The Last Bridge (16 page)

My father danced with Wendy and my mother between taking long pulls from the silver flask he kept in his breast pocket. He made periodic stops to the truck to refill it from the fifth he kept under his seat.

From the way he was stumbling I figured he had an hour left in him and then he would have to go home.

If I didn’t know any better I would have sworn Addison was getting paid for dancing with every available (and not so available) woman in Wilton. He periodically looked over at me and nodded or waved; I shrugged it off.

Jared was with his jock buddies over in the corner. They stood in a clump with their arms crossed, acting like they’d rather push tackling sleds across the floor than dance with a girl.

I was anxious to leave before I lost my nerve. It was strange I would pick the only day of the year when my family seemed normal. Stranger still, I was having second thoughts as I watched Mom and Wendy dance together and saw my mother laugh for the first
time since that day on the phone when she spoke to Addison’s father.

Dad went out to smoke with a few of his friends. Before he left he looked at me and made the shape of a gun with his thumb and index finger and then pulled the trigger.

“So how about a dance?” Addison had slipped up next to me.

I shook my head. “Bad idea.”

“He’ll be gone for at least ten minutes. Come on, one dance.”

“What’s the matter? Did you run out of women?” I asked.

Addison took my hand and pulled me to the floor. We weaved in and out of families, couples, and the odd pairing of girlfriends dancing until he found a spot in the center of the room under the twirling disco ball.

He stopped short and I tripped into his arms. He held me there by putting his right arm around my waist and interlocking his left hand with my right. “Sometimes you just have to take the bull by the horns,” he said, smiling.

“So I’m a bull?”

“A beautiful one.”

I tried to pull away. “What if my dad …?”

“I’m watching the door; don’t worry.”

“I love this song,” I said, surprising myself at my own enthusiasm. Nell found the tape in her father’s music cabinet. We used to lie in her bed and listen to it over and over again; we didn’t know the lyrics or even the name of the song; we liked the way the sound pulled you away from yourself. We liked the message about wanting to stop the world to be alone with one person and the chorus that promised things would get better.

“Me too,” he whispered, as he leaned forward and made up his own lyrics and sang them in my ear.

I laughed; it was the height of cheese to sing lyrics in someone’s ear. Addison laughed too and spun me around. I opened my eyes and focused on his smile, the thin cool lips, his straight ivory teeth,
and the laugh lines framing his mouth like quotation marks. He held me as if the lyrics were true.

“Let’s go.” My father’s voice sliced through the music as his thick hand grabbed my wrist and tore me away from Addison. “You dance with me and no one else.” His words sprayed spit in my ear.

The crowd parted around us, leaving Addison, my father, and me in the center of a widening circle. My heart raced as the electronic beat of the music vibrated the floor.

“I can explain,” Addison said.

“You couldn’t keep your hands to yourself, could you?”

My toes felt like they would snap from the pressure of all my body weight pressing down on them. Why hadn’t I worn flats? How was I going to run in high heels?

My father pushed Addison.

“Dad, don’t!” I said. Addison’s face drained of color and his jaw slackened like he had been punched instead of pushed.

My father pulled me by the hair out of the lodge. I struggled to keep my balance as he twisted my hair in his fist. If I could have scalped myself to get away from him, I would have.

He slammed the exit door open so hard it swung back on its hinges and banged against the side of the building. It had grown dark. There was a cold wind blowing up from the north that whipped my dress above my head. Bad weather was coming.

“Get in,” he said as we reached the truck. He opened my door and shoved me in. I banged my head against the gearshift. I held my temple and tried to focus as I blinked away the sting of tears. Everything was double and blurry, like waking from a dream in the dark. I reached for the door handle.

“Open it and it will be the last time you feel anything,” he said as he climbed into the driver’s seat and caught my sleeve in his grip. My dress ripped.

My head throbbed. I could feel a welt forming over my left eye.

Outside, dark clouds swirled above us like hands waving in a
funeral parade. I worked at the straps of my shoes, hoping I could get away faster in bare feet.

My father put the key in the ignition and tried to start the truck. The engine was having difficulty turning over.

I pushed the heel strap on my right foot down with my left big toe, trying to move as little as possible. I got it down but still had to get out of the other intertwining straps. One good flinch of my leg would get it off me.

I was hoping someone had followed us into the parking lot or called the police.

“You’re just like your mother,” Dad said as he kept trying to start the truck. He banged on the dashboard. “You couldn’t keep your hands off him.”

Someone had to be coming for us.

I got the other heel strap down.

I took as deep a breath as I could muster and in one swift motion kicked both my legs out and shook the shoes free as I reached for the handle and slammed my body against the door to get it open fast.

The engine turned over just as my father caught the back of my dress and pulled me back toward him.

“No, you don’t,” he said, as I cried out into the parking lot. He gripped my thigh and squeezed hard.

My voice was faint, like I was gurgling underwater and not screaming for help.

So this is how you save yourself?

Outside, the sky opened up with a squeal of thunder and a deluge of rain.

“Son of a bitch,” my father shouted, as he banged the steering wheel and tried to navigate his way out of the parking lot.

The windshield wipers blinked furiously back and forth, trying to ward off the blanketing rain. Empty bottles of Jack Daniel’s rolled at my bare feet.

Dad put a cigarette in his mouth and pushed in the lighter. The
ashtray was overflowing with butts and the cellophane wrappers from new packs.

“You think I’m a fool, don’t you?” he said as he balanced the unlit cigarette on his lower lip.

I shook my head.

“He wouldn’t marry your mother. Just like Addison won’t marry you.”

“Who?”

“Shut the fuck up!” he exploded, with a smack that threw me against the passenger door. I felt blood trickling out of my nose. Tears burned my cheeks, and once again I could not see what was in front of me.

The lighter popped out as Dad turned the radio up louder.

Janis Joplin was begging a man to take another little piece of her heart.

The inside of the cab filled with smoke as my father took long careful drags on both his cigarette and stash of Jack. We were traveling down the main road, which could lead anywhere. I shoved my hands between my legs to warm them as the rain beat down on us with a fury matched only by my father’s. If he would only slow down, I’d roll out.

“I married her. I stayed in this goddamned hellhole. And for what?”

He looked at me but it wasn’t me he was seeing; it never was. The ticktock of his turn signal synchronized with the swishing of the wipers. My face was expanding. My teeth ached.

We turned off the main road just as the rain let up.

There was a rumble in the back of the truck like a log shifting.

“We built that bridge together. He was like a brother to me.”

We veered left at the fork; we were heading for Rucker’s Creek. I rolled my window down to get some air. Black spots like tiny crows fluttered in my peripheral vision. Droplets of rain splashed on my face. I stuck my head out the window and vomited. I tasted blood from my nose as it trickled down my throat.

Dad pulled me back in.

“Roll it up.”

He turned onto the path in the woods that his truck had made from so many trips. He didn’t slow down enough for me to jump out. I needed a chance to run if I was going to escape. I couldn’t risk him catching me.

We pulled up to the clearing with the rope bridge that connected the ravine.

“Let’s go,” he said as he put the truck in gear, left the headlights on, and came in front of the truck toward me.

We were going to walk the plank.

A
DDISON’S COFFEE WAS
as strong as his grip.

“Drink up,” he said as I sat at our kitchen table and let Addison slide my boots off. I’d backed into the creek and twisted my ankle trying to get away from him and the words I had traveled great distances not to hear. I would have crawled home if I had been alone but I wasn’t. Before I could get up I felt Addison’s hands reach under my armpits and hoist me up.

“Lean on me,” he said.

“Please don’t.” I couldn’t finish the thought. The pain was blinding.

We hobbled like that the rest of the way home. Neither of us spoke except to communicate direction changes or a need to rest. He held me against him, his arm wrapped around my waist and his shoulder wedged against my own.

I was too tired to struggle and too drunk to care.

“Want me to carry you?” he said.

The last time he carried me he thought he was saving me.

How wrong he was.

We made it to the house. He found the key we left on top of the lamppost and unlocked the door. Inside, he helped me to a chair and made a pot of coffee.

“You can go,” I said as he squatted down in front of me and
pulled the boot off my good foot and warmed my toes with his hands.

“God, Alex, you’re frozen.”

He stood up and took my mother’s washbasin out from under the sink and filled it with steaming hot water and soap and brought it over.

“This is going to hurt.” He carefully removed my other boot as he held my calf. He winced before I did. “Sorry,” he said.

I began to cry as he slipped my wet, holey socks off and gently rolled up my jeans. He placed my feet in the hot, sudsy water and slowly rubbed feeling back into me.

M
Y FATHER CAUGHT
me by the arm about twenty feet from the car. I screamed and clawed at him with a fierceness that startled me. The sounds emanating from my throat were not human.

“Let go.” I pushed away from his massive arms.

“Stop it,” he said in a voice that was so calm I almost relaxed into the sureness of it. Maybe I was wrong about what was happening; maybe we were just going to talk about walking the plank.

The wind was howling. The ground beneath me was slippery and muddy as I scrambled for footing. My father released me and shoved me down on the ground so hard he knocked the wind out of me.

“You need to grow up, little girl,” he said. “You need to get some balls if you’re going to survive your life.”

My father was haloed in the headlights from his truck. I struggled to get up but the ground was slick. The best I could manage was getting on all fours.

“Do you know what it’s like to lose everything?” he said, his thick bear arms waving at the sky. “She was mine and he took her. This farm should have been mine. And you …” He walked to the truck and opened the passenger door.

He’s getting a gun. He’s going to kill me
.

He rummaged behind the seat as I pushed myself up to a standing position. The high spindly trees lush with summer leaves waved around me like a crowd around a boxer waiting for him to hit the
ground. I put my arms out. If I had to, I would feel my way out. I stumbled toward the woods.

“You think I don’t know?” Each word moved closer to me. I could hear the slapping of his boots on the mud. Even in his funeral suit he wore his steel-toed work boots. He grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. The force threw me back to the ground. He leaned over and lifted my head up.

He was holding the red sketchbook Addison had given me. It was still in the big plastic bag I kept it in.

I reached for it. He snatched it away and walked to the ravine.

“You won’t cross for me; maybe you’ll cross for this.” He threw the book out past the bridge, past the streaks of light from the car, far away from my line of vision.

“I wanted one thing to be mine. I settled for you,” he said, as he walked back toward me and put his hands under my armpits and pulled me up. “Let’s go.”

The sky had opened up as we were halfway across the bridge. My father held me by the waist and pushed me across as I trembled and wished for death. We were soaked by the time I slipped on the step up from the bridge and almost fell into the ravine.

Sadly, my father caught me and dragged me to solid ground. I felt his weight bearing down on me, one hand pressing my head into the smooth mud and the other under my skirt… tearing at my underwear, and then it was inside me, but it wasn’t a hand. No, it wasn’t a hand at all.

He passed out on top of me. I managed to push him off and pull myself to a dry patch of ground under a pricker bush. My right leg had swollen to twice the size of my left, and judging by the snapping sound it made when my father tackled me as we made the final step on the bridge, I was certain it was broken. I had partial eyesight from the swollen slits each of my eyes had become. My lips were bleeding and swollen. My chest felt like someone had reached in and pulled my heart out with his bare hands.

My hands were strong, though, and I used them to get away.

I blacked out once I was under the bush. I felt pain everywhere, and while I had heard it called blinding, this was more vivid. This was pain that had no sound, no voice.

“Cat.” I was dreaming of my father slicing me in half with his band saw when I felt a hand on my cheek and then two arms lifting me.

It was Jared.

It had stopped raining.

“What did he do to you?” he muttered, as he carried me through the slippery mud and grass away from the bridge and deeper into the clearing. I had made it to the other side, the one I had never been on. He laid me down on a cot inside a small hunting shack. It smelled like moss and dried leaves.