On the Other Side of the Bridge (2 page)

The boys hiked up a hill until they reached the railroad tracks, which stretched above Catfish Creek. From up there, they could see the Winfield Road Presbyterian Church below. Service had just ended, and people were making their way toward the parking lot.

They ran down the hill, stopping at the bottom to pick grass burrs off their pants. They climbed over the fence behind the church, hurried inside the building through the rear door, and walked down the hallway until they reached the sanctuary. Then they slipped out the front doors, avoiding making eye contact with the Reverend Rodney Elrod, who was talking with a group of ladies about a women's retreat.

“Call me tomorrow,” Lonnie said before crossing the street and heading home.

Lonnie's parents weren't church goers, but his mother thought it was important for him to get some religion. When Brother Elrod stopped by their house one day to invite them to attend Sunday services, Lonnie's mother explained that she worked a late shift and couldn't make it to church, but that she would send her son.

So each Sunday morning, she made Lonnie walk across the street to the Winfield Road Presbyterian
Church, even though they weren't Presbyterians. If pressed about their religion, Lonnie's mother might have replied that they were Catholic. But Lonnie hadn't been inside a Catholic church since he was baptized as a baby.

His dad didn't care if Lonnie went to church, but he wasn't going to fight his wife on the issue. Although he had been raised a Baptist, he wasn't sure if he believed in God, but like his wife, he thought it was good if their son did.

Lonnie hated going to church, especially to Sunday school. The pastor's daughter, Jo Marie Elrod, who attended Aaron Wyatt Middle School with him, was in his Sunday school class, and she always made him feel stupid because he wasn't nearly as knowledgeable about the Bible as she was.

Jo Marie howled with laughter when Lonnie once asked Mrs. Finley, the Sunday school teacher, if Jesus could technically be considered a zombie since He had been raised from the dead. Mrs. Finley told him that his question was inappropriate, if not blasphemous. Lonnie didn't know what blasphemous meant, but he wasn't trying to be funny or cause trouble. He thought he had asked a perfectly legitimate question. He had planned to ask the same thing about Lazarus, whom he learned had also returned from the dead. The following day, Jo Marie blabbed it all over school that Lonnie Rodríguez thought Jesus was a zombie.

Lonnie begged his mother not to make him go to church anymore, but she refused to listen. She would stand on the porch, watching, until she saw her son cross the street and walk through the church's front doors.

Then one Sunday morning, Lonnie left the sanctuary to go to the bathroom. He didn't really have to use it, but
he had to do something to avoid falling asleep, while Brother Elrod droned on about the book of Habakkuk.

He strolled past the fellowship hall and the Sunday school classrooms until he reached the back of the building. Stopping there, he looked out the window. The back yard had a kiddy playground set enclosed by a chain-link fence. Beyond the fence, he could see the hill that led up to the railroad tracks.

Lonnie stepped outside, quietly shutting the door behind him. He was alone. The little kids were in children's church, and almost everyone else was sitting in the sanctuary, listening to Reverend “Snore-rod.”

Walking around the playground equipment, he thought that if he was a little kid, he would have enjoyed playing in the fort and coming down the slide on his belly, or crawling through the plastic tunnels.

He turned his attention to the fence, and a wicked idea began to form in his mind. He looked around. No one was watching. Without giving it another thought, he hurried to the fence and scrambled over it.

Lonnie glimpsed back at the church, feeling like an inmate who had just made a prison break. He couldn't stop now. He raced up the hill until he reached the railroad tracks.

He took in his surroundings: cedar elm trees and red oaks that had begun to sprout leaves in the warm, April air; black-eyed Susans, bishop's weed and dandelions that blanketed the hilly terrain. The sun shone brightly, and the wind caressed his face. Feeling liberated, Lonnie inhaled deeply and smiled. Mrs. Finley might have found it inappropriate, if not blasphemous, but he turned his eyes skyward and exclaimed, “Thank you, Jesus!”

On the other side of the tracks, he could see Catfish Creek. He would have liked to have gone down there, but he didn't have much time. The service would be ending soon. Instead, he remained where he was, playing on the steel rails, until a couple of minutes past noon, when he headed back to the church.

From then on, Lonnie spent many Sunday mornings, either at the railroad tracks or at Catfish Creek. And if his mother happened to be standing on the porch when church let out, she would see her son, Bible tucked under his arm, smiling like a saint, walking out of the Winfield Road Presbyterian Church.

Axel was Catholic, and he attended Sunday mass regularly with his family. Once in a while, though, he would tell his parents that Lonnie had invited him to go to his church. That way he could join him on his excursions.

Sometimes Lonnie wondered if sneaking out of church to play at Catfish Creek was a sin. Would God punish him for doing it? If He did, Lonnie figured the punishment couldn't be any worse than having to endure listening to the Reverend Elrod's coma-inducing sermons or his daughter's self-righteous, flapping mouth.

L
ONNIE'S DAD WAS SITTING IN THE DEN
watching a baseball game between the San Francisco Giants and the Chicago Cubs when Lonnie walked in. An open bag of Fritos lay on the coffee table, along with two empty beer cans. Lonnie's dad wore blue-plaid pajama bottoms and a black T-shirt with a picture of Ghostface from the
Scream
movies on the front. His face was peppered with five-day-old stubble, and his hair stood on end, as if he had poked a finger into an electric socket.

“Hi, buddy, how was church?” he asked.

Lonnie sat his Bible on the coffee table and plopped himself on the couch next to him. “Alright, I guess.”

“What'd they preach about?”

“The usual stuff. You know, about God and Jesus.”

“That's good.” His dad turned back to the game, unaware that each Sunday he asked the same questions, and each Sunday Lonnie replied with the same superficial answers.

Lonnie grabbed the Fritos bag and pulled out a handful of chips. “Mom asleep?”

“Yeah. She went to bed as soon as you left. But she told me to tell you that there's leftover KFC in the fridge if you're hungry.”

The Giants scored first, with a two-run homer. It was a good play, but Lonnie wasn't a Giants or Cubs fan. The game he was looking forward to watching was the one coming up later between the Texas Rangers, who were leading the American League West, and the Oakland A's, who trailed them by only two games.

At the commercial break, he went to the kitchen and took the KFC bucket out of the fridge. Three pieces of chicken were left. He grabbed a Coke can and carried it and the KFC bucket to his room.

Piles of clothes, empty soda cans, chips bags, comic books and other junk lay on the floor. Lonnie's mother had long given up trying to make him keep his room neat. All she asked was that his door remain shut, so she wouldn't have to see his mess each time she walked by. Lonnie couldn't understand what the big deal was. It wasn't as if the neighbors were suddenly going to pop in and want to see his room.

He made his way to his desk, which was cluttered with empty soda cans, books, pens and loose sheets of notebook paper. He picked up a book,
The Dumfrees Move In
by Violet Sparks, shoved everything else on the floor and sat his food and drink on top of the desk.

While he ate, he leafed through the book, which he was supposed to read for Progressive Reading, otherwise known as “reading for dummies.” The class was made up of flunkies, low readers and students with “reading motivation” issues. Lonnie figured he fell into the third category because he hated to read. No, that wasn't quite true. He didn't dislike reading. He read all the time — horror magazines, comic books and graphic novels. He had even read Bram Stoker's
Dracula
. Some parts of
Dracula
were hard to understand, but Lonnie took his
time with it and discovered he enjoyed the book as much as any vampire movie he had ever seen.

The most amazing thing he learned from reading the book was that a fellow Texan, a man named Quincey Morris, had helped kill Dracula. Lonnie had always been under the impression that it was Professor Von Helsing who had put an end to the Count's reign of terror. Even cooler was reading that old Quincey had stabbed Dracula in the heart with his Bowie knife. He only wished Bram Stoker had added Quincey Morris shouting, “Remember the Alamo!” before doing in the Count.

Lonnie's sixth-grade reading teacher, Mr. Dreyfus, had described him to his parents as a “reluctant reader.” That label preceded Lonnie when he moved up to the seventh grade, and he was placed in Ms. Kowalski's Progressive Reading class. But reading wasn't a problem for him. It was that he hated to read dopey, baby books, like
The Dumfrees Move In
.

The story was about the Dumfree family, who had moved from Phoenix to Los Angeles, but their house wasn't ready for them to live in. So Mr. and Mrs. Dumfree, their daughter Sally, their son Rusty and their dog Elmo had to stay with their friends, the Robinsons, until their house was finished.

It was an easy read, and Lonnie should have zipped through it in no time. But he found the story so boring that each time he tried reading it, he zoned out after a few pages.

He shut the book and picked up the instructions sheet for his book project. He had already completed the first part, which was to design a new cover for
The Dumfrees Move In
. The original cover art showed the Dumfree family unloading their van, while Mr. and Mrs. Robinson
stood on the porch, smiling. The picture Lonnie drew showed a red faced Mr. Robinson, arms flailing in the air, not smiling, but cussing, as he watched the Dumfrees sit their suitcases on the driveway. He figured that was how his dad would have reacted if a whole family and their dog had shown up at their door. The cuss words, encircled with a word balloon, were made up of pound signs, question marks, stars and exclamation points.

In addition to the drawing, Lonnie had to write a summary of the story that needed to include the exposition, the rising action, the climax, the falling action and the dénouement. He hadn't understood what those terms meant when he was in the sixth grade, and they still didn't make sense to him. He had also been given a list of twenty questions to answer about the story. One of them read:
Which character do you identify with the most? Why?

Lonnie didn't feel like he identified with any of them. Definitely not the noodle-brain Mr. Dumfree, who didn't have sense enough to wait until his house was ready before moving his family to L.A. Or his ugly, red-headed kid, Rusty. Lonnie chuckled, thinking he probably identified most with Elmo, the dog. Wouldn't it be hilarious if that's what he wrote?

The character I identify with the most is Elmo the dog because dogs can't read, and I hate to read stupid books like
The Dumfrees Move In
.

He finished the rest of his chicken. Then he flopped on his bed with the book. Within minutes, he fell asleep.

Three hours later, he was awakened by a knock on his door. His dad stuck his head in and said, “Hey, buddy, your mom wants me to pick up a few groceries. Wanna go with me?”

“Yeah, sure.” Lonnie jumped out of bed, happy to get out of having to work on his project.

Until eight months ago, his dad had worked as a truck driver for the Merriday Trucking Company. But he was fired after he was arrested for drunk driving, and his license was suspended. Since then, he had been without a job. His only source of income was the unemployment checks he received every two weeks, which didn't compare to what he had been earning as a trucker — a fact that his wife never let him forget. Only recently had his driving privileges been restored, but no trucking company was willing to hire him.