The River Burns (26 page)

Jake hesitated, then he asked, “You mean like for baseball?”

This time, Skootch indicated that he did not mean that, but he did not say what he meant.

He watched as Jake applied paint to his skin. He nodded approval. He seemed to appreciate his natural artistry.

“Looking good. When you're done, I'm taking you for a long run through the woods. I've got some things to show you. I'll find someone who's superb with a needle. What you need is a loincloth. For today, you can wear one of mine. We have to toughen you up for battle, Jake. Understand me? We need to make a warrior out of you.”

“I don't think I'm much of a warrior,” Jake Withers demurred.

“Not yet,” Skootch agreed. “Slip out of those clothes. Let's see what fits.”

■   ■   ■

A dilemma.

Willis Howard sold a pie to Alex O'Farrell, forgoing the desire to shove it back in his face. He told himself that if it was a cream pie he'd do just that, but he knew that he was only kidding himself. He lacked the courage, and calculated that a man like Alex getting a pie in the face from a man like him would probably result in receiving a knuckle sandwich in return. As old as the elder O'Farrell might be, a blow from that man probably would kill him.

Anyway, he didn't have a cream pie so that was that.

The situation become more testy for him when he learned that Tara sold her first grandfather clock and that Alex O'Farrell was the buyer. He found the development difficult. She convinced him that she could outsell him when it came to the big-ticket items, and she just proved that to be true. He told her he sold one a year but hadn't actually sold one in over two years. He just liked having them around because they gave the store a sense of class. His supplier was willing to wait before he took the clocks back as he had more returns than he could handle anyway. So both the manufacturer and the shopkeeper conspired to pretend that they sold grandfather clocks for anywhere from seventeen hundred dollars to a little over four thousand. O'Farrell's purchase pretty much split the difference, costing just under thirty-one hundred. As well, she hadn't offered terms, which Willis never liked to do with the elderly as they often expired before their contracts, and put the whole thing on his credit card.

Amazing.

A fine development for his store, he just regretted that Alex O'Farrell was the purchaser.

“I thought you'd be more surprised,” Tara said in response to his confounding attitude.

“His son—”

“Be careful now. I'm dating him.”

“Not that son.”

“—burnt the bridge, some say. I know.”

“That family is not in my good graces right now.”

Tara gave him a couple of taps on his left shoulder, which he found a tad condescending. “Two things, Willis. Innocent until proven guilty—”

“—everybody knows—”

“—and nobody is saying that Alex has anything to do with it. I ­haven't met Denny O'Farrell—well, briefly, in a storm—but he's a grown man. Are you going to blame the fathers for the sins of the children now? Isn't that ass-backwards?”

“What's ass-backwards is you dating Ryan.”

“Excuse me?”

Sometimes he said more than he ever meant to release when in her company. She made him the opposite of tongue-tied. As if she oiled his larynx.

“Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Date whomever you want, it's no skin off my nose. But I don't know what he's going to do now. If he doesn't arrest his own brother, I can guarantee you the shit will hit the fan.”

“You can guarantee that? And you won't have anything to do with pushing the issue either, is that fair to say, Willis?”

He yielded to a compulsion to open the cash register at that moment, just to hear it ring.

“Willis?”

She crossed her arms, awaiting a reply. He imagined that she was tapping a toe. Willis punched the drawer shut.

“I'm a citizen, Tara. I have my responsibilities. Everybody does.”

“Responsibilities. That's a word. So is meddling. Are you sure you know the difference?”

Now she was mad, and did not wait for a reply. Willis was surprised when she bolted, returning to her alcove.

They remained separated for a while. A few tourists came and went. Finally, Willis went across to her space and leaned his hip against the doorjamb. “Listen,” he said. “It's a really good sale. Congratulations. We'll have to agree to disagree on the other matter, but selling the clock, that's well done. Over the years he's been in this store probably fifty times. I think his biggest purchase was a ukulele.”

“A what?”

“I'm serious.”

Tara shrugged, accepting his willingness to heal their wounds. “It's a start. I hope to sell more clocks.” Even when he was apologizing Tara found him creepy, and wished he'd go. “Anyway, you sold him a pie. If he was supposed to be persona non grata in here, why did you sell him a pie?”

“You're right. I'm sorry. I was out of line. By the way, that was also a good sale.”

She wasn't following his thread.

“Someone buys a pie and then you help him eat it. And carve me a slice. Good one. We can sell more pies that way.”

She knew that he was trying very hard to be funny, and ingratiating, but she chose to make this difficult for him and let his apology go by, only vaguely accepted. Just then, though, she saw her way out of this discussion.

“She's here. Look. Mrs. McCracken. With fresh pies!”

Willis glanced out the window, through and around the plethora of merchandise, as the older woman parked her Vespa.

“I'm surprised,” he allowed. “I thought she'd be in mourning for the rest of her life.”

Finally, they could agree on something. “Me, too,” Tara said, but unlike Willis she was curious, rather than merely accepting, of this change in the woman's temper. The old lady bounded into the store as though she was celebrating.

“Do you know what the tourists are doing?” she exclaimed as she carried in a pair of lemon meringues that looked incredibly fluffy and light. She didn't wait for a reply. “They got off the train and went straight to where the bridge used to be. They're snapping pictures! Like never before. Basically, they're taking pictures of a
hole
. They'll go home and say to their friends, ‘You'll never guess what used to be here.'”

“Why are you so chipper?” Tara asked. The leap from her misery the previous night did not seem either real or healthy. Tara felt then that she should not leave her side, eventually walking Mrs. McCracken home and staying on for a late-night cup of tea. The revolving lights of assorted emergency vehicles intermittently flashed on the windows of her home while they sat together.

“Willis, do you understand what you must do?” Mrs. McCracken demanded, ignoring Tara a moment. “Sell everything bridge. Postcards—triple their price—T-shirts and those, what do you call them? Hoodies! Dreadful word. Anything with a bridge on it, they'll buy.”

“If they ever show,” he complained.

“Oh, they'll show. You can't look at nothing forever.”

“Anyway, it's only for a day or two. The novelty will wear off. With no bridge there will be no tourists.”

“Exactly! So let's change that.”

“Mrs. McCracken—” Tara attempted to intrude.

“Oh, don't look at me that way, I have not lost my senses. I am overcome, overcome I will say, with a thought. I have been enlightened, sweet girl, and now fate and I daresay my legacy awaits.”

Her spirit was so infectious that Tara was not only sporting a smile but she and Willis managed to share a laugh together. Her indefatigable presence somehow dissolved their spat.

“Okay. So what gives?”

“We won't give up!” Mrs. McCracken looked from the man to the woman and raised her hands in a gesture that was meant to indicate that the mysterious was nothing if not obvious.

“On—what?” Tara asked.

“The bridge!” Mrs. McCracken kept looking from one to the other as though they were drawn into a contest and her job was to anoint the winner. She feigned impatience, when neither came through, and smacked her lips. “The old bridge is to be rebuilt. We will have a new old bridge!”

“Seriously, Mrs. McCracken,” Willis Howard said, “and I've never asked this question of you before—although once or twice I might have been tempted—but have you been drinking?”

“Oh, don't be an idiot! Four o'clock is my hour, not a moment before!”

“The covered bridge is gone, Mrs. McCracken. It's not coming back. The government will now build the fast highway bridge the loggers want and that's the end of it.”

“That's not the end of it!” she fought on.

“I have to agree with Willis,” Tara put in.

“Oh, goodness, you're both as idiotic as my grade ones! Of course, the government will build the highway bridge, and it will be ugly and it will be a monstrosity and there's nothing to be done about that.”

Tara was on the verge of interrupting her, but settled for a puzzled look as Mrs. McCracken carried on.

“The government will not build a new covered bridge. They can't afford it. They don't have the expertise. Neither the loggers nor the highway department will be in favour. But we, ladies and gentlemen, good citizens of Wakefield, we shall build a new old covered bridge all by ourselves.”

Both Tara and Willis Howard were loath to burst her bubble, and so delayed, but Tara soon ventured, “And how do we do this without, oh, I don't know . . . money?”

“We raise it!” Mrs. McCracken beamed.

“With bake sales, I suppose,” Willis deduced with evident scepticism.

“And lotteries, and an appeal, and car washes by the kids, and—”

“Do you have any idea what an old bridge like that costs? The wood—”

“We're surrounded by forests!”

“The labour alone—” Tara said.

“Volunteers! Think, people! You're not thinking!”

She cast her eyes between them as though waiting to congratulate the first one to get it. Yet her two listeners shared a glance and failed to return her enthusiasm.

“You're not thinking positively,” Mrs. McCracken noted. “We can do it,” she encouraged them, although the lack of support seemed to have reduced her own belief. “People built that bridge, not government, and people can rebuild it without outside help.”

“Do you have any idea,” Willis Howard asked, “how many pies you'd have to bake and sell to pay for it?”

“Oh, don't be such a party pooper!” she taunted him.

“Mrs. McCracken,” he said, “there aren't enough years left in my life to raise that kind of money, let alone in yours. As for volunteers, you can count on me to hammer a nail, but it won't be pretty or efficient, and if you want me to raise a beam to the rafters . . . sorry, but forget it. It's not going to happen.”

Quick to rise, her enthusiasm now rapidly ebbed. Tears sprouted in her eyes. “I just don't want to quit,” she said quietly. “I don't want to lose. I don't want to be defeated.”

She sounded so heartbroken that Tara Cogshill took a deeper breath. She fell silent, hopeful that Willis Howard would do the same. He chose instead to have the final word. “I hate them, Mrs. McCracken,” he said. “I hate them for what they did. But the bridge is gone. It's not coming back.”

The old lady held her hands to her chest, as though she wanted to weep but could not, her pain too grievous to endure.

■   ■   ■

He led him through bramble
and over loose stones, along rocky river streams and up short, steep hills that winded him, through forest and glen and a farmer's field in fallow lanced by a hot sun so that he perspired, smudging the war paint on his flesh so that he did not look human, yet he was alien to these woods and a stranger on this path. He followed Skootch, hoping that this was the right thing to do and also out of fear. Skootch had on his skinny sandals, but bereft of proper footwear Jake Withers settled on baseball cleats for this trek. Sometimes they proved to be adequate gear, yet useless on stone and being relatively new they were giving him blisters. So he suffered. His feet, his lungs, his thighs hurt. His skin was scratched and bled and at the sight of blood Skootch whipped him with a pine branch, driving him to the ground, then cackled as Jake complained and at moments in his own way begged.

He pleaded for Skootch to stop running and when he did stop mosquitoes and deer flies swarmed and he wanted to get a move on. Skootch was testing him, he knew that, but he did not know why. He chose this work, this livelihood, with this man, and so he ran through the woods with him, virtually nude, panting, bleeding, dizzy from the exertion and the heat. Skootch panted, too, but he only laughed at the bugs and blood, the heat and the scourge of the underbrush.

Jake collapsed once, and Skootch bent over him, breathing heavily, too, hands on his knees.

“Do you know how rich you're going to be?” Skootch asked him.

He did not.

Skootch bent down on one knee, close to him. “Whisper. In my ear,” he said, “how much you'd like to make in a day. Give me a number. Each and every day. To make this worthwhile.”

“I don't know,” Jake said. He didn't.

“Think about it. Then whisper in my ear.”

Jake thought about it and then he whispered in Jake's ear that he'd like to make a thousand dollars a day.

Skootch nodded, and remained bent on one knee. He placed a sweaty hand on Jake's slickened shoulder. “I can't let you make that much money, Jake. Once in a while, maybe. Not every day, day in, day out. If you made that much money you'd buy foreign cars and who knows what kind of woman you'd want to bring home or what kind of trouble you'd let rain down upon us. So no. You won't make that much. I won't allow it. But you will make enough, Jake, and women in our camp will surprise you, if only you give them a chance.”