The Other Side of the Bridge (39 page)

“Floor of the barn’s concrete, see. Can’t root about in concrete.”

Ted blinked his one eye. Arthur took it as encouragement.

“Cows don’t mind so much. Seem pretty happy just standin’ there doin’ nothin’.” He stopped—it struck him that maybe that was tactless. Even the cows, even the pigs, had more freedom than Ted had now. The problem was, everything was tactless. There was nothing happening anywhere in the world that wasn’t irrelevant to Ted.

Arthur thought of telling him what was going on in his mind. Imagined saying, “I’m scared I’m going to kill my brother. He’s made this girl I love fall in love with him. He didn’t want her, he just took her because he saw I loved her. But now I think he’s going to make her, you know, go out to the barn with him, like he does with other girls. I know she’d never do anything like that, but he’s awful good at wearin’ people down, and she’s so much in love with him…. And if he did it, if he wore her down…I think I’d kill him. I’m really scared I would.”

He wondered if Ted’s one eye would show any interest if he said that.

He still saw her practically every day. It was a torment, because she looked so happy. She seemed younger than when she’d first come to Struan, more carefree, more like a schoolgirl. She laughed and tossed her head if you said something funny, not that Arthur ever did; it was Jake who could make her laugh. The happier she was, the more fearful Arthur became. He wanted to warn her: don’t trust my brother. He imagined himself saying it, saw the disbelief and reproach in her eyes.

Spring came early. By March the snow had gone from the fields, though there were still pockets of it left in the woods. Arthur kept going out to the fields, picking up a little pinch of soil and rubbing it between finger and thumb, looking at the sky, sniffing the air. Should he start the seeding? All the farmers in the area were wondering the same thing. A couple of them had begun already. Arthur was anxious to get started if only to distract himself, but he was cautious. Would his father have started so soon? He picked up another little nugget of soil and rubbed it, seeing his father as he did so, or rather feeling him, feeling the moisture content (a little bit wet) and the soil temperature (a little bit cold) with his father’s forefinger and thumb. He saw that his hands were his father’s hands, broad and square and powerful. It gave him confidence.

Whenever the boys saw him going out to the fields they came with him; they wanted to get started too. They were very subdued nowadays. Arthur guessed they’d heard on the POW grapevine how the war was going: German armies in retreat, towns and cities bombed to rubble. They must need distracting as much as he did. “Is goot?” they’d say hopefully, copying his gesture, rubbing small crumbs of soil. “Is goot time now?” But Arthur shook his head. He decided to wait till the ground warmed up a little more. A couple of days of strong sunshine should do it.

Then on the first of April there was a heavy snowfall and overnight the temperature plummeted to ten below. The boys grinned at him and bowed, and said, “Goot farmer!”

He was going to miss them when they went home. He couldn’t imagine what he’d do without them. What would he do about Otto’s land? The thought took him back to Laura, as all thoughts did.

Jake and Laura took to doing their homework together after school. They took their books upstairs to Jake’s room. Mrs. Dunn was so delighted that they were “friends” that she didn’t even protest.

“She’s so good for him, Arthur,” she confided in a hushed voice. “She’s quieting him down, don’t you think?”

Arthur was appalled by her innocence. How could she know her own son so little? He wouldn’t have left any girl alone in Jake’s presence for ten seconds. He studied Laura surreptitiously for signs that she was being pressured to do things she didn’t want to do. He wasn’t sure what those signs would be, but he was sure he’d know them if he saw them.

He saw them on a Saturday morning at the end of April. He was in the cow barn—the cold snap had broken and he and the boys were taking the cows out to pasture for the first time—and Laura appeared in the doorway. The minute he saw her, he knew.

“Mornin’,” he said, his heart tightening in his chest. And she smiled at him vaguely, and said good morning, and he knew.

She told him that their generator had stopped working and her father wondered if Arthur could have a look at it. She apologized for bothering him, and he said it was no bother, he’d come right now. They walked back to the Luntz farm together and she hardly spoke, and he knew without a doubt.

He had to take the generator to bits to find out what the problem was and he kept dropping things, nuts and screws rolling off into the grass. His head was buzzing like a nest of hornets, thoughts flying about every which way. He kept seeing her and Jake together, Jake whispering to her, touching her. It caused such rage within him that he could hardly breathe. He struggled to calm himself down. He told himself he didn’t know anything for sure, but that wasn’t true; he knew something for sure, he just didn’t know what. He told himself that probably nothing serious had actually happened yet. If anything serious had happened, Laura would be in a terrible state and she wasn’t, she simply looked confused and unhappy. He decided, with huge relief, that this must mean Jake was working on her but hadn’t got anywhere yet. He would be pushing her in small steps, each one hardly seeming like anything, but keeping up a constant, unrelenting pressure; Arthur had been on the receiving end of Jake’s campaigns often enough to know how he worked. She’d be afraid of losing him, afraid he’d think she was a prude. Prude was one of Jake’s words—Arthur had heard him say it of other girls he knew. “She’s such a prude.”

He dropped another screw and had to go searching through the grass on his hands and knees. There was the sound of footsteps and he looked up and saw Reverend March coming around the corner of the house.

“I’ve come to see how you’re getting on,” the Reverend said jovially. He stood squarely in the light, looking down in bafflement at the dismembered generator spread out on an old tarpaulin on the ground. “Heavens above,” he said. “Heavens above. What would we do without you, Arthur?” It was a good question. Reverend March couldn’t have hammered a nail into a plank of wood to save his life.

“It’s okay,” Arthur said, unable to look at him directly because of the images swimming about in his head. “Just dirt in the carburetor, that’s all.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Reverend March said. “It is very good of you to rescue us once again. We always seem to be appealing to you.”

Arthur dropped another nut. This time he managed to slam his hand down on it before it could roll off the tarpaulin. He wondered if he could warn the old man that his daughter was in danger. How would you go about saying it? However he put it, Reverend March wouldn’t believe him. Jake had charmed him as he charmed everyone else: Arthur had watched him do it and it was something to behold. Jake listened seriously to every word the old man said, deferred to him, asked his opinion, laughed at his jokes. He even asked questions about things Reverend March had said in his sermons. The seriousness, the studiousness with which he asked them made Arthur want to puke, but you could see how impressed the Reverend was. If Arthur tried to tell him it was all an act, that Jake was out to seduce his daughter, the old man would think he’d gone mad. The same would be true if he tried to warn Laura herself. She wouldn’t believe him either. Jake’s lies were far more convincing than the truth.

He was going to have to deal with Jake directly. It made him sweat to think about it but he could see no other course of action. He would tell him straight out that if he touched Laura he would kill him. He would make sure that Jake believed him. He saw himself making sure, slamming Jake’s head against a wall. The thought made his hands shake.

A movement caught his eye: Laura, carrying something out to the clothesline. Reverend March saw her too. She began pegging out a tablecloth, stretching the sides so that it would dry flat. Watching her, Arthur felt rage swelling up inside him again, hot and acid as bile. He bent over the generator, afraid that the old man would see the state he was in.

“She isn’t quite herself today,” Reverend March said absently. “We’ve been trying to make a decision. We’ve been trying to decide whether or not to settle here. In Struan, I mean. When this dreadful war is over and Reverend Gordon returns to his flock, we’ve been wondering whether or not we should stay. It’s a decision we have to make, but I’m afraid it is upsetting her.”

Arthur paused in the act of threading a screw.

“Personally I am in favor,” Reverend March said, watching his daughter walk back to the house. “I have been overwhelmed by the kindness of the people here, the way you have all, in the midst of your own troubles and sorrows, welcomed us into the fold. But it’s a difficult decision for Laura. She has friends back home, whom she misses.”

Laura disappeared around the corner of the house and the old man sighed. He bent down and picked up Arthur’s screwdriver and examined it curiously, turning it over a time or two.

“Initially the plan was simply to come for the duration of the war,” he said, testing the sharpness of the screwdriver cautiously with his finger. “To fill a need and to get Laura away from things for a while. We intended to go back. Not to the same house—the memories there are too painful—but back to North Bay. But of course, in the interim she has also made friends here. Very good friends.”

He smiled down at Arthur and gave him the screwdriver. “I don’t know why I am burdening you with this, Arthur. Burdening you yet more. It’s just that Laura seems rather cast down at the moment, and I’m afraid that the issue has brought back both the memories and the sorrow. She was so much better; it is painful to see her unhappy again.”

He seemed to expect a comment of some sort. Arthur stood up, wiped his hands on his overalls, and managed to mumble something about everyone being real pleased if they settled here. His head was spinning. He’d been so sure. So sure. And now it seemed it might not concern Jake after all.

Reverend March was thanking him for his kind words. Arthur nodded. He squatted down again and finished cleaning the carburetor. Reverend March kept talking and Arthur nodded from time to time to show that he was listening, although he wasn’t. He put the generator back together, reconnected the fuel line to the gas tank, and started the engine. The generator shuddered into life.

Reverend March stopped in midsentence and stared at it. “Miraculous,” he said. “Completely miraculous. I don’t know how you do it.”

After supper he went to visit Ted Hatchett. He sat beside him for an hour, saying nothing. He kept seeing Jake, wedged between the rocks under the bridge, the water rushing over his face. His fault. Arthur’s fault. He saw Jake the day he got home from the hospital, lying on the bed in the kitchen. His face, as he asked, “Did you mean what you said, Art? When we were on the bridge? Did you want me to fall?” And then the months during which Arthur had waited, sick with dread, for Jake to tell their parents what had really happened on the bridge. Sure that he would. But he never did.

He saw that it was impossible to be sure of anything, where Jake was concerned. He would never know what Jake was thinking or intending, never know his motives, never understand the first thing about him.

So now he couldn’t think what to do. How much to trust his own gut feelings, how much weight to give to what Reverend March had said. He was sure Jake was pressing Laura. Maybe she was upset about the question of where they were going to live, but he was sure there was more to it than that. Almost sure.

What could he do? He could warn Jake off, but that was dangerous because it might backfire. If Jake was playing games, courting Laura just to torture him—otherwise, surely, he would have given up on her by now—then it would definitely spur him on.

A sound, a kind of creaking, near at hand, broke in on his thoughts. He looked around, trying to figure out where it was coming from, and then realized it was Ted. He was trying to say something. Arthur leaned forward to hear him better. Ted had another couple of goes and finally managed to get it out.

“How’re the pigs?” was what it sounded like.

“The pigs?” Arthur said, his mind still on Jake.

Ted nodded.

“They’re good,” Arthur said, sitting back in his chair. “They’re real happy. We put ’em out last week. In the orchard. You remember the Luntzes’ orchard? Little patch, don’t produce much in the way of apples but it looks nice. They’re rootin’ away there. Look real happy.”