The Other Side of the Bridge (15 page)

“I’ll tell you something,” Pete said, stretching out one leg, then folding it up again and stretching the other. The thwarts in the
Queen Mary
were very low, and Pete’s legs were very long, so his knees were always jackknifed up around his ears. The knees of his jeans had given up the struggle long ago and were split straight across from seam to seam. “When you guys have evolved a bit more, like in a billion years or so, you’ll discover the outboard motor and you’ll never look back.”

Ian grinned. But lately there seemed to be an edge to Pete’s jokes, and sometimes it made him uneasy.

“It’s a nice canoe, though,” he said, trying again. “You have to admit.”

“It’s nice,” Pete said. “But I’d like to see you land a pike in it. Man overboard.” At that precise moment his hook was grabbed by something so big that Pete was flung to the side of the
Queen Mary
. The jigger flew out of his hands and he came within half an inch of going overboard himself.

“Holy shit!” he said when he’d recovered himself. “What was that?”

Ian was laughing too hard to answer. Pete took an oar from the bottom of his boat, paddled the
Queen Mary
up beside the canoe, reached out, and before Ian could stop him gave the side of the canoe a little push, and over it went.

The water was so cold Ian’s heart almost stopped. He came to the surface gasping with the shock of it, and there was Pete, looking down at him and grinning like a cat.

“You’ve christened it,” Pete said. “It’s good luck to dunk your canoe first time out. You’re gonna be a lucky man.” And he was right, because Ian heaved himself out of the water, made a wild grab at Pete’s arm, and by sheerest luck managed to catch it, flung himself backward, and Pete ended up in the water too. It was just like old times.

At church, Ian and his father sat in their usual pew. It was a full house. The summer-like weather had cheered everyone up and made them more willing to sit through a sermon in return for the pleasure of gathering around the church steps afterward and getting caught up on the gossip. The women were wearing summer dresses and hats with fake flowers. Everybody looked brighter and more alive than they had a month ago, when there was still snow on the ground. Even the children seemed less fractious than usual. Reverend Thomas was the only one out of step. His sermon was on the theme of pain—on accepting that life was full of it, on enduring it cheerfully, on welcoming the closeness to God that suffering could bring. Ian, who was wider awake than usual because of his early-morning dip, heard his father suppress a snort. He’d seen more of pain than Reverend Thomas had.

Arthur and Laura Dunn and the children sat three rows ahead, as they always did. Ian fixed his eyes on Laura, as he’d been doing now for what felt like his whole life. If Cathy had been there he might have felt guilty, but her family went to the Baptist church at the other end of town. Ian was secretly glad; it left him free to concentrate on Laura. He still felt the usual confusion of emotions when he was in her presence. It was like a drink of cool water in the desert and being eaten alive by army ants, both at the same time.

After church, while Arthur headed back to his truck so that he wouldn’t have to talk to anyone, she came up to speak to him.

“Happy birthday,” she said. Carter had followed his father, but Julie and March came with their mother. Julie smiled shyly up at Ian. She was shy with him again because she had seen so little of him during the winter. March, the baby, who wasn’t a baby anymore, stopped digging a trench in the sand around his mother’s feet with the toe of his shoe and looked up at Ian curiously. Laura said to them, “Aren’t you going to wish Ian a happy birthday?”

“Happy birthday,” Julie said.

“Thank you,” said Ian.

March said, “I gotta truck.”

“Do you?” Ian said. “Where is it?”

“At home,” Laura said. “Or he’d have been running up and down the aisle with it.”

“What color is it?” Ian asked March. He must be almost three by now. In the past two years he seemed to have improved considerably. So had Julie. Ian didn’t mind either of them now.

“Blue,” March said uncertainly, looking up at his mother for confirmation. She nodded.

“Like your dad’s,” Ian said, and March looked over to where his father’s truck was parked under a tree. He shook his head.

“It’s smaller,” he said regretfully.

“Maybe it will grow,” Ian said, and March frowned at him under his thatch of fair hair.

“Ian’s teasing you,” said Laura. She touched the side of March’s cheek with the back of her hand, making Ian ache with longing.

He watched her make her way slowly back to the truck, Julie and March trailing along behind her like small dinghies behind the mother ship. Carter and Arthur were standing by the truck. Carter was asking his father something; Arthur shook his head and Carter turned away, his shoulders hunched. Typical Carter posture.

But he wasn’t really a bad kid, Ian thought. He didn’t sass his parents or refuse to do what he was told or throw rocks through people’s windows. It was just that he always seemed so moody. Ian would see him in the school playground at lunchtime and during recess, watching while the other boys in his class kicked a football around. He wasn’t good at sports. Not team sports, anyway. The only thing he was really good at, as far as Ian knew, was running: during sports day at the end of the year he usually won every race he was entered for. He’d come flying in, face flaming with exhilaration, twenty yards ahead of the rest. Maybe speed was his thing; he was fast on a bike, too. Sometimes in the evenings Ian would see him streaking down the road, crouched over the handlebars, head down, a long low cloud of dust trailing out behind him.

At home, though, he was one big negative. Sullen and uncommunicative. It was possible, Ian thought, that Arthur had been like that as a kid, but it seemed unlikely. His silence now was companionable, rather than morose. The same with Pete—you wouldn’t describe Pete as gabby, but his silence was thoughtful. Carter’s silence was resentful.

Maybe he’d grow out of it. Ian found it hard to believe that Carter was only four years younger than him. He seemed such a kid.

Strange, he thought later, how sometimes when you start thinking about a person, you seem to bring them to the foreground of your life. At eleven o’clock that night there was a hammering on the door and when Ian answered it, Sergeant Moynihan was standing on the porch, gripping a boy firmly by the arm. The boy was Carter. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, and his face was white and scared.

“Took his father’s truck,” the policeman said without preamble, propelling Carter into the hall. “Went for a little spin on his own. Left the road, clipped a rock, ended up in the ditch. Lucky he didn’t hit a tree. Where’s your dad?”

“He’s been called out,” Ian said, ushering them toward his father’s office. “He shouldn’t be too long.”

“Stick a bandage on him or something,” said Sergeant Moynihan. “I’ll phone his parents.” He prodded Carter’s shoulder with his forefinger. “What’s your phone number?”

Carter mumbled the number. He was holding a bloody handkerchief to his head and looked unsteady on his feet.

The policeman headed toward the hall. Over his shoulder he said to Ian, “You’re getting lots of practice nowadays, I hear. Stitch him up yourself, why don’t you? Save your dad the trouble.”

“No thanks,” Ian said sourly. He led Carter into his father’s office and sat him down in a chair. He still looked very white, and Ian wondered if he was going to keel over. He kept a hand on Carter’s shoulder for a minute or two until the boy seemed steadier. Then he went over to the medicine cabinet and got a pad of surgical dressing out of the drawer.

“I’m just going to put a dressing on it,” he said. “It’ll do until my dad gets back.” He carefully removed the bloody handkerchief and applied the dressing. Carter flinched but didn’t protest.

“Hold it there,” Ian said. “I’ll put a bandage around it to keep it in place. It’s not too bad. It’s almost stopped bleeding.”

They could hear Sergeant Moynihan on the phone out in the hall. “I’ll find out,” they heard him say, and he came into the office. “Your mother’s worried, of course,” he said to Carter. “And they can’t come and get you, can they, because you swiped the truck.” He turned to Ian. “She wants to know how bad it is. Is he going to have to go to the hospital?”

“Probably not,” Ian said. He was winding the bandage firmly around Carter’s head. “My dad will want to make sure he doesn’t have a concussion, though. And it will need a couple of stitches. Tell her we’ll bring him home.”

Sergeant Moynihan nodded and went back to the phone.

“I can walk home,” Carter said, his voice shaky.

“I guarantee my dad will veto that.” Ian fastened the end of the bandage to the rest with a safety pin. He was dying to know what the story was.

Sergeant Moynihan came back into the room. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to go and help his dad get the truck back on the road.” He turned to Carter. “What was it all about, then? You’re way under age, aren’t you?” He waited a minute, then prodded Carter’s shoulder. “How old are you?” Still no reply. He prodded him again. “Come on, how old?”

“Nearly fourteen!” Carter said, coming to life all at once, angrily leaning away from the prodding finger. He didn’t seem intimidated, though. Ian was impressed in spite of himself.

“Thirteen, in other words. Three years away from old enough. You could have killed somebody. Killed yourself. Not very smart, was it?”

Carter didn’t reply.

Sergeant Moynihan sighed. “Kids,” he said. He hoisted his pants; he had a sizable paunch and his trousers fought a losing battle to stay on top of it. “Okay, I’m off. I expect his dad could come and get him when we get the truck out. If it’s still drivable. Didn’t look like too much damage.” To Carter he said, “You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t take it out of your hide.”

He left, and they heard the police car pull away. Ian sat down in his father’s chair and studied Carter. Carter was looking at the floor.

“So, did you just want to go for a drive?” Ian said. He remembered nagging his father to take him driving out along the lake road, where you didn’t see another car for hours. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen at the time.

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you ask your dad? He’d have taken you, wouldn’t he?” Most of the farm kids he knew were driving their father’s tractors by the time they were Carter’s age. But of course the Dunns didn’t have a tractor.

Carter looked up. Under the bandage his face was still very pale but his eyes were hot and angry. There were streaks of drying blood smeared down to his chin; if it had been anyone else, Ian would have cleaned them off, but he suspected Carter wouldn’t appreciate it.

“I did ask him.”

“What did he say?”

“Same as always. ‘Not now.’ Everything’s ‘not now.’ He won’t let me do anything.”

“What do you mean?” Ian asked, intrigued. “Like what?”

Carter shrugged and looked away, his mouth set in a bitter line. For a moment Ian felt sorry for him. It was true Arthur didn’t seem to pay much attention to him. Even the chores he was given to do kept him close to the house, under his mother’s supervision.

“How about your mother? Wouldn’t she teach you to drive?”

“She’s too busy,” Carter said, his tone flat.

“Well, sometime when she isn’t.” He imagined Laura in the passenger seat of the battered old truck, calmly and patiently instructing her son. Well, possibly not calmly—he thought of the harried way she rushed around: you wouldn’t exactly describe her as calm. And now that he thought about it, she wasn’t always all that patient with her kids, especially Carter. But she was still a wonderful mother. Carter had no idea how lucky he was.

“She’s always too busy,” Carter said, the bitter tone still there. “She’s
permanently
busy.”

“You probably just got her at a bad time,” Ian said. “You should ask her again.”

Carter’s head came up. “What do you know about it!” he said nastily. “
You
don’t live there! She isn’t
your
mother!”

Which made Ian want to take him out behind the house and beat him to a pulp.

He went out to the farm the following night. It was late, almost ten o’clock, and he was afraid the Dunns would have gone to bed, but he was in luck and the kitchen light was still on. Arthur was the only one in there, sitting in his usual chair; he and Laura always went upstairs together, so Ian guessed Laura was helping her father get ready for bed. The old man slept in a small room off the parlor so that he didn’t have to negotiate the stairs.