The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story (3 page)

There was a new customer in the cafe, sitting in the booth , I had left. She looked up, startled when I walked to her table.

"Excuse me," I said, and lifted the bedroll lightly from the other seat. "Left it here just a bit ago. I'd have left my soul if it wasn't tied on with string."

She smiled and went back to reading the menu.

"Careful of the lemon pie," I added. "Unless you like it not too lemony and then you'll love it."

I walked into the sun again, swinging the bedroll at my side before remembering that the United States Air Force had taught me not to swing any hand that was carrying something. Even when we carry a dime, in the military, we do not swing our hands with it.

On impulse, just seeing the telephone in its little glass sentry-box, I decided to make a business call, to someone I hadn't talked with in a long time. The company that had published my book was in New York, but what did I care about long distance? I'd call and reverse the charges. There are privileges in every trade-barnstormers get paid for giving airplane-rides instead of having to pay for them; writers get to call their editors collect.

I called.

"Hi, Eleanor."

"Richard!" she said. "Where have you been?"

"Let's see," I said. "Since we talked? Wisconsin, Iowa,

Nebraska. Kansas, Missouri, then back across to Indiana, Ohio, Iowa again and Illinois. I sold the biplane. Now I'm in Florida. Let me guess the weather in the city: six-thousand-foot thin broken stratus, high overcast, visibility three miles in haze and smoke."

"We've been going wild trying to find you! Do you know what's been happening?"

"Two miles in haze and smoke?"

"Your book!" she said. "It's selling very well! Extremely well!"

"I know this seems silly," I said, "but I'm stuck on something here. Can you see out the window?"

"Richard, yes. Of course I can see out the window."

"flow far?"

"It's hazy. About ten blocks, fifteen blocks. Do you hear what I'm saying? Your book is a best-seller! There are television shows, they want to have you on network television shows; there are newspapers calling for interviews, radio shows; bookstores need you to come and autograph. We are selling hundreds of thousands of copies! All over the world! We've signed contracts in Japan, England, Germany, France. Paperback rights. Today a contract from Spain ..."

What do you say when you hear that on the telephone? "What nice news! Congratulations!"

"Congratulations yourself," she said. "How have you managed not to hear? I know you've been living in the underbrush, but you're on the PW bestseller list, New York Times, every list there is. We've been sending your checks to the bank, have you checked your balance?"

"No."

"You should do that. You sound awfully far away, can you hear me all right?"

"Fine. It's not underbrush. Everything west of Manhattan, Eleanor, it's not weeds."

"From the executive dining room I can see to New Jersey, and beyond the river it looks awfully brushy to me."

The executive dining room. What a different land she lived in!

"Sold the biplane?" she said, as though she had just heard. "You're not giving up flying?"

"No, of course not," I said.

"That's good. Can't imagine you without your flying machine."

What a frightening thought: never to fly again!

"Well," she said, getting back to business. "When can you do the TV things?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "Do I want to do them?"

"Think about it, Richard. It would be good for the book, you could tell quite a few people what happened, tell them the story."

Television studios are in cities. Cities, most of them, I prefer to stay out of. "Let me think about it," I said, "and I'll call you back."

"Please call me back. You are a phenomenon, as they say, and everybody wants to see who you are. Do be nice and let me know as soon as you can."

"OK."

"Congratulations, Richard!"

"Thank you," I said.

"Aren't you happy?"

"Yes! I don't know what to say."

"Think about the television shows," she said. "I hope you decide to do some, at least. The big ones."

"OK," I said. "I'll call."

I hung up the telephone and looked through the glass. The town was the same as before, and everything had changed.

What do you know, I thought. The journal, those pages sent almost on whim to New York, a best-seller! Hurray!

Cities, though? Interviews? Television? I don't know . . .

I felt like a moth in a chandelier-all at once there were lots of pretty choices, but I wasn't quite sure where to fly.

On impulse I lifted the telephone, coded my way through the maze of numbers required to reach the bank in New York and convinced a bookkeeper that it was me calling and that I wanted to know the balance in my checking account.

"Just a minute," she said, "I have to get it from the computer."

What could it be? Twenty thousand, fifty thousand dollars? A hundred thousand, dollars? Twenty thousand. Plus eleven thousand in the bedroll, and I could be very rich!

"Mr. Bach?" she said.

"Yes, ma'am."

"The balance in that account is one million, three hundred and ninety-seven thousand, three hundred and fifty-five dollars and sixty-eight cents."

There was a long silence.

"You're sure of that," I said.

"Yes, sir." Now a short silence. "Will that be all, sir?"

Silence.

"Hm?" I said. "Oh. Yes. Thank you. . . ."

In motion pictures, when we've called somebody and they

hang up, we hear this long buzzy dial-tone on the line. But in real life, when the other person hangs up, the telephone just goes quiet in our hand. Awfully quiet. For as long as we stand there and hold it.

four

. FTER A while, I put the telephone back into its holder, picked up my bedroll and started walking.

Has it ever happened, you've seen a striking film, beautifully written and acted and photographed, that you walk out of the theater glad to be a human being and you say to yourself I hope they make a lot of money from that? I hope the actors, I hope the director earns a million dollars for what they've done, what they've given me tonight? And you go back and see the movie again and you're happy to be a tiny part of a system that is rewarding those people with every ticket . . . the actors I see on the screen, they'll get twenty cents of this very dollar I'm paying now; they'll be able to buy an ice-cream cone any flavor they want from their share of my ticket alone!

Glorious moments in art, in books and films and dance, they're delicious because we see ourselves in glory's mirror.

Book-buying, ticket-buying are ways to applaud, to say thanks for nice work. We're joyed when a film, when a book we love hits the best-seller list.

But a million dollars for me? Suddenly I knew what it was to be on the other end of the gift so many writers had given me, reading their books since the day I sounded out for myself: "Bam-bi. By Fe-lix Salt-en."

I felt like a surfer resting on his board, all at once some monster energy wells up, grabs him without asking if he's ready and there's spray flying from the nose of the board, from midships, then from way aft, he's caught on this massive deep power, the wind pulling a smile around his mouth.

There are excitements indeed, having one's book read by many people. One can forget, charging mile-a-minute down the face of a giant wave, that if one isn't terribly skillful, the next surprise is sometimes called a wipeout.

five

M. CROSSED the street, got directions from the drugstore to a place where I might find what I needed; followed can't-miss-its and Lake Roberts Road under Spanish-moss branches to the Gladys Hutchinson Memorial Library.

Anything we need to know, we can learn it from a book. Reading, careful study, a little practice, and we're throwing knives expertly, overhauling engines, speaking Esperanto like natives.

Touch all the books of Nevil Shute, they're encoded holograms of a decent man: Trustee from the Toolroom, The Rainbow and the Rose. The writer printed the person he is on every page of his books, and we can read him into our own lives, if we want, in the privacy of libraries.

The cool hush of the big room, books for walls, I could feel it trembling for the chance to teach me. I couldn't wait,

now, to plunge into a copy of So You've Got A Million Dollars!

Strangely enough, the title wasn't listed. I looked in the card catalog under So, under Million. Nothing. In case it was What To Do When You Suddenly Become Rich, I checked What, Rich and Sudden,

I tried a different reference. Your problem isn't that the volume you want is not in this library, said Books in Print, it's that it hasn't been printed.

Not possible, I thought. If I've fallen rich, so have a lot of other people, and one of them must have written the book. Not stocks and bonds and banks, those weren't what I needed to know, but what this is supposed to feel like, what opportunities beckoned, what little disasters growled near my ankles, what big ones like vultures might be diving for me this moment. Somebody show me what to do, please.

No answer from the card catalog.

"Excuse me, ma'am ..." I said.

"Sir?"

I smiled, asking her help. Not since fourth grade had I seen a date-stamper clamped to a wooden pencil, and here's one hi her hand this minute, today's date.

"I need a book on how to be a rich person. Not how to earn money. Something on what a person is supposed to do when they get a lot of money. Can you suggest. . . ?"

Clearly she was used to strange requests. Perhaps the request wasn't strange . . . citrus kings, land baronesses, all-at-once millionaires abound in Florida.

High cheekbones, hazel eyes, hair to her shoulders in waves the color of dark chocolate. Businesslike, reserved with those she hasn't known for long.

She looked at me as I asked, then up and to her left, the

place we look when we're remembering old knowledge. Up and to the right (I learned it from a book) is where we look when we are searching for new.

"I can't recall . . ." she said. "How about biographies of rich people? We have a lot of Kennedy books, a Rockefeller book, I know. The Rich and the Super Rich, we have."

"Not exactly it, I don't think. Something like How to Cope with Sudden Wealth?"

She shook her head solemnly, thoughtfully. Are all thoughtful people beautiful?

She touched an intercom on the desk and spoke softly into it.

"SaraJean? How to Cope with Sudden Wealth. Do we have a copy of that?"

"Never heard of it. There's How I Made Millions in Real Estate, we've got three copies. . . ."

I wasn't getting through. "I'll sit over here for a while and think about it. Hard to believe. There's got to be this book somewhere."

She looked at my bedroll, which at that moment happened to be in some rather spotty, dirty light, then again at me. "If you don't mind," she said quietly, "could you leave your laundry-bag on the floor? There's new upholstery everywhere . . ."

"Yes, ma'am."

Surely, I thought, in these shelves of books there must be one written about what I'm supposed to do now. The only immediate advice I could think of without a book was that fools and their money are soon parted.

When it comes to slipping a Fleet biplane down to land in a little bit of a hayfield, I was second to few; but at that moment in the Gladys Hutchinson Library I thought that

when it comes to herding a fortune I might be second to none at all, I might be an unmatched disaster. Paperwork has always caught and torn in my mind, and I doubted that would suddenly go smooth with money.

Good, I thought. I know myself, and I know for sure- my weaknesses won't change and neither will my strengths. A minor thing like a bank account cannot possibly transform me from the casual, easygoing flyer I've always liked to be.

After ten minutes submerged again in the card catalog, driven at the last to Luck-Good and even Luck-Bad, I gave up. Not believable! There was no such book as the one I needed!

Lost in doubt, I walked outside into the sun, felt photons and beta-particles and cosmic rays bounce and ricochet at lightspeed, silently zing and whiz through the morning and through me.

I was nearly back to the cafe part of town when I realized my bedroll was gone. With a sigh, I turned and walked all the way back to the library, ever warmer in the sun, and went to retrieve the thing at the foot of the card catalog.

"Sorry," I said to the librarian.

"I was hoping you hadn't forgotten," she said, and she said it with such relief that she wouldn't have to store this guy's laundry-bag in Lost and Found that I knew that she was telling me true.

"Sorry," I said again.

With all the books we have, so many still waiting to be written! Like fresh deep plums way up in the treetops. Not much fun to climb up some teetery ladder, snake through the branches going way out on limbs to pick 'em, but how delicious they are when the work is over.

What about the television, is that delicious? Or would doing publicity for the book aggravate my crowdophobia? How do I escape when I don't have a biplane waiting to lift me over the trees and away?

I headed toward the airport, the one place in every strange town where an airplane pilot feels at home. I found it by watching the landing pattern, the invisible tracks that small aircraft leave on the way to and from the ground. I was practically under the base-leg-to-final-approach turn, so the airport wasn't much of a walk.

Money is one thing, but crowds, and getting recognized when you want to be quiet and alone, that's something else entirely. Isn't that celebrity, isn't that fame? A little bit might be fun, but what if you can't turn it off? What if you do these television things and everywhere you go, somebody says, "I know you! Don't tell me . . . you're the guy who wrote that book!"

People drove by, people walked by in the near-noon daylight, not looking. I was barely this side of invisible. They didn't know me beyond I was somebody walking toward the airport carrying a neatly tied bedroll, somebody with the freedom to do that without stares.