After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away (20 page)

This wild ride. This ride through the familiar streets of Yarrow Lake suddenly unfamiliar as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope, whipping past.
Oh! oh!
as Crow turns, banks the motorcycle into the wind, and we’re headed away from Yarrow High and residential streets. We’re on a blacktop road bordered on one side by open, undeveloped land, newly budded willow trees rushing past in a dreamy shimmer of green. Before I have time to prepare, to react, we’re up onto, then over, a rattly wood-plank bridge over a small stream where sunlight glitters like broken glass below.

“You okay,
chérie
? Want to turn back?”

In the rearview mirror that’s stippled with rust, I can see Crow’s face, Crow’s smiling eyes searching for me. Quickly I tell Crow that I’m not afraid, I don’t want to turn back.

Later I will wonder if Crow doesn’t always remember my name.

For a guy who knows so many girls and women, it’s easier to call them
chérie
.

I’m not thinking such thoughts now, hunched behind Crow, trying to catch my breath, staring with damp astonished eyes.

How low to the ground we are! How open to the wind, to the pavement rushing beneath! How wide the driver’s seat is directly in front of me, the sheepskin saddle I must grip with my knees, awkwardly. As if my legs are being pried open. The raw keening roar of the motor that makes my heart race. Sets my teeth on edge. It’s like Crow is a black flame rushing through the landscape, and I am being carried with him like a trusting child, my hair whipping in the wind and my eyes streaming tears. I don’t have time to think of the other girls who’ve ridden behind Gabriel Saint-Croix on this motorcycle, if they gripped him tight as I am gripping him, astonished by my own boldness. Don’t have time to wonder
Did they love him too? Were they happy like me?

This wild ride. I want never to end.

What is hard to become used to is the sky overhead. My eyes keep glancing up, like something’s wrong: I’m on a vehicle without a roof. A vehicle without sides to protect the driver and me. No time to think,
Am I afraid? am I terrified?
It’s happening too fast for words.

Late April there’s a net of glimmering green cast over everything. There’s a rich, ripe smell to the air. On the open highway pavement rushed beneath us like a river.

This wild ride, I want never to end.

23

“Try to see,
chérie
. Don’t try to remember.”

Shutting my eyes. So many times I have tried to remember, but this is the first time I will try just to
see
.

“Keep walking. Don’t stop. I can lead you.”

Beneath my feet this wood-chip trail is spongy. Last time I was here, back in November, the trail was covered in a crust of snow in places, other stretches were muddy. This afternoon there is a dreamy look to the air, sunlight shifts and ebbs behind banks of filmy clouds. Now that we’re off the roaring Harly-Davidson, we can hear birds singing.

Red-winged blackbirds, flocks of them in the cattail marshes beside Sable Creek.

I told Crow that I don’t have happy memories of this place, the trail out of Yarrow Lake that runs beside Sable Creek, the footbridge beside the railroad bridge where I panicked and couldn’t cross.

Immediately Crow said, “That’s where we’re going then.”

“I don’t think—”

“Yes,
chérie
. We will cross the bridge today.”

“But…”

I’ve told him about the Tappan Zee Bridge. What happened there, what I saw, or thought I saw, in the lane in front of my mother’s car.

Crow shudders. As if bridges trouble him, too.

Softly I say, “…can’t stop thinking I was meant to die there. With my mom.”

These words come out so naturally. Though I have never heard them before.

I expect Crow to challenge what I’ve said, the way an adult would. But Crow only shivers, as if a shadow has passed over him.

“Lots of places I’ve felt that way.”

There’s sadness in Crow’s voice, but something blunt and flat too. Meaning
Don’t ask me. Not yet.

Crow has been leading me along the trail, my hand in his. Supposedly, my eyes are shut. In this way I am trying to “see” what was on the Tappan Zee Bridge before the wreck. But I’m cheating. I can see a little, a blurry crescent through my eyelashes.

The swift-running creek. Sunlight on the creek. On the other side, marshes. We’ve been walking for about ten minutes, Crow has left his motorcycle in a parking lot beside the trail.

Somewhere along here Crow and I first met. When I was new to Yarrow Lake. When I was limping and wincing with pain because I’d tried to run when I wasn’t ready yet.
Know what you look like? Somebody who’s been in a car crash.

I don’t want to remember how I distrusted Crow then. How I was ready to scream, to run panicked, if he came too close.

Now, Crow is holding my hand.

His fingers are strong and warm, holding my hand.

The bad memory is returning. I’ve forgotten how wide Sable Creek becomes at this point, joined by another creek flowing in the direction of Yarrow Lake. How ugly the old bridge is, defaced by graffiti.

Crow sees that my eyes are open and chides me, “Hey, girl, you’re supposed to be trying to
see
.”

Making a game of it. Crow makes games of what he can, failing isn’t so serious then.

Bad memories returning. Signs posted along the trail.

NO MOTORCYCLES
.

BICYCLES MUST BE WALKED
.

NO HORSES
.

CAUTION
:
TRAIN
.

“I’m afraid….”

“So?”

“I’m changing my mind, really I don’t want—”

“
Chérie
, keep walking. Shut your eyes. We are headed for the bridge. We are going to cross it.”

“Gabriel, I don’t think—”

“‘Gabriel’? Who’s he? You think you know ‘Gabriel’?”

Crow laughs. I’m not sure what the joke is.

I remember sexy/glamorous Claudette calling him Gabriel. Teasing in a way that seemed cruel. And the look on Crow’s face, stricken and somber. A look I’ve never seen on Crow at any other time.

I don’t dare ask Crow about Claudette. I’m summoning up my nerve to ask him about Trina.

“Keep walking,
chérie
. Now, a little hill. I’m your guide. Seeing Eye dog, that’s Gabriel.”

I’m beginning to be nervous. Through my half-shut eyes I can see the path up the hill, the pedestrian bridge about six feet above. Suddenly this doesn’t seem like a good idea, I wish that I’d never agreed to try it.

“Jenna! Come on.”

So Crow does know my name. When I’m not
chérie
.

“We’re going to cross this bridge when we get to it. Not before and not after.”

This makes me laugh, as Crow meant it to. Teasing and playful is Crow’s way of coping.

But I’m afraid. I can’t keep my eyes shut, the footbridge is so close….

“Last time you were here, and you couldn’t cross the bridge, what did you think would happen?”

“I don’t know…. A train might come along?”

“A train might come along, okay. And then?”

“A train might come along when I was on the bridge. Before I could get across.”

“And then?”

“I—I’m not sure.”

“Trains come along here all the time, don’t they? Obviously, on the track.”

This is true. I guess I haven’t thought about it.

“What is special about you, Jenna, that the footbridge would collapse because you were on it?”

“I…don’t know. I’m just scared of bridges.”

“The other bridge, the big bridge, you’re remembering. Not this little bridge.”

Crow is gripping my hand tight. There’s an edge in his voice I heard when he spoke to his father. Suddenly we’re on the platform above the creek. It’s as narrow as I remember it. The wood is as old and rotted-looking as I remember. To our left is the elevated railroad track, about five feet above us. There’s the smell of wet wood, the frightening swoosh of water beneath our feet. In March and April, in the spring thaw and after torrential rains, Sable Creek is higher than I’ve ever seen it.

Not a creek but a river. A furious river deep enough to drown in.

Yet Crow is urging me forward. And I can’t.

“
Chérie
, there is no train. I promise you. I can see in both directions:
There is no train.
”

I don’t believe him. He isn’t even looking. He’s laughing at me, I’m such a child to him.

I am a child, I will never grow up. I will never get beyond the bridge. I will never see what is on the bridge, and so I will never cross it.

Crow says, “Let it pass through you, Jenna.”

“Let what pass through?”

“Fear.”

“It doesn’t pass through—it sticks….”

“Make yourself empty, like light. Let fear pass through. Don’t let it stick.”

“I can’t….”

“
I
make myself empty. It’s what I do, to cross over.”

“You? Why?”

“Every time I risk anything, on the motorcycle, in a place like this, with another person, I’m scared. Because I know things can go wrong, and I can be hurt.”

I’m gripping Crow’s fingers tight. I can hear his voice quaver, as if the words are being pulled from him.

“I know other people can be hurt. And I hate it.”

“‘Hate’—what?”

“What the world does to us. Some of us.”

Crow sounds angry, disgusted. For a moment I’m frightened of him, the rage quivering in him.

At first Crow isn’t going to continue. Then he says, in a low, tense voice, “My brother, Paul, died in an ugly accident when he was thirteen. I was a little kid, just ten. We were living in Maine then. It was before my mother left us—this is why my mother left us…. I adored my brother and followed him everywhere he’d let me. Paul and his friends. One day they were jumping and diving into an old stone quarry about a mile from our house, a quarry kids weren’t supposed to play in. The water was always cold, even in summer. And deep, except where there were submerged rocks. Paul thought he knew where it was safe to dive and where it wasn’t. So he dived from a cliff about twenty feet above the water, hit his head on the edge of a sharp rock, and…It was so fast, what happened. One minute Paul was calling to us from the cliff, the next he was in the water, under the water, not moving; it was like his body was broken, just rags. The other boys tried to swim to him, to help him. But they were just kids and panicked. They told me to run for help, and I ran, and ran, I was crying as I ran…. I couldn’t run fast enough.”

Crow swipes at his eyes, his voice trails off.

I tell Crow I’m so sorry. It must have been a nightmare….

“It was. Is.”

I’ve never heard any man speak like Crow has spoken, with such raw anguish. Never seen any man swiping tears from his eyes, his face like something about to break into pieces.

For a long moment we stand in silence. There is nothing that I can say that isn’t weak and banal. I am squeezing Crow’s fingers, as if to give him strength.

Now Crow nudges me to come with him out onto the footbridge. I can’t bear to see the creek rushing so close beneath the rotted-looking planks, only a few inches below. “Stop looking! I told you.” Crow grips my head in his hands, with his thumbs gently shuts my eyes.

“Stop thinking where you are now. Forget me. Just focus your eyes back onto the Tappan Zee Bridge. We won’t move from here. We will be very still. Until you
see
.”

Though my eyes are shut, it feels like my eyelids are blinking, quivering. I can’t see anything. The noise of the creek rushing beneath my feet is like a roaring in my ears. I am becoming paralyzed with fear, can’t stop swallowing. The inside of my mouth feels coated with dust. Mom shifts lanes, we’re moving onto the Tappan Zee Bridge. It’s a familiar bridge, but very wide. And the Hudson River below, so wide. I’m distracted by something on the dashboard, trying to play a CD, but the disk keeps being rejected, Mom and I have been talking about something, can’t remember what, I’m in a sort of peevish mood, don’t know why, seems so often I was in this sort of mood not knowing why, and Mom trying to find out, wanting to know, wanting to make me feel better, I guess, but it felt like prying,
Try me, Jenna, maybe I can help,
but I don’t want Mom’s help, I am fifteen years old, for God’s sake, not a little kid, really pissed now the CD won’t play, and there is absolutely nothing wrong that I’ve done, pressing “eject” to try again, suddenly there’s something beyond the windshield, something directly in the lane in front of us, I can see it clearly: a bird with wide brown flapping wings? a hawk? a hawk with a darkish head, streaked breast and tail feathers looking dazed as if it has just struck the bridge railing? and I’m screaming for Mom not to hit the hawk, I’m groping for the steering wheel, not knowing what I’m doing, Mom pushes at me, Mom is braking the car, braking too hard, the car swerves, begins to skid toward the railing…

Suddenly I
see
. More vividly than I’d seen at the time. More vividly than any dream. My eyes are shut tight, and Crow continues to grip my hands, I’m sobbing with relief: There was something on the bridge after all, I hadn’t imagined it, Mom must have seen it too, in that last panicked moment Mom would have understood.

“It was a hawk, Gabriel! A hawk on the bridge.”

“A hawk?”

“It must have flown against the railing and was stunned, but managed to recover and fly away. I wanted to protect the hawk, I…pulled at the steering wheel—it was there—it really was there! My mother must have seen it too.”

Crow holds me, lets me cry. Holds me tight and comforts me as you’d comfort a stricken child. The first time any boy has held me like this. Any man. I am crying as if my heart is broken, which I guess it is.

“I should tell people, shouldn’t I? That I saw the hawk, and I pulled at the steering wheel, and it wasn’t Mom’s fault in any way….”

“Hell, no.”