Chapter One: The Goddam Bridge. The Miracle. The Howling. CHAPTER ONE The Goddam Bridge. The Miracle. The Howling. 1 I''m sure I can tell this story. I''m also sure no one will believe it.
That''s fine with me. Telling it will be enough. My problem--and I''m sure many writers have it, not just newbies like me--is deciding where to start. My first thought was with the shed, because that''s where my adventures really began, but then I realized I would have to tell about Mr. Bowditch first, and how we became close. Only that never would have happened except for the miracle that happened to my father. A very ordinary miracle you could say, one that''s happened to many thousands of men and women since 1935, but it seemed like a miracle to a kid. Only that isn''t the right place, either, because I don''t think my father would have needed a miracle if it hadn''t been for that goddamned bridge.
So that''s where I need to start, with the goddamned Sycamore Street Bridge. And now, thinking of those things, I see a clear thread leading up through the years to Mr. Bowditch and the padlocked shed behind his ramshackle old Victorian. But a thread is easy to break. So not a thread but a chain. A strong one. And I was the kid with the shackle clamped around his wrist. 2 The Little Rumple River runs through the north end of Sentry''s Rest (known to the locals as Sentry), and until the year 1996, the year I was born, it was spanned by a wooden bridge.
That was the year the state inspectors from the Department of Highway Transportation looked it over and deemed it unsafe. People in our part of Sentry had known that since ''82, my father said. The bridge was posted for ten thousand pounds, but townies with a fully loaded pickup truck mostly steered clear of it, opting for the turnpike extension, which was an annoying and time-consuming detour. My dad said you could feel the planks shiver and shake and rumble under you even in a car. It was dangerous, the state inspectors were right about that, but here''s the irony: if the old wooden bridge had never been replaced by one made of steel, my mother might still be alive. The Little Rumple really is little, and putting up the new bridge didn''t take long. The wooden span was demolished and the new one was opened to traffic in April of 1997. "The mayor cut a ribbon, Father Coughlin blessed the goddam thing, and that was that," my father said one night.
He was pretty drunk at the time. "Wasn''t much of a blessing for us, Charlie, was it?" It was named the Frank Ellsworth Bridge, after a hometown hero who died in Vietnam, but the locals just called it the Sycamore Street Bridge. Sycamore Street was paved nice and smooth on both sides, but the bridge deck--one hundred and forty-two feet long--was steel grating that made a humming sound when cars went over it and a rumble when trucks used it--which they could do, because the bridge was now rated at sixty thousand pounds. Not big enough for a loaded semi, but long-haulers never used Sycamore Street, anyway. There was talk every year in the town council about paving the deck and adding at least one sidewalk, but every year it seemed like there were other places where the money was needed more urgently. I don''t think a sidewalk would have saved my mother, but paving might have. There''s no way to know, is there? That goddam bridge. 3 We lived halfway up the long length of Sycamore Street Hill, about a quarter of a mile from the bridge.
There was a little gas-and-convenience store on the other side called Zip Mart. It sold all the usual stuff, from motor oil to Wonder Bread to Little Debbie cakes, but it also sold fried chicken made by the proprietor, Mr. Eliades (known to the neighborhood as Mr. Zippy). That chicken was exactly what the sign in the window said: THE BEST IN THE LAND. I can still remember how tasty it was, but I never ate a single piece after my mom died. I would have gagged it up if I tried. One Saturday in November of 2003--the town council still discussing paving the bridge and still deciding it could wait another year--my mother told us she was going to walk down to the Zippy and get us fried chicken for dinner.
My father and I were watching a college football game. "You should take the car," Dad said. "It''s going to rain." "I need the exercise," Mom said, "but I''ll wear my Little Red Riding Hood raincoat." And that''s what she was wearing the last time I saw her. The hood wasn''t up because it wasn''t raining yet, so her hair was spilling over her shoulders. I was seven years old, and thought my mother had the world''s most beautiful red hair. She saw me looking at her through the window and waved.
I waved back, then turned my attention to the TV, where LSU was driving. I wish I had looked longer, but I don''t blame myself. You never know where the trapdoors are in your life, do you? It wasn''t my fault, and it wasn''t Dad''s fault, although I know he blamed himself, thought if only I''d gotten up off my dead ass and given her a ride to the damn store . It probably wasn''t the fault of the man in the plumbing truck, either. The cops said he was sober, and he swore he was keeping to the speed limit, which was 25 in our residential zone. Dad said that even if that were true, the man must have taken his eyes off the road, if only for a few seconds. Dad was probably right about that. He was an insurance claims adjuster, and he told me once that the only pure accident he ever heard of was a man in Arizona who was killed when a meteor hit him in the head.
"There''s always someone at fault," Dad said. "Which is not the same as blame." "Do you blame the man who hit Mom?" I asked. He thought about it. Raised his glass to his lips and drank. This was six or eight months after Mom died, and he''d pretty much given up on beer. By then he was strictly a Gilbey''s man. "I try not to.
And mostly I can do that unless I wake up at two in the morning with nobody in the bed but me. Then I blame him." 4 Mom walked down the hill. There was a sign where the sidewalk ended. She walked past the sign and crossed the bridge. By then it was getting dark and starting to drizzle. She went into the store, and Irina Eliades (of course known as Mrs. Zippy) told her more chicken was coming out in three minutes, five at the most.
Somewhere on Pine Street, not far from our house, the plumber had just finished his last job of that Saturday and was putting his toolbox in the back of his panel van. The chicken came out, hot and crispy and golden. Mrs. Zippy boxed up an eight-piece and gave Mom an extra wing to eat on her walk home. Mom thanked her, paid, and stopped to look at the magazine rack. If she hadn''t done that, she might have made it all the way across the bridge--who knows? The plumber''s van must have been turning onto Sycamore Street and starting down the mile-long hill while Mom was checking out the latest issue of People . She put it back, opened the door, and spoke to Mrs. Zippy over her shoulder: "Have a nice night.
" She might have cried out when she saw the van was going to hit her, and God knows what she might have been thinking, but those were the last words she ever spoke. She went out. The rain was coming down cold and steady by then, silvery lines in the glow of the one streetlight on the Zip Mart side of the bridge. Munching on her chicken wing, my mother walked onto the steel deck. Headlights picked her out and threw her shadow long behind her. The plumber passed the sign on the other side, the one that reads BRIDGE SURFACE FREEZES BEFORE ROAD! PLEASE USE CAUTION! Was he looking in his rearview mirror? Maybe checking for messages on his phone? He said no to both, but when I think of what happened to her that night, I always think of my dad saying the only pure accident he ever heard of was the man who took a meteor to the head. There was plenty of room; the steel bridge was quite a bit wider than the wooden version had been. The problem was that steel grating.
He saw my mother halfway across the bridge and hit the brake, not because he was speeding (or so he said) but out of pure instinct. The steel surface had started to freeze. The panel truck skidded and slued, starting to come sideways. My mother shrank against the bridge rail, dropping her little piece of chicken. The panel truck slued further, struck her, and sent her spinning along the rail like a top. I don''t want to think about the parts of her that were torn off in that death-spin, but I''m helpless not to sometimes. All I know is that the nose of the panel truck finally drove her into a bridge stanchion near the Zip Mart side of the bridge. Part of her went into the Little Rumple.
Most of her stayed on the bridge. I carry a picture of us in my wallet. I was maybe three when it was taken. She''s got me on her hip. One of my hands is in her hair. She had beautiful hair. 5 Shitty Christmas that year. You better believe it.
I remember the reception after the funeral. It was at our house. My father was there, greeting people and accepting condolences, and then he was gone. I asked his brother, my Uncle Bob, where he was. "He had to lie down," Uncle Bob said. "He was really worn out, Charlie. Why don''t you go outside and play?" I had never felt less like playing in my life, but I went outside. I passed a bunch of grownups who had come outside to smoke and I heard one of them say poor guy, drunk as a skunk .
Even then, deep in grief for my mother, I knew who they were talking about. Before Mom died, my father was what I''d.