View To The Bridge

A path of brilliant light streaked the black morning sky,flickered and dropped to the dirt road in front of KennethMills. It cast a shadow that towered twice his six footframe. Moments before, in the darkness, he had stumbledon a rock not yet fully covered by last night's snowfall. The pain ranfrom his big left toe up his back to his lower neck. His face twistedwith the pain. He turned his face back to the house. The spotlightagain flickered, zigzagging skyward and then back down. The lightnow steadied on his face. Pain was etched in the deep furrows of hisforehead.

Esther briefly smiled at his grimace.

It was an icy, bone-chilling morning, as Kenneth made his waydown the rock hardened path to the covered bridge. Through a lightsnow flurry, Kenneth could see the graying structure awaiting himlike a giant dinosaur. He knew the old bridge presented no danger,as he prepared to cross the frozen river into Osprey Cove.

Kenneth Mills, a thin, gawky, and pitiable man, had lived onthe outskirts of Osprey Cove all his life. Now at thirty years old, hewondered if he would ever escape its cold grasp or that of his bittergrandmother, Esther.

Kenneth had been a sickly child whom his grandmother watchedover with an iron-fisted control that became the gossip of OspreyCove. He lived in mortal fear of Esther Mills and of the townsfolk,who were also critically savage.

Osprey Cove was fifty-one miles north of East Quaco, which inturn was another forty plus miles northeast of Bangor, Maine. Therocky coastline lay nearby. The small seaside cove had changed verylittle over the past century. At the onset of winter, November 1964,Kenneth felt it could just as easily have been 1864.

His face now flushed in anger. Kenneth recalled their earlierargument: "Why can't you let me go about business and try to be aman?" Kenneth argued. "Cause you don't act like a businessman, likeyour Pa, and you never will!" Esther yelled back.

"Maybe that's because you never give me a fair chance at it. Youknow, I never had the full benefit of knowing him like you did."Kenneth said.

"Wouldn't have mattered much. You will never replace him. YourPa was as near perfect as they come; and, you're as worthless as theycome." Esther slashed back.

"Suppose that's why I never became a doctor like I always wanted ...'cause of you and your putdowns on me?" Kenneth half asked.

"You couldn't have been a surgeon anymore than old Sam Bronson,down at the funeral parlor; who by the way, takes advantage of you allthe time. Why you waste your life working for him is beyond me!"Esther exclaimed.

Kenneth didn't answer. He thought of Sam Bronson and thesmall handful of other townsfolk ... not many ... who believed in him.There was Ms. Duboir, his biology teacher, who still believed in himeven though he hadn't gone on to become a doctor. And Kennethremembered Dr. Joe Walters, the town's general practitioner whomhe so wanted to be like. Kenneth loved and worshiped Dr. Walters.Kenneth believed that the good doctor was earnest in his praises andsupport of him; that Dr. Walters truly believed in him.

Then there was Mack of Mack's Pub, who Kenneth felt mightpossibly believe in him. Although, Mack had on more than oneoccasion played Kenneth for the fool that everyone else in OspreyCove believed Kenneth to be.

Kenneth paused on the gray covered bridge where his parents haddied when he was ten. Kenneth felt that his parents, if alive today,would certainly believe in him.

A shiver ran through him as he recalled their frozen bodies in thecar. He grappled with other details of that wintry night, but to noavail. "I feel so terribly alone; deserted, unwanted. Why did you haveto go away and leave me with your mother?" Kenneth whimpered.

Esther's view to the bridge was becoming clearer. She carefullywiped away the innermost frost from the glazed window. The frostymoisture soaked her yellowed handkerchief. The handkerchiefbegan to form cold droplets that fell to the cobwebbed and dustcovered windowsill. She reached above shoulder-level to readjust thespotlight. Its metallic hinge grated and with a shrill refused to giveway to Esther's wiry arm.

"Damn piece of junk," she screeched, giving it a more determinedtug. It shrilled and finally gave way. Esther, with trembling hand,grasped the stiff yellowed handkerchief and wiped away the newfrost from the windowpane. Her withered arm, still hanging fromthe spotlight's iron handle, tightened and twisted the lamp to cast anew path of light. The right quarter of the gray bridge came into fullview. "Aha, now I've got you good and clear," she laughed.

Kenneth stood motionless, partly hidden inside the bridge'sopening. There was the shadow of a much smaller man in a raincoatand a fisherman's hat, just to one side of him. "Who is that?" Estherheard herself ask. "Who are you talking to, Kenneth?"

The shadow shrunk as the fisherman stooped in front of Kenneth.Rising up, the shadowed figure handed Kenneth a large knapsack."Lousy old eyes, can't focus any good," Esther thought.

Straining, nose against the icy window, she screwed her eyebrowsto force a sharper vision. Kenneth was opening the knapsack. Theother man knelt next to Kenneth and pointed into the sack. Esthersaw Kenneth stand and strain as he tried to lift the knapsack by itsdrawstrings. It refused to budge. "Come on you weakling. Hell, ifyou can lift my eighty-five pounds of skin and bones, you sure as hellcan lift that wet sack of who-knows-what." Esther shook her headin disgust.

Kenneth held the knapsack closer to its neck to gain betterleverage and with a second effort, raised it. Esther could see thesmall fisherman, now hunched over, slyly moving away fromKenneth. Kenneth looked back to the house and to the windowwhere Esther's nose and eyebrows traced the only clear glass on theiced windowpanes. His eyes squinted at her window, through thebrilliant path of the spotlight.

He turned back to speak to the fisherman who was steadyinghimself at the bridge's corner pillar, before the fisherman began todescend down the steep riverbank.

Esther wrapped at the window with her knotted knuckles. "What'sgoing on down there, Kenneth? What are you up to now?"

Kenneth knelt, as the fisherman had done moments before.He tied the knapsack's drawstrings to his right ankle and began todrag it to the bridge's corner pillar. He crawled on his belly like awounded soldier with desperate troops clinging to his ankles. Hecrawled, belly-down, to the bridge's opening and peered over theedge, transfixed in his stare, impaled to the bridge's floorboards like apinned frog in a tray of formaldehyde. He lay motionless in a state ofvertigo as he...