A Bridge of Years Read Free Page A

back."

    Tom
put down the phone and turned to confront his own reflection, gazing
dumbly out of the bureau mirror. Here was a haggard man with a
receding hairline who looked, at this moment, at least a decade older
than his thirty years. He'd put on weight since Barbara left and it
was beginning to show —a bulge of belly and a softness around his
face. But it was the expression that made the image in the mirror
seem so ancient. He had seen it on old men riding buses. A frown that
announces surrender, the willing embrace of defeat. Options for
tonight?
    He
could stare out the window, into his past; or into this mirror, the
future.
    The
two had intersected here. Here at the crossroads. This rainy old
town.
    He
turned to the window.
    Welcome
back.

    Doug
Archer called in the morning to announce that Tom's offer on the
house—most of his carefully hoarded inheritance, tendered in
cash—had been accepted. "Possession is immediate. We can have
all the paperwork done by the end of the day. A few signatures and
she's all yours."
    "Would
it be possible to get the key today?"
    "I
don't see any problem with that."
    Tom
drove down to the realty office next to the Harbor Mall. Archer
escorted him through paperwork at the in-house Notary Public, then
took him across the street for lunch. The restaurant was called El
Nino—it was new; the location used to be a Kresge's, if Tom
recalled correctly. The decor was nautical but not screamingly
kitschy.
    Tom
ordered the salmon salad sandwich. Archer smiled at the waitress.
"Just coffee, Nance."
    She
nodded and smiled back.
    "You're
not wearing your realty jacket," Tom said.
    "Technically,
it's my day off. Plus, you're a solid purchase. And what the hell,
you're a hometown boy, I don't have to impress anybody here." He
settled back in the vinyl booth, lean in his checkerboard shirt, his
long hair a little wilder than he had worn it the day before. He
thanked the waitress when the coffee arrived. "I looked into the
history of the house, by the way. My own curiosity, mainly."
    "Something
interesting?"
    "Sort
of interesting, yeah."
    "Something
you didn't want to tell me until the papers were signed?"
    "Nothing
that would change your mind, Tom. Just a little bit odd." "So?
It's haunted?"
    Archer
smiled and leaned over his cup. "Not quite. Though that wouldn't
surprise me. The property has a peculiar history. The lot was
purchased in 1963 and the house was finished the next year. From 1964
through 1981 it was occupied by a guy named Ben Collier—lived
alone, came into town once in a while, no visible means of support
but he paid his bills on time. Friendly when you talked to him, but
not real friendly.
Solitary."
    "He
sold the house?"
    "Nope.
That's the interesting part. He disappeared around 1980 and the
property came up for nonpayment of taxes. Nobody could locate the
gentleman. He had no line of credit, no social security number
anybody could dig up, no registered birth—his car wasn't even
licensed. If he died, he didn't leave a corpse." Archer sipped
his coffee. "Real good coffee here, in my opinion. You know they
grind the beans in back? Their own blend. Colombian, Costa Rican—"
    Tom
said, "You're enjoying this story."
    "Hell,
yes! Aren't you?"
    Tom
discovered that he was, as a matter of fact. His interest had
been piqued. He looked at Archer across the table— frowned and
looked more closely. "Oh, shit, I know who you are! You're the
kid who used to pitch stones at cars down along the coast highway!"
    "You
were a grade behind me. Tony Winter's little brother."
    "You
cracked a windshield on a guy's Buick. There were editorials in the
paper. Juvenile delinquency on the march."
    Archer
grinned. "It was an experiment in ballistics."
    "Now
you sell haunted houses to unsuspecting city slickers.
    "I
think 'haunted* is kind of melodramatic. But I did hear another odd
story about the house. George Bukowski told me this—George is a
Highway Patrol cop, owns a double-wide mobile home down by