The Bridge Read online

  Designed by Wilma Robin Copyright

  (c) 1973 by D. Keith Mano

  All Rights Reserved

  Printed in the United States of America All the characters in this hook are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is ‘purely coincidental.

  This hook is for Elizabeth McKee…with gratitude for her patience and encouragement.

  Chapter 1

  At the crest he could hear the first eee-thud, eee-thud of the mortars. In the rear seat Carol clapped her hands. The Model T’s hood hesitated, then dipped, level. Oscar shifted, gave the engine relief. His palms bore bracelet tooth marks from the steering wheel: he had been lifting hopefully with shoulders and hands while they drove the steep incline. Eleanor, beside him on the wooden seat, leaned forward, placed her fingertips on the dashboard gently, a grace note, hands spread octave wide. Carol, behind Oscar, caressed the seven months of her pregnancy. She rubbed the opaque ball, depressing it, prodding it, as though there were discrete, erogenous parts. Juices of her excitement intrigued the fetus. It moved. Carol leaned sideways on the rear seat. She touched her twin sister’s seven-month pregnancy. It was a tough muscle, contracted. Julie giggled: a whinny, an extraordinary sound blown through mouth and nostrils, an arcane call of their childhood. Eleanor made fists when she heard this, the joined cry of Oscar’s other wives. She glared at him. Oscar didn’t see. Though reluctantly, he too had been thrilled by the mortars’ drumming, by the meshed tusks of piping, falling sound. Holiday memories, his family: Oscar touched the red armband, a tourniquet for his left biceps. It was an austere civilization; this was ceremony and entertainment.

  Across a narrow river valley they saw the crater's southern wall. Its rim was somewhat lower than the crest; its foreshortened mouth inscribed a silver ellipse. Dust from two hundred explosions sifted up: the kinetic uncertainty of a dormant volcano. The Adirondacks cowered, molars on its false horizon line; they shimmered, appearing insubstantial through the dust, through the blue haze of factory smokestacks active even on the Feast of Eater. The Model T braked downward along a one-lane dirt road. Against the engine’s catarrhal, masticating pulse, the far rumble seemed an inverse echo: reverberations louder than the sounds that had made them. The road hair-pinned; tall conifer growth appeared on its verges. Oscar slowed. He saw the other black Model Ts, a slanting chain three hundred yards long to the bridge head. Each chassis a pedestal for its jiggling human busts.

  “Bumper to bumper.”

  “We should have come yesterday.”

  “I was busy, Eleanor.”

  “We should have come yesterday. There’s nothing left. I know it.”

  White/green insecticide sugared the cedar trunks, on the southwest, the side of the prevailing wind. Serrate branches sawed slowly, parting the still air's ivory bone. It was humid. The traffic had whisked up a great awning of dust. It shaded them as the Model T drove under; it fell into their sweat. Julie and Carol were redheads; dust connected their russet freckles. They had no maternity dresses. Deerskin bodices had gradually been let out on thongs, Venus-flytrap jaws opening, as though their clothes, too, had conceived. Sweat of long wearing stained half circles under armpits, darker, lighter, the isobar chronicles of waves on sand. Their moccasins were black with body oil, pliant and comfortable, new animals living in them. Eleanor did not sweat. Her skins were carapaces that cracked; they did not learn the shape of her thin body. She wasn’t pregnant.

  The crater wall loomed now. Fifty yards ahead traffic passed over a poorly leveled culvert. Oscar watched torsos crest, bow, right themselves. Then Eleanor and he bowed; Julie and Carol on the high platform back seat exaggerated the jounce, whinnying: fun. Some families walked. Several rode bicycles, wrenching handlebars against the false direction given out by a stone, a root, a snake of soil erosion. He counted six abandoned cars. Tires were vulnerable; the technology of rubber processing had proved obdurate and subtle. Traffic halted. Oscar stood to wipe dust from the far side of his square windshield. The glass jiggled in its frame. Trapped bubble imperfections clotted and chewed transparency. All new mirrors distorted. No one, Oscar thought, could exactly know his own face. He sat.

  “They’re all the same.” The heavy chestnut braid flicked against Eleanor’s shoulder. It was knotted hard, glossy: it could disgust him, arouse him. Eleanor’s arms were wrapped against her chest. “I hate it. The same car. The same color.” She pointed toward the bridge. “It’s a nightmare.”

  “Don’t start, for Priest’s sake.” Oscar let the clutch in. “I had that up to here yesterday. It’s the best we can do.”

  “I saw that car book in your office. There were nice cars. Like cats. Not like coffins. This is a coffin.”

  “The Council decided and for once the Council was right. Ford’s Model T is the most efficient, the simplest form of transportation ever invented.” The image of Priest toppled from its magnetic grip on the dashboard. Oscar reset it. “Look, dearest. Let me explain again. For the first time in man’s history, scientific knowledge is two hundred years ahead of technology. I can tell you how to build a supersonic jet plane. I can tell you how to make Mnemycin and Planktil. But I haven’t got the tools.” Eleanor jerked her head back by the braid; the skin of her scalp moved, lifting eyebrows. Her thumb plucked at the deerskin bodice.

  “And these skins. I hate them most of all. I hate the feel of them.”

  “Please. There’s no sense bitching about it. This is a holiday. Let’s not spoil things.” Oscar rapped the horn button; there was no sound. He blew breath through fattened cheeks. “I get this every month on the Ecotech committee. I’m sick of arguing priorities.”

  Sick. Sick. He spoke English well, exactly as the Eastern School of Eco-phonologists advocated: pronunciation standards based on the New York “Rosetta” tape. Yet there was no suppleness; it was an academic symbol code. Sometimes, dreaming, he sang growls, shrieked: in the morning his chin was tacky with drool. Oscar envied, feared the young Appalachia savages that Eleanor taught in speech therapy. Their evolved speech was of groans and clacking yips, set behind the mouth. Lips did not move; their faces were expressionless as dog muzzles. Sick of arguing, he whispered. Oscar wondered if a Nineties man could have understood him.

  “How does it go?” Julie leaned forward. They were not identical twins. Julie’s skull was larger than Carol’s. The same features on a more expansive skeleton appeared niggardly; Julie’s freckles were a crabbed, ungenerous spatter.

  “What?”

  “The words. What are the words?”

  “Not again.” Eleanor slapped her own cheek.

  “I’m not as smart as you are, Miss Titless No Ass.” Carol whinnied. Julie said, “At least I can make the goodies.”

  “Stop it. Both of you.”

  “She started it.”

  “All right.” Oscar touched his forehead to the steering wheel. “Priest. I know why bigamy was a crime.”

  “How does it go?”

  “All right. Listen.”

  He inhaled. “You wait until the dom puts meat into your palm.”

  “I hold my hands cupped like this?” She made a paten of adjacent palms.

  ”Right. The dom will say, ‘Come and feed at my arm. I have given my flesh for you.’ Then you say, I accept this gift of grace and I am full of thanks.’”

  “I accept this gift of grace and I am full of thanks.”

  “Listen to her.”

  “Shut up, Eleanor. Say, Guh. Guh. Say the letter ‘g’ guh. Not huh.”

  “Guhift of guhrace.” Eleanor laughed.

  “Well…All right. Then another dom will bring the cup of blood.”

  “Just take a sip, dear. Don’t drink it all, like you usually do.”

  “I’m eating for two. Only crows pec
k.”

  “Eleanor. Please don’t lower yourself.”

  Eeeeee…Oscar thought he had blinked: a nip of shadow taken from the sun’s white underbelly. A shell exploded to their left in dense evergreen stands. Shrapnel sprayed: a single shaking of some huge Castanet. The forest had caught its force. A billow of small birds went up, but no smoke. In the traffic heads bobbed uncertainly; hands were over temples, defensive salutes. Carol had bruised her cheekbone on the door handle. There was a momentary pressure against the eardrum, a child’s blowing there.

  “Priest!” Eleanor said. She had been startled. “How did that happen?”

  “A misfunction,” Oscar shrugged. “And they say weapons production is ten years ahead of consumer goods.”

  “I accept this gift of grace,” said Julie and Carol nervously. “And I am full of thanks.”

  It was four o’clock. The sun had begun to erect a great lean-to of its shadow, fixing it in a slant down from the crater rim, then eastward. Traffic halted. On the right bank a Model T, its front axle broken, knelt forward, salaamed, a trained camel sitting. A tall fat man kicked the radiator, pulling the kicks, furious, yet wary of thin moccasin soles. His belly eaved over deerskin shorts. There were many corpulent men now. Since the Age of Ecology, food had become both ritual and currency. A man’s fat was his social substance. Oscar braked.

  “It’s Leo.” Oscar stood, hips against the wheel. “Leo. Leo. Over here.”

  “Oscar.” Leo’s thick glasses were misted with perspiration. He visored them up, waved, then shuffled quickly toward Oscar’s car. His mustache sewed together a harelip. Grins showed his ovine upper teeth to the gums. He had learned to smile from the extremities of his mouth. “Priest! Am I glad to see you. Look at that son of a bitch. Got room for Betty and Flora?”

  “We’ll make room.” Horns brayed; a ten-yard gap had opened ahead. “They can sit on Carol and Julie’s laps.”

  “Laps. We haven’t got laps,” Julie giggled.

  “Betty. Flora.” Betty’s head and shoulders appeared behind the broken car. Leo shouted at the irritable traffic. “Hold your horses, damn it. Flora. Hurry up. You can find a ladies’ up at the crater.” Flora ran huddled from a paling of cedars; hands masked her groin. “Damn woman. I’m sick of her bladder. Sometimes I think the Ecologists had a good idea. Come on. Come on.”

  The car moved. Sunlight slanted across the windshield, brushed its tawny film of dust, and made opaqueness. Oscar leaned out to see. Flora sat on Betty’s lap; the high stomachs of Carol and Julie bolstered her elbows. Leo wedged down beside Oscar. Eleanor slammed the door. Her nostrils closed; the bridge of her nose furrowed. Leo stank. They could see superstructures of the bridge, half wagon wheels spoked with thick, bolted wooden supports. An elderly man hawked images of Priest at the roadside. Oscar waved him away.

  “Thank Priest you came along. We’ve been stuck here since three o’clock. Walked down to the bridge and back twice, but their damned service phone is out. All I need is to miss signing in.” He craned over his right shoulder. “Just look at that ecological disaster. Crack. Like a gun going off. Crack. I hit that big rut back there—”

  “The road’s in bad shape.”

  “But the car. The car, I bought it two weeks ago. Priest’s bloody arm!” He dropped his fist on the dashboard. “Pardon my language, Eleanor. I’ve had a trying day. No offense meant, Oscar—but do you Ecotech boys ever get anything right? I installed a new flush system back last month of Paul. Yesterday I sat down.” He remembered surprise with his face, eyes lidless. “Broke right in half. Water all over the floor. Right in half. I fell on my wrist—”

  “Things must be going well with you, Leo.” Oscar smiled. “We still have to use the outhouse.”

  “Bah—” Leo shrugged. “I was on the waiting list for a year. I keep on top of things, that’s all. Never mind, Flora—” He turned around. “You’re no lightweight yourself. Just keep your big mouth shut.” Leo supported paps with his palms. “Brand-new car. There’s got to be a better way.”

  “It’s not easy, Leo. I’ve just been through this with Eleanor. I get a little tired of complaints. We’ve got too much data. I wish the Ecologists had burned more books.”

  “No smoke. Pollution.”

  “It’s one thing to know that bolt A has to be screwed into hole B—then you have to build a machine that makes bolt A. And the bolt-making machine needs bolts. It’s what they used to call Chinese boxes.”

  “Turn right over there.”

  “Right?”

  “I have a press pass. We can use the service entrance.”

  They crossed the bridge. Traffic was staggered: the primitive framework would support only two cars. Crater River hushed, blowing, a toothless idiot’s mouth sound. The racket of the mortars increased, under them now, not merely above, vibrating sympathies in the wooden roadway’s tympanum. The fetuses began to pop up against their husks. The great noise had stimulated them, had already become dark memories. Flora and Betty were allowed to touch. Leo shouted. He closed his right ear with one finger. The guard accepted his pass. A saggy, four-railed gate was levered up, then opened. Oscar drove over the hummocked grazing of a dairy farm. The Model T’s inefficient differential made his rear wheels lock and slide. Cows had been herded away from the milk-destroying noise. Two burnished silos butted the sky. A farm dog charged their left running board. It barked. They could not hear, and the dog gagged on excitement, on frustration, bringing up its long tongue again and again.

  “Turn here.” The road ramped, negotiating oblique ascents of the crater wall. Oscar could see the West Parking Lot above. Leo glanced at Eleanor suddenly. She seemed asleep, arm on the car door, ear on the Y of her armpit. He whispered: Oscar felt his breath. “How do you do it?”

  “Read. Read all the time.”

  “No. Julie and Carol.”

  “Oh,” Oscar laughed. Leo fingered the image of Priest, slid it quickly along the dashboard, a mating chess piece. “Hard work. Positive thought. Patriotism. My country right or wrong.”

  “I’m a patriot,” said Leo seriously. “No one can say I’m not a patriot.”

  The press area was a gravel peninsula. It had been separated from the West Parking Lot by raw logs, their surface hewn to textures of a ragged, carved turkey breast. The women rushed ahead; for the first time, they had been granted equal privilege at the Feast of Eater. Oscar guessed there were at least two thousand cars in the West Parking Lot. Most had colorful pennants attached to the windshield; it was impossible otherwise to distinguish one car from another. Leo stooped to remove gravel from his moccasin. Oscar stared toward the West Gallery entrance. Over the steep shoulder he saw a colossal profile; the mammoth statue of Priest. Leo clutched his elbow. Eleanor hesitated behind the other women, but when she saw Leo whispering, she strode angrily ahead, through an aisle of cars. Her braid danced from left to right shoulder, back again. A one-legged man hopping.

  “Oscar, my friend. Remember when we were in the Volunteer Guards? It’s twenty years now.”

  "Volunteer.” Oscar drew a set of earplugs from his pocket. “I always liked that. Volunteer. A drafted volunteer.”

  “Remember big Lois? That Eater holiday down in Southend?”

  “Big Lois. Priest! I remember. Do you still see her?” Leo’s articulation disturbed him. It was imprecise, blurred, as is speech among the deaf.

  “No. Dom's holy name, no. I haven’t the time or the inclination. I work a nine-day week. It’s not easy running a so-called free press with the Consul’s rep looking over your shoulder. I was just being sentimental. Shit, they were good days, weren’t they? We shared. You didn’t mind my sloppy seconds.”

  “You had mine, as I recall.”

  “Ah, well…perhaps. I couldn’t grow a decent mustache then.” Leo put a large red sour ball in his mouth. He sucked. “Would you consider doing me a favor?”

  “Yes. What?” Oscar inserted one plug. His left eardrum had burst during the last Feast of Eater. It had
bled for days.

  “A little night work.” Leo pulled the fingertips of his left hand, as if removing a glove. “With Betty and Flora. They both like you. You’ve kept in shape, Oscar. Women go for that craggy, haunted face of yours.”

  “Swap? Don’t you get enough?”

  “Oh, no. No. Too much.” He raised the backs of both hands against his chest, wriggled fingertips there. “I don’t want to touch yours. Priest! That Eleanor scares me half to death.” Leo sucked. The red ball edged out through his slit lip, glans through foreskin. “I need children.”

  “What’s that? I didn’t hear.”

  “Don’t make fun of me, damn it.”

  “No. I’m not. I didn’t hear.” Leo leaned close.

  “I said—I need children.”

  “Oh.” Oscar smiled. “Don’t worry, they won’t put you in the crater for that. Not any more.”

  “Of course not.” Leo touched his armband, then squeezed it: one of three preferred reverences. “But I am embarrassed. I write editorials about the new man, virile, tough, procreative. You know. That sort of thing. Look—even with three wives I bet a change would do you good.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Yes.” Leo crunched the candy ball. “Ah—I’m thinking of running for underconsul from Baldwin next year.”

  “I see.”

  Leo was puffing. An inverted triangle of sweat, base line across shoulders, apex at buttocks, grew dark on his back. They rested in front of the state souvenir stand. Oscar examined a pair of cheap field glasses. There were icons of Priest with paste rubies set in the arm; postcards; toy mortars that exploded a cork; stereopticon slides taken from the movie Priest, which had starred Edric Ekholm; CRATER ‘81 bumper stickers; a game for five-to-ten-year-olds called Boom!! The entrance to a pleasant prayer glade opened behind the stand: stone benches under weeping willows circled a goldfish pond. A dom exited from the glade. He wore a black rubberized suit, black hood; his left sleeve was scarlet below the biceps. He fingered a rosary of drilled human incisors. The souvenir man wished him a happy Eater. The dom gave him a perfunctory blessing, left fist in left armpit, left elbow up, an amputation. His words did not survive the crater uproar. Leo inclined his head, eyes pressed discreetly shut. Oscar grinned.