Bridge of Clay(86)

    We dreamed in our rooms and slept.

We were boys but also miraculous:

We lay there, living and breathing—

For that was the night he’d killed us.

He’d murdered us all in our beds.





At Silver, in the dry riverbed, they built days into weeks, weeks to a month. For Clay there became a compromise—he went home for The Surrounds on Saturdays, but only when Michael was at the mines.

Other than that, they were up every day before sunrise.

They came in long after dark.

When winter set in, they built fires down there, and worked hours into the night. The insects had long since quieted. There were cool red sunsets, and the smell of smoke through the morning; and very slowly, very surely, a bridge was forming—but you wouldn’t know to see it. The riverbed was more like a bedroom, a teenager’s; but instead of socks and clothes, it was scattered with shifted earth, and crossworks and angles of wood.

Each dawn they arrived and stood with it.

It was a boy, a man, and two coffee mugs.

“That’s pretty much all you need,” he said, but they knew the Murderer was lying.

They also needed a radio.



* * *



—

On a Friday, they drove into town.

He found it in St. Vincent de Paul:

It was long, black, and crusty-looking—a broken tape deck that somehow worked, but only if you forced it with Blu-Tack. There was even a tape still in it: a homemade best of the Rolling Stones.

    Every Wednesday and Saturday, though, the antenna was always outwards, at forty-five degrees. The Murderer soon came to know; he knew which races had meaning.



* * *



—

In the intervals, when Clay came home to Archer Street, he was shockingly alive and worn; he was powdery. His pockets were full of dust. He took clothes, he bought boots, and they were brown, then tan, then faded. He always brought the radio, and if she raced at Hennessey he’d go there. If it was somewhere else—Rosehill, Warwick Farm, or Randwick—he’d listen, inside, in the kitchen, or alone out back, on the porch. Then wait for her at The Surrounds.

She’d go there and she’d lie with him.

She told him about the horses.

He’d look at the sky and not mention it; that none of her mounts were winning. He could see how it weighed her down, but saying it would make it worse.

It was cold but they never complained; they lay in jeans and heavy jackets. Her puzzle of blood-lit freckles. Sometimes she had a hood on, and lengths of hair climbed out. They itched against his neck. She always found a way.

It was typical Carey Novac.



* * *



—

In July, on a night he’d gone to the mines, Michael Dunbar left new notes, to add to his plans for the scaffold, and dimensions for the molds and arches. Clay smiled at the drawing of falsework. But sadly, he had to start digging again—this time to build a ramp, for delivery of blocks of stone.

He cut into the walls of the riverbed, and gently fashioned a road; it wasn’t just the bridge, it was everything around it—and he’d work at these things, even harder, when he was left in the river alone. He worked and listened, and staggered inside. He collapsed to the sunken couch.



* * *



—

Since Settignano, there’d been an unspoken understanding.

The Murderer wouldn’t mention it.

    He wouldn’t ask what Clay had learned:

How much of The Quarryman, and Michelangelo? And Abbey Hanley, Abbey Dunbar? And painting? His paintings.

In Michael’s absence, Clay read his favorite chapters, and the favorite chapters of Carey.

For her it was still the earlier ones:

The city and his upbringing.

The teenage broken nose.

The carving of the Pietà, the Christ—like liquid—in Mary’s arms.

For Clay, it was still the David.

The David and the Slaves.

He loved them like his father did.

He loved another of the book’s descriptions, too, of where those statues stood today—in Florence, in the Accademia:


Today, the David remains, at the end of the gallery’s corridor, in a dome of light and space. Still in the grip of decision: forever fearing, forever defiant and deciding. Can he take on the might of Goliath? He stares over us, far away, and the Prisoners wait in the distance. They’ve struggled and waited for centuries—for the sculptor to return and finish them—and must wait a few centuries longer….





* * *



—

At home, when he was here, in the evenings, sometimes he went to the roof. Sometimes he read on one side of the couch, while I read on the other.

Often we all watched movies together.

Sometimes a double feature:

Misery and Mad Max 2.

City of God. (“What?” called Henry from the kitchen. “Not something made this century for a change!”) And later, for balance, Weird Science. (“That’s a bit bloody better—1985!”) That last one had been a gift again, this time for a birthday, from Rory and Henry combined.

The night of the second double feature was a great one.

    We all sat, we gaped and watched.