Joe Lansdale - The Best of Joe R. Lansdale

Tom took the gun, I picked Toby up, and we started toward the swinging bridge, which was where the Goat Man was supposed to live.

Me and my friends normally stayed away from the swinging bridge, all except Jake. Jake wasn’t scared of anything. Then again, Jake wasn’t smart enough to be scared of much. Story on him and his old man was you cut off their head they wouldn’t be any dumber.

Jake said all the stories you heard about the swinging bridge were made up by our parents to keep us off of it ‘cause it was dangerous. And maybe that was true.

The bridge was some cables strung across the Sabine from high spots on the banks. Some long board slats were fastened to the cables by rusty metal clamps and rotting ropes. I didn’t know who had built it, and maybe it had been a pretty good bridge once, but now a lot of the slats were missing and others were rotten and cracked and the cables were fastened to the high bank on either side by rusty metal bars buried deep in the ground. In places, where the water had washed the bank, you could see part of the bars showing through the dirt. Enough time and water, the whole bridge would fall into the river.

When the wind blew, the bridge swung, and in a high wind it was something. I had crossed it only once before, during the day, the wind dead calm, and that had been scary enough. Every time you stepped, it moved, threatened to dump you. The boards creaked and ached as if in pain. Sometimes little bits of rotten wood came loose and fell into the river below. I might add that below was a deep spot and the water ran fast there, crashed up against some rocks, fell over a little falls, and into wide, deep water.

Now, here we were at night, looking down the length of the bridge, thinking about the Goat Man, the body we’d found, Toby, and it being late, and our parents worried.

“We gotta cross, Harry?” Tom asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Reckon so. I’m gonna lead, and you watch where I step. The boards hold me, they’re liable to hold you.”

The bridge creaked above the roar of the river, swaying ever so slightly on its cables, like a snake sliding through tall grass.

It had been bad enough trying to cross when I could put both hands on the cables, but carrying Toby, and it being night, and Tom with me, and her trying to carry the shotgun… Well, it didn’t look promising.

The other choice was to go back the way we had come, or to try another path on down where the river went shallow, cross over there, walk back to the road and our house. But the river didn’t shallow until some miles away, and the woods were rough, and it was dark, and Toby was heavy, and there was something out there that had been tracking us. I didn’t see any other way but the bridge.

I took a deep breath, got a good hold on Toby, stepped out on the first slat.

When I did the bridge swung hard to the left, then back even more violently. I had Toby in my arms, so the only thing I could do was bend my legs and try to ride the swing. It took a long time for the bridge to quit swinging, and I took the next step even more gingerly. It didn’t swing as much this time. I had gotten a kind of rhythm to my stepping.

I called back to Tom, “You got to step in the middle of them slats. That way it don’t swing so much.”

“I’m scared, Harry.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “We’ll do fine.”

I stepped on a slat, and it cracked and I pulled my foot back. Part of the board had broken loose and was falling into the river below. It hit with a splash, was caught up in the water, flickered in the moonlight, and was whipped away. It churned under the brown water, went over the little falls and was gone.

I stood there feeling as if the bottom of my belly had fell out. I hugged Toby tight and took a wide step over the missing slat toward the next one. I made it, but the bridge shook and I heard Tom scream. I turned and looked over my shoulder as she dropped the shotgun and grabbed at the cable. The shotgun fell longways and hung between the two lower cables. The bridge swung violently, threw me against one of the cables, then to the other side, and I thought I was a goner for sure.

When the bridge slowed, I lowered to one knee on the slat, pivoted and looked at Tom. “Easy,” I said.

“I’m too scared to let go,” Tom said.

“You got to, and you got to get the gun.”

It was a long time before Tom finally bent over and picked up the gun. After a bit of heavy breathing, we started on again. That was when we heard the noise down below and saw the thing in the shadows.

It was moving along the bank on the opposite side, down near the water, under the bridge. You couldn’t see it good, because it was outside of the moonlight, in the shadows. Its head was huge and there was something like horns on it and the rest of it was dark as a coal bin. It leaned a little forward, as if trying to get a good look at us, and I could see the whites of its eyes and chalky teeth shining in the moonlight.

“Jesus, Harry,” Tom said. “It’s the Goat Man. What do we do?”

I thought about going back. That way we’d be across the river from it, but then again, we’d have all the woods to travel through, and for miles. And if it crossed over somewhere, we’d have it tracking us again, because now I felt certain that’s what had been following us in the brambles.

If we went on across, we’d be above it, on the higher bank, and it wouldn’t be that far to the road. It was said the Goat Man didn’t ever go as far as the road. That was his quitting’ place. He was trapped here in the woods and along the banks of the Sabine, and the route them preachers took kept him away from the road.

“We got to go on,” I said. I took one more look at those white eyes and teeth, and started pushing on across. The bridge swung, but I had more motivation now, and I was moving pretty good, and so was Tom.

When we were near to the other side, I looked down, but I couldn’t see the Goat Man no more. I didn’t know if it was the angle, or if it had gone on. I kept thinking when I got to the other side it would have climbed up and would be waiting.

But when we got to the other side, there was only the trail that split the deep woods standing out in the moonlight. Nothing on it.

We started down the trail. Toby was heavy and I was trying not to jar him too much, but I was so frightened, I wasn’t doing that good of a job. He whimpered some.

After we’d gone on a good distance, the trail turned into shadow where the limbs from trees reached out and hid it from the moonlight and seemed to hold the ground in a kind of dark hug.

“I reckon if it’s gonna jump us,” I said, “that’d be the place.”

“Then let’s don’t go there.”

“You want to go back across the bridge?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then we got to go on. We don’t know he’s even followed.”

“Did you see those horns on his head?”

“I seen somethin’. I think what we oughta do, least till we get through that bend in the trail there, is swap. You carry Toby and let me carry the shotgun.”

“I like the shotgun.”

“Yeah, but I can shoot it without it knocking me down. And I got the shells.”

Tom considered this. “Okay,” she said.

She put the shotgun on the ground and I gave her Toby. I picked up the gun and we started around the dark curve in the trail.

I had been down this trail many times in the daylight. Out to the swinging bridge, but except for that one other time, I had never crossed the bridge until now. I had been in the woods at night before, but not this deep, and usually with Daddy.

When we were deep in the shadow of the trail nothing leaped out on us or bit us, but as we neared the moonlit part of the trail we heard movement in the woods. The same sort of movement we had heard back in the brambles. Calculated. Moving right along with us.