The Bridge

In his rearview mirror all he could see was dust. It hadn’t rained there in a month, a drought attested to by the burnt-up stalks of corn that lined the dirt road and the cracks in it that lay before him. That he was doing nearly 50 down it wasn’t helping, but the faster he got there, the better he thought he’d feel. He hadn’t been sure that he knew where he was going…he’d been down the road a hundred times before, driven it even, but he was younger then and hadn’t paid much attention. Now he wished he would have. The only things that seemed familiar could’ve seemed familiar at any number of other places in the countryside, a maddening quirk of the area, and he was left to his own devices. If he’d had any sense, he thought, he’d have learned the little things like, say, how to tell directions, but he was usually too busy daydreaming about one girl or another, daydreams which he was now glad had failed to materialize. Looking back, it struck him that he’d either had very poor taste, or that he was merely lucky to have avoided such an odd assortment of females that had all turned out unfortunately, each in their own special way. Momentarily there flickered in his mind the notion that, perhaps, he had some sense after all, but those hopes were quickly dashed.

Fifty yards ahead the road splintered. To the left lay newly graveled East 11395 Avenue, the name a result of an amusing if-still-semi-practical effort to rename all country roads. East 11395 was an avenue like nacho cheese was a vegetable, he reckoned. The ungraveled dirt road to the right, which really amounted to little more than a path, seemed to be the logical continuation of the one he was already on, so he took it, in part because it felt right, though more so because he’d declined to reduce speed, rendering the other option an impractical one. It wasn’t lost on him that this road hadn’t received such a heartfelt and considered name as East 11395 Avenue. In fact, it hadn’t received a name at all; As far as the Department of Transportation was concerned, he was smack-dab in the middle of nowhere. If he were to randomly careen into one of the ditches and find himself semi-incapacitated, how would he explain where he was if he were so lucky as to have the chance? His grandfather had warned him as much before. Then again he’d told him a lot of things, some of which he’d listened to and some of which he’d ignored.

As much as anything else, that was why he was where he was…hurdling through a cornfield, tires straddling a green stripe in the road that suggested his destination was not a popular one, sure of where he was going, less so of where he was headed. But then, that was par for the course for him at this point. He’d returned home earlier in the week, unable to cope with the impending stress of college graduation and the longstanding pain that his not-so-recent breakup continued to inflict. But home was no cure. It wasn’t even an anesthetic. No, home had only salted the wound, if not opened an entirely new one. For the first time, what he left behind those three years before wasn’t what he found upon his return. His younger brother, previously possessing nothing if not time, was found to be enamored with the type of girl it is foolish to become enamored with. His father, forever laying plans for his eldest son’s return, was also discovered to be busy, though it was difficult to tell what with. His mother was found to be nearest to the place he’d left her in, though that was equal parts good and bad, given that they’d never been particularly close. He loved her like all sons do their mother, of course, but they rarely spent much time alone together, and this visit would do nothing to change that. The only constant, as it had been for the past three years, was that someone was still missing.

Just as he began to doubt his decision back at the fork, a five-foot tall, white aluminum sign assured him that he’d made the right call. Despite having not been there for a handful of years, his memory had served him well, which, in a different setting, might have brought a smile to a face that desperately needed one. Instead, though delinquents had peppered the sign with shotgun blasts, the black lettering remained prominent enough to exact from him a sigh and a drop of the head. At that moment, his self-pity rocketed to climax. Everything had backfired. The girl he loved was no longer his, but she hung around to haunt his dreams, the pseudo-reality he was living in was on a crash course with a non-pseudo version of the same, home was different, and in a last ditch quest for something that made sense, he’d driven 20 miles into the middle of nowhere to find a sign telling him that even though he’d only wanted to see a bridge, he wouldn’t even be allowed that bit of catharsis. It was out.

Turning around briefly crossed his mind, but he needed to see for himself. That bridge was the only pure thing he had left, if he still had it, and he certainly planned on finding out which one it was. As he approached a sharp bend in the road, a rust-brown truss emerged above the sun-torched tassels. If nothing else, at least it hadn’t collapsed into the creek. That would’ve been too much to bear…he might have just kept on Thelma and Louise style, no credit roll to spare him, but it hadn’t, and he hadn’t the nerve in the first place. Never did. As he dejectedly rounded the corner, the rest of the rusted, rotten structure came into view. It looked exactly as it always had, from the vines that wrapped its upper beams to the brush and weeds that flanked it, seemingly contradicting the doomsday-esque “bridge out” sign he’d passed a couple hundred yards before. Drawing closer, though, he could see the problem. It was the same problem most scarcely used old bridges off the beaten path eventually incurred: the dirt that should have met up with the wooden planks had washed out during high water or, more likely, a lethal combination of rain and neglect. Ten yards shy of the bridge, and, more importantly, five yards before the hole that rendered it useless, he skidded to a stop. Since taking the corner he’d preoccupied himself with the sights before him and again failed to slow down, a slip of the mind illustrated by the thick cloud of brown dust that swept over the roof of his car.

After the dust settled, he sat a brief moment longer, still not entirely sure of why he’d come. Whatever it was, he was there now, so he drew a breath, opened the door and stepped out. No sooner than his feet hit the ground, sweat began to bead on his lip. It was hotter outside than he recalled. Even though the sun threatened to retreat below the tree line, it was still 90 or so out, a thermal onslaught intensified exponentially by the characteristic July mugginess. It struck him that it always seemed to be just exactly that hot on the bridge, and it probably was, given that of the hundred-odd times he’d been there, they’d all been during the suffocating heat of summer. His only defense was to peel off his already damp sleeveless T-shirt and wipe his face with it, a trick that was sure to result in a few extra pimples the next morning. Unfortunately, he had no one to impress, so it didn’t particularly matter.

The frogs and locusts were due to strike up their chorus soon, the two creatures reliable as death and taxes, and they made their move as he ambled warily across the only dirt still connecting land to bridge. Their songs cut clearly through the dense evening air, both entities fighting for atmospheric supremacy, a dual ending in a stiflingly hot, loud tie. It always happened that way, as one only appeared with the other, heat and song arriving and abating together in spring and fall, while full force in the midst of summer. He may as well have been 10 years old again at that point, sitting shirtless next to his grandfather on an overturned bucket on one of the banks now only a few dozen feet away, a rod in his hands and a youthful buzz cut on his head. Perpetually impatient, he imagined himself fiddling with his line until he could claim a bite, as his grandfather stoically looked on down the creek at who knows what. He’d always fancied himself a fisherman, especially at that age, an idea perpetuated more by his fishing proclivity than any God given talent for it. Given his experience, it struck him that if fishing ability were thrown into the nature versus nurture debate, it would come across decidedly as nurture, though his grandfather would surely disagree.

If ever one was born to fish, it was his grandfather, and it’s a damn good thing, too, or the old man might have starved to death as a young boy somewhere in the mid 1940’s. As all grandfathers should, he had told his grandson countless stories from his youth, most of which dealt with playing hooky from school to fish, and about how abject poverty was something his family could only dream of. But then, all of that was true, only that he never used the word abject or poverty, given that he’d never made it out of the 6th grade. To the boy, he was something along the lines of a fatherly folk hero, who also played the role of best friend and mentor. Before he’d acquired his driver’s license, the two were practically inseparable, spending their summers and weekends together hunting and fishing and cutting logs and checking cattle, hobbies the old man had shrewdly parlayed into one multifaceted moneymaking conglomerate. He’d never been to the bridge without him.

The wooden planks that composed the floor looked relatively good, at least in comparison to what he recalled, still splintered in places with cracks allowing for a peek at the muddy water below. It wasn’t high above the water level, maybe 20 yards from it, but it also wasn’t the type of bridge you could jump off of and come away unscathed. It was usually shallow enough to, on the sunniest days, see the very bottom of the creek bed, at least right under the bridge. Even in the deepest parts of the creek, the water rarely reached above shoulder level, an often-lamented quality that the old man blamed on the increase of ponds and lakes in the area. Still, despite its various deficiencies, it served as their primary destination on fishing trips more often than not.

When they didn’t feel the need to descend the treacherously eroded banks that required you to slide on your ass most of the way down, they sometimes just fished off the bridge itself with a newly poached yellow grasshopper they then proceeded to dip in stink bait. As a boy, he had always hated stink bait, which for the most part looked identical to peanut butter – and smelled like what he imagined peanut butter would smell like if it were mixed with rotten meat and vomit - but the fish loved it, so they used it. Provided his grandfathers’ uncanny feel for just where to toss the unholy smelling bait, it struck him that the only real trick was reeling the fish in once you’d hooked it, given that it then had to be reeled 20 yards directly up out of the water and onto the bridge, a maneuver that the prey seemed somewhat averse to, as evidenced by its maniacal flopping. For all the fishing he’d done, however, he was never very fond of removing the hook, a fear that embarrassed him and aggravated his grandfather. Catfish, as you may know, have sharp, hardened fins that they use as a defense mechanism, a mechanism he saw in action when his uncle had once stupidly tossed a fish to the old man to clean, resulting in the fin piercing directly through the old man’s hand. No more than eight-years-old at the time, the boy bawled his eyes out and punched his well-meaning uncle as hard as an eight-year old can for hurting his grandfather. Since then, the boy had never been particularly fond of his uncle or handling the fish. But then, he didn’t particularly like crawfish and their mini pinchers either, so perhaps he was just a pansy.

A droplet of sweat that landed squarely in his eye snapped him back from his haze. It was dark now, the sun having long ago sank below the towering maples and cottonwoods that lined the creek and fields. He’d been standing there for well over an hour now. Composing himself, he came to realize that it wasn’t just the one bead; he found himself leaning over the waist-high rail, hands grasping the upside down-V made by the bridge’s support rails, his thick brown mop of hair thoroughly drenched. Had the planks below him not been so hot and parched, there would no doubt have been a puddle, and he somewhat seriously wondered if his sweat had made even an infinitesimal increase in that damned-low water level. Reluctantly, he knew that it was time to head back home. Not that he had anything to do, but it was just time, a notion reflecting an innate, unique sense of the arbitrary that he assumed he picked up from his mother, who never ran out of nonsense in order to keep him busy. After taking one last long look out across the now-moonlit waterway, he was both glad he had come, and disappointed in what he had found, if not, in retrospect, entirely surprised. Turning to head back to his dust-covered car, he paused, stooped down, and returned upright with a large hunk of gravel that had been stuck between one of the cracks. He cocked his arm back to hurl it into the water, but he again stopped, and stepped back up to the edge rail. Scanning the support beams, he stepped up to the largest, one that ran perpendicular to the planks, and on the side facing the water, scrawled the old man’s name. Satisfied, he chucked the rock as far he could, and then turned back to his car, unsure if he’d be back.