Bridge of Clay(45)

    “You were jealous of a dog?”

“No!” Again, he was beside the point. “I’m just—I’m wondering why it took you months to walk to my front door after watching and waiting! Hoping I’d do it for you—to chase you down the road.”

“You never did that.”

“Of course not…I couldn’t.” She didn’t quite know where to look now, and settled for directly ahead. “God, you just don’t get it, do you?”

That last one was like a death knell—a truth so quiet and brutal. The effort it took had weakened her, if only momentarily, and she slid back down upon him, her cheek like stone on his neck. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”

But for some reason, he went on with it.

Maybe to welcome the nearing defeat.

“Just tell me.” The taste of his voice. It was dry and sandy, and those bricks had been thrown up to him, and he swallowed them each in turn. “Just tell me how to fix it.”

The act of breathing was suddenly an Olympic final, and where was Emil Zátopek when he needed him? Why hadn’t he trained like that lunatic Czech? An athlete with that sort of endurance could surely stand up to a night like this.

But could Michael?

Again:

“Just tell me, I’ll fix it.”

“But that’s it.”

Abbey’s voice was horizontal, put there, dropped on his chest. No anxiety, no labor.

No desire to fix or be fixed:

“Maybe there is nothing,” she said. “Maybe it’s.” She full-stopped. She began. “Maybe we’re just—not right, the way we thought.”

His last gasp now, final breath:

“But I—…” He cut off; he trailed. “So much.”

“I know you do,” and there was such pity in her, but a ruthless kind. “I do too, but maybe it’s not enough.”

Had she ended it with a pinprick, he’d have bled to death in bed.





The night ahead, having slept so long and hard during the day, was as wretched and restless as the last. He looked through the wooden box, and thought back to the morning porch: The milk jumping the rail.

The jugular in my neck.

He saw Achilles and Tommy, Henry and Rory.

And Carey.

Of course he thought of Carey, and Saturday, and if she might go to The Surrounds anyway. He’d die to know, but would never ask her, and then he stopped and fully realized—a final forceful acknowledgment.

He got up and leaned forward on the desk.

You’re gone, he thought.

You left.



* * *



— Soon after dawn the Murderer was up, too, and they walked the river like a road; they hiked up from the house.

At first there was a general slant, as the riverbed rose in altitude.

After a few hours, though, they were climbing giant, crestfallen boulders, and holding on to willows and river gums. Whether steep or gradual, one thing never changed; they could always see the power. The banks had a sort of girth. There was an obvious history of debris.

“Look at this,” the Murderer said. They were in a heavily wooded section; there were ladders of sunlight, hung up high in the shade, all in varied directions. His foot on an uprooted tree. A jacket of moss, and foliage.

    And this, thought Clay.

He was next to an enormous rock, which appeared to have been dislodged.

They climbed more than half the day like that, and ate lunch on a long, granite overhang. They looked across the ranges.

The Murderer unpacked his bag.

Water. Bread and oranges. Cheese and dark chocolate. All of it passed from hand to hand, but nothing much more was said. Clay was sure there were similar thoughts, though—of the river, its showing of force: So this is what we’re up against.



* * *



— Through afternoon, they walked back down. Now and then a hand would reach up, to help the other, and when they returned, in darkness, in the riverbed, nothing more yet was spoken.

But surely it was now.

If ever there was a time to begin, it was this.

It wasn’t.

Not really:

There were still too many questions, too much memory—but one of them had to make a start, and the Murderer, rightfully, cracked first. If anyone was to attempt a sense of partnership, it should be him. They’d walked many miles together that day, and so he looked at him, and asked: “You want to build a bridge?”

Clay nodded but looked away.

“Thanks,” said Michael.

“For what?”

“For coming.”

“I didn’t come here for you.”

Family bonding, the Clay way.





In many ways, I guess it’s true, that even bad times are full of good times (and great times) and the time of their demise was no different. There were still those Sunday mornings, when she’d ask him to read to her in bed, and she’d kiss him with her morning breath, and Michael could only surrender. He’d gladly read The Quarryman. He’d first run a finger on the lettering.

She’d say, “What was the name of that place again, where he learned about marble, and stone?”

Quietly, he’d answer.