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She pried at it with her fingernails, wiggling it this way and that, and it came loose. She dropped down onto her heels, flushing with pleasure.

“Yes!” she said, and clanged the locker door shut.

The janitor stood halfway up the hall. Mr. Eugley. He stood with his mop plunged into his big yellow rolling bucket, staring along the length of the corridor at Vic, and Vic’s bike, and the Shorter Way Bridge.

Mr. Eugley was old and hunched and, with his gold-rimmed glasses and bow ties, looked more like a teacher than many of the teachers did. He worked as a crossing guard, too, and on the day before Easter vacation he had little bags of jelly beans for every kid who walked past him. Rumor was that Mr. Eugley had taken the job to be around children, because his kids had died in a house fire years and years ago. Sadly, this rumor was true, and it omitted the fact that Mr. Eugley had started the fire himself while passed out drunk with a cigarette burning in one hand. He had Jesus instead of children now and a favorite AA meeting instead of a bar. He had gotten religion and sobriety both while in jail.

Vic looked at him. He looked back, his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish’s. His legs trembled violently.

“You’re the McQueen girl,” he said in a strong Down East accent that obliterated r’s: Yah the McQueen gill. His breathing was strained, and he had a hand on his throat. “What’s that in the wall? By Jesus, am I goin’ crazy? That looks like the Shortaway Bridge, what I haven’t seen in years.” He coughed, once and then again. It was a wet, strange, choked sound, and there was something terrifying about it. It was the sound of a man in gathering physical distress.

How old was he? Vic thought, Ninety. She was off by almost twenty years, but seventy-one was still old enough for a heart attack.

“It’s all right,” Vic said. “Don’t—” she began, but then didn’t know how to continue. Don’t what? Don’t start screaming? Don’t die?

“Oh, dear,” he said. “Oh, dear.” Only he said it de-ah. Two syllables. His right hand shook furiously as he raised it to cover his eyes. His lips began to move. “Deah, deah me. ‘The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.’”

“Mr. Eugley—” Vic tried again.

“Go away!” he shrieked. “Just go away and take your bridge with you! This isn’t happening! You aren’t here!”

He kept his hand over his eyes. His lips began to move again. Vic couldn’t hear him but could see from the way he shaped the words what he was saying. “‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters.’”

Vic turned her bike around. She put a foot over. She began to work the pedals. Her own legs felt none too steady, but in a moment she thudded up onto the bridge, into the hissing darkness and the smell of bats.

She looked back once, halfway across. Mr. Eugley was still there, head ducked in prayer, hand over his eyes, other hand clutching the mop to his side.

Vic rode on, photo in one sweaty palm, out of the bridge and into the drifting, lively shadows of the Pittman Street Woods. She knew, even before she looked back over her shoulder—knew just from the musical chuckle of the river below and the graceful sweep of the wind in the pines—that the Shorter Way was gone.

She pedaled on, into the first day of summer, her pulse knocking strangely. A bone-deep ache of foreboding rode all the way back with her.





The McQueen House


VIC WAS HEADED OUT OF THE HOUSE TWO DAYS LATER TO RIDE HER bike over to Willa’s—last chance to see her BFF before Vic and her parents took off for six weeks on Lake Winnipesaukee—when she heard her mother in the kitchen, saying something about Mr. Eugley. The sound of his name produced a sudden, almost crippling feeling of weakness, and Vic nearly had to sit down. She had spent the weekend not thinking about Mr. Eugley with a vengeance, something that hadn’t been hard to do; Vic had been down all Saturday night with a migraine headache so intense it made her want to throw up. The pain had been especially fierce behind her left eye. The eye had felt like it was going to pop.

She climbed back up the front steps and stood outside the kitchen, listening to her mother bullshit with one of her friends, Vic wasn’t sure which one. She stood there eavesdropping to her mother’s side of the phone conversation for close to five minutes, but Linda didn’t mention Mr. Eugley by name again. She said, Oh, that’s too bad, and Poor man, but she didn’t use the name.

At last Vic heard Linda drop the phone back into the cradle. This was followed by the clatter and slop of dishes in the sink.

Vic didn’t want to know. She dreaded knowing. At the same time: She couldn’t help herself. It was that simple.

“Mom?” she asked, putting her head around the corner. “Did you say something about Mr. Eugley?”

“Hm?” Linda asked. She bent over the sink, her back to Vic. Pots clashed. A single soap bubble quivered, popped. “Oh, yeah. He fell off the wagon. Got picked up last night, out in front of the school, shouting at it like a madman. He’s been sober thirty years. Ever since . . . well, ever since he decided he didn’t want to be a drunk anymore. Poor guy. Dottie Evans told me he was down at church this morning, sobbing like a little kid, saying he’s going to quit his job. Saying he can’t ever go back. Embarrassed, I guess.” Linda glanced at Vic, and her brow furrowed with concern. “You okay, Vicki? You still don’t look too good. Maybe you ought to stay in this morning.”