Bridge of Clay(103)

First, I’d crouch below him.

Slowly I’d roll out the strapping tape.

A line straight down the middle.

A cross before his toes.

It started like a crucifix, but the result was something different, like a long-lost letter of the alphabet; a few edges would curl to the top.

When the 400 was called, I walked with him near the marshal zone, and the day was muggy and motionless. As he left he thought of Abrahams, and the bible-man, Eric Liddell. He thought of a skinny, diminutive South African, whose taped feet inspired his.

I said, “I’ll see you after the end,” and Clay had actually answered me, his peg in his shorts, in the pocket:

    “Hey, Matthew,” and then just, “Thanks.”

He ran like a Goddamn warrior.

He was truly the lightning Achilles.



* * *



—

In the end, it was close to evening that day, on that first anniversary, when Rory came to his senses; he said, “Let’s burn the bed.”

Together, we made the decision.

We sat at the kitchen table.

But there was no decision to make.

Maybe it’s a universal truth of boys and fire; the same way we’ll often throw stones. We pick them up and aim for anything. Even me, edging close to nineteen: I was supposed to be the adult.

If moving into the main bedroom was the grown-up thing to do, then burning the bed was the young one, and that’s how I bit the bullet; I took a bet each way.

Initially, not much was said:

Clay and Henry were assigned the mattress.

Rory and I took the base.

Tommy, the matches and turpentine.

We took it out through the kitchen, into the backyard, and launched it all over the fence. It was roughly the same place, all those years earlier, where Penelope met City Special.

We got to the other side. I said, “Right.”

It was warm and a breeze had picked up.

Hands for a while in our pockets.

Clay had a handful of peg—but then the mattress went back on the base, and we walked out to The Surrounds. The stables were tired and leaning. The grass was patchy-uneven.

Soon we saw a distant old washing machine.

Then a shattered, lifeless TV.

“There,” I said.

I pointed—close to the middle, but nearer our place—and we carried our parents’ bed there. Two of us stood, and three crouched. Clay was off to the side; he was standing, facing our house.

    “Is it a bit windy, Matthew?” Henry asked.

“Probably.”

“Is that a westerly?” It grew gradually stronger each minute. “We might set the whole field on fire.”

“Even better!” shouted Rory, and just as I started to admonish him, it was Clay who cut through everything—the field, the grass, the TV. The lonesome carcass of washing machine. His voice directed away: “No.”

“What?”

We all said it at once, and the wind blew even harder.

“What’d you say, Clay?”

He looked cold in the warmth of the field. His short dark hair was flat on his head, and that fire inside him was lit; he said it, quietly, again.

A firm and final “No.”

And we knew.

We would leave things exactly like this. We’d let the thing die its own death here—or at least that’s what we believed—for how could we ever foresee it?

That Clay would come back and he’d lie here.

He’d squeeze the peg till it bit through his hand.

The first time was the night before State, once we’d sat for a while in the kitchen; him and me. He laid the truth down in between us: He’d win State, then go for Achilles.

He had the two hundred dollars—probably his whole life savings.

He didn’t even wait for an answer.

What he did do was go out the front, run a light run through the racing quarter, feed a few of our carrots to the mule—and end up back on the roof.

Then, later, much later, while the rest of us slept, he got out of bed and wandered there; he picked out a brand-new peg. He climbed up onto the fence, then walked the width of the laneway. It was dark and there wasn’t a moon out, but he found his way easily through.

    He wandered and climbed over onto it.

The bed lay down in the gloom.

He curled himself up like a boy.

He lay down in the dark and he dreamed there, and cared nothing for winning or State. No, he spoke only to another boy, from a small country town, and a woman who’d crossed the oceans.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to both of them, “I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” The peg was clenched tight in his hand, and he addressed them, lastly, again. “I promise, I’ll tell you the story,” he said, “how I brought you both home Achilles.”

That mule was never for Tommy.





Once, in the tide of Dunbar past, there was a girl who knew a Dunbar boy, and what a girl she was.

She had auburn hair and good-green eyes.

She had a puzzle of blood-colored freckles.

She was famous for winning a Group One race, and dying the very next day—and Clay was the one to blame.

He lived and breathed and became it.

He eventually told them everything.