The River Burns Read Free Page A

following her retirement, she commenced getting out of bed an hour earlier still, school not being the instigator of that routine either. Nor did Buckminster, her tabby, precipitate the new regimen, although she was fond of blaming him. “That cat!” And while she needed to be up at a reasonable hour to tend to her newest occupation, baking pies, folks weren’t going to consume her wares or even make a purchase before noon. Mrs. McCracken got up early for one reason only. She was lonely. Flat-out fatigued by solitude. Being full of zip and the town’s busybody ameliorated her condition, but any time spent in bed while awake was difficult to bear. Once an eye cracked open she was up and at ’em, usually three steps ahead of her alarm clock.
    Her full name bloomed as Alice Beauchamp McCracken. Not a soul called her Beauchamp. Only the government, the bank, and one or two credit card agencies knew it to be her middle name. Yet no one had called her Alice in such a dreadfully long time either. Peers who might have done so were now deceased, and a few younger people whom she believed called her Alice once upon a time had since succumbed to the common weal. She was Mrs. McCracken to the world, to the point where she’d begun to refer to herself only that way. When introduced, a fairly rare occurrence, whether she was meeting a Dick, a Mary, or a Siobhan, she replied, “I’m Mrs. McCracken, how do you do?” Schoolteacher force of habit, perhaps. Upon spying a bill or an official notice that carried her given name or even the first initial, she was oddly surprised, as though the address must be a typographical error.
    And yet, Alice Beauchamp McCracken one day would be inscribed upon her gravestone. She’d made the arrangements.
    A scooter morning. Fresh berries. She’d beat the heat and arrive at the fields early, be back in time to bake a blueberry pie. Mrs. McCracken started up her Vespa GTV 250, a scooter that could truly scram.
    She lived near the old covered bridge and, obedient to its rules to a fault, slowed down and came to a complete stop before traversing onto the wood surface. The same could not be said of the vehicle approaching from the opposite end. This early, she had no clue whom the interloper might be, but he was under an obligation to stop and to ascertain that he would indeed be first onto the single-lane bridge. He was not first, not by the length of her scooter, and he was not waiting for the vehicle travelling from the opposite side of the river, namely Mrs. McCracken on her Vespa, to cross the bridge ahead of him. They were on a collision course, and knowing full well that she possessed the right of way Mrs. McCracken would not back down. If it meant that her full name was to be inscribed on her gravestone sooner rather than later, so be it.
    The car, an old roadster she soon established, an antique, seemed to be of similar mind, the difference being that only Mrs. McCracken on her scooter would be shunted off the bridge upon impact over the side rails and through the half-height opening into the rapids below while the old green roadster, a heavy Studebaker as it turned out, might suffer, at worst, a scratch.
    Not even a dent , Mrs. McCracken calculated as she sped along.
    Maybe she’d end up a very big muss on the windshield.
    That might turn his stomach. He’d be sorry then.
    The prospect, perhaps, caused the Studebaker to begin to slow, which allowed Mrs. McCracken to honourably do the same, and the two headlong adversaries stopped at the bridge’s centre, the scooter’s wee front tire a speck away from the car’s bumper.
    â€œYou’re in the way!” the driver, an older fellow with a shining pate and white paintbrush moustache, called out. She could not yet distinguish his florid, chubby face through the windshield but knew that she didn’t know him.
    â€œI started across the bridge first and you never stopped!” Mrs.