--ONLY A FOOL GOES FOR A WALK IN A MINEFIELD
TWICE
The Sound of the Cars on the Bridge
Overhead,
vehicles cross the great bridge at astonishing speeds, race car fast. Their collective echo shrieks like audible
horror trapped in a jar, the noise bouncing between girders. The concrete joists shudder as if the bridge
itself is suffering a seizure, convulsing weak-kneed.
He’s
late but not really. He’s been watching
her for half an hour from the west end while his conscience battles a flight
impulse, a survivor reflex.
He’s
not a brave man and he knows it.
She’s
as pretty as in newspaper photographs.
Her hair is wavy, marmalade-orange, same as her brother’s. She’s been sitting near the river’s edge,
oblivious to the sound of the cars on the bridge. She’s hunched over, clutching her knees like
a shivering child, a nervous date. She
stares at the pockets of light hitting the green water and wafting away. He can imagine some of the things she’s
thinking but not all of them, of course.
He
stumbles down the slope of the riverbank.
Stumbles, not staggers. There is
a difference.
The
ground is filled with tall scratchy weeds.
They’re brittle and toast-colored and the earth is uneven and soft from
recent rains and his shoes get sucked down and he thinks of quicksand and
rescue scenes from old Tarzan movies he’d watched when he was a boy and not yet
a murderer.
She
hears the soupy sound his shoes make and turns, using a hand to shield her eyes
from the glare breaking across his shoulders.
“You
came.”
He
nods. There’s a fist stuck in his throat
and it’s knuckles ram his neck bones and he gags and swallows with a combustive
cough.
They
shake hands and exchange names, his fictitious.
She
pats the ground. “Sit.”
She
has her brother’s heart-shaped face, his eyes.
“This
is where his car landed after he swerved,” she says.
That
night is a blur. He’s tried to recall
details but he can only get as far as the edge of a memory.
“The
other driver was going a hundred in the wrong lane, Sean’s lane.”
He
nods again. It’s easier this way but he
realizes he’ll have to come clean soon and he wonders what that will feel like.
“Our
parents were killed by drunk drivers, too,” she says.
He
tries to steady his eyes. His mouth
tastes like bleach. “I know,” he
says. “There was a story on the news.”
Again
he recalls being a boy: his first drink at age thirteen, Uncle Roy egging him
on, claiming it would free him, make him a man, and so he drank and when it
didn’t deliver he took another and another, but all these years later he’s
still searching for that release, the freedom Uncle Roy had promised, only what
he feels now is ensnared and shackled, taken to the same damp cell, night after
night, even when it’s day, the cave barren of sun, void of any tactile
reference save for the gassy fumes of whiskey and sound of the cars on the
bridge screaming hostilities.
She
tosses a twig. It wobbles in the air,
landing shoreline. Together they watch
it swivel and sway against the foamy skirt of a jutting boulder before it sinks
and disappears.
“Anyone
you know ever get killed?”
He
shakes his head.
“Good
for you.”
When
she begins to study his face and take in his features, he turns away.
“It
was impossible after Mom and Dad died, so I don’t know how I’m going to be able
to survive this.”
He
wants to say, “You will.” It seems
appropriate and necessary, but he can’t.
“Sean
wasn’t just my brother, he was my best friend.”
He
feels his mouth shaping a supportive smile, showing no teeth, his lips on fire.
“I
never dated. Sean did--now and then
anyway--but he was moody and sucked as a conversationalist.” Her laugh is frail, breathy and without
lilt. “Whenever one of his dates would
find out about our parents and the accident, she’d split. It was as if they thought death could be, you
know, contagious. Does that make any
sense?”
Nod
of the head again.
“Not
that it mattered terribly, because I was always there for him. We had each other. And the cool thing was, lately Sean seemed to
be making progress, as if he’d found a way to put some of the sadness behind
him.”
She
uses the tip of her worn boot to loosen a stone from the soil, and once it’s
freed she bats it back and forth soccer style.
She watches him watching her and stops.
“So,
you said you had some information about the accident.”
He
reads her mind. She’s thinking: stalker,
maybe psycho.
His
conscience falters for a moment. He
thinks: I have options. I can lie. I can run.
She doesn’t know my name, doesn’t have my number.
As
he stands and pats the back of his pants, a shredded ghost-pattern of dust
slides into a slanted breeze and dissipates.
He takes the stone from between her boots and rubs it clean. It’s as flat as a cookie, so he side-arms
hard and the rock skips one…two…three…four…
“Hey,”
she says. “I don’t want to be rude or
anything, but this meeting was your idea.
If you don’t have any information, then stop screwing around and say
so.”
He
listens to the final plops of the skipping stone. It takes a second for him to realize
that—however briefly—he has successfully drowned out the sound of the cars on
the bridge.
He
turns to the girl, facing her sorrow flush.
“I do,” he says.“ I do have
something to tell you.”
In
the distance the sun is a flame of infinity.
