though, she was still conscious enough to be aware of it, and she made a noise of protest and reached for him. He slipped away.
“Get your rest, Vic,” he whispered. “We’ll have you back on your bike in no time.”
She drifted.
His voice came to her from far off.
“I’m sorry they took the Shorter Way down,” he mu
rmured.
“I thought you didn’t like it,” she said, rolling over and away from him, letting him go, giving him up. “I thought you were scared I’d try to ride my bike on it.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I was scared. I mean I’m sorry they went and took it down without me. If they were going to blow the thing out of the sky, I wish they’d let me set the charges. That bridge was always a death trap. Anyone could see it was going to kill someone someday. I’m just glad it didn’t kill you. Go to sleep, short stuff.”
Various Locales
IN A FEW MONTHS, THE INCIDENT OF THE LOST BRACELET WAS LARGELY forgotten, and when Vic did remember it, she remembered finding the thing in the car. She did not think about the Shorter Way if she could help it. The memory of her trip across the bridge was fragmented and had a quality of hallucination about it, was inseparable from the dream she’d had of dark trees and dead dogs. It did her no good to recollect it, and so she tucked the memory away in a safe-deposit box of the mind, locked it out of sight, and forgot about it.
And she did the same with all the other times.
Because there were other times, other trips on her Raleigh across a bridge that wasn’t there, to find something that had been lost.
There was the time her friend Willa Lords lost Mr. Pentack, her good-luck corduroy penguin. Willa’s parents cleaned out her room one day while Willa was sleeping over at Vic’s house, and Willa believed that Mr. Pentack had been chucked into the garbage along with her Tinker Bell mobile and the Lite-Brite board that didn’t work anymore. Willa was inconsolable, so torn up she couldn’t go to school the next day—or the day after.
But Vic made it better. It turned out that Willa had brought Mr. Pentack along for the sleepover. Vic found it under her bed, among the dust bunnies and forgotten socks. Tragedy averted.
Vic certainly didn’t believe she found Mr. Pentack by climbing on her Raleigh and riding through the Pittman Street Woods to the place where the Shorter Way Bridge had once stood. She did not believe the bridge was waiting there or that she had seen writing on the wall, in green spray paint: FENWAY BOWLING →. She did not believe the bridge had been filled with a roar of static and that mystery lights flashed and raced beyond its pine walls.