Bridge of Clay(106)

When he saw her, he forced a grin.

“Hey, kid.”

That bone, so bony-white.

So raw and pure, like sunlight.

He was flat on his back, and men in overalls, men in boots, men of cigarettes, agreed that they shouldn’t move him. They formed a scrum and showed respect. At first he wondered if he’d broken his neck, for he couldn’t feel his legs.

“Carey,” he said.

The sweat.

A rising, wobbling sun.

It rolled down through the straight.

And still, she couldn’t stop looking, as she kneeled there, closely, next to him. She watched the blood and dirt, merged like traffic on his lips. It caked his jeans and flannel shirt. It caught the zipper down his vest. There was a wildness clawing out of him.

“Carey,” he said again, but this time he followed with something else. “Can you go down and scratch my toes?”

Yes, of course.

The delirium.

He thought he was back there, in the halcyon athlete’s foot days, and hoped he might distract her. “Never mind the collarbone…that itch is Goddamn killing me!”

When he smiled, though, he couldn’t hold it.

    She went to his boots to loosen them, and now he screamed in pain.

The sun flopped down and swallowed him.



* * *



—

In the hospital, a few days later, a doctor came in on his rounds.

He shook the boys’ hands.

He ruffled Carey’s hair:

A tangled, boyish auburn thing.

The light was collarbone-white.

After he’d checked on Ted’s progress, the doctor looked amiably at the children.

“And what are you three going to be when you grow up?” he asked, but the boys didn’t even get a word in—for it was Carey who looked, it was Carey who grinned, as she squinted through the glare in the window. She pointed, casually over, at her roughed-up trampled-down dad, and already she was on her way: To here and Clay, and Archer Street.

She said, “I’m gonna be just like him.”





So this is where I washed up—in the trees—on the day beyond Cootamundra.

I stood there, alone in the eucalypts, my feet amongst the bark.

The long belt of sun in front of me.

I heard that single note, and for now I couldn’t move. There was music from out of his radio, which meant he didn’t know.



* * *



—

I watched them in the riverbed.

I can’t even tell you how long—and the bridge, even in pieces, was more beautiful than I could believe.

The arches were going to be glorious.

The curvature of stone.

Just like Pont du Gard, there wouldn’t be any mortar; it was fit to exactness and form. It glowed in the open like a church.

I could tell by the way he leaned on it, too, and ran his hand across.

How he spoke to it and fastened it; and fashioned and stood alongside it: That bridge was made of him.



* * *



—

But by then I had to commit to it.

My station wagon, behind me.

Slowly, I left the trees, I walked out all the way. I stood in the afternoon, and the figures in the river, they stopped. I’ll always remember their arms; they were tired but hardened with life.

    They looked up, and Clay said, “Matthew?”

And nothing could ever prepare me, as I made my way down toward them. I was nothing but a shell of what I needed to be, for I wasn’t expecting this—such buoyancy and life in the tilt of his face—or such a wondrous bridge.

And it was me, not him, who fell down first, my knees in the earth of the riverbed.

“It’s Carey,” I said. “She’s dead.”





What if they hadn’t kept the place?

The house at 11 Archer Street.

If only they hadn’t come back.

Why didn’t they just sell it and move on, instead of prudence, collecting the rent?

But no—I can’t go thinking like that.

Once again, I can only tell it.

She arrived at nearly sixteen—to a street of boys and animals, who now included a mule.



* * *



—

In the beginning, it was the night of the day in March, when Clay had run and won State.

It was back at E. S. Marks.

I’d lovingly taped his feet.

The closest kid was a farm boy from Bega.

It took a while to convince Clay to stay.

He didn’t want the dais, or the medal; he only wanted Achilles.



* * *



—

He’d broken the state record by just over a second, which they said, at that level, was ludicrous. Officials had shaken his hand. Clay was thinking of Epsom Road.

As we pulled out of the car park, and joined the late-afternoon traffic, he watched me in the rearview, and I looked, briefly, at him. Fair’s fair, he seemed to be intimating, the gold medal round Goddamn Rosy. She was panting in Tommy’s lap. I glanced back and silently said it:

    You’re lucky you’re refusing to wear it—I’d use it to wring your neck.

Back home we dropped Rory and Henry off.