The Other Side of the Bridge (24 page)

“Jake, honey, I’ve had a letter from Mr. Wheeler.”

Arthur, sitting outside on the back doorstep searching through a jar of nuts and bolts, heard the anxiety in her voice. Mr. Wheeler was the school principal.

“He wants me to come and see him. Do you know what it’s about? Is everything all right at school?”

Silence. Probably a shrug from Jake.

“But what would it be about, Jakey?”

“Dunno. Wheeler’s an old fool. Just don’t bother going, Mum.”

“Oh, but Jake…” her voice trying for a firmness she no longer seemed to possess.

“Gotta go, Mum. See you later.”

It turned out that Jake had cheated on a test. How could he do such a thing? Why
would
he do such a thing, when he was so clever that he didn’t need to? That was what she couldn’t understand. Mr. Wheeler said gravely that because of Jake’s accident they would be lenient this time, but if it happened again he would be expelled.

Jake denied it, of course. He said a boy in his class had made it up, a boy who had it in for him.

He was nearly sixteen now, almost as tall as Arthur but thin as a rake, and better-looking than ever. His limp did him no harm with girls; Arthur knew that for a fact. No harm at all. It didn’t matter who they were, how old, or where they came from, Jake could make them light up like candles. Arthur saw him after church one Sunday, chatting to the Miller girls and their mother. Mr. Miller was manager of the Hudson’s Bay store, and he and his wife, who was blond and plump and still pretty, though she must have been nearly forty, had three daughters, ranging in age, Arthur guessed, from about ten to eighteen. Jake was standing with them on the church steps, talking to them, making big gestures with his arms. Arthur heard him say, “And if I hit it, it would fall off and douse the grasses, and there’d be this great
whoosh
of flame….” And Mrs. Miller and all three girls started laughing, their eyes fixed raptly on Jake’s face. It was only the eldest girl that Jake was interested in, but he was busy charming all of them, just because he could.

Not just charming them, either. Arthur went into the barn late one afternoon and heard a sound, and paused, trying to identify it. Hot dusty light slanted through cracks in the boards and the air was thick with the smell of cattle. He heard the sound again: Jake’s voice, very low. He was up in the loft and the words sifted down with the sunlight. Low though they were, Arthur could hear them plain as day.

“Put your hand there.” You could even hear the smile in his voice. “There. That’s right.” His voice became thick as the dust.

Arthur stood rooted to the floor of the barn. He couldn’t understand what he was hearing. Or rather, he understood it perfectly, but he couldn’t believe it was Jake. That Jake could say such things to a girl. He felt suddenly sick with lust and longing. He was twenty-one and hadn’t touched a girl in his life.

Jake still suffered pain sometimes. Usually in the evening. Arthur could tell by the way he kept shifting his position, trying to get comfortable. He would stand up, walk around, sit down again. Move his shoulders restlessly. He never complained about it though. Arthur almost wished he would. Jake’s stoicism made him feel worse.

He was no longer waiting, hour by hour, for Jake to tell their parents what had happened on the bridge. He didn’t know why the axe hadn’t fallen, but it hadn’t, and it didn’t feel imminent. Maybe Jake was biding his time. Hoarding the revelation, like money in the bank. Or maybe he didn’t intend to tell them directly, maybe he had decided that it was more valuable to have something to hold over Arthur. A debt that he could call in when the time was right.

“The Jackson boy is home,” Arthur’s mother said, piling potatoes onto her husband’s plate. “But he’s lost an arm, according to Annie. And Stan and Helen Wallace’s boy is still not well enough to travel.” She piled the beans and carrots high—one good thing about living on a mixed farm was that food rationing didn’t affect them. But her lips were tight. Arthur noticed that little lines radiated out around them as if she’d pursed them too often lately, at too much bad news. “The thing is, you get used to it. We’re all getting used to it. Is this enough, Henry?” A nod from Arthur’s father. “To hearing these things, I mean. No one takes any notice anymore. It’s as if all these deaths and all these horrible injuries are…normal. You hardly even feel shocked anymore. It’s terrible. You should at least feel shocked! Pass me your plate, Arthur.” She began forking fat slices of beef onto Arthur’s plate.

“And you know what else? They’re turning Hamborough—what used to be Hamborough—into a prison for prisoners of war. They’re sending German prisoners all the way over here and putting them in special camps. Some of them are being sent to the prison in Monteith. Jake, how much meat would you like?”

“Just a slice,” Jake said. “Hamborough? You mean the old ghost town?”

“Yes. Some of the buildings are still good, apparently. So they’re putting the prisoners there. I don’t think it’s a good idea. What if they escape? Are you
sure
you can’t eat another slice, Jakey?”

Jake flinched. He hated it when she called him that. “Yes, I’m sure.”

“Well have lots of potatoes.” She ladled potatoes onto his plate. “I don’t think having escaped prisoners roaming around the woods is a good idea.”

“Won’t there be guards?” Jake said. “That’s too much, Mum. I can’t eat all that.”

“Try,” his mother said, gently urging. She worried about him all the time, Arthur knew. Every minute of the day. The war, the death of the Luntz boys, hadn’t changed that. In fact, it had made things worse: with boys dying by the thousands, how could hers be spared? Fate must have something else in store for them. Specifically for Jake: Jake was the one she worried about. Arthur understood that. It had always been so, and now more than ever. He didn’t blame her. Jake was always in the background of his mind too. A shadow, tinged with guilt.

“The Veterans Guards are going to guard them,” their mother said. “But they’ll fall asleep. They’re old men.”

Jake gave a snort of laughter. He ate a slice of beef, one potato, and about half a carrot, and then pushed back his chair.

“I’m off,” he said. Sometimes Arthur wondered if he ate so little because he knew how it distressed her.

“Aren’t you having dessert? It’s pie.”

“I’ll have some later.”

“Where are you going?”

“Out.” He patted her head and was gone. The screen door slammed behind him.

Into the silence of the room his mother said, “Do you think he’s happy? With us, I mean. Is he happy, here, with us?”

Arthur looked at her, and saw desolation in her eyes.

One evening at the beginning of May, Otto Luntz came over to tell them that he and Gertie were going away.

“I don’t know how long,” he said. He sat down at the table and accepted the cup of tea Arthur’s mother set down before him. “Maybe a vile. Gertie’s sister in Oshawa, ve go stay vid her. Maybe ve sell de farm, I don’t know.” He looked from one to the other of them. His expression was so bleak that it was hard not to look away. “I be glad you look after tings,” he said. “I pay, of course.”

“We don’t want no money from you, Otto,” Arthur’s father said. “We’ll be happy to look after things as much as we can.” He sounded anxious though. There was a limit to how much they could do.

But Otto understood that. He said, “Important ting is de pigs. I know you can’t do more land, but I tink maybe if you usse my tractor you can do some liddle more? You get my fuel ration too. Den you got horses and a tractor?”

Arthur and his father looked at each other doubtfully. They had never wanted a tractor, didn’t care how fast it was, how efficient. They’d told themselves it wasn’t worth the money—Otto had borrowed heavily from the bank to buy his and in the early stages it kept breaking down, costing him even more—but the simple truth was that they hadn’t liked the idea of it. Hadn’t wanted a big, ugly, noisy machine crawling across their land. If you compared it to the horses, who knew their work so well, who were quiet and companionable, and fertilized the land as they went instead of compacting the soil or churning it into a sea of mud every time it rained, the horses won hands down. But now, if they had Otto’s land to consider as well as their own…

“We ain’t neither of us driven a tractor before,” Arthur’s father said, as if hoping that would excuse them.

“I show you tomorrow,” Otto said. “It iss not difficult.”

So the next day he showed them, and it wasn’t difficult. Both Arthur and his father had a turn driving it up and down the Luntzes’ driveway and it seemed pretty straightforward. Like a truck but bigger. So it was settled. The Dunns would look after the farm as well as they could and keep a share, unwillingly, of the profits, and Otto and Gertie would take their time over deciding what to do next—though they all knew they were saying good-bye for good, that the next time the Luntzes came to Struan it would be merely to clear out the house.

Otto brought the tractor over on the morning he and Gertie left. What with the strain of the farewells nobody paid it any attention, but after the Luntzes had gone they all went and had a closer look at it, even Jake. It might be for farmwork, but it had wheels and Jake liked wheels.

“It just makes me think of those boys,” Arthur’s mother said. She was red-eyed and her voice was clogged as if she had a cold. “I’ll never see it without thinking of them.”

“No point dwellin’ on it,” Arthur’s father said. “It don’t help.”

“I know it doesn’t help.” Her voice was sharp with unhappiness. “But it’s a fact.”

“Doesn’t look as strong as two horses,” Arthur said to change the subject, though it did look pretty strong. It didn’t look as friendly as the horses, though, that was for sure.

Jake was wandering around it, patting the huge tires, drawing a line along the dusty flanks with his finger. “I’m glad it’s red,” he said with satisfaction. “Red’s the right color for a tractor.” He climbed up and sat on the seat and grinned down at them. “Bet it’s fun to drive,” he said. “Wonder how fast it can go. Whoo! We should take it out on the road and see what it’ll do!”

“It’s not a toy,” his father said sharply, in the voice he used to use with Jake, and Jake flushed. He said, “That was a joke, Dad. I was making a joke.”

“It’s dinnertime,” his mother said. “Maybe after dinner you can all try it.”

But maybe Jake guessed he wouldn’t get to drive it, because after dinner he wandered off, like he always did. Arthur’s mother did the dishes as usual, and Arthur and his father retired to the armchairs for a few minutes to let the food go down, though maybe for a little less time than usual because, although they wouldn’t have admitted it even to each other, they were both quite excited about the tractor.

“Looks bigger’n it did before dinner,” Arthur said, when they went out to it again.

“Won’t look no smaller tomorrow,” his father said. “Might as well give ’er a go.”

He climbed up stiffly, placing his feet on the plates with deliberation, and made to sit down. Then hesitated and looked down at Arthur. “You wanna go first?”

Arthur shook his head.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Here goes.” He started the engine as Otto had shown him and it fired up with a roar. He and Arthur grinned at each other. He put it into gear and the huge wheels started turning. He grasped the steering wheel tightly with both hands and yelled, “I’ll take her down to the lower forty!”