The Other Side of the Bridge (44 page)

“That looks kind of dangerous,” Ian said, frowning at the billhook. “Let’s have a look at it.” March handed it to him. It was old and rusty but still sharp enough to be a bad idea for a not-quite four-yearold.

“Where did you find it?” Ian said. Tools were never left lying around. He glanced at Arthur to see what he thought of it, but Arthur’s eyes were closed and his mouth was open and a faint sighing snore was drifting out with every breath. He was having a proper post-dinner break for once, like he used to before Jake arrived, which Ian suspected had something to do with the fact that Jake had gone outside after dinner, instead of joining them.

“I was digging a hole,” March said, anxiously hauling his T-shirt up and down over his belly, afraid that all these questions meant that he was going to be stopped, as usual, from doing anything that might be fun. “Out by the barn. I was going to bury my truck, and it was there.”

“Well I’ll tell you what,” Ian said. “This is your dad’s and it’s a tool for cutting things, so it wouldn’t be a very good toy,”—a huge sigh of exasperation from March—“Hang on, hang on, what I was about to say is that we can sharpen it together, if you like.” He dug around in his pocket for the sharpening stone. The scythes needed frequent sharpening, so the stone lived permanently in his pocket at the moment.

“Can I do it
myself
?” March asked, stretching his T-shirt down to his knees.

“Yes. I’ll show you how and then you can do it yourself. I’ll just hold it and you can do the rest. You see the billhook has one flat side and one rounded side? Well you don’t sharpen the flat edge, you just smooth the stone over the rounded edge like this….”

So he showed March how to rub the stone over the bevel of the blade, and March had a go at sharpening the hook himself, and then in the middle of the task Julie burst in, highly excited because there was a huge bird—a bald eagle, as it turned out—sitting on the top branch of the white pine at the corner of the hay barn. March rushed off to see it and Ian put the sharpening stone and the billhook down on the kitchen counter, thinking that they’d come back and finish the job in a minute, and followed them out. Then Laura came around the corner of the house with the laundry basket and a minute later Jake appeared from the same direction. And then Arthur, presumably wakened by the excitement, came out as well, and they all stood around with their heads tipped back, gaping up at the eagle, who was looking down at them in utter disdain.

How many stepping-stones? Laura going out to collect the laundry, March finding a billhook where a billhook shouldn’t have been, a bald eagle sitting in a pine tree, the billhook and sharpening stone on the kitchen counter. Such small, unimportant events.

After a while the eagle flew off and Laura told Julie and March she wanted them to come in and wash because they were going to play with friends straightaway. Arthur said, “Might as well get back to it,” and he and Ian set off down the track to the fields.

They were starting on a new field and it was Ian’s job to scythe the edges so that Arthur and the horses could get the binder around. It wasn’t until he picked up the scythe that he remembered he’d left the sharpening stone on the kitchen counter. Arthur didn’t have one with him, so there was nothing for it but to go back to the house and get it. That was the final stepping-stone.

They were in the kitchen. Laura had her back to the wall and Jake was standing directly in front of her, very close. He had one arm against the wall beside her and with the other hand he was lifting her chin. She had her arms up, hands flat against his chest as if she were going to push him away, but she wasn’t pushing him away. That was what Ian noticed. That and the look of horror on her face when she saw him in the doorway.

If she’d been trying to get away she would have looked relieved when he walked in, not horrified—so Ian reasoned, if he reasoned at all. Jake had his back to him and Ian didn’t wait to see his reaction. He turned around and walked out.

He went directly back to the field where he’d left Arthur. He did not debate what he should do, the rights and wrongs, the possible consequences. He was filled with an intent so furious, so ungovernable, that it left no room for thought. When he reached the field he walked straight across it, straight through the tall uncut grain, trampling it, sweeping it aside with his hands. Arthur brought the horses to a stop when he saw him coming and then came to meet him, looking puzzled. When he was still a few feet away Ian said flatly, “You’d better go back to the house.”

“Somethin’ the matter?” Arthur said.

“Yes. Your wife and Jake.”

For a second or two Arthur stared at him and then Ian saw understanding hit him. It was as if it hit him literally: Arthur almost staggered. Then he pushed past Ian and started walking, fast, back to the house.

Ian followed him. He left the horses standing in the middle of the field. He followed Arthur, still not thinking, still focused solely on the image in his brain: Laura and Jake. He felt breathless with a kind of excitement, a violent excitement, made up in equal parts of rage and retribution. He was almost dizzy with it.

He saw Arthur reach the steps to the kitchen and fling open the screen door and go inside. He knew that something was going to happen, that there were going to be consequences. He was glad. There should be consequences, the worse the better. When he entered the kitchen Arthur was just disappearing up the stairs. Laura was standing at the foot of the stairs, her hand on the banister, looking up. Jake must be up there, packing, probably. Packing in a hurry, thinking that he would get away. Ian heard Arthur’s footsteps crossing the landing, and then Jake’s voice, light, falsely cheerful. There was a scuffling sound, and Jake said, almost laughing, “Hey Art! Hey! Calm down! What’s the matter?”

Laura looked at Ian and he saw she was shaking. She said in a whisper, “Ian, what have you done?”

Ian stared at her, his mouth open, speechless with disgust. When he could find words he said, “What have. done? What have. done? What have
you
done?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. But oh, Ian…”

Upstairs Jake was talking fast, still sounding amused, but then there was more scuffling, crossing the landing, and they heard him say, “Jesus, Art! Jesus! Take it easy!” And then he came hurtling down the stairs, Arthur right behind him. At the foot of the stairs Jake fell and before he could get to his feet Arthur reached down and grabbed him and hauled him upright. Jake tried to brush him off, he said, “Okay! Okay!” still trying to make light of it, trying to sound amused. He looked across at Ian and gave an embarrassed laugh as if in apology for the unseemly behavior of his brother, but Ian saw that he was scared, which was good. Laura looked terrified; she’d backed away from the stairs and was standing in the middle of the room with her hands pressed against her face, and that was good too.

It wasn’t until he saw Arthur’s face that Ian began to feel uneasy. Arthur hadn’t said a word but there was something in his eyes that Ian hadn’t seen before in anyone, far less in Arthur. It was the look of someone who had reached the limit, the end of the line—as if he were teetering right on the edge of a cliff within himself, and if he went over, there would be no telling what came next. He propelled Jake across the kitchen toward the door and when they were still a few feet away he gave Jake a shove, and Jake cannoned into the screen door so hard that it slammed open, right back against the outside wall, and he flew out into the yard. Laura gave a cry and ran to the door and Ian came after her. They saw Jake scramble to get up and Arthur reach down and grab him by the back of his shirt and stand him on his feet and start propelling him toward his car. Jake was saying, “Okay, Art. Okay. It’s okay,” but his voice was breathless, there was no pretense of amusement anymore. Laura ran after them. Ian followed hesitantly, apprehensive now, but not yet scared, or not yet admitting that he was scared. He approved of what was happening: it was more serious, more violent than he had expected, but that was okay.

Arthur and Jake had almost reached the car and Arthur, pushing Jake toward it, spoke for the first time. He didn’t shout and his back was to Ian but there was such force behind the words that Ian heard him clearly. He said, “Go. Go now.”

Maybe Jake was emboldened by the fact that Arthur had spoken; maybe he thought he could reason with him now, that they could have a civilized discussion, which he, of course, would win. Arthur had let go of him, expecting him to get into the car and go, now, this minute, but Jake turned to face him, his back to the car, and smiled and said soothingly, as if to an overexcited child, “Okay. Okay, Art. I’ll go. I’ll go right now, but my stuff is still up in the bedroom; just let me get my things, okay?”

He shouldn’t have done that. He should have got into the car and gone. Instead he gave a little laugh as if it had all been just a joke between them and now it was okay, it was over, it was fine.

He said, “You’re kind of overreacting, brother.”

Was it the laugh that did it, or the patronizing tone? Arthur reached out and took hold of the front of Jake’s shirt with both hands and lifted him into the air, right up into the air, and then slammed him against the car, slammed him so hard the car rocked with it. “Go now,” he said.

Ian, scared now all right, seriously scared, saw the color drain from Jake’s face from the force of it. Laura cried out and ran toward them and grabbed Arthur’s arm, but it was clear that Arthur didn’t even know she was there; he lifted Jake and slammed him against the car again. “Go now,” he said again. And lifted him once more. “Go
now
.”

It was the thud of Jake’s body against the metal of the car that was so terrifying. Running toward them, appalled, Ian saw that the force of the blows would kill him. Maybe that wasn’t Arthur’s intention, maybe he just wanted Jake to go—wanted it so badly that there were no words to describe it and so in the absence of words he was urging Jake on his way. Maybe that was all he thought he was doing, but he was going to kill him nonetheless.

Ian reached them and grabbed Arthur’s arm, yelling at him to stop, but Arthur pushed him away. Ian staggered, regained his balance and flung himself at Arthur again, wrapped his arms around his neck this time, and heaved backward. Arthur lost his balance and toppled over and they both ended up on the ground. But in falling Arthur did let go of Jake, and Ian, fighting to keep his arms locked around his neck, managed to yell, “Get into the car!”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a figure running toward them. Carter, still too far away to help but coming fast. He saw Laura help Jake into the car and slam the door behind him, but he couldn’t hold Arthur any longer and as the engine roared into life Arthur broke free.

From where he lay on the ground, what happened next seemed to Ian to take so long that at any stage he should have been able to reach out and stop it. Jake, finally inside the car, his face stiff with shock; Arthur, scrambling to his feet and lunging for the car, one hand stretched out to grab the handle; Carter, racing toward them; Laura, reaching for Arthur, trying to block his path—and then the car, lurching as Jake slammed it into reverse, taking off from a standing start and roaring backward in a great plume of dust and gravel, traveling so fast that Carter had no chance whatsoever: his face, as it hit him, frozen in astonishment, his body pitching forward, head hitting the rear window with such force that his legs were flung up and over, straight up and over, so that his body somersaulted right over the top of the car, and then, slowly and finally, down. And after that: stillness. Silence.

Strange, the way the mind works. The way it protects itself from things it cannot face. Grief, for instance. Or regret. Guilt. It finds something else, anything, to draw between it and what cannot be looked at.

What troubled Ian most, in the days following the accident, was that he couldn’t remember whether or not Carter had been with the rest of them earlier that afternoon when they’d gone out to look at the eagle. He would call up the scene in his memory again and again, trying to recall where they’d all stood, where within the little cluster of them Carter might have been. The others he could see quite clearly. He himself had stood directly behind March, because the little boy was craning his head back so far he was in danger of falling over backward. Laura was to his left, with Julie beside her. Jake was a few feet behind them. Arthur was beside the water trough. But he could never quite see Carter.

He worried about it constantly. He wanted to be able to see him, there with the rest of his family, head tipped back, looking up in awe at the magnificent bird.