The River Burns Read Free Page B

McCracken berated him. “Obey the rules! They are put in place to be obeyed!”
    â€œMove to the side, for crying out loud! We can both pass by!”
    â€œThis bridge is one-way-at-a-time only. Back right up right now or I’ll have the police here quicker that you can say, How did I wind up in jail today? ”
    That charge got him out of his car and he slammed the door as if to confirm his position. She nearly broke out into laughter, he was so short, except that that would be unkind. “You got to be out of your freaking tree, lady!”
    â€œ A , freaking is not the name for any tree. Nor do I believe it serves as a legitimate adjective for any object, animate or not. And B , I am not out of my tree because I have never been in one. Now, return to your car as a gentleman ought to do and back this monstrosity up!”
    â€œMonstrosity!” He failed himself then, actually looking at his vehicle to detect if there might not be some merit to her defamation. “Monstrosity?”
    â€œFine,” Mrs. McCracken backtracked. “I’ll withdraw the insult. Uncalled for. Back up your fine antique car, please, sir. I’ll tell you why you must if you really want to know.”
    He was beginning to appear amused. “Tell me why. I’m interested.”
    â€œThis is quite a small town. Not a village. But small. The police know me. They do not know you.” She removed her cell phone from her berry-picking pack strapped to the rear seat and held it up to a strobe of sunlight slicing through a gap in the ancient roof. “Shall I awaken an officer at this hour?”
    The visitor looked at his car, at the scooter, and at the acerbic old woman.
    â€œWhat are you doing on that thing anyhow? You must be eighty.”
    â€œI am not,” she told him, strident for the first time, “ eighty. ”
    â€œLady, I’ve got a car show to get to. Near the city. Something tells me, the only way I’m going to get there is to back up. So I’ll tell you what.”
    â€œDo that. Tell me what,” Mrs. McCracken encouraged him.
    â€œI’m going to back up.”
    â€œFine. That’ll be just fine,” she determined.
    â€œFine,” he agreed, and got into his car, and backed up.
    When he reached the other side and steered off to the oncoming lane, Mrs. McCracken scooted on by him heading uphill without a word, a flash in the sunlight, her dress a yellowy-white flag in the breeze, her blue helmet ablaze, then she was gone. This time, the driver checked who was coming—no one—before driving onto the old covered bridge.

3
    D enny called it smoking, although he rarely lit up anymore. Smoking meant just hanging with the guys and the morning found him by the old covered bridge where he and his friends Samad and Xavier waited in line with their big rigs. The guys still smoked and he had a tendency to stand downwind so the scent would find him as the others puffed away. He might breathe in deeply but he didn’t call it inhaling exactly.
    Quitting was his idea. He did it of his own volition and without prodding when Val first got pregnant. He didn’t want her smoking, so he didn’t either. Harder for her than for him. He still missed it, though, and the other guys could tell. The easy part was driving smoke-free in his cab. The hard part was hanging out with the guys and having a few beers after a ball game. He could crumble pretty easily but he never did in any big way, even though he and Val were done with making babies, and despite allowing himself a once-in-a-blue-moon smoke with a beer. He was feeling so jumpy inside his skin today he felt like having that smoke. He knew to resist when the urge was strongest. The urge. Strange, that. As if something living inside him craved a different life.
    Denny shuffled a stone around with his toe and munched an apple pinched from his lunch pail. He looked up as another logging truck, out of sight,